25 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6ac89f193dc04cd89da823b16684ac8f.pdf e56e5e9f4f2310153182d7cf8b4adf85 PDF Text Text �On Melville n an acclaimed new biography of Herman Melville ^Melville: His World and Work), Andrew Delbanco writes of how Melville drew on his experiences as a seafarer to create his masterwork, Moby-Dick. However, Melville was at a point in his literary career where he was ready to go beyond the adventure stories of his popular earlier novels, Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket. During a picnic on Monument Mountain, not far from Melville’s country home, the Melville had been engaged in extensive reading, and a fateful meeting-with author took cover during a rainstorm with Nathaniel Hawthorne, then 46 and much another author in 1850 had such a powerful influence on him that he admired by the younger writer. The two hours the men spent in conversation, according approached his work-in-progress with an entirely new vision. to Delbanco, left Melville filled with new aspirations. After that meeting, he revised his novel with perspective gained from all the great works he had immersed himself in: the Bible, Paradise Lost, Wc. Aeneid, Frankenstein, and Shakespeare’s tragedies. He accomplished a “stylistic breakthrough,” Delbanco tells us, but the transformation went much deeper: “In his fever of creation, Melville became Emerson’s proverbial poet, whose ‘imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind.’ His book opened out into the panorama of history and myth to which he had been exposed in his reading, from the Western scriptures to Eastern tales of dervishes and devil worshippers.” The publication of Moby-Dick in September 1851 came during a remarkable period for American literature, when Americans were struggling with soul-wrenching issues such as slavery which would determine the character of our nation. Between 1850 and 1855, seven important books were published: Emerson’s Representative Men-, Thoreau’s Walden, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The House ofSeven Gables, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Melville’s Moby-Dick and Pierre. Moby-Dick a great commercial disappointment, selling only 2,300 copies in its first months. The reviews were mixed. “The intense Captain Ahab is too long drawn out; something more of him might, we think, be left to the reader’s imagination,” wrote the reviewer for Literary World. The London Morning Post-was more insightful, if not exactly prophetic: “There is much that is incredible and a little that is incomprehensible in this latest effort of Mr. Melville’s wayward and romantic pen; but despite its occasional extravagancies, it is a book of extraordinary merit, and one which will do great things for the literary reputation of its author.” His next novel, Pierre, drew on Melville’s life story, growing up in a family of distinction but greatly reduced circumstances. His hopes of surviving on his literary efforts crushed, Melville took a menial job as a customs inspector. He died in debt and obscurity in 1891. Billy-Budd, a book that alternates with Benito Cereno on the reading list for senior seminar today, was greeted with critical acclaim when published in 1924. Johnnies who enjoy making literary excursions can visit Arrowhead, the 1780 farm­ house in Pittsfield, Mass., where Melville wrote his great novel. Those whose devotion to the novel goes even further may want to take part in one of several annual marathon readings Moby-Dick, such as one held aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last surviving wooden whaling vessel, or another held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, not far from where Melville shipped out on the Achushnet in 1841. -RII I STJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS . SANTA FE The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapohs, 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 Sus3an Borden (A87) Barbara Goyette (A73) Caroline Knapp (SF99) Andra Maguran Jo Ann Mattson (A87) Erica Naone (A05) Chris Utter (A06) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �"I "I College Vol The ZINE FOR Alumni of St. John’s College y Annapolis • {Contents} PAGE IO DEPARTMENTS Santa Fe Welcomes a President At his Inauguration in October, President Michael Peters received a warm welcome and pledges of support from both the St. John’s and Santa Fe communities. PAGE Iz| Lives in their Hands 8 LETTERS 9 HISTORY Bibliofile Peter Pesic takes up a standard childhood question. Linda Weiner considers the limitations of science. Losing Moby PAGE Miss Brann Honored by the NEH Santa Fe GI Program Supports Teachers Intellectual Fisticuffs in Annapolis Fishpond Renovations Johnnies on the Water Helping New Orleans Grant Aids in Shoreline Restoration 30 20 How Moby-Dick has submerged and resurfaced over the years offers a bit of insight into decisions about the college’s reading list. FROM THE BELL TOWERS • • • • • • • Gil Crandall (class 011936) shares memories of being a “rat.” Working with wood, metal, and glass, four Johnnies make beautiful and enduring objects. PAGE a 3a ALUMNI NOTES PAGE 18 PROFILES 3a Joseph Houseal (A84) follows his love of 26 dance to the Himalayas. 36 Fighting fear with reason; David Veazey O, Pioneers! (A97) fights a deadly disease. 39 Shana Hack (A95) follows a dream. Homecoming in Annapolis features a tribute to the women of the Class of 1955. 41 Entrepreneur Paul Laur (SFGI95) keeps family at the heart of his business. 48 OBITUARIES Remembering Santa Fe Tiitor Ralph Swentzell. 48 STUDENT VOICES PAGE 26 After Katrina: Writer Sara Roahen (SF94) describes a visit home. 50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS ON THE COVER Herman Melville Illustration by DavidJohnson 5a ST. John’s FOREVER �{From the Bell Towers} Miss Brann GJoes to the White House Annapolis Tutor is one of Twelve NEH Medalists November lo and ii were whirlwind days for long-time Annapolis tutor Eva Brann: feted at an award dinner hosted by the National Endow­ ment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., meeting George W. and Laura Bush in the Oval Office, and being one of the guests of honor at a State Dinner with lumi­ naries including Judith Martin (Miss Manners) and actor Robert Duval. But what is one of the first things she mentions when asked to recount the experience? The books she was given. One was a novel, Henry and Clara, written by NEH’s acting deputy chairman, Tom Mallon, who sat at her table during the awards dinner. “It is about Henry Rathbone, who was in the box with Lincoln when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre. He later goes stark raving mad and kills his wife. Thebookwas very well done,” Miss Brann says. The second was Thieves ofBaghdad, a new work published by a fellow honoree, Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who wrote about the efforts he led to save Iraq’s antiquities. “It is a thriller,” Miss Brann says. “The work he did required courage and ingenuity.” In addition to bringing home a couple of very good books, there was another tremendously gratifying aspect to the events. Miss Brann says. Both President Bush and NEH Chairman Bruce Cole referred to St. John’s as a “national treasure,” something that caused her to glow with pride. “It is nice to know that the college has a reputation in Washington and with the NEH that is real and serious,” she says. Miss Brann learned at the end of October that she was selected to receive the National Humanities Medal, given in recognition of outstanding scholarship. The honor is awarded to those “whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand America’s access to important humanities resources.” The news came from Mr. Cole, who phoned her personally. “I was dumbstruck,” Miss Brann recalls. Soon after, she received a call from the White House social secretary, who filled her in on the protocol for the White House ceremony with the President and the State Dinner. Miss Brann, who gets by with the most basic of wardrobes, was forced to go on a shopping spree, buying three outfits. She added costume jewelry that has been in her family for decades. “My father was a doctor in Brooklyn, and when patients had no money to pay, they would bring him their jewelry,” she explains. Miss Brann could choose three guests to accompany her; she invited her pubUsher and good friend Paul Dry and his wife. Cede, of Philadelphia. The third invitation went to Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70). The three attended a reception and dinner at the Madison Hotel, where Miss Brann was pleased to meet one of her personal heroines, Judith Martin. “I told her, ‘you’re the ruler of my life! ’ She was very nice.” The next morning. Miss Brann, her guests, Meeting President George W. Bush AND First Lady Laura Bush was and other honorees were EXCITING, BUT THE BEST PART, ACCORDING picked up by bus and TO Christopher Nelson and Eva brought to the White Brann, was hearing St. John’s praised House. One by one, the AS A “national treasure.” honorees were led into the Oval Office. “I went in and Mrs. Bush and the President greeted me very kindly,” she says. “We had our picture taken, and the President said, ‘you have a nice smile! ’ He was very fit and very friendly.” The President hung her medal around her neck, and soon all the medalists and their guests were gathered in the Oval Office. “After talking with Miss Manners, the President said, ‘I think now that I’ll send you over to the Congress.’ ” The President told his guests about some of the famous items in the Oval Office, including the Resolute desk, made from the timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes. “Then he said he had to go-’I’m going to meet the president of Yemen,’ he said, ‘to talk to him very seriously about terrorism.’ ” Many speeches followed at the NEH ceremony at the Metropol­ itan Club. “Again, the college was very much to the fore,” Miss Brann said. Next, the honorees were brought to the NEH Building for a panel discussion. “I was asked whom I would most like to meet among the dead-I said Lincoln.” St. John’s student Mark McClay (A09), whose father. Bill McClay (A73), is a member of the National Humanities Council, attended the discussion. “It was very nice to have a student there,” Miss Brann says. “I made him absent from lab.” {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } continued on nextpage �{From the Bell Towers} Supporting Teachers A Generous Gift Will Provide Santa Fe GI Scholarships Robert Warren (SFGI93) and his wife, Carol, signed a planned giving agreement that establishes a scholarship for working teachers pursuing master’s degrees in the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. The agreement, signed in December, will provide financial assistance to students attending either the Liberal Arts or the Eastern Classics programs who are full-time primary or secondary school teachers and living and working in New Mexico. The need-based scholar­ ship may be granted to either full-time or part-time students in the graduate program. The scholarship, tentatively valued at between $325,000 and $475,000, will be funded by a percentage of the Warrens’ residuary estate. The Warrens believe in the value of a St. John’s education and are particularly interested in supporting the Graduate Insti­ tute. Moreover, they want their gift to recognize the value of the GI to individual teachers living and working in New Mexico because they believe the program enhances teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom. When he attended the Grad­ uate Institute from 1991 to 1993, Bob Warren saw educators who were committed to teaching and to learning but who did not have the resources to complete their graduate studies in the same timeframe as other students. “I was with a number of teachers who were doing the GI one-third of a segment at a time. The reason was money,” he says. Warren is glad to be able to help teachers who must take out loans. “If we can help free someone to get out from under that rock of graduate school debt, then it’s undeniably a worthwhile undertaking,” he says. Krishnan Venkatesh, director of the Graduate Institute, says that teachers need this kind of assistance. In New Mexico, the average starting salary for teachers is approximately $27,500. The Warren Family Scholar­ ship at St. John’s College is the Warren’s fourth endowment to a college. They have established and funded scholarships at his and Carol’s alma maters, Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York, at Cathohc University’s Columbus School of Law, where Bob earned his J.D., and a single funded scholarship to enable an underprivileged Seneca Indian girl to attend a private elementary and secondary school in Bob’s hometown of Buffalo, N.Y. For Bob Warren, creating the Graduate Institute scholarship is something he has wanted to do for a long time. He hopes that Carol Warren, Santa Fe President Mike Peters, Robert Warren (SFGI93), and Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh celebrate a new SCHOLARSHIP THE WaRRENS HAVE Others will follow in his foot­ steps; in particular, he would like to see more support for the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. “Education is everything,” he says. “What’s happened to the idea that anyone who could do well academically could receive a higher education in this country? It’s become reprehensibly expensive, curtailing that opportunity for many who deserve better.” Santa Fe president Mike Peters was delighted with the Warrens’ support of the Graduate Institute. “This is the kind of continuing commitment to the college that is really vital,” he says. While the Warrens’ scholar­ ship agreement will help Graduate Institute teachers in Santa Fe at some time in the future, the college’s own National Educator’s Grant is available now to support teachers in the GI on both campuses. For full-time public or private school teachers with at least three years of teaching experience, the college will grant a scholarship to pursue either of the college’s graduate programs. The grant provides one-third of either program’s tuition. Administrators, curriculum developers, and other educational professionals are also eligible for this new grant. —AndraMaguran ENDOWED. continued After resting and changing into her formal wear, it was back to the White House for the State Dinner. “It was very elegant, without being overpowering,” Miss Brann says of the event. “There were endless, beautiful corridors, a quartet playing Mozart.” She and President Nelson took their places in the receiving line, “and this was really the high point,” Miss Brann says, “President Bush said, ‘Good evening, Eva. You have a wonderful college.’ ” Miss Brann was seated at a table with Mrs. Bush. “We sat down to a wonderful dinner,” followed by a performance by Allen Toussaint, a jazz musician and composer who had lost his New Orleans home in Hurricane Katrina. Miss Brann tried with no success to find out who nominated her for the award. After the story hit the national news, she received warm letters from alumni all over the country. She is pleased, she allows, but still a bit perplexed. “I think the college has more to do with this than I,” she insists. Her only disappointment in the whole affair was that DoUy Parton, a Medal of Arts winner, was not able to attend. “I am a great admirer,” says Miss Brann. Seeing the White House, chatting with Robert Duval about his films, and hearing accolades for his college also made the event memorable for President Nelson, who had never been to the White House before. He found it remarkable that the President knew several former and current St. John’s students. One especially enjoyable moment for Mr. Nelson was walking up to President Bush in the receiving line and hearing the greeting, “and here’s the other president.” {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } —Rosemary Harty �4 {From the Bell Towers} Fite Club Tuesday-Nite Fites Allow Johnnies to Take the Gloves Off BY Chris Utter { Ao6) One of the most idiosyn­ cratic parts of life on the Annapolis campus in recent years has been the proliferation of clubs with names like “Mabel the Swimming Wonder Monkey,” which meets to watch and comment on campy movies, and “Hoi Strategoi,” organized with the sole purpose of playing the board game “Diplomacy.” One of these odd clubs, though, the “Tuesday Nite Fites,” has outstripped them all in popularity. On a good night, more than 40 students partici- S pate in the “fite,” a kind » of sophistry contest. It all began two years ago with a series of lectures given by Annapolis tutor Michael Comenetz. Comenetz sent out a note to the Polity that ended with the statement, “there will be some etymology and prostitution.” Erikk Geannikis (A06) thought this was such a strange juxtaposition of subjects that he wrote the two words on a chalkboard in the King William Room of the Barr Buchanan Center. Throughout the day students drifted in and out of the room, some deciding to vote on which concept was superior by putting a mark under one of them. Geannikis saw this and thought it was so funny that he decided to pit two new concepts,''Puliteia vs. Caramella,” against each other, for people to debate about and then vote on. Shortly thereafter Geannikis institutionalized the process by securing a charter for the club from the student council. The kind of debate that goes on at a fite is, in part, something we are used to at St. John’s. It is an exercise in comparing two concepts in the abstract, even though we may not have related the two ideas before. “That’s the benefit of Tuesday Nite Fites,” says Brian Jones (Ao6)-gaining a clear idea of concepts we use every day.” But the TNF format gives students the chance to indulge in something we can’t do in seminar: debate, compete, and argue. “It’s a kind of catharsis,” says Jones. “I think that’s why so many students show up.” Nevertheless, as in seminar, the merit of an argument depends on its ability to get to the heart of the matter. “It’s not a candy shop,” says Schuyler Sturm (A08), quoting one of the club’s mottos. In other words, the outcome does not depend on which concept people like more, but which one is demonstrated to be superior. For example, in the debate “Pants vs. Dance,” at first the debaters were at a loss even to compare the ideas, let alone decide {The College Beyond Sophistry: The TOPICS MAY BE BIZARRE, BUT THESE JOHNNIES TAKE DEBATE SERIOUSLY. LeFT TO RIGHT ARE AnNAPOLIS STUDENTS Max Kronberg, Meghan Lockard, Brian Jones, Genna Hinkle, AND Christopher Stuart. which one was better. Diagrams of pants were drawn on the chalkboard, and liters vehemently tried to persuade the other side that they were right. Eventually, though, the thought struck someone that “pants” could also be the plural for “pant,” as in panting for breath. And since “pants,” as breaths, are necessary in order to “dance,” pants ended up winning because of its priority. Often, if something can be shown to be a priori, that concept will win the fite. There is always a “Title Fite,” which is the main fight of the evening, and which is usually a little more serious, for example, “Ways vs. Curves”; this is followed by the “Two Hole,” which some have called “earthier” than the rest; the “Brian Jones Fite,” and the “Seminar Fite,” which pits two, usually senior, seminar topics against each other. At the end of the nite, each fiter votes for a winner. A memorable recent Title Fite was “Furniture vs. Friction.” Most people sided with friction following the priority argument. But then one of the combatants, struck by the blindness of his peers, walked up to the blackboard and wrote, “Friction: too subtle to be serious?” And after a fierce debate, furniture won. ‘‘It won,” says Sturm, “because superiority is based on a stronger concept, what affects the human mind more. For this reason, I often discourage people from using the priority argument. Many of the debates can be reduced simply to Nature vs. Art.” Geannikis is graduating this year, but he has passed on the archonship of the Tuesday Nite Fites to Sturm. Sturm was the only freshman to show up for the first fite of his freshman year. Sturm sees a bright future for TNF, which he views as more than just a weekly sophistry contest. “It’s useful as exercise for seminar in that we can think of concepts purely in the abstract. I don’t know that this could exist at another school; it would probably seem strange to outsiders. But people here are used to strange oppositions between subjects,” he says. - St John’s College • Winter 2006 } �{From the Bell Towers} Fish on the Run Students read by it. Faculty fiddle by it. Children peer over its edge. With the exception of the bell tower of Weigle Hall, no physical feature is more emblematic of the Santa Fe campus than the fishpond on the Upper Placita, in front of Peterson Student Center. The pond and surrounding garden were gifts from film actress Greer Garson, who donated funds for the project in 1964 in memory of her mother, Nina S. Garson. Garson’s husband. Buddy Fogelson, was a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, and the two were supporters of the college. Designed as a two-foot deep reflecting pool, the pond was not originally intended to accommodate fish, says Pat McCue (SFGI83, EC97), land­ scape and grounds supervisor. It’s not quite deep enough for healthy and happy fish, but that didn’t stop local residents from releasing overgrown goldfish into the pool. It quickly became a refuge for Santa Fe’s rejected fish. (Several “legitimate” koi, an ornamental variety of the common carp, were donated by former president John Balkcom, SFGIoo.) Later this spring, the fishpond and its residents will benefit from a much-needed renovation project. The pool will be made deeper, the water­ fall will be repaired, and a water line that runs beneath the pond will be replaced. During construction, he says, all of the fish except the koi will be up for adoption. Fish that are not adopted will be distributed to the pond in Schepp’s Garden, to the president’s home, and to a fish tank. Most of the pond’s fish are goldfish; a few catfish and minnows have also taken up residence with the elegant koi, and every once in a while some­ Johnnies on the Water Annapolis Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78) has been seeing more and more students turning out for crew and sailing. An analytical sort, he crunched some numbers. “With 61 students involved-45 in crew, 16 in sailing-that’s 13 percent of the St. John’s under­ graduate students spending time in boats on the water,” he says. Also a competitive sort, Pickens did some comparing: Washington College, on the Chestertown River, and St. Mary’s College, a sailing powerhouse regularly atop the collegiate rankings, each have just 7 percent of their student bodies involved in boat racing sports. “Then I thought, ‘what about the Naval Academy? They have all those boats,’” Pickens says. The academy has just 9 percent of its midshipmen in thing exotic-a rainbow trout, for example-turns up. When he has time, McCue feeds the fish, though they could easily survive on the pond’s algae and larvae. For the most part, pond maintenance is minimal, that is until McCue has to repot all 18 of the water lilies. Among the fish pond flora there is one special variety, a lotus flower symbolic of Eastern philosophy that McCue donated in honor of the Eastern Classics program. Johnnies seem to develop a special affection for the crew or sailing. That’s 360 individuals, Pickens allows, but percentage-wise, St. John’s wins. In part, the new interest in sailing is due to a fleet with nine good boats. The program also has a dedicated coach in Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Pat McCue sits on THE EROZEN FISH POND, DUE FOR A MAJOR OVERHAUL THIS SPRING. ichthyoid residents of the pond. Several years ago, “Stan,” a very large koi, ruled the pond for four years. When Stan died, some students paid to have him stuffed and mounted in the dining hall, where he hung for a few years until he mysteriously disappeared. —Andra Maguran Skip Kovacs, also the college’s boathouse manager, “a world­ class sailor,” Pickens says. “Sailboat racing is just plain fun,” Pickens says. “They prac­ tice as a team on Tuesdays and Fridays, and on Wednesdays, members are invited to go and scrimmage with Navy.” This spring, the team will take part in a competition hosted by the Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association. “We’re taking advantage of the great natural resource of the Chesapeake Bay, to get students out and involved in water sports. It’s a great fit for us-not like foot­ ball,” says Pickens. Johnnies churn up the Severn River during crew practice LAST FALL. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �6 {From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements Award for President Nelson Last November, the Rosenbach Museum & Library of Philadel­ phia honored Annapolis President Christopher B. Nelson for “his passion for liter­ ature and teaching.” The award was presented at the museum’s annual fund-raising event. One of the cultural treasures of Philadelphia, the Rosenbach seeks to inspire curiosity, inquiry, and creativity through its exhibitions and programs. A quick review of the museum’s collections indicates why the Rosenbach’s board of directors would appreciate President Nelson and St. John’s College. Among the museum’s collec­ tions are the finest known copy of the first edition oiDon Quixote, original drawings and books by William Blake, manuscripts by Joseph Conrad, and a manuscript of James Joyce’s Ulysses. and Santa Fe community together. Eakes is currently principal of The Holly Company, a consulting firm. The society sponsors special seminars, called Inviting Conversations, which are modeled after 18th-century salon conversations, are led by a St. John’s College tutor, and take place in the home of a Philos member. The society’s newest initiative, the Xenos Program, seeks to involve St. John’s students in their community by arranging informal gatherings at the homes of local residents, who provide students with career advice, local networking contacts, or just a homecooked meal. Off-Broadway Hit New Tutors Gabriel Pihas (A93) joined the Annapolis faculty in January. After graduating from St. John’s, Pihas went on to earn an M.A. and M. Phil in Medieval Studies at Yale University. He studied at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in Social Thought. His academic honors include an Evelyn S. Nef Fellowship, the Marian and Andrew Heiskell Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize, and a Dissertation Teaching and Research Fellow­ ship at Chicago. SF Chooses Philos Society Chairman Thomas G. Eakes, a busi­ nessman and civic leader in Santa Fe, has been elected to serve as chairman of the Philos Society, a steering group of St. John’s College supporters that works to bring the college Santa Fe sophomore Laura Sook made her directorial debut with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, produced last FALL BY Santa Fe students. It was met with critical acclaim from both the campus community and locals who turned out for an EVENING of musical THEATER FEATURING “MISTAKEN IDENTITIES, PIRATES, AND OF COURSE, A LOVE STORY,” SoOK SAYS. FrOM LEFT TO RIGHT, THE THESPIANS ARE: SOPHOMORES AbBY PetRY AND E. ElNOWSKI, AND SENIOR Jeanne Bustamante. {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 } Search & Rescue Honors Volunteer Winter usually sends the St. John’s College Search and Rescue out into the snow, looking for lost skiers. But this past November, the team found one of their own to honor, dedi­ cating the team’s emergency operations center to Dr. Jerry Allen in honor of his years of service. AUen, a Santa Fe family practice physician, joined the team in 1973. About 40 current and former team members came together to honor Allen. During the ceremony, the center-located in the basement of the Evans Science Laboratory-was officially renamed the Jerry Allen Emergency Operations Center, with a bronze plaque installed. The center is the team’s command post, where radios are tuned to state police and civil air patrol frequencies and mission boards track teams in the field. In his remarks, Allen shrugged off the attention. “I would have to say that for all the years I was on this team, I got far more from the team than the team got from me,” he said. Team President Mike Ongstad (SF06) recounted his first meeting with Allen. “I showed up for my first mission with my pack full of gear. It was about a a.m. And here was this old guy who was going to lead our team into the wilderness, and I thought, ‘oh great, this is going to be so slow.’ After the first hour on the trail the students had to ask him to slow down so we could catch up,” said Ongstad. Team founder Herb Kincey said that over the past 3a years, Allen invested “tremendous” effort into the volunteer organi­ zation. “He’s worked with generations of St. John’s students and has always been there for them,” he added. 4—John Haktnett (SF83) �{From the Bell Towers} Johnnies Help in New Orleans A few hours after their last seminar in December, five Annapolis Johnnies piled into a car and headed south to New Orleans to work in the city’s devastated Ninth Ward. They had volunteered for a group called Common Ground, a New York-based nonprofit housing and community development organization. Caleb Nolen (Ao8) had been looking for a way to help, and his Web search led him to the group. Nolen and Jessie Seiler (Ao8) organized the trip, which also included Joshua Becker (Ao8), Micah Gates (Aog), and Rebecca Harrison (Aog). Some of the students stayed for the whole winter break, sacrificing hoUday celebrations with their families to go to New Orleans. The students spent their nights sleeping on cots in the commu­ nity center of a church and their days gutting homes that were badly damaged by flooding and rendered uninhabitable by mold. The experience was unsetthng, the work was exhausting and even dangerous, and at times, the students felt overcome by a tragedy of such proportion. “The night we drove in, we saw these mountains of trash piled everywhere,” Seiler says. “It was eerie, apocalyptic.” At the same time, the dedicated volunteers the students encountered, especially those working for Common Ground, gave them some hope for the city. “There are a lot of really good people doing really good things,” Nolen said. Each person in the group was assigned work suited to his or her skills. Gates did technical work; Becker worked in the kitchen feeding volunteers. Nolen, Seiler, and Harrison gutted flood-damaged homes in the lower Ninth Ward. As they worked in damaged homes, the students wore respirators and suits to protect them from mold and asbestos. ''The night we drove in, we saw these mountairts oftrashpiled everywhere. It was eerie, apocalyptie. ” Jessie Seiler (Ao8) Back to Nature Annapolis campus Johnnies have long used College Creek as a source of recreation. Today’s Johnnies also use it as a source of study, ever since a iggg project turned a portion of the shoreline back to its original marsh. Now, a $200,000 chal­ lenge grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations will help return the entire shoreline to marsh. College Creek, a Chesapeake Bay tidal tributary, has for a long time been considered a prime candidate for shoreline restoration. Stabihzing the shoreline will create natural filters for stormwater runoff Using sledgehammers and crowbars, they gutted the walls of homes right down to the twoby-fours, tearing out insulation, paneling, ceilings, and drywall. Both Seiler and Nolen got very sick, and Seiler had to move to another assignment: assisting the Common Ground legal team. One project she worked on included trying to get FEMA trailers to the city’s homeless. Thousands of the trailers sat unoccupied while political and practical obstacles kept them from being used. In addition to the stench of rotting refuse, the acrid smell of bleach-used to eradicate mold and to disinfect tools, boots, and protective clothing-wiU stay with the volunteers for a long time. So will the things they threw out: a notebook in which someone had copied half of the and keep nutrients from the creek, creating healthy habitats for vegetation and wildlife. The iggg restoration returned approximately onefifth (170 linear feet) of the shoreline to marsh. The marsh has been used as a laboratory field site and has been inte­ grated into the laboratory curriculum. It also provides opportunities for independent student and faculty study. Annapolis tutor Nicholas Maistrellis describes some of the work done with the marsh: “We collect and identify estu­ arine organisms, particularly fish, and marine invertebrates. {The College. We identify the plants indige­ nous to the marsh and think about their distributions over the marsh. This allows us to raise the question of whether the plants are restricted prima­ rily by physical factors or by competition with others. This, in turn, leads to the study of the changing distribution patterns of different types of Spartina alterniflora. The latter problem, whose study requires the use of molecular biological tech­ niques, has so far been done only by students working inde­ pendently. However, I would hke to see it included in the senior lab curriculum.” St. John’s is now in the plan­ ning stages to remove the remaining 680 feet of structural John’s College • Winter 2006 } 7 psalms from the Bible, a man’s photo album with pictures of his daughter, all of a child’s doUs and other toys. Walking through the city, Nolen and another volunteer marveled at surreal scenes such as an abandoned March Gras float and homes spray-painted with bright red numbers indi­ cating how many dead were found inside. They spotted a dead dog that had been rotting on the street for several months. To Nolen, it seemed hke a small but important thing to do something about that dog. “Jessie and I went back the next day and put it in a plastic garbage bag,” says Nolen. “I was afraid it was going to fall apart when we picked it up.” “That was a long day,” Seiler adds. Nolen is taking the spring semester off to continue working in the lower Ninth. It would be difficult for him to study right now. “Here is a chance to do some good,” he says. Seiler plans to go back over spring break and hopes to spend next summer volunteering in the city. She is certain there will still be plenty of work to do. —Rosemary Harty bulkhead and restore this area to its natural wetland and shrub buffer. Current funders, in addi­ tion to the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, include the Vernal W. and Florence H. Bates Foun­ dation and the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Maistrellis fists the ways the fully restored marsh will benefit St. John’s: “As an outdoor site for scientific investigation of living things; as a resource that can be shared with the larger Annapolis community; as a way to decrease the amount of sedi­ ment entering the creek. This improves water quality, and thus the fruitfulness of the creek in fife forms.” And, he says, “it is beautiful.” —SUS3AN Borden (A87) �{Letters} World Government World Federalism was indeed an interesting movement, but what if the world government turns out to be a tyranny? This would seem to be an obvious possibility, but Mr. Baratta [author of The Politics of World Federation, reviewed in the Fall 2005 College} and other proponents of “global governance” hardly ever seem to consider it. Today we have, so to speak, a free market in governments: if you don’t like the government you live under, you can move somewhere else. True, the price is high, and some people are unable or unwilling to pay it, but many do. Under a world government, there would be no escape. Moreover, the hope that the world government would be a federal system and therefore would not meddle in the internal affairs of its member states is a feeble one. In the United States, we have a “federal” government that has in effect become a monolithic national govern­ ment, spends more money every year, and is never reined in by the states that created it. A world government, alas, would do the same. Geoffrey Rommel, SF81 Mr. Sarkissian’s Stories It was with great sadness that I learned of John Sarkissian’s death from a recent issue of The College. John was both a legend and a good friend to our generation of students at the college. He could discuss Darwin or Leadbelly with equal facility, as could the other members (Barbara Leonard, HA86, Bob Spaeth, Nick Maistrellis and a few wannabees) of what we then called “The Biology Department.” What truly set John apart was his ability to convey the reassuring thought that life existed beyond four years of intense reading and discussion in the sometimes claustro­ phobic Town and Gown atmosphere in 1960s Annapolis. John was an endless source of information on travel and suggestions for books that while maybe not “great” were certainly very, very good. In the days before formal graduate school counseling was available, he also served as a savvy guide to what these schools had to offer and how to put together a successful application. A lot of this knowledge was built up through his ongoing contact with alumni, and it never failed to impress me that when former students returned for a visit, John was usually the first tutor they sought out. But it was the stories, both those he told and those told about him that really were a source of endless enjoyment and such a gift to us; I can honestly say that I never heard him tell the same story twice. There was the one about the five jockeys who jumped into his cab in Chicago, and who insisted on climbing back and forth between front seat and back as they loudly demanded to be taken “where they could have a good time.” And there was his fellow tutor who wheeled a typewriter rather than his newborn around Annapolis in a pram. Or there was the time, while serving as a radioman on a World War II PT boat in the Pacific (“because I knew how to use a Japanese dictionary”), when a torpedo was shot through the wooden hull of the ancient craft. The inevitable Sarkissian punch line was that the water was so shallow that they only sank a few feet and were soon rescued.. . My favorite was the tale of Boa Vista. .. John and colleagues had been traveling up the Amazon for days looking for this legendary beauty of a town with paved {The College streets and running water. “ ‘Beautiful Sight’ my foot,” he snorted, “nothing but dirt roads, scrawny chickens, and flies. But wait, wait,” this last delivered with leaping eyebrows and an ash now longer than its cigarette, “a Chinese restaurant with the best Peking Duck I’ve ever had, no, seriously, better than in Beijing.” John and I met up occasionally, but far too infrequently, over the past 35 years. One evening at the old Salaam Supper Club in D.C. stands out, John in a fez, banging on some borrowed bongo drums in time to the combo’s accompaniment of the belly dancer. . . I last saw John a few years back at an alumni reunion. He was leading a seminar on Coriolanus. .. It was one of those crisp, timeless, October afternoons when nostalgia is invigorating and old friends are new joys. .. We exchanged reading suggestions. I think at the time he was devouring John Buchan’s work or George MacDonald Frazier’s Flashman series, or something by Graham Greene, or, who knows, maybe all three at once. I don’t remember what I was reading but I had been trav­ eling overseas and tried to muster up one or two pale imitations of a Sarkissian-level adventure to share with him. John was one of the most approachable and delightful people I have ever known. I will miss his stories and tips for good reading, but what I will miss even more is always looking forward to hearing them in person. Juan B. Ianni, A70 Euclid with Mr. Swentzell I haven’t had a lot of contact with St. John’s in these nearly 20 years since I graduated. But I have lots of fond memories, and I know that St. John’s - St John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } contributes to my sense of coming from somewhere in spite of having moved around a lot in my life. When I tell people about St. John’s, I always mention the books. But of course, it isn’t really, or mainly even, the books. It is the conversations and the relationships they engendered. Upon hearing the sad and surprising news of the death of Ralph Swentzell, what is brought home to me, in my sadness, is not the immortality of books, but us mortals and the relationships we share. It was a joy to study Euclid and be in seminar with Ralph Swentzell. I hadn’t spoken to Mr. Swentzell in all these years, but I sure carried a sense of wonder and admira­ tion for him. He loved so much but never played favorites. He was a big man with a big voice and a grand enthusiasm. I am not sure whom to thank for the gift of Ralph Swentzell, but for anyone listening, let it be known that it is one I cherish. Liz Barnet, SF86 The CoZZege 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, rr6o Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: rosemary.harty@ sjca.edu. �{History} 9 The St. John’s Trombone Blues BY Gil Crandall, class of 1936 It has been 73 years since I enrolled at St. John’s. That previous June I had graduated from Annapolis High School and turned 17 a month later. Like most teenagers, I was filled with confidence. Yet I felt a bit intimi­ dated as I walked up to McDowell Hall knowing that I was just a “Rat,” a holdover term for freshman from the era when St. John’s had a military program. Being an Annapolis native, I was a day student, but never­ theless subject to the same “Rat rules” as other freshmen. We were required to wear rinkydink black-peaked caps, with the number 36 in orange on the front, ill-fitting cover that had a tendency to fall off easily. (I still have mine, but it is a bit motheaten.) There were other Rat rules enforced by the student council, and transgressions resulted in various punish­ ments, including corporal, but nothing really harmful except to one’s ego. It had been my intention to participate in some extracurric­ ular activities. However, I had a part-time job at Gilbert’s Pharmacy and Soda Fountain on State Circle, a business owned by my family. I also played the guitar, an instrument slowly gaining popularity in dance bands. The Swing era was just then on the rise. One day, not long after the semester started, I received a circular advising that the college marching band would welcome new members. I filled in the accompanying application answering the question, “What instrument would you like to play?” with “trombone.” Guitar was not then a marching band instrument, and to my knowledge, it still isn’t. The director of the college musical activities was Professor Adolph Trovosky, a longtime Annapolitan who had emigrated years earlier from Poland or Germany and had never shed a thick accent. He was regarded as a fine musician and a kind man with a cheerful disposition. On the first day of band practice the good professor must have been somewhat agitated, as he busily distributed instruments and scores. He handed me a nickel-plated trombone and several musical scores. Never before had I ever touched a trombone and I could not read a note of the music. When the time came for the band to play the first selection, “St. John’s Forever,” I simply sat with the trombone on my lap. Professor Trovosky, observing that I was not participating, stopped the band and asked me why I was not playing. Somewhat Gil Crandall in 1936; a gig with OTHER Johnnies helped him buy a NEW GUITAR. embarrassed I responded, “Sir, I can’t play trombone.” With a look of total astonishment, he said, “Veil, Mr. Grandall, vy in de vorld dit you zign up to play der trombone?” I meekly responded, “Sir on the application form I answered the question, ‘What instrument would you like to play?’ I would like to play trombone.’ ” Visibly confounded. Professor Trovosky glared at me while the band members roared with laughter. Placing the trombone and sheet music on the gym bench, I quickly departed as the band resumed playing. Fortunately that experience did not adversely affect my college career, nor my inauspi­ cious future as a guitarist. The college did not sponsor a dance band, so I formed a small off-campus combo dubbed “The Collegians.” The roster included myself, two local musicians, and three other Johnnies: highly talented Bill Quimby on sax, clar­ inet, and flute; robust Bob Murphy on stringbass (both of the class of 1936); and Bill Herson, class 011935, a mad-man drummer. The Collegians, sans trombone, gained popularity in the Annapolis area, playing gigs at various venues with slim financial reward. The country was enduring the Great Depression. Our biggest success came when an RKO movie team arrived in Annapolis to shoot a scene for Shipmates Forever, featuring Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. The storyline centered on the Naval Academy, with Powell as a midshipman and Ruby his sweetheart. I was lucky to book the Collegians and a few extra musicians to play “sideline music” for a scene replicating the academy’s Graduation Ball, shot in Dahlgren Hall. All the band had to do was to play a few bars of a foxtrot as 50 couples, attired in formal dress, started dancing. The camera rolled, a dialogue between the two stars was recorded, and we stopped playing on the director’s cue. Later in Hollywood, the studio orchestra provided the real music. That gig was a financial windfall for the Collegians. It paid for my then-costly ($184.50) Epiphone guitar, with enough left over to buy a six-dollar derby hat de rigueur for hip musicians. Professor Trovosky now plays a heavenly harp, as do all the Collegians, except for me. I strum guitar rather poorly and still yearn to play the trombone, {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Inauguration} “SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENS HERE” Santa Fe Welcomes a President ore than 700 students, alumni, and friends of St. John’s College filled the gymnasium of the Student Activities Center for the October 28 Inauguration ceremony for Michael Peters, the sixth turned president the into Santaa Fe campus. Creative decorating theofgym venue fitting for an occasion of such importance, with faculty in academic robes joining military officers (friends and former colleagues of Mr. Peters, a West Point graduate and retired Army colonel) in their dress uniforms. With music performed by faculty and students, the ceremony was short on pomp and rich with substance­ reflecting the nature of the individual chosen to lead the college. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson set the tone for the evening with his enthusiastic pledge to support St. John’s College. In a state where “tradition rests right next to high-paced modernity,” the governor said, “... it is only fitting that such a place is also home to a unique institution of higher learning like St. John’s.” Gov. Richardson expressed admiration for St. John’s College and particular admiration for Mr. Peters, a retired Army officer who served in the Vietnam War, former chief of staff at West Point, and most recently, executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Peters, he said, is a “forward-looking, visionary. . . committed to developing and strengthening the bonds that make St. John’s such a special place.” “Mike Peters is a man who has served his state, his country, and his community with honor and courage-from soldier, to diplomat, to statesman. And he has spent the better part of his career working with young people as an educator-helping to bring positive influence to the next generation of soldiers, scholars, innovators, and leaders.” M In just a short few months, the governor said, Mr. Peters has come to know “the unique nature of New Mexico, as well as the critical importance of higher education here in this state.” As a college that prepares students to take their place in “an increas­ ingly dynamic world,” St. John’s is important to the future of New Mexico. And under Mr. Peter’s leadership, Gov. Richardson predicted, the college will thrive. “The intellectual heft, the diplomatic savvy, and the disci­ plined personality he brings to the table will only lead to bigger and better things for both St. John’s College and New Mexico,” Gov. Richardson said. “His thirst for learning and his appetite for aiming higher is contagious-and sure to help motivate and inspire the students, the faculty, and the family of St. John’s College to do great things, well into the future.” Santa Fe Dean David Levine recalled the beginning of the New Program in Annapolis in 1937 as he considered the future of St. John’s with Mr. Peters at the helm. The St. John’s Program was founded at a time when the world was in crisis, he said, when “we were all to be tested, not only our physical strength, but our moral fiber.” A second beginning came in 1964 with the founding of a second campus, when “a great experiment was undertaken, to see whether the same college, the same living curriculum, could exist in two different places.” Today, though “the look and esprit are quite different” at the two campuses, “what is not different is the generous spirit of learning, the openness, originality, profundity, and common purpose.” Formally installing Mr. Peters as the president of St. John’s Santa Fe campus another new beginning, one of great promise. Dean Levine said. The college took on an extended national {The College- St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Inauguration} u Passing the torch: President Michael Peters AND Former Santa Fe President John Balkcom (SFGIoo). made a point of thanking his family for their support and encouragement: his wife, Eleanor, and their children, Mike and Rebecca; and his parents. Max and Peg Peters, “who have been my models since I was a child.” He also thanked Moravian College President Ervin Rokke, a mentor and friend, and the person who encouraged him to consider life as a college president-to the good fortune of St. John’s College. Inauguration Address BY Michael Peters search for a president and “along came a tall, unassuming, articu­ late, generous man of the world, who, too, recognized that some­ thing extraordinary happens here.” “And so it is that today we now call Michael Peters to this great venture of liberal education as its guardian and spokes-man,” he continued. “We welcome him to our midst and ask him to join us in our effort to find a place in our complex world for such a bold vision of education, at once enabling, encouraging, and ennobling.” Speaking for the students, senior Shane Gassaway, Polity presi­ dent, admired the way Mr. Peters has devoted time to getting to know students and the Program by taking part in an international affairs study group, attending dormitory meetings, and becoming a genuine advocate for students. “But if there were only one way to win the heart of a Johnnie it would be to read the books that we read with the same care and reverence that we show them,” noted Mr. Gassaway. “And this Mr. Peters has undertaken to accomplish. Beginning with the January Freshmen last winter, Mr. Peters has attended seminar every Monday and Thursday night. And now he does the same with the sophomore class.. . We’ve known him so far as a prospy, as a January freshman, and now as a sophomore. It is sometimes said of the January freshmen that those who don’t leave right away turn out to be the best Johnnies. With such a valuable addition to our community. I’m hopeful we can say the same thing about January presidents some day.” Acknowledging each of the guests and speakers at the cere­ mony, particularly students and alumni of the college, Mr. Peters Eighteen months ago, as I was comfortably ensconced at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, I could not have imagined that I would be at the podium in the St. John’s College Student Activities Center in Santa Fe addressing you as the president. But as a reformed New Yorker, I recall the insight of that renowned contemporary Western philosopher, someone who is not included in our curriculum: Yogi Berra. Yogi is purported to have said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” I can certainly attest to the wisdom of Yogi’s remark. However, when I walked into a classroom on the Annapolis campus in July last year and observed the engagement and commitment of the students and faculty to our distinctive program, I knew this was the place for me. Everything that has happened since then-a quick trip to interview in Santa Fe while trying to adjust to mountain time and 7,000 feet; a mid-winter move; and getting to know the incredible students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of the college-have reinforced my first impres­ sion and love for the college. St. John’s is a community of learners centered on what we call “the Program,” an all-required curriculum in math, science, language, social science and philosophy based on study of the great works in Western thought. This community is enhanced by our Graduate Institute, which offers two master’s programs, including one in Eastern Glassies, where students study the key texts in the Chinese, Japanese, and Indian traditions. As I said, the students and faculty are a very talented group who share a commitment to the Program. At St. John’s we don’t put much credence in reviews and rankings like those of U.S. News and World Report, but there is one I’d like to share with you that speaks to the excellence of our faculty and their dedication to teaching: The Princeton Review. In the most recent edition, the {The College- St. John ’5 College • Winter 2006 } �12. {Inauguration} liberal education is ourpurpose. A purpose that is important in and of itself but abo important four Republic b to be up to the challenpps improve our classrooms, create a it willface in the years ahead. home for the Graduate Institute, Santa Fe faculty was rated number one in the country. What is most and build a modern auditorium gratifying about this ranking is President Michael Peters that would benefit both the that it is based not on abstract, campus and the community. external criteria but on the opin­ Second, connection with the community. St. John’s is a vital ions of the students themselves. My congratulations and thanks to part of Santa Fe and New Mexico. Each year we bring more than the faculty for their great work. loo of the best students from around the United States and the The central idea behind the St. John’s program is to help all of usworld to New Mexico. Many of these students remain in the state students and faculty-learn not what to think, but how to think and after they leave St. John’s and contribute to New Mexico’s think deeply. In other words, we are seeking a truly liberal educa­ tion. Why are we so single-mindedly dedicated to studying the economy and welfare. Of our 8,000 alumni, almost i,ooo are residents of New hberal arts? In part because, as Vartan Gregorian, the president Mexico, and of this number more than 30 percent are involved in of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and former president of education. Also, more than 50 New Mexico teachers and adminis­ Brown University, said, “. . . When people do not know how to trators have attended our Graduate Institute in the past four question deeply, to separate fact from fiction, and to give coherence and meaning to hfe, they can feel a[n] . . . unsettling emptiness in years, and with programs like Tecolote, we have hosted hundreds their lives.” more New Mexico educators on campus. Through our lectures, art exhibits, musical performances, With this clear sense of who we are and what we are about, allow community seminars, and summer programs we bring the me to highlight the three areas I will focus on in the days ahead. community to St. John’s and the St. John’s experience “off the They are: support for learning, connection with the community, hill.” In addition, our students and staff volunteer their time to a and heightened visibility. number of deserving enterprises in Santa Fe. First, support for learning. With fundamentals as solid as ours, But we want to do more, and we’ll be looking for ways to my foremost priority is, as one of my predecessors put it, “to facil­ strengthen the connections between St. John’s and our friends itate the work of the faculty . . . [and] ... to create appropriate and neighbors in Santa Fe and New Mexico. Part of this effort is a conditions for learning.” I’m not going to list every aspect this greater emphasis on attracting qualified New Mexico students to might entail, but it includes continuing to attract and retain the highest-quality students, faculty and staff; to provide the need­ the college, especially those from traditionally underrepresented based financial aid necessary to support deserving students; to groups. Our Opportunity Initiative is designed specifically to address this issue. We are also hopeful that with the Governor’s ensure a vibrant campus life, where students can exercise and develop their mind, body, and spirit. And, of course, it also entails strong support we can convince the legislature to extend the lottery scholarships to New building and main­ Mexico residents who taining first-class facili­ attend private colleges in ties and grounds. In this the state, hke St. John’s. regard, I apologize that My final priority is to you may have to navigate heighten the visibility of around some construc­ tion on your way to the the college and the reception at the Peterson campus. For too long we Student Center. This is a have been content, as sign of progress for me. the New Testament says. We are also in the initial planning stages for a new dorm, so we can house a larger Mr. Peters thanked MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY percentage of our under­ FORTHEIR SUPPORT (LEFT graduates on campus, TO right): his wife, and we are looking for Evelyn; son, Mike; ways to expand and DAUGHTER, ReBECCA; AND FATHER, MaX. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Inauguration} to “keep our light under a bushel basket.” We cannot continue to do so. Prospective students, friends, the higher education community-and if it is not too presumptuous, the nation-need to know about us. Who we are, what we do and how we do it. In part­ nership with our sister campus in Annapolis, we need to tell our story and to be what some have called “a beacon of liberal educa­ tion.” Once again to quote Vartan Gregorian, “[HJigher educa­ tion . . . must focus on a revival of the liberal arts. Yet, paradoxi­ cally, liberal education is in decline just when we need it most.... Liberal education is needed to integrate learning and provide balance-otherwise students will graduate into a world in which dependence on experts of every kind will be even more common than it is today.” A liberal education is our purpose. A purpose that is important in and of itself, but also important if our Republic is to be up to the challenges it will face in the years ahead. For example, as David Brooks of The New York Times said regarding reform of the intelligence community, “I’ll believe the intelligence community has really changed when I see analysts being sent to training academies where they study Thucydides [and] Tolstoy ... to get a broad understanding of the full range of human behavior.” Well, at St. John’s we do study Thucydides and Tolstoy. Not because we are trying to develop intelligence analysts, but because we believe that a responsible citizen needs a number of attributes that come from a liberal education including a “broad understanding of human behavior.” To tell the St. John’s story we need the help of everyone herealumni, parents, friends, students, faculty and staff. It deserves to 13 be told-I’m certainly going to do it and I hope you will join me. As I conclude, you’ll forgive me, but sometimes I just can’t get beyond my old military training. One aspect of that training was in a presentation, you should always tell’em what you’re going to tell them, tell them and tell’em what you told them. So again, my priorities are: First and foremost, support for learning; second, connection with the community and last, but certainly not least, heighten visibihty for the college and the campus. Blessed with a very sohd foundation, a clear sense of who we are and what we wish to accomphsh, and the talent and commitment of the entire college community, I am confident that St. John’s best days are ahead. I am pleased to play a part in fulfiUing this very promising future. Thank you for demon­ strating your support for St. John’s by being with us today, Above: Gov. Richardson CONGRATULATES PRESIDENT PeTERS. Left: The after-Inauguration party at THE Peterson Student Center was an all-inclusive and festive affair that FILLED BOTH THE DiNING HaLL AND THE Coffee Shop. Tutor Carey Stickney (A75) JOINED STUDENTS IN PROVIDING THE Coffee Shop music. {The College. St. John’s College • Winter 2006 } �{Johnnies at Work} LIVES IN THEIR HANDS Johnnies Workfor Lasting Beauty wi Caroline Knapp, SF99 Wiener’s character is with his craft. The patience, elegance, and hese Johnnies make different deliberation that characterize boatbuilding are just as evident in things: timher-frame homes, his words as in the boat frames all around him. jewelry, wooden boats, furniture. He came to the work, Wiener explains, “theoretically.” While he attended St. John’s, Wiener’s developing interest in the What they share is the desire to manual arts was encouraged by tutor William Darkey (class of build something enduring and 194a), who built his own harpsichord. But it wasn’t until gradu­ beautiful and to improve in their ating that Wiener set himself to training his body “in as rigorous a I had trained my mind at St. John’s.” craft with each new project they take on.fashion Theyasare The desire for rigor led him to boatbuilding. It was, in his way of idealistic and practical, enterprising and imagi­ thinking, the “most uncompromising” of the woodcrafts, the one native, and when they finish a day’s work, they with the lowest margin for error. “Furniture,” he says, “has to hold up to the demands of the human body, but ships have to hold have the pleasure of standing back and regarding up to the full force of nature out on the water.” the fruits of their labor. However, learning to build wooden boats in the United States in T Michael Wiener, SF69 Boatbuilder Carrying on a conversation with Michael Wiener at the Spaulding Center for Wooden Boats isn’t for the easily discouraged. Although the boatyard in Sausalito, Calif, is just big enough for a half dozen wooden boats in various stages of reconstruction, it’s humming with activity. Two young men are carting planks from one neat stack to another, an older man in a straw hat is cranking a hand-operated crane, and from inside the wood-beamed ware­ house comes the hiss of welding equipment. In the middle of the yard a group of adult students peers up at the partially de­ constructed hull of a loo-year-old pleasure boat, Freda. The atmosphere is of steady, unhurried industry. As head of the yard, Wiener can’t go more than two minutes-even on his lunch hourwithout being called over to consult on one of the dozens of tasks at hand. Wiener answers each question with the same measured, precise attention. Under his soft cloth cap his expression is affable; his eyes, while alert to the yard’s activity, are relaxed. When he tells the story of his journey to this boatyard, it’s clear how consonant the early 1970s was no easy task. After an unsuccessful search for a boatyard in Maine, Wiener returned for a time to his native San Francisco Bay. There he found one yard whose boatbuilders were “taken aback and flattered” that he would request an apprentice­ ship in a dying art. But after he’d put in a year learning the rudiments of the trade, he recalls the yard’s Irish foreman taking him aside and asking, “Do you know what you’re doing?” When he answered in the affirmative, the man said, “Well, my lad, you’re doing it in the wrong place.” That recommendation sent Wiener on an international hunt for a traditional boatyard willing to take on an American apprentice during the height of the Vietnam War. He found it eventually in Denmark, where he spent four years as an unpaid apprentice, studying from master boat builders. When he returned to the United States, Wiener was well qualified to build wooden boats, but uncertain whether he wanted to. Instead, hoping to integrate his academic and practical training, he went to work for Charles and Ray Eames in their famous San Francisco design office. The Eames brothers, intrigued by Wiener’s combination of intellectual and hands-on experience, soon put him to work on one of their most ambitious projects, the feature-length science movie Powers of Ten. Wiener {The College- St. John ’5 College ■ Winter 2006 } �{JohnniesatWork} Michael Wiener (SF69) 15 sought rigor in his life and FOUND IT IN BOATBUILDING. {The College -Sf. John’s College • Winter 2006 } �{JohnniesatWork} i6 ''Given the choice between moreperfect and more quick, I always choose moreperfect. Kait Schott, designed an innovative camera stand and shot the film, which has since become something of a cult classic. Though his work with the Eames brothers brought him closer to the fusion of knowledge he’d envisioned in Mr. Darkey’s freshman math class. (“Lining up a 2o-foot animation stand, I used plenty of Euclid,” he explains.) Wiener wasn’t quite satisfied with that compromise either. Wiener worked instead as a jack-of-all-trades builder in the tiny Tomales Bay town of Marshall, co-founded the first organic dairy west of the Mississippi, and taught himself to build furniture. Slowly though, the boatyard began to pull him back. “I thought that when you learn something rigorous like boatbuilding, you can apply it to anything,” he says. “That’s not true.” Wiener moved back to Sausalito with his wife and two daugh­ ters, joined the Spaulding yard in 1978, and took over yard opera­ tions in 2000. In 2002, following the death of its founder, the yard became a nonprofit, the Spaulding Center for Wooden Boats. Wiener is on the board of directors. It would be a pleasure to talk more, find out what he’s reading, if he finds time to sail, and how he thinks St. John’s has changed. But the lunch break is over, and Wiener’s eyes are already darting back to the corner of the yard, where his expertise is needed. For more information on wooden boat restoration classes at the Spaulding Centerfor Wooden Boats, call Kait Schott, SF91___________________________ Jewelry maker, metal and glass worker Kait Schott may have spent the years since her graduation learning fine craftsmanship of the most demanding sort, but for Johnnies her most impressive achievement is one seemingly unre­ lated to her professional life: Schott completed freshman lab five times, once as a freshman and four times as a lab assistant. After graduation, rather than taking up a career as a profes­ sional baros specialist, Schott returned to her native Minnesota. There, after spending nearly five years employed as a goldsmith, she now crafts her own jewelry out of metal and glass. But all those years in freshman lab helped lead Schott to her work. Her lab experiences contributed to her interest in working with actual, not metaphoric, materials. In freshman lab, she explains, “there’s a struggle with a physical object, with the tension between you and the physical stuff.” In freshman lab, the stuff in question is likely to be clay weights, simple chemical solutions, or cat innards. Eor gold­ smiths, the stakes are somewhat higher. But Schott maintains SF91 that both are expressions of the same contest, “over whether or not you are going to achieve the eidos of the thing that’s in your head.” Having grown up in a family where her mother and grandmotherwere “always making something,” she was inspired by the wealth of materials available in Santa Ee. While still a student at St. John’s, she began visiting the bead dealers at the city’s flea market. Soon she was making simple jewelry for friends and giving it away. Later, she began selling her work “just to support the habit.” Though she had had no professional training at this point, Schott had already identified one of the key principles drawing her to work with jewelry. “Jewelry is so personal,” she says. “It’s expressing a really primitive urge. You find a little trinket that just has something about it, and you want to take it with you. So you put it on a string.” She also realized early that she wasn’t interested in making jewelry that looked like everyone else’s: “Jewelry is also very personal in the sense that it’s expressive. The pieces I make are not particularly narrative, but the person who wears them makes a decision about what they want to portray.” Schott’s own decision, after graduating from St. John’s, was to continue the experiment she had begun as a student, “to really engage the physical stuff of the world.” Her first steps took her to the San Francisco area, where she took metalsmithing classes at the Richmond Art Center. Armed with new technical skill, she moved back to Minneapolis, found a glass workshop, and eventu­ ally attended trade school for metalworking. There, she learned to cast, polish, solder, and set stones in an atmosphere that encouraged neither creativity nor discussion. Though, she muses, “it was like St. John’s in that everything was laid out for you.” After graduating from trade school, she worked for four-and-ahalf years as a hired “pair of hands” in a large jewelry shop specializing in complex and expensive gold wedding bands. The work was challenging, but not creative, and it demanded speed and skill. “As a goldsmith, there was a constant battle of will between me, the stuff, and the clock,” she says. While the first two elements of that equation were familiar, the third posed more difficulty: “Given a choice between more perfect and more quick, I always chose more perfect. I do have an appreciation of having some efficiency and speed. But I also know that there are limits to how fast I’m ever going to do something and still enjoy it.” In 2003, Schott quit work as a goldsmith, moved to an artists’ co-operative, and decided to concentrate on her own work. “I want to sit back and think for a while again about what I really wanted to make,” she explains. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Johnnies at Work} Lately, that has led her to work extensively with glass; she’s fascinated hy the way that glass responds to heat. “I think most people can anticipate what metal will he hke when it’s heated. But glass becomes really fluid when you work with it. It’s just magic. The material itself is a seduction.” The new work pattern has also given her time to return to her roots. With a local alumni chapter, she recently revisited Goethe’s “On the Metamorphosis of Plants.” At this distance from freshman year, she sees in the essay a meditation on the artist’s struggle. “It’s a great metaphor for feeding yourself creatively, for developing into something new and different,” she says. “The sense of striving that Goethe seems to ascribe to the plant is hke the struggle to take the world and try to making something out of it.” Kait Schott’s work, including a recent series ofplantforms in glass inspired by Goethe, can be viewed at www. kaitschott. com. Ben Shook, SFoo Carpenter Ben Shook explains his decision to become a craftsman as though it were composed, like a wooden joint from one of the chairs he builds, of two separate pieces which fit together perfectly; “St. John’s left me with student loans and some inextricable idealism. I probably already had the idealism. So I had to make a living.” Shook’s tone is self-mocking, but he’s perfectly serious about In her work, Kait Schott (SF91) struggles with “the eidos of the thing that’s in your head.” 17 materials and the idealism. It kept him up nights as he was beginning his apprenticeship, practicing in his own shop the skills he’d observed during the day. And today it’s the driving force behind the thriving small business he runs out of his Portland home. Shook felt the first stirrings of interest in fine woodworking while visiting a museum. He spent the year after his graduation traveling and working in France. One day, he visited the Musee des Arts et Metiers, the Paris museum devoted to the finest prod­ ucts of French craftsmanship and engineering from the Middle Ages to the present. The masterworks in wood, stone, and metal that he saw there convinced him that “the depths to which one could take this craft are unfathomable.” Shook returned to Dayton, Wash., found a job as a bartender, and bought some tools. Working from books and studying furni­ ture, he began to build what he now calls “rustic things,” roughhewn desks and bookcases made using wood salvaged from old barns. He still had no formal training, but the results were compelling. “One day, this woman who owned a gallery came by,” he recalls. “And she bought everything, about ao pieces. She just said, T’ll take all of it for my shop.’” Encouraged by the sudden success. Shook decided to get serious. In aooa he apprenticed with a French master carpenter in Washington, working for low wages and “asking him questions every second there wasn’t a machine on.” By the end of the year. Shook had learned the basics of timber-frame construction and {The College • St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 } �i8 {Johnnies at Work} felt ready to strike out on his own. Today, Shook em­ ploys two assistant woodworkers in a large shop attached to his Portland home. His business has grown rapidly in the last few years, mostly through word of mouth. Working by hand and with power tools, he and his assis­ tants spend at least one month on each major furniture piece. The shop spent nearly half of last year furnishing a whole house for just one client. Slowness is one of the qualities Shook appreciates in his work, one of the principles he’s distilled from his beginnings in the craft. “Working with wood requires a different orientation to time,” he says. “The time is so great with some projects. You just have to let go of the male perception of working at something from beginning to end. You have to think in days and weeks. You have to have a real patience for letting glues set up, for just learning to let something sit.” Shook’s latest passion is building chairs. “I’m getting really into them,” he confesses. “Chairs are the most human kind of furniture, the thing that you put your body in rather than on.” The chair design he’s working on now has no metal parts; the seat is hand-shaped. Its secret. Shook says, is a special central joint orig­ inally designed by master builder Sam Malouf: “It’s such a beau­ tiful and simple joint, and it’s so strong.” Joints are, of course, the heart of the furniture maker’s craft, and Shook has spent some time considering them. At the moment, it seems to him to be a question of creating union. “The marriage of two pieces of wood in a joint is such a delicate and precise thing,” he says. “And when it’s done right, it’s a forever marriage.” If Shook sounds as though he’s been considering words closely as well, that’s no accident either. When he isn’t working in the shop, one of his interests is writing poetry, which he says is “sort of like making furniture.” Visit WWW. benshook. com. Ben Shook(SFoo) WORKS ON A CHAIR, “the most human KIND OF FURNITURE,” IN HIS Portland shop. Jordan Finch (SFoo) Builder Jordan Finch’s career as a builder of beau­ tiful homes has its roots in his junior year at St. John’s, when he experienced a revelation. Having enjoyed woodworking as a hobby, he knew he wanted to build things-big things, beautiful things-after gradu­ ating from the college. “I had this idea that I wanted to build cathedrals,” he says. “I went on this long search to learn about them, but it never quite panned out-there just weren’t many cathedrals being built.” However, Finch has found something nearly as satisfying in building timber-frame homes, characterized by soaring ceilings, heavy exposed beams, craftsmanship, and durability. He is rapidly becoming a master of the same post-and-beam construc­ tion methods that contributed to the majesty of Europe’s great cathedrals. Timber framing has been practiced for centuries, but in modern times, stick-built construction-faster and cheaper-has prevailed, “until the 1960s, when hippies began reviving the craft,” says Finch. Picture an old-fashioned Amish barn raising and you’ll get a sense of the work Finch does. Without a few dozen men to raise the frame that serves as the skeleton of the house. Finch relies on the modern crane. But in every other way-the precise fitting of tenon into mortise, securing joined timbers with pegs of solid wood-Finch uses time-honored and traditional methods to build homes. “There’s a great geometry to it all. When you’re building these homes, you have to hold this visual image in your head. It’s like doing Euclid in 3-D,” he says. Finch took up carpentry as a teenager, and he has been perfecting his craft since graduating from St. John’s in 2000. While spending junior year in Annapolis, he stole time from his studies to build a boat. That summer, the college’s Placement {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Johnnies at Work} office (now Career Services) helped Finch find a job with Steve Whalen (SF83), who had a carpentry business in Southwest Harbor, Maine. “I told him I was attending St. John’s and knew how to use a hammer and he said, ‘come on up.’ ” After gradua­ tion, Finch served a two-year apprenticeship with Vicco von Voss, a custom furniture maker in Chestertown, Md. “It’s probably been the highpoint of life in craftsmanship so far,” he says. Von Voss began designing his own timber-frame home, and Finch contributed his construction expertise to the project. Along the way, he recognized that he had found a solid substitute for cathedrals. When his apprenticeship ended. Finch found a job with Lancaster County Timber Frames in Pennsylvania. “I had the basic skills, but I wanted to get faster,” he explains. “There are shops like these throughout the country and a lot of them do beautiful work, but it really is high tempo.” Finch’s “meditative” methods weren’t a good fit with highpressure shops, so he took his tools and went out on his own as an itinerant joiner, subcontracting for other timber framers on proj­ ects in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Massachusetts. After a year and a half of honing his craft on the road. Finch moved to Virginia to marry Quinby Owen (Aoa) and settle down in the Shenandoah Valley town of Mount Jackson. 19 When Quinby’s parents needed to find a builder for their home, their new son-in-law talked them into hiring him. It was his first opportunity to design a home and to build it from start to finish. Never mind the r6-hour days; it’s been well worth it, he says. “We raised the frame on Oct. 33, 2004. I’ve been involved in quite a few raisings, and there’s always a sense of expectation and eagerness in the air, but this time, it was really satisfying,” he says. There is a wholeness to the work that appeals to Finch each time he takes up his tools. “I’ve gone from milling the tree to sanding something to a mirror polish. Sometimes you smell like a chainsaw, other days you need a surgeon’s touch just to take a sliver of wood away,” he says. “That really gives me a sense of fulfillment-it feels natural and complete.” People are surprised to hear that timber framing is a green building method, he says. “Timber framing does take larger, mature trees,” he acknowledges. “But if a building will stand for 300 years or more, that’s a responsible use of materials.” Happy to create anything out of a beautiful piece of wood. Finch still makes furniture and recently accepted a commission for a dining room table. With Quinby expecting a baby when he started his business. Finch named his shop Finch and Sons Fine Woodworking. Since the arrival of daughter Aurelia, now almost one, he’s had to reconsider the name. “How does Finch Family Woodworkers sound?” For questions on timber-frame construc­ tion, contact Finch at Jordanafinch® yahoo.com or at 540-333-0034. —Rosemary Harty Quinby (Aoa), Jordan (Aoo), and Aurelia Finch, in the home Jordan is building in Virginia. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �ao {The Program} SMALL WAVES IN A TRANQUIL SEA” Melville, Literature, and the St. Johns Reading List wi Rosemary Harty ow many Johnnies have read-or even heard oi-The History of Henry Esmond?. Thackeray’s novel, the story of Henry and his love for Beatrix, was on the list of hooks that Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan assembled for the New Program, first published in The Bulletin ofSt. John’s College. It was the Bulletin that in 1937 set out the specifics of the Program for prospective students and the rest of the world, and here, the college’s criteria for choosing a classic was defined. The first two involve magnitude: “A great book must have been read by the largest number of persons”; for clarity, works by Plato and the Bible are mentioned in this regard. The work also must offer the possibility of many different interpretations. It must “raise the persistent unanswer­ able questions about the great themes in European thought.” And the final two criteria: it must be “a work of fine art” and a “masterpiece of the liberal arts.” These criteria have guided choices for the college’s reading list for nearly 70 years. A self-study conducted by Annapolis faculty for reaccredidation two years ago acknowledged that, “although there is broad agreement about our reading list, certain authors, texts, and text selections regularly come up for discussion. The Senior Seminar list, which contains the most recently written books, is always the most controversial. Even here, however, upon annual review of the Program by the Instruction {The College. Committee, there is far more stability than change, and our concerns amount to small waves in a largely tranquil sea.” Changes-major and minor-to the list come slowly and with careful deliberation. This is not done to preserve a canon, but rather, a continuum, as the self-study report states: “Year after year, for at least two hours on Monday and Thursday nights, students and tutors discuss the same books in the same way with the sense that here, in the thinking, speaking, and listening that go on in the Seminar, the College is most alive and most itself.” A number of books read for seminar have dropped off that first list included in the Bulletin, including Goethe’s Faust, Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Corneille’s Le Cid. Moby-Dick-'wXdCti many faculty and alumni would consider a perfect match with that 1937 definition of a great book-has been out of the list for some time. It hasn’t been read in seminar in Annapolis for 3r years and has made sporadic appearances on the Santa Fe seminar list. In recent years Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner have joined the senior seminar list at the urging of some tutors and over the objections of others. Considering suggestions and objections from tutors and students is the work of the Instruction Committee, comprising 13 tutors (six from each campus), the deans of both campuses, and the two presidents as ex-officio members. The IC is respon­ sible for the program of instruction, and with it, has the power to add or remove a book from the reading list. Changes are made by consensus, not by majority rule, and also are governed by transferability. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{ThePrOGRAM} {The College -St John’s College • Winter 2006 } ai �aa {TheProgram} ''Chiefamong these motives was the overwhelming idea ofthe great whale hitnself Such aportentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity ” Ishmael Annapolis tutor Anita Kronsberg (A79) says the committee considers factors such as “whether a book has the kind of weight and substance” worthy of study and discussion, and whether it connects in interesting ways to other books on the reading list. Each year, the committee reviews reports submitted by the tutors who served as the recorders for their seminars. These reports help the committee decide if a certain reading is working well in seminar, and along with specific requests, factor in decisions to change the list. When a book comes off the reading list, it’s usually to make room for another. There are sacrifices and sometimes compro­ mises, because in the harsh light of reality, “we can’t read all great books,” Kronsberg says. The nature of the college’s Program (roughly chronological) means that fewer changes will be made when Ancient Greek and medieval works are concerned. A few years ago, the committee made an earnest attempt to find room for The Sound and the Fury, “but we couldn’t put it any­ where in the seminar where the students could read it,” she says. “It’s a very beautiful book, some of Faulkner’s finest writing,” Kronsberg says, almost wistfully. “The approach he takes is not like anything else we read.” Don Quixote is one of a handful ofvery long novels Johnnies are asked to read in the Program, most timed for summer or winter breaks to allow time to read and ponder before seminar meets. But discussion is still condensed to two meetings on books like War and Peace and Middlemarch. It’s not entirely satisfying, but that’s another reality of the Program: “We acknowledge that St. John’s is a place where some books get a first reading,” says Kronsberg. Whether it’s a long novel, a complex poem, or a passage from Kant, returning to the work provides a fuller view. Santa Fe tutor Frank Pagano says the IC on his campus usually concentrates on two years of the Program at a time: freshman and junior years, or sophomore and senior. When the committee makes changes to the list, it’s often in the interest of choosing books that “work well in seminar.” “We want books to be great,” says Pagano, a tutor of aa years. “That’s easy to experience, but hard to nail down.” To illustrate his point, Pagano points to difficulties in reading Supreme Court decisions for seminar. While important, they don’t quite work as Program books, in his opinion. “Inevitably they require historical background-that’s a sign that something isn’t great,” he says. In Santa Fe about five years ago, the IC decided to add Maimonides (Guidefor the Perplexed} to the sophomore reading list. “It’s a great book in itself. But the second reason it works in seminar is that you have two traditions that the Bible represents, and we had no theology that was Jewish.” Maimonides also speaks to other Program authors, says Pagano: “He’s picked up on in junior year by Spinoza, especially.” Although changes to the reading list have not been monu­ mental ones, the Instruction Committee could vote by consensus to remove Plato’s Republic-Mt^My unlikely, but by the rules governing the committee, not impossible. “The thought is we could change anything,” Pagano notes. However, substantial changes to philosophy are pretty rare. “They’re all part of a tradition, and it’s very hard to take one out and put one in,” he says. “If you’re going to do Hegel and not do Kant, you’re not going to be able to see who Hegel is responding to.” Pagano would like to see Johnnies read Absalom, Absalom—“a book that encapsulates the American tradition better, as well as the Southern problem.” He’d choose Faulkner over Moby-Dick, which he finds interesting, but not as compelling. “I delivered a speech on Moby-Dick in high school,” he adds as a side-note, “and that speech was a bit of a bomb.” Moby-Dick first appeared on the college reading list for seniors in 1952-53. It was read for many years in the 1950s and made brief reappearances in Annapolis and Santa Fe, most recently in 2003. It lives on in preceptorials, yet some tutors think it’s a shame not all students read the work because it is the type of work-like so many books that remain on the Program-that needs to be discussed to be understood. How did Melville’s novel first get the boot? The prevailing legend in Annapolis is that too many students were writing essays on the book. With only a list of prize-winning essays available to check, the memory of veteran tutors was consulted. “Oh, it’s absolutely not apocryphal,” says Eva Brann (HA89). “I distinctly remember one year there were at least 10 essays written on the book.” Tutor Malcolm Wyatt (HA03), who joined the college in 1958, recalls that too many bad essays were being written about MobyDick. “The temptation of allegory was too much for students-the white whale, why is he white, the peg leg-itwas away to grind out a senior essay without much serious thought,” he says. In Santa Fe, the book was last read in senior seminar in the spring of 2003, but it wasn’t a success in the eyes of tutor Howard Fisher. That may be because it was read while seniors were writing their senior essay. (In Annapolis, seminar is suspended with all {The College- St. John's College • Winter 2006 } �{TheProgram} as “ .. ril chase him round GoodHope, and round the horn, and round the norway maelstrom, and roundperditions flames before Igive him up. Ahab Other classes for the writing period, while Santa Fe students meet for seminar for part of the time.) “As wonderful as the book is, the seminars were not a success,” Fisher says. “I had been in a senior seminar or two in Annapohs where we read it as part of the Program, and it seemed to me that we had as good a discussion as any other book. It is episodic, and that makes it difficult to sustain a unified conversation, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.” Most years, on one campus or the other, Moby-Dick is offered in preceptorial, and it’s a popular offering. Annapolis tutor Jonathan Tuck tried to lead a precept on the novel a few times, only to find other tutors got there first. “In some ways, having frequent preceptorials honors Moby-Dick more, because it gets the reading it needs,” Tuck offers. Santa Fe Thtor Claudia Honeywell loved the preceptorial she led on the book. “Oh, would that it could be on the Program,” she says. “At the time I chose it for precept, I was really interested in it. I felt like it was my discovery-T’ve found this great book, let’s read it together.’ ” For Honeywell, Moby-Dick more than meets the college’s criteria for a great book: “It’s endlessly fascinating. You’re never done reading it, and there’s no way to be done reading it. Even as you’re formulating the line of interpretation, you’re left in an uncomfortable place-just as Ishmael is. The book has no apparent resolutions.” It was “a bummer” that the novel came off the reading list, Honeywell says, because “we don’t have it as an element of our common discourse. It’s a book that can really accompany us through the moral uncertainty of life. There’s the famous passage where Ahab talks about how human life is lived, that men hide behind a pasteboard mask if they’re there at all. I think about that now and then, I see situations that trigger memories of it.” As one of their rewards for finishing the novel, Annapolis tutor Nathan Dugan invited his students a few years ago to a party, complete with clam chowder. Dugan had read it for the first time just a year before and was eager to read Moby-Dick with students. The preceptorial was productive, but it took hard work to make such a vast book the subject of coherent discussions, he notes. “The good thing is that you can go through very slowly and spend a lot more time on the parts,” he says. “The difficult thing is that you can’t require everyone to read 1,000 pages before you start. But with the right of questions, a glimpse of the whole can come out.” What the novel would add to the program as a whole is a portrait of human beings as seekers and interpreters of symbols {The College. and meaning, Dugan adds, something that relates well to Platonic dialogues Johnnies read as freshmen. “In the end it’s telling us something about why we need to be self-aware,” he says. Dugan sees no compelling reason Melville’s tale must be on the reading list. And yet, he allows, “fife would be more full” if he could teach Moby-Dick and Joyce’s Ulysses. Having taught two preceptorials on the book, Annapolis tutor David Townsend acknowledges the impracticality of Moby-Dick as a seminar reading. Yet in his view, the novel is “one of the dozen great novels ever written.” The book confronts themes of man and nature, hierarchy and obedience, freedom and equality. “It addresses the struggle to build a community and how essential that is,” he says. “It points out that you don’t have an individual self outside of the community. It’s eclectic and diverse in the cultures that it depicts. And it’s also contemporary in that it’s one of the first books to address a global economy and the psychological and moral effects of commerce.” In addition to the length, one problematic issue in Melville’s tale is an absence of women, something that can’t be said about Middlemarch. Townsend would not want to see Eliot’s novel sacrificed for another fictional work. “It’s a very rich and coherent story, more manageable in two seminar discussions” than Moby-Dick. St. John’s is not trying to establish a canon, even if it seems that way to outsiders, says Townsend. And yet the college gets letters and e-mails from those who look to “the great books college” to decide what “great” books they should read. A few years ago, a group of Canadian doctors asked for the reading list. Most recently, an Iowa man wrote to ask for a copy of the list; he planned to ask his local library to post it for patrons. “Because we don’t have time to read everything, it often seems that if someone’s not on our reading list, it’s because we’ve found that the work is not as important,” says Townsend. That’s not the case, he adds. “These books at this moment in time are the ones that work well in conversation for our community.” Honeywell expresses a similar sentiment. “There are so many friends out there, and we can only invite so many to the party, yet you still think about your friends. We form our own relationships with books, and they are like friends.” To find out what Johnnies are reading today, visit the St. John's Website: www.stjohnscollege.edu. Sf. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{TheProgram} 2.4 PLATO, ARISTOTLE, BALDWIN? The College magazine asked readers to suggest books they would like to see on the St. John’s reading list. The question drew an interesting variety ofresponses, with essays, novels, and works of philosophy suggested. Here are some ofthe offerings: Notes ofa Native Son would be a happy addition to the senior seminar list, perhaps following close upon the Lincoln and Faulkner readings. —Kevin Schnadig, SF98 Death in Venice Notes ofa Native Son The playwright August Strindberg once wrote about his experience of reading the complete works of Balzac, something over 50 volumes. When he had finished he felt, as he tells us, that he had lived an entire life condensed into the space of a couple of seasons. And that his own life now, whatever remained of it, took on the quality of a kind of second life, a strange addition to the life he had lived vicariously through the great author. There are other kinds of works, however, not oeuvres but single volumes, that leave their readers with a much different impression. They do not make us feel that we have passed through the entirety of a life but rather, and this is their particular strength, convey to us a sense, both tortuous and exhilarating, of the essential incomplete­ ness of life, of time fraught with interruptions, cut into so many fragments of unclear and mutilated histories, and interwoven with a dizzying variety of fictions and hes. The book 1 have in mind is James Baldwin’s Notes ofa Native Son, a collection of essays first published in 1955. These essays, brilliantly incorporating original insights into the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Faulkner, Kafka, and so many others, deal primarily with two themes, both literary and philosophical in scope: the encounter between human beings with different cultures, different ways of thinking and different superficial appearances; and the experience, individual as well as collective, of being an exile, geographically as well as psychologically. Notes ofa Native Son is, but is also much more than, a book about the experience of black Americans in the aoth century. Speaking of this experience, Baldwin writes that “the depthless alienation from oneself and one’s people is, in sum, the American experience.” But it is also, one comes to realize while reading these essays, an essentially philo­ sophical experience. For there is a certain kind of understanding that arises only from the point of view of an exile. St. John’s students and tutors will immediately call to mind the cases of Socrates, Christ, Dante, Spinoza, and Frederick Douglass, to name a few. It is the moment when all that is familiar becomes violently and threat­ eningly unfamihar, and one is compelled, if one has a penchant for intellectual honesty, to re-evaluate those most fundamental notions of self and other, truth and lies. As I believe St. John’s is at bottom an attempt to cultivate these moments of understanding by passionate discussion of ideas, I think I first encountered this book during my freshman year at Kenyon College, an experience which instantly changed my life. I have re-read it several times since... and after each reading, as in all the works on the reading fist, I understand more, both about the book and about the experience of being human, particularly that of falling in love. It would be wonderful if all St. John’s students had the oppor­ tunity to read and discuss Death in Venice. I suggest this book for three reasons. First, the reading list contains very little 20th-century fiction, and Mann’s tale is certainly one of the best examples, written before the First World War and the emergence of Modernism, yet the style and tone appear to signal the approach of the movement. Second, Death in Venice is short enough to be discussed in one seminar class, while containing enough chal­ lenging material to provoke a thoughtful, lively conversation. Third, and most importantly, the subject matter, the elderly von Aschenbach’s erotic longing for the teenaged Tadzio, is guaranteed to spark debate, especially in light of current events. At the same time, however, it will require students to revisit their discus­ sions of ancient Greek notions of eros, especially as expressed in Plato’s Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus. Indeed, Death in Venice maybe viewed as a 20th-century commentary on the Platonic idea of love, even incorporating sections of the relevant dialogues into the novella. This work serves as a transition of sorts, from the values and beliefs of ancient Greece to those of the modern world, and for all these reasons, it would make an excellent addition to the reading fist. —Charles Green, AGIoa The Decameron It’s absolutely imperative that we add Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece. The Decameron, to the sophomore curriculum. Boccaccio’s tales of true love and high adventure (and depraved monks, which are what everyone who reads The Decameron seems to remember best) will provide a wonderful relief to sophomores recently completing their study of St. Anselm and Aquinas. Rather than depicting how people ought to behave in an ideal world-a “city of God” so to speak- The Decameron depicts how they behave in the real world, wherein people are more apt to pursue love, and sex, and wealth than divine absolution. As such we shall be reassured that not everyone in the Middle Ages spent all {The College. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{TheProgram} their time woefully recounting their sins and attempting to understand God’s power and majesty. But of course, perhaps the greatest case for adding The Decameron to the curriculum is Brother B,obert, who has long feared the deduction of his beloved Rabelais from the Program list. Obviously, as The Decameron is about IO times dirtier than anything that can be found in Pantagruel and Gargantua it would be wholly illogical to deduct Rabelais from the curriculum and leave Boccacio on. Thus, the fears of one of our oldest and most respected tutors will at long last be assuaged, and sophomores will have gotten a delectable new read which provides a different, lighthearted, and secular perspective on the Middle Ages. —Jennifer Wright, ao8 The Rule of St. Benedict, The Philosophy ofFreedom I have always thought that the jump from Augustine to Aquinas is too large, a thousand years, and that The Rule of Saint Benedict would fit nicely, as it was much read and often observed in between, so preserving literature from one era for the next. The aoth century is the serious question.. . Which Western writers of the aoth century will be studied through the aist? How many thinkers have given new direction to painting, sculpture, dance, speech, music, drama, agriculture, finance, medicine, religion, and education? There is only one whose insights into embryology, physiology, astronomy, geology, botany, and zoology wfil guide fruitful research for generations. Rudolf Steiner has put before us in a new light so many subjectsepistemology, moral technique, meditative practice, evolution of consciousness, social life-that the prospect of rethinking every thought we hold may keep us from approaching his books. Yet the faculty of St. John’s is under pressure to study anthroposophy from at least two directions. Advances in physics are rapidly overwhelming Cartesian dualism. Philosophy cannot disregard science. New generations of students will expect their college professors to understand the foundations of their experience... Die Philosophic der Freiheit (1894) is the best introduction. There are at least three English translations... Rudolf Steiner’s contribution to Western thought is placed in the same rank as the work of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In The Philosophy of as Author James Baldwin belongs on THE READING LIST, SAYS AN ALUMNUS. Freedom, Steiner leads the reader, by means of pure thinking, to the source of his knowledge. Having made that effort, one is competent to eval­ uate his statements, which the faculty of St. John’s will shortly be obliged to do. —Lisa S. Turner, parent (Douglas Turner, A04) Atlas Shrugged____________________________________________ While scorned by many academic philosophers, the book has had a tremendous impact on popular perceptions of philosophy, including among many highly educated people. In addition, the book has gained at least some ground in academia. There are a handful of colleges where some philosophers embrace Ayn Rand, and many others where at least short selections from her books are included in survey courses on ethics and political philosophy. I recently re-read the book after more than ao years. My perceptions have evolved and changed, and I was dismayed to discover how flawed much of the writing is. In particular, Rand’s “bad guys” are drawn as comic-book characters. Even so, there is much that is compelling in her writing, and the philosophical heroes of the novel give some very thought-provoking speeches. The ideas in the novel span the entire range of philosophical issues, from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics, politics, art, and even the role of sexuality in human relations. Possibly the best reason: With the lone exception of Aristotle, whose metaphysics and logic she embraces, Rand attacks virtually the entire canon of Western philosophical thought, from Plato to Descartes to Hume and Kant, right up to the present day post­ structuralists and post-modernists. One of the best lines in the whole novel, found in the long Galt speech, is: “The choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical error, to declare: T am; therefore I will think.’” The purpose of reading a book at St. John’s is to provoke lively discussion. And particularly for seniors in the undergraduate program, I can’t imagine a better book to challenge the entire body of work they have read in earlier years of the Program. . . {The College. John's College ■ Winter 2006 } —Steve Oppenheimer, AGIoa �^6 {Homecoming} O, PIONEERS! The Class ofigss Returns BY Rosemary Harty oyce Kittel Wilson (class of 1955) had a lot to learn from men like Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, and Curtis Wilson. She also remem­ St. John’s-particularly her classmate, bers some of the things she learned Anita (Jane) Gerber Denison. from women-the first to attend “Jane taught me how to smoke,” Wilson recalls. “I just don’t remember that,” Denison says. Cigarettes were an ever-present prop for students and tutors alike. “We could smoke in class, and most of the students and tutors did,” Wilson recalls, Denison and Wilson were catching up in the home of Sam (class of 1954) and Emily (class of 1955) Kutler, who hosted a Saturday-afternoon luncheon at their home during Homecoming Weekend. As with most of the conversations around the room, the subjects alternated between “what are you doing now?” and “do you remember this?” Homecoming is always festive, lively, and full of memories, but this year it was especially nostalgic, as members of the Class of 1955-the first to include women-returned for their 50th anniversary. The class had 48 members, nine of whom have passed away. Sixteen members of the class attended their reunion, traveling from far and wide. They smiled at imitations of Jacob Klein’s accent or memories of President Richard Weigle’s attempts to keep the female citizens of St. John’s safe from bad influences. They were pioneers, and they had pioneers’ stories, such as the “open door” rule required for men and women to be in the same dorm room at the same time. They also talked about getting their tutors and male classmates used to having women in class and on campus. As Wilson puts it, the men of St. John’s did not accept the inva­ sion of women quietly. “They went kicking and screaming into the fray,” she says. Denison graduated from Towson High School, north of Balti- J {The College They encountered many challenges, but Joyce Wilson and Jane Gerber Denison ( both class of 1955) share fond memories of BEING the first WOMEN TO ATTEND St. JoHn’s CoLLEGE. more, and she won a scholarship to attend St. John’s. She made it through three years at the college and found it rigorous, chal­ lenging, and sometimes overwhelming. “The college was so much smaller then. You had 15 in a seminar, and there was no way you could hide. If you weren’t prepared, everyone knew it,” she says. “The oral exams, and the don rags-I dreaded those like poison.” She left close to the end of junior year and returned to Baltimore to find work. But she was summoned back to Annapolis by Jacob Klein, then dean of the college. “I went to his house. He was a very persuasive man. He wanted me to come back, and I did, but I was very confused, and I left again.” - St John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Homecoming} A Toast to Toasts women cloy/ The appetites they feed: but she-this college­ makes hungry/ where most she satisfies.’” It’s a fine tradition: at the end of the Saturday-night Homecoming banquet, alumni raise a glass in honor of their classmates and in gratitude to the college. More recent classes go first, paving the way for the Johnnies who studied in the old program. Here are a few of the sentiments offered this year in Annapolis: Graduate Institute, all years, Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76): “We’ve always heard it said that the Graduate Insti­ 27 tute is a refined version of the program. And we do admit that we are an amorphous group, we don’t have [typical] reunions. We dare say our wise perspective has helped us understand what St. John’s means to all of us together.. .. We raise our glasses to this collective enterprise of St. John’s College.” Class of 1995, Zena Hitz : “At reunions, we tend to think a lot about the past, partly because we’re St. John’s alumni, and we’re sentimental. . . . What I’ve enjoyed about Homecoming is seeing what people are doing now, what their lives are like, meeting the people they love, hearing about their work, finding out what they’re thinking about-so I would like to raise a toast to the class of 1995: Our lives, our love, our work.” Class of 1980, Ken Ross: “I know some of my classmates knew me as a very shy person in r98o and so they elected me anyway. I really enjoyed meeting my old friends and making new friends here. And to this very special college-here’s to the class of 1980!” Class of 1975, Jim Jarvis: “One of the most delightful things about being at a 30th reunion is to realize that we’re now the reunion where most of the people have gray hair-which is great. And to see that so many of these people are so amazingly accomplished, and have not lost their love for books and ideas. All of us I think would say about St. John’s College, what [Domitius Enobarbus] says in Antony and Cleopatra'. ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/Her infinite variety: other Denison went on to a marriage, a rich family fife that included five step-children, and a satisfying career as a professional editor. But she can still see Klein, who died in 1978, as if it were yesterday. “He always had this little twinkle in his eye.” Yet Denison left St. John’s feeling well prepared for the future, and she treasures the memories she took with her. “At that time, it was a very small community, and all of us women were new to it. We were close, and that was nice,” she says. If Denison left because she was young and unsure of her path in fife, Wilson left for another reason many college-age women encountered: marriage. She married Gerald Wilson (class of 1956) and became pregnant with her first child in her third year. “There was a saying at St. John’s, ‘ifyou’re unable to enable, have a baby,”’ she recalls, Wilson enabled, but left when classwork became too much for her. “I remember I had trouble keeping up with my fruit fly exper­ iment-! had let some get loose,” she recalls. She went on to have four children, and was one of the first women on the East Coast trained in the computer language COBOL. “I liked the logic in programming, and I was good at it,” she says. Later, after moving to California for her husband’s career, she earned a paralegal certificate and worked for law firms. {The College. Class of 1970, Steve Forman: “When people ask me if I went to St. John’s for the books I say no, I actually came here for the sports. Upon reflection I realized who I studied Euclid with, I know who I studied the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle with. I also remember who played for the Druids and how we hated the Hustlers. Because of what I realize is important about that other side of the Program that provided the balance in our fives with the studying and the thinking and the conversations, I think I’d like to [toast the late] Bryce Jacobsen [class of 1942, former athletic director].” Class of 1935, Roland Bailey: “. .. A toast to all of us who have lived in accordance with the philosophy of Rabelais: ‘To five: in general and tolerant fellowship with man and nature; in grateful appreciation of the good things of fife; and in cheerful expectation of all of fife’s inescapable vicissitudes.’ ” (A poetic toastfrom Priscilla Husted Griscom, class ofiggs, can befound on the inside back cover q/The College./ The women who entered St. John’s in r95r paved the way for those who would come later; several women from later classes-all the way up to 2004-joined the Kutler luncheon to hear the stories and help the pioneers celebrate. Steered to St. John’s by a teacher in her Cleveland High School who spotted her engrossed in Moby-Dick, Josephine Jaster Poe (class of 1957) thought St. John’s was still for men only when she first heard about it. “Then I learned they had opened it up to women, but my father said I couldn’t go,” she recalls. “I did anyway. And when I got here, I had no sense that women were ever a problem. I was just one of the boys.” Her husband, Harvey Poe (class of 1952), later a tutor and dean of St. John’s, recalls that the college embraced the idea that “women could do anything the men could do.” The college’s history also was a focal point of the weekend. Tylden Streett (class of 1950) unveiled two plaster busts of New Program founders Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan (see page 5r). Class of T955 member Priscilla Bender-Shore brought her series of oil paintings inspired by the Muses to share with the college community and alumni during the weekend. Charles Nelson (class of r945) set the tone for the weekend with the Friday-night Homecoming lecture, “In the Beginning... The St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �2,8 {Homecoming} ''Thefreedom to choose the St. John spath is essential to its success. ” Charles Nelson (class of 1945) Genesis of the St. John’s Program, 1937.” Nelson, who worked closely with hoth men while he was a student, talked about Barr and Buchanan separately-what type of childhoods and early education they had-and what brought them together to launch the New Program in 1937. He also talked about the decisions they made, such as requiring faculty to teach across the curriculum, and explained the rationale for such choices. He talked about their struggles, such as a draining battle to ward off annexation by the Naval Academy, and their triumphs. Even as the college gained international attention for its “radical” methods, Barr and Buchanan did not want the St. John’s Program “universally copied,” Nelson said. “That would have left the entering freshman without a significant choice, and the ThemUSES to freedom to choose the St. John’s path is essential to its success,” Nelson said. “The discipline and commitment required in order to gain the rewards of the Program presupposes that the path is freely chosen. In fact, I believe that most alumni would assert that it must be not only freely chosen, but also pleasurable; otherwise, it isn’t worth the pain.” —Rosemary Harty Homecoming Seminars, book-signings, and parties are standard fare for Homecoming in Annapolis. This year, thanks to artist Priscilla Bender-Shore, class of 1955, there were The Muses, gracing the Hodson Atrium (home to the Pendulum Pit) in Mellon Hall for the full weekend. It was an appropriate visual tribute to the women who in 1951 arrived in Annapolis to end the college’s days as an all-male institution. During a Saturday afternoon reception, Bender-Shore provided insight into The Muses: Dancing at the Edge ofthe World, which she graciously shared with the Annapolis campus community. The series comprises several large paintings depicting classically robed women engaged in graceful dances. In her presentation, Bender-Shore said she was pleased that this, her first visit back to St. John’s since graduation, gave her a chance to share her work. For Bender-Shore, the human figure, especially the female form, is a muse. She studied at the Yale School of Art and Cooper Union before attending St. John’s and earned her M.F. A. from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She currently lives and teaches in Santa Barbara. “Priscilla won the Reader’s Digest award to study in Giverny, France, and that was when she began to develop the ideas for the Muse drawings,” notes Emily Kutler, class of 1955, also an artist. “At a time when everyone was going modern, she stayed with what she was doing: human figures. Everyone was glad to hear her speak; she is so articulate and thoughtful.” Bender-Shore showed through slides of her work how her time as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s home in Giverny laid a foundation for the series. 4- For just a weekend, the Hodson Atrium became an art gallery. On display was a series of paintings by Priscilla Bender-Shore (class of Z955). {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } C �{Homecoming} Clockwise: At the afternoon picnic. Class OF 1965 MEMBERS GeRALD ZoLLARS, MiKE Woolsey, and Vivian Ronay trade stories; Henry Shyrock (class of 193a) and Roland Bailey (class of 1935) represented the “old” program at the Saturday banquet; Members of the class of 1955 and friends AT the Kutler home; Two future Johnnies enjoy Homecoming. {The College- St. John s College ■ Winter 2006 } �30 New Books from Santa Fe Faculty {Bibliofile} skv ,/in a bottle Sky in a Bottle___________________ by Peter Pesic MIT Press 2005 t starts with the simplest questionone every parent has heard, and few have answered satisfactorily: why is the sky blue? For Santa Fe tutor Peter Pesic, the question is the first step in a scientific journey that starts with Plato and Aristotle and ends, if it does in fact end, with Pesic. Sky in a Bottle, the latest in Pesic’s remarkable list of scientific and philosophic books, chroni­ cles the search for an answer to a question confronted by scientists and philosophers for centuries. Plato, Leonardo, and Newton all wrestled with the problem, as did the understand the first two questions, the ancient Chinese and Middle Eastern scien­ third question becomes “Can we recreate tists. The color of the sky is intimately the color of the sky here on Earth? Can we, connected with one’s view of the structure in effect, put the sky in a bottle?” Pesic of the heavens, the properties of fight, the traces the various attempts to answer the functioning of the eye, the composition of first two questions, taking the reader on a elements, the nature of air, and man’s rela­ tour through the central ideas of chem­ tionship to the cosmos. As late as i86a. Sir istry, optics, and atomic physics. John Herschel claimed that the color and In true seminar fashion, rather than polarization of skylight was one of “the two show how each thinker improved upon great standing enigmas of meteorology.” previous work, the book attempts to eval­ The book begins by dissecting the uate each of the proposed solutions on its central question into three related ques­ own merits, uncovering the scientific and tions. The first question is “Why does the cultural assumptions behind each thinker’s sky have color?” The second is “If the sky work. “One of the things that struck me does have color, why is it blue rather than was how long the question remained totally some other color?” Once we think we unresolved. Until almost 1900 people really didn’t know why the sky was blue. Many great physicists really barked up the wrong trees trying to answer the question,” said Pesic. Pesic first encountered the question in another scientist’s work. “I read a few years ago about a physicist named Smoluchowski who was working on the problem of trying to duplicate the color of the sky in a bottle. The more I learned of his work, the more I began to wonder if it was possible. Could it be done?” Although the inspiration for the book started with Smoluchowski, Pesic says the question at the heart of the book has its roots in his experience at the college. Z A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT LED SaNTA Fe TUTOR Peter Pesic to ponder blue skies. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter aoo6 } “When I first came to St. John’s the first class I taught was freshman lab. We were studying the atomic theory and the question “Do atoms exist?” Here I was a physicist and I had never really asked myself this. How could you prove atoms exist? I had a Ph.D. in physics, but the question never came alive for me until freshman lab. It occurred to me that many of the things we take for granted, like the color of the sky, are, in fact, deep and interesting questions worthy of reconsidering,” he says. Sky in a Bottle explores Rayleigh’s scat­ tering law and the connections between the appearance of the sky and Avogodro’s number. Pesic also discusses the depictions of the sky in art, the secrets of matter and light, and even what the sky’s brightness might tell us about the size and density of the universe. For those who prefer to take a more active role in tracing the conversation about the sky, the book contains an appendix of 11 important experiments related to light and color. “Some of the experiments in the book are simplified versions of the experiments we do in junior and senior lab. I included them to see if it was possible to demonstrate that light is a wave without using elaborate equipment,” says Pesic. —John Hartnett, SF83 Excerpt: Giotto was among the earhest artists to paint the sky blue, as in his fresco of the raising of Lazarus in the Arena Chapel in Padua (1305-1306). Blue pigments became much more available through the use of the mineral azurite. Yet even in the early part of the fifteenth century, the secret of mixing blue pigment was still closely guarded. Ultramarine was the preferred hue, made by grinding up lapis lazuli into a powder, which then could be used as pigment. It was ruinously expensive, so rare that it was said to come “from beyond the seas,” the literal meaning of ultramarine. This extraordinary blue long continued to be used for the most special passages in paintings by Giotto and later artists, usually reserved for the robes of the Savior or the Mother of God. Its expense also meant that only the master artists would dare use it. -Peter Pesic, Sky in a Bottle �{Bibliofile} Leaving Us to Wonder: An Essay on THE Questions Science Can’t Ask by Linda Wiener and Ramsey Eric Ramsey SUNY Press, 2005 t might seem strange for a St. John’s tutor to suggest in the title of her new book that there are some questions that can’t be asked. In Leaving Us to Wonder, Santa Fe tutor Linda Wiener and her collaborator propose that he who poses a question just might have already limited the answer. Consequently, many of today’s most important questions, when posed by scientists, are doomed from the start to limited or inadequate answers. The book is an interesting collaboration between a biologist and a philosopher. Wiener is the biologist; Ramsey is a philosopher and associate dean of the Barrett Honors College at Arizona University West. The two met at a conference 10 years ago and struck up a conversation on some of the issues that had bothered Wiener in graduate school. Their work explores the meaning of the scientific worldview and how it plays out in our everyday lives. Their book investigates alternatives to what they call “scientism,” the view that science is the proper and exclusive realm for thinking about and answering every question. One might expect that the impetus for such a book would come from the biologist’s critique of the philosopher’s methods and the philosopher’s objections to those of the scientist. For Wiener, the book really began when she was in graduate school as a scientist and began to question her own methods. She says, “I wanted to be a biologist because I wanted to be out with plants and animals and living things. But in graduate school, we treated animals and plants as if they were purely mechanical and mathematical. To the extent that science can study them they are, but I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to question that view. My colleagues thought that science was the way to understand everything. It seemed to me to be too narrow.” Although the book warns us about the dangers of a scientific worldview in general, Wiener uses a specific examplethe conclusions of evolutionary biologists-to help illustrate the case. Wiener shows how researchers working in evolutionary biology have stretched their Z conclusions to cover answers to questions about dating and divorce, relationships, childrearing, and the complex relations between the sexes-questions that cannot be answered from a scientific view alone. But the blame for this worldview is not limited to the scientists. At stake is the commonly held idea that a question is not properly answered until it has been answered by scientists. Our modern Leaving Us to Wonder “My colleagues thought that science was the way to understand everything. ” Linda Weiner popular worldview includes the erroneous assumption that the only real and true knowledge is the knowledge gained using the scientific method. The book challenges this worldview by asking probing questions about modern inquiry. Do the facts procured by technoscientific systems render inconsequential our lived experiences, the wisdom of ancient and contemporary philosophic insight, and the promise offered by time-honored religious beliefs? Drawing on authors from the Program, including Socrates, Darwin, Nietzsche, {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } 31 Kant, Heidegger, and others, Wiener and Ramsey demonstrate how many of the claims and conclusions of technoscience can and should be challenged. They offer ways of thinking about science in a larger context that respect scientific practice, while taking seriously alternative philosophies whose aims are freedom, the good life, or living well. For Wiener, many of these ways of thinking were first suggested by her experience at the college. “Being a tutor here allowed me to see how others have thought about the facts of biology in different ways. In the Program we see how Aristotle and Goethe and Nietzsche are looking at some of the same things as scientists, but with a different approach. Those approaches allow you to see new things that the modern scientific paradigm doesn’t reveal,” she says. As one might expect from a collabora­ tion between a philosopher and a biologist, the book is respectful of the power of scientific thinking. Wiener is not proposing that purely meditative thinking, to borrow a term from Heidegger, should supplant and replace the calculative thinking of the scientific method. Instead, she carefully presents the idea that both kinds of thinking have a role to play in getting at the truth-neither has a monopoly on metaphysical reality or objective truth. Calculative thinking might propose that humans are fundamentally collections of DNA and should be viewed as such. Meditative thinking might propose that humans are fundamentally rational creatures who exercise their will. Neither answer has a monopoly on the truth, but each ignores the conclusions of the other at its peril. The book concentrates on the limits of scientific thinking only because of its prevalence in the modern world. Wiener points out, “If you seek solutions in a strictly scientific way you don’t tend to get good solutions. First you have to figure out what the problem really is. Once you hnd a solution is needed, then you bring in more technical knowledge at the end. You don’t start with science. You end with it.” —John Hartnett, SF83 �3a {Alumni Profile} A Quest to Preserve Ancient Dance Joseph Houseal, A84 BY Patricia Dempsey raveling off-road in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan means leaving behind modern modes of transportation-even wheels. “Off-road means traveling on yak, horse, or foot” through windswept mountain passes and isolated valleys, says Joseph Houseal (A84). A gifted athlete who once held the half-mile track record in Michigan and was a profes­ sional dancer, Houseal says that even he gets weary traveling this rugged terrain on his quest to find sacred rituals and dance festivals. He travels in Bhutan for up to seven months at a time as part of a five-year project to document Bhutan’s ancient dance forms before they are lost to modern culture. When Houseal is in Bhutan-some 7,600 miles from his home in Chicago-he is closer than ever to the rural roots of his youth in St. Joseph, Michigan, where his father is a blue­ funded by the Core of Culture and the berry farmer. The Bhutanese, a majority Honolulu Academy of the Arts, will become ofwhom practice Tantric Buddhism, part of a traveling exhibition, “The Arts recognize in Houseal a fellow farmer, a man of Bhutan,” which will appear in several on “a divine mission,” says Houseal. U.S. cities, and in Europe and Asia before “Everything in my life has come together finding a permanent home in the New York into this work of dancers preserving dance,” PubUc Library’s Performing Arts Dance he says. “I am alive because I have this Collection. purpose.” Landlocked in the eastern Himalayas, Over the decades that he has devoted between China and India, the Kingdom of himself to dance, Houseal has attained the Bhutan is an isolated sanctuary of nature Eastern ideal of integrating body, mind, and and ancient culture, where dance is spirit. He trained rigorously for his first integrated into every aspect of life. The career in professional ballet companies such Bhutanese practice monastic dances, lay as the Washington Ballet, made his choreo­ religious dances, masked dances, and other graphic debut on the Quad at St. John’s with sacred dance rituals. Dance is a form of Aeschylus’ Choephori. He later moved to meditation, communication, and informa­ Kyoto to study the ancient Japanese Noh tion. “Dance in Bhutan is not the same Theater and there formed a dance company thing as it is here in the states. We have one that attracted critical acclaim. Today, as word for dance. In Bhutan, they have over executive director of the Chicago-based 20 words for dance,” says Houseal. Dance in Core of Culture, Houseal leads a project to Bhutan is also endangered, as centuries-old videotape and preserve the dances of forms of feudalism meet the 21st century. Bhutan, In 2008 this ethnographic record. “Today the Bhutanese are on the brink of T {The College Sf. John's College ■ IVinter 2006 } Joseph Houseal, posed for a Nihon Buyo portrait. NihonBuyo is an ANCIENT form of TRADITIONAL Japanese dance. creating a generation that will have young people who cannot dance,” says Houseal. In Bhutan, Houseal travels ancient mountain paths with his British associate, Gerard Houghton, and Bhutanese film director Karma Tshering, who speaks 14 of the 22 Bhutanese languages. Last spring, for instance, they had three months to shoot 125 hours of film, but it took up to five days each way trekking off­ road to reach each of the six festivals they recorded. A festival can last up to five days, and dances last all day. “It can take a lifetime for a deep spir­ itual transformation, linked closely to Tantric Buddhism, to take place,” says Houseal. Houseal’s journeys often lead him to encounters with the mysterious and mystical. In one such encounter he saw exactly what is endangered in Bhutan. “We met a monk named Lopon Sangay. He has been a monk since he was eightyears old. When we met him, he had been awake for 16 days, dancing five-and-a-half hours a day in an elaborate three-week ritual. He couldn’t understand why we thought that was amazing. In his mind he was simply acting out the Dharma, his practice as a monk-this is a way of life in Bhutan, dancing as a practice. And it is these internal teachings that are endangered,” says Houseal. “Movement can be preserved and taped, but the internal teachings­ training the body and the mind, the organs, using visualization, projectory movement, and energy awareness-cannot. When Lopon dances, his body, mind, and spirit are transformed.” The audience or observer is also trans­ formed. “It is a fusion of mind, body, and spirit that leaves a karmic, compassionate �{Alumni Profile} imprint on the audience,” says Houseal, “In Bhutan, you don’t applaud after a dance is performed; you absorb the energy-so you can’t help but be transformed and take something away from it with you.” The ambitious scope of Houseal’s work in Bhutan is characteristic of someone with his perseverance, passion-and, he admits, luck. Growing up in rural Michigan, with eight siblings, Houseal had little time or money for dance. As karma would have it, a 92-year-old ballet teacher, classically trained by Russian immigrants, lived within driving distance. “She taught me the total art of ballet: character, music, plot, costumes,” says Houseal. After high school, he success­ fully auditioned for the School of the Wash­ ington Ballet and began as a scholarship student. Then in the late 1970s, the touring New York City Ballet needed performers to dance as extras in Coppelia. with Barysh­ nikov in the lead; Houseal was chosen from among hundreds who auditioned. “I saw how Baryshnikov lived and worked-in the dressing room, with the press, dancing the ballet-but I didn’t see myself living his life.” Houseal, the valedictorian of his high school class, wanted intellectual fulfillment, so he left the world of dance for St. John’swhere he also learned to take himself seri­ ously as a dancer. “I was trained as a performer, but my tutors, especially Chaninah Maschler, got me to explore the profundity of being a dancer,” Houseal recalls. “This was my first serious probe for four years into the question: ‘What is the nature of dance?’ ” Houseal also discovered what has become a lifelong love of ancient dance. He took 600 lines of ancient Greek and choreographed a dance to be performed on the Quad. “The Greek plays were meant to be spectacles, meant to have a civic purpose, a theatrical purpose. Where else can you recreate such a spectacle but at St. John’s?” In Annapolis Houseal was also influenced by Barry Talley, then musical director at the Naval Academy, for whom he worked as a choreographer. Houseal learned how to reconstruct baroque operas, ballets, colonial dances, and ballad operas. And it was Houseal’s friend at St. John’s, Grady Harris (A84), who introduced Houseal to ancient theater forms and gave Houseal translated Noh plays to read. Houseal was also influenced by Francis Mason, Jr. (A43), editor of The Ballet Review, who encour­ aged him to “go to the source and find out what dancers are teaching.” Inspired by ancient dance of Greece and drawn to an Eastern sensibility, Houseal moved to Kyoto after graduation to study Noh Theater under Master Matsui Akira. Houseal later formed the Parnassus Dancetheatre, which showcased dancers from all over the world performing Houseal’s avante garde choreography. During the seven years he lived in Kyoto, Houseal watched the city evolve into a cultural Mecca. But by the early ’90s, the cultural renaissance in Kyoto was devastated by the city’s economic downturn and AIDS. Houseal, a fortunate survivor of the disease, pursued his life’s work with renewed passion and studied for a graduate degree at the Laban Center for Movement and Dance in London. He returned to Chicago, where he says he 33 found the “bald eagerness for money offputting,” While meditating one day in his lakefront apartment, Houseal spotted a monk walking by on the beach and invited him in for tea. The monk told him to go to Ladakh, a region in the Himalayas. Soon Houseal found himself at a monastery in Ladakh, where he was “transformed to accept Fate’s call and recognized the need to preserve ancient dance.” As Houseal considers the transformations in his life-from a farming youth to professional dancer, from a college student to choreographer, and now as a dance preservationist, he observes that it can take 30 years of meditation and practice in Bhutan to become a monk. “I look at myself and see how it took only four years at St. John’s to cultivate what has become a deep part of my being,” he says. “At St. John’s I developed my mind after I had already trained my body. And look where it took me-to the source, the Himalayaswhere I can reach my life’s purpose.” For more information on the Core of Culture’s dancepreservation project in Bhutan, visit: www.coreofculture.org. Top: Houseal in Kumasaka, a Japanese Noh PERFORMANCE, AT KlI TeMPLE. HoUSEAL SAYS HE WAS THE ONLY FOREIGNER IN 8OO YEARS TO BE ALLOWED TO PERFORM NoH AT THE TEMPLE. Left: Bhutanese farmers, who are also lay MONKS, REHEARSE A TRADITIONAL DANCE IN THE VILLAGE OF UrA. {The College. 5t. John’s College . Winter 2006 } �34 {Alumni Notes} 1942 Ernest J. Heinmuller writes, “Having moved from St. Michaels, Md., I am now in Easton, Md., recently appointed to the Emergency Medical Treatment Committee.” Adventures in the Orient -OAN E. Cole (class of 1957) has been seeing the world since her retirement from the New York Public Library System and just returned from a trip to Japan and China. “Seeing the evidence of their long pasts puts our past in greater perspective. The U.S. is just a baby that can and should learn from the ‘elders.’ Museum visits, temples, and a performance of acrobats made it a most memorable trip.” J Lee Mace is enjoying retirement life at Leisure World in Silver Spring, Md. “Indulging myself with travel-mostly cruises! ” 1948 “I became a great-grandfather, doubly, with George Klimov born October 5, aoo4, and Shawn Trimble, born October 13,2004,” writes George R. Trimhle, Jr. 1964 Attention, any Johnnies living in England: Patricia Carney would be glad to organize a seminar for college alumni living in the U.K. “I am in Cambridge. Suggested reading: Omerus by Derek Walcott.” 1969 Andrew Garrison (A) writes: 1962 “Our son Jesse is in his third year at Oberlin, studying metaphysics and documentary filmmaking.” Michael Elias is set to direct his adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel A Dead Man in Deptford on the life of Christopher Marlowe. Michael is living in West Los Angeles with his 13-year-old son, Fred, 1970 Les Margulies (A) has been living in Kiev, Ukraine, for almost a year. “I am Chief Operating Officer of a group of companies in the advertising area (The Atlantic Groupwww.agl-media.com). “Kiev is nothing like you would think. It is not grey, Soviet, and depressing. It looks like a combination of Vienna, Paris, and Prague. There are not too many ex-patriots over here (excluding government, probably less than 1,000, so that makes me a bit of a big fish in a small pond). I love living in Europe and can’t imagine why I had not moved years before when various opportunities presented themselves. I do miss certain foods, such as peanut butter. Wheat Thins, and corn muffins. But on the other hand, excellent vodka is $3.5o/liter and that more than makes up for the other bits lacking. “Living is much more expen­ sive than you would think. With the exception of vice products (local beer, wine, vodka, and cigarettes (50 cents a pack), everything is the same price or more as in the States. Decent wine at a bar is $io/glass. “Intellectually the work is very challenging and fun. Even though most of my friends and I am sure my fellow classmates are retired to warm climates somewhere, I am still going strong. I may not remember the details of Plato’s Republic, but I sure remember my first mixer at Chase Hall.” {The College -5f. John’s College - Winter 2006 } 1972 Ilene Lee (A) celebrated her birthday this year with an early-morning ascent to the top of Mount Tam in Marin County, Calif. She writes: “Wow-what a view!” 1973 Sheila Bobbs Armstrong (SF, SFGI95, EC93), had an intellectually stimulating summer. “I just did the Summer Classics: Nietzsche, three comedies, and Sri Aurobindo. I needed to kick­ start my brain. My eldest son, Ian, is a junior at St. John’s, and my son Gamon is a senior at Occidental College in L.A. My third son, Quinn, is a high school senior at Idyllwild Arts Academy in L.A. Mike and I are still in Santa Fe, Perth, and traveling. I still teach occasionally.” Dr. Mary Batteen (A) was made a full professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in July. She is the chair of the Oceanography Department there and regularly teaches graduate courses in physical oceanography and advises M.S. and Ph.D. students. She was recently interviewed for a book. Careers in Focus, which was published in 2004. She has two children: Matthew, 13, and Elizabeth, 8. Her husband, Tim Stanton, is a field oceanographer who has traveled to the North Pole, Antarctica, and Brazil, all this year. �{AlumniNotes} Bursting with parental pride, Jon T. Ferrier (A) writes, “Our daughter, Valerie, is halfway through law school at St. John’s University in New York, and Kayne and I are on the L.S.D.-the Law School Diet-for the next couple of years-just in time for our 35th class reunion! Pride abounds, and our hearts soar, like the eagle.” 1976 Richard Bradley Bonds (SF) is a nursing student. “Things have heen a little quiet since St. John’s and law school,” writes William W. Campbell (A). “In 3004,1 got the Honorary Young Farmer Award from Pennsylvania Young Farmers for ‘support of adult farmer education in Pennsylvania.’ Now that is excitement!” 1979 Susan Herder (SF) loves living in San Francisco and working as a self-employed neuro-muscular therapist: “I have more free time now, as I completed a pre-med program at San Francisco State University last year. (What a trip, to have come t8o degrees from shunning the sciences!) I do a lot of sports-I’ll run my first marathon (in the wine country in France!) in September, and regularly swim in the bay. I think about my classmates often and send you all the best.” 1981 Marilynn Smith (SFGI) reports that her move from California to Texas went smoothly last summer. “Living near my daughter and her family (including three grandchildren) is priceless,” she adds. Edelman, born on May 36. I can be contacted at edelman3@stanf0rd.edu.” Margaret Graham (SF) is still living in Boulder, Go., with her husband, three kids, one dog, two budgies, and ii chickens. She recently began taking prerequisites for nursing school, but notes there is a three-year waiting list to get in. 1984 Peter Green (A) just started a new job as deputy business editor at The New York Post. He often runs into Robert George (A85), who writes editorials for the Post. Catch up with him on his work e-mail: pgreen@nypost.com News from Barry and Cynthia Hellman (A): Thia Keppel Hellman is one of the Hampton University leaders organizing the effort to build a state-ofthe-art proton radiation therapy center in Hampton, 35 Va. The project will cost approximately $180 million and take several years to complete. The certificate of public need (COPN) was awarded recently. Fr. Robert Nicoletti (SF) was apologetic about not sending in his Alumni Association dues this year, but he has good reason, he notes: “As a missionary with two orphanages and a soup kitchen (300 people a day), I need to find funds.” He asked St. John’s alumni to consider supporting “these very human­ itarian activities in the Ukraine. Many thanks and prayers.” 1987 John Sellers (A) is “married to Becky Woods, teaching grades 8-r3 math and science, including chemistry and physics. Challenging!” continued onp. 1977 David Pex (SF) got married August 14, 3005. “Complete with instant family! Ages 4, 6, and 8!” 1983 Jonathan ANroNio Edelman Carla Schick (A) is still writing. “I will he published in a small independent journal called Defect Cult. Other poems have been published in the Peralta Press and Word is Bond.^" (A) returned to graduate school after 30 years in the film industry. “I am working towards a master’s degree at Stanford University in the Joint Program in Design (mechanical engineering and art). My wife, Annie, and I are very happy parents of a new baby boy, Liam Elijah Talbot Honoring Excellence “IM Sawatzki (AGI91) a teacher at Bethel High School in Spanaway, Wash., has been named Washington History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of The History Teacher of the Year Award honors one excep­ American History and Preserve America. He received a tional K-13 teacher of American history from each state and U.S. $1,000 honorarium, and a core archive of history books territory; is was based on criteria including experience in andselection materials donated to his school library. teaching American history for at least three years; a deep career commitment to teaching American history; evidence of creativity and imagination in the classroom; and close attention to documents, artifacts, historic sites, and the other primary materials of history. J {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �36 {Alumni Profile} Logos in Action David Veazey, Ayr BY Rosemary Harty man who uses the power HIV hysteria must first be eradicated.” of rational speech The writing he does now is much unjustly can do great different from the approach he took when harm, Aristotle writes in he sat down to pen his senior essay on Rhetoric. David Veazey Plato’s Sophist. “St. John’s requires a (A97) does just the different sort of writing that I never use in opposite; he employs carefullythe chosen outside world-that is, asking a lot of words, solid evidence, and a well-crafted questions and not necessarily coming to argument to save lives by helping to fight any conclusion compared to thesis­ the spread of HIV/AIDS in Russia, where argument-conclusion that the rest of the the government has downplayed the risk world is used to,” he explains. while new cases rise at an alarming rate. Veazey developed persuasive writing Veazey lives in Moscow, where he works skills on his own, noting that four years as a grant proposal writer for AIDS of the Socratic method prepared him well Foundation East-West (AFEW), a Dutch for the work he does today. “When I am non-governmental humanitarian public working on grant proposals I try to act as health organization that seeks to reduce sort of a Socratic midwife. I’m not an the impact of HIV/AIDS in Eastern expert on any particular AIDS issue, Europe and Central Asia. The job taps two but I try to ask the experts questions that of his best attributes: he’s passionate will help them come up with a good about making a difference in the world project that will be interesting to a donor. and skilled at drawing together informa­ This approach has St. John’s written all tion from many sources and assembling a over it.” persuasive argument. Consider Veazey’s editorial in the Kiev Post, which sought to meet the “rising hysteria” about HIV/AIDS in the Ukraine tvith clear and dispassionate logic. He pointed out that the stigma associated with the disease discourages people from being tested, tackled prevailing myths about how HIV is spread, and asked ordinary citizens to educate themselves and get involved in the fight against the disease. “In order to seriously address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine,” he concluded, “the epidemic of fear and A Veazey’s route to Russia began at Fordham University in New York, where he was attending graduate school in economics and working part time and during summer breaks for Doctors Without Borders. He worked as a grant writer, then as a researcher for the international humanitarian organization’s access-to-medicines campaign. Ulti­ mately, the work steered him away from economics. “I became very interested in how the pharmaceutical industry worked and how it affected drug development for tropical diseases,” Veazey says. “I wanted to tie it to my economics studies in industrial organization somehow. I came up with several good thesis topics but the problem was finding the data to work with. All of my classmates were working on very esoteric topics with little relevance to people’s lives. This was mainly because the availability of data largely determines the topic. So I became more convinced that economics is inherently unable to answer any meaningful ques­ tions. . . I couldn’t see myself doing it as a career because of that.” When the September ii terrorist attacks sent the city of {The College. St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 } continued onp. gr Life in Russia is ALWAYS INTER­ ESTING, SAYS David Veazey, here with HIS WIFE, Elena Rudych, in Voloko­ lamsk, A SMALL TOWN TWO hours from Moscow. �{Alumni Profile} continued New York into an economic downturn, Veazey’s position at Doctors Without Borders came to an end, and he couldn’t find work anywhere-even part time. Veazey decided that the time was right to visit a friend in Moscow, where he could explore the job market. It was a risky move, primarily because English is not widely spoken in the city, and Veazey spoke no Russian. At first he patched together freelance work writing for magazines and newspapers for the U.S. expatriate community. That led to a job working for the Russian news agency Prime-Tass. Veazey’s language skills improved and he learned to edit “really, really fast,” but the job paid very little. Then he spotted an advertisement for a position with Aids Foundation East-West, “jumped on it, and got it.” His title is senior adviser on proposal development; in other words, bringing in money. He’s been at it for three years now, and his work is driven by urgency. The AIDS epidemic is still new to the former Soviet Union, he says. According to UNAIDS, 860,000 people in Russia have HIV/AIDS, the majority of whom are drug users who contracted the virus from contaminated needles. The outbreak may be much higher than reported by the government, says Veazey. Many more people may not be aware they have HIV. “The estimates vary widely because there isn’t any good data available. Some estimates are higher than a million. In the highest HIV-prevalence areas like Irkutsk and Samara, more than i percent of the population is estimated to be HIV­ positive. Once it goes beyond i percent, the epidemic can easily become selfsustaining,” he says. East-West sponsors projects supporting local organizations that work with injecting drug users, a method called “harm reduction,” says Veazey. “The ultimate goal is to get them not to use drugs, but in the meantime, they can use clean needles.” Another foundation project seeks to prevent the spread of HIV in prisons; inmates have been trained as outreach workers, medical professionals and psychologists were trained on preand post-HIV test counseling, and disciplinary and custodial staff received training on reducing risk in the work place. Until about five years ago, the Russian government was not aggressively involved with the spread of AIDS, Veazey says. “Politicians had been talking about increasing border security because they think the disease comes from abroad,” Veazey says. The government became more active after Veazey’s organization and four others attracted grant funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, an international fund with $7.a billion in pledges to fight three deadly epidemics. The Russian govern­ ment donated $20 million to the fund, ''When lam working on grantproposals I try to act as sort ofa Socratic midwife. ” David Veazey, A97 but did not apply for any grants itself. “In 2003 AFEW and the four other organizations applied for and won $89 million in grants over five year for HIV prevention,” says Veazey, who was the lead writer. “This caused some embarrassment among proud Russian officials. There were a lot of behind-thescenes discussions about whether they were going to allow us to go forward or not. One faction of the government even put together its own proposal at the last minute to try to sabotage ours. But in the end, we prevailed.” The following year, the government submitted its own successful proposal to the Global Fund for a similar amount, but focusing on HIV treatment, Veazey adds. “Now things are starting to change. President Putin announced in a speech recently that he was ordering the government to increase its budget for AIDS by 20 times. Of course, we have to see what they actually do with this money, but the environment is sharply different from a few years ago,” he says. A favorite aspect of his job is writing editorials and getting them published in {The College .Sf. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } 37 newspapers such as the Kiev Post. Once, he criticized the European Union for not taking a big enough role in prevention; another time he admonished the U.S. government for advocating abstinence-only programs. The U.S. “essentially enforces abstinence because they offer a lot of money and people normally don’t refuse.” Life in Moscow can be hectic. A native of Chattanooga, Tenn., Veazey has never grown used to living among so many people: “At 12 million people, Moscow is much bigger than New York. There are a lot of high rises, and the city has a kind of a grim exterior. There are a lot of reasons to be grim, because there’s so much poverty here. Then there are the challenges of everyday life in a city where some modern conveniences have not quite caught on. Says Veazey, “the most annoying thing for a Westerner are small food shops called producty. You walk in and there are about four different counters for different kinds of goods and you have to ask each person for what you want, they weigh it and tell you how much it costs, you go back to the cashier and pay for it, you bring your receipt back, and you can get whatever you bought. Then, you have to do it over again at the other counters.” Life in Moscow improved dramatically for Veazey in 2003, when he married Elena Rudykh, who works as an assistant network administrator. Elena’s family lives in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, and Veazey loves visiting the region. “Once you get outside the city, the countryside is beautiful, especially in winter, with birch trees and snow,” he says. His favorite thing about Russia is the character of the people: good-natured in spite of a hard life, resilient, friendly-and devoted readers of great literature. “Everyone here has read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. It’s pretty amazing,” he says. Veazey and his wife are starting to think about moving back to the U.S., where Veazey would like to attend law school. He’s still interested in advocacy. “I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not going to save the world,” Veazey says. “It just feels good doing this kind of work, and I want to continue doing it.” �{AlumniNotes} 38 Josephine Lucia DiggsGalligan on July 20, 2005, in Washington, D.C. Big sister Sophia Emmanuelle is enjoying her new status immensely.” Senegal Bound (SFoi) has been busy: “After leaving Santa Fe, I went back to school at the University of Maryland, where I completed a B.S. in Soil Science. I then worked for two years Anne Schuchman (A) and Jim as a carpenter’s apprentice/site manager for Berrettini (AGI93) joyfully Blakketter Craftsmen (whose newest employee is Anne Neadham, Aoi.) I also took time off to volunteerannounce with Red the birth of Augus­ Feather Development Group, building strawbale homes onJames, August 22, 2005. tine Indian Reservations (Hopi and Chippewa). I’m now on my way Gus joins Samuel (6) and Stella to Senegal as a Sustainable Agriculture Extension Agent with (3). Jim is a manager at Time, the Peace Corps. If anyone will be traveling through, they Inc. Anne received her Ph.D. in should see me (for the next two years).” Italian Studies from New York University in 2004 and is an adjunct professor at NYU and a research affiliate with the University of Michigan. “We’re living in Rutherford, N.J., have started homeschooling, and would love to get in touch with Laurie Cooper (A) and Don Graham Harman (A) reports other Johnny homeschoolers Kugelmass were waiting the that his book Guerilla (ams8050@nyu.edu or arrival of their third child, Metaphysics was published in jpb@alum.mit.edu).” expected this January. Laurie August by Open Court. He is continues to practice still teaching at the American psychotherapy in a community University in Cairo, Egypt. mental health clinic. llison Anne Arnold A 1988 1990 Clinton Pittner (SF) “got 1989 Beverly J. Angel (SFGI) is now practicing intellectual property law with the firm D. McDaniel LLP. divorced, but took a cross­ country motorcycle trip from Alabama to California (6,500 miles round trip), which was nice. Found out there’s a K-ia school that has a program [similar to St. John’s], and even has two Johnnies as teachers!” Ken Turnbull (A) writes, Lee Carpenter (A) is busy completing a law degree at the University of Maryland School of Law; he expects to graduate in May aoo6. “My wife, Leslie, and I continue to be astounded and delighted by our i6-month-old daughter, Fiona.” 1991 Teddi Ann Galligan and David Alan Diggs (both AGI) “announce with great joy the birth of their second daughter. 1992 Elyette Block Kirby (SF) writes, “I am living half an hour south of Paris with my husband and three children, Benjamin, 4; Bronwyn, 3; and Luca, I. I’m always looking to meet other Johnnies living in the area...or traveling through.” 1993 Valerie Dufe-Strautmann (SF) gave birth last August to Northanna Mildred Strautmann. She and her husband, Jake Strautmann, live in Watertown, Mass. You can {The College -St John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } drop her a note by e-mail: vsd_str@yahoo. com 1994 Bill Kowalski (SF) and his wife, Alexandra Nedergaard, are proud to announce the birth of their second child, Chloe Sophia Kowalski, on December 6. “On the very same day, the paperhack edition of my fourth novel. The Good-Neighbor (Harper­ Collins), arrived on my doorstep, reminding me that December i was the official release date. This edition includes a P.S. section, comprised of an essay, an inter­ view, and a recommended reading list, all by yours truly. The essay is about St. John’s. It’s written for people who have never heard of us, and it gives a very general overview of the Program, so it won’t contain anything particularly new or enlightening for John­ nies. But I hope it helps bring SJC some more of the national exposure it so richly deserves (and international as well-the hook will be translated into German and Swedish).” Colin and Emily Ray (both A) have big news: “Our daughter, Marina Claire, was horn on December 2, 2004. We just moved into our new house in Tokyo. We’d enjoy having a Johnnie visit us!” �{Alumni Notes} 39 Fair Play Shana Hack (Ag^) Loves Toys wi Rosemary Harty ince graduating from St. John’s College, Shana Hack (A95) has heen selling toys for a living, primarily in various stores around Santa Fe. When the time came to make some deci­ sions about her future. Hack decided that she was happy selling toys. “I just realized I wanted my own toys,” she says. Hack was sorry to miss what would have been her loth reunion last September, but she had just opened Moon Rabbit Toys, a block from the Plaza on Guadalupe Street in Santa Fe. It’s a family enterprise. Hack’s husband, Scott Cox, a carpenter, built shelves for the store. Her mother, Karen, became her first employee. From the beginning. Hack was out to create an extraordinary toy store, one that reflected her own values. Only two toys in her store require batteries. Most toys are made from natural wood, and Hack scours catalogs and Web sites to find toys produced under fair labor conditions. “I found some amazing companies in Thailand that make toys of renewable wood and that follow European Union labor stan­ dards. I buy a lot of toys made in the U.S., and some wonderful board games made in Germany. If I buy something from China, it’s because it’s a really decent toy. Where else are you going to get rubber chickens and Ruble’s Cubes?” Shana Hack, with Rabbit Toys. S Don’t look for an Xbox or Game Boy in Hack’s store. “I love simple toys,” she says. “Take out a yo-yo and learn a trick. Who doesn’t love a Slinky? And Frisbeesthey’re just brilliantly designed.” Parents who remember how much fun it was to play with a Jiberwheel-a hand-held toy with a gyroscope-are buying them for their kids, but playing with them instead. Another popular toy is the goofy drinking bird, which provides a physics lesson every time he leans over to drink. 1995 M. Louise Heydt (SFGI) writes that her first book. Divine Rainbow, Nature as a Spiritual Teacher, was published in July 3005. It is for sale at the St. John’s bookstore in Santa Fe. 1996 “Hello Johnnies,” writes Gwendolynne Barr (SFGI). “What do you think-evolution and/or intelligent design? Experiment today by stirring up the gene pool of the Northern California Alumni Association: www.teamrioja.org/ sjcaanc/index.html. We hold {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter H006 } Moon Hack’s stock of board games has already attracted Johnnies who enjoy strategic games. “There’s the ‘Settlers of Catan,’ all about trading and developing cities; ‘Carcasonne,’ which involves building a map; and ‘Hector and Achilles’-how could I resist that?” When she’s a little better estab­ lished, Hack would like to start a game night for Johnnies. Bringing students into the store would give her someone with whom she can discuss her favorite books: Herodotus’ HistorfcA-which she keeps in her store to peruse at leisure-and Moby-Dick. With just a little advertising and a good location. Moon Rabbit Toys has already attracted a good base of parents, tourists, and children of all ages. The downside is that she’s been known to work a month without a day offa small price to pay for the rewards of running her own show and being able to play with toys. “I’ve been dreaming about this for four years, planning it for two, and now I get to wake up every day and say, ‘I own my own toy shop-how cool is that?’ ” ♦ Tracy Christine Whitcomh (A) writes, “One more year of nursing coursework and I’ll be an RN-BSN! I spent a semester in Perth, Australia, and enjoyed riding camels as well as removing staple stitches. I’m still in Vermont. Anyone coming up to Burlington, feel free to look me up at tracywhitcomb1973@hotmail.com. Cheers!” friends, at seminars throughout the year, as well as an annual symposium at Stag’s Leap winery in Napa. Good times, great (and other­ wise) books.” �{AlumniNotes} 40 1997 Jenn Coonce (A) works for WcightWatchers.com and is getting an M.A. in modern psychoanalysis at the Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis in New York. Casey McFaden (AGI) recently accepted a position at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Haver, and Feld, LLP in Washington D.C., with a focus on the federal regulation of electric utilities. he writes. “I have asked David Reber (AGI) to be a consultant with our math curriculum, and if possible, to teach part time. The other six members of our development team are not Johnnies; however, they are aware of and support our great books approach. Most of them have attended at least one Touchstones workshop, and we expect to be asking for additional help from the Touchstones program as well as the great books program once we have a contract and start hiring additional personnel. We are constantly running into problems with our Milwaukee Public Schools administrators who don’t understand why we don’t want to operate the same as all the other schools.” 1999 Mike and Arby Soejoto (both A) are proud to announce the birth of their son, John Anthony, on July 10. Their daughter, Lucy, turned 2 last fall. The Soejotos live in Los Angeles, where Mike is an attorney, and Abby is a stay-athome mom. They’d love to hear from any friends at msoejoto@pircher.com or asoejoto@sbcglobaLnet. John Cowherd (A) writes, “I took a month off and now I’m back working at the same place and waiting to get my Virginia bar exam results in a few weeks.” 2000 Paul E. Tanner (AGI) recently William Conway (A) is living accepted the Erickson Research Fellowship in Educational Policy at Michigan State University. in Philadelphia, working at Saint Joseph’s University in administration. “I’m studying towards an MBA and am available to talk to students and alums about business school and working in higher ed administration: wconway@sju.edu.” Out of the Loop? 1998 Chris Jones (SF) writes that Stephen Conn (SF) is happy to all is “well in Tennessee. I’m practicing pastoral counseling, art, and Isha yoga. I miss St. John’s and friends there, so I hope to hear from some at kierkegaardvark@yahoo.com.” announce that one of his comic-strip series, “The Radioactive Rahbi,” has heen picked up hy the Newport, R.L, free weekly, the Mercury (WWW. newportmercury. com). He would also like to shamelessly plug his Sgt. Pepper/Great Books Authors T-shirt, available in both campus bookstores. He writes, “Best to all the ’97/’98ers!” Glen Scott Cooper (AGI) is involved with an exciting new endeavor. “We are opening a new public charter school Aug. I, aoo6-Downtown Institute of Arts and Letters, a great books high school that is part of the small schools initiative of Milwaukee Public Schools,” Catch up on all the latest news. Join the St. John’s College Alumni Online Community. Here, you can let friends know where TO find you, discover what former classmates are up to, share “For the next eight months, I will be sailing as the director of Resource Development on the Voyage of Makulu,” writes Todd Wilson (SFGI). “We will sail from Australia to Italy, teaching New York City public school students world geography along the way. You can track the voyage at the organization’s Web site: www.reachtheworld.org.” PHOTO galleries AND BLOGS, KEEP UP WITH ALUMNI EVENTS AND COLLEGE NEWS, AND CONNECT WITH OTHER ALUMNI WORKING IN YOUR FIELD. From the St. John’s home page (www.stjohnscollege.edu), CLICK ON ‘‘For Alumni” and follow the directions from there. continued on pg. 42 {The College- St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 } �{Alumni Profile} A Sweet Deal PaulLaur (SFGIg^) Pursues a Values-CenteredEnterprise BY Erica Naone (A05) " hen he drove up to Denver recently to pour cider samples at a new chain grocery story, Paul Laur (SFGI95) took his 7-year-old son Gavin along. As president of Santa Fe Cider Company, Laur manages his business with Gavin and Nathaniel (4) in mind-involving them in the world of work while enjoying the time he spends with them. “My sons go with me to pick the apples or to drive the truck to the press,” he says, “and that’s part of what makes the job fun.” The manager of the grocery store had other ideas and told Laur it was unprofessional to have his son with him on the job. True to the marketplace and with the community in philosophical tendencies that brought him which we live.” to St. John’s, Laur went home and thought Laur’s background, in fact, is it over. What emerged was a clear view on adventurous and far ranging. He began the role of business in a person’s life, his college career as a physics major at the particularly his own. University of California-Irvine, hoping to “The manager was talking about become a theoretical physicist. Sidetracked corporate ethics-not professionalism at into a sailor’s life, he found himself, in the all,” Laur says. “I have a family-run late 197OS, sailing a boat to Australia with business. It makes total sense to me to bring three undergraduates from St. John’s in my family along for the ride. It’s a shame Annapolis: Steve Scott (A78), Preston Kelly that corporations have to be so faceless.” (A8a), and John Fleming (A78). Laur had Laur has worked hard to bring the already heard about the college and had personal into the professional. When he considered applying to St. John’s. Another started his business in Santa Fe, he looked old friend, Nick Kennedy (A81), had gone to for a way to fit himself into his chosen St. John’s and introduced Laur to the three community. He wanted to attach his men in his Annapolis crew. The experience business to an existing story, and he found on the boat, Laur says, “elevated St. John’s that story in the orchards of New Mexico. to the short list of things I wanted to do in Planted by Spanish settlers 400 years ago my life.” with rootstock from Asturias in northwest “I suppose the main point about sailing Spain, the orchards risked losing their with these guys,” Laur adds, “was that water rights to fast-growing urban during the 10 weeks or so that it took us communities nearby. Laur wanted to help to reach Australia, we had one or two keep water in rural communities and began conversations about life and our condition. working to create a market for apples from We didn’t spend much time in port-three local orchards. days in Panama and three days in Tahiti-so The way he approached being an most of the time we were logging miles at entrepreneur came out of his liberal arts sea and under sail, only running the engine sensibilities. “My background has not been an hour a day to charge the batteries.” a business degree from Harvard,” he says. After finishing his undergraduate degree “It’s been about creating synergies with the at the California Maritime Academy, Laur W {The College - St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } Paul Laur went from sailing the seas IN A MERCHANT MARINE CAREER TO SELLING CIDER MADE FROM NeW MeXICO APPLES. found a career in the Merchant Marine that allowed him to attend the graduate program at St. John’s in Santa Fe between trips to sea. He met his wife, Ruth, just as he was finishing up at St. John’s. It was then that Martin Crowley, who had hired Laur years before to deliver a sailboat, invited Laur to manage a rum factory for him in the Caribbean. This experience with Pyrat Rum introduced Laur to the art and science of taste. “I became really good at picking up subtle differences and could identify which component was causing what, yet I still had a lot of stuff that fed my scientific geekism,” Laur says. “I love the scientific process, but without the tasting that goes along with it, it makes you a plumber at best, rather than a composer.” When Laur and his wife had their first son, they returned to Santa Fe rather than raise him in the Caribbean, “where it would be a battle to get him to wear shoes.” They founded the Santa Fe Cider Company in 1999Being in Santa Fe allowed Laur to participate in community seminars at St. John’s that have fed his intellectual and entrepreneurial interests. At a community seminar on Flannery O’Connor, Laur met Owen Lopez, executive director of the McCune Foundation, which supports small business and community development in Santa Fe. Lopez became a great supporter of Laur’s company. Laur also enjoyed a seminar led by tutor Krishnan Venkatesh, Graduate Institute director, on food, taste, and the culture of connoisseurs. Laur aims constantly for connection: education to business, science to art, living to livelihood. “Having a liberal arts education,” he says, “means thatyou’re liberated from being ultra-conservative and having to have all the hghts green before you go forward.” �4a {Alumni Notes} 2001 Matthew Lippart (SF) writes, “After four years of crashing up against the system, my school is getting its own building! Yay! In addition, I would like to teach overseas next year (China or India, preferably) so any advice, suggestions, or connections would be appreciated. (Online at mlippart@hotmaiLcom.)” Talley Scroggs (A) and Louis Kovacs (Aoa) are living in Baltimore, Md. Lots in the works, Talley writes: Lou’s in medical school, Talley is working three jobs and applying to JD/MB A programs, and they’re getting “hitched” next June. They’d be happy to hear from anyone in town. Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, this August. She will be joining her husband, George Finney (SF99), who is starting his second year in the same program. Erin Krasniewicz and Randy Pennell (both A) are living in Philadelphia and would love to hear from other Johnnies in the area. Randy works for the Associated Press, and Erin works for the Pew Charitable Trusts. “If you are going to visit Philadelphia and want to know where to find the best cheesesteaks, drop us a line first! (Hint: It’s not Pat’s or Gino’s.)” nothing special.” He lives in Philadelphia and is studying to be a counseling psychologist. Please contact him at woollyrubric@yahoo.com if you have any leads regarding the whereabouts of a video copy of Philoctetes: the Musical, the class of 2002’s notorious RealPlay. Also, he writes, please contact him if you can offer him a job in the Philadelphia area. 2004 from chiropractic school this April and will be spending the summer in Brussels, Belgium, learning French. She writes: “I would love to hear from anyone from St. John’s: Drlauren@gmail.com.” John C. Gorczynski (SF) writes: “I have enjoyed working for the mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security in Houston, Texas. I am very excited to be moving to the San Francisco Bay area this fall with Katie de Mahy (SF03). See all you alumni out there.” Mark Ingham (SF) is living the contemplative life: “I drive a vacuum in the North Canadian Oilfield while listening to my own audio recordings of Nietzsche.” 2003 In June, Ann Carruthers (SF) finished her master’s degree in philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. She is now living in Austin, Texas, with Steven Orsinger (SF03) and beginning a Ph.D. program in political philosophy in the Government department at the University of Texas. Mary Duffy (A) has signed on for a lo-month stint with AmeriCorps at the South Whidbey Community Engagement Center in Washington State. “Whidbey Island is in the Puget Sound, about an hour north of Seattle, including the ferry ride,” writes Mary. “I’ll be living on the island, sharing a house with two other volunteers on a stretch of Sunlight Beach, which sits on Useless Bay. I am still writing poetry and I hope to finish a novel in verse by next summer. I would love to hear from Johnnies in the Pacific Northwest, and can be e-mailed at hisgirlfriday@gmail.com.” What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in May; dead­ line for the alumni notes section is March 15. Alumni notes posted to the college’s online community will also be included in The College. Visit www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on Alumni. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 3800 Annapolis, MD 31404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: Rebecca Anne Dwyer (SF) Amanda Kennedy Finney (SF) will begin her first year in the evening law program at 2005 Lauren Shofer (A) graduates 2002 Evan Draper (A) is “doing Applied Linguistics beginning in fall 3006: “I am very excited about this, having spent the last two years teaching English as a second language in Taiwan and China (which, according to the Chinese, are the same),” she writes. “I am glad that the St. John’s education has prepared me for graduate study and that the good people in Scotland realize it. The program is 13 months long. Edinburgh was my first choice because of the vast linguistic resources they have.” has been accepted to study at the University of Edinburgh’s Master of Science program in {The College -St John^s College ■ Winter 2006 } The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �{Tributes} 43 Remembering Ralph Swentzell Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell, a faculty member from 1966 until his retirement in 2003, died of cancer last summer. At a memorial service September 25, he was remembered as a lifelong learner, as a man with many diverse interests, and as a devoted husband and father. In the words of Dean David Levine, Mr. Swentzell represented for many of his colleagues “the paradigm of the St. John’s tutor: An insatiable desire for learning joined to a generous spirit, he mentored and inspired generations of students and tutors alike.” Similarly, Mr. Swentzell’s ability to balance the demands of being a St. John’s tutor, while raising a family and pursuing many diverse interests, inspired colleagues such as Tim Miller, who joined the faculty shortly after Mr. Swentzell. “Because of the hours of study needed by a tutor teaching parts of the Program for the first time, the strain on the tutor’s home life is enormous. . . I think Ralph found a balance between the two obligations as well as any tutor I have known. The collaboration of Rina and Ralph in designing and building their beautiful solar home remains an inspiration for me and I’m sure for many others.” The following are some additional remembrances from Mr. Swentzell’s colleagues and friends: "'He liked to play with ideas, not because he took them lightly, but because hefound them so beautiful and fascinating. Tom Simpson met his wife and life companion, Rina. After Mr. Bunker and Mr. Boyd were recruited to St. John’s College, Mr. Swentzell followed, and he joined our faculty in 1966, retiring in 2003 after 37 years of active and exceptional teaching (and learning). Jorge AiGLA,Tutor Ralph Swentzell was born in East Patterson, N.J., on July 13,1938, attended the local public high school, and joined the U.S. Air Force Band at the age of 17 in 1956, where he remained for four years playing clarinet. In his free time he read widely and was much affected by the writings of Freud. He went to study psychology at Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., where he came under the tutelage of Robert Bunker and Stuart Boyd, and where he also Ralph Swentzell made significant contributions to our Program: he was instrumental in introducing original papers to our music and junior mathematics tutorials, and his helpful handwritten notes for the junior and senior laboratories and senior mathematics are legendary in their clarity and true liberal approach. Ralph was an early incentive in the planning and formulation of the Eastern Classics program, and was responsible for the firstever computer-based Chinese lexicon. Several of us had the privilege to be in his “Computers and the Mind” Schmidt Study Group the first year this fellowship was awarded. If there ever was a man who learned from learning, it was Ralph Swentzell. For him, teaching was an excuse for touching­ students and colleagues. To co-lead a seminar with him or to be in a tutors’ meeting with him, were transforming experiences. Every conversation (about anything) was a conversion. One could feel oneself learning from him and being changed by his authentic human presence. Ralph illuminated the texts, never disposing of them; he opened the books while he allowed himself to be intimately and personally opened by them. One could often hear him in the hallway or Quad. .. saying to his interlocutor: “Yeah, yeah that sounds right, and from what you are saying it is as if.. .” and then he went on clarifying and amplifying whatever was centrally at stake in the conversation. His personal interests were deep and broad: neural networks, consciousness, quantum mechanics, computer modeling, relativity, emergence, Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism, Bodhid­ harma, thermodynamics, biochemistry. Ralph was an intrepid wind surfer, a house A MAN WITH MANY INTERESTS, TUTOR Ralph Swentzell left his mark on St. John’s College. {The College - St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �44 builder (he and his family built their lovely home in Santa Fe and their weekend home in Madrid), a jogger, and a lover of sweets and used bookstores, and since his retirement, he was engaged in learning how to play the guitar. As an individual he was kind, gentle, acute, compas­ sionate, without a tinge of pride in his polymathy or intelligence. Through him many of us were granted a glimpse into the mystery of friendship. Ralph was a devoted husband for 45 years and a loving father of three wonderful daughters, grandfather of twelve, and great-grandfather of three children. He made time to be with his family, and to make a family. Tom Simpson Tutor Emeritus In thinking about Ralph Swentzell, the word that comes first to my mind is “hearty.” I think of his hearty laugh, his zest for ideas, his love for people and for the world-his total dedication to the pursuit of truth, and an almost diffident modesty about any claim to having arrived at it! For many years, Ralph and I have been good companions in adventures of all sorts, including, most of all, adventures of the mind. Whatever crazy idea I came up with, I could always count on him to give a hearing to, and find some possibilities in it, but when I came up with a seemingly safe and innocuous idea, he would say gently that he’d been wondering about that-and I would find that the idea I had thought so simple and secure in fact had a very different side, and opened up in ways I had never imagined. He liked to play with ideas, not because he took them lightly, but because he found them so beautiful and fascinating. The more seriously he took them, the more he delighted in that play. I think it’s fair to say that however far afield his personal inter­ ests took him, the college was always in some way close to the center of his life-not {Tributes} in its institutional aspect, certainly, but because those books and those questions were always so vivid and vital to him. They were part of his lifeblood, and that is why it was always so exciting to share them with him. He suffered immensely-more than most of us, I suspect-when institutional constraints seemed to cramp and distort that open chase for truth. He did indeed voyage far from the known shores of our Western learning! Armed with that computer program he had devised to open Chinese works to our tutorial way of starting out by reading fascinating texts -he took off for the far shores of Eastern thought. He went to the core of the question of what language is, and how it serves thought. He knows, as Scott Buchanan had before him, that it is only by getting far outside the confines of our presuppositions, that we might be able to see ourselves in our true proportions-not as Western, or Eastern, but as fully human. With the Eastern Studies, he threw a challenge to the college, one which I always felt we had really failed to hear. It is not too late for that! When Ralph got hold of a good idea, he would not let go of it. Many years ago, when he and I were thinking about possible spaces and other worlds, we began wondering about the strange structure of the Lobachevskian geometry. What would {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } it mean, we wondered, to be living in a world like that? We tended to conclude, as everyone does, I guess, that depending on the scale, things might not seem so different. The closer you got, the less you would know where you were! There seemed to be a moral in that. We had that conversation long ago. But just a few weeks ago I had a chance to visit with Ralph one more time, catching him, as it happened, at a moment when he was briefly filled again with his old exuberance. He went up the little stairs to his computer room to make me a copy of the latest version of the Chinese dictionary-and then called down, “Hey! Come on up! I want to show you something! ” Thinking back to that old conversation, he had worked up a computer program which was ready to take you anywhere you wanted to go in the Lobachevskian world. You could go to any farthest corner, and there look around to see what the cosmos looked like. Sure enough-our old speculation was verified: the deeper you got into that cosmos, the more it looked like home! Ralph had achieved a special stance, at some far corner of the cosmos best known to him-from which he could see all his worlds at once-the Western one, with the music, the mathematics, the quantum perplexities he loved so much-the Pueblo one, in its deep peace with the cosmos-and the Chinese one, with its special power to see truth as at once aesthetic and whole. He hasn’t solved every­ thing, or maybe anything, but he had seen so much! He was ready to take it all on, with that hearty laugh and an undying sense of wonder and amazement. It was very typical of Ralph that at the end of our last few minutes together, he said he wanted to lend me a book. It was the philosophy of Hua-Yen, and he thought it might be just what I was looking for. I don’t yet know just what he meant, but I still have the book. I have my assignment, and I’ll see what I can do with it! ♦ (Read by Hans von Briesen) �{Tributes} 45 A Homecoming Tribute to Bill O’Grady William O 'Grady was a tutor at St. John's Collegefrom nj7o until his death in tgS6. In a relatively short time at the college, Mr. O 'Grady made a lasting impression on many students and tutors, and his absence is stillfelt. Mr. O’Grady now has a permanent memorial: aframed collage ofpictures taken on his wedding day, unveiled during Homecoming in the Coffee Shop. Several former tutors, friends, and colleagues of Mr. O ’Grady gathered to share their memo­ ries. Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney, A’25, offered this tribute: When we call to mind the dead that we love we sometimes make them better than they were. Especially if they diedyonng or untimely we try to balance our sense of what was taken from them with the most generous account of what they took: unahle to see why they should he gone while we remain, we conclude that it should he vice versa. So a certain kind of eulogizing is distantly akin to what Priam does when he calls his remaining sons worthless after the death of Hector, or even heaping dirt and ashes on his own head. There may also he a kind of suspicious ease in praising the dead: let their virtues he what they will, we feel we cannot he properly compared to them until our lives, too, are over. I mention these dangers not supposing that hy naming them I can be sure of entirely escaping them, hut as an invocation of the spirit of truth. It should he possible to praise someone, even extravagantly, while speaking truly. I hope you will take what I say with less than a grain of salt. I knew Bill O’Grady first as my sophomore math tutor, then through his Friday night lectures, then as a colleague when I became a tutor in Santa Fe and he spent several years on that campus. I do not remember much of that math tutorial 33 years later; I was not working at it with real devotion or deep interest. I may not have been atypical: what I remember is Bill reading aloud to us sometimes-an essay or maybe a story­ in what I now recognize were attempts to kindle a fire in our unseasoned, soggy souls. He did not try to blame or intimidate the class into more serious learning, nor did he lecture on what he himself had learned or was learning. He kept presenting us with opportunities. Of the things he read, I remember only one. It was about a Mexican bullfighter whose nickname was “El Loco,” perhaps because on his bad days an unprejudiced observer might decide that he had just as good of a reason to be in the bullring as a lunatic escaped from an asylum. On those days it seemed a miracle he was not killed. But on his good days every move he made seemed a miracle of grace and skill. You left the stadium proud of the whole human race. El Loco had an enormous following, whether in spite of or because of one’s never knowing if a particular performance would be his best or his last. What, asked the writer, would it be like for us to judge one another and ourselves not on the basis of our everyday fumblings but according to what we are at our very best? That question continues to resonate for me, occasioned not only by my students or colleagues but also by my own mysterious inertia and capacity to disappoint myself. But it was as an interpreter of texts in Friday night lectures and question periods that Bill O’Grady seemed to me to fully manifest his own gifts. He was the most penetrating reader I have ever known. He read not only with his mind but also with his heart. Under the light of his attention books revealed themselves to be more beautifully put together than I could have imagined possible, and to be more directly addressing my own heart and soul than I could have dared to hope, and these were not separate. . . He never talked down to students. I think this was because he had read and thought, to paraphrase Pascal, not like a professional scholar, but like a human being. He once proposed as an example of what Socrates meant by finding his corroborating witness within the very one he sought to persuade the story of Nathan the prophet rebuking King David for his murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. Nathan tells David of a rich man who has taken his poor neighbor’s one ewe lamb, his beloved pet, and slaughtered it to feast a visitor, though he had many flocks of his own. David exclaims, “That man deserves to die!” and Nathan replies, “Thou art the man.” It is the vividness of David’s realization that the story is about him that I find in all of Bill’s encounters with texts. He is not present as a specialist, an impartial expert who has built an airtight case that will be most interesting only to fellow experts, but as a fellow doer and sufferer with the author, with the characters, whose own fate is tied to the questions of issue. We are all prone to imagine that it might after all be best and most admirable to be some kind of expert about some­ thing. Even El Loco on his good days looked as if he knew everything about bullfighting. And whether best or not, all kinds of expertise are necessary, if life is to be more than just survival. But whether all things in the world are as they are merely by necessity or because it is somehow for the best is not a question to be decided by expertise. And those for whom that question can be a matter of their own happiness or misery, of life or death, could do worse than to take Bill O’Grady as an exemplar, to read what he wrote and remember what he said and did, and to find his spirit alive in all that is best about St. John’s College. Tutor William O’Grady {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 } �{Obituaries} Thomas McDonald, Class of 1948 Former Tutor Thomas McDonald, a tutor for three decades on both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses, died after a long illness from complications of Parkinson’s Disease on December 27, 2005, in Baltimore, Md. Mr. McDonald was born in Atwood, Kansas, and lived in Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois before arriving in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1941 at the age of 13. He enrolled in St. John’s at the age of 16. The following summer at age 17, when informed that at 6'5" he was too tall to be a Marine, he requested and received a Senate Naval Affairs Committee waiver to enlist in July 1945Discharged in late 1946, Mr. McDonald attended the University of Virginia briefly and then entered the New School for Social Research in New York. There he studied philosophy under Karl Lowith and Hans Jonas. In 1958, after serving as a lecturer at the New School, he taught for three years in the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education. Following a year in Europe, he joined the St. John’s faculty in 1963. He taught for several years in the 1970s and 1980s at the college’s campus in Santa Fe, NM. He also served as a visiting professor at East Texas State University and as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy Center for Bioethics at Georgetown University. An authority on Kant, he spent his 1976-1977 sabbatical year in Germany. He retired in 1991, but continued to teach part-time. Santa Fe tutor Jim Carey (class of 1967) had Mr. McDonald for his freshman math tutorial in 1963, and felt very fortunate to have known him as a tutor and a colleague. “He was in, my opinion, the finest tutor who ever taught at St. John’s,” Mr. Carey said. Howell Cobb, Class of 1944 FederalJudge Howell Cobb, class of 1944, who had a distinguished career as a jurist, died Sept. 16. 2005. Judge Cobb was born in 1922 to lawyer and state circuit Judge Howell Cobb and his wife, Dorothy Hart Cobb, in Atlanta, GA. He was reared in Georgia and Washington, D.C. From 1940 to 1943, he attended St. John’s, but World War H interrupted his studies. He served as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, where he saw action as a John Mack, class of 1945 fighter/bomber pilot in the South Pacific. After the war. Judge Cobb earned an LL.B, from the University of Virginia 1948. He attended the University of Texas Law School to prepare for the Texas Bar Examination and in 1954 was hired by the firm of Orgain, Bell, & Tucker in Beaumont. He became a partner in 1956. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed Cobb a U.S. District Judge. He served for 20 years, assuming senior status as a sitting judge in March 2001. Judge Cobb is survived by his wife, Amelie; six children; and 21 grandchildren. John Mack, Class of 1945 Former BVG Member John Duncan Mack, class of 1945, of Concord and Chatham, Mass., died Sept. 27, 2005. Mr. Mack was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1924 to Josephine and John George Mack. He served two tours as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Infantry in World War II in the South Pacific and was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. Mr. Mack’s studies at Annapolis were interrupted by the war. He began at St. John’s as part of the class of 1945, but received his diploma in 1948. He became a very active supporter of the college, serving as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors and as national fund-raising chairman. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1950. Mr. Mack began a long career as a marketing executive at Welch’s Grape Juice, followed by Procter & Gamble, Clairol, Bristol-Myers, and Gillette. From 1976-1992 he was president of Carter-Products, CarterWallace, in New York City. During his career, he was president of the Wave Hill Environmental Center in Riverdale, N.Y., and was elected to the Township Committee of East Amwell, N.J., {The College St John’s College ■ IVinter 2006 } where he served as Deputy Mayor. While living in Concord, he was a trustee of the Thoreau Society, trustee of the Thoreau Farm Trust, and a member of the Historic District Commission. Mr. Mack is survived by his wife, Lorna Carey Mack; by his sisters, Anne Dean and Mary Hurst; by his four daughters, Pamela Mack, Sheila Mack, Carey Weber, and Lorna Sheridan; and by seven grandchildren. Theodore X. Barber, class of 1947 Psychologist Theodore X. Barber, 78, whose pioneering research and writings explored hypnosis and the nature of consciousness, died of a ruptured aorta Sept. 10, 2005, in Boston. Hailed as one of the most prolific and revolutionary authors on hypnotism. Dr. Barber, a psychologist, developed the Barber Suggestibility Scale to examine scientifically the experience of individuals under hypnosis. He conducted his work for more than 35 years at the Medfield Foundation and Cushing State Hospital in Massachusetts. Doing post-graduate work at Harvard, Dr. Barber read a paper in a British medical journal describing how hypnosis had improved an “incurable” skin condition of a teenage boy. The case, he later wrote, “indicated that the royal road �{Obituaries} to solving the mind-body problem” was hypnosis. Dr. Barber served as president of the Massachusetts Psychological Association and of the Hypnosis Division of the American Psychological Association. He received numerous awards, including the Presidential Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Field of Hypnosis, by the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (aooa). Two of his most widely read books are still in print; Hypnosis: A Scientific Approach (1969), and Advances in Altered States of Consciousness and Human Potentialities (1976). In his work The Human Nature ofBirds: A Scientific Discovery with Startling Implications (1993), he showed how birds have intelligence equal and sometimes superior to that of humans. Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Barber graduated from high school at age 15 then enrolled at St. John’s. He earned his doctorate in psychology at American University in Washington, D.C., and then moved to Boston to do post-graduate work at Harvard. Henry Clay Smith, Class of 1934 Psychology Professor Henry Clay Smith, a member of the class of r934, died in West Tisbury, Mass., at the age of 92. Dr. Smith was born in T913 in Catonsville, Md., was raised by maiden aunts after the death of his mother, and attended St. John’s on a scholarship. After graduation, he went on to earn a doctorate of psychology at Johns Hopkins University. For 38 years, he was a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. He taught, conducted research, and puhhshed books on industrial psychology, personality development, and sensitivity to people. His early work on the effects of music on productivity of assembly line workers helped make music part of the background of daily work hfe. Among his publications were three major textbooks and numerous articles. Dr. Smith strove to achieve a rich, balanced life in the manner of his idol, Thomas Jefferson. He designed and built a house based around a three-story tower, which was his home for the past 30 years. His self­ improvement projects ranged from yoga to developing a legacy blueberry patch and reading rpth-century novels. He was an avid player of tennis, golf, and croquet. The last of his writing projects, a biography of Thomas Jefferson, was in progress as his illness progressed. Dr. Smith is survived by his wife, Nancy, three children, eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Tania Forte, Anthropologist by Michael N. Fried (A8a) Tania Forte (A85) died from a cerebral aneurysm on November 17, 2005. She was 46. At the time of her death she was a visiting scholar at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., on leave from the anthropology department at Ben Gurion University of the The goodness ofher friendship was in its being both pleasing and elevating Michael N. Fried (A82), on Tania Forte Negev in Israel. She was highly regarded by her professional colleagues and she was loved by all those who had the good fortune of knowing her. After leaving St. John’s, Tania studied anthropology at the University of Chicago and completed a Ph.D. there in aooo. Her doctoral work concerned transactions, land, and histories in a small Arab village in the Galilee. Her research during the last few years centered on the production and use of images of the Palestinian-Israeli conllict-the conflict through the lens of the television camera, one might say. She was also working on a book on the everyday practices of three generations of Palestinian women in the Galilee. In all this work, she saw people producing stories and images, and she was fascinated with how these verbal and visual accounts served both to represent the world and to define the identities of those producing them, in short, how people create themselves by the histories they teU. Tania’s own history was itself an extraordi­ nary tale. Her grandparents came from Gaza, Turkey, Iraq, and Italy; her parents. Clement and Daisy, were born in Egypt, were exiled by Nasser after the 1956 Suez war, and even­ 47 tually immigrated to France. Tania grew up in France, but she was born in London and kept a British passport-her only passportall of her life. Tania would probably have allowed her British passport to quietly expire, were it not necessary to have some passport: such things were of little impor­ tance to her. Thus she wrote in a little piece called “Weedlings”: “Since I’m not very good at nationalities I have not changed it [her passport] through years of living in four other countries, where the last thing anyone would suspect about me is that I am a subject of Her Majesty.” She was one of those people who seem to belong nowhere and everywhere. Tania entered St. John’s in Annapolis as a Febbie in 1982.1 graduated that year and hardly knew Tania in the few months we were both at the college. But when she came to Ben Gurion University, we spoke about the college constantly. Like most of us, she felt a great sense of loyalty and debt towards St. John’s and believed it to be a central locus for her intellectual formation. Indeed, I can remember a conversation shortly before she left for Minnesota in which she said that it was becoming increasingly clear to her how genuinely different we are from our respective colleagues because of those four years in Annapolis. I hope I will be forgiven for speaking just now in the first person, but Tania was a very good friend. And here I must say that Tania’s intellectual gifts were equaled by her capacity for friendship. As a friend she was warm and generous, she knew how to laughshe had a wonderful laugh-but she also knew how to demand. She would not allow her friends to fall into easy self-pity, moral or intellectual laziness. The goodness of her friendship was in its being both pleasing and elevating. Also Noted: Winston Gilbert Gott, class of 1931, May 3005 W. Morris Shannon, Class of 1937, July 39,3005 Thomas Spence Smith, class of 1938, February 3005 {The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �48 {Alumni Voices} GOING HOME Life in Katrinas Wake BY Sara Roahen, SF94 n the last Tuesday in October, I flew home to New Orleans for the second time since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita lashed and inundated the city. On the approach, the plane sailed above Lake Pontchartrain, whose calm waters appeared impossibly untouched by the storms, and it cut across the Sara Roahen, SF94 Mississippi River’s bends, around which barges pushed and containers waited in tidy rows to he emptied or filled, just like they always had. The pilot took a wide on a triumvirate of New Orleans institu­ right turn and noted over the intercom, tions: Angelo Brocato’s, an Italian ice “Ladies and gentlemen: there’s downtovwi cream parlor and bakery founded in 1905; New Orleans to your left.” It didn’t occur Venezia, an Italian restaurant where to me until later that he would have said almost nothing comes without red sauce; the same thing to a cabin of tourists; at the and Pho Tau Bay, a local Vietnamese chain time it made sense for him to point out a that marked a refugee community’s hopeful, unflooded area to those of us breakthrough into New Orleans’ popular whose stomachs wrenched at the thought food culture when it opened along the of returning to our devastated city. But as high-profile strip last year. The flood’s my seat was on the right side of the plane, unforgiving waters had marked the three I saw what he didn’t mention; thousands of businesses with brown, waist-high stripes. downed cypress trees turning fragile Brocato’s and Venezia’s vintage neon signs swampland into a game of pick-up sticks; had smashed to the ground; we found Pho aqua-blue FEMA tarps reflecting like Tau Bay’s two blocks away. It was a full swimming pools in the sun from nearly month after Katrina, but no one had begun every rooftop of suburban Kenner; dump cleaning yet. I have never heard a sound so upon dump of maggot-clogged refrigerators, startling as the silence that crashed down some hurled willy-nilly into heaps, others in when we shut off the car motor. No kids, formation. This didn’t look like our city. no streetcar, no electrical buzz, no birds. We were a cabin of tourists after all. We couldn’t even hear the flies that dark­ My husband, Mathieu de Schutter ened the ice cream parlor’s windows from {SF94), and I took our first post-Katrina the inside. trip home exactly a month earlier, before When people ask us about New Orleans, we technically were allowed back into the which happens less and less, the first city. Matt is a resident at Children’s question is always about our house. We’ve Hospital, and a flash of his ID was lived in New Orleans since 1999, when convincing enough for the two peachMatt entered medical school at Tulane fuzzed National Guardsmen securing University, and we committed to the city Earhart Boulevard. Before heading toward last April by purchasing a house two blocks our house, which we had heard was dry and from where we had rented for six years. We standing, we drove to one of my favorite wanted to stay in the neighborhood, blocks, in an area called Mid-City, to check mostly because it’s at the start of the Mardi O . though our house is intact, our lives, and those ofourfellow New Orleanians, are not. {The College- St. John’s College • SVinter 2006 } Gras parade route. The area turns into one big, feel-good, family-oriented block party for the two weeks preceding Mardi Gras; even when we don’t feel like watching the parades, we enjoy hearing the marching bands warm up, feeling the bass drums boom, watching families tromp along with empty bags they hope to fill with beads, doubloons, and penny toys. Our new house, by the way, endured the storms like a champ. We’ve had to replace some roofing tiles, and a whole wall of siding, and the ceiling in the living room, which sagged precariously when the house settled weeks afterward. A pecan tree fell in the backyard, crushing our fence (but thankfully not Matt’s skateboarding ramp), and the house’s foundation cracked in several places. All that can be fixed, though, especially given that we have a multi-talented neighbor whose six-pack lunches we abide when no professional bosses will. Hearing the positive news about our house, most people stop asking questions and move onto the news of the day-that sickening earthquake in Pakistan, White House indictments, winter-which means we rarely get to mention anymore that, though our house is intact, our lives, and those of our fellow New Orleanians, are not. To begin with, we are moving to Philadelphia. Matt got a second residency position in anesthesia at the University of Pennsylvania once it looked certain that the program we had been banking on, at Tulane, had lost its appeal (the program, in fact, moved to Houston). We are the best­ case scenario: we are alive, we have insurance and savings, and we had our cat with us when Katrina bore down. But that doesn’t help our friends, who are damaged, or the city we’re leaving behind, which needs us. You see old people, as old as my grand­ parents, at The Home Depot buying new �{Alumni Voices} toilets and carrying two-by-fours. You talk to a co-worker who didn’t have insurance, and you know that no one will ever buy her another house. You read obituaries-too many of them-for people who died of heart attacks and strokes during their evacuations, deaths that don’t factor into the official hurricane death toll. You see homes that used to contain lives gone silent, smudged from the black waters, and spray-painted by inspectors warning “NO ENTRY.” The owners of one of them wrote back: “Mom Is Okay. We’ll Miss Everyone. God Bless.” Four other Johnnies took a bigger hit than we did and are staying. Sarah Todd and David Olivier (both A94), and their two girls, Louise, 4, and June, a, are renting a friend’s guest house while their own home is gutted and rebuilt. Billy Sothern and Nikki Page (both A98) are soggy but surviving. Billy’s father, a specialist in mold remediation, has become a local celebrity. Fortunately there are light moments, every day. When I finally got in touch with our exterminator, we had a love-in over the 49 Sara Roahen and Mathieu de SCHUTTER, IN FRONT OF THE HOME THEY BOUGHT LAST APRIL. Even though the HOME WEATHERED THE storm, the couple HAD TO MOVE TO Philadelphia. phone, exchanging evacuation stories and well-wishes. Natural disasters remind you that people matter more than anything, and that’s entirely good. We have room­ mates now, friends whose apartment is too moldy to inhabit, and another friend stops by to take warm showers because his neighborhood doesn’t have natural gas yet. Our busy little household embraces us with the sweet illusion that the city is bustling again rather than barren. On top of that, they say the oysters are safe to eat. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } our water is potable even if it smells like a Jacuzzi, and restaurants in our neighborhood are busier than ever with people who would have killed for a proper bowl of gumbo during their evacuations. The other day, my friend Cynthia and I took the walk we used to take once a week before the storms: through Uptown, across the levee, down the streetcar line, past Audubon Park, and back home. Neither of us mentioned the bundles of branches we had to hurdle, the smelly refrigerators we passed, how empty the park seemed, or how quiet it was on the streetcar tracks. Like in our past lives in New Orleans, we just felt lucky to be there. �50 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Alumni, I’ve been thinking about Montaigne lately. He seemed mundane and irrele­ vant to me in sopho­ more year, but he has informed my life in ways that other teachers have not. I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with practicality. Every day I bump into challenges-some more mundane than others. Each one asks me to think carefully about myself and others, about thought and action, about perception and possibility. These situations also demand that I act, hopefully in accord with my insights and commitments. In the Essays, Montaigne does the same thing, but he does it better. He thinks about the dilemmas of a normal life, makes sense of them in ways that are moving and profound, and takes courageous action. A practical integration of the true and the useful did not come easily to me. Even with a pragmatic bent and the push of economic necessity, it took me several years to begin to braid thought and action CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. into a graceful whole. In midlife, the task is still far from complete. I think of this as my personal version of a community-wide challenge. How do we commit ourselves to the highest values while living in a demanding and mundane world? Montaigne can be a guide, but we must work to live up to the challenge as individuals and as the college. These days, St. John’s is doing much more to help alumni bridge this gap between real and ideal than the college did in earlier decades. For example: Both campuses offer internships (the Hodson Internship in Annapolis and the Ariel Internship in Santa Fe) to help students and recent alumni experience professional lives that may interest them. The Career Services offices on both campuses are well stocked with informa­ tion, and the directors and staff are quite knowledgeable about options for work or further education. The Virgil Initiative matches alumni with current students to help them under­ stand the issues of transition and find resources to help them thrive. Association chapters welcome current students and alumni into their seminars and social events to help smooth the way. As an institution, the college is also making strides to integrate practicalities, performance, and accountability into the life of the mind. For example; Our new president in Santa Fe, Michael Peters, is attending to the practical issues of the aging physical plant and other matters that shape the health of the DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks 817-654-2986 ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-375-901!^ BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Katherine Goldstein 720^46-1496 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon 410-280-0958 BOSTON Diane Cowan 617-666-4381 dianecowan@rcn.com MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 CHICAGO Rick Lightburn rlightburn@gmaiLnet NEWYORK Daniel Van Doren 914-949-6811 AUSTIN Charles Claunch 512-446-0222 college. A new college-wide chief information officer, Cathy Smith, has joined the community to build and implement infor­ mation management solutions. Christopher Nelson (SF70) continues to shape a productive community in Annapolis. Under the leadership of Jeff BishopfHAqb), the college-wide advance­ ment effort continues to thrive, and alumni support those efforts in a variety of ways. Friends and foundations recognize the quality of management and administration for the college as well as the excellence of the Program. Both campuses reach out to prospective students who represent the diversity of the larger community. The growing strength of the college paves the way for new and ambitious goals for tutor salaries, new facilities, and excel­ lent services to support students and alumni. The college is healthy, and alumni are thriving because we all recognize that the practical and the theoretical are mutually dependent, not mutually exclusive. Even if I didn’t understand that as a sophomore, I certainly understand it now. And Montaigne showed me the way. For the past, present, and the future, Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76) President St. John’s College Alumni Association NORTHERN CALIF. Deborah Farrell 415-731-8804 SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon 801-364-1097 PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian 215-482-5697 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray 724-325-415Z SEATTLE Jon Bever 425-778-6372 PORTLAND Lake Perriguey lake ©law-works .com SOUTH FLORIDA Jonathan Sackson 305-682-4634 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 805-684-6793 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 {The College- St. John’s College - Winter 2006 } TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NC) Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 WASHINGTON, D.C. Deborah Papier 202-387-4520 drpapier@verizon.net WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weiss 413-367-3174 �{Alumni Association News} Barrand Buchanan IN Bronze BY Patricia Dempsey When Tylden Streett, class of 1950, unveiled the busts he created of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan at Homecoming in Annapolis, there was a sigh of delight from alumni gathered in the Conversation Room for the All-Alumni meeting. Though works-in-progress in plaster, the life-size busts capture the spirit of the two visionaries. Streett created the busts as a personal tribute to the two men, but also as a way to keep Barr and Buchanan’s legacy at the forefront. “At St. John’s, we are indebted to Barr and Buchanan,” says Streett. “I think some of the young students today are not as aware of the fact that the college’s program exists today because of them. They were, to me, the most important thing about St. John’s. I was very fond of them and the memory of them, because St. John’s changed my way of thinking and the direction of my life.” A few years ago during a slow period with commissioned works, Streett began to work on the busts. “My years at St. John’s had an enormous influence on me-so these portraits were appropriate,” says Streett, who attended St. John’s after a military career as a fighter pilot in World War II. “I looked into a lot of colleges, but at St. John’s I was impressed with how Barr and Buchanan were educating students by having them read the original works of great thinkers.” Streett worked from memory and photos to sculpt the busts. Ideally when he sculpts a subject, Streett poses the person once and takes photos from many angles. “For these portraits I didn’t have this luxury,” says Streett, “but I knew them both. Buchanan interviewed me before I attended St. John’s, but I didn’t remember his appearance; I knew Barr when I was a student. Also Barr has a memorable kind of face, an actor’s face-the features are put together in such a way that one easily remembers it.” Streett, who graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1955 after attending St. John’s for two years, was invited to pursue graduate studies at mica’s Rinehart School of Sculpture, where he earned his master’s degree in 1957. A former director of the Rinehart School who still teaches at MICA, Streett has received numerous awards and grants. In addition to his privately commissioned work, he has created public works such as a limestone gargoyle for the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Streett starts with a life-size head shaped in clay, “an ordinary head with no distin­ guishing features,” then sculpts it to look like the subject.” When it came to Barr and Buchanan, Streett sent those who were familiar with Barr and Buchanan photos of the clay sculptures and asked for suggestions. “Many, such as John Van Doren (class of r947), were very helpful. I’m still getting comments. Some felt that Buchanan is younger-looking in relation to Barr.” Once Streett feels the clay stage is complete, he moves on to the molds and castings. “The mold is chipped off and I end up with a plaster replica of the clay bust.” Then comes a mold over the plaster replica and a wax cast of the sculpture is ready. Streett shapes and shades the wax cast, and when he’s satisfied with it, a ceramic mold goes over the wax cast. At the foundry, the wax is melted out and molten bronze is poured in. When this mold is broken off it reveals the bronze bust, but there is more work to be done. “There are certain imperfections created by the process and the hightemperature furnace which can cause the mold to crack, and wax may flood out. So I do what’s called a ‘chaste’ and go over the whole surface with a hammer and a chisel tool. I might polish the nose, a cheek bone-surfaces where I want to bring up 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. Glenda Eoyang, SF76 A85 Secretary - Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79 President - Vice President - Jason Walsh, Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair- Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 3800, Annapolis, MD 31404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. light.” In the final stage, Streett creates a patina using chemicals to change the coloration. Once the busts are completed-currently they are at a Baltimore foundry being cast in bronze thanks to the generous donations of several alumni-they will be displayed on campus, perhaps in the Barr Buchanan Center. If their presence inspires future and current Johnnies to learn more about the two men who brought a “radical” new concept of education to a small and struggling college, that would be a good thing, says Streett. In any case, he feels that he has done something to honor two men who changed his life. “I did it for me,” he adds. “They seemed awfully important to me.” Tylden Streett UNVEILED HIS TRIBUTE­ IN PROGRESS—TO THE New Program FOUNDERS DURING THE All-Alumni {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 } meeting. �5a {St. John’s Forever} A Changing Campus A comparison of these two aerial shots (top, 1939; bottom, 2004) shows the changes that have come to the Annapolis campus and its environs over the past sts decades. Still to be built, as the historic photo shows, were Campbell Hall, a dormitory, and Mellon Hall, also home to the Francis Scott Key Auditorium. The Carroll Barrister House had not yet been moved from down­ town to the campus. The turrets still graced Pinkney Hall. The ungraceful stack looming high above the trees was part of the college’s heating plant, torn down in 1950Shortly after the older photograph was taken, major changes were made along College Creek; trees were cut down and the shoreline was filled in. The college’s neighbors have also changed. State office buildings and housing now flank the campus on the west, and the rail lines are long gone, replaced by Rowe Boulevard. And of course, the Liberty Tree-aligned with the south face of Pinkney in the older photo-is missing from the contemporary shot. Yet even this more contemporary aerial photograph is now outdated: Spector Hall, nearly identical to Gilliam Hall (shown here on back campus) and just south of the building, is now complete and occupied. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 } �T Priscilla Husted Griscom , class of 1955, ^955by Priscilla Hustei DELIVERS HER TOAST DURING THE rnscom. Homecoming banquet; Alumni Association President Glenda Eoyang looks on. Class of 1955 Fifty years later the names have all fled Aristophanes, Euclid old white men are dead what did we study? why did we so? to all be forgotten from a half century ago we studied for pleasure we studied for fun we studied to talk our ideas to let run we studied to hear what others did say of nature, of gods, of death, in their way we studied to show those unwelcoming men how women could do it better than them we studied for power we studied for pride no study for grades were then ever made we studied for Wi n free and Curtis and Bart we studied our life to live fuller and smart we studied to argue and studied to laugh and studied to see what women we’d be we studied for love for St. Johnnies we were true to ourselves we studied for HER —Ki Alumni Calendar Opening Celebration, “With a Clear and Single Purpose,” 7 p.m. Friday, April 21,2006 ; Croquet Sunday, April 23,2006 - i p.m. Summer Alumni Seminars gathering. The evening begins with coffee 5 in Santa Fe, July 24-28, 2006 and desserts, moves into FSK auditorium for a program which features an overview Homecoming, Santa Fe: July 28-30 of plans for the college’s future, and end^^ , with a champagne reception. Homecoming, Annapolis: Sept. 29-Oct. I, 2006 Homecoming in Annapolis, 3005 Left: Rachel Bartgis (A09) and beau Joseph Pereira enjoy the Waltz Party; Annapolis Dean Michael Dink (class of 1975) ENJOYING HIS 30TH REUNION. Above: Admiring a future Johnnie. PHOTOS BY ALEX LORMAN {The College -Sf, John’s College • Winter 2006 } �Periodicals Postage Paid STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS ■ SANTA FE Published by the Communications Oefice P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ADDRESS service REQUESTED *****************5-DIGIT 87529 S292 P1 15817 ANN1 MS. AMY MCCONNELL FRANKLIN HC 74 BOX 24512 EL PRADO NM 87529-9546 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Winter 2006 Description An account of the resource Volume 32, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2006. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 32, Issue 1 Winter 2006 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor) Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Borden, Sus3an Goyette, Barbara Knapp, Caroline Maguran, Andra Mattson, Jo Ann Naone, Erica Utter, Chris Johnson, David The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68190bebffa74bd866b58d77fb647b47.pdf 751fce1e57d573efed8dd69e6f4f4549 PDF Text Text The St. John’s College • Winter a o o 7 Annap W.E.B. Du Bois In Annapolis �“We claimfor ourselves every single right that belongs to afree-born American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears ofAmerica. The battle we wage is notfor ourselves alone butfor all true Americans. ” -W.E.B. Du Bois, 1906 On W.E.B. Du Bois SIJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS . SANTA FE Imost five decades after publishing his landmark work, The Souls ofBlack Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois stepped off a train a few blocks from the Annapolis campus. There to greet him was Martin Dyer, the first African-American to attend St. John’s College. Dyer had already been accepted to a historically black institution. Coppin State in Baltimore, but he changed his plans when St. John’s admitted him. Dyer walked next to Du Bois with a sense of awe. amazed at how a man with such small stature could convey such a sense of greatness, and that a man in his Bos who had already been through many trials could be so vigorous and lively. This issue of The College recounts Du Bois’ visit to Annapolis to deliver a lecture. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois earned a bachelor’s degree at Fisk University and then a second BA at Harvard, where he later earned a PhD. He taught at Wilberforce University in Ohio, then at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta). I’l 1905’ Du Bois helped to found the Niagara Movement and later was instrumental in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1910, he left his teaching post at Atlanta University to work as publications director at the NAACP full time. He wrote weekly columns for newspapers and was editor-in-chief of The Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine, in which he decried lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and sexual as well as racial inequality. Du Bois’ most famous idea was that a “talented tenth” of the black population would lead his race to advancement and equality. To that end, he was a fierce advocate of education and self-determination. In addition to his work for racial equality in his own country, he was very much a citizen of the world, fighting against colonialism and imperialism in Africa, and traveling the globe, speaking and writing, well into his 90s. Persecuted for his political activity and disillusioned with America, he moved to Ghana, where he died in 1963, on the eve of the historic March on Washington. Du Bois was a marvelous writer, and The Souls ofBlack Folk includes some of his most powerful prose. He described Lincoln as “the long-headed man with carechiselled face who sat in the White House. ...” In the poignant essay he wrote on the death of his infant son, haunting imagery can be found: “He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train.” There’s no record of what Du Bois thought of St. John’s, though Dyer remembers him congratulating St. John’s for voluntarily accepting black students. But in accord with the St. John’s way, he thought that education should go beyond preparing men and women for work; black and white, one must have “ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living.” —RH The Gollege (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, Emily DeBusk, assistant editors Jennifer Behrens, art director Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Sally Benson (SF03) Eva Brann (HA57) Elizabeth Burlington (A08) Jon Enriquez Oliver Lemke (SFio) Gabriel Pihas (A92) Thomas Scally Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �{Contents} PAGE IO DEPARTMENTS Endowing St. John’s Why building the college’s endowment is the most important goal of the ongoing capital campaign. PAGE l6 The Day Job Five ambitious Johnnies brave cattle-call auditions, rejection letters, and uncer­ tain incomes in pursuit of their dreams. PAGE PAGE z6 2 FROM THE BELL TOWERS • • • • • • • New Endeavors for Former Deans Christopher Nelson’s Fiction Group Celebrating Fish Twenty Years of Karate-Do The Man Behind the Covers The Music of Homer Challenging Alumni 36 Bibliofile • A new translation of Plato’s Republic by Joe Sachs. Harrison Sheppard (A61) considers consumerism in America. Joshua Kates (A80) deconstructs Derrida. • 2121 Race and Human Nature ’ A Graduate Institute preceptorial explores race through autobiography, literature, and Supreme Court cases. 38 ALUMNI PROFILES 38 For architect David Schwarz (A72), a good PAGE 2'Y opening question makes all the difference. 42 Portfolio manager Steve Bohlin (SF81) Du Bois IN Annapouis finds integrity and success go together. 44 At a time when most are enjoying Alumni remember a quiet, dignified man who came to campus. retirement, Martha Jordan (SFGI83) makes a leap of faith. 47 Jon Ferrier (A73) is still pursuing justice. PAGE Chaninah Maschler 48 Obituaries A respected tutor emerita looks back on an interesting life. • • A Tribute to Brother Robert Alumnus Ahmet Ertegun (class 011944), founder of Atlantic Records PAGE Homecoming 50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS PAGE 38 The memories of six alumni from six eras reflect an evolving St. John’s. ON THE COVER W.E.B. Du Bois Illustration by DavidJohnson 52 ST. John’s forever �{From the Bell Towers} Life After the Dean’s Office While Michael Dink (A75) in Annapolis and Victoria Mora in Santa Fe have settled into the role of dean on their campuses, their predecessors have been industriously using that time to enter into new ones. Harvey Flaumenhaft and David Levine expound on their new lives. The Amphibious Mr. Flaumenhaft The St. John’s community will be pleased to learn that, after his unusually long eight-year term as dean (second only to Jacob Klein’s nine-year stint), Harvey Flaumenhaft says he is “staying off the streets and out of trouble.” What a relief. Although he doesn’t regret the time he spent as dean (1997-2,005), Flaumenhaft relishes his new freedom, which has allowed him to pursue his many intellectual interests. “I’m glad I did it, but I’m glad I’m done,” he says. “We have a large operation here so the dean has a wide variety of functions, the kinds of things that other institutions have many people to do. You don’t get much time to read, study, and think. There’s a lot of putting out fires and preparing for the future by talking with many people.. .It’s interesting work, especially to me because I’m very interested in what kind of thing adminis­ tration is. But prior to being dean, I had never been a manager, let alone had this kind of responsibility.” The difficulties of being a dean were not limited to new administra­ tive duties, he says, but also included the things he couldn’t do. “I had a number of writing projects I had to put on the back burner; that was a hard part. I also didn’t teach because of the demands of the job. It is very nice to get back to the days of writing and reading without somebody needing me at any moment,” he says. Flaumenhaft, who has been with the college for nearly 40 years, points out that St. John’s has a unique approach to the role of dean, which is effec­ tively a safeguard of the official relationship between the faculty and the administrators. “One of the particularities of this college is that the deanship is not a career track. The faculty recommends someone from their ranks to be dean temporarily-you do it for a finite stretch of time then go back to being a tutor. In a lot of places, to be dean is the end of being a teacher and student. This is a way of making sure that people who make adminis­ trative decisions remember the work and needs of the faculty. We keep the dean amateur, in the best sense. It’s good for the faculty and good for the full-time professional administrators to have someone who is an ‘amphibian.’ ” After finishing his term as dean. Harvey Flaumen­ haft: Captivated BY Geometry. Flaumenhaft took his long-overdue year of sabbatical, followed by a year of unpaid leave of absence. So what exactly has been keeping him off the streets and out of trouble? Geometry. He spent his sabbat­ ical and this year revising, format­ ting, and editing his forthcoming book in two volumes entitled “Insights and Manipulations: David Levine: Exploring phronesis. What Classical Geometry Was Like at Its Peak and How It Was Transformed.” break from professional duties before returning to teaching. Flaumenhaft describes the book as “a close reading of When describing the dean’s major mathematical texts, office, Levine calls it a “work trying to understand the room” where members of the contrast and transition from faculty, board. Instruction classical to modern mathe­ Committee, and student body matics.” Students can look are able to come together to forward to benefiting from meet. “Here, you’re trying to Flaumenhaft’s “amphibious” make it possible for people to flexibility; after to years of grow into and with the administrative and intellectual Program,” Levine explains. exercise, he will be resuming “And that requires a lot of the role of tutor in the fall. conversations and working with the faculty, trying to make —Emily DeBusk (Ao6) it as effective as possible.” During Levine’s tenure as David Levinedean, approximately one-third Back in the Swing of the current faculty was These days, an average week appointed. “These are people for David Levine (A67) who will continue to shape and includes not one, not two, but influence the school for years three games of racquetball, to come, so those decisions are something Levine claims he momentous.” could not have done prior to In addition to working with taking his sabbatical after his the faculty to support the five-year stint as dean. And, Program, Levine placed according to his playing part­ priority on improving the ners, his game is stronger than quality of student life, lowering ever. the rate of attrition, and Levine, who first came to expanding the assistant dean teach at St. John’s in 1986, and position into a full-time job. whose tenure as dean of the During the Santa Fe campus’ Santa Fe campus was 2001presidential transition and aoo6, is enjoying a year-long search, however, he absorbed {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{From the Bell Towers} Story Time with Christopher Nelson In the spring of 2005, after spending more than a year splitting his time hetween the two campuses while the Santa Fe presidential search was underway, Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) was eager to reconnect to the Annapolis community. He decided to do it the St. John’s way-talking about hooks-and began a study group on short American fiction, co-led by tutor Deborah Renaut (A68). Open to all in the campus community, the group has attracted students, staff, tutors and tutors’ spouses. To choose his material. Nelson spent the summer of 2005 reading more than too short stories to select the reading list for the study group. He read works by authors such as Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe and sought advice from faculty members. Three stories were at the top of his list: Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Poe’s “William Wilson,” and Wright’s “Fire and Cloud.” “They have open, endless ques­ tions and are deep, difficult, complicated stories,” he says. Nelson had another reason for pursuing American fiction in the seminar: as an exchange student he spent his senior year in high school in Amsterdam and missed out on 20thcentury literature and history classes. Also, he acknowledges, “fiction didn’t speak to me when I was younger the way it does now.” Every other week. Nelson is joined by about six to ten “regulars” who attend most of the study groups. Among them is Jeff Peters (AGI06), who plans to pursue a doctorate in 18th-century British literature. Although he was an English major at St. Mary’s College, Peters says the seminars connect him to fiction without considering secondary sources. He also finds it fasci­ nating to look at the short stories of authors who are well known for greater works. “These are works I never would have read.” Another regular, Eileen McFarren, additional responsibility while Annapolis president Christopher Nelson commuted between campuses and was not always available. “I used to joke during difficult times that I couldn’t get paid enough to do this job, but other times, I wanted to say ‘you’re paying me far too much.’ When you know how much people are learning and you hear people playing the piano and the conversations in the coffee shop-all of these things that wiU lead to one’s personal growth-then it’s well worth our efforts.” Relinquishing some adminis­ trative responsibility and returning to his life as a tutor is a transition that agrees with Levine. “I’m happy to read and write and talk. Our primary role is to teach. Will I be happy to be back in the classroom? Absolutely.” For the moment, however, Levine is enjoying his time off. He and his wife, Jackie, have traveled to visit their children and eight grandchildren as well Short lunch: attends the study group not just for the readings and discussion, but also to feel more a part of the college community. McFarren and her husband, tutor Louis Petrich, moved to Annapolis five years ago. “When we lived overseas we both taught American fiction. I was automatically part of a group since the ex-pats hung out together,” she says. “Here I know a lot of other tutors and their spouses, but not in the St. John’s way-through a seminar. 3 So this group gives me that chance.” McFarren finds that the discussions she likes the most are about the stories she likes the least. “I’m forced to see the story in a completely different way,” she explains. Nelson and Renaut plan to lead the fiction study group next year, though Nelson hints that there may be a shift away from short American works to collec­ tions by a single author. “ ‘The Dead’ may be the greatest story in the English language,” he says of Joyce’s story. —Patricia Dempsey stories and Frank Rowsome, Jeff Peters (AGI06) and Chris Nelson (SF70). as made a trip to Greece. Several intellectual projects are also in the works. Levine is finishing the last two chapters of a book he began some years ago, which is about one of Plato’s smaller dialogues, the Charmides. “a dialogue about ‘moderation’ featuring two of Athens’ most politically notorious figures.” In the spring, Levine plans to follow up on his fourth dean’s lecture on Aristotle and Plutarch, which explores the question ofphronesis, or {The College - St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } practical sense. He believes that this project will hkely result in a book, but for now, he simply wants to find out what’s next. “What is the next question, and where does it lead?” Levine asks. “Which authors might help me under­ stand the questions better?” Is there a relationship between these two projects, practical sense and modera­ tion? “That’s a longer story,” says Levine, smiling. —Sally Benson (SF03) �4 On Fish More than 100 students, tutors, staff, andparents turned out in Octoberfor a ceremony to welcome back the denizens of the Santa Fefishpond, housed temporarily in Schepp’s Garden and at President Michael Peters’house while thepond was repaired and improved last year. A giftfrom the Class of 2005 helpedfund theproject. Among the speakers was tutor Ewen Harrison, who asserted thatfish are the true center of the St. John’s Program: As some of you may know, I spent many years studying the evolution and behavior of fish, before I saw the light and came to teach and study at St. John’s. I thought that when I came to St. John’s I would put my fishy ways behind me. How wrong could I have been! Over the past few years I have come to understand that contemplation of fishes is the true heart of the St. John’s Program. I offer you rr brief observations to help you see the truth of this radical claim. i) Homer: Since we begin our freshman seminar with Homer, I shall do the same. Who is the true hero of the lliadJ Achilles, you may say? Think again. I quote from Book 21: “Achilles let Asteropaeus lie where he was on the sand, with the dark water flowing over him and the eels and fishes busy nibbling and gnawing the fat that was about his kidneys.” Fish are the true heroes of the Iliad, the subtle, behind-the-scenes players. They Uterally incorporate the products of the absurd activities of men at war. 3) Heraclitus famously said that we can’t step into the same river twice, which of course is inspired by the deeper observa­ tion from the fish’s perspective that you can’t swim in the same pond twice (especially after it has been renovated). {From the Bell Towers} 3) Plato: Who can forget the comparison in the Meno between the greatest philosopher of antiquity, Socrates, and the torpedo fish; or the metaphor of fishing in Plato’s Sophist: fishing as a means of acquiring truth no less. Elsewhere Plato would have us look for the form or eidos of the fish, which has more reality than the fish we think we see in front of us. men?” In Job, some think that the Leviathan is a crocodile, but of course we now know that it is in fact an enormous fish. I leave it to the reader to inves­ tigate the significance of the fish that swallowed Jonah. 6) Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act IV: “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.” This is clearly a reference back to the It’s all about the fish, says Santa Fe tutor Ewen Harrison. 4) Aristotle used fish as prime examples of how to think about motion. Is it a stretch of logic to claim that his prime mover is in fact the great cosmic fish, whose tail produces all other motions in the cosmos? I think not. 5) The Bible is of course replete with fish references, too many to quote here: What does Jesus mean when he tells Peter and Andrew to “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of wisdom of Homer: consump­ tion by fish as the means to becoming one with nature. 7) We don’t like to provide contextual information about our program authors, but here it is warranted. Immanuel Kant was in fact a failed fisherman. This failure to catch fish was the origin of his argument that we can’t know things in them­ selves. Fish are the symbolic precursors to the concept of Noumena. {The College- St. John’s College • Winter zoo^ } 8) It is not widely known that Georg Hegel during one of his more meditative moments was sitting along a pond (much like this one) watching fish, when he fell in; at that moment conceiving of the notion of the unification of subject and object, in this case becoming one with the fish. 9) In the post-Darwinian world, we see that we are all descendants of fish about 390 million years ago (a group of lobe-finned fishes known as Rhipidistians or Osteolipimorphans that are the most likely ancestors of all tetrapods), and therefore these very individuals that we see before us are our distant cousins. 10) The Graduate Institute has fish prominently located on their promotional material. A coincidence? I think not! 11) Geography: it is surely no accident that the fish pond occupies the physical center of the Santa Fe campus. We already appreciate the wisdom of the founders of the New Program. It is time that we also appreciate the wisdom of the first landscape architects of the Santa Fe campus. I hope it is now clear to you that contemplating fish is the forgotten eighth liberal art, in need of restoration to its former glory. I urge you all therefore to read fewer books and spend more time watching and thinking about fish, as all of the great thinkers have done. I offer you a summary of the four undergraduate years at St. John’s as seen from the perspective of a fish contemplator: Freshmen: There are no fish. Sophomores: God created fish. Juniors: You are better than fish. Seniors: You are fish. �{From Karate-Do BY Olfver Lemke (SFzo) In the gymnasium at St. John’s GoUege (Santa Fe), there hangs a plaque commemorating 20 years of Karate-Dd. A Ddjd has existed at the college since 1986, run by tutor Jorge Aigla, M.D., 6th Dan, Kyoshi, and is composed of students, tutors, alumni, and staff members. A Ddjd, as Mr. Aigla says, is not a spa group or a fitness center, nor is it a club. The Japanese word means “hall of enlightenment.” In the true study of Karate-Dd, students must confront themselves, learning to understand and control their fears and anger. Commitment is the primary requirement. Yet Karate-Dd has no prescribed result. “It is not a means to anything,” Mr. Aigla says. “I do it because I must do it.” And although some students come to him expecting to get in shape or to learn to fight, the ones who stay are inevitably those who come to value Karate-Dd as an end in itself. Mr. Aigla’s own story in some ways exemplifies this principle. As a teenager, he conceived a keen interest in the martial arts; his mother saved 200 pesos the Bell Towers} (about $i6) to allow him to begin to practice Tae Kwon Do at a Dojo in Mexico City in 1970. He earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do before proceeding to its Japanese counterpart, Karate-Do. Mr. Aigla began practicing Karate-Do in 1974, at the San Francisco Karate-Dd Dojo headed by Sensei Johnny Pereira (and assisted by Sensei Greg Barron). This, he says, was a pivotal experience in his hfe. “It’s very rare,” says Mr. Aigla, “to come across a real Sensei.” Most Karate instructors resemble coaches or trainers, competitive and motivated by the prospect of gain and recogni­ tion. A Sensei is something else entirely. “If life brings you to one,” Mr. Aigla says, “you drop everything and follow him.” Mr. Aigla found his Sensei in Johnny Pereira, and studied with him for many years until Sensei Pereira’s untimely death in 1993. Mr. Aigla has remained associ­ ated with this style of Japanese Karate-Do: Wa Do Ki Kai, now headed by Sensei Ferol Arce in Oakland, Cahfornia. Some of us have seen adver­ tisements offering a black belt in one year, but this is misleading, on par with the one-year degree programs found at onhne universities. When Mr. Aigla was asked to teach Karate-Do at St. John’s, he did what he felt was necessary to counter this shortcut mentality and accepted the offer by then Student Activi­ ties Director, Istvan Fehervary in 1986. “I said, ‘only if I’m not paid,”’ he recalls. While practice sessions were a significant commitment on top of his academic duties, a lack of pay came with a high degree of autonomy. “Since I don’t get remuner­ ated, I have very high stan­ dards,” Mr. Aigla says. “I require that students always be there and give a hundred percent spirit.” Thus, there is no selling of belts. The only true way to progress in the Dojd-as in the study of Karate-Dd itself-is to appreciate the art for its own sake. “I am simply passing on what I was given: a Zen Way.” For many years, students practiced thrice-weekly (Basics, Form/A'ara, Sparring) in the Great Hall. Mr. Aigla himself arrived early to move chairs and tidy up, making sure that the sessions would start on time. In 2000, the college gymnasium opened, and the Ddjd has met there ever since. Mr. Aigla comments that this is more convenient, hut not necessarily any better, than previous arrangements. “Ifyouwantto workout, you can work out anywhere,” he says. The Ddjd holds to a prin­ ciple which seems important in the college as a whole: where there is interest, commit­ ment and disci­ pline, material requirements are small. The resem­ blance between the Ddjd and the college seems. 5 indeed, hardly accidental. The Zen Way of Karate-Dd, fike the teaching of the Program, is deeply traditional and not inclined to change. It attracts a small but dedicated group of students, and it is in a sense inimical to the fast-moving and result-oriented culture of modern America. Membership in the Ddjd has declined since the eighties; students have more obligations and fewer unfilled hours. Many are uneasy about the commitment the Ddjd requires. But, as Mr. Aigla says, a Ddjd is not strong in proportion to the number of students it has, but in proportion to its spirit. Since 1986, Mr. Aigla has awarded four black belts, including one to his son, Andres; three Second degree blackbelts, one Third degree, and one Fourth degree blackbelt (to fellow tutor Bill Kerr). Other tutors have been involved, and the number of students has varied between eight and 20. Some have not stayed long; others have continued for many years, and several have come hack years after graduating. “If you want to hit people,” says Mr. Aigla to prospective students, “this is not the place for you.” Karate-Dd is about self-control and etiquette, and in some ways about communion. The word kumite, commonly translated as “sparring,” in fact means something closer to “an exchange in trust.” Students spar as partners, not opponents. “Kumite is nothing but an intense conversation,” Mr. Aigla says. “It is a way of learning to acknowledge the other as a human being.” In light of this, it is no wonder the Ddjd has flourished at St. John’s, and it seems likely that the past 20 years are only the beginning. The Santa Fe Ddjd celebrates ao years. {The College. 5f. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �6 The Man Behind THE Covers Most compliments on The College usually come with a follow-up question: “Who does those illustrations on the covers?” That’s David Johnson, a fond reader of great hooks and an award-winning illustrator who lives in New Canaan, Connecticut. Johnson began drawing in high school and began selling his work at age 19. His pen-and-ink draw­ ings appeared regularly in the New York Times Book Review, which led the magazine’s designer, Claude Skelton, to suggest him for the magazine. Do you have afavorite author ofall you have drawn sofar? I’m not sure I have a favorite, hut I am a reader. My grandfa­ ther was a publisher; he ran an export trade magazine. He was a Harvard man, so he had a library with the classics. I didn’t go to college and was living at home-my father died when I was young-so we went to live with my grandfather and that became our permanent home. I read my way through his library. My grandfather had some pretty obscure things like Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days ofPompeii. He had these really nice sets of books and I opened them up and realized they hadn’t been cut yet. They were apparently part of my grand­ mother’s dowry. In hindsight, I felt fortunate to be around so many books. I think people don’t read if they can get away with it. I know so many people who Idled up their life with reading in college and that’s the last they ever read. {From the Bell Towers} How didyou become an artist? I went to high school in New Canaan and I had one of those teachers that some people are fortunate to have-the synergy was great and he encouraged me. I didn’t go to college, I was supposed to go to Cooper Union-hut the concept of New York-I guess I was too young. So I took a year off, and then I started selling work. My style is a palimpsest of a lot of artists. I grew up looking at cartoonists like those in The New Yorker, a bunch of English line artists, and George Price, slNcw Yorker-type cartoonist. I like the way that by just using a line he made volume. I’m lucky because I discovered something that interests me, and I’m lucky because I get to do something I love. I started working for the New York Times Book Review, and it really changed my career from being a not very good conceptual artist to being an illustrator. My work is very dependent on the design, and it can look really awful. I’ve done a lot of “whatever comes over the transom” as they used to say, and it’s become more and more portraits. The [College} covers are the highest quality work I do of the black-and-white portrait style. I know it will look good, because the design is good. How do you create these portraits? I use watercolor paper and an old-fashioned drafting pencilit’s sort of like a sports car. I can make sharp turns, and then start and stop. I use little ball­ point pens, called Uniballs, while my fiancee uses an expensive loo-pinpoint. I use the cheap $1.95 pens. Then I fill it in with markers, because I’m really messy. A really scary thing to me isn’t a chainsaw massacre; it’s an open bottle of ink on a drawing table. Self-portrait by David Johnson How do you do the researchfor The College covers? I’ve done much of my research on the Internet, but I also use the library. New Canaan is a very literate community and we all do fund-raising for the library, which is very small. We’re near Storrs, where the University of Connecticut is, and the town library there is good. Sometimes I find two conflicting pieces of reference. In one way I love to try to guess the way they looked. The illus­ tration of Virgil is a good example. I don’t like trying to draw wigs-Adam Smith wore a wig. I’m not really sure how wigs are supposed to look. Which author are you really lookingforward to drawing? I haven’t drawn Dickens yet. Dickens is just fun, though a lot of people only know him through A Christmas Carol. {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2007 } Our cat is named Pip. My sister and I both like Dickens, and if nothing else, we have lots of good names for pets. Well, we don’t read Dickens on the Program. What? How can that be? lU/zrzZ are you reading now? Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. We don’t read that on the Program either right now. Holy cow! I really like Mann, especially his early books, because I’m interested in my own family and my own person­ ality. I can trace my nose back at least four generations. �{Philanthropia} The Fielding Challenge A Generous Alumnus Raises the Stakes Ronald H. Fielding (A70) gave a promising start to “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College with an unprece­ dented gift of $10 million in August aoo3. In January, he decided to offer the college another $2.5 million-provided that alumni join him in Ronald Fielding (A70), shown with Santa Fe seniors John Carpenter and Melinda Miller-Klopfer, challenges alumni to SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN. making the $125 million capital campaign a success. Fielding will match new and increased alumni gifts, and multi-year pledges dollar for dollar up to $2.5 million. The Campaign for St. John’s College has raised more than $100 million in gifts and pledges. Fielding’s first gift was directed to the college endowment for continuing support of financial aid. His new gift has heen pledged specihcally toward the construction of a new dormi­ tory complex in Santa Fe, though alumni matching gifts can he unrestricted or directed to any goal of the campaign. Through his challenge. Fielding hopes to inspire alumni to support the campaign through the Annual Fund. “The dormitories are impor­ tant for the Santa Fe campus,” Fielding says, explaining one motivation for his gift. However, by issuing this challenge, he is also seeking to stimulate a burgeoning “culture of giving” among Johnnies from both campuses. “To a great extent, this capital campaign is about positioning the college for the future,” he says. “We can’t be a strong institution without the support of alumni.” Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), chair of the board. An Argos for Annapolis Arcadia, a spirited Jack Russell mix, joined the Annapolis campus community last summer. She spends much of her time in the office of Assistant Dean Anita Kronsberg (A79), where she greets visitors with enthusiasm and the hope of getting a treat. She’s also been known to hang out on the Quad, watch croquet practice, and chase a tennis ball through the corridors of Mellon Hall. Warren Spector (A81), whose gift to the college made the construction of Spector Hall, a new dormitory, possible, requested the college consider a campus dog. Cadie-a rescue dog-got the job. Student Services Director Taylor Waters (AGI96) is Cadie’s one of many admirers. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } hopes the challenge creates “new levels of alumni giving.” “Ron’s first gift was remark­ able in itself,” Bishop says. “His leadership has set a standard that we hope others will follow.” Fielding’s gift, combined with an anonymous pledge from another donor, brings the college much closer to adding dormitory rooms to the campus. At 30,000 square feet, and with 60 beds, the new dorm will mean the college can house about 80 percent of Santa Fe undergraduates on campus. In addition to student rooms and common rooms, the dormitory complex will add four new seminar rooms and ten faculty offices, greatly alleviating a space crunch on campus. Santa Fe President Michael Peters said the progress on dormitory fundraising, combined with a $5 million gift from Graduate Institute alumnus Dr. Norman Levan for the construction of a GI center, has allowed the college to move construction planning to the front burner. “These gifts help us achieve one of our most important goals-strengthening our campus as a cohesive community of learners,” Peters says. �8 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements Green Johnnies Win MTV Award Students for a Sustainable Future, a group formed last fall in Annapolis by freshmen David Bronstein, Jean Hogan, and Malcolm CecU-Cockwell, is one of five college groups-the only one from a small coUege-to win a national competition for a $1,000 eco-challenge grant from MTV; Music Television. MTV sponsors Break the Addiction Challenge, a nationwide eco-competition that challenges students to demonstrate environ­ mental changes in their lives and schools. MTV chose five school groups that had received print or broadcast attention and awarded each a $i,ooo grant. Last fall. Students for a Sustainable Future created media buzz with an article that appeared in the local paper. Besides getting the word out through the media. Students for a Sustainable Future seeks to educate St. John’s students about global warming, ways to improve recycling on campus, and reducing energy use. The group’s overall goal is to develop strategies to move St. John’s towards getting too percent of its energy from renewable sources, such as the geothermal system that heats and cools the new dormitories. “Global warming will directly affect our future. We want to use the campus as a model for a greater society,” says Bronstein, who as a high school student in Maryland’s Montgomery County lobbied the County Council to pass a bill requiring more use of clean energy, such as wind and solar power. Santa Fe HONORED Students Fourteen St. John’s students, along with one alumnus and one staff member, set out in March aoo6 to St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana. They put in 2,248 hours of assistance with the Emergency Communities, providing food and supplies at the Made with Love Cafe, and joining the nonprofit Common Ground Collective, gutting homes and businesses in prepa­ ration for renovation. Their trip was one of hard labor and a labor of love. The students strength­ ened existing relationships and built new ones; they heard stories of loss and pain while creating memories of laughter and good will; and they learned up front about the devastation of mother-nature and bureaucracy. Their philanthropic deed did not go unnoticed. President Bush’s Higher Education Community Service Corporation recognized the college, with distinction, on the Honor Roll for Hurricane Rehef Service. New Staff Gail Griffith joins St. John’s College as director of communi­ cations in Santa Fe. Griffith has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and an advanced degree from Georgetown University. At Georgetown, she ran executive training programs for international leaders for the university’s School of Foreign Service. She later joined the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation where, throughout the 1990S, she worked on the foundation’s campaign to ban landmines. She is the author of Will’s Choice, a memoir based on her teenage son’s battle with depression. She serves on the board of directors of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and was this year’s recipient of the Tipper Gore “Remember the Children” Award, from the National Mental Health Association. Ironman Tutor On June 25 Santa Fe tutor J. Walter Sterling Jr. (A93) completed his first Ironman triathlon: a 2.4-mile swim, 112.5-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He took on the grueling enterprise not just to challenge himself physically: “I ran for Team Ironman, raising money for local charities, and in memory of several deceased dear friends from the community in which I used to work: Project H.O.M.E., Philadelphia. “Though I am a long-time runner, this was only my second triathlon,” says Sterling. “I trained as well as my schedule allowed (with much help from friends and many runs up Atalaya), and, eventually, I was able to finish. Up at 4:30 a.m., on the beach at 5:30, in the water at 7. After roughly two hours of swim­ ming, eight hours of biking, and five hours of running later. Santa Fe tutor J. Walter Sterling Jr. (A93) rides for A CAUSE. {The College* St. John’s College ■ Winter 2001 } I crossed the finish line at 10:17 P-m. The mid-day temper­ ature had reached the mid-pos. Quite a day!” Sterling describes the experience as “a wonderful catharsis” for both body and soul. “Physical training has proven to be the one great source of balance in my life as a tutor, and Santa Fe is a glorious place for it,” he says. “But it is not just a counterweight. For some of us, physical discipline and duress of this sort is an intrinsic part of liberal educa­ tion, but that is a longer story. In any case, it is probably one of the best ways to cleanse ‘the doors of perception.’ ” Sterling is scheduled to compete in his next Ironman this April in Arizona. “I hope to raise money for Project H.O.M.E. in its effort to combat homelessness,” he says. His goal is to finish in 12 hours. �{From the Bell Towers} There’s No Place Like Homer Club While they are not the first ones at St. John’s to explore the musical qualities of Ancient Greek, the Homer Club might be the most technologically savvy. These Johnnies, who endeavor to build enough of a vocabulary to sing passages of Homer out loud, tape record themselves and then listen to the playback to critique their tonal chanting. “We plan to present a performance that emphasizes the scansion, the musical qualities of Homer,” says Ben Hoffman, a junior from Stanford, Connecticut. “Mr. [Amirthinayagam] David (A86), a former tutor came up with the idea of exploring the musical qualities of Homer. But we want to become aware of the whole experience of Homer’s story.” Hoffman is joined once a week by core members Bradley Van Uden, a freshman from Thousand Oaks, California; Schuyler Sturm, a junior from Lyndonville, Vermont; and Alexandra Walling, a freshman from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The Homer Club practices two types of singing: chanting and rhapsody. “With the chanting you have the circle dancing,” says Hoffman. “The physical experience is a huge part of the circle dancing. It’s almost a conjuring. If you are in the circle, you are being swept away by the sounds of the words. It’s so powerful you don’t even need to know what the story is saying. But with the rhapsody there’s more drama, you vary the timing, there are subtler voice qualities, and you need to have an audience.” Hoffman says that rhapsody is easier to perform than a dance because it takes just one person. “You vary the rhythm, no one is dancing to it, so the aesthetic value comes from the dramatic aspects,” he says. The musicality of the Greek language derives from the fact that the Greek accents are pitch accents, tonal. Hoffman demon­ strates by chanting a passage from the Iliad. “One of the prettiest passages in Homer is 9 the ‘catalog of ships’ when the ships are sailing off to Troy,” he says. “It’s probably not the most dynamic from a plot stand­ point.” Normally there would be a circle of dancers moving around the singer, with no other sound or accompaniment. “But there is the stomping of the feet,” says Van Uden. “You stomp hard so the pattern of the dance comes through the rhythm.” Hoffman is preparing to perform a rhapsody from the first book of the Iliad, in which Chryses asks Agamemnon to accept ransom for his daughter. “Schuyler and I plan to perform this rhapsody for Gollegium as one of our goals at the end of the spring semester. Rhapsody is usually performed by one person-so it may be somewhat inauthentic with two but, hey, it will be fun,” he says. —Patricia Dempsey The Homer Club is captivated BY THE MUSIC OF AnCIENT GrEEK. Shown here (l. to r.) Alexandra Walling are and Bradley Van Uden (both Aio), AND Ben Hoffman (Ao8). {Letters} Grateful for Brother Robert I had the grace of having Brother Robert as my tutor for seminar my freshman year in Annapolis (1987-88). Those benignant eyes were consoling during my first don rag. I remember him having a group of students over to his house for dinner (great chef) to discuss some aspects of the Iliad and some psalms in Greek. At present I am working in the Vatican, heading up the “Church and Sport” Section within the Pontifical Council for the Laity-a new office dedicated to the Church’s pastoral care of the world of sport. Everything from the Gregorian chant with the then Dean James Carey in Santa Fe to the seminars on Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas (et alia) were a great start for my future priestly vocation. (I was ordained a to the priesthood in the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ January 2, 2001. It may seem ironic that a former Johnnie would be involved in an office for sport, but I can boast of playing inter­ collegiate sports at St. John’s: crew in Annapolis, soccer and basketball against the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe! Above all, I am indebted to both Brother Smith and St. John’s for helping me to find my vocation in life. I continue the pursuit of the great books as I am working toward a doctorate in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Ateneo Regina Apostolorum in Rome. —The Rev. Kevin Lixey, LC (SF91) Correction: In the previous issue’s Alumni Notes, alumna Janie (Bosworth) Bingham was incorrectly listed as Sallie Bingham. Also, Janie graduated from the Santa Fe {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } Graduate Institute in 1994, not 1993- 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. �{Capital Campaign} “WITH A CLEAR AND SINGLE PURPOSE” Endowing a Future, Supporting Students wi Rosemary Harty s a student, Sharon involved in the Alumni Association and Bishop (class of 1965) later joined the college’s Board of Visitors always worried about her and Governors, she could see firsthand St. John’s tuition bills. the disparity between the college’s But immersed in the renowned academic program and the Program, she and her financial resources available to support it. fellow students gave little thought the times when we had to go to “Theretowere financial state of the college.the “When we a loan to make payroll,” she bank for were students, money was thought of as a says. While the college is on firmer necessary evil or filthy lucre,” she says. financial ground than it has ever been “We were above that.” (with 15 straight years of balanced After graduation. Bishop began a career budgets), at the root of the problem is a as a social worker and later helped estab­ college endowment that is still inadequate lish and build a successful consulting firm. for the college’s needs. Caliber Associates, Inc. When she became A {The College -St John’s College • Winter 2002 } �{Capital Campaign} “The endowment is an essential foundation for accomplishing our goals,” says Bishop, now chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors. “Yes, we’re much better off than we used to be. But being a more solid college financially means every­ thing to our future. One, we can attract more students, and two, higher quality students. Three, we can attract more support from alumni, friends, and foundations when we demonstrate that this is a good place in which to invest their dollars. It’s a question of confidence.” Increasing the college’s endowment is one of three primary goals of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. The campaign goal of $125 million includes $46.5 million for endowment. Along with tuition revenue, gifts to the annual fund, and state and federal support, endowment constitutes an impor­ tant source of revenue for the college. Drawing about 5 percent from the endowment each year provides II percent of the college’s budget. A larger endowment ITie college’s capital campaign seeks to address priorities that will sustain the Program and strengthen the college. Funding these priorities will require $125 million. To date, $101 million has been raised. THE campaign FOR STJOHN’S College “WITH A CLEAR & SINGLE PURPOSE" $33 million for need-based aid. iB $34 million to incrcdsfe faculty salaries to the median of peer instilii tions; provide fatuity development opportunities. means more growth and more revenue. The endowment-intended to grow in perpetuity-is more critical to the life of the college than any other goal of the capital campaign. “The endowment is not just to cushion the blows, to protect the college in lean times,” says Bishop. “It helps relieve the pressure on annual fundraising and makes us less dependent on tuition income. It means we can do more to support faculty, student life, and every aspect of the academic program.” A Reversal of Fortunes An inadequate endow­ ment has hampered St. John’s since its founding in 1784. While Johns Hopkins University is named for the millionaire who left $7 million in his estate to endow the university and hospital, and a Puritan clergyman named John Harvard left half his estate to a college in Cambridge, no wealthy philanthropist stepped forth to support St. John’s at its beginning. Many prominent Annapolis citizens pledged $3.5 million to improve services Io students, fund internship opportunities. and provide grants so that elementary and secondary teachers can attend the Graduate Institute. $5 million for library collec­ tions and laboratory equip­ ment; improving Information Technology infrastructure. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 200^ } ELDING S49.5 million for building projects, including a Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate Institute Center in Santa Fe, and the addition to and renova­ tion of Evans Science Labora­ tory. The renovation of Mellon Hall and the addition of two new dormitories in Annapolis are completed and fully funded. �12 {GapitalCampaign} ''St. John s had no business surviving. But it did. Bud Billups (HA03) money to help found the college, hut the largest share in its early years was to come from the coffers of the state of Maryland, whose lawmakers chartered St. John’s and Washington College to serve as the state’s institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately for St. John’s, the Maryland General Assembly in 1805 withdrew funds promised to the college. The college’s supporters were as vexed by the Assembly’s decision as were faculty and students. In a letter to the Rev. William Duke, Rev. Joseph G.J. Bend of Baltimore wrote: “I have read in the public prints that our sapient Senate have passed the bill of our more sapient delegates for depriving the colleges of the whole funds by the promise of which their predecessors induced a great number of persons to subscribe very handsomely to their establish­ ment. The more I see of democracy the more I detest its principles, if its votaries act upon them. The reign of the Goths and Vandals was not more destructive than the ascendancy of these men has been.” Goths and Vandals aside. Bend captured the outrage and dismay that followed in the wake of the General Assembly’s decision. The bright promise of St. John’s beginnings was dimmed by this reversal, and the college would continue to experience periods of serious financial struggles, interrupted by brief periods of prosperity and stability, until quite recently. The advent of the New Program in 1937 garnered the college respect and admiration, along with international attention in the media. But barely having survived bank­ ruptcy, St. John’s had little opportunity to build an endowment, especially during the lean war years. A dogged fund-raiser. President Richard Weigle (HA49) worked hard to attract gifts to the college. In his final report to the college in 1980, he reported a $10 million endowment for Annapolis and slightly over $2 million in Santa Fe. Even as recently as 10 years ago, the collegewide endowment hovered at only $30 million-far below what was needed to sustain the college. Bud Billups (HA03), recently retired as Annapolis treasurer and now a consultant to the college’s Management Committee, studied the college’s financial history prior to joining St. John’s in 1991. “St. John’s had no business surviving,” he says with a smile. “But it did.” One factor in the college’s survival was the support of philanthropist Paul Mellon, a student at the college for a year in 1940. Mellon made regular and substantial gifts to the college that could have been directed to endowment but instead went to cover deficits and to build Mellon Hall. “He kept the doors open,” Billups says. Another reason the endowment could not grow was the college’s practice of drawing too much out of the fund. In the years before Billups joined the Annapolis campus, the college had been drawing up to 10 percent of its endowment to balance the operating budget. That was a practice that had to end, Billups says. The college’s board endorsed a plan to reduce draw from endowment by r percent each year over five years. (Today, the college’s spending policy restricts draw from endowment to 4.5 to 5.5 percent of the endowment, according to a formula that factors in the rate of return, as well as an educational price factor.) Reducing the draw meant several years of severe budgets for the college. All available resources were devoted to the academic program and financial aid, which meant that improvements and repairs to buildings were deferred, as was routine maintenance. In Annapolis, eight positions (most vacant) were cut from the college staff. Salaries for faculty and staff were frozen, and sabbaticals were eliminated. Among the most difficult decisions was going to one-tutor senior seminars for a time. “We started cutting, but we saw that we could still operate. A lot of things we did, we did for one year, and then we put them back. When the community could see that these cuts weren’t permanent, it made it easier to endure,” Billups says. Managing the budget in Santa Fe during the leanest years was similarly difficult, says Bryan Valentine, Santa Fe treasurer. “For years we put together what we needed and then began the gruesome task of cutting everything {The College- St. John'’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{Capital Campaign} 13 but the bare bones,” he recalls. member investment committee. Building Meem Library was Why Endowment Matters “These are individuals who are delayed while the college strug­ leaders in the investment The chart below illustrates how St. John’s meas­ gled to assemble financing for the industry,” says Billups. “And ures up compared to peer institutions. As of June project. 30, 2005 (the most recent year for which audited each one brings a different area data is available), the St. John’s endowment Positions to improve the quality of expertise.” Gregory Curtis stands at about $102 million, which means the of life on campus-for example, a (HSF02), a long-serving member college has available a little more than $101,000 student activities coordinatorof the college’s board and current per student. were created and then later cut. • Grinnell chair of the board’s investment $862,337 • Tutors went beyond their Pomona committee, is chairman of Grey­ $750,470 • Swarthmore $724,850 teaching duties to run student court & Co, which provides • Bowdoin $313,181 clubs or counsel students. “It may financial advisory services to • Haverford $300,709 be one reason Search & Rescue wealthy families and select • Reed $258,292 was so successful,” Valentine endowments. • Oberlin $208,039 • St. John’s suggests. “For years, there was In 1994, the investment $101,599 little else for students to do.” committee recommended shifting Though a bit draconian, the the bulk of the college’s assets to cuts of the 1990S ushered in a new era for the college: the Commonfund, a nonprofit investment management sustained financial stability. The college went from deficit firm that invests money in a common pool, improving the budgets to small surpluses, which were directed to college’s rate of return. “There was no way, with our overdue capital projects. The college successfully limited amount of money, to get good managers for the completed the collegewide Campaign for a Fourth college’s endowment,” says Billups. “The Commonfund, Century in 1996, raising $35 million. “You could feel with about $18 billion or so in investments, could help us things turning around,” says Billups. “Projects that were achieve the diversification we were looking for. And they put off for years were finally completed and the campus had a very good track record.” started looking better. We had really turned a corner.” The remainder of the endowment is invested in other funds chosen by the college with support from the Managing the Money investment committee, which approaches the college’s endowment in the same manner that a prudent individual The college maintains three separate endowment funds, manages a retirement portfolio, Curtis says: seeking the which totaled $102 million as of June 30, 2006, the end of best rate of return while minimizing risk. “You see in the the last fiscal year. Each campus has its own endowment, college’s portfolio very broad kinds of index holdings, comprising gifts earmarked for a specific campus. A third some hedge funds and private equity. The portfolio is now was established because individual donors and founda­ large enough that we need to have exposure to more tions wanted to make a gift to both campuses. Under the cutting-edge kinds of product. We can gain access and we purview of the Management Committee, the college have the expertise on the investment committee and the develops budgets. The two campuses each have a separate board to do it,” he says. operating budget, drawing from their own endowments As the St. John’s endowment continues to grow, the and sharing the draw in the college fund. The college’s college may engage an outside expert to advise the board board reviews and approves the budgets. and the college management committee. But it doesn’t All three endowment funds are now invested according take an expert to point out how well the college would be to a college-wide strategy under the guidance of a five{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{Capital Campaign} 14 ''We re at thepoint where we re lookingfive years ahead. Bronte Jones, Annapolis treasurer served if it reaches its capital campaign goal, maintains conservative spending, and grows the endowment through prudent investing. “Every­ thing gets a lot better,” Curtis says. Looking Future Income from endowment SUPPORTS THE INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM AT St. John’s. to the The new treasurer in Annapolis, Bronte Jones, has a different perspective on endowment. She joined St. John’s last July from Huston-Tillotson Univer­ sity in Austin, Texas, where she managed chron­ ically limited resources. With an endowment of $io million, the university is enduring the kind of crises St. John’s managed 2,0 years ago, and it affects every facet of their opera­ tion. “They would love to be able to offer the kind of financial aid St. John’s can,” says Jones. “Without our endowment, that couldn’t be done. And through the capital campaign, we are protecting that capability.” Although she has just recently joined the college, Jones agrees with Billups’ assessment that the college is beyond the days of living fiscal year to fiscal year. “We’re at the point where we’re looking five years ahead and consid­ ering the financial implications of our plan. We have a wish list of things we want to do, such as creating additional common rooms or refurbishing our existing ones. Where St. John’s used to be, those would be luxuries.” The college’s financial policies today aim for “financial stability over the next 50 to 100 years,” Jones says. “You can’t ever relax. It’s a nice place to be, but there are still plenty of serious issues.” Sharon Bishop attrib­ utes the college’s financial health in part to good management, but also to the extraordinary gifts the college has received from alumni, friends, and foun­ dations. Bishop herself has pledged $i million to the campaign, directed to the endowment in support of financial aid. As in her student days, the cost of tuition remains an ongoing concern for Bishop. But as long as the endowment is well-managed and continues to grow to ensure access for all qualified students, she’ll support tuition increases that keep the college on solid ground. “I had more concerns about raising tuition in the past, because I felt that we’re sending the wrong signal. Now I know we have the right approach, as long as we support students who don’t have the resources to pay tuition.” {The College- St. John’s College - Winter 2001 } �{Capital Campaign} Every Dollar Tells a Story BY Emily DeBusk (A06) The college’s endowment fund comprises a host of individual funds-many established to honor the memory or contributions of a tutor, classmate, or long-serving staff member. Some endow a special purpose, while others are unrestricted. All funds are at work in the daily life of the college. A Sacrifice Remembered__________________________ After his graduation from St. John’s in 1965, James McClintock was just settling into his first job as a teacher in Connecticut when he was drafted into the Army. Two years later, he was in Vietnam, serving with the Army’s 69th engineer battalion. As the now infamous Tet Offensive seeped toward the borders of South Vietnam, McClintock, along with only five other soldiers, was given the impossible task of defending the perimeter of an airfield at Can Tho. He was killed in action on January 31,1968, at age 25. After his death classmates and friends began making gifts to St. John’s in his name. With the additional aid of his family, the fund became established as the James R. McClintock Memorial Fund, used exclusively for the annual mathematics prize in Annapolis. In correspondence with President Richard Weigle, McClintock’s mother wrote, “St. John’s has had a special meaning to us-and now more than ever-it represents true America.” Philosophy, Football, and Floorboards According to the citation for his Alumni Association Award of Merit, given in 1978, Bryce Jacobsen (class of 1942) “consistently demonstrated that Socrates and softball, philosophy and football, and Ptolemy and tennis are by no means incom­ mensurate.” Jacobsen came to St. John’s as a tutor in 1958, and although he was a favorite mathematics tutor, he is best remem­ bered as a champion of the college’s intramural athletics program. The class of 1986 set up an endowment fund to be Bryce Jacobsen, in his famous used for one of the two barber’s chair. mathematics prizes awarded at graduation, which thereafter became known as the Bryce Jacobsen Mathematics Prize. As a creative fund-raiser for the endowment, members of the class of 1986 sold plaques made from the maple wood that used to be the floorboards of Iglehart Gym. Jacobsen retired in 1988 and died a decade later. A Fitting Tribute________________________________ Twice a year students, faculty, and Annapolis community members attend the Steiner lectures, which are known for their diverse subjects and distinguished speakers. This lectureship was specially designed to be as intellectually versatile as alumnus Andrew Steiner (class of 1963), who was killed in a car accident in 1991. In addition to being the president of NHP Corporation for 20 years, Steiner was known to the St. John’s community as a loyal and generous friend who was deeply concerned with the welfare of the Program. Established by gifts from the Advanta Corporation, Dennis and Gisela Alter, and Steiner’s family and friends, the Andrew Steiner Visiting Lecture Scholars Fund brings two visiting personalities from a wide range of studies each year to spend time on campus with students and faculty and to preside over one of St. John’s most honored traditions-the Friday night lecture. Steiner’s widow, Lenore, remains an active and invaluable friend of the college by serving on the Board of Visitors and Governors. Two Maryland Institutions In 1699, a Welsh immigrant named Thomas Linthicum acquired part of a tobacco farm in what is now Crofton, Maryland. The home built there by his grandson Thomas Linthicum III, “Linthicum Walks,” is thought to have housed George Washington on his journeys. Throughout the genera­ tions, eight Linthicums have passed through St. John’s, from Matthias (1844), to Cadwallader (187g) who went on to become a famous mathematician, to William (1913) who was the last Linthicum to graduate. In 1997, St. John’s received a $50,000 bequest from a magnanimous descendent, local attorney Sweetser Linthicum, in addition to the generous gifts he made throughout his life. Celebrating a Courageous Precedent_____________ In 1952, Martin Dyer of Baltimore was the first AfricanAmerican to graduate from St. John’s College. St. John’s was in turn the first college south of the Mason-Dixon Line to voluntarily end the practice of segregation. Dyer later congratulated the college for taking the important first step of not only allowing, but recruiting, black students in a time when segregation was still common. The Martin Dyer Book Fund was founded in 1997 to enable students who could not otherwise afford to buy Program books to do so. Dyer-who makes an annual gift to the fund himself-continues to encourage his classmates to give. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } 15 �{The Day Job} THE DAY JOB Ambitious Johnnies Pursue their Dreams BY Rosemary Harty Archer arrived in New York in August 2004 and has held a series ometimes dreams change, of day jobs that range from wretched to pleasant while she audi­ get put on hold, or replaced tioned for roles. “I’ve held a string of negligible jobs,” she says. “The first tele-marketing job was for a company that helped sell by new dreams. Sometimes tickets for theater organizations, so I didn’t feel too bad about they just grow more urgent. that, though people were still pretty annoyed to be bothered. Another was tele-marketing those vacation time-shares; that was a The College talked with five total disgrace.” Johnnies who over the past The stereotypical job for aspiring actresses is waitressing, but didn ’t have enough experience to land a restaurant job. “I year were trying to break into theArcher fields of did some catering, but that was an appalling failure,” she says. acting, opera singing, fiction writing and “Part of my problem is that I refuse to get a job that doesn’t allow S filmmaking. Callbacks and Tele-marketing Larissa Archer (SFot) A few years ago, Larissa Archer auditioned for a top Broadway agent. She performed one of her favorite pieces, from Strind­ berg’s Miss Julie. When she finished her monologue. Archer knew the agent was impressed. “He said, T love your work, I love your style. But as tall as you are, I don’t think I can get you work,’ ” she says. Archer stands 6'2" in her stocking feet. Her height is one of the things working against her in her aspirations to break into acting.“It can get discouraging, but it’s just how it is,” Archer says. “If someone doesn’t think they can make money off you, they’re not going to take a gamble.” me to skip out when I need to for an audition; I need jobs that just give me that kind of freedom.” Archer’s acting ambition developed in high school in San Fran­ cisco. “I studied acting when I was home from college in Santa Fe, and after I graduated I studied more. I was part of a theater company called the Actor’s Theater. I performed, did some dramaturgy, and even swept the stage.” As a performance artist. Archer worked up a slam poetry monologue that stole the show every night. She played the title role in Sr. Mary Ignatius Explains It Allfor You. On the same day Archer quit her theater job-‘T badly needed a change,” she says-her mother, a jewelry designer, returned home from a trunk show in New York. With a few phone calls to friends, she had found Larissa a cheap room to rent in New York. Later, since her mother visited the city so often, she bought a “semi-affordable” condo in the Bronx to give her daughter a base. {The College ■ St John's College • Winter 2007 } �{The Day Job} Commuting to Manhattan by subway can be tiresome, “but not having a roommate is great.” Archer made a practice of signing up for Equity Principle Auditions. “You get up at 6 a.m. to stand in line at the Equity Center, sign up at 8 and around 10 a.m. they tell you whether you’re going to be seen. I’ve been seen by Second Stage and Yale Repertory, and I’ve done off-off-Broadway auditions. I’ve done more audition in theaters that are less likely to cast me, but I figured I’d aim high.” This fall. Archer took her dreams a step further by moving to London to enroll in a master’s degree program in classical acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She played Hamlet for her first-term assessment. Cast in two shows, she had to turn the roles down because of her class schedule. Archer is glad she went to St. John’s before pursuing drama training-it will help keep her on the right path to virtue and excel­ lence in a field that can challenge such notions. Imagine if Marlon Brando had studied Aristotle? she wonders. “I’m glad that I’ll always have something worthwhile to occupy my mind,” she says. 17 Larissa Archer (SFoi) poses by Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. She hopes a master’s degree will help her career. Opera and the Office Aaron Silverman (Agd) By night, you’re Papageno, Balthasar, or a peasant in the chorus. By day, you’re an administrator, answering e-mails and scheduling appointments. That was Aaron Silverman’s life for three years in New York City, as he tried to break into the opera scene. Silverman balanced auditions, performances, and singing lessons with his office job, never losing sight of his passion for the opera. Those who aren’t drawn to perform may not grasp the lure of it all: the stage, the audience-the applause. But opera is satisfying on a deeper level, says Silverman. “It really is fantastic to be up there and singing over an orchestra, being able to connect with people who were writing 300 years ago. It really is exciting to be able to bring their art to life,” he says. {The C o l l e g e . St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �i8 {TheDayJob} Silverman has always loved to sing; in high school he took part in musical theater with roles in plays such as Guys and Dolls. During his sopho­ more year, spent in Santa Fe, he took voice lessons with Mary Neidorf, the widow of former Santa Fe dean Boh Neidorf (HA83). As his voice matured, he developed a strong hass baritone, and at the college he studied the St. Matthew Passion and Don Giovanni. “I wrote my junior essay on Don Giovanni and my senior essay on Otello. I did have a little trouble defending it. One tutor asked about the role of God and the role of good and evil as Verdi saw it. I wanted to show that Verdi did have religious ideas in mind, but one of the tutors on the committee said, ‘it’s just an opera. How can it mean anything more than that?’” At commencement, Silverman was vindicated when his paper won an essay prize. After graduation, Silverman won a full scholarship to study at Catholic University’s Rome School of Music. The program was demanding, including two years of French, German, Italian, and classes in music theory and performance. He also had the oppor­ tunity to sing, with the school’s chorus, for the pope. Most opera singers choose music conservatories for their undergraduate degree, but Silverman believes his liberal arts studies will be advantageous in the long run. “I feel like St. John’s was the ideal education for an opera singer,” he says. “Being able to analyze a text, having the background in literature and philosophy, you can see how these composers were working.” At this stage in his career, Silverman still considers himself a semi-professional opera singer. He auditions all the time, even for small parts or a slot in the chorus. “You make the best of the jobs you get and try to turn them into jobs for the future,” he says. Among the highlights so far: he played Jose Castro, a bit part in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West for City Opera. Friends and family from all over came to see him during the six-week run of the opera. Aaron Silverman (A96) PRACTICES and AUDITIONS, WAITING FOR HIS BREAK IN OPERA. Like many in the arts in New York, Silverman took temporary jobs while he auditioned and performed. One job led to a permanent position as assistant to the chair of psychiatry at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College. Affordable housing was elusive; he moved seven times. Recently, Silverman’s life changed dramatically. He and his girlfriend are having a baby, so he’s moving back to the D.C. area, where he’ll find a day job conducive to supporting a family. He’s planning to audition with the Baltimore Opera and perhaps some smaller companies. A recent audition with the opera at Wolftrap went poorly when Silverman tried to audition even though he was sick. “I would have loved that job,” he says. Silverman is realistic, but not discouraged. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing opera as a primary thing for at least two years. But I’m going to keep practicing.” Shopping Scripts and Teaching English Benjamin Friedman (SFg§) After the civilized courtesy of St. John’s seminars, Benjamin Friedman was ill-prepared for film school at the University of Southern California. Lecture classes, cutthroat competition, and savage criticism from professors were something of a shock to him. After graduation, Friedman took a video production class at the College of Santa Fe and liked it so much he decided to apply to use. He had been warned about the competitive nature of the business, but it didn’t seem too bad-until the students started scrambling for funding. “There are only so many films that they allow to be made, and you start submitting scripts and past work {The College - St John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{The Day Job} 19 ''Temping can bepretty­ depressing although I was at apoint that I was so relieved to have a steady income. to try to show the faculty that films. While completing his MFA, you’re the right person to get the he worked on others’ films, resources,” he says. “After the first recording sound, managing equip­ year, people start feeling a little ment or handling other technical pinched.” matters. He’s made two short films Benjamin Friedman {SF95) Friedman had to get used to blunt with autobiographical elements: criticism. A particularly bad Aimless told the story of a young moment came when he pitched a film idea about a crazy man who man who graduates from college without any idea of what to do cages a woman like a bird. Where he saw metaphors of free will next. Hopeless picks up the same story, with a “lonely, neurotic and human destiny, his professor saw a bondage film. Another man” who meets a “lonely neurotic woman” and then keeps idea, for a film about a man who discovers another woman was blowing his chance at love. “It’s a talky romantic comedy-far given his dead wife’s heart, was similarly shot down. “I though it from Woody Allen, but I like it.” The main character, he says, “is was touching and upbeat,” recalls Friedman. “I showed the script a schmucky Jewish guy, just like me.” to three faculty members, and one actually said that it disgusted With his screenwriting partner, Camille Landau, Friedman him. Those USC guys-they don’t mince words.” recently finished a full-length script of one of his shorter films. Nevertheless, Friedman still enjoyed his studies, putting his “Our script has attracted the interest of an independent produc­ creativity to work in writing scripts and turning them into short tion company,” he says. “Everything is extremely preliminary at the moment, but it’s exciting to be talking to people.” Friedman has pursued a number of day jobs including teaching and temping. He helped out in the script depart­ ment for a television special and did filing at an art gallery. “Temping can be pretty depressing, although I was at a point that I was so relieved to have a steady income,” he recalls. “Rather than working harder or getting more day jobs, I made my living expenses more and more slender.” Fortunately for Friedman, a more interesting day job came along. He began teaching English as a second language to adults. “This is a day job I like very much,” he says. “The students are wonderful, they’re highly motivated, they’re very gracious and grateful, and there’s that feeling you get of doing something to contribute to society.” Friedman has applied to law school and may pursue a career in public interest law. “I hope to continue writing scripts, but in the short term I don’t expect filmmaking to be a major part of my life. I’ve had great experiences working in entertainment. It’s exciting, it’s full of surprises, and you meet a lot of interesting people,” he says. Though if a Johnnie asked him for advice, Friedman isn’t sure he’d recommend film school. “Better, perhaps, to start working in the business as a gofer or production assistant, learn the ropes and work your way up,” he says. Benjamin Friedman (SF95) teaches ESL while shopping SCRIPTS TO PRODUCERS AND CONTEMPLATING LAW SCHOOL. {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2oot } �20 {TheDayJob} Arthur Allen (Ao6) pursues Shakespeare and Curious George ACTING GIGS AND TEACHES SPANISH. Arthur Allen (Ao6) Arthur Allen had just auditioned for an anti-littering commercial. “I was supposed to glare at somebody who was throwing a cigarette on the ground. In the next take, I was the one throwing the cigarette. It was kind of fun.” It was a bit basic for Allen, but it could mean a paying gig-some­ thing that would help him pay the rent and buy food while he performed without pay as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night for a new fringe theatre company in Seattle. Since he returned to the Seattle area last fall, Allen has been lucky to have many auditions and several paid acting jobs in his hometown. In late January, he was gearing up for his last performance as Curious George for a repertory company called “Book-It,” which adapts works of literature for the stage. The traveling company performs at schools in the Seattle area, and Allen was looking forward to performing at his old high school, where he first got the acting bug. “To be on the other end this time is exciting,” he says. After his gig as a monkey ended, Allen was to take on the role of a villain in a production based on Isabel Allende’s House ofSpirits. “I go from playing a lovable monkey to molesting a woman and chopping off her fingers,” he says. Allen knew he didn’t want to study acting as an undergraduate. “I felt I would gain more in terms of my art by understanding the human condition,” he explains. “I asked myself, what was the point of knowing how to tell a story if I didn’t have a story to tell? There was never a doubt in my mind that St. John’s was the place for me.” After graduation, Allen moved back home and lived briefly with his parents in Mukilteo, about an hour outside Seattle. When commuting interfered with auditions and performances, he found a room with family friends in Seattle. To support himself, Allen tutors and teaches Spanish to kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders in a parochial school. Allen worked briefly in the men’s department of Nordstrom, selling neckties and other accessories. He gave it up shortly after having to turn down an audition for the part of a terrorist on the hit TV show 24. The script was intriguing. “I had to smash some­ one’s face against a desk while my superior interrogated him,” he says. But Allen couldn’t find someone to cover his shift at the department store and was too conscientious to call in sick. “I guess it’s St. John’s-all those read­ ings in ethics,” he says. He has an agent who calls him often for auditions; everything from modeling gigs, which can pay $150 an hour, to commercials and televi­ sion shows. “It’s very important to detach yourself from the outcome. Actors encounter rejection all the time, so you can’t get discouraged. Most of the time, they’re not looking at what you can do as an actor. They’re out for a particular look. For now. I’m pretty content.” Allen doesn’t see himself heading for LA or New York to look for the big break. “It’s more satisfying to be part of the arts culture here,” he says. Recently Allen has combined great books, acting, and entrepreneurism by launching his own one-man theater company, specializing in bringing great books to life. He called it Voices Verbatim, and only uses works written or translated before 1930, “to avoid paying royalties,” he adds. More is available on his Web site: VoicesVerbatim.com. Writing and Waitressing Sally Benson (SFog) One of the things that’s sustained Sally Benson (SF03) is enjoying the journey, not focusing too much on the destination-though she sometimes wishes the journey came with better pay and health insurance. Benson studied dance briefly in college, but aban­ doned that path and found herself in Washington, working for the National Endowment for the Humanities in an administrative support position. A rejected St. John’s grant application, with a Program Statement attached, made it to her desk one day for {The College- St. John’s College ■ W^inter 2001 } �ai {The Day Job} recycling. She pitched the application, Critique sessions in which she read her hut kept the statement and eventually work aloud gave her the incentive to visited the Santa Fe campus. “I sat it on write seriously and the courage to find a discussion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, her voice. “Writing short stories is Sally Benson {SF03) and it was the most wonderful thing,” hard-you’re really got to hook the she says. reader and have a strong plot, so I’m After graduation, Benson stayed in working on that. Now I’m wondering Santa Fe for as long as she could afford to, ultimately deciding to about flash fiction or prose writing and I’m curious about writing poetry.” move to New York. She hoped to find a good job to support herself while pursuing an interest in writing. “I’ve always had a love for The workshop leader, a literary magazine editor, was blunt in language,” she says. “I had taken fiction writing classes before I his critiques, though not unkind. “I didn’t take it personally. He went to St. John’s, and I found that some of my papers at St. John’s was treating us as if we’re published writers.” Benson is ready to pushed the envelope in terms of creative writing. In junior year, start sending her fiction pieces out to literary journals, but she’s a one of my essays was a dialogue with David Hume. I had him come little wary of rejection. “I understand if you get a note back over to tea, arguing with him about the idea that we don’t have with the rejection, that’s a really great thing. It must be pretty personal identity.” discouraging when it’s a form letter,” she says. Studying poetry in language tutorial was also a joy. “Words to By the end of last spring, Benson’s enchantment with New York had worn off. She took a me are like brush strokes on summer job working at a paper. How we refine our vineyard in Southern Mary­ words, our phrases, our para­ land to clear her head. Finan­ graphs, it’s fascinating to me cial realities-rent, car insur­ what you can do with language. ance, food-often intrude on I definitely know that writing is her vision of a writer’s life. important to me.” “It’s important to make room But there was the small to imagine doing something matter of supporting herself in different than just struggling one of the costliest cities in the to pay my rent,” she says. world. And while plenty of Last summer, Benson administrative jobs were avail­ headed back to Santa Fe, able, Benson knew she where she landed part-time couldn’t sit behind a desk work at the Meem Library again. Instead she talked while pondering her next herself onto the wait staff of a move. Should she pursue the high-end French restaurant. practical realm-perhaps law “It was really a professional school? Or follow her French kitchen. It was six days passion? “I miss writing very a week, all day long.” Though much these days,” she says. she was making $40,000 a “But at least here in the year, it was overall a tough job. library, I can enjoy more It did give her great material reading.” for three short stories, called “Small Bites,” which examine fife at a restaurant. Soon after hitting the city, Benson began taking classes at the Gotham Writer’s Work­ shop. She took part in several Sally Benson (SF03) had to FLEE EXPENSIVE NeW YoRK, classes, including some all-day BUT SHE LEFT WITH GOOD sessions with other writers. '' Words to me are like brush strokes on paper. STORY IDEAS. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 3001 } �2,2, {Race and Human Nature} UNDERSTANDING THE “OTHER” A Graduate PreceptorialExplores Race and lliitnan Nature wi Rosemary Harty hat does it mean to be the “other”? Why do human beings make distinctions based on skin color or supposed racial heritage? Is racism a type of ignorance that can be remedied with education and integration? What are its sources in the human soul? Joan Silver (MA76), director of the Graduate Institute, has been thinking about the first question for much of her adult life. The other questions evolved from the readings Silver chose for the preceptorial she offered last spring, on Race and Human Nature. “The distinction between ‘black’ and ‘white’ is deeply embedded in American society and carries the additional weight of the history of slavery,” explains Silver. “We often act as if we can avoid issues of race, but in fact they are with us every day as is the general human tendency to make some group into the ‘other.’ ” When she began planning her preceptorial. Silver says, the topic of race and racism had been “brewing” in her psyche for some time. In the undergraduate program, she had led students in discussions of stories such as Faulkner’s “The Bear” and O’Conner’s “The Artificial Nigger,” rich, complex stories that look at the difficult question of racial distinction, slavery, and at what underlies these matters in the human soul. Tutor George Russell helped her plan the course by making some suggestions based on a course in African-American literature that he had taught at a private secondary school many years ago. Over the 16 weeks of the preceptorial, students read and discussed works including the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Huckleberry Finn, Supreme Court cases, and poetry by Langston Hughes. Silver knew her own experiences and attitudes influenced her desire to work on these texts. She grew up in a predominantly white community in California in the 1950S and early 1960s with little exposure to AfricanAmericans, but acutely aware of the importance of the first efforts to bring about integration. Minority students and faculty were also an important element of the community at a college she attended as an undergraduate. State University of New York College at Old Westbury, started as an “experimental school” in 1968. Contact with these individuals-and with their differing relationships to their racial heritage-had an enduring impact on her thinking about race. It was also at Old Westbury that she learned of St. John’s, where she came to do the undergraduate program and ended up as a tutor. Silver later joined the Santa Fe faculty in 1989. When she returned to the Annapolis campus in 1997, she and her partner, April Gifford, settled in Cheverly, Maryland, an integrated community within {The College - John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{Race and Human Nature} the predominantly AfricanAmerican Prince George’s County outside of D.C. Their new community offered their children an opportunity to grow up in a setting rich with diversity. Yet Silver was startled hy her reaction to their first weeks in Cheverly. “It was very interesting to me to he a minority in the grocery store,” Silver says. “I think for anyone to he in a minority anywhere, one feels certain things-that feeling of being ‘other.’ I love living in this community-it’s so sane to live in such a setting.” That experience of being “other” was valuable. It helped to foster in her a desire to lead a sustained look at issues she had touched on in these seminar readings with undergraduates. Many more graduate students than could be accommo­ dated listed the preceptorial as one of their choices. Those who got in-Wesley Scott Brown (AGI07) among themconsidered themselves fortunate to be sitting at the table with students of different races and different backgroundsall equally enthusiastic about the readings and drawn to the topic. “There were readings in that class that I’ll go hack to for the rest of my life,” says Brown. Brown grew up in the South and has a compelling interest in race relations. He hopes to work for a nonprofit community development group, preferably in an inner city such as Washington, D.C. “Growing up in Georgia, you still feel the vestiges of what the institution of slavery did to that region. I think that experience, combined with my Christian beliefs, developed in me an under- as GI Director Joan Silver found PERSISTING QUESTIONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE IN WORKS THAT EXAMINE RACE AND DISCRIMINATION. standing of race relations and a desire to work toward reconciliation and equality,” he says. No passage in the readings was more thought-provoking for Brown than this section from Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, where Douglass stands watching the ships on the Chesapeake Bay and yearns for freedom: “ ‘You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swiftwined angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! ’ ” “Perhaps it’s because this is happening on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, not too far from Annapolis, that made it so moving to me,” Brown says. “I thought it was such a compelling example of the human desire for freedom, about the brutality of slavery.” Douglass’ narrative should be required reading for high school students. Brown says. “It forces the reader into the shoes of the one being oppressed. That’s what’s so powerful about all the books we read in the course. Any time you can put yourself in the shoes of another, that’s a way to empha­ size the equality of all mankind,” he says. A high school teacher in Severna Park, Maryland, Kelly Nash (AGI07) teaches a diverse group of students and knew the literature and autobiographies in the preceptorial could inspire insights she could share with her own {The College - John’s College ■ Winter 2001 } �2,4 {Race and Human Nature} Dream Variation by Langston Hughes To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun. To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently. Dark like meThat is my dream! students. “It looked like an interesting way On the first day of class. Silver asked to look at a modern problem,” she says. students why they had chosen this precepto­ Just as Silver had an eye-opening experi­ rial. “I looked around the table and said, To fling my arms wide ence in the grocery store near her home, ‘ isn ’ t it obvious’?” Sawyer says, laughing. In the face of the sun. Nash experienced what it was like to be a Dance! Whirl! Whirl! She wanted to dispel the kind of tension Till the quick day is done. minority when she was a Peace Corps that can arise when white people talk about Rest at pale evening... volunteer overseas. Particularly in China, race and racism in a group that includes A tall, slim tree... where she taught in a small farming village, African-Americans. Night coming tenderly she felt like an outsider as a Caucasian “We had really good conversations, Black like me. and as an American. She stood out really open conversations,” says Sawyer, among others and sometimes felt hostility who said hearing the perspective of because of it. students from the South opened new The readings were thought-provoking, and at times, avenues of thought for her as well. difficult-but they’re important for Americans to read about At St. John’s, she was part of a campus that is predomi­ and understand racism, both historically and in a modern nantly white. But because of the nature of the Program and context. “The narrative by Frederick Douglass really the respect of her classmates and tutors, she never felt that stands out,” Nash recalls. “It was so honest. You could see race mattered: “I was having a discussion with another the point where he broke, he had put up with so much. He’s African-American student in the GI program, and I asked being whipped and he reaches this point where he’s not her what she thought about it-she said she felt ‘colorless’ at going to be whipped any more. You see how arbitrary, how St. John’s, that the books and ideas mattered. And I had to cruel, the treatment of slaves was.” agree I felt the same way.” Stepheca Sawyer (AGI06) had read all the works in the In her preceptorial paper on Richard Wright’s autobiog­ preceptorial with the exception of Flannery O’Conner’s raphy, Black Boy, Sawyer considered how human beings “The Artificial Nigger.” Yet talking about them around a wear “masks of pride” that camouflage their fear. “A table with students of different races and different common thread in our discussion was the fear of the backgrounds was new to Sawyer, as she had earned under­ unknown. We may be saying one thing in public, but we graduate and graduate degrees at historically black believe something else. A lot of things we shouldn’t do are colleges. She is currently a professor of business leadership done in the name of pride. and the business retention coordinator at Morgan State “Every week, I would ask, “what are people afraid of?’ University in Baltimore. Whether you want to admit it in front of everyone in class or Sawyer had planned to attend divinity school but chose to not, we are afraid of things. I know we dealt with that ques­ attend the Graduate Institute because she wanted to better tion in every single book. What are we still afraid of in our understand the foundations of Western thought. Initially, society today? I don’t know if we can answer that but I guess she wasn’t a big talker in class. But by the time she took that goes with the St. John’s way-you don’t focus on the Silver’s preceptorial, she had found her voice. “This time, I answer, you just think about it. And maybe, you get closer to approached these texts more from the human nature side, the truth.” instead of the political view. Because I was looking at them Perhaps the hardest thing for her was reading and with a St. John’s eye, I saw things I had never seen in them hearing the racial slurs, particularly the word “nigger,” before,” she says. found in many of the readings. “The first 20 times it came {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter zooi } �{RaceandHumanNature} 25 ''We may be saying one thing in public, but we believe something else. A lot ofthings we shouldn i do are done in the name ofpride. Stepheca Sawyer (AGI06) up, it almost felt like somebody was jabbing me,” she says. “It’s a painful word, aword full of hate, and I had to kind of numb myself to it. Some of my classmates came up after­ ward and apologized when they had to read a passage.” Another African-American participant in the class was Crystal Watkins, who until recently was the admissions counselor for diversity at St. John’s. Watkins grew up in Annapolis and attended the Key School, where she recently returned as alumni director. She attended the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland, where she was active in groups for African-Americans. Although she audited the class to learn more about the St. John’s Program for her job, Watkins sat at the table and took part in the discussions. Talking about race comes easily to Watkins, she says. Often problems fester when views go unsaid. “Race and ethnicity and culture had been such a part of my world for the previous six years, I want to hear what other people have to say about it. If tension enters the room, I want to work through that and come out the other side,” she says. Watkins had read many of the works in African-Amer­ ican studies classes, where they were always discussed within the context of history, politics, or soci­ ology. Reading and discussing O’Conner’s “The Artificial Nigger” was a particularly memorable part of the class for her. Focusing just on the characters and the action in the story- instead on the social context of racism in the Southallowed her to reflect on what the story said about humanity. “It was a short story, but so very powerful, with inter­ esting characters in just about every paragraph. We found deeper meanings talking about it together-black vs. white, city vs. country, the differences between the generations.” Several participants in the class, including Watkins, were intrigued by one question a student raised. “He asked whether that people may be happier being in the wrong than finding out the truth,” Watkins says. “They want their truth, their justice. They would rather live with their own constructed truth than with what is morally right. I think the class did settle on something like that-something a little disturbing.” Leah Lavin, who gradu­ ates from the GI this spring, was also intrigued by what the question raised about human nature. “The ques­ tion was, ‘isn’t it interesting that we humans are more afraid of being proven wrong than continuing to live out the wrong that we do?’ We were talking about Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses.'''' Lavin grew up in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, where the schools, and perhaps the community, were “quietly segregated and maybe even quietly racist.” She was amazed that most of her friends chose to attend the In class and in her paper, Stepheca Sawyer (AGI06) EXPLORED THE FEAR FACTOR, {The College* St. John’s College • Winter 2001 } �a6 {RaceandHumanNature} Cotton Ball, held for debutantes of “Confederate descent.” “I thought that was so obvious that it was ridiculous,” she says. In every class of the precepto­ rial, Lavin felt she was delving into the kind of issues and : discussion that drew her to 5 St. John’s in the first place. “The books in this class were important, but the mix of students was so strong that we really looked forward to hearing one another talk-this class had almost a friendship sort of atmosphere to it,” she says. “We talked about fear. We talked about this tendency we have to define the ‘other.’ There’s pain in some of these readings, especially the Faulkner and Frederick Douglass. You feel you have to approach it with care.” Courtney Lawrence, who completed the graduate program last December, wrote in an e-mail that one reason she took the class was curiosity about “how a predominately white campus with a predominately white staff would tackle the issue of race as it relates to human interactions.” “Actually, I thought the scope [of the class] was a little narrow to gain a great deal of insight into human nature-at least not any more than I’d struggled with before,” she wrote. “The course and readings alone spoke volumes. Though as the only race we focused on was the black American race, I wonder how the course would have played out had we tackled the treatment of Native Americans, Asian Americans, or Hispanic Americans. All of these groups shape the culture in which we live, yet most courses dealing with race exclude the minorities of minorities. I worry sometimes that as white people we think if we talk openly about the pains blacks have endured, we can erase some of that pain or some of the hate that still exists.” For Silver, reading and discussing O’Conner’s “The Artificial Nigger” always raises the most interesting ideas. There’s an analogy to he found in trying to see beyond an Teacher Kelly Nash (AGI07) EXPERIENCED DISCRIMINATION WORKING OVERSEAS. offensive title to seeing beyond the ignorance and petty-mindedness of the protagonist, a weak and frightened man. In the story, Mr. Head and his grandson. Nelson, take the train to the big city so that Mr. Head can show him what a dangerous and unsavory place the city is, Mr. Head believes, in part because of the blacks who live there. Some saw Mr. Head as incapable of redemption and believed the story showed how a legacy of hatred and fear is passed down through generations. “There was a fair amount of disagreement on that story, about whether Mr. Head’s transformation is real, or whether there was any hope for poor Nelson,” Silver recalls. Silver confesses she argued her point rather forcefully. She believes Mr. Head gives us a chance to see a little bit of the human condition, a small piece of redemption. Through encountering a plaster statue of a black man, one depicting human suffering and degradation, Mr. Head may experience a revelation of sorts. He certainly knows the depths of his own sin and weakness; perhaps that. Silver suggests, is a start. “The story presents to us something that’s very hard to accept,” she explains. “It’s really interesting that what the main character has kept hidden is sinfulness and pride. What I saw in that story is that you need to give yourself permission to be flawed-what’s key is understanding that the ‘other’ can be a part of one’s self.” Silver says the preceptorial confirmed for her that the works chosen for the class were “great books” in everyway St. John’s defines them. “You don’t ever really get to the end. They will keep revealing things as you keep working with them. {The College- St. John's College ■ Winter zoo? } �{W.E.B. Du Bois} a? W.E.B. DuBois Comes to St. Johns Many dignitaries visited St. John’s in the 1950s: Dwight Eisen­ hower came to dedicate Mellon Hall and Eleanor Roosevelt dehvered a lecture. But the visit W.E.B. Du Bois made to the college in April 195a is remarkable in that an author who would one day be read on the Program came to the college to lecture to its students. The invitation came from Martin Dyer (class of 1952), the first African-American student admitted to the college. Recruited by a group of St. John’s students. Dyer had attended the segregated Dunbar High School in Baltimore. His loth-grade history teacher was Yolande Du Bois Wilhams, Du Bois’ only child. Dyer greatly admired Du Bois: “In my view, Du Bois was in every way the equal of the famous and not-so-famous people who came to the college to deliver lectures in those days, and I resolved sometime in my junior year to do all that I could to get him to the college,” says Dyer. In January 1952, Dyer wrote Du Bois’ daughter to ask if she thought her father would accept a lecture invitation. Williams wrote back to say she thought her father would be pleased. “We’ve been hearing about your fine program there,” she added, “and you know Dunbar is proud of you.” That same month, Du Bois wrote a short response to Dyer’s inquiry: “If requested by the authorities of St. John’s College, I think I can arrange to come for one Sunday evening lecture some time during the spring.” Dyer next approached President Richard Weigle (HA49) with his request, concerned that Weigle would object to Du Bois’ left­ leaning politics. But Weigle issued the invitation, dated February 14,1952. In his letter, he wrote that St. John’s had a custom of inviting “outstanding men and women to speak to students, faculty and interested members of the community on some contemporary topic of a political, economic or sociological nature.” More informal than Friday lectures, these talks were held in the King William Room on Sunday evenings. “The topic could be one of your own choosing, although we would prefer to have you deal with the general racial problem in the United States,” he wrote. St. John’s, Weigle continued, “is one of a relatively small number of southern colleges to have opened its doors to Negro students. The community here is there­ fore conscious of this great national issue and feels rather strongly on it.” Dyer was assigned to meet Du Bois at the train station in Annapolis and escort him to campus. “Du Bois and I walked the relatively short distance from the station to [the college guest house]. I accompanied Du Bois to Weigle’s office and did not see him again until lecture time that evening,” Dyer recalls. The lecture was well attended by students and faculty. Dyer says. “Although he did take time to congratulate the college on the fine example it set in admitting me to the college, Du Bois was true to form in condemning the treat­ ment of blacks in the United States during the preceding three centuries,” he says. “Probably correctly, he saw little significant progress in civil rights gains even after World War II when the country demanded no lesser sacrifice from black soldiers than it did from white. Having been so intimately involved in the fight to improve the pfight of American blacks, Du Bois seemed genuinely depressed by how little progress had been made. He, of course, had no way of knowing what dramatic changes would begin just two years later with Brown v. Board ofEducation and reach a boiling point in the early 1960s.” After the lecture, Du Bois joined students at the home of Priscilla Bender-Shore (class of 1955) and Mel Shore (class of 1954), students who lived in the converted barracks installed on back campus to house married students and their families. Mel Shore died in 2006; PrisciUa has vivid memories of Du Bois. She recalls that Jacob Klein, then dean, objected to the visiting lecturer’s politics. Klein was a Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe; Du Bois an active supporter of the communist party. “There was a funda­ mental difference in ideology,” she says. Yet the Shores felt strongly about hosting a post-lecture question period. “We could see that he wasn’t going to be honored and we thought he was a really important person,” Bender-Shore recalls. “He was famous even then for his ideas and his works and activities in the black community.” The Shores’ house was filled with students who were eager to question Du Bois about civil rights and politics. Bender-Shore remembers little of the lecture topic or the discussion at her home, but Du Bois left a lasting impression. “He was a small man, very firm and confident, genteel,” says Bender-Shore. “We felt very honored to have him among us.” The morning after the lecture. Dyer walked Du Bois back to the train station alone. “There was no fanfare that I can recall,” he says. The contact between St. John’s and one of its future seminar authors, though unceremonious, was indicative of the important changes in store for the college. Six more African-American students enrolled in St. John’s just a few years after Dyer. The Program at St. John’s later included works by Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. {The College- St. Jo hn’s College ■ Winter 2007 } W.E.B. Du Bois St. John’s congratulated on opening its doors to STUDENTS OF ALL RACES, BUT REMAINED DISCOURAGED ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS WHEN HE SPOKE ON CAMPUS IN I952. �2,8 {The Tutors} Chaninah Maschler A LIFE BY Chaninah Maschler (HA98) INTERVIEW BY Robin Weiss (SFGI86) was born in Berlin, Germany, two years before I hid together, at the house of our former cleaning lady. But Hitler became Chancellor. The Nazi epoch soon we had to split up. After staying with many different profoundly affected my family’s life. My mother, families (some communist, some Gatholic, some Calvinist; having been a teacher (especially of “classical some rich, some poor) I landed in Utrecht, with the family gymnastics”) at some rather la-di-da finishing Mook. Mr. Mook was an upholsterer and paper hanger; schools for German upper- class young women, was Mrs. Mook had been a maid; when I arrived she was mothering prepared to take Hitler’s anti-Jewish rage seriously. seven children, ranging in age from to less than one year. I was She left Germany for the Netherlands in the midthe oldest, being it at this time. I was very fond of the Mook 1930S and there became a leader of a hachsharah (a children, except for the eldest, a girl, who felt displaced by me school preparing Jewish youth to be farmers in what was then and, not unnaturally, gave me a hard time. She and 1 had to Palestine). My parents had settledin Palestine two or three years share a bed. During the roughly three years that 1 spent with the after the conclusion of World War I (long before my birth). Mook family the children thought of me as a non-Jewish orphan My brother was born there. They had joined Martin Buber and girl from Rotterdam. (Everyone knew that Rotterdam had been Judah Magnes in hoping a bi-national and expressed bombed to bits by the Luftwaffe). Hitler ’s Blitzkrieg was for totally effective state in conquering the this hope when they chose a European, and Hebrew About half a year after liberation my mother returned from Netherlands: Between May 1940 and May Arabic, 1945 Germany ruled name-Peter Achmedits Yehuda-for myracial brother. Owing, part, to Bergen-Belsen, where my brother had died. By Dutch standards, there and enforced Nuremberg laws with in gradually my brother ’s suffering severely from asthma, my parents neither of them looked particularly Jewish, so they had been increasing strictness. I believe it was in 1942 that Jewish young returned 1925.kidnapped Not long from after the my streets birth my working in the underground associated with the Quakers. But men weretoforGermany the firstintime of parents wereand divorced. owing to the treachery of a woman double agent, both of them, Aunsterdam sent to “labor camps” such as Mauthausen. separately, were turned in and sent to a concentration camp. News of the death in Mauthausen of one of my brother’s friends My mother and I went back to Amsterdam. There I enrolled at convinced us to go into hiding. At first my mother, brother, and a classical gymnasium. I had not attended school for three years and was so ignorant as to be quoted in the school newspaper for my laughably uninformed remarks. The return to school was a source of great joy to me. I did not want to go to America. But I went, after just a year and a half of gymnasium. That meant that I’d learned a little French, Latin, and the Greek alphabet. I {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{TheTutors} “ .. Where ebe couldIhaveflourbhed as Ihave at St. Johns?'' Chaninah Maschler (HA98) Chaninah Maschler (HA98), tutor emerita {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } 2,9 �30 {TheTutors} After a stint at two New York high schools, I enrolled at Queens College, one of the four free colleges in New York City. Paul Klapper had been presi­ dent of Queens College and the program of studies instituted under him was first rate, as were many of the faculty, especially the music, mathematics, and chemistry departments. But under a new president, John J. Theobald, McCarthy machina­ tions took hold. Many members of the faculty, unwilling to sign the required loyalty oath, left for teaching positions in California. When the City College of New York (CCNY) opened its doors to women, I transferred to City College and switched majors from chem­ istry to philosophy. The teacher I most admired at the time was Felix Cohen. He had a law office in D.C. but also taught philos­ ophy of law-meeting with the rich kids at Yale law school one day a week, and with the poor kids at CCNY on another day. Unlike his famous father, Morris Raphael, Felix was very gentle in class. Together with his father he brought out a book of read­ ings in jurisprudence and legal philosophy, which is still in print. To this day I find its preface’s use of Deuteronomy 30:11 profoundly moving. After finishing college in New York I moved to New Haven to do graduate work in philosophy at Yale, where I had been given a fellowship. Curiously, I was oblivious of the fact that in a group of, say, 25 grad students, only four were women and that women faculty at the University were limited to “native inform­ ants,” that is, female speakers of such languages as Chinese or languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent. I arrived at Yale too untutored to use the university’s riches wisely. There were no advisors. My fellow graduate students in philosophy were vastly better educated than I and much more sophisticated and worldly. I profited from associating with the linguist-historian of philosophy, Rulon S. Wells, and from the friendships I formed. Also, of course, from the wonderful Chaninah on her way to school, 1939, Amsterdam. library and the free time I was granted. But I did not, otherwise, use my years well there. Today, when Johnnies come to talk to me about doing graduate work in philosophy, I always urge themmake sure there is something else you become semi-expert at, where you can make progress, where you find out what it is like to have a skill. Philosophy is no such enterprise. My first experience of teaching came at Bryn Mawr College, where I was given an assistant­ ship and sometimes filled in for absent faculty. Next, Penn State University hired me. I remember being frightened as I traversed a meadow and encountered young men of horrific, formidable build and registered that any one or more of these immensities might, the next day, turn up in my Introduction to Philosophy or my Logic classes. Only later did I learn that these young men were wearing shoulder pads. They were on the football team. In 196a Henry Maschler (HA98) and I were married. My alma mater, CCNY, hired me to teach evening logic classes. I enor­ mously enjoyed these. Old and young, men and women, black and yellow. . .everyone was there. We worked our way through an elementary symbolic logic text. Also, we analyzed arguments in Platonic dialogues, and Sherlock Holmes’ reasoning as he dealt with this or that case. Next, Barnard College invited me to teach history of philosophy. I did not much enjoy my classes at Barnard. My experience there confirmed what I had felt at Bryn Mawr, that I much preferred classes in which both men and women participated. It seemed to me that Barnard women were too anxious to please. John Kennedy’s assassination shook me. I interrupted teaching. While waiting for the birth of our twin girls, I served at the Hunt’s Point Library in the Bronx. There, for the first time, I had a female African-American boss. Even at the time I was aware that this was an important experience for me. {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ IVinterzooi > �{TheTutors} The willingness to start over and be^in at the beginning is goodfor all ofus—no one is shutout. ” 31 While at Yale I made the acquain­ fact that mathematics and labora­ tance of Eva Brann. After receiving tory classes are part of the required her degree from Yale she taught at liberal arts curriculum. I am deeply Stanford hut left its classics depart­ grateful to the college for requiring Chaninah Maschler (HA98) ment after just a year to join the of me that I learn some of the St. John’s faculty. Her letters showed elements of ancient and post­ that she was profoundly happy there. When I visited her in Galilean astronomy; that I learn enough to appreciate how Annapolis to attend a Friday night lecture I’d bring a suitcase mathematics and the physical sciences grew up in tandem. And full of bagels. The bread situation in Annapolis was dreary in there I understood in freshman lab about there not having been those days. Like so many other repeat-visitors at the college, I a Moses who brought us the chemical periodic table. St. John’s experienced the wonderful hospitality of Dean Jacob Klein and is also quite singular in so accustoming us to the absence of his wife. I found out that Mrs. Klein had briefly attended one of jargon that when unexplained technical or pseudo-technical the boarding schools in Germany where my mother had taught vocabulary is used it has a slightly comical effect. The willing­ (though not during the years when my mother was there). Later, ness to start over and begin at the beginning is good for all of when I had come to join the Annapolis faculty and my mother us-no one is shut out, if they are willing to concentrate; and the came for a visit, I introduced the two women to each other. more competent are obliged to check on whether they At the time, when I came visiting, I felt the St. John’s faculty adequately understand and whether it is true. was too self-absorbed, too smug. I had reservations. On the In some respects it seems to me that the college has changed other hand, the students were strikingly courteous, friendly, for the better over the years of my association with it. For and helpful to strangers; eager to share thoughts. example, whereas in former years the career counseling office When our twin girls were about five it was suggested to me was hardly spoken of, work is today recognized to be central to a that I apply for a summer teaching position at the then recently good life. Even mentioning money has become legitimate ever established St. John’s Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. I took the since then President Bill Dyal toasted the seniors at the senior children with me. Their memories of the beautiful Santa Fe dinner in Spanish, wishing them Love and Money. It is probably landscape are vivid to this day. Having participated in the also a good thing that more faculty today have spouses and writing of a book about the Joseph story in Genesis, I selected children, and that there are more women tutors. Genesis and the opening chapters of Exodus as texts for my first In the years since my retirement I have spent time reading 19th-century authors-William James, George Eliot, Darwin, St. John’s preceptorial. Dewey. Previously I had been on a more intimate footing only That first appointment at the Graduate Institute led to my becoming a faculty member of the Queens College Liberal Arts with Charles Peirce. It now seems to me a little odd that a school so profoundly American as St. John’s should exclude the Institute, a mini-St. John’s program within the confines of a standard undergraduate education. I taught there for some pragmatist tradition. It is true that St. John’s does well by years and have exceedingly happy memories of the students in students and faculty and the nation in demanding that all my classes at Queens. But when the city of New York was on the acquaint themselves with some of the Supreme Court cases, verge of bankruptcy, I (along with many other non-tenured with Lincoln’s speeches, with the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. But why favor continental philosophy to the faculty of the city university) was fired. As it happens, my exclusion of American authors that are studied and valued all husband too lost his job at that time, so I applied for a full-time teaching position at St. John’s and was accepted. over the rest of the world? Given the fact that undergraduate philosophy classes across I do not want to end on such a chiding note. Given my the nation tend to be taught by way of discussion rather than intellectual and pedagogic ways, where else could I have flourished as I have at St. John’s? I am hugely in the college’s lecture, there is a sense in which my manner of teaching has never been very different from what goes on at St. John’s. But at debt. other schools the students’ other classes take the form of lectures, and that made a difference also for the classes I was in. One of the things I have always greatly valued at St. John’s is the {The College -Sf. John's College ■ Winter 2oot } �{Homecoming} SIX JOHNNIES, SIX DECADES BY Emily DeBusk (Ao6) and Rosemary Harty ome remember Jacob Klein, Barbara Leonard and the Liberty Tree; others knew Christopher Nelson and Tom May. Some saw wars end, some saw wars begin. Many have raised families and some have sent their own children to St. John’s. Visiting with six alumni who returned in October for Home­ coming-one from each decade-yielded a rich trove of memories and glimpses of lives lived after St. John’s. Among the Veterans John Wallace (Class ofig4g) Then: John Wallace entered St. John’s during World War II, saw veterans on the GI Bill invade the campus at the war’s end, knew Barr and Buchanan, and loved the parties and general rowdiness that marked campus life during his years. “I know the folks at the church nearby used to complain about the noise. They’d be going to church, and we’d be going to bed. The girls at the Naval Academy dances would come over here after their dates had to go in for the night. We wore coats and ties to every meal and lecture. I’m pretty sure the food was good,” he recalls. There were about 30 students in Wallace’s class. Many had won state schol­ arships to attend St. John’s, as he did. “Four years free-you can’t beat that with a stick,” he says, grinning. He saw many students drop out. “Some decided they wanted to go elsewhere. Some couldn’t get through don rags. And some just stuck it out,” he says. A historic change came to the campus during Wallace’s time. The college admitted its first African-American student, Martin Dyer (class of rg5a). Wallace still feels proud about the campus community’s response. “He fit in fine, he was accepted, and it all happened with absolutely no objection,” he said. Now: Wallace’s career as a civil engineer grew out of his first job after graduation: working on construction of the Bay Bridge. For Wallace’s first few days, the foreman training Wallace led him on perilous walks over narrow beams hundreds of feet above the Chesapeake Bay. “Every day, he’d ask, ‘you coming back tomorrow?’ After three days, he stopped asking.” When the bridge was completed, Wallace went to work on building the Garden State Parkway, then helped build a bridge over the Ohio Turnpike. He took night classes to earn his master’s degree in engineering at Johns Hopkins University. And in 1985, he {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } became partner of an engineering firm, Wallace, Montgomery and Associates, in Towson, Md. Today, he’s semi-retired, and he and his wife, Pamela, have three children. Money and Women George Wend (Class oftg^t) Then: Times were simpler when George Wend was a student in the early r95os. Between classes Wend fenced, designed boats, and worked in the wood shop. Semi­ nars lingered late into the night, and dance parties into the early mornings. Two issues complicated the scene: money and women. Money was tight and the Naval Academy wanted to take over the campus: “The college was small enough that we would have meet­ ings about it in the Great Hall. Jacob Klein, who had just retired, was called in.” Wend distinctly remembers Klein’s calming, avun­ cular manner. After one collegewide meeting, he simply said, “Gentlemen, get a good night’s sleep.” In 1951, the college admitted women. The change was “anticipated with mixed feel­ ings,” says Wend. “Jacob Klein was highly in favor of the idea. In the rgsi variety show, I remember, someone made a joke, ‘You don’t have to go to Europe to study a broad.’ But I remember someone stopping me on Main Street to ask what I thought about women coming to St. John’s. I said ‘I don’t see why not.’ They definitely brought something new to the college.” �{Homecoming} 33 Now: Wend enjoyed a long career in physics and engineering at the Westinghouse Elec­ tric Corporation. He is now retired and lives in Pennsylvania. “I moved to this particular community for the small liberal arts college in my town. I can take classes there and keep up my learning,” he says. Wend was pleased to reunite with six other classmates for their 55th homecoming. All Dressed Up Vicki Davis Cone (A68) Then: The jean-clad students of today might look askance at having to dress up for dinner, seminar, and lecture, but Vicki Davis Cone treasured the tradition. “We would wear skirts or dresses and stockings or heels, and the men wore jackets and ties,” she says. “I think most people were perfectly content to dress up.” There was one time when a male student donned jacket and tie and nothing else, she notes. Men and women lived in separate dorms, with the opportunity to visit each other in common rooms informally dubbed “sin bins.” “Women were locked in at midnight, but the men were free all night,” she says. During Cone’s time, the college began allowing men and women to visit in each others’ dorms during visiting hours. Cone enjoyed the way dinners were served family-style in the dining hall by white-jacketed student waiters. She met her husband. Bill (A67), in the dining hall. “He was the most handsome waiter,” Cone says. Simon Kaplan, Richard Scofield, Jacob Klein, and John Kieffer dominated the intellectual life on campus. “They seemed so wise and knowledgeable, sophisticated and cultured,” says Cone. The mood of the campus changed as the Vietnam War intensified, but the campus itself seemed removed from the war, at least in Cone’s memory: “Most of the students took that time to get away from the world and figure out who they were, reading the books and getting lost in the ideas.” Now: Cone started working in the library soon after graduation and her marriage. She spent most of her library career at St. John’s. Cone worked as a cataloguer for many years until she took a decade’s hiatus to raise the couple’s two children. She Henry Robert (class of 1941), Jack Ladd Carr (class of 1950) and Christopher Nelson at a REDEDICATION CEREMONY FOR THE CAMPUS CANNON. Mr. RobERT FUNDED THE RESTORATION AND PROPER INSTALLATION OF THE igTH-CENTURY CANNON, DREDGED FROM THE BALTIMORE HARBOR. returned to the college in 1980 and worked for two decades, earning her Master of Library Science degree at the University of Maryland. In aooo. Cone joined Anne Arundel Community college, where she is informa­ tion resources management librarian. She was recently promoted to tenured associate professor. A War Ends Paula DavidoffiArii) Then: Single-sex dorms were still the norm when Paula Davidoff entered the college in 197a. “Although boyfriends and girlfriends slept in each others’ rooms,” she notes wrly. “The difference was you just had to be careful about it.” The Vietnam War ended during Davidoff’s years at the college. She vividly remembers the impact it had on campus. “I remember coming out of a seminar and hearing that Johnson had just said it was over. If the bell in McDowell Hall wasn’t ringing, in my memory it seems that it was.” Davidoff also remembers an easy mingling of students and tutors. “I got to be friends in a tutor-student way with Robert Bart, and he was an extraordinary person. Students and tutors had get-togethers at the Little Campus, and in tutors’ homes, and {The College ■ Si. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } the conversation was real St. John’s. There was gossip, there was laughing-even if we weren’t talking about books or ideas from seminars, the ideas in our readings carried over into fife. Robert had this wonderful way of making you feel smart even when you were doing just the dumbest things.” For two wonderful years, Davidoff enjoyed the best digs on campus: with three other girls, she lived in the Reverdy Johnson house. “We used to have cocktail parties on the lawn for the tutors in the spring,” she recalls. Now: Davidoff met her husband, Bernie (A69), when he returned to campus to study with Leon Kass, then a tutor. She married Bernie a week before she graduated and settled in New Jersey. There she studied classics for a while, then turned her atten­ tion to raising five children, now ages 17 to 29. Two (Ada and Esther, both seniors) are current Johnnies; Sam graduated in 1999; and Davidoff’s youngest is a prospie. For the past 15 years, Davidoff has been a professional storyteller, a career that evolved from her years as a teacher. “I’m hired to come to a school for a residency, and what I’m teaching is literacy skills, often to very young children: listening, speaking, writing, teaching kids to think about story beyond the surface. I tell myths and folktales. They’re the foundation for all �{Homecoming} 34 the other literature we have; they’re the dreams of a community or a civilization.” A Different Downtown Stephanie Rico (A86) Then: Students who enjoy dance and yoga classes in the dance studio of Iglehart can thank the lobbying efforts of Stephanie Rico. “The gym has really improved,” she says. “I started the first aerobics class in 1985, and we had to meet backstage [of FSK Auditorium] because there was no room in the gym.” Rico and her family returned to Annapolis for her aoth reunion in October. There are some obvious changes, such as the two new dorms on College Creek, but Rico was most struck by the “vast changes” in downtown Annapolis. “I lived on Fleet Street which was, back then, pretty run down. Now every­ thing has been built up and gentrified. On campus it was even more remarkable to see what was pretty much the same. We saw students talking on the quad, selling Reality t-shirts. They could have been us.” Now: Rico holds a PhD in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education from Stan­ ford University. She splits her time between a San Diego high school, where she teaches science, and co-directing the California Science Project, a professional development network for science teachers. “My driving interest in education started at St. John’s,” she says. “The way we learned was so different from the way I had to learn in high school. So a lot of my work is dealing with restrictions, but there is a lot of school reform going on. I’m pretty unusual in that I teach all three sciences: physics, chemistry, and biology. I didn’t even like science before I went to St. John’s. The fact that I’m a science teacher is directly due to St. John’s.” Waiting for the Hall Phone this new industry, so I just jumped right in, without having to go to graduate school. And I know a lot of my classmates have gone into Web design as well.” Although he wasn’t on campus when the college had to cut down the Liberty Tree, Sirkin says the “front campus just doesn’t look the same to me without it.” Cell Phones and Hurricanes Craig Sirkin (Agg) Lizzie Jump (Aoi) Then: Craig Sirkin witnessed several mile­ stones. “I went to the last lecture delivered by Mortimer Adler,” he recalls. “The audito­ rium was packed, because he was such a celebrity here. I also remember that when I was a sophomore, the school really pushed to cut down on underage drinking. That’s when ID checking became strict.” St. John’s also saw enrollment rise. “By the end of my freshman year, the school was running out of housing and the administra­ tion was encouraging people to move off campus,” he recalls. The college was also stepping gingerly into cyberspace; during Sirkin’s senior year, the computer lab was wired for the Internet. “It was a big deal because when I was a student, we didn’t even have phones in the rooms, which meant that if you had someone on your floor who was a talker, you could never use the hall phone.” Now: Sirkin enjoys a career that reflects the information revolution that hit the campus during his college years. He now sells hard­ ware for a telecommunications company in Denver. “I got out of school and there was Then: “I remember, when I was a senior, being shocked to see so many lower classmen with cell phones,” recalls Lizzie Jump. “We were closet cell phone users, but these kids were just using them on the quad. It was like a cell phone revolution.” Now, not a semester goes by without the occasional renegade phone call interrupting a seminar. “Campus was pretty much walloped by Hurricane Floyd in ’99, especially the Liberty Tree. I lived in 201 Pinkney and I was one of about eight who had to be temporarily evicted because the Liberty Tree was so close to our rooms. For a while I had to live in the prospie room in Campbell. I was pretty mad about that, since lower classmen were getting singles. Then they had to take the Liberty Tree down; that was very sad.” Despite these changes. Jump reckons that two things will never change about St. John’s: the Program, and the general spirit of mischief that inspires bizarre pranks and campus-wide jokes. “I think it was my junior year when some people stole the seal from the bricks on the Quad steps. They hid it in the trunk of a car, and for about a month the administration kept getting postcards from the seal from all over the world.” Now: After graduation. Jump spent two years in Americorps, followed by some time as an adoptions counselor for the ASPCA. She currently works as a receptionist for a social services organization. “It’s seriously like the movie Ojfice Spaced she says. “I think I’m going to ask for a red stapler for Christmas. Saturday’s banquet featured an Oktoberfest {The College -5f. John’s College . Winter soo^ } theme. �{Homecoming} 35 A Family Affair Homecoming in Annapolis this year included a spate of family­ friendly activities: a story-teller regaled children with the tale of Rumpelstiltskin; a carnival on the lawn gave kids a chance to play games and win prizes; and pony rides and face-painting kept the young ones entertained while classmates caught up with each other. Adults enjoyed seminars in the mornings and a banquet with an Oktoberfest theme in the evening. (It was the best of times, it was the wurst of times.) There’s no telling whether the beer or the kids’ activities brought alumni home, but another new record for attendance was set: 320 alumni attended Homecoming, bringing no family members or guests with them. The children’s activi­ ties were a big draw, says Stephanie Rico (A86). “We had a great seminar with all of us smashed together around one table-it was awesome,” she says. “But Homecoming was definitely more kid-friendly this year; it just gives more people more freedom to enjoy Homecoming.” Clockwise, from top left: Sandy Israel (A85), with Katie AND Jake. Everett Wilson (class of 1956) received the Alumni Association’s Award of Merit. Shown with Everett, (second from left) are his son DAUGHTER Elsie. Johnnie kids Anton, wife Mia, and enjoy picnic games. students perform for homecoming. 1986. Don Hitt (AGI06) raises his GRADUATES EVERYWHERE. {The Colleges:, John’s College ■ Winter 2007} Members Current of the class of glass on behalf of GI �36 Plato’s Republic Translation, glossary, and introductory essay by Joe Sachs. (Afterword “Imita­ tion,” by John White, class of 1964, Focus Publishing Company, 2006 BY Gabriel Pihas {A92), tutor Sometimes the original cannot be heard until a new translator comes along to liberate us from a habitual dependence on older translations. If we are not always reading in the original, it feels to us as if the author had to wait for the translator’s response in order to fully voice its appeal. The Republic is a case in point: most of us have become habituated to the fine 1968 translation by Alan Bloom, which, despite its many virtues, may have blocked up our ears to certain elements in the dialogue. Joe Sachs’ new translation of the Republic helps make it young and beautiful. Together with the translation come two pieces worth reading to anyone interested in the Republic. Mr. Sach’s introduction is written to be readable for first-time readers, but is full with insights into the text. John White has provided the after­ word, “Imitation,” a developed version of a truly excellent piece that appeared in the 1989-90 St. John’s Review double issue on the Republic (Vol. XXXIX, Nos. I and a). For those familiar with Mr. Sachs’ series of translations of Aristotle, his translation of Plato’s Republic, may come as a surprise. His translations of Aristotle are so helpful exactly insofar as they are distant from ordinary speech, and un­ Platonic in style. Phrases like “being-atwork-staying-itself’ or the somewhat menacing sounding “thinghood,” could never be taken straightforwardly in a Platonic dialogue. What is surprising in the new translation of the Republic is not that Mr. Sachs avoided such language, for how could he not? Rather, it is that his translation of the Republic so convinc­ ingly brings the real conversation of the original to life, without even a trace of the Aristotle translator we may have thought we had come to know. Although dialectic takes place in conversation, it aims at a pure vision of what is that is beyond speech. A conversa­ tion about a vision that goes beyond it, and that cannot be put into words, is neither a tragic loss of that vision, nor {Bibliofile} does it perfectly recollect it. Exactly because it is neither the one nor the other, it is quite similar to the translation of a Platonic dialogue. An ordinary conversation is difficult to translate because it takes place in a community, and hence an adequate translation would have to include an account of the inter­ locutors themselves. In order to include this, one would have to capture the nuances of their interactions, and so, presumably, a literal translation would not be an adequate one. But a Platonic dialogue, because it aims beyond words, is at the same time extremely translatable for someone attentive to who the speakers are and to where the conversation points. A good translator can at least point us in that direction by putting the reader inside the talk Socrates had with good-natured Glaucon and Adeimantus, wolfish Thrasymachus, Polemarchus and his hypocrite father Cephalus. Mr. Sachs has done an outstanding job of this. Where Mr. Bloom was sometimes old-fashioned in his language, this new translation tries to be much more conversational. Also, where Bloom never varies the translation of a term at the expense of the feel of a passage, Sachs will take liberties with a word for the sake of the passage. The result is an extremely readable Republic, which is at the same time, very accurate. Once one reads it, it comes as a surprise {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } ''[Sachs] genuinely encourages the reader to mull over multiple interpretations, and he gives the reader an even picture ofboth sides in the various debates. He alwayspushes the reader to decidefor him or herself by asking the dialogue (and not the commentator)for the last word. ” that we have had to wait such a long time for a translation like this. Of course, there will be disagreement about the translations that will largely be based around the commentaries of the translators. Those who see the Republic as mainly a work of political theory will find Bloom’s interpretive essay and notes more helpful, while those who are interested in the dramatic character of the dialogue will prefer Mr. Sachs’ introduction and notes. But there is something more important than either set of preoccupations. I have learned from both translations, but I would wish to point out that the humility with which Mr. Sachs makes his claims in his commentary is not just a question of politeness. He genuinely encourages the reader to mull over multiple interpre­ tations, and he gives the reader an even picture of both sides in the various debates. He always pushes the reader to decide for him or herself, by asking the dialogue (and not the commentator) for the last word. Leaving the reader open is more important for a translator of Plato than any set of preoccupations, since it lets the dialogues be just that, dialogues. Jfr �{Bibliofile} Too The Much for Our Own Good: Consumeritis Epidemic________ Harrison Sheppard (Class of 1961) and Alex Aris Aristotle and Alexander Press, 3006 BY Eva Brann (HA57), tutor affluence and its by-prod­ ucts, on the roots of Amer­ ican materialism, on the social, political, and economic costs of, and finally the cure for, consumeritis. The book ends with a set of graphs and tables. All the graphs go dramatically up or down: up for spending, personal and public; down for savings and voter participation. A final table displays remedies, among which self-awareness is number one (surely a Johnnie-mark: “Know Thyself’ is what we try for). There follow policy proposals that should raise debate, such as a consumption tax. Indeed, the whole book should cause reflection. I’ll give an example of my own: “Nothing in excess,” said the Temple at Delphi, and we should surely let Harrison Sheppard’s alarm at our excesses infect us. Yet here’s a question: Suppose we were morally and legally inhibited in our buying from and selling to one another-what other things might we then be doing to each other? It is a real question for me: Can people being able to get so freely what they want be such a bad thing? Harrison Sheppard and I were freshman together in seminar, back in 1957, he as student, I as tutor. St. John’s is mentioned at the beginning and the end of the book, and is silently there all the time. For a semi-explicit thesis is that we should be less addicted to buyable stuff and more involved in reading great books-and watching good movies. This is a readable, spirited, double-track work. On one track it is in the tradition of a type of popular “how-to” book, the “howto-save-our-souls” track. What we need to save ourselves from is a social ill, “consumeritis,” a termed coined on the model of “conjunctivitis” and the like. I’ll say a little in a moment of how the diagnostic signs of the illness are framed and what remedies are proposed here. The other track puts good movies, particularly some golden oldies of the thirties through fifties, in the service of remembering a more non-acquisitive ethos. To me that sweeter descant to a book dealing with a psychic corruption rings true; these movies overlooked much we Essential History: Jacques now deplore, but there was a good-heartedDerrida and the Development ness-call it innocence-and, within the OF Deconstruction_______________ framework of their times, a social rightby Joshua Kates (A80) mindedness about them that still makes Northwestern U. Press, 3005 them somehow salubrious. On the main track, we run across a lot of interesting and disconcerting information BY Thomas Scally, tutor about the “consumer At St. John’s College, our epidemic,” which is inquiry is driven by defined as buying in excess Joshua Kates thoughts, ideas, and ques­ of the satisfaction of our tions that are immortal needs. The introduction and transcend particular contains seven bold-face times and places. Our paragraphs that collect conversation becomes these unwanted intruders i Jacques Derrida deep rather than decora­ on consciousness, the I and the Development tive because we read our come-ons, imperatives, f of Deconstruction texts in a manner that and promises of adver­ frees them from mere tising, from “You Could temporal and historical Instantly Win” (ifyou’re determinations. However the one in three million) to noble and rewarding this “Bankruptcy Sale!” (ifyou maybe, we have, at don’t mind feeling slightly present, a curricular like a vulture). There problem that cannot be follow chapters on 1 Essential & History {The College- St. John ’5 College • Winter 200’^ } 37 resolved entirely apart fiom such determinations. A crass statement of this problem might be put thus: How do the great books in that lump of time called the last half of the 30th century converse with the books we have found to be speaking to each other across the preceding centuries? In his Essential History., Josh Kates shows us important ways in which such a clumsy question can be rethought and reformulated. Although I could rehearse the praises this work has received from professional philosophers and theorists, what I would like to highlight instead is the way it can enhance our understanding of what we do in our reading of texts at St. John’s. Let me start on the inside and work out. In chapter 7 of Speech and Phenomena Jacques Derrida writes: “Going through the First Investigation (Husserl’s), we must try to ascertain how far these concepts respect the relations between signs in general.. .and presence in general. When we say through Husserl’s text, we mean a reading that can be neither simple commentary nor simple interpretation.” Kates’ book shows us how Derrida goes through Husserl’s text by itself going through Derrida’s text. By “going through” both Kates and Derrida mean that what they each come to think is inex­ pressible and unthinkable without such a passage. At St. John’s, we may not readily formu­ late our own work in this way, but a little reflection will show that this “going through” is what we have always tried to do. Of many possible examples, an obvious one is how our going through Newton and Maxwell makes Einstein possible and thinkable. So we have in a sense gone through what makes the thought of the second half of the 3oth century possible. Kates’ reading of Derrida’s reading of Husserl shows us how to make such going through explicit and how to connect our own reading with other powerful readings of the same books. Kates’ Essential History is, not only a remarkable scholarly accomplishment, but also a significant contribution to the maturing of intellec­ tual life at St. John’s. �{AlumniProfile} 3^ Good Design Starts With Good Questions Architect David Schwarz (A’^2) BY Rosemary Harty n 1991, when Washington architect David Schwarz (A7a) was competing with larger, more established firms to design the Ballpark in Arlington, the stadium for the Texas Rangers, he approached the project from a sound business perspective. He analyzed the revenue streams a baseball team relies onfrom ticket sales to broadcasting rights-and ensured that his design maximized income potential. That was one winning approach, but Schwarz went deeper in seeking a design that would reflect the unarticulated visions of those building the park: he asked Rangers President Thomas Schieffer what color he associated with the sport of baseball. “When he answered ‘sepia,’ I knew that our building needed to be nostalgic,” Schwarz says. “For an architect, success is rooted in asking the right question. It’s very rare that a direct question will give you the information you need and want. If I had asked him if he thought of baseball as nostalgic, he would have said no.” Schwarz’s Washington-based firm had The desire for a rigorous education led already made its mark in Texas, with the David Schwarz to St. John’s. design of the Cook-Fort Worth Children’s Medical Center, and Sundance, a mixed-use project in Forth Worth. But landing the Ball­ park in Arlington (later rechristened says some of the fundamental principles Ameriquest Field), a $165 million project, instrumental in his success, such as the was a triumph. Schwarz beat out 16 other ability to formulate a penetrating question, firms. His architects worked nights and were developed at St. John’s College. weekends on a proposed design for the Schwarz as a child decided to pursue a competition, on top of the firm’s existing career in architecture. He enrolled in a work. “I told everyone they’d have great job program in St. Louis but quickly grew security if we won and no job security if we dissastified. “I got a 3.9 on a 4.0 scale lost,” Schwarz said. without going to half my classes or ever But Schwarz did win, by proposing a cracking a book. I decided if I truly wanted design with arched arcades, red brick and pink Texas granite, and a pedestrian-friendly to be educated, I would have to go some­ where where I really had no choice, and site plan that made the stadium seem more that’s the nice thing about the Program at hke an urban center than a suburban desti­ St. John’s: you really do have no choice.” nation surrounded by a vast parking lot. Schwarz is frank in his assessment of Today, Schwarz directs a 40-person firm in St. John’s, to which he admits something of a Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth that has love-hate relationship. He did gain a valu­ carved out an international reputation, able education at the college, but was winning scores of awards for its work. He studied in one of the finest graduate rankled by what he describes as the “holierthan-thou” attitude of some tutors. He programs in the country, Yale University, where Vincent Scully was one of his mentors. butted heads with President Richard Weigle (HA49), whose support for LBJ during the While he owes a great deal to Yale, Schwarz I {The College • St. John’s College ■ Winter 200^ } Vietnam War infuriated some students, Schwarz among them. He also believes he was too much of an independent thinker for some aspects of the college, and he sometimes went out of his way to make fun of the Program. He wrote a sophomore paper he titled “The Unification of the God Concept in Plato, Aristotle, St. Anselm, and Aquinas” in which he main­ tained that the concept was the same for all. “It was obviously ludicrous, but my reasoning was impeccable,” Schwarz recalls. “My view was that you can use much of what St. John’s does in ways that are heretical or sophistic.” When his proposed senior essay on the Laocoon was rejected (“because art wasn’t something you could talk about because there was no truth in it,” he says he was told), Schwarz was hvid. He wrote instead on Jonathan Swift, borrowing his title from a Nietzsche quote: “Behold the asses who are bold and most beautiful.” “It was a very articulate work making fun of St. John’s. I don’t think the college quite knew what to do with my senior thesis.” In spite of his mixed views, Schwarz values his education and recommends St. John’s to anyone, as long as they plan to go to grad­ uate school. “It is wonderful training for the mind,” says Schwarz. “It gives you three things, and only three things: it teaches how to think, how to read, and how to speak. If you’re lucky, it will also teach you how to write, but you have no choice in those other things-you have to learn to express yourself in a clear manner.” At St. John’s Schwarz developed an approach to problem solving that could have helped him in any career. “The tools I learned at St. John’s are very applicable to my architecture practice and very applicable to what I do as a businessman,” he says. “I think the other thing that St. John’s teaches subliminally, but not intentionally, is to recognize the biases of other individualsvery important to being an architect.” Asking insightful questions helps him design buildings that suit the owners’ needs-even when they can’t teU him what they are. “For example, in designing a house for a married couple, an obvious question is: ‘Do you like brushing your teeth with your �{AlumniProfile} spouse or not?’ It’s an extremely important question because it tells you a lot about their relationship. They’re perfectly happy to answer that question, but they’re not happy to answer all the things that question imphes. Getting to a client’s personal truth in architecture is trying to understand people’s actual hopes and goals, aspirations and desires. There are overarching princi­ ples that form everyone’s views of them­ selves and those are really what you have to design to.” Beyond designing beautiful houses that contribute to marital harmony, an architect has an opportunity to contribute to how people live, making communities more vibrant, and, ideally, conserving resources. “If our society wants people to give up their cars, for example, it needs to give people places worth walking to and walking in,” says Schwarz. That’s the principle behind projects such as Frisco Square, north of Dallas, which will be one of the largest mixed-use developments in the country, mixing retail/restaurant space, offices, residences, and public offices, including a library and city haU. “Our view is that you don’t change the world by trying to change human behavior, you change the world by understanding human behavior and causing human behavior to work in a way that’s better for the world,” says Schwarz. “The kinds of communities we’re trying to create are extraordinarily successful but they take longer, they require more thought and more work, and some developers just aren’t going to do it.” Schwarz is on the naional council of the World Wildlife Fund, and he’s disturbed by the way Americans use up resources such as farmland without careful thought. That’s one reason he’s eager to do redevelopment projects. One of his firm’s current commis­ sions is a major redevelopment project in Houston, a mixed-used development near the city’s center. “We’re very interested in how you take existing places and make them more viable in a changing world. We want to create places where people are comfortable, but the goal is to force people to intermix in a way 39 that does’t seem forced. When [President] George W. Bush was our client for the Ballpark in Arlington, one of the things he said that has really stuck with me is that baseball is one of the few things that the chairman of the board and the person on the assembly line can talk about together. And he’s right-in most of the work we do there is something that works that way, a great equalizer. It causes greater commonality.” The diversity of the work his firm takes on-from concert halls and hotels to luxurious private homes and offices-is driven in part by Schwarz’s personality. He hates to be bored or trapped in a niche. “One of the things that has probably been most important to my practice came right out of St. John’s, and that is the belief that an educated man can think anything. The philosophy of this firm is that a good designer can design anything,” he says. “We’re constantly looking at the things that cause us to have new ideas and to think differently, readjust our world view.” When he won the commission for the children’s hospital in Fort Worth in 1985, Schwarz knew he wanted to design some­ thing that would elevate the spirits of sick children and their families, without resorting to bright colors and cartoon figures . The hospital’s most striking feature is its majestic central atrium. “It gives patients, we hope, a larger view than spending their whole lives in the hospital,” he says. “It really does function as the public space of a small town.” The hospital remains the project of which he is most proud. “There isn’t a time when I go to Fort Worth when someone doesn’t come up and thank me,” he says. “It is an extremely humane kind of place to have a sick child and it’s very comforting to parents to be there. It’s done a huge amount to change the experience of tragedy in parents’ lives.” Keeping the firm small, while accepting many commissions, means Schwarz has little time to pursue his passions outside of work. He enjoys gourmet cooking and loves to read and listen to music. But everything is subject to the demands on his time. “I have a very hard time saying no to great opportunities,” he admits. * David Schwarz’s design for the Cook Children’s Medical Center sought to raise the spirits of sick children and THEIR FAMILIES. A SEVEN-STORY CENTRAL ATRIUM EMPLOYS A MIRRORED CURTAINWALL TO EMPHASIZE SPACE AND LIGHT. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{Alumni Notes} 1942 1948 1965 Ernest Heinmuller reports: George R. Trim hi e, Jr. Bart Lee Kaplan became a “After TOO weeks of study I have been ‘commissioned’ as a St. Stephen’s minister for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Easton, Md.” proudly announces the birth of his third great-grandson, Aiden Gabrieli Dodge, born on August 26, aoo6. grandfather for the first time on December 8, 2007. Grand­ daughter Kathryn Rose Jirousek was born in Cleveland to daughter Molly and son-in-law Bill Jirousek. 1946 “I will retire from the remunera­ tive practice of law at the end of this year,” says Peter Weiss, “and devote the rest of my days to quixotic efforts to abolish war, rid the world of nuclear weapons, and get social and economic rights taken seriously.” 1956 Joe Wase describes himself as “an attorney married to an attorney. In my dotage, at the age of 73,1 am struggling to learn to play the guitar and banjo.” 1959 1966 1969 In January 2007, Peggy Escher (A) was awarded a PhD in Comparative Literature from New York University. In August, she defended her dissertation on “Configurations of Trickery in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, Masuccio’s II Novellino, and Shakespeare’s OiheUo". Judy (Millspaugh) Anderson (A) reports: “1 survived radia­ tion, chemotherapy, and a major surgical rearrangement of my innards, and am doing really well.” Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A) marvels at the minds of her classmates as she surfs the Web: Patience (Pat) Schenck “Mel Kline (A) e-mailed that writes: “The class of 1959 is he’d been in contact with looking forward to our 50th in Pheme Perkins (A) at one 2009. Please plan to attend. point. . .got me thinking. . .Mel’s Register online, and send your a well-known Jewish scholar e-mail address to Pat Schenck at (www.chaver.com/), Pheme pscenck@toadmail.com” is a well-known Catholic Biblical scholar (www.bc.edu/ schools/cas/theology/faculty/ pperkins/), and William McKeachie (A) is The Very Reverend, Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul in Charleston ee Fischler (SF68) writes: “Jean K. Fitzsimon (A73) and I moved to Philadelphia after Jean was (www.stlukeandstpaul.org/ appointed a federal judge. The investiture was very content/view/16/35/). What moving. Under the great seal of the United States, can that mean? Was there some­ in a WPA 1930s, all cherry-wood courtroom with thing in the water? And of 30-foot ceilings, attorneys from all over the country course we have our share of lauded Jean’s accomplishments. Attending the event as representa ­ minds, including famous legal tives of the college were Barbara Gdyette (A73) and Jeff Bishop Larry Silverman (A) and (HA96). Other St. Johnnies appeared as well including Larry Peggy Winter (A), and doubt­ Feinberg (class of 1964), Harvey Goldstein (class of 1959), less many others. And a brain Mary Bittner-Wiseman (class of 1958), Paul Heylman (A74) and surgeon. Really. It’s amazing Roger Greene (A73). Jean and I both are having trouble adjusting what Google can find. Even to having a permanent home after years on the corporate trail. (maybe) Ethan Pavlo (A) I, who was born and grew up in Philadelphia and vowed after I left ( www.sinehead.com/ never to return, am reflecting on predestination and free will ‘in alhyg.html). Internet vivat.” wandering mazes lost’ about the peculiarities of my fate. I really thought I had had my last Philly cheesesteak in 1970. And lemon pie Tastykakes? Fuggeddabout it.” Of Free Will and Cheesesteaks L {The College - St. John’s College • Winter zoo'^ } 1971 Barbara Sherman Simpson (A) is a veterinary behaviorist. She is clinical associate professor at the North Carolina State University, College of Veterinary Medicine, and president-elect of the American College of Veterinary Behavior­ ists. She fives in Southern Pines, N.C., with her 15-year-old daughter Diana, three horses, and one dog. David Gleicher (SF), a professor at Adelphi University, recently published a book. Rescue ofthe Third Class on the Titanic. 1972 Kevin Snapp (SF) writes: “My fife has been adrift following an unexpected divorce and the resulting loss of my job. Although I still need a job, there is fight in the darkness, coming, appropriately (with a twist) from the Gospel of John. After a chance incident led me to revisit the prologue, I discovered that John’s narratives conceal an esoteric, highly heterodox �{Alumni Notes} Seven Deadly Sins 1979 OANNE Charbonneau (SF72) sends news from Montana: Carol Colatrella (A) was “I’ve recently taken early retirement from academia and awarded a Fulbright New live happily in the Bitterroot Valley with my husband, Century Scholars grant in Richard Rice. I spent many years in English departments fall 2005. In 2006 she and (from Freshman English director to chair) but found my her family enjoyed three months niche in hberal studies and humanities programs. I coordi­ in Denmark as part of her nated the Arts and Humanities core curriculum program for her Fulbright for four years at James Madison University and recently finished research a two-volume study guide for Prentice-Hall’s new text Exploring project on the university in the Humanities. This past summer I spent five weeks in Cambridge, age of globalization. England, as a participant in the NEH summer program on the Seven Deadly Sins. I’m going to try my hand at distance learning Marilyn L. Schaefer (SFGI) is while continuing research on Middle English romances.” 4" enjoying her retirement from teaching at the City University of New York. She spends a lot of account of who Jesus really was. Her responsibilities include time reading, enjoying the It makes sense of a number of overseeing the foundation’s pleasures of New York and an things in the other Gospels and support for public radio and occasional St. John’s alumni is specifically corroborated by independently-produced event. “I love the St. John’s similar clues in Luke. It is documentary film and video, magazine and read every word,” strange that I should be the first designing and implementing she reports. “In the summers, to see these things, which only special initiatives, making I sometimes go to France or to require some Jewish back­ grants in response to special the University of Chicago’s ground and careful reading to opportunities, and imple­ alumni program in Oxford. I’d pick up, but apparently I am. menting the foundation’s love to hear from other alumni.” I am grateful to tutor Bob program of large institutional Sacks (class of T954) who intro­ grants. duced me to the concept of esoteric writing and techniques of careful reading to uncover it. Whether or not this account of Professional adventurer Peter Jesus is true, it puts John, Herman Grubb (A) has been first-century Christianity, and R. Spencer Porter (SF) has married 22 years to the lovely the writing of the Gospels in an embarked on a new endeavor. “I Betsy Bowen, with two kids, ages entirely new light. I have have a 7-year-old daughter in the 12 and 15. “Our newest adven­ considerable work ahead of me second grade and am training to ture is the hrst-ever Galapagos to put these findings in context be a Jungian psychotherapist.” Islands sea kayaking trip with and present them persuasively. camping on beaches. Read about Does anyone know of a source it at www.rowinternational.com of funding for someone who or see the January 8, 2006 neither has a doctorate nor is feature story in the New York pursuing one?” Times travel section. Our Idaho log cabin resort is doing as well After four years of teaching in a as our whitewater rafting trips.” Cincinnati public high school, J 1980 41 give, as generously as they can, to the Ralph Swentzell Memo­ rial Fund. He touched so many of our lives so deeply, it’s the least we can do.” 1983 From Jack Armstrong (SF): “Greetings from West Chester, Pennsyltucky (as Bob used to call it). All is well, kids growing, nobody sick. Michael is a senior now, and applying to college. His primary concern is choosing a school with a rowing team. Emily is nine and very interested in dragons and the electric guitar. Carmen and I are doing Othello and The Taming ofthe Shrew in the spring at the Shakespeare Festival, come see if you can. Peace.” Desiree Zamorano’s (SF) short story “Mercy” was recently published in the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine. West. 1977 1978 1973 Last September, Elspeth Revere (A) was promoted to Vice President, General Program, at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Michael Berger (A) is now teaching composition and coordinating writing across the curriculum at The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Cincinnati. 1982 C. Randal (Randy) Linder (SF) writes: “I would like to challenge all of my classmates to {The College. 5f. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } 1985 Norman Ewart (A) joined Rosetta Resources Inc. as associate general counsel. Rosetta Resources is engaged in the exploration and production of natural gas. Norman also has been: studying and making sculptures at the Glassell School for Art, attending his son Thomas’ baseball games, encouraging Thomas’ guitar playing and artistic talents, dancing, traveling the world, and working out rvith his wife, Charlotte, general counsel of ICO Polymers Inc. Alumni interested in the arts or life in continued onp. 43 �4^ {AlumniProfile} Conservative Contrarian Steve Bohlin (SF8i) BY Patricia Dempsey able assets-landfills. I asked myself: ” hen faced with a how many new landfills are going to tough invest­ open up?” ment decision, Bohlin made the choice to invest. His Steve Bohlin clients hated this decision, but it turned (SF8i) heads for out to be a shrewd one. “I think the the Rio Grande basis of my success is that I have not and Rio Chama to go fly fishing. been wrong very often,” he says. “You “I study the water all around me and cannot be too cocky, but you have to be focus,” he says. “It’s like meditation. decisive. Either way you are relying on I empty the mind and think only of one thing: Am I dumber or smarter than the your own judgment. The rules are constantly changing.” fish?” Bohlin brings this single-minded The insights gained at St. John’s help focus back to the office where, as a port­ folio manager and managing director guide Bohlin today. “One of my epipha­ for Thornburg Investment Management nies at St. John’s came from the opening question for a Leibniz reading. in Santa Fe, he is responsible for managing billions of dollars for institu­ Tutor Paul Mannick asked ‘What’s at tional clients. stake?’ At first the question seemed as A FLY FISHING investor: Steve Bohlin, with his wife, inane as the reading about monads, but “There are parallels between fly Rachel O’Keefe (SF8i), and daughter Audrey. fishing and the investment work that I the point of the question is essential for do, one of which is this ability to focus,” all the works we read. There are truths Bohlin explains. “With fly fishing you in these books, but they may not jump take a little piece of yarn and maybe a out and bite you at first look. It is very with less risk in the market whether the steel rod and you act like a bug on a river. important-in philosophy, in life-to deter­ interest rates are up or down. “The It takes enormous concentration, minding mine what’s at stake.” economy is on a knife’s edge: Is it strong, is the line.” Bohlin, who considered pursuing it weak? Everything is overpriced so there is mathematics or law after graduating from As a portfolio manager, Bohlin regularly very little value in the marketplace,” says questions whether he is “dumber or St. John’s, cultivated his business acumen as Bohlin. “I do not know where the interest smarter” than the prevailing economic a matter of survival growing up outside rates are going-no one does. Seventy predictions. “There are no right answers in Chicago. He worked a graveyard shift in a percent of economists are wrong all the time this business,” says Bohlin, who reads factory that made decals for products like with their predictions, so you look for a hundreds of pages of economic data, Buster Brown Shoes and Corning Ware. strategy that works anyway.” research, and legal documents every day as He discovered St. John’s when he took his Bohlin questions accepted assumptions he manages portfolios for funds such as sister Denise (SF81) to visit the college. “I about the market and searches out less Thornburg’s Limited Term Income Fund. was hooked when I found St. John’s. Every desirable companies that investors often To safeguard his investment decisions, bit of it-the readings, the discussions as overlook. “I am a contrarian in the aspect Bohlin, a self-professed “conservative opposed to being lectured-seemed like the that I like to find those companies that are contrarian,” says he believes in the return of best thing since sliced bread,” he says. beaten up by the marketplace and find out principal first, then a return on principal. At St. John’s Bohlin met his wife, Rachel why,” he says. “It might be a whim, there He uses a philosophy for bond investments O’Keefe (SF81); the couple now has a might be a good reason as to why. The called fixed-income laddering. Laddering, daughter, Audrey, age 4. market is not always right. The data is not which allows Bohlin to build a portfolio of One of Rohlin’s jobs after graduating always right.” Bohlin allows three to five bonds with staggered maturities, demands from St. John’s was as a “paralegal of sorts” years minimum to study a company to see if the same careful observation and patience for one of his tutors, Tom Simpson, who was it shows signs that it will turn around and as fly fishing. For example, Bohlin might involved with a large anti-trust lawsuit. Two grow. “In 1998 for example, waste manage­ spread the maturities over a lo-year period, months later, the lawsuit was settled and ment companies were beaten down. This with the average maturity being five years; Bohlin, out of a job, gave Garrett Thornburg one company had done a merger but they when each bond matures he strategically a call. Thornburg initially hired Bohlin to had wreaked havoc with their accounting reinvests the profits into bonds with higher analyze private placement investments and systems. They had $8 billion in debt. yields. This conservative, cantilevered reams of legal documents. “I enjoyed it and However, they had $74 billion in irreplace­ approach allows him to participate well and it surprised me. I barely knew what a stock W {The Colleges:. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �{Alumni Notes} continued the Houston area would be well- advised to contact Norman or fellow alumnus Dimitri Seletzky (A92), who is senior counsel at Chevron. Contact information: norman.ewart @rosettaresources.com, 713-335-4041. David Kidd (A) is alive and well and living in Baltimore. You can visit him online at www.kiddstudios.com or in person “like the good old days.” Sally Shaw (A) is working for peace and clean, renewable energy every day. “No nukes,” she writes. Silitch, UIAGM Mountain and Ski Guide, 370 Chemin de la Deviaz; 74400 Chamonix, France, tel. +33 6 89 48 4118, michael @high-alpine. com, www.high-alpine.com.” 1987 Paul Anderson (A) finished his PhD in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University in June 3006. He currently works as an academic adviser in The College at the University of Chicago. Michael Silitch (SF) lives in Chamonix, France, with his wife, Nina (Dartmouth ’90), and their two sons, Birken-3 in January 3007, and Anders-2 in February 3007. “I work as a mountain and ski guide here. My wife recently stopped teaching with the arrival of Anders. Chamonix is a great place to come climb, hike, ski, and cycle. Contact me: Michael Dr. Kim Paefenroth (A) is associate professor of Religious Studies at Iona College in New York: “My new book is Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions ofHell on Earth (Baylor University Press, 3006), in which I show how Romero’s zombie movies use images from Dante’s Inferno, as well as his own ruminations on the excesses of modern American culture, to create new visions of evil and damnation.” 1989 Aaron Rosenbaum (A) writes: 1988 1986 43 John F. Gibson (SF) writes: “Smita and I have a little girl: Uma Patricia Lahiri Gibson, born May 7, 3006. She’s absolutely adorable. See www.cns.gatetech.ed/gibson/ photos. I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Science at Georgia Tech, working on turbulence, dynamical systems, and chaos.” or bond was when I was at St. John’s, and I didn’t know anything about mutual funds. But I developed a confidence at St. John’s that I can learn and research anything.” He was especially influenced by tutor Bob Neidorf. “He taught me that the St. John’s experience is not about knowing things, but about the pursuit of knowledge,” says Bohlin. “Learning how to learn from every experience has held me in good stead all my adult life. I believe I finally ‘got’ that lesson from him.” Since he joined Thornburg Investment Management in 1984, the company has grown from five employees to 135. Bohlin is also an equity holder in a second company. “My daughter just started kindergarten, my son turned three, and my wife, Jessica, is expecting our third in January. My audio visual contracting business is now three years old. We just finished the second THX-certified screening room in a residence in the world (George Lucas has the first) and won an award for the best residential system design for 3006 at our industry’s big conference. Any Johnnies looking for a job in AV? Or just passing through the Bay Area? E-mail me: arosenbaum@al.net.” 1990 “Greetings and best wishes to all former classmates, tutors, and acquaintances from Annapolis,” writes Andrew Ghiz (A). “My wife, Christi, and I have been in Houston since September 3000. We are happy to report that our son Nicholas was born February 17, 3006.1 can be reached by e-mail at ahghiz@yahoo.com.” 1991 Andrew M. Schwartz (A) works in Philadelphia as a member of a regional defense litigation firm called Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman, and Goggin. In December he was named a shareholder of the firm by the president and CEO. continued on p. 45 Thornburg Mortgage Corporation, a mort­ gage real estate investment trust. When judging his own performance over the course of his career, Bohlin considers not only a successful track record but also the integrity he brings to his job. “There is a deteriorating financial trend, particularly in the area of trust, with all the corporate scandals,” he says. “The confidence in corporate America and in financial managers has been rocked by these. I sign a document, it says, ‘I am fiduciary for this company’ so I cheer when I see corporate wrongdoers brought down.” In spite of recent financial management scandals in corporate America, Bohlin is {The C o l l e g e ■ St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } optimistic about the future. “Yes there has been an erosion in financial confidence but this is still the most viable capital market in the world. But one cannot be too cocky. Like the fish, the economic data keeps me questioning.” Bohlin has another reason to be opti­ mistic: he is retiring. “I have been approached by some not-for-profit boards and will probably join one or two of them and I will continue my work on the over­ sight committee of the New Mexico State Treasurer’s office.” Bohlin also plans to spend more time with his family-and fly fishing on the Rio Grande. �44 {Alumni Profile} Answering a Cali. Martha Black Jordan (SFGI86) BY Rosemary Harty inging in the choir of for part of the year, and Martha Christ Church enrolled in the Graduate Institute. Anglican Episcopal in Her first segment in the GI was Mexico City helped Philosophy and Theology, in which nurture the Reverend she studied the Bible and other Martha Black Jordan’s works and discussed her ideas call to the priesthood. “It was with others. “It was a heady more of a process, over many years, experience,” she recalls, and one rather than something that came she savored, “especially in the on suddenly,” Martha (SFGI86) seminar (led by Mr. Darkey and says of her vocation. “Music is an Mrs. Knight) when we almost unmediated thing. Hearing, and proved the existence of God.” singing, those heautiful words Martha has expressed her every week, as a member of the gratitude to St. John’s in several choir, opens you up to God.” ways: she has served as a member Martha committed herself to a of the college’s Board of Visitors long but fulfilling journey when and Governors since 2003. And in she decided to pursue ordination in July aoo6, she and her husband, the Episcopal Church of Mexico. Purdy, made a generous gift to the She enrolled in a graduate pastoral ongoing capital campaign to estab­ theology program at St. Mary-oflish a tutorship in their name. the-Woods College in Indiana, Purdy’s encouragement and traveling to the campus four times support were instrumental in a year for residencies lasting from Martha’s decision to enroll in the three to seven days. Between GI, 35 years after graduating from sessions, she studied, wrote Sweet Briar College, and to later papers, and corresponded with her study for the priesthood. Both professors by e-mail. In addition to Jordans grew up in Mexico her assigned courses, she read (Martha was born there), and they other works of theology and philos­ met at a party one summer after ophy to prepare for her canonical college. “He thinks I can do exams. Last winter in Mexico City, anything,” Martha says of her she sat through three days of husband, who owns a Coca-Cola rigorous examinations, and having bottling franchise in Mexico. passed them, was ordained to the Reading great literature and deaconate in the spring. writing have been lifelong passions On November i8, Martha was for Martha. In Mexico City, she ordained a priest at Christ Church, Martha Jordan (SFGI86) says all her past pursuits were joined six other women to form a ALWAYS LEADING HER TO SERVE HER CHURCH. the same church in which she was group called Tramontane, baptized and where she married “beyond the mountain,” which her husband, Purdy. Family and initially offered a forum for friends from all parts attended the sharing and critiquing each others’ “My granddaughter Cecilia, who is ii, ceremony. When her bishop, the Most personal writing. “We decided that we Reverend Carlos Touche-Porter, Primate of was the crucifer at the head of the proces­ wanted to do something to make Spanish sion,” Martha says. “And the three grand­ Mexico, finished reading the Prayer of language poets better known in the United sons were there, in various stages of Consecration, the Rev. Martha Black States,” she explained. The group trans­ somnolence.” Jordan became, at 74, the oldest woman lated a collection of Mexican poetry with St. John’s deserves much credit for ordained to the priesthood in Latin the poems printed in English and Spanish fostering her natural spirit of inquiry and America. “Eve either ruined my old age,” entitled Ruido de Suenos (Noise of she quips, “or I’ve begun what I was always preparing her for the disciplined and Dreams). It was published in 1994 with meant to do.” lengthy study required for ordination, great success. Martha is also the author of Martha says. The Jordans live in Santa Fe S {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter zoo^ } �{Alumni Notes} 1992 Patricia Dougherty (A) offers this “aoo6 Review in Haiku:” One dress code, whose socks? Grammy’s condo yields date night Dear dog departed live in Watertown, Mass. Valerie can he contacted at vsd_str@yahoo.com. Francie Roberts (A) is going abroad to continue her graduate studies: “I finished my MA and 45 all the coursework for my PhD in Medieval Studies here at the Catholic University of America in D.C. and have now received a fellowship to go the Catholic University of Leuven (about la kilometers from Brussels) where Where Have You Been? Aaron Garza (SF) just finished a semester of law school at the University of Utah. Christopher Hadley, S.J. (A) writes: “I am in Cambridge, Mass., now, starting the MDiv program at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, I will be here and maybe at Boston College soon, for a few years. New England Johnnies and anyone else too, feel free to drop me a line, chrishadleysj @yahoo. com ” All 3975 MEMBERS OF THE BURGEONING AlUMNI OnLINE COMMUNITY HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU. NEARLY HALF THE COLLEGE’S ALUMNI HAVE REGISTERED WITH THE SITE. DURING A MONTH’S TIME, THE SITE HAS MORE THAN 8,000 LOG-INS FROM THE COLLEGE’S FAR-FLUNG ALUMNI. 1993 Valerie Duee-Strautmann (SF) and her husband, Jake Strautmann welcomed their daughter Northanna Mildred Strautmann on August 8. They The NUMBERS GROW DAILY. Job hunting? Check out the latest postings to the job bank. Jobs from all over the You nation are listed. can post your opening here too. Hiring a fellow Johnnie? The site hosts 70 networking GROUPS covering A vast RANGE OF PROFESSIONS. PoST TO YOUR OWN GROUP OR EXPLORE ANOTHER IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING A CAREER CHANGE. Find a long-lost classmate or hook up with your local alumni CHAPTER. So PULL UP A CHAIR AND CATCH UP WITH YOUR CLASSMATES. They’re waiting for you. Visit the college Web site at WWW.STJOHNSCOLLEGE.EDU; CLICK ON AlUMNI. two books of bilingual poetry, Manos en Agua/Hands in Water and Espacio entre Palabras/Spaces Between Words. A few years later, Martha turned her attention to a seed planted back in her days at St. John’s: her deep interest in serving the church. “It all seemed so inevitable,” she says. “Even from the beginning, almost every choice I made, whether consciously or not, was leading to this state of serenity and fulfillment. And happiness! ” As an unpaid member of the church staff, Martha preaches at least once a month, provides pastoral care and counseling to members of the church community, and officiates at services. “There is one rector and two women priests, so we take turns preaching and conducting the services,” she said. She conducts study groups on theolog­ ical topics and is helping the church build its membership by reaching out to the community. “One of the things we’re trying to do is make the Anglican Church accessible to Spanish-speaking people who have left the Roman Catholic Church for one reason or another, or who are looking for a church home. We’re not trying to convert anyone, but we are accessible to those who are looking for a community that is a via media between Rome and GenevaCatholic and Protestant.” Martha will continue with her studies; she has two more courses to complete and {The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } I have been rather generously funded as part of a project on “Concepts and Concept Formation from 1350-1350.” 1 leave in January and will be in Belgium for four years, where 1 will earn my keep by writing a dissertation on the development of late medieval doctrines of mental language. This means at the end I will wind up with “Leuven” on my diploma, rather than “America.” It also means there’s a space on my floor for anyone who wants a place to sleep in Belgium. My e-mail is suavoluntade@yahoo,com and I’ll post my new address on the alumni website once I have one. If you’re in Europe (and even if not), feel free to send me a note.” 1994 Marilyn Medlock Roper (AGI) and her husband, Dan, have moved into their newly built house at Hilton Head, S.C. After three moves in two years while tearing down one house and building another on the same lot, they’re ready to stay put for a while and hear from friends in Annapolis and all over. two major papers to write to fulfill the requirements for her master’s degree in theology from St. Mary’s. She juggles her academic writing with preparing her Sunday sermons, sometimes struggling with deadlines and writer’s block. “I am resigned to living in a state of terminal Paper Anxiety-now Sermon Anxiety,” she says, “always an assignment pending.” And she adds, “In the end, if it is a good sermon, or paper, God is present.” �{Alumni Notes} 46 They can be reached by mail at 13 Marsh Wren Rd., Hilton Head Island, SC aggaS, or by telephone (843) 4ag-i6ag. grandchildren across the country and now the globe, Janie and George are challenged to keep up with them. Janie (Bosworth) Bingham (SFGI) is stepping down as Chair of the Board of the Santa Fe Conservation Trnst. She has also served as the SFCT Executive Director. Janie will continue as an active member of the SFCT board. Janie and her husband, George (Kramer) Bingham (SF66) spent several weeks during the fall in Italy, principally Rome, where Janie’s daughter and family are enjoying a well-earned sabbat­ ical year. In early October, George’s daughter Tanmaya married her Aussie lawyer beau; they are living in Canberra, with plans to move to Melbourne. With five children and eight 1995 In May 2006, Rosemary Ingham (AGI) received the United States Institute of Tech­ nology award for Distinguished Achievement in Costume Design aoo6. A move for Mike Layne (SF) and family: “I finally moved the family out of Alaska this past November. I am the new grant administrator for the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians in Highland, Calif. We are moving into a home in Redlands, which is about one In the Aloha Spirit mile from the University of Redlands campus. I’m still married (eight years as of June 2007). Audrey Rae will turn five in February 2007, and Thaddeus Jackson will be two in March 2007. My new e-mail is: mlayne@sanmanuel-nsn.gov. I miss Alaska, but the weather down here is much warmer. And we are now much closer to family and friends. Tell Dan Myers (SFg3) I said HOOT! He was in Italy when I moved, and I’m dying to know the details of his trip.” 1996 Loreen (Lori) Keller (AGI) is in her second semester of teaching at McHenry County College in Northwest Illinois. She teaches Introduction to Philosophy and owes all her inspiration and motivation to the great days she spent at the GI. loha! From MaryIrene Corrigan Ruffin (A04): “The last two and a half years have been a total Having defended her disserta­ whirlwind! On January i, 2005,1 married Devin tion in philosophy at Penn State Corrigan (USNA 2003) and moved to Pensacola, University, Kirsten Jacobson Fla., to join him while he went through flight (SF) is now an assistant school. In March of 2005, we moved to Corpus professor Christi, Texas, and in the following August, Devin got winged asof philosophy at the University of Maine. a Naval Aviator in Fixed-Wing Aircraft. Last September, we moved to Jacksonville, Fla., where he learned to fly the P-3 Orion. Recently, we have finally settled into our first actual duty station: Kaneohe, Hawaii! Jacob Curtis (SF) and Dayna There aren’t any words to describe how beautiful the Sims Curtis (SFg8) would like islands are and how awesome it to announce the birth of their is to get a chance to live in baby girl, Clio, born August 8. Hawaii, but I do miss simple “She is our precious muse! We things like Maryland crabs, EST, enjoy reading about what and seasons. But, the experience everyone is up to, so say more.” is worth it, and there is still much exploring to do! Through all the moves, I have had the luxury of sampling a variety of jobs. I’ve been a bartender, receptionist, an associate at a dog park, and most recently, have found my niche as a Customer Service Repre­ sentative for Marine Corps Community Services, which definitely allows me to use all devices of sophistry I can muster.” 4" A 1997 {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } 1999 Patrick B. Reed (AGI) and his family are living in Bithus, Germany, where his wife, Jana, is serving with the Air Force. They have enjoyed traveling and teaching German to their oneyear-old year old, Lucy. 200^ Sarah Seitz (SF) is pursuing her interest in green building. She was recently at work on a passive-solar design tire house near Bancroft, Ontario (about four hours from Toronto and Ottawa by car). “The house will be approximately 500 square­ feet and I expect it will take at least the next six weekends to get it built and closed in. If anyone is interested in learning more about this building tech­ nique and participating in the construction, feel free to send me a message.” Her contact information can be found on the alumni online directory. After living and working in Washington, D.C., and Boston, Emma Wells (SF) has relocated and is in her first year of law school at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz. “Law school has been a completely new experience for me and while I am used to receiving large reading assign­ ments, it was the first time I had to take long and stressful final exams. I would love to hear from old friends, Johnnies in the Tucson/Phoenix area and any others who have any advice for surviving law school sanely. Please feel free to contact me at ewells@email.arizona.edu” �{Alumni Profile} 47 A Champion of Justice on Ferrier (A73) credits St. John’s for posing a question that has formed the shape of his entire life. What isjustice? “I rememher being blown away by my seminar on the Nicomachean Ethics. At St. John’s we spent a lot of time talking about justice, and now I work in a busi­ ness where that’s what we peddle, but you don’t hear people asking what it is.. .1 was tainted into thinking about the nature of justice a lot.” As a Circuit Court Referee in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ferrier takes his passion from the theoret­ Jon Ferrier (A73) was honored as “champion of the ical to the practical as he strives to underdog” by the Michigan Bar Association. uphold justice as best he can. He hears the family cases of the circuit court, sorting through cases of of people-rich, poor, smart, dumb-you divorce, juvenile delinquency, and hope that the judge has some standard of domestic violence daily. As a referee, he justice and doesn’t just cater to some. St. hears and judges cases, but his decisions John’s is where I began to understand that are subject to the revision of a judge if an justice is the never-ending pursuit of appeal is made. “I’ve worked with all strata itself.” J 2003 “I am very excited to have advanced to candidacy this December,” writes Natasha Vermaak (SF), from California. “Now to walk the path I have defined.” Robert Morris (A) is in Afghanistan. “I am leading an unmanned aerial vehicle platoon that flies pilot-less reconnaissance drones,” he writes. “I am very excited about going. I think being away will be the worst part of the whole deployment.” After almost 30 years in the legal profession, Ferrier’s conscientious approach to his job has earned him the recognition of the State Bar of Michigan, which named him a “Champion of Justice” in September 2006. The “Champion of Justice Award” is given to practicing lawyers and judges with exceptional integrity and compe­ tence, whose extraordinary professional accomplishment benefits the community. “This career-capping honor was a truly humbling experience and at the same time, the proudest moment since I started practicing law” Ferrier says. At the awards cere­ mony, Ferrier traced his career path back to his childhood fascina­ tion with Raymond Burr’s portrayal of Perry Mason on TV, as well as his experience at St. John’s, where, he says, “I got the equipment to turn myself into the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be: a free human being.” —Emily DeBusk (Ao6) In December, Greg Green (SF) married Anne Deger, soon to be a Johnnie herself. Greg is the evening and weekend supervisor at the Meem Library. What’s Up? 3006 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 3004 Rebekah Coleman and Patrick Evans (both A) were married on October 2r, 2006. Rebekah is in the neuroscience PhD program at George Mason University. 3005 Charles Claunch (SFGI) began the MA program in pohtics at the University of Dallas in August 2006. “I’m happy to discuss the program with anyone interested in studying in the UD pohtics department.” Classmates can contact him at cclaunch@ alumni. stj ohnscollege. edu. NIC Zakheim (A), soon to be will be published in May; dead­ Nic Strahl (as she is changing her name), has taken the posi­ tion of Circulation Coordinator (a wonderful title that does not actually describe what she does, she tells The College} at Scientijic American magazine in New York, N.Y. line for the alumni notes (The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } section is March 15. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �48 {Tribute} “An Abiding Presence” Brother Robert Smith (HAgo) BY Steve J. Werlin (A85) Brother Robert liked to climb trees. This is probably not true about the decades in which most of us knew him. But he once told me that, as a hoy, he had been fond of climbing. Climbing anything, really. He said that a favorite place for him to read was on the roof of his parents’ house, sitting outside his bedroom window. I can add this: As recently as the mid-8os, when he was already much closer to go than to ig he hopped nimbly out the window of a Paris hotel room to have a rooftop picnic with a friend and me. As a child, he also liked a candy bar named “Oh Henry! ” I had beheved that the candy was named for Henry Aaron, the baseball player, who was featured in its commercials when I was a kid. Learning of Brother Robert’s fondness for it, 50 years before, cleared up my misconception. I’ve known people who were older than Brother Robert was, and I’m sure some people, though perhaps not many, are active and capable into their 90s, or even beyond. But it’s worth thinking about how long Brother Robert lived and, even more so, about how long he worked. Last year was something like his 70th as a teacher, with only graduate school and assorted short adventures intervening. In the late iggos, he visited my home institution, Shimer College. On the day of the visit, one of my very senior colleagues remarked in the course of a meeting that the question we were discussing seemed to come up about every five years. Most of us present were impressed by that colleague’s long sense of history. Later that evening, in a seminar he led for us on one of Plato’s dialogues. Brother Robert said something about a certain student attitude and mentioned that it seemed to come into vogue about every ao years. But it would not always have been easy to tell that he had been teaching for that long. Watching him prepare for a seminar on the Bible or the Summa Theologica, books that he knew more-or-less by heart, was a lesson. He would spend hours doing his reading, looking for all the world as though he was studying those pages for the very first time. I think one piece of Brother Robert’s greatness as a teacher was how often he was able to find so very many things new. It’s not that he never developed clear positions. Lots of us know aU too well that he had very, very strong opinions on a surprisingly wide range of subjects: from Stalin to Clinton, from William of Ockham to the Talking Heads. But he was able to find the books he read with us continu­ ally new because of the way he understood the classes he was reading them for. Brother Robert knew that conversations, whether in seminars or other­ wise, are neither about books nor about authors’ opinions. They are about what we, and especially about what our students, think. He expressed that clearly in one of the two guiding principles for teachers that he shared with me, “Start where the students are.” The enduring friendships he developed over his many years of teaching, friendships with the widest variety of students, are nothing if not a testimony to one simple fact: Brother Robert, through his know-how and his character, through the livehness of his curiosity and the generosity of his heart, was able to help us all think seriously, deeply, and openly about ourselves and about our world. And so our conversations with him could become decisive moments in our lives. I don’t miss Brother Robert. I don’t see how I could. He is so very much a part of me. Brother Robert Smith (HAgo) will be He’s with me in so REMEMBERED FOR HIS DEEP FAITH, ECLECTIC much of what I do: INTERESTS, AND JOIE DE VIVRE. from my teaching, to my cooking, to my you to get up on the table and reading and writing. He’s with dance upside-down, then you get mewhen I chat with colleagues, up on the table and dance students, and friends. I don’t upside-down.” The perhapsknow how I could ever feel him never-realized image of Brother as absent. Robert dancing upside-down on The first time I left Annapolis, a seminar table is an emblem of in the summer of ig85, he his devotion to teaching that embraced me with one arm, put ought to endure. his hand on my head, and said, “May you be blessed in all you Editor's note: Mr. Werlin's do.” The gift of his abiding pres­ remembrance was one ofmany ence, for over ao years, has gone shared at Brother Robert's a long way towards making that memorial service last November. prayer come true. A collection ofall the tributes I’d like to close by passing is available; contact the along the other guiding prin­ Communications office, ciple that Brother Robert shared Annapolis, for a copy: with me. It’s not as rhetorically reharty@sjca.edu; 443-716-4011. sharp as the first, but it’s memo­ rable. “If what it takes to make a class work,” he told me, “is for { The College . St. John’s College • Winter 2002 } �{Obituaries} Ahmet Munir Ertegun, Annapolis class of 1944 BY Jon Enriquez Ahmet Munir Ertegun, Annapolis class of 1944, died in New York City on December 14, 2006. He was the founder and chairman of Atlantic Records, one of the most successful record companies of the 30th century. Mr. Ertegun was born in Istanbul in 1923. His father, Mehmet Munir Ertegun, was a diplomat and advisor to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. During his boyhood years in London and Washington, D.C. Ahmet Ertegun developed an interest in jazz under the tutelage of his older brother, Nesuhi, especially after their father became ambas­ sador to the United States in 1934. Mr. Ertegun also credited his brother for ensuring his study of Western thought, including his studies at St. John’s. In 1947, Mr. Ertegun and a partner. Herb Abramson, founded Atlantic Records in New York City, with financial backing from Mr. Ertegun’s dentist. Working with Abramson and others, Mr. Ertegun built Atlantic into a formidable record company. Atlantic focused on African-American music, a genre largely ignored at the time by the major record labels. Atlantic developed a strong jazz catalogue, but the label’s principal strength lay in rhythm and blues, especially after Atlantic entered a partnership with the Memphis-based label Stax Records. In 1967, Atlantic was acquired by Warner-Seven Arts Commu­ nications, although Mr. Ertegun continued to oversee the label. While Mr. Ertegun no longer worked closely on every record, his passion for music and his business acumen ensured Atlantic’s continued growth. Atlantic’s most successful acts included Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, The Drifters, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Bobby Darin, Otis Redding, and Roberta Flack. Mr. Ertegun was widely regarded as one of the best executives in the record industry. Observers cited his passion for music, his commit­ ment to paying royalties to performers, his sophistication and style, his love for philos­ ophy, and his ability to move easily among people of different ethnicities, classes, and aesthetics. He enjoyed juxtaposing interesting people, introducing Wilson Pickett to Henry Kissinger, for example, or Kid Rock to Eva Brann. Mr. Ertegun was a co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Hall in 1987. Mr. Ertegun was also instrumental in founding the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, a charitable organization to support destitute artists. Among his many honors are an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music, the Trustees Award and the President’s Merit Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and recognition as a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress. “One of the best decisions I ever made in my life was to apply to go to St. John’s College, rather than a conven­ tional university,” Mr. Ertegun said in 2005. “St. John’s, then and now, offers a true educa­ tion in everything. It is meant for the student who wishes to be able to become a truly educated person-one who has been exposed to the various types of thought since the beginnings of the Western civilization, and therefore will begin to understand where one stands at this time in the history of the world. . . .[And] It seems to have prepared me to help create rock and roll out of the African American legacy of gospel and blues music.” 49 In 1991, he told the graduates of Berklee College of Music how his thought and life were shaped by philosophy. “In the dialogues of Plato,” he said, “a main thesis was that a human being’s greatest goal is happiness. And that happiness is many things. Its highest state is when a person gains under­ standing of truth, that is, the discovery of knowledge. It is also attained when one can create an object of beauty that is an imitation or interpreta­ tion of nature-an object of fine art, whether it be a painting, a literary work, or fine piece of music. The state of happiness is also attained by leading a morally and ethically good life. That is by developing a set of habits which makes you choose right instead of wrong almost automatically. That is what makes you a good person, which is even more important than being a successful one.. .” Enriquez is registrar in Annapolis. Also Noted Irene Dortch (class of 1966), August 12, 2006 Frances Hotelling (AGI77), October 8, 2006 BrewerNewton (class of 1947), January 5, 2007 John O’Donnell (class of 1935), September 8, 2006 Edward Senseney (class of 1952), September 9, 2006 Thomas Sigman (class of 1957), January 5, 2007 Horace Witman (class of 1934), October 24, 2006 CarlYannuzzi (SFGI69), April IO, 2006 Ahmet Ertegun (shown here THE 1944 St. John’s in yearbook) WAS A MAJOR INFLUENCE IN American music. He served on THE college’s BOARD IN THE I97OS AND RECEIVED THE AlUMNI Association’s Award of Merit. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } �50 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President More than Just Memories I feel very honored and excited to begin serving as president of the Alumni Association. The Association has a solid history of working in concert with the college to enhance the opportunities for Johnnies to stay connected with each other and maintain a vibrant link with St. John’s as an institution and with its program of learning long after they leave the campuses. Over the years, the Association’s work has included: • Building strong regional chapters. • Developing lively homecomings on each campus. • Supporting the production of alumni directories, first printed and now online. • Helping seniors and recent graduates network in the alumni community. Today, we have 23 chapters across the U.S. The Annapolis homecoming this year and last had more attendees than the undergraduate enrollment, the online directory is approaching 50 percent participation (sign up today if you haven’t already!) and we host annual “senior dinners.” In some chapters we have offered recent graduate receptions to help new alumni learn about career options and build connections in the new cities and towns to which they move. The Alumni Association wants to keep the experience we had of the college and the Program available to alumni throughout their lives, as more than just memories of a time we spent in an “idyllic” campus setting: as an accessible range of programs and services. This year our plans include: • Increased on-campus alumni programs. The college, with the Association’s support, will begin offering the “Piraeus” program of alumni seminars in April 2007 and January 2008 in Santa Fe, and in June 2007 in Annapolis’ new dormitories. (Recall that Socrates went down to the Piraeus at the beginning of the Republic']. • A stronger Santa Fe homecoming program. While the Annapolis homecoming historically has been held during the school year, Santa Fe’s homecoming has been in July. At that time of year, the travel costs are at their high-season peak and the campus is empty of students. These factors appear to have diminished participation in Santa Fe’s homecoming. To make the Santa Fe event more vibrant and rewarding, Santa Fe homecoming has been moved to the fall. • Continued growth ofchapter activities. We continue to have interested alumni stepping forward to start new chapters where they live. Existing chapters are organizing a broad array of activities, ranging from formal seminars to casual movie and beer nights. The Association will continue to support these expanded activities. graduates, about 50 percent of our alumni graduated in the last 20 years due to the increase in class sizes on both campuses. In addition, the Alumni Association continues its ongoing responsibilities in support of the community: selecting nine alumni trustees to serve on the Board of Visitors and Governors; recognizing outstanding contributions by our alumni to the nation or community, their profession, or to the college through Awards of Merit; and welcoming as permanent members of the community those beloved and long­ standing friends, faculty, and staff of St. John’s by making them Honorary Alumni of the college. We accomplish this by providing directed funding for various alumni-related programs organized by the college or our Chapters, by providing volunteer efforts by our members, and by advocating on behalf of alumni and the college. I look forward to serving the St. John’s community by helping foster opportunities for more alumni to connect more often and more richly. Jason Walsh (A85) Alumni Association President 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 • Moreprograms directed to recent grad­ uates. We have a new committee of young alumni working to develop activities and services of high interest to the growing number of recent To make the Santa Fe event more vibrant and rewarding, Santa Fe homecoming has been moved to thefall. 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. The Alumni Association's Mission: Tofoster opportunitiesfor more alumni to connect more often and more richly 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, Annapohs, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 200'^ } �{Alumni Association News} Glenda Eoyang (SF76) Mission Accomplished On the surface, two accomplishments of Glenda Eoyang’s six years as president of the Alumni Association seem paradoxical: the association has strengthened its autonomy, and the association has forged a more productive working relationship with the institutional body that is St. John’s College. Rather than clashing, these two goals benefit the association and the college equally, Eoyang says: “The goal of my presidency was to strengthen the partnership between the Alumni Association and the college. It was clear that alumni wanted to support the college community and get us all working together.” This needed to be done without compro­ mising the independence of the association. As the only permanent members of the college community, alumni are protective of the Program. The danger is that can turn into “conservative and close-minded views about the college,” Eoyang acknowledges. “Stability, consistency, and coherence over time are important to alumni,” says Eoyang. “We can do our best if we are aligned with the college, yet independent.” For example, one of the things alumni want to do is assist Johnnies and new graduates as they consider careers and graduate schools. “While the college is more focused on the Program instead of the working world, alumni can provide the CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-^75-901^ rim2u@c0mcast.net ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-332-1816 emartin@crs.org AUSTIN Joe Reynolds, SF69 512-280-5928 jpreynolds@ austin.rr.com BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen, A77 410-472-9158 deborahwcohen@ comcast.net Alumni Association MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu worked to bring the and college closer TOGETHER. career networking and the advice that are important to Johnnies when they graduate. Great strides have been made, Eoyang says, particularly with the onhne community. Launched two years ago, the online directory and networking site was created with support and suggestions from the association. About 4,000 alumni are part of the community. “It has great possibilities to keep alumni connected with each other and the college,” she says. Building membership and keeping alumni involved with the college remain the association’s top priorities. Chapters have grown, more alumni are taking part in chapter activities, and more alumni are participating in the Annual Fund-all encouraging signs. Eoyang beheves alumni become involved with St. John’s when the time is right for them. Her involvement started when Barbara Lauer, then on the NEWYORKCITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net NORTHERN CALIF. BOSTON Reynaldo Miranda, A99 Dianne Cowan, A91 415-333-4452 617-666-4381 aldo.miranda@ diannecowan@rcn.com reyn gmail.com CHICAGO PHILADELPHIA Rick Lightburn, SF76 Helen Zartarian, AGI86 847-922-3862 215-482-5697 rlightburn@gmail.com helenstevezartarian@ mac.com DALLAS/FORT WORTH PHOENIX Paula Fulks, SF76 Donna Kurgan, AGI96 817-654-2986 623-444-6642 puffjd@swbell.net dakurgie@yahoo.com DENVER/BOULDER Tom Byrnes, SF74 720-344-6947 tbyr@pair.com 51 PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 91^67-2194 erin_hanlon@juno.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 206-542-3441 jdoherty@mrsc.org SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2007 } association board, encouraged her to start a chapter in the Twin Cities. “I think for many alumni, the college is important in their lives, but they’re just busy. What brings them back is friendships: personal relationships with people who are currently engaged with or at the college,” she says. While she will continue serving the college as a member of its Board of Visitors and Governors, Eoyang says stepping down from the association gives her more time to devote to her business, the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, which offers consulting, training, and research. Eoyang applies concepts and lessons from nonlinear dynamics chaos theory and complexity theory in building interventions for human interaction. The goal is to help managers and employees know how to deal with change and conflict “There are three large-scale issues,” she explains, “sustainability, and not just of ecological systems but of equity systems and economic systems; conflict, everything from individuals to youth gangs; and evaluationif you can’t predict, how do you evaluate whether things are better or worse?” Eoyang is also looking forward to more free time to spend at home with her husband, John, a psychologist. “He’s a Johnnie at heart,” she says. “Our first argument was over Pascal.” 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 WASHINGTON, DC Deborah Papier, A72 202-387-4520 dpapier@verizon.net WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org Providing OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE ALUMNI TO CONNECT MORE OFTEN AND MORE RICHLY �5a {St. John’s Forever} A Wandering Library n the summer of 1969, Santa Fe’s to another institution. Without a perma­ library was located in what is now nent home, the library collection of 15,000 the bookstore in Peterson Student books, phonograph recordings, and tapes Center while fundraising for a new continued meandering about campus, library was underway. In 1968 the stopping in various rooms in Peterson, in college came close to receiving the basement of Weigle Hall, on the first funding from the New Mexico State floor of Calliope House in the lower dormi­ Commission’s Higher Education Facilities tories, and on the first level of the Fine Act, but was unable to raise the necessary Arts Building. match of $622,000. This meant Richard Not until November 1990, under the Weigle (HA49), at the time president of tenure of President John Agresto, did both campuses, had to relinquish the funds Meem Library open its doors. At that point Z {The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 } the college’s collection (now with more than 67,000 books) found a permanent home. One of the aims of the college’s capital campaign, “With a Clear and Single Purpose,” is to increase library acquisitions on both campuses. The college hopes to add to the collections and to restore and replace outdated, damaged, and missing volumes. —Alexis Brown �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Introducing Piraeus, a new program Don Quixote for St. John’s alumni. Join your fellow Johnnies for a weekend of revisiting a favorite Program work or read something new. More details are online: www.stjohnscollege.edu led by Victoria Mora and Peter Pesic January 18-20, 2008 Santa Fe Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the Unity of the Intellect led by James Carey April 14-15, 2007 Santa Fe The seminar will meet in the morning and afternoon on both Friday and Saturday, concluding with a final seminar and brunch Sunday morning. Participants can also look forward to the Friday night lecture and dinner together on Saturday evening. $250 per person, includes seminars, receptions, and brunch. Saturday night dinner courtesy of the Alumoi Association. This weekend program includes morning and afternoon seminars on Saturday, dinner together with Mr. Carey at a fine restaurant in Santa Fe, morning seminar on Sunday and a concluding brunch. BAnnual CBBlnetMal $200 per person, includes seminars, Johnnies vs. the Naval Academy Saturday lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and April 21, 2007 Sunday brunch. Dinner courtesy of the Annapolis Alumni Association. Rain date: April 22, 2007 Homer’s Odyssey led by Eva Brann (HA57) and David Carl June 14-17, 2007 Annapolis September 28-30 Participants may choose to stay on campus in Gilliam Hall. Saturday afternoon is reserved for exploring the metro area, downtown Annapolis, or the Eastern Shore, followed by a crab feast in the Boathouse. $350 per person, includes seminars, receptions, and brunch; an addi­ tional $200 per person for three nights of room and board. Saturday night dinner courtesy of the Alumni Association. {The College- St. John’s College • Winter 200"^ } Dan Caldwell (A86), Johnnie. wife Li, and a future �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS ■ SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box aSoo Annapolis, Maryland 21404 address service requested Periodicals Postage Paid � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Winter 2007 Description An account of the resource Volume 33, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2007. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 33 Issue 1 Winter 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Dempsey, Patricia (assistant editor) DeBusk, Emily (assistant editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Benson, Sally Brann, Eva Burlington, Elizabeth Enriques, Jon Lemke, Oliver Pihas, Gabriel Scally, Thomas Johnson, David The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/44e76d23da077302e9cfee62b4cea998.pdf a62f21ee86f7d52aa8698c1115c13583 PDF Text Text �On Galileo SIJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE “7 don y know ’—what a beautiful expression that is—so candid in its honesty. ” Galileo Galilei bserving the natural world raised questions for Galileo, for example: Why did the water on the surface of the earth slosh around once or Born in 1564 in Pisa, Galileo at ainmonastery considered becoming a monk, twice a day, studied like water a swingingand container? Galileo rejected the but his father insisted that hethe study medicine. Galileotowas intrigued mathe­ idea that moon had anything do more with it. Instead,with he concluded matics, which he studied with a tutor dropping out of the around University that itindependently was because the earth was before both rotating and moving the of Pisa altogether. He later returned to the university to teach, but at a very low salary, and sun, constantly speeding up and slowing down, generating the tides. It his appointment to the of Padua saved him from poverty. Galileo alsoled pursued wasUniversity a rare mistake for Galileo, whose thought experiments him to potentially prohtable projects; one of these,Ofa course, telescope, proved successful. such brilliant insights. he had the quite big picture right.He turned his instrument to the heavens with more questions, publishing his observations in Starry Messenger. Always a prudent scientist, Gahleo nevertheless made mistakes, for example, overesti­ mating his political connections and friendship with Pope Urban VIII when he published his Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems in 163a. He had finished the work on Christmas Eve, iGag, but the bubonic plague delayed the news of his work, which challenged the Catholic Church’s ban on teaching Copernican theories, getting to Rome. Galileo never married, but he had three children with his housekeeper, Maria Gamba. In her book Galileo’s Daughter, Dava Sobel documented the especially close relationship he had with his daughter, Virginia, whom he settled in a convent as a young girl. When she joined her order, Virginia took the name Maria Celeste. Although she lived a cloistered existence, she followed her father’s career and worried about him. After his trial in 1633, in which the Roman Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy, Maria Celeste took on his penance. Galileo had hoped to persuade the church to consider purely scientific matters apart from faith. Instead, the Dialogue was banned for aoo years. Galileo was forced to publicly confess his error and was sentenced to house imprisonment for the remainder of his life. He died in 1642. We read his works at St. John’s, follow his thinking, and replicate his experiments. But the spirit of Galileo is reflected in laboratory in another way; Johnnies are asked to be gadflies when they consider science. Like all other classes at St. John’s, “laboratory proceeds in the mode of radical inquiry,” explains Michael Dink < A75), dean in Annapolis. “We don’t want simply to assimilate the conclusions of science; we want to raise questions about not only its conclusions, but also its methods, and indeed the whole enterprise. Thanks to the interplay of seminar and laboratory readings, we are in a position to see the project of modern science as novel and questionable.” This issue of The College celebrates inquiry, both in laboratory and in the work of five alumni engaged in fascinating pursuits in science. -7?// O The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jenny Hannifin, Santa Fe editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Christopher Allison (SF97) Ethan Brooks (Aio) Shane Gassaway (SF06) Ruth Johnston (A85) Cathi Dunn MacRae Tom Nugent Deborah Spiegelman Erica Stratton (A08) Kea Wilson (A09) Jennifer Wright (A08) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design ® Mixed Sources I J FSC Product group from well-managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fiber www.fsc.org Cert no. SW-COC-002404 O 1996 Forest Stewardship Council �"I "I College The ZINE FOR Alumni of Vol y St. John’s College Annapolis • {Contents} PAGE (J DEPARTMENTS Commencement 2008 In Annapolis, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities tells graduates to be grateful. In Santa Fe, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations asks Johnnies to be citizens of the world. PAGE ZO Talking About Science PAGE 8 Johnnie researchers tackle big questions dealing with the human brain, dangerous diseases, and basic mysteries of the universe. 3a ALUMNI PAGE 14 Progress An aspiring writer ponders whether artistic expression can co-exist with the demands of the Program. PAGE • • • Eastern Classics helped Lisa Levchuk (SFGI05, EC06) finish her novel, Everything Beautiful in the World. Radical Inquiry A Work in Celebrating capital campaign success New outreach effort in Annapolis A dream walking Cultivating outdoor skills in Santa Fe Helping high school students get to college Deconstructing a greenhouse Annapolis’ weekend warriors A new GI director in Annapolis Salvatore Scibona (SF97) found inspiration for his first novel. The End, in his heritage. Z^ PAGE FROM THE BELL TOWERS • • • • • 30 BIBLIOFILE No part of the Program has undergone as much revision as the laboratory. PAGE a PROFILES 3a Singer-songwriter Buddy Mondlock (A82) finds success in the music business. 36 The Peace Corps introduced Melanie Kirby (SF97) to a life with bees. 40 Adrian Bordone (AGI96) helps nonprofits prove their worth. Z^8 45 OBITUARIES In Love with Croquet Remembering two dedicated Annapolis staff members. For one day a year, Johnnies are bloodthirsty Spartans. PAGE 48 47 ALUMNI VOICES Christopher Allison (SF97) finds purpose in the foreign service. ON THE COVER Galileo Galilei Illustration by DavidJohnson 50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS 5a ST. John’s FOREVER �{From the Bell Towers} The Campaign for St. John’s Exceeds $125 Million Goal When the college formally declares its success at campaign celebrations this July in Santa Fe, and September in Annapolis, there will be quite a few people to thankLed Zeppelin among them. The legendary rock band reunited in December 2007 (with Jason Bonham replacing his late father on the drums) in London for a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, class of 1944 and founder of Atlantic Records. Proceeds established the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which benefits four educational institutions, St. John’s among them. Many individuals-from an anonymous donor who made a $12 million gift to strengthen the college endowment to a recent alumnus who made a first-time gift of $20 to the college’s Annual Fundcontributed to the success of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. As of June i, 2008, more than $130 million has been raised in the campaign, an extraordinary achievement for a small college. “We have been able to address important priorities such as financial aid and faculty salaries, as well as improving the physical facilities on the campus,” said Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70). The Santa Fe campus, which is marking the 40th anniversary of its first commencement this year, will see some of its most impor­ tant long-term goals come to fruition as a result of campaign gifts. Among them are the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a new home for the Graduate Institute; a new dormitory; and the Ariel Intern- Great things have already been accom­ plished THROUGH THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN. Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made a $5 million gift for a new GI building in Santa Fe. Below: Gilliam Hall in Annapolis was made possible through a GRANT FROM ThE HoDSON TrUST. left: ship program that provides work experi­ ence for students. “The success of this campaign will mean a stronger, more vital campus community in Santa Fe,” said Presi­ dent Michael Peters, “Innovation and vision have always meant a lot to this campus. Financial stability, increased support for student financial aid, and improved facili­ ties position us for a bright future.” The campaign formally opened in 2006 with opening celebrations in Annapofis and Santa Fe. On July 25, Santa Fe will host the first closing celebration, a Fiesta for New Mexico alumni and supporters. On September 13, Annapolis-area alumni and college friends will celebrate the successful completion of the campaign. Strong leadership gifts, most notably from Ronald Fielding, campaign chairman, started the campaign out on a high note. Fielding directed his gift to the endowment, for financial aid. To stimulate giving in the final year of the campaign, he issued a $2.5 million challenge to alumni, matching first-time gifts, increased gifts, and multi-year pledges to the campaign. The challenge worked-alumni met and exceeded the challenge, prompting Fielding to raise the challenge and match qualifying gifts through June 30. One of the greatest achievements the college can celebrate in this campaign. Fielding noted, is the creation of a strong culture of giving among alumni. Leadership gifts from donors such as Fielding, a strong response to the annual fund from alumni, and the support of foundations all contributed to the campaign’s success, says Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors. “I think this campaign has reinforced our central beliefs about St. John’s,” Bishop says. “First, St. John’s stands for something important and valuable in higher education. Secondly, our alumni believe in our Program and are willing to support it with their dollars, more than they ever have in the history of our college. Finally, we have gained the admiration and financial support of foundations and friends which have been critical to our success.” When the celebrations end in the fall, the college will embark on a new strategic plan, one that establishes priorities and iden­ tifies challenges for the college in the coming years. Bishop says. “Because this campaign has been such a resounding success, we can move on to the next chapter, firmly grounded in our purpose and confident about our future.” - Rosemary Harty {The College -St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} Reaching out in Annapolis BY Ethan Bkooks (Aio) In past years, Annapolis students have engaged in community service in a variety of ways, from tutoring local children to working on Habitat for Humanity proj­ ects. Early this summer, a group of students who are concerned about the social issues of the wider Annapolis community launched a new project: Epigenesis, a lo-week leadership program for Annapolis youth “who have experienced serious difficul­ ties in life,” says Jamaal Barnes (Aio). The idea, says Barnes, is for Johnnies to support teenagers as they “work through the Annapolis community to create the change they want to see.” Four students created Epigenesis: Barnes, Rachel Davison (AoB), Raphaela Cassandra (Aio), and Joshua Becker (A08). The group already has seed money: a $10,000 grant from The Davis Projects for Peace program. The effort arose from a growing concern among students over social problems in Annapolis, including drugrelated violence, a high drop­ out rate for students of color, and a lack of opportunity for area youth, says Barnes. “Epigenesis was inspired by a love for the Annapolis community,” he says. “Instead of being worried and concerned and sitting in our The founders of lofty positions on campus, our education inspires us to act. If something’s wrong, we should try to fix it in whatever way we can.” Epigenesis founders began their project by making contacts with social service and community organizations in Annapolis, including Annapolis High School, We Care and Friends, Asbury United Methodist Church, and the Boys and Girls Club in Annapolis. “We thought it was important to partner with other groups and get the support of other community programs,” says Ms. Cassandra. The program began in mid­ June with a leadership work­ shop for a dozen area teenagers, selected with the help of community partners, at St. John’s. The group will continue to meet throughout “A Dream Walking” St. John’s lost one of its biggest fans last February when writer, newspaper columnist and conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr. died. Buckley was the Commence­ ment speaker in Annapolis in May 1996. Shortly afterward he praised the college in his nationally syndicated column, focusing on the titles of the senior essays he read about in the Commencement program. Not easily impressed, Buckley described his column as “a lullaby to the forlorn on the theme of: Believe it or not, some American students learn.” He described expressing his astonishment at the “academic and intellectual sophistication” of the students to Ray Cave (class of 1948), who sat next to him on the podium. He listed many of the authors read on the Program, and concluded with a line that the college has treasured since: “Did you ever see a dream walking? Go to St. John’s.” 4" the summer to plan and carry out projects in their own communities. Students will develop programs to address the social problems they see as the most critical in the Annapolis community today. Barnes says these could include open-mic nights and community fairs. Johnnies Epigenesis HOPE TO EMPOWER AnnAPOLIS YOUTH TO WORK FOR CHANGE IN THEIR communities: (l. to R.) Rachel Davison (A08), Jamaal Barnes (Aio), Raphaela Cassandra (Aio), and Josh Becker (A08). {The College- 3 St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } will help facilitate the program as advisers, office assistants, or group leaders, “to help the teens in whatever way possible,” he says. �{From the Bell Towers} Ah, Wilderness! Search and Rescue Fosters Outdoor Skills Thanks to wider cell phone coverage, fancy GPS devices, and better wilderness and safety education, fewer hapless hikers are getting lost in the mountains near the Santa Fe campus. That’s meant a shift in focus for the college’s Search and Rescue Team. Brendan O’Neill, Athletics and Outdoors Program coordi­ nator in Santa Fe, has been involved with the team since 1998. Since Search and Rescue was founded in 1971, the team would field 30 or so rescue missions a year, he says. With fewer rescues, the team has focused more energy on teaching Johnnies leadership and outdoor skills. O’Neill says extended training is focused in four main areas: navigation, including map reading, compass skills, and GPS; wilderness medi­ cine; communica­ tions, including using radios; and field certification, which the state of New Mexico requires for search and rescue partici­ pants. The team has about 30 members, 35 of whom are St. John’s students. Team members are encouraged to attend at least two sessions a month. In the pastyear several courses Nate Murray have been held on the Santa Fe campus, including a wilderness first-response course taught by Wilderness Medical Associates, an amateur radio license class taught by the Los Alamos Radio Club, and an avalanche course. Cultivating leadership skills is still an important goal of the team, O’Neill says, and to that end students take on important roles such as presi­ dent, training officer, and logistics officer. All this training means a safer and more effective mission when Search and Rescue heads off campus to the mountains. In January, three searches in four days involved members of the St. John’s team. In the first, the hiker turned up while rescue teams were mobilizing-“the best result in a mission,” says O’Neill. The second involved a rescue that was completed just before a snowstorm. The third rescue, in which two people were lost for three nights in the Santa Fe Ski Basin area, required 13 teams working in blizzard-like conditions. - Jenny Hannifin (SF09) IMPROVES HIS COMMUNICATION SKILLS. A Book That changed your life Is there one book that changed your life? Opened your eyes to something you never considered before? The College is collecting stories about how one or two (three at the most!) books affected alumni. Send your thoughts to the editor by email: Rosemary.Harty@sjca.edu or mail to; The College Maga­ zine, PO Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. The deadline is September 15. We’ll print as many as we can fit. Here’s a sampling to inspire you: Erin Hanlon (SF03): ''War andPeace brought me to a belief in God. That part where Pierre is searching and meets the old Mason kind of paralleled my own searching, and when Pierre goes through the initiation ceremony it somehow dawned on me that God existed. That said, I did not become a Mason, but instead an Orthodox Christian. The other book that had a big effect on me was The Boxcar Children in third grade. It was the book that made me realize I loved to read-and I became a bookworm after that.” {The College- Anna Perleberg (SF02): “Alot ofbooks have been influential in my life-kind of like breathing. But the first was Mystery at Lilac Inn, a Nancy Drew that my kindergarten teacher gave me when she realized I’d read all the picture books in the class­ room. Not only did it have exciting girly adventures, it began to instill confidence in me that I could educate myself at my own pace and not have to fit into a mold.” Rhonda Ortiz (A04): ''''Pride andPrejudiccw^s, the first ‘grown-up, thinking’ book that I read and enjoyed. This coincided with taking a class from my most influential teacher in high school, Mr. O’Malley (AP history). Together, they mark the beginning of my adult thinking. Reading Euclid and Apollonius taught me to appreciate and love the beauty of mathematics. The Bible and the liturgy, however, have been the most formative of my life.” St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} 5 Determinate Negation: Razing the Santa Fe Greenhouse BY Shane Gassaway (SFo6) In early January, a call went out from Mike DiMezza (SF98, EC99), former assistant gardener. He was spreading the word to those who helped him huild it that the adohe greenhouse behind the Fine Arts Building would soon he taken down. Its decommission makes way for a fire safety road that will serve the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, the center for the Graduate Institute, on which construction will begin later this year. For many people, the green­ house, built in 2003, stood as a legacy and a proud accomplishment. It was distinct among buildings on the Santa Fe campus in that students conceived of, designed, and built it-with help from alumni, the Buildings and Grounds office, and friends of the college. A “green” structure, it served as a model for owner­ ship, stewardship, and belonging in the St. John’s community. Even though its destruction makes way for a great benefit to the college, many will feel its loss deeply and for a long time. That’s why, when Mike suggested a recon­ vening of some of the old crew to deconstruct the greenhouse, I agreed to join in. We would salvage the materials to be reused elsewhere-perhaps for another greenhouse built by a later generation of students. Upon reflection, of course, the idea seems a bit crazy. After all, Mike was calling me in New Orleans from his place in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife, Amy, and one-year-old son, Lucca. The old crew is scattered to far corners at this point. But as Mike said later in Santa Fe, “So many people helped build that green­ house, so much heart, love, and care went into the site, to have just destroyed it would have been too much to bear.” In March, Mike and I flew to Santa Fe. Together with some students, staff, old guard B&G workers and David Perrigo, the campus architect, we brought down the greenhouse in four days. I delighted in seeing John­ nies again with tools in hand. It felt similar to building the greenhouse as a student along­ side other students. The work had been a diversion for some of us, or an outlet for the stress of the trials of the class­ room; for others it was a means of honing thoughts engendered therein. For all, it meant learning a practical application of the St. John’s method by addressing each task, if not as a knower, then as a thinker. It meant learning to take stock of the tools and resources at one’s disposal, however few they were and Deconstructing the Santa Fe GREENHOUSE WAS AS MUCH A LABOR OF LOVE AS BUILDING IT FOR Mike DiMezza (SF98,EG99). Materials were preserved to REBUILD THE GREENHOUSE WHEN THE BEST SPOT IS CHOSEN, {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } however crude, and using them to the utmost with creativity and deliberation. For five years the greenhouse stood as a monument to that invaluable lesson, and as a refuge and place of beauty for the students, faculty, and staff of Santa Fe. Will it have a future incarnation? As Santa Fe President Michael Peters told me, a greenhouse does belong on campus. Materials salvaged from the greenhouse were saved, and the structure will be rebuilt as soon as the best loca­ tion has been determined. Until then, it shall live in the hearts and works of those whose hands shaped it and whose lives it touched. * Shane Gassaway is enrolled in the PhD program in philos­ ophy at Tulane University. In New Orleans, he’sput his building skills to use in assisting in the construction ofa playground through a program called Kaboom, whose mission is to build a playground within walking distance ofevery child in America. �6 {From the Bell Towers} Weekend Warriors Armed with Padded Weapons, Johnnies Pursue Honor BY Erica Stratton (Ao8) The Melee Club, which wages a (bloodless) battle on the soccer field after lunch every Saturday afternoon, has an important niche at St. John’s: It reminds armchair Iliad enthusiasts what hand-to-hand combat was actually like. Forget that these weapons are foam instead of bronze and that the partici­ pants fight not for honor, but until the last man is standing. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments of stoicism that would do any Spartan proud: though no face or groin hits are allowed, everything else is fair game. “Things like Melee just evolved out of warfare, like most modern forms of martial arts and weapon practice,” explains Michael Sloan (Aii), who has been playing since he came to St. John’s. “The only difference is that while things like fencing and Aikido teach the tactics and procedures of a specific form of combat. Melee is simply a brawl.” No specific physical prowess is needed to play-though many of the veteran players will be happy to demonstrate techniques that would make any zombie­ fighting ninja proud. The traditional Melee weapon is a foam sword called a “boffer,” though soft rephcas of axes, spears, and shields are also common. They all have a core of PVC, wrapped in pipe insulation foam in the shape and size appropriate to the kind of weapon needed. After the glue has set, the entire weapon is wrapped in colorful duct tape to add durability. Archon William Kunkel (Aii) says, “The name ‘boffer’ is probably based on the sound one makes when hitting someone solidly. With a well padded one, it actu­ ally sounds like ‘boff.’ ” This year’s Melee group numbers around 20 students, including several women. The rules of battle are simple and the objective is clear. Club members split up into two opposing “armies,” chosen by “captains” as if it were a soccer game. Usually the opposing teams stare at once another for a few seconds, then suddenly rush at each other, screaming a battle cry. Combatants get their arms and legs “cut off’ with the slap­ stick glee of a Monty Python movie. Once a limb is “disabled,” the player must act as if it no longer functions, leading to the classic Melee pose of hopping after someone on one foot. And, though they might start out as two armies, loyalties are fluid and any game can quickly become “everyman for himself.” With all this treachery and risk of bruising, why do people play? Killian Gupton (Ari), who just started playing this year, says, “I play because I really need an opportunity to wail away at someone and let off steam without hurting anybody. It just helps me relax and get something out of my system.” Kelly Trop (Ari), one of the female players, gets straight to the point: “I play mostly because it’s fun to attack people with giant foam weapons.” The origins of Melee on the St. John’s campus are lost to those who play the game now, but Archon Jason Ritzke (Art) believes this particular game is unique to St. John’s. “Many other padded-weapon fighting groups exist,” he says. “However, this has the special nature of allowing us to truly communicate (to a classmate) what we really thought about that point made in seminar.” Above, Scott Jones, Michael Sloan, and Bill Kunkel let off STEAM in pretend BATTLE. Bottom left, Kunkel, Scott Jones, Cameron Thompson, Sloan, Jason Ritzke, Robert Mercer, and Daniel Dausman mount a charge. All are members of the class of {The College. St. John’s College . Summer 2008 } aoii. �{From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements New GI Director in Annapolis Tutor Marilyn Higuera is the new Graduate Institute director in Annapohs, taking over for Joan Silver. Higuera has heen a tutor at St. John’s since 1979. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Univer­ sity of Michigan and spent two years as a mathematician at the Apphed Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. Having taught graduate students at St. John’s, Higuera is excited about spending the next four years strengthening the institute, recruiting new students, and supporting students. “They have come to St. John’s after earning an undergraduate degree some­ where else, and they know that they’ve really missed some­ thing. Many of them have fulltime jobs and commute long distances to come to the college,” she says. “I’m touched by their level of commitment, the lengths that they go to in order to be here.” One of Higuera’s most important charges as the new director, succeeding tutor Joan Silver, is to continue to promote the Hodson Trust Teacher Fellowship. The program pays up to 70 percent of the total cost of attending the program for kindergarten through rath-grade teachers. Honors for Aicla Head Sensei Ferol Arce, 9th Dan and one of the highest-ranked martial artists in the country in Karate-Do, came to the Santa Fe campus for his first visit in February aoo8, with three other Black Belts. St. John’s Dojo members, including tutor Jorge Aigla, were pleased to be able to work out with him. But Arce also had a surprise in store: he awarded Aigla a 7th Dan, making Aigla the highestranked martial artist in New Mexico, according to Arce. Aigla has been teaching Karate-Do free of charge on the Santa Fe campus for 22 years and has been practicing for 39 years. The St. John’s Dojo has about 15 committed members and comprises students, faculty, and staff. Aigla accepted the award on behalf of the St. John’s Dojo, adding that “this distinc­ tion really belongs to the students and to the college.” New Look for the Web Site The St. John’s College Web site was redesigned this spring by Baltimore firm no/inc, with the college’s Web team imple­ menting the changes. The new look prominently features the great book authors, and offers improved navigation through drop-down menus and quick links. Staff News Anna Sochocky is the new College in Santa Fe. She brings 18 years of experience in areas of media cultivation, advertising, promotion, and electronic and print pubheation development. During the past 10 years, she has operated a successful consulting business in these areas as well as government rela­ tions and creative writing. Most recently she was director of Pubhc Relations and Marketing at the College of Santa Fe. Sochocky earned a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at Macalester College and a master’s in liberal studies at Hamline University. Melissa Latham-Stevens, art director/senior graphic designer for the Santa Fe campus, has been recognized for her design talents by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). LathamStevens won a Silver Medal in the Alumni Relations Pubhea­ tions category for her design of the St. John’s Homecoming 2007 brochure. Correction In the Winter 2008 issue of The College, an article on the Annual Fund incorrectly identified Jack Walker. We regret the error. director of Communications and External Relations for St. John’s Tutor Marilyn Higuera Helping High School Students Get to College The Ronald Simon Family Foundation, which helps high school students prepare for and succeed in college, chose St. John’s College as the site for its tutoring efforts in Santa Fe, creating opportunities for St. John’s students interested in education. The foundation provides educational support in areas including test preparation, college admissions counseling, and tutoring. Steve Simon, coordinator for the foundation’s New Mexico program, chose St. John’s as the Santa Fe tutoring site because of the college’s emphasis on classical education. In the fall of 2007 the foundation hired St. John’s students and alumni to tutor local high school students participating in the program. {The College. Martin Timmons (SFLA07, EC05) is the tutoring coordinator, and works with Kay Duffy (SF04, EC05), Jennifer Fain (SF09), Liam Goodacre (SF08), Juhan Gress (SFio), Kathryn Leahey (SFii), Brooke Nutini (SF05), Adam Perry (SFii), Aaron Kane Turner (SF09), and Nicholas Weeks (SF05, EC06). St. John’s College . Summer 2008 } Brooke Nutini (SF05), left, tutors HIGH school student AdRIANNA Romero. �8 {Commencement} “A Shared Experience” inutes after Cole congratulated the the reces­ parents of the 106 graduating sional seniors and 2,2 Graduate Insti­ marking the tute students who obtained end of the master’s degrees by leading a ai6th round of applause. He praised Commencementthe in Annapolis, college’s “democratic” Nancie and Bill Lee education, of Mi I i Ian which i, he described Hawaii, hurried to McDowell as “the sense of a shared expeHall carrying two Banana rience-what one St. John’s Republic shopping bags with alumnus has described to me as their gifts: 130 purple orchid an ‘intense commonality.’ ” leis, one for each new graduate Appointed by President and their tutors. In Hawaii a lei George W. Bush to chair the is a gift of affection and celebra­ NEH in 2001, Cole was previ­ tion. The Lees, whose son ously Distinguished Professor Justin was among the Class of of Art History and Professor of aoo8, presented the leis in the Comparative Literature at spirit of community that is at Indiana University in Bloom­ the heart of St. John’s College. ington. He praised the value of Bruce Cole, chairman of the a liberal arts education, but National Endowment for the emphasized the unique nature Humanities, touched on this of St. John’s. “I can say with spirit when he described his confidence that the great books meeting with the students who education you have received at visited him at the NEH to invite St. John’s is truly one-of-a-kind. him to speak at Commence­ At this college, you haven’t ment: “One thing that struck acquired knowledge in the form me when I met with some of textbooks and lectures, pre­ members of this graduating packaged for easy consumption class in January was how consis­ like a frozen TV dinner. You tently all the students spoke in haven’t absorbed these great works through the filter of terms of‘we,’ not ‘I,’ when discussing their experience another person’s mind, however here at the college,” he said. brilliant that person might be.” Graduates of St. John’s, Cole said, leave the college with a “moral sense” acquired through books and discus­ sions. “By their very nature, most of the books you have encountered at St. John’s have forced you to constantly ask yourselves, ‘What should I do? What does it mean to live a good life?’ On too many campuses today, these funda­ mental questions are M {The College- Above: The Lee family brought leis to help graduates celebrate (l. to r.): Jessica Lee, Bill Lee, Justin Lee, and Nancie Lee. left: John Travis Pittman (A08) celebrates. Right: John­ LEAVE the college WITH THE TOOLS TO LIVE A “gOOD AND FLOUR­ ISHING PRIVATE LIFE,” NEH CHAIRMAN BrUCE CoLE SAID. Bottom, nies left unasked-sometimes, as incredible as this might sound, because other questions are deemed higher priorities; and often, simply because it is presumed that ultimately we cannot find the answers. At St. John’s, these questions have guided your whole education, and for that, you should be profoundly grateful.” By educating students through careful reading and genuine conversation. Cole said, “St. John’s has given you more than just the means to St. John’s College ■ Summer zoo8 } make a living-it has also given you the tools to make a life, a good and flourishing private hfe as an individual, as a spouse, as a parent, as a friend.” —Patricia Dempsey PwiZThe College magazine online at www. stjohnscoUege. edii to read the commencement addressesfrom both campuses and view aphoto gallery ofthe ceremonies. �{Commencement} “Great Books for a t the 41st Commencement on the Santa Fe campus, 89 undergraduates and 30 Graduate Institute students received their degrees. Rain was in the fore­ cast, hut Saturday’s sky was clear, and the weather not unlike a brisk fall day. The Artemis String Quartet provided music for the procession and recession, and the college Commencement Choir sang pieces by Palestrina and de Cristo before and after the address to the graduating class given by Richard N. Haass. director of policy planning for the Department of State and a Haass is the president of the principal adviser to Secretary of Council on Foreign Relations, State Colin Powell. He has been an independent, nonpartisan vice president and director of membership organization, foreign policy studies at the think tank and publisher dedi­ Brookings Institution, a senior cated to helping the public better understand the world and associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International foreign policy. He has authored or edited 10 books on American Peace, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s foreign policy, the most recent John F. Kennedy School of of which is The Opportunity: Government, and a research America’s Moment to Alter associate at the International History’s Course. Prior to Institute for Strategic Studies. serving on the Council on “We were so pleased to have Foreign Relations, Haass was Global World” At left (l. to r.): Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, A {The College- 9 AND father of GRADUATE JuLIE Howard Klein; Commencement speaker Richard N. Haass; President Michael Peters. Bottom, left (l. to r. ): Eliiah Berry, Louise Blake, Adam Braus, and Elyse Brejla. Right: A beaming Abigail Petry, followed by Jessica Perry, with their diplomas. someone of Richard Haass’ stature and experience speak to our graduates about great books, great ideas and their link to global issues and the lives of our graduates,” said Michael P. Peters, president of the Santa Fe campus, who before joining St. John’s was executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Haass began with an outline of the nonpolar nature of today’s foreign relations, operating within a world that has moved from concentrated power to one of distributed power. “All of you-no matter your career path-will be affected by nonpolarity. The world is not Las Vegas: what happens there will not stay there.” He referenced Thucy­ dides’ The Peloponnesian War, with its many exam­ ples of hard-headed analysis. “Through his exploration of the politics, diplomacy, and conflicts of the great powers of his day, Thucydides provided foreign pohcy insights that remain relevant in our time,” said Haass. He St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } suggested five books that would add greatly to one’s knowledge of foreign policy: Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society, Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored, Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, Carl von Clausewiz’s On War, and George Kennan’s American Diplomacy. “Understanding of the world is essential not only for your role as competitors, but also for your duty as citizens,” said Haass. “This understanding will enable you to meet your obliga­ tions to society and to live up to the credo of this wonderful institution, namely, ‘to make intelligent, free choices concerning the ends and means of public life.’ ” — Jenny Hannifin �{The Program} TALKING ABOUT Scien ce CONSIDERING THE CHALLENGES OE LABORATORY BY Jenny Hannifin AND Rosemary Harty ate April, 9 a.m. Tuesday, senior lab: With Reality George Doskow, then dean in Annapohs, said: “The lab program parties behind them and graduation days away, it’s remains, as it always has been, the most problematic part of the understandable that the students in tutor Adam program.” Schulman’s laboratory have trouble mustering up The reasons he hsted remain issues today: enthusiasm for the Lederberg-Tatum experiment. But • How do you cover such a scope of material in three years and as the students move away from the table to the laboratory to beginstill allow time for thoughtful discussions and meaningful agitating E. coli bacteria, even the most serious cases of senioritisexperiments? are chipped away by the beauty and simphcity of the experiment, • How do you present difficult material in a way that makes it which Schulman enticingly touts as “bacterial sex,” This experi­ accessible to students and to faculty who lack scientific ment, demonstrating gene transference in bacteria, is the last one backgrounds? these students will do at St. John’s, completing an education in • How do you make room for new discoveries without dropping science that began when they read Theophrastus’ Inquiry foundational works? Concerning Plants and went outside to carefully observe the The first question remains open-ended. Neither campus is actively magnolia trees in Mellon Courtyard. considering adding more time for laboratory, although some tutors As with every aspect of the Program, laboratory at St. John’s is a would hke to see it revisited to slow down the pace and allow more work in progress. The classic fruit fly experiments of the r95os are time for biology. The remaining questions can be considered in the gone; students today work on Einstein’s photoelectric effect and context of junior and senior laboratories. Though an essential work Millikan’s oil-drop experiment. Manuals have been revised and re­ in junior lab. Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is revised. Study groups have introduced new and interesting material described variously as a “hard slog” and a “stretch,” especially for to tutors, who work them into laboratory. Through it all, laboratory students for whom math does not come easily. And in senior labora­ remains grounded in Barr and Buchanan’s basic plan for science at tory, a lack of experiments and a need to include some of the new the college. “These laboratories,” Buchanan wrote in the 1937 discoveries in biology have prompted both campuses to think about Bulletin ofSt. John’s College, “wiU provide a proper pre-professional including different works and experiments in laboratory. scientific training, will illustrate the hberal arts in the liveliest “A Continuing Quest” contemporary practices, and will focus the past on the present for the whole course.” A fundamental question for the college, says Annapohs tutor Nick Nevertheless, the college has faced challenges in its laboratory MaistreUis, is “what is the place of science in a hberal arts educa­ program over the years. In A Search for the Liberal College, tion?” That raises other questions, he adds, such as: How should the J. Winfree Smith recounted how faculty and students in 1948 college accommodate modern science in a curriculum based on the expressed concerns that science was becoming less integrated with classics? “That’s the great problem St. John’s has always faced in lab, the rest of the curriculum and that faculty were employing conven­ and it’s a continuing quest,” MaistreUis says. tional textbooks. The decision in 1976 to reduce the laboratory When MaistreUis joined the college in r967, lab had already program from four to three years, so that students could devote more changed away from the direction set for it by the Program’s founders, attention to the sophomore music tutorial, was controversial. And in “Under Barr and Buchanan, lab focused a lot on using scientific a report he gave to the Board of Visitors and Governors in 1985, equipment and experiments, on measurement and quantifying L {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{The Program} things. It did not follow the normal division of the sciences.” The change of direction happened under Dean Jacob Klein, who was urging the college to focus more on the deeper questions of scientific theory. Maistrelhs has been involved in some of the changes and improvements to the laboratory over the years. Thanks to investments made in the laboratories on both campuses-many funded by grants and gifts to the college-the labs are better equipped and more functional. Without a doubt, the program is stronger, more coherent, and more vital, he says. But in his view, more time is needed for biology. Back in 1976, Maistrelhs supported the move to reduce the labo­ ratory to three years. Students were clearly overburdened and soph­ omore lab was a weak part of the program. “It involved dissecting a lot of animals and tended to be very much hke a standard biology course,” he says. Now, students have biology in freshman year and in the last semester of senior year-in all, just 23 weeks for biology. To accommodate modern developments and allow for a slower pace, Maistrelhs would hke to see “the question of getting more time for laboratory raised.” What we do in biology at St. John’s, we do better than in pastyears, Maistrelhs says. The program has already improved by shifting away from “dissecting dead things” to more observations on the biology of hving things. More freshmen are spending laboratory classes down at the restored shoreline of GoUege Greek, a hving laboratory. Students in Santa Fe take advantage of a verticle mile of chmate zones-including high desert, transitional and sub-alpine—when learning about classificiation. “New and wondrous things are being {The College. Laboratory—IN 1941 and today—is not a history of science or “physics for poets,” but an integrated part of the Program. discovered all of the time,” he says. “Biology is a living and progres­ sive science and we should always he attentive to what we’re doing. The very best thing about science at St. John’s, Maistrelhs says, is the simple fact that “everybody does it all. The students do it, the tutors all teach it. The way we do it, there’s an emphasis on hands-on experiments and discussion, making science something to be talked about.” How Hard is Too Hard? Considering Maxwell For Bruce Perry, who served as archon for junior lab in Santa Fe last year, the second year of laboratory illustrates how well science speaks to and draws from other aspects of the Program. “We start with Galileo, who’s sort of the father of modern science, and it’s beautifully sequenced with other readings,” he says. “Students do some Newton in math, they do Newton in lab. They do Leibniz in math, and Leibniz in lab. So you’re seeing the same author in two different paths: one as a mathematician, one as a physicist. It’s really interesting.” After considering Gilbert, Ampere, Coulomb, and Oersted, junior lab devotes a month to Faraday. “Everyone knows how magnets work, but people didn’t know that magnets and electric currents could interact or that you could have magnetic fields. And then people noticed that currents could attract. So you start seeing aU St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �12 {TheProgram} these weird overlaps with these phenomena,” says Perry. “Faraday sorts out all the phenomena, and a way of accounting for them.” One reason laboratory devotes so much time to Faraday is to set the stage for Maxwell, who in turn sets the stage for studying Einstein in senior mathematics. For lo weeks, students read Maxwell’s Treatise and attempt to translate Maxwell into modern vector calculus. The material can be frustrating for students, some of whom find it a “hard slog,” says Perry. To explore Maxwell, Santa Fe uses a manual originally developed by tutor Peter Pesic and subsequently revised by tutor Jim Forkin. Annapolis uses a book by Tom Simpson that comprises three short papers by Maxwell and many notations by Simpson, supplemented by further notes by tutor Chester Burke. At i,ooo pages, the Treatise is “not very approachable,” so Santa Fe juniors read ao to 30 pages of it along with many pages of tutor notes. Perry says. “There’s a division about whether we’re going to stay with the Treatise as what we do here in Santa Fe, or do something like what Annapolis does.” A faculty study group is meeting this summer in Santa Fe to explore this issue in depth. A balance is needed, he suggests, between working out the equa­ tions and understanding the process. “The whole idea is to under­ stand where the science comes from, why one hne of thought emerged, why some other path did not. It’s not just theory, it’s not the history of science; it’s more like seeing what science looks like in the actual messiness of how it emerges, and the limits of what one knows or doesn’t,” he says, adding, “that’s one of the things at the college that’s wonderful.” In Annapolis, tutor Dylan Casey agrees that Maxwell is difficult and that students can get frustrated. As a physicist, one of the things that drew him to St. John’s was the college’s inclusive approach to science and mathematics-everybody does it all, regardless of their particular aptitude for math and science. Frustration is only a problem if students give up, but Casey believes that juniors have adapted to working through difficult material. “We read the Republic, we read the Metaphysics, and there are all sorts of things there that we acknowledge that we find confusing. But we say, ‘let’s try to understand it.’ I think that works well here at St. John’s.” The quest to comprehend Maxwell’s equations while following the development of his ideas, Casey suggests, is similar to memorizing Ancient Greek paradigms to approach the Meno. “You want to learn the language, but you’re not there to learn it in itself, to master it,” he says. “There’s a similar tension in Maxwell. We’re confronting a very challenging thing, and mathematics that students recognize but that many are not comfortable with: differential equations and proto vector calculus. Maxwell is developing what he calls a physical analogy and he’s presenting it through mathematical work, but because we are less facile with the mathematics it makes it harder for us to see the work in a physical analogy.” Underlying the tension is that at St. John’s, we strive not to take anything for granted. Casey questions whether this is always possible. “When we study Euclid and mathematics, we want to understand the geometry, but a lot of the focus is on trying to under­ stand why he is trying to say what he does,” he says. “With Maxwell, we may have to take some things for granted and then see how his argument plays out, to look at it in itself.” {The College- Perhaps some of Maxwell’s derivations can be taken for granted to allow for more time to discuss his conclusions. “It’s a little bit hke understanding how to drive a car without understanding how the car was built. It might be helpful to understand the physics, but really, only part of that really matters,” he says. “I think we overestimate sometimes how much doing the derivation will enhghten us as to what the final equation means. It’s something we have to work out every day.” The college will always grapple with whether there’s too much, whether the pace is too quick and where precious time is best invested, but Casey anticipates that “the basic shape of the junior lab is going to stay the same.” Brave New World: Senior Laboratory Senior laboratory, says Marilyn Higuera in Annapolis, has two chal­ lenges to address: i) not enough experiments and 2) a need to get from Darwin and Mendel to beyond Watson and Crick. Both of these issues speak to heightening the excitement of discovery and wonder in students. “For a while now, tutors have thought maybe that the story of the gene is not as thought-provoking as it once was,” Higuera explains. “Students already come to the college knowing that Mendel’s factors are in some way connected not only with the chromosome, but with part of the chromosome. The articles are still quite interesting but students already know pretty much what they were looking for.” Higuera also wants to see more experiments in senior year. The problem is “evolution, in general, doesn’t lend itself to experi­ ments” that can be done in the time allotted for laboratory in senior year, one month less because of essay writing. Right now, the labora­ tory experiments with fast-growing plants that are similar to the ones Mendel used in his genetic experiment. “After that, we’re a bit puzzled,” Higuera says. “We do some chemical things with bacteria, but you can’t see the bacteria until they colonize. So we’re hoping, eventually, to include more plant work in the lab and maybe in Annapolis we can take advantage of our wetlands.” Faculty study groups offer a way for tutors to help shape improve­ ments to laboratory. Annapolis faculty members who participated in tutor Kathy Blits’ 2004 group on ecology and evolution went away excited by the subject matter, and Higuera later chaired a lab committee that met to review papers that could be studied in senior lab. “We began to be aware that there are really philosophically interesting questions coming up as scientists try to refine their knowledge of how the gene works. It’s not clear what you want to identify as its function. We are entertaining the notion that there might be papers we want to read and ways of raising these questions in our own classes.” Higuera is fascinated by the norm of reaction, a phenomenon of genetic development referring to the fact that organisms with exactly the same genes do different things when exposed to different environments. “There are so many interesting questions,” she says enthusiastically. “How does an ‘organism’ recognize that it’s in a different environment? What should one call the environment? We tend to think of it as ‘outside your body’ but genes have an environ­ ment and they interact with their environment. Where do you draw the boundaries? These are wonderful questions that have scientists St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{TheProgram} 13 as Kant thought it was, but it’s really a statistical connection.” As for second semester, Houser sees it as “a pretty coherent whole” that starts with Darwin and the issue of inheritance, then moves to Mendel and the discovery and exploration of the function of chromosomes, and how those might be related to heredity. Houser would like to see the college include The Triple Helix, a book by Richard Lewontin: “That’s the perfect way to end the semester because he talks about the broad-ranged questions that come up for us, and lots of new questions as well. But he brings back the question of the role of reductionism in the question of evolution, to some extent, what an organism is,” Houser says. If Houser would suggest one improvement for laboratory, it would be finding away to better unite the biology of freshman year with that of senior year. “The larger debate in biology is the debate between those who take a more holistic view-environmentalists, ecologists, that sort of thing-and reductionism. Some of the tendency in the freshman year has been to go in the holistic direction, and yet most of the work we do in the second semester of the senior year is reduc­ tionism. If we’re going to engage in a reductionist enterprise in the senior year, then maybe we ought to do a httle bit more preparation in the freshman year.” Tammie Kahnhauser and Daniel Rekshan (both A08) THE CLASSIC HeRSHEY-ChASE BLENDER EXPERIMENT. replicate Guiding Principles wringing their hands.” It always comes down to the question: where do you fit it in? “It would be tough to get from Darwin to that level, but I think tutors and students would be really interested in that.” While he agrees that more time must somehow be made for biology, Stephen Houser, senior lab archon in Santa Fe last year, is fairly satisfied with senior lab these days. The first semester of senior year is particularly exciting he says, because of the questions it raises through the study of quantum physics about the nature of science and the human relationship to the world we’re observing. These are questions that “don’t get asked in other parts of the Program,” he says. “We just scratch the surface, but certainly the Indeterminacy Principle is one of those areas that suggest that, in some way, our minds and the world may not be fully commensurate. There are a number of different aspects to that. Particle-wave duality is another example, which is also connected to Heisenberg. That’s just another place where it seems like our minds are not geared toward what seems to be a paradox in reality.” The arrangement of having quantum physics in the first semester and biology in the second is a “historical accident,” says Houser, but there some connections. In Santa Fe, students read Shrbdinger’s What is Life? that helps connect physics to biology. Although he explores questions of entropy before the discovery of DNA, Shrodinger suggests “there was some large complex molecule that did govern the operation of cells,” Houser says. “That’s an inter­ esting problem, because living organisms represent a very high level of order, and it’s hard to understand how they can maintain that order because they don’t have the statistical basis upon which order is based in the rest of the world.” Shrbdinger’s text underscores the discovery in first semester that “cause and effect turns out not to be a necessary connection. {The College- The St. John’s way of doing science-no matter how vigorously the college fine-tunes it-will always have its detractors. One would have to experience the Program in its entirety to see the beauty and wisdom of science’s place at St. John’s, says Higuera. “What I love to see is that aU our students awake to all of these fascinating questions and they develop a certain kind of confidence in their own ability to think about them. That’s true for everything in our Program.” As far as science goes, studying a magnolia leaf, carrying out the oil-drop experiment, and colonizing bacteria are valuable even when they don’t work exactly as they should. “We try to see through the eyes of the scientist, follow his thinking, and see if we agree. That’s a valuable skill to practice-for science, for any disci­ pline. Students are engaging in observing the world and thinking in a way that one doesn’t if one is just memorizing laws and working problems,” she says. Because the goal is to cultivate an ability to ask questions and consider conclusions with a skeptical eye, experiments have a different role at St. John’s than they would in an upper-level course in organic chemistry or developmental biology at another institu­ tion. “An experiment is always a work in progress,” says Houser, more like a “brief encounter with the material world.” Last year in Santa Fe, Houser’s students were discouraged because their Millikan experiments didn’t turn out as expected. “That’s one of the lessons that could be learned in the lab,” he says. “That is the difficulty and level of frustration you have to live with as a scientist.” Casey points out that when students discuss Lavoisier and the problem of naming, the first question they may ask is “why is this problem important?” For Casey, that’s what sets the college apart. “We put our hands on things. We ask questions and we try to read between the lines,” he says. “That’s what made me really interested in St. John’s.” St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{Radical Inquiry} RADICAL INQUIRY at the heart of the Program prepared them to explore deep questions in their respective fields. Graham Redgrave (SF90) uses analo­ gies to Homer along with MRI scans in his work with patients diagnosed with eating —Francis Bacon, The New Organon disorders. Cynthia Keppel (A84) divides her mong the characteristics that time between applied and basic science, work unite Johnnies, across disci­ rooted in her fascination with nuclear physics. plines and time, are these: At the National Institutes of Health, Steven A burning desire to investi­ Holland (A79) seeks genetic links to infec­ gate theories for themselves. tious diseases. Patricia Sollars (A80) hopes Boundless curiosity. A will­ her work in a tiny area of the brain may clues about the biological clock. And ingness to doubt even the mostprovide entrenched in her laboratory at the University of Chicago, doctrines and ideas. Perhaps most important is a willingness to doubt themselves, to hold Leslie Kay (SF83) learns more about the brain their judgments up to a critical light, by studying how rats distinguish one odor abandon what doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, from another. In some cases, these determined inquirers and formulate new ideas. These are traits shared by the Johnnie scien­ have more questions than answers. But tists profiled here, who attribute at least a instead of finding “despair” in their dead share of their success to their experiences at ends, they draw satisfaction from the contin­ St. John’s, not just in the laboratory but in all uing quest. aspects of the college. The “radical inquiry” “Byfar, the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this—that men despair and think things impossible. ” A {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} 15 Why do people get sick? Graham Redgrave: Psychiatrist BY Tom Nugent When the youthful patient began to describe the alluring temptation of self-starvation and binge-eating, the psychiatrist tried a metaphor. “Have you read the OdysseyV' She nodded. “Do you remember the scene where his sailors tie him to the mast?” As the two of them continued to discuss the ways in which her psychological disorder tempted her to engage in binge-eating, he asked her: “Are you saying you feel like Odysseus, as you struggle with the impulse to overeat?” The patient nodded. “That’s right,” she told Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Graham W. Redgrave, M.D. (SF90), during a recent therapy session atHopkins Hospital. “I can see that when I’m tempted to start gorging on doughnuts or cookies. I’m like Odysseus hearing the music of the Sirens.” Helped along by Homer’s great epic poem, the discus­ sion at the eating disorders clinic continued, as the patient told the doctor that although the “singing of the Sirens was beautiful, Odysseus knew he shouldn’t hsten, because if he got distracted by the music, his ship would crash on the rocks.” Redgrave listened carefidly-then used the metaphor to reassure that patient that it was all right to “give up” the disorder and then “go home” (like Why does a the wandering Odysseus) to a healthier way of living-a concept that the troubled patient had been strugghng to accept. healthy woman starve herself? Graham Redgrave ( SF90 ) COUNSELS PATIENTS WHILE CONDUCTING RESEARCH ON THE NEURAL MECHANISMS INVOLVED IN EATING DISORDERS. For the 40-year-old Redgrave, who last year won a coveted NARSAD Young Investigator grant for his groundbreaking research on the functional neuroanatomy of anorexia nervosa, that “In the case of that particular patient, the discussion about recent conversation about Odysseus at the hospital’s nationally Odysseus was an important part of the dialogue, because it helped renowned Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore was a “fabulous her achieve some useful insights about the recurring ‘temptation’ example” of how the liberal arts (and especially classical philos­ to engage in an eating disorder that was wrecking her life.” ophy and literature) can often play a helpful role in the practice of psychotherapy. During the months that followed that therapy session in the faU of aooy, Redgrave says his patient “continued to make important “More than anything else,” says Redgrave, “a psychotherapy strides in understanding the psychological issues-the areas of session is a conversation in which both participants are trying to broken meaning-that had been key factors in causing her episodes communicate about problems related to what Freud described as of starvation and overeating. ‘broken meaning.’ ” And so, in one way or another, the challenge “As a psychiatrist, I feel very fortunate to be able to work in a is always to persuade patients to lay aside these broken meanings by gradually bringing understanding and insight to them. setting where I can study both the physical brain and the ideas that emerge from it,” the therapist and researcher explained. “More {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} i6 ''Eating disorders affect millions in this country and cause immense suffering Graham Redgrave (SF90) and more, it’s becoming clear to me-in my [brain] research and also in my clinical treatment of patients-that knowing how to patients,” Redgrave recalls. “This doctor was achieving some very positive results among a highly stressed, inner-city population, and organize the knowledge you gain in a coherent epistemological 1 was intrigued by that. When he described his approach to patients framework is absolutely essential to effective psychiatry.” as ‘based on Dr. McHugh’s system,’ and then as 1 watched him interact with the patients and saw how effectively he communi­ Ask Redgrave to account for his passionate interest in “the hnks between epistemology and psychiatry,” and he’ll tell you that it began during his junior year in Santa Fe .., when he agreed to take on the “marvelously exciting” challenge of analyzing and then writing an essay on Plato’s Theaetetus. “That was an extraordinary experience,” he recalls with a nostalgic smile, “because it forced me to think long and hard about what knowledge really is. When can you be sure you understand an idea accurately, and what should you do with the knowledge you’ve obtained? What’s the best way to think about an idea, if you really want to grasp its essence?” cated with them, 1 was struck by how clear-headed and sharply focused that approach really was. “After a few months of working with him, 1 realized that the McHugh approach was a truly deep way of thinking about psychi­ atry, and that it was based on an epistemological system that in many ways seemed to have come straight out of Plato. That was very helpful for me, because it showed how effective psychiatry must be built on a clearly focused epistemological framework.” Born in London in 1968, Redgrave moved with his family to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., as a fourth-grader, then More than a decade after his graduation in Santa Fe, Redgrave landed on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s in the faU of 1986. A says he was “just amazed” to discover-while en route to an even­ tual residency in general psychiatry at Hopkins-that the legendary JHU psychiatrist and co-author of the classic The Perspectives of dedicated classics student in high school (he took four years of Latin and loved it), at St. John’s he liked the way “the education flowed out of the continuing ‘conversation’ between you and your Psychiatry, Dr. Paul McHugh, had centered his entire approach to tutor and your classmates. I remember being blown away by Euchd, psychotherapy on a carefully thought out epistemological frame­ work based in large part on concepts Redgrave had first encoun­ and by the elegance of his definitions. “You got the sense that you were right there at the intellectual roots of Western civilization,” he says, “and the conversation kept tered in the Theaetetus. “During my first year in medical school at Johns Hopkins, 1 wound up ‘shadowing’ a psychiatrist who was treating HIV/AIDS getting richer and richer. And everything we read was part of that hving conversation. In many ways, I think the reason I’m so excited about doing research in psychiatry these days is because I get to participate in a similar conversation, but now it’s about the brain and the mind and behavior and meaning.” After meeting his future spouse, Brooke, in Santa Fe (they’re now raising three young children in the Baltimore area), Redgrave spent several years working as a computer programmer in San Francisco, then opted for med school in 1994. “I found computer science very challenging,” he says today, “but psychiatry ulti­ mately seemed much richer and more complex. What I really like about my current role at Johns Hopkins is that I’m able to conduct MRI-based research on brain function in eating disorders, while also treating illnesses like anorexia and bulimia. “As our treatment methods continue to get better, it’s a privilege to find yourself working in both arenas. Eating disorders affect miUions in this country and cause immense suffering. The stakes are high, and we need every tool-including the Greek and Latin classics [-that can help us to better understand these illnesses.” Redgrave spends many of his afternoons (and more than a few of his nights) in a speciaUy designed, state-of-the-art “imaging lab” at {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 200S } �{RadicalInquiry} The Johns Hopkins Hospital. His quest: to pinpoint some of the key changes in hrain function that take place during episodes of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa-a potentially lethal behav­ ioral syndrome in which young women starve themselves as part of a pathology that often involves several different psychological factors. In his role as a chnical psychiatrist, Redgrave treats eating­ What are 17 the fundamental BUILDING BLOCKS OF MATTER? Cynthia Keppel: Experimental Nuclear Physicist and Cancer Researcher BY Rosemary Harty disorder patients in psychotherapy sessions that explore the psychological vulnerabihties contributing to anorexia. During these encounters, the psychiatrist employs the standard tech­ niques of traditional psychotherapy to help patients overcome a disorder that reportedly affects up to one percent of the U. S. female population (or about 1.6 million American women). Once he steps into his lab at the Hopkins Hospital’s Phipps Chnic, however, the chnician puts on a different hat. He becomes a researcher who’s more interested in the activation of brain regions At some point, every thinking being looks to the stars and wonders about the nature of the universe. Where did all of this come from? What is everything made of? What keeps everything from flying apart? “These are probably questions that we all ask ourselves at one time or another,” says Cynthia Keppel (A84). “Some of us just become a little obsessed with them.” Keppel spends her days probing questions that could keep a than in behavior patterns among struggling patients. Although the neuroanatomy involved in Redgrave’s studies is person busy for a lifetime-several lifetimes, perhaps. Most of complex, the strategy behind them can be easily understood. By using (MRl) technology to chart the flow of oxygen-carrying are bound together tvith gluons that form into larger particles them deal with the behavior of quarks, elementary particles that such as protons and neutrons. “My approach to physics is very hemoglobin in the brains of patients with severe eating disorders, St. John’s-like. I’ve always been most interested in the big the researcher can monitor the ways in which the neurons (brain questions,” Keppel says. “There are so many basic, fundamental cells) respond to anorexia-related “cues” in the behavior of the test subjects. Hopefully, gaining a better understanding of the and compelling questions to pursue.” patterns of activation involved in such disorders will aid position as University Endowed Professor of Physics at Hampton Keppel balances many professional roles: She holds a joint researchers in developing interventions (such as new drugs or University in Virginia and Staff Scientist at the Thomas psychotherapy techniques) that will eventually help to reduce or Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. She also directs the even prevent them. Explains Redgrave: “By studying the change in levels of oxygenation in areas of the brain such as the dorsolateral Hampton University (HU) Center for Advanced Medical Instru­ mentation and a joint medical physics program with the Eastern Virginia Medical School, where she is leading efforts to develop prefrontal cortex or the insula, we can measure the activity that’s advanced diagnostic and treatment tools using nuclear taking place in neurons in women acutely ill with anorexia and technology. compare it to healthy women. “Studying neural mechanisms of eating disorders is a relatively Keppel has a fourth job that takes top priority; she and her husband, Barry Hellman (A84), a pathologist, have three new frontier in psychiatry, and the rapid evolution of imaging tech­ children, ages ar, r4, and 7. It’s not unusual for her to be at nology makes this an especially promising area of research. I don’t think we’re going to find a magic bullet for eating disorders the university laboratory in the morning, return home to “hang with the kids” in the afternoon, and head back to the anytime soon, but we are getting closer to understanding the basic laboratory for late-night research. “I think the greatest advance building blocks of the disorder, which may one day help relieve the in my work,” she quips, “has been the development of the suffering of anorexia patients everywhere.” home office.” One of her most exciting endeavors is directing the scientific and technical aspects of Hampton University’s Proton Therapy Institute, a $200 million project to treat cancer patients more safely and effectively. Five proton therapy centers are {The College- St. John's College • Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} i8 Cynthia Keppel (A84) currently operating in the ENJOYS A CAREER THAT COMBINES THE BEST OF BOTH THEORETICAL AND APPLIED SCIENCE, ALLOWING HER TO WORK TOWARD BETTER TREAT­ MENT FOR CANCER WHILE PROBING MYSTERIES OF THE SUBATOMIC WORLD. United States. Hampton’s center is under construc­ tion and scheduled to treat its first patients in August 3010. As the Scien­ tific and Technical director, Keppel is respon­ sible for machine opera­ tions, nuclear science, and winter breaks at and treatment planning for St. the patients. computer modeling and “It’s not news that radiation kills tumors,” imaging, gained skills in John’s. applied She did mathematics, Keppel explains. “The and trick is to kill the tumor about physics. She chose read extensively side American University for effects and increasing graduate studies prima­ while reducing safety for those under­ rily to work with Ray going the therapy.” Traditional radiation Arnold, who was among therapy directs a photon making exciting discov­ beam eries in particle physics to the Keppel says. the prominent scientists patient, As force carriers, photons “interact at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center all the way through the (SLAG) in California. At patient’s body, even some­ SLAC, it costs $100,000 times all the way through a day to run an experi­ the table.” ment on the particle In contrast, protons beam accelerator, but deposit all of their energy into a well-defined (tumor) space and interact only minimally secure time for her experiment on resonance electroproduction, beforehand with healthy tissue. After careful positioning, the subject of her dissertation. Resonances are extremely short­ patients are exposed to the proton beam for only about a minute, lived elementary particles (they exist for about 10-33 seconds) as an intense energy burst is targeted precisely to the tumor. that are produced in proton scattering experiments. Keppel managed to “That translates into exactly what you want for battling cancer,” “When you hit a nucleon, like a proton, they might do elastic she says. Her work has had direct and beneficial medical applications, scattering, like billiard balls striking each other, and stay intact. Or the electron beam can hit the proton and completely break it and that has been immensely rewarding for Keppel. But, at the apart. Another thing that can happen is that the electron hits Jefferson Lab, she spends her time exploring abstract and the proton, but the proton absorbs it and goes into an excited puzzling questions of experimental physics that first captivated state and grows. The quarks then have to align themselves into her while she was a student at St. John’s. different spin structures. That’s a resonance state.” Keppel first gained experience in scientific research What Keppel was exploring then and continues to probe by working at the Naval Research Laboratory during summer today is the question: how do quarks align themselves to remain {The College. St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{RadicalInquiry} 19 ‘7/2 my research, n e re irorkinyon questions we may not know the answers tofor 20 years. Cynthia Keppel (A84) bound in a resonance state? What force holds quarks together, engineering [at other colleges and universities] have been and how does it differ from the force that holds nucleons working so many problems, not in a global sense, but sitting together? “The strong force that holds quarks together must somehow there with paper and a computer, and doing lots of applied also be the same force responsible for holding protons and something we don’t do at St. John’s,” she says. “Nevertheless, neutrons together,” she explains. “For physicists, these are we make it.” phenomena on vastly different scales. How do we link these math. That is a skill on its own and thinking on its own, and it’s In her sophomore year-when she first settled on a career in science-Keppel seriously considered transferring to another things together?” Scientists understand the force that holds quarks together institution; instead she listened to a “strong feeling” that she through quantum chromodynamic (QCD), a quantum field had a lot more yet to learn at St. John’s. Getting comfortable theory of the strong interactions based on the exchange of force­ with difficult questions in the liberal arts-posed by Hegel and carrying gluons between quarks and antiquarks. But the force Aristotle as well as Einstein and Bohr-prepared her to be a tena­ holding nuclei together is “fraught with mystery,” Keppel says. cious and creative researcher, still filled with wonder at the “It doesn’t fall into any of our fundamental field theories.” mysteries of the universe. “In my research, we’re working on questions we may not know Keppel’s work straddles classical and modern science, prac­ physics. “Nuclear physics is like classical mechanics-it works. the answers to for ao years,” she says. “One of the most valuable things I learned at St. John’s was to keep at it-to keep ques­ We can make MRI machines, smoke detectors, nuclear power tioning. tical and theoretical applications, and nuclear and particle and bombs. On the other hand, we know from a couple decades of experiment now that quarks and gluons are the fundamental things that everything should be made of.” But there’s no bridge between nuclear and particle physics. Why do people get infections? Steven Holland, M.D.: Physician and Researcher “That’s my little niche,” Keppel says, “trying to find that bridge.” Physicists at the JLAB probe these questions about subatomic After a morning of hospital rounds at the National Institutes of matter by running experiments in the Continuous Electron a young boy whose lungs were under attack by a mysterious Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). The accelerator allows fungus, a young woman with an unidentified infection causing Keppel and her colleagues to propel electrons at a nucleus and painful skin rashes, and a woman in her 30s with a rare genetic then study the output: data such as energy, wavelength, and disease that has killed four members of her family. Health, Dr. Steven Holland (A79) was up to speed on the cases of geometric patterns. Getting time on the particle beam acceler­ As Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases at ator at this national laboratory is extremely competitive, says NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Keppel, and takes much more time than the actual experiment: “You describe what the experiment is, who your 50 to 100 Holland devotes much of his time to research. But periodically he takes his turn as the consulting physician at the Institute’s collaborators are, and you write this whole thing up and present hospital in Bethesda, Md. For a month, he works in close contact it to a Program Advisory Committee composed of internation­ with the medical staff who treat the sometimes stubborn, baffling ally distinguished scientists. The committee approves only a fraction of the proposals submitted and invites researchers to and debilitating infections that have brought patients here. The team began with an update on the condition of the 12-year- present their experiment.” Her St. John’s education is helpful in old boy. “He has fungi in his lungs, and we’re working very hard to that Keppel knows how to state her case succinctly and effec­ figure out what his problem is,” Holland explained later. “It must tively, as well as stand up to prolonged questioning. be genetic and it must be profound, and we’re desperate to figure In one way, her analytical skills were sharpened at St. John’s, it out because he’s got a fatal problem.” but Keppel notes “there’s no sugarcoating” the disadvantage Getting to help patients while researching the causes of their Johnnies may encounter in graduate school in the sciences. “Most people who find out they want to do math, science, and disease combines the best of two worlds for Holland. “What I get to do as a physician is to identify the problem, meet the patient. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �ao {RadicalInquiry} try to understand her illness at a molecular and genetic level, and Everyone is exposed to mycobacteria in air, water and dirt. Infec­ try to treat it with specific, directed therapies,” he explains, tion is extremely rare except in severe cases of HIV, in patients adding with a grin: “That’s pretty fun.” with profound immune defects, and a third group that Holland is The NIH is like a small city, and Holland’s laboratory has a investigating: North American and Western European women hroad charge, studying everything from frightening staph infec­ who are post-menopausal, Caucasian, and thinner and taller than tions and drug-resistant tuherculosis to preparing a defense for their peers. “This is a new disease we’re studying, and it must potential hioterrorist attacks. The welfare of each individual have some genetic basis,” Holland says. “It’s got ethnicity and patient is at the heart of their work. “It’s a wonderful thing to he morphological restriction, and we’re very interested in trying to here because patients come who have rare or undiagnosed prob­ definitively characterize it and identify the genes responsible.” lems, and we get to take a holistic approach that nobody else can afford to take anymore.” convinced he would find a genetic defect in their immune system After graduating from St. John’s, Holland earned a medical that was responsible for their lung disease. Holland’s newworking degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in thesis is that these patients have normal immune systems, but When he first began studying these patients, Holland was 1983. He stayed at Hopkins as an intern, resident, and chief share some genetic flaw in the lung surface itself. His research resident in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in infec­ team now includes a lung specialist as well as infectious disease tious diseases. He joined NIAID in 1989 to study the molecular and immunology specialists. “Part of the fun in doing science is biology of HIV, and in 1991 moved to the Laboratory of Host every now and then being able to say how wrong you were,” Defenses to study phagocytes and phagocyte immunodeficiencies. Holland says. That’s why studying science the St. John’s way was He’s been Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases valuable, he adds: following the thinking of scientists throughout since 2004. the ages-even when they were wrong-fosters resilience and creativity in problem solving. In medical school Holland developed an interest in working in the developing world, perhaps speciahzing in tropical diseases or “Ptolemy is wrong-elegantly, definitively, comprehensively nutrition. He eventually focused his interest on infectious wrong,” says Holland. “I was like Ptolemy, but not as smart. The diseases such as tuberculosis, largely eradicated in the U.S. but beauty is once you get to realize that you’re wrong, then you stiU have space to go to find out what’s right.” still a major killer in the developing world. “With the advent of HIV, which came up just as I was starting medical school and resi­ Holland and other researchers were successful in making dency, the importance of infectious diseases to global health really became obvious,” he says. important discoveries about the genetic cause of a devastating The research side of Holland’s work is driven by a desire to often causes painful boils, one of the many trials God inflicted on understand why human beings are susceptible to diseases. The more interesting question to think about, Holland suggests, is: Job. “It’s a fascinating disorder in which one gene is mutated, but it affects the function of everything, from brain to bone, to why don’t more of us get sick more often? “It’s been many immune system to lung, to heart,” says Holland. He led an NIH millions of years since [humankind] began, and we’ve become the research team that discovered that Job’s patients had an immune disease called Job’s Syndrome-so named because the disease dominant species,” he says. “It isn’t because of antibiotics, it’s system that was doing part of its work too well, with white blood because we’ve really become damn good at fighting off infections. cells in overdrive, attacking systems of the body, but other parts incompetently. We have found an accommodation with all the biome in the world that has, most of the time, for most of us, kept us pretty happy.” A decade ago, Holland and his collaborators published the first Holland examines immunodeficiency at the molecular level and comprehensive paper on Job’s. For the past decade, he and other at a functional level, seeking to pinpoint the reasons individuals develop rare diseases. He has a driving interest in genetic causes researchers hunted the gene that caused the disease, and just last year, they determined that mutations in the STAT3 gene were of disease because “so much of immunity is genetic.” responsible. “We’re still working on how to use those genetic At any one time, his laboratory runs dozens of clinical protocols observations to guide us to therapy,” Holland explains. “Finding dealing with infectious disease. One seeks to find the genetic a mutation is exciting; understanding exactly what that mutation cause of mycobacterial infections, which are similar to TB. does is more complicated.” {The College -5:. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �ai {Radical Inquiry} ""Part ofthefun in doing science is every now and then being able to say how wrong you were. ” Steven Holland {A79) Not unlike the St. John’s Program, research science calls for quality of life, and perhaps he can gain knowledge that can help asking questions and making connections in unfamiliar territory. her relatives. He admires her courage, and he’s grateful for all his For the last four years, Holland has been working with a patient in team has learned from her. “I’m a pretty hopeful guy,” he says, her 30s, who first sought medical attention for a movement “but I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think there’s a chance we can disorder, but was referred to him because of the infections she also suffered. Her family history was intriguing: her grandfather, help her.” The day that started at 8 a.m. will extend to well after 6 p.m., father, sister, and brother all died young of the disease, which also when Holland will conclude an interview with a fellowship candi­ caused infections. date. His wife. Dr. Maryland Pao, is a child psychiatrist who also Holland had no answers until he delivered a paper at a confer­ has a demanding job as deputy clinical director for the National ence and providentially decided to stay through the meeting, Institute of Mental Health. The couple have three daughters most of which was outside his research area. “Somebody ranging from rg to 9 years old. For fun, “we stay home,” he says, presented a case that was exactly this woman,” he says. Back in although once a week he makes time to play ice hockey. his laboratory, Holland looked up the gene responsible in that Holland draws interesting parallels between the college and his case and arranged to have his patient’s DNA sequenced. He work at NIH. “St. John’s is about trying to come up with new discovered a deficiency in the Thyroid Transcription Factor-r insights about the past in general. It’s wonderful and I loved it. (TTF-i) gene. “It controls the function of some of the cells in the I wouldn’t have gone any place else.” At NIH his work is about “trying to come up with new insights brain that control movement, the formation of thyroid factors, some of the lining of the lungs, as well as some of the neurological about the future. There’s a greater opportunity for failure, but function of the intestines. It also controls the production of some there are real opportunities for tangible success. When some­ of the immunoglobulins, also called antibodies, which fight off body gets better, that’s fun. They get up and they do what they’re infections in the body.” This woman’s case allows Holland to explore compelling ques­ supposed to do.” As for the answers he doesn’t have yet, “I don’t mind not tions about genetics and infectious diseases. TTF-r requires two knowing,” says Holland. “I would mind if someone said you don’t know and you can’t know. That would be irritating. That’s why I copies, one each from the mother and the father; only one was have a laboratory. The beauty of passed along to his patient, and this haploinsufficiency is what has made science is that there’s a reward for her so ill. What turns this gene on? both saying, I don’t get it, and then How could it be stimulated to do its saying, I want to figure it out. You don’t get penalized for being igno- work? rant-you get penalized for staying In early spring, the woman had ignorant. ”4- already spent three months at the —Rosemary Harty hospital, undergoing experimental treatments to boost proteins in the TTF-r gene to stimulate it to func­ tion better. It’s the first time anyone has tried any therapy for patients of this disease, Holland notes. “Now we’re going in to give her a second set and see if we can’t push her cells to finally make enough of this protein that she has not had all the Even modern scientists hit road­ years of her life,” he says. blocks Perhaps he can make significant improvements in this patient’s find AND dead-ends, SAYS Dr. Steven Holland, who hopes to CURES FOR BAFFLING DISEASES SUCH AS Job’s Syndrome. {The College St John’s College • Summer 2008 } �{Radical Inquiry} 2,2. What Patricia Sollars (A80) regulates THE body’s internal studies the BIOLOGICAL CLOCK THAT GOVERNS CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS IN MAMMALS; HER RESEARCH MAY BE HELPFUL IN DEVELOPING REMEDIES FOR JET LAG AND SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER. CLOCK? Patricia Sollar.s: Neuroscientist questions related to the brain function, and Pickard focuses more on anatomical research. Located in the hypothalamus, the superchiasmatic nucleus is the primary in Sollars eventually completed her mammals. It cues human heings to the doctorate at the University of Oregon. regulator of circadian rhythms sleep-wake cycle, and it tells creatures She completed a fellowship at the Univer­ with seasonal breeding cycles that it’s sity of Pennsylvania, where she served on time to get going. the faculty, then joined her husband at As a graduate student in neuroscience, Colorado State University. Until this Patricia Sollars (A8o) first thought about year, she was a research scientist at the the concept of an internal clock in a purely Department of Biomedical Sciences at abstract, St. John’s way: “I thought, ah, Colorado State University; this fall she temporality-what is time?” she says, and her husband will move to the Univer­ laughing at the memory. “Of course that’s sity of Nebraska, where they will teach and conduct research as part of the not even in the same ballpark.” university’s new veterinary program. Sollars was studying at Columbia * University, rotating through laboratories In Nebraska, Sollars will continue to that were studying various questions in research the SCN and its role in the circa­ nucleus (SCN). Although her initial concepts of the internal dian system. The term “circadian” comes from the Latin, Sollars notes, for “about a day.” Most human neuroscience, when she first learned about the superchiasmatic clock were “naive,” she says, the SCN captured her imagination beings have a circadian rhythm of about 24 hours-unless some­ in the same way in which she once pondered the nature of time thing knocks it out of balance, for example, shift work or flying along with Augustine. In one tiny area of the brain, she discov­ across time zones. In her research, Sollars has deliberately ered a rich source of inquiry: Does the SCN alone regulate the altered the circadian rhythm of mice, hamsters, and rats to try to internal clock? Is it part of a distributed network in the brain? demonstrate that the SCN-relying on cues relayed through the When sight is taken away, how does the SCN continue to regulate circadian rhythms? optic nerves-autonomously regulates an important character­ istic of circadian rhythms. “Here was this one little nucleus that sits just on top of the Sollars devised and carried out an experiment she believed optic chiasm in the brain,” she says. “It was always there, but would show definitively if the SCN was the master circadian people knew so little about what it was doing. There were so many questions to ask, so many experiments to develop, on a oscillator. She based her experiment on the knowledge that each species, and even strains within species, have different endoge­ molecular and a behavioral level. All biological creatures have nous circadian rhythms. “If you keep a mouse in constant dark­ the ability to regulate their activity to day/night cycles, and in ness with no temporal cues, it will run [on an exercise wheel] mammals that is thanks to the SCN.” with a period 0123.5 hours, and every day it gets up a half an hour Sollars met her husband, Gary Pickard, then finishing up a earlier,” she says. A golden hamster has an endogenous “free- post-doctorate fellowship in neuroanatomy, in the laboratory at running” rhythm of 24.06 hours, and a rat, 24.3 hours. Sollars’ Columbia. They have collaborated on research for most of the experiment involved a little meddling: what would a hamster do past 35 years, though Sollars is more interested in pursuing with the SCN from a mouse brain? If the clock was in the SCN, {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{Radical Inquiry} a3 ''The best thing about St. Johns was the chance to get to play with ideas. ” Patricia Sollars (A8o) Sollars theorized, the hamster should have the mouse’s circa­ other physiological phenomena in your body are out of phase,” she says. Knowing more about the SCN’s regulatory role may dian rhythm. The first step was for her to test her transplant theory from lead to the development of better remedies for jet lag. hamster to hamster. “That worked like charm,” she said. It’s in her nature, Sollars says, to demand to be intrigued, “When you lesion out a hamster’s SCN and transplant one from invigorated-even entertained-by her work. After two years of another hamster, it restores rhythmicity at 24.06 hours.” studying biology and chemistry at the University of Michigan, Next, she knocked out a hamster SCN and implanted one from she started over again at St. John’s. Here she discovered how a a mouse. When the hamster started running in his exercise good question, paired with a sound method of inquiry, could lead wheel, Sollars didn’t know what to expect. Amazingly, the to discoveries-or at least, new and more interesting questions. hamster established a reliable rhythm of 23.5 hours-exactly that “The best thing about St. John’s was the chance to get to play of a mouse. “Then,” she says with a sigh, “I made the mistake of taking it with ideas,” she says. “We’d have these long discussions, and one step further.” She implanted the SCN of a rat into the was most important.” you’d never know where they were leading because the process hamster, expecting a 24.3-hour cycle to emerge. “When the “That’s what I loved most about the Program and that’s what I rhythm was restored, it was 23.5-the mouse again,” she says. “I carried into the study of neuroscience. When you take on some­ transplanted a rat SCN into a hamster, and the rhythm that thing as vast as the human brain, one of the most important comes back out is that of a mouse.” Far from being discouraged, Sollars has an entirely new line of things is the ability to ask questions from a variety of perspec­ inquiry: “One possibility is that this is species-specific. Perhaps don’t expect.” tives, to be open to all sorts of possibilities-to look for what you the mouse and the hamster have autonomous clocks in the SCN —Rosemary Harty and the rat could have a distributed clock network. Perhaps when leaving part of the clock behind.” She published the findings of How DO WE CREATE OUR INTERNAL COGNITIVE WORLD? her experiment in \\\& Journal ofNeuroscience (March 1995). Sollars had to put this question aside while she devoted more of Leslie Kay: Neuroscientist you transplant the SCN from the rat into the hamster, you’re her time to raising her children: Galen, 23, and Emilia, 17. She has continued to work with her husband on laboratory experi­ Why do people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease lose their ments at Colorado State that are more concerned with the sense of smell as the disease progresses? How does a whiff of anatomical underpinnings of the SCN, several of which may have Coppertone trigger memories of family beach vacations? And what exactly is happening in the network of our brains when we beneficial medical applications. Among their current projects is an investigation into the SCN’s role in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a debilitating condition linked to the shorter days of winter. Evidence suggests that a serotonin deficit makes some people more vulnerable to the disorder. “With this particular deficit, you’re not as responsive to the light input from the outside,” she explains. “You end up having an altered phase relationship, then that affects hormones, affects mood, and a lot of other secondary components.” Another clinical application of her work is the link between circadian rhythms and jet lag. Is there a way to enhance the way the internal clock works with other systems in the body to help individuals adapt to major shifts in time zones? “Your internal clock, it turns out, will rapidly shift to a new time-hut all the stop to smell the roses? Leslie Kay (SF83) can’t answer these questions yet, but she knows a lot more about how our olfactory system interacts with other circuits in the brain than when she began conducting research 17 years ago at the University of California at Berkeley. As an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago, Kay spends her time studying what happens in the brains of rats when they are faced with the task of distinguishing between two similar but distinct smells. Her research may someday contribute to a better understanding of devastating diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Kay came to St. John’s after dropping out of Stanford to take some time off. She went to Santa Fe with her then-husband, a {The College. St John’s College • Summer 2008 } �2.4 {RadicalInquiry} Johnnie, sat in on some classes, and soon enrolled as a January Freshman. The Program, she says, was a good choice for someone interested in too many disciplines to choose just one to study. “I was flipping hack and forth between being a writer, a scientist or a mathematician. At Stan­ ford, I switched my major four times,” she explains. “The freshman year at St. John’s hooked me. I love geometry, and studying Euclid, I was in heaven.” Between Kay’s junior and senior years, St. John’s tutor Gerald Meyers helped her secure an intern­ ship at Los Alamos National Laboratories with GenBank, an international repository of known genetic sequences from a variety of organisms. At that time, a clerked typed in the sequences, and Kay and the other students annotated coding regions and proteins. Still unsettled on her career path, she ended up working there for two and a half years after graduating from St. John’s. Kay went to grad school at UG Berkeley, dropped out, and worked as a programmer for several years before returning to the GenBank project, where she was a scientific reviewer and software designer. With programmers in great demand, Kay worked in the insurance industry for a brief time, but the attractive pay wasn’t enough for her. In search of something fascinating, she returned to Berkeley, where she studied math, physics, and biology. Convinced that she had found her niche, she walked into researcher Walter Freeman’s neuroscience laboratory and asked to do computational modeling of the brain. “He was a gruff guy, and said, ‘we’ll see.’ He gave me data to analyze. I came up with an effect in the data, but not enough to prove it. I had to do experiments, and the experiments got me excited.” Her “secret love” of statistics, combined with a desire to test theories for herself, propelled Kay into serious laboratory research. For her doctoral thesis, Kay studied how different regions in the rat’s brain talk to each other when the rats perform an olfactory task. At CalTech, where she did post-graduate research, she narrowed her focus to the activity found in single neurons. She tried to draw conclusions about objective odor responses from her research, “but it didn’t work.” She did discover, however, that even at the level of a single neuron, the activity of the first cells in the central olfactory pathway are strongly modulated both by the {The College- Rats can tell scientists a great deal about circuits in the brain INVOLVED in the SENSE OF SMELL. ShOWN ARE (l. TO R.): DoNALD Frederick; Leslie Kay (SF83), with RG07 perched on her shoulder; Cora Ames; and Daniel Roias-Libano. meaning of the odor (whether it suggests a sweet or bitter taste to the rat) and the behavior the rat is trained to carry out in response. After her post-doc, Kay had her choice between two positions: one in New York at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and one in Chicago. “The University of Chicago was the only place I interviewed where they were excited by the fact that I went to St. John’s,” she notes. While her laboratory focuses on the olfactory system and brains of rats, her findings may some day help scientists learn more about neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, because the sense of smell is affected early in the progression of these devastating diseases-sometimes many years before other symptoms appear. “The interesting thing in the olfactory system is that you go directly from the nose to the olfactory bulb in the cortex,” she explains. Then information is transmitted to the limbic system, including the hippocampus, amygdala and hypothal­ amus, which is important in emotional states and in memory St. John’s College • Summer 2,oo3 } �{Radical Inquiry} formation. The signals are also carried to the basal ganglia, which is involved in disorders snch as Parkinson’s. Kay and her students implant electrodes inside the brains of rats to record brain waves while they perform various odor discrimination tasks. When animals inhale, the olfactory bulb is as It has been shown that part of the olfactory deficit in Parkinson’s disease is due to difficulty in sniffing, and Kay showed in a paper in 2005 that sniffing behavior couples the olfactory bulb with the hippocampus when rats learn odor asso­ two to ten cycles per second-are observed. But when a mammal must distinguish between one smell and another, faster gamma ciations. “We lose some of our olfactory sense as we age, but changes seen in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are more pronounced, and the reason is unclear. We also know that if the olfactory bulb is taken out of rodents, they act depressed, waves of 40 to 100 cycles are observed in the olfactory bulb. their eating patterns change, they become more afraid of However, in some circumstances when a rat has learned the association for a smell, a different pattern of 15- to 30-cycle beta frustrating, and not because they can’t smell, but because the stimulated, and theta waves-slow electrical pulses ranging from open spaces, and they give up more easily in tasks that are waves emerges. Gamma and beta waves are both evoked when rats smell the odors-but the results change dependent on the behavior olfactory bulb is missing,” she says. “If they are treated for involved in the experiment. This breakthrough came when Kay and her students observed differences in two experiments they were conducting. One researcher directed her rats to press the my attention all these years is: how do we create our internal cognitive world? The olfactory system offers a nice way to study left lever for one odor, the right for another (a two-alternative choice task). The other student conducted a “go/no go” task, in which the rat would press a lever for one odor, and not press the lever for the other. In the latter experiment, the rats learned the task faster and displayed enhanced beta oscillations. In the former, they learned slowly and showed large gamma oscilla­ tions when the odors were difficult to discriminate. It appears the go/no go task was much closer to what an animal does in its natural environment. she explains. “When an animal is foraging around and smells something, depression, they improve. “The question I got started on, and the one thing that’s held that question because it is connected with all these other systems. And the circuitry is relatively simple-or it was. It’s turned out we just didn’t know as much as we thought we did.” A satisfying part of Kay’s work is training graduate students to interpret data, to look for effects “that aren’t visible to the naked eye.” This analysis demands patience and skepticism­ something philosophy teaches, too. Kay has never been willing to take anything for granted. “You think you know something and you go looking for the thing you know. It’s like the hubris of the Sophists. We have a lot of prejudice Reading List: Hume and Descartes, and those guys­ it’s either something it eats, runs away from, or approaches,” says Kay. Disconnect the link from olfactory bulb to the higher brain-for example, by injecting lidocaine into the pathways­ and the system only makes gamma oscil­ lations, not beta. “Through many different studies, what we’ve seen is that beta waves are not isolated; they involve the entire olfactory system all the way into the hippocampus,” she says. In this Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduc­ tion, by Frank Close The New Cosmic Onion: Quarks and the Nature ofthe Universe, by Frank Close The Ideas ofParticle Physics: An Intro­ ductionfor Scientists, by G. D. Goughian, J. E. Dodd, and B. M. Gripaios Don’t Fear the Big Dogs, by Bill Vancil happening in the higher brain, indi­ Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century, by Bettyann Kevles cating that “the whole system is working Suggestions from Cynthia Keppel task the brain wave activity in the olfac­ tory bulb correlates with what’s about what the sensory systems might be telling the brain. I always go back to together,” says Kay. {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } it’s really about constructing our internal representation of the world.” “The thing about biology “ Kay adds, “is that we can make hypotheses, and almost invariably [the answer] comes out somewhere in the middle. Then you have to do to more experiments to understand that result. We never quite prove anything. And I find that fascinating.” —Rosemary Harty �{Student Voices} A Work in Progress BY Kea Wilson (A09) ost St. John’s students spend their last night before freshman year trying to cram that last sweater into an over­ stuffed suitcase and get those last 20 pages of the Iliad read. I spent mine at a $2 million benefit gala in Miami, where Placido Domingo shook my hand and Vanessa Williams gave me a kiss on the cheek. A week earlier, I had flown to Florida as a finalist in a youth arts competition to which I had submitted a short story on a whim. Twelve master classes, eighteen hotel lunches and one ridiculous photo-op in a botanical garden later, I found myself at this surreal party with a medal hung around my neck, starstruck and eating hors d’oeuvres with the playwright Sam Shepard. Three hours after that, I boarded my plane to Albuquerque, still unsure of what had happened to me. From the moment when I landed to the moment I write this now. I’ve been a little embarrassed about telling this story. But I’ve been embarrassed, too, of calling myself a writer at all, and especially so since I first dragged my trunk onto the Santa Fe campus and began to call myself a Johnnie. No i8-year-old with an ounce of perspec­ tive would ever presume to say she had gained the experience, insight, or originality necessary to call herself an artist by the time she had finished high school, no matter how many awards she had won, or how much encourage­ ment she had received. No i8-year-old who’s just finished reading about the burial of Hector in the lobby of the Sunport would even dare to think that she was an artist, regardless of where her plane had just arrived from. After three years at St. John’s, I’ve often wondered just how many students have had Laurel Price (A09) makes TIME FOR MUSIC AND DRAMA ALONG WITH HER STUDIES AT St. John’s. {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } moments like these. While I’ve managed to write almost every day since coming to St. John’s-despite my embarrassment and often my own best efforts to quit-many of my friends have either banished their guitars to the dark recesses of their dorm room closet, or else been too caught up with Newton to ever take it up in the first place. From my original 28-student January freshman class in Santa Fe, at least six left to pursue some form of a career in the arts. I’ve been the editor of a literary magazine, a member of a filmmaker’s club, and devotee of a dance class that have all lapsed due to a lack of student interest or energy. When I first decided to apply to St. John’s, I was especially swayed by a video of then-Santa Fe Dean David Levine (class of 1967), posed in front of the Meem Library: he said that “there should be no realm of human endeavor that we should feel ourselves excluded from” once we have completed the St. John’s education. Why, then, is the artistic realm of human endeavor so cut off from many Johnniesand could we make art, even if we wanted to? Making Time for Art Needless to say, I didn’t come to St. John’s to be a writer-and I’d venture to say that even fewer students come to the college to play the clarinet, or act, or more generally, for any reason other than to read great books and attempt to understand them in a community of intelligent people. After all, I had spent the past four years of my life learning to be a writer at a fine arts high school, where I had saddled myself with a creative writing major at age 14. By the time I graduated, I had taken enough English and creative writing credits to fulfill St. John’s entrance requirements six times over, not to mention written a port­ folio of my own terrible amateur writing that had a page count roughly equal to that of War and Peace. When I applied to college, there was no doubt in my mind that I knew how to write, �{Student Voices} at least insofar as I’d done it, consistently and with varying degrees of success, every day for years. When I walked into my first seminar, I still hoped to pursue my writing professionally-hut like most young artists. I’d listened to the advice of my parents, my guidance counselors, and every successful writer I’d heen lucky to meet while at arts school; “Have a hack-up plan.” “Study something you enjoy.” “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I ran across St. John’s and marveled at the Weh site, which adver­ tised itself holdly and with QuickTime video testimonials, as a strong foundation for any endeavor I might undertake. I thought I’d found the answer. I hgured out pretty quickly that many of my friends had the same idea when coming to the college. After years of classical piano training, Sam Richards (SF09) had not only learned the nuances of his sonata repertoire, hut also the slim odds of success in the music world. “I actually chose St. John’s partly because I was so interested in playing music,” he says. “Knowing that it would be hard to actually have a career as a professional musician, I figured that it might help me to have a ‘strong liheral arts education’ as a hackup.” Once immersed in the difficult work of the tutorials, however, Richards found that there were simply too many “lah read­ ings, Newton to figure out, Racine to trans­ late, Nietzsche to read... .Part of me feels really had because just about everyone I know ends up telling me that I’m a talented musician, I should keep playing the piano. I’m good enough to be professional, and so on. . . but I just don’t feel it anymore.” It’s no secret that all too often, the rigorous work of the Program eclipses the often extraordinary time and energy it takes to practice and perfect an art form­ er, God forbid, produce any new material yourself. But this argument isn’t enough to explain why so many Johnnies manage to find time for week-long rock climbing trips in Arizona and so few manage to find time to write a novel. While Eron Wiles (SFio) doesn’t “find St. John’s to be discouraging to art in particular” and has even managed to sustain her own interest in the arts through a craft club, time in the pottery studio and small sewing projects, she misses the sustained community she enjoyed as an art major at a previous college. “A big part of going to art school is a class critique of each other’s work. I know I was constantly comparing my work with others.” At St. John’s, students not only lack the time, but simply the common vocabulary necessary to critique one another’s composition or use of a certain rhyme scheme. For some, however, St. John’s doesn’t only lack a common artistic dialect, but actually demands that we speak about books, the arts, and everything else through the rigidly defined analytical language that we’re taught in seminar-and in the process, neglect our artistic impulses entirely. Caitlin Cass (SFog), a rising senior and prodigious visual artist, says that she is “constantly blown away by how apathetic our student body is when it comes to anything that does not involve critiquing [or] discussing the work of others.” While many students are discour­ aged by the lack of artistic community at the college, however, Cass has taken it as a form of encouragement: she says that her “frustration with this is probably the only {The College - John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } a? Fine arts classes—offered free to STUDENTS—OFFER AN OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS INCLUDING SaRA FrY (Alo) TO EXPLORE THEIR CREATIVE SIDES. reason I’m even considering a career in the arts. The one truly useful thing I’ve learned at St. John’s is that I could never spend my entire life discussing what other people have created. I need to create things myself.” Like Cass, Simon Tajiri (SFog) came to the college with a passion for art, but quickly found himself saddened by “how much talent people have shelved in order to do the Program.” A talented poet, blues guitarist, songwriter, soundtrack composer and general Renaissance man himself, Tajiri quickly found himself feeling stifled by the St. John’s “culture which says that there’s a certain way of writing, a certain way of speaking, a certain way of reading, thinking. If you want to be part of the conversation, heard by your tutors and your �2,8 {StudentVoices} Magdalen Wolfe (A07) portrays Desdemona in the King William Player’s Othello production. Tutor Will Williamson played the title role. classmates, it’s got to go a certain way. And there’s room for individuality in that. But not rehellion.” Finding A Voice Like many of the subjects I interviewed, I’ve neglected my art form for months at a time while I’ve become embroiled in life at the college. During my sophomore year in Santa Fe, I logged countless hours on the layout computers in the basement of Peterson Sudent Center, painstakingly adjusting page margins on the school literary magazine rather than writing anything new of my own to submit. I’ve spent more than a few excruciating semi­ nars biting my tongue rather than commenting on Shakespeare’s use of word­ play, if only because I knew that my comment would be met by a round of silence if I spoke. And while I am, absolutely, still dying to understand just how Shakespeare, as a writer, frames a sentence or captures Iago’s specific brand of ego in words. I’ve come to be just as hungry to understand what Shakespeare, as a thinker, has to tell me not just about writing, but about human life. My freshman language tutor, Cary Stickney (A75) has always stood out in my mind as the first person who showed me what it truly meant to study at St. John’s. He was the first tutor to tell me, point­ blank, in my don rag, that it was not enough for me to simply love books the way I had loved books in high school-as something I wanted to write and the way I wanted to spend my time-hut that I must love books as a testament to the infinity of human perspectives they represent, and the invaluable mirror they provide for myself and the species I’m a part of. He also stands out in my mind as the tutor who could always be seen on the lower Placita on Wednesday afternoon, mandolin in hand, surrounded by students and other tutors making music. When I asked him whether or not a St. John’s student could pursue a career in the arts, Stickney responded that “insofar as the chief thing is to love the beauty and depth of the work that is possible in any given art so as to be inspired to produce that kind of work oneself, I do indeed. Insofar as really getting anywhere with Kant or Newton requires that same appli- {The College .St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } cation of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, that same eager, stubborn persistence that a career in the arts requires, yes, there again I think so.” But he was also careful to question whether or not there had “ever been a school that knew how to turn out great artists. It is hard enough to get students to speak their minds and ask their own ques­ tions and listen to one another and to the texts. If the creative arts are about finding one’s own voice, then I think St. John’s may be one of the best places to prepare to practice such arts.” And Stickney’s question is, after all, not a purely rhetorical one. While it remains to be seen whether or not any school can guarantee their alumni that specific breed of creativity, inspiration, sensitivity to beauty, personal richness and yes, success that any artist craves and requires, it cannot be ignored that St. John’s does produce alumni who go on to successful careers in all manner of art forms. One alumnus that I spoke with, David JLidd (A85), came to St. John’s after abandoning his dream of becoming an architect, and ended many years later restoring classical homes as part of his larger practice as painter, muralist and restoration artist with Kidd Studios. While the road was not a direct one for Kidd (he also spent several years in the Navy and had a successful career as the senior clinical trial researcher for the neurosurgery department at Johns Hopkins University), he says that it was his broad-based education at St. John’s that taught him the adaptability not only to draw on the skills he learned from every fork in his career path, but to eventually gather the courage to apply those lessons to his new career as an artist. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be painting a mural and need to use perspective and I’ve fallen back on what Winfree Smith taught me [in freshman math],” says Kidd. “And �{StudentVoices} doing clinical trials and helping people with chronic pain symptoms, it doesn’t feel hke that was a waste of time at all either, not in any way... I learned all this stuff about grant writing and business and managing people, and there were all these hfe skills that came with it that even if I didn’t stay in that career-I took to the next thing.” While Kidd makes no pretensions that it was this adaptability alone that led to his success as an artist, he cannot help but credit his education here for providing him with the foundation not only to pursue any field he chose, but also to address those essential human questions that artists, in particular, explore when they assert their perspective on the world through paint. stone, or pencil. “[Program authors] were able to look at the same thing, the same group of data and come at it from different directions and give it a whole new meaning,” he says. “1 swear that’s what art is. There are artistic scientists, and there are pedantic artists on both sides of the divide. 1 think real art and real creativity crosses all the disciplines like anything else.... [The things that Johnnies are taught] are broadly applicable to every­ thing from writing a computer program to saying ‘1’11 put this element on this painting here because that’s where it will look good in the composition...’ Every­ thing that goes on around us, as we are able to understand it, is logical. It may be chaotic, and maybe we don’t know what the 2,9 process is, but there’s always a process. If you can bring that to your art, 1 think it only improves it. That ability to synthesize, to take a bunch of disparate things and pull them together into a composition, that’s what an artist does, and the training here just gives you practice.” As 1 stumble through Newton, Kant, Maxwell, and the other challenges of junior year-and inevitably, editing whatever stub­ born metaphor in whatever short story I’m writing at the moment-I often find it difficult to follow Kidd’s advice. It’s hard sometimes, as I’m trudging through the electro-magnetic equations, to understand how my fiction can even fall under the same umbrella as the vast and brilliant works of the minds we encounter here, and how I’ll ever be able to say something as new, as daring, or as genius as they have already said. I’m only comforted to know that generations of St. John’s students before me have struggled with these ideas and emerged in awe, with an expanded faculty to enjoy and marvel at the world around them, and more courage to express their reverence and perplexity and excite­ ment for those ideas than when they entered. I’m comforted when I hear the words of a current St. John’s student, Simon Tajiri, and to know that they echo my thoughts exactly: “I’m pretty sure that I’ll spend my life creating, whether it be writing, music, whatever. I don’t know if it’ll be any good at all, or if people will want to hear what I have to say. But I want to be responsible about it. I want to make sure I’m hstening to the conversation before I jump in. I want to be honest about what I’m thinking and I want to be disciplined enough to be loyal to my beliefs... I don’t want to create more dogma. I just want to be honest and I want to be able to tell when what I’m saying is real. Maybe St. John’s can help me do that. Here’s hoping, anyway.” ♦ St. John’s may provide an ideal education FOR AN ASPIRING WRITER, SAYS KeA WiLSON (A09), BUT EVEN THE MOST DEDICATED ARTISTS FIND DIFFICULTY BALANCING CREATIVITY WITH THE Program. {The College. St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } �30 {Bibliofile} The End__________________________ Completing The End was a io-year quest FOR Salvatore Scibona (SF97), who drew on HIS experiences at St. John’s for scenes in Salvatore Scibona (SF97) Graywolf Press, 2008 HIS NOVEL. BY Rosemary Harty Salvatore Scibona’s first novel begins on the Feast of the Assumption, in the fictional Italian enclave of Elephant Park in Cleveland, with Rocco, the baker: He wasfivefeet one inch tall in street shoes, bearlike in his round andjowlyface, hulking in his chest and shoulders, nearly just as stout around the middle, but hollow in the hips, and lacking aproper can to sit on (though he was hardly ever known to sit), and wee at the ankles, and girlish at his tiny feet, a man in the shape ofa lightbulb. Having devoted himself to work, Rocco can’t grasp the latest piece of bad news in his sad life. Confused and heartbroken, he finds himself at Niagara Falls, confronting a deceiver in the guise of an ice cream man and learning the ultimate truth about his fife. The novel ends with the memories of Costanza Marini, a widow who runs an illicit but profitable business in her Elephant Park home. Mrs. Marini harbors a fierce but oppressive love for those she cares about, rich memories from her youth and marriage, and persistent demons: Fouryears into her widowhood, Satan visited her in her garden. She was on her knees, yanking the quack grass out ofthe spinach. Iridescentflies dappled the carcass ofa bass in thefurrow. “Egoist, ’’said the tempter. “Despair!” To despair is a sin. But, true enough, she had no hope. She could not remember having hoped. “Die! ” said the Devil. Rocco, Mrs. Marini, and many other char­ acters, from a menacing jeweler to a restless and intelUgent young man named Ciccio, had been hvingwith Scibona for a third of his life as he worked on his novel. The End. The characters and the world he created for them became so real that he was bereft at leaving them behind when he completed the novel, published in May. He came to think of them as individuals with their own will, an understanding that ultimately made it easier for him to write. “In the last few years, I went from thinking of myself as being the characters’ parent, to being their peer, to finally being their child,” Scibona says. “I respected them as elders.” Throughout the novel, Scibona changes the point-of-view and plays with time, some­ times retreating to the past of one character and at other times abruptly shifting back to another character in the present day, which in the novel is r953. To write genuine char­ acters and speak genuinely for them means “cultivating a human relationship with someone who’s not really there,” Scibona explains. Mrs. Marini, for example, can be “severe, judgmental and nasty,” Scibona says, but she’s also extraordinary, and he grew to love her for her independent spirit and generosity. A third-generation Italian American, Scibona grew up in the suburbs, but he {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } spent a great deal of time with his grandpar­ ents and enjoyed hearing about the old days in their old neighborhoods. Their stories inspired him to create Elephant Park, and he dedicated his novel to them. “I ate up their pasts,” Scibona says. “I felt as though the suburb I grew up in was such a culturally vacuous place, and the neighborhoods where they grew up in Cleveland seemed full, vibrant, awake.” After graduating from St. John’s, Scibona went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. There he learned to develop a writing habit to complement the reading habit he formed at St. John’s. “St. John’s was the perfect place for me, and I miss it every day. Rut at the Writers’ Workshop I finally made up my mind that-out of all the many options St. John’s allowed me to entertain-I wanted to write novels. I didn’t want to do anything else with my time, and I had to make aU my other work and financial decisions accordingly.” Scibona won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Italy (where he worked on his Italian and conducted research for his novel); held fellowships at the prestigious artists’ colonies at Yaddo and MacDoweU; and taught writing at Iowa, Harvard Summer School, and Boston University. He won the Pushcart Prize for his short story “Prairie” in aooo. It was pubhshed in The Pushcart Book ofShort Stories: The Best Storiesfrom a Quarter-Century ofthe Push­ cart Prize. “The Platform,” a short story that later became a chapter in The End, was selected for pubheation in the Best New American Voices in 2004. Since 2004, he’s been the writing coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., a part-time job that allows him time to write. His body of work is relatively small, Scibona says, because for 10 years, he devoted himself to the novel, which began to form in his mind while he was a student at St. John’s. The first half-dozen drafts went into the trash, Scibona says, as he struggled to find an authentic voice. “I learned how to write by writing this book,” he says. “I wrote longhand, then typed what I had onto �{Bibliofile} a manual typewriter, then marked it up with pencil, and retyped, over and over, trying to get the sentences to sound the way I wanted them. All of the other changes-to plot, to character, to the book’s ideas-came out through revision of the sentences.” St. John’s was an indispensable experi­ ence for Scibona, and he creates a similar experience for his character Ciccio in the form of a rigorous Jesuit school for boys. Ciccio endures oral examinations that are very much patterned on orals at St. John’s, fielding questions that are “straight out of sophomore year.” Scibona includes concepts from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard in Ciccio’s dialogues with his teacher, a dying priest. “The book tries to express its ideas as much as possible in action and in things. But the boys’ school resembles St. John’s because I needed a way to briefly ask certain Johnnie questions in an overt way,” Scibona says. Scibona’s girlfriend, Emily Shelton, came up with the title The End. (He had briefly considered somehow using “being-at-workstaying-itself,” from Annapohs tutor Joe Sachs’s translation of entelecheia, but even­ tually decided it would be “kind of absurdly and laughably overblown.”) The title he settled on reflects a main premise of his story: that each fife is a purpose in itself, each fife has an ultimate end. “It’s the telos end,” he says. “Hope­ fully, if our fives have meaning, then they’re culminating, not just stopping. When we die, it’s not like someone just pulled the plug-your end has meaning in the Aristotelian way.” For the stonemason, Enzo, his end is a well-deserved rest. For his son, Ciccio, the end is a departure, a “coming into being of the potential.” As he wrote about Ciccio, Scibona remembered his own departure and begin­ ning. “I will never forget the first day I got out of my car and walked up the steps in Santa Fe-I thought, ‘now I’m a real person.’ That’s what St. John’s meant to me,” he says. Everything Beautiful in the World Lisa Levchuk, SFGI05, EC06 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 BY Deborah Spiegelman A novel’s journey from inspiration to fruition can find a short cut or meander for years, and in the case of Lisa Levchuk (SFGI05, EC06), the direct path finally was 3^ Studying classic works of the East helped Lisa Levchuck (SFGI05, EC06) finish her first novel. revealed in the Bhagavad-Gita. Freed from focusing on the result. Levchuck was inspired through the Eastern Classics program to complete Everything Beautiful in the World, which will be published this fall by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Fifteen years in the making, Lisa’s debut novel began as a short story in her MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. During her thesis defense, she was told that it could be something longer. Degree in hand. Levchuck decided to settle in Massa­ chusetts and by 1993 was teaching English full time. Meanwhile, the short story stubbornly refused to take on the shape of a novel. Looking for a break from teachingLevchuck admits to a penchant for accumu­ lating degrees-she decided to apply to the St. John’s Graduate Institute. After completing the Liberal Arts program, she was drawn to Eastern Classics. “I’d been working on the book on and off... and I was blocked up with expectations of what would happen if I ever finished,” Levchuck remembers. “Reading Krishna’s words to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita helped me to understand that anticipating outcomes is really deadly to the creative process,” she says. “I wish I could return to that mindset now. It’s proven to be quite elusive.” Studying Sanskrit also played a supportive role. “Doing Sanskrit taught me focus,” Levchuck recalls. After sitting in the library for hours with her Sanskrit dictionary, writing her own book felt fike a pleasant distraction. By the time she left {The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } St. John’s, Levchuck had the lion’s share of her novel completed. Everything Beautiful in the World is set in New Jersey, where Levchuck grew up in the early 1980s, a time “closer to what I remember [about high school],” she explains. It is the story of 17-year-old Edna dealing simultaneously with a gravely ill mother and with her own relationship with a teacher. According to advance copy from the publisher, Edna figures that “the only good thing about having a mother with cancer is that people are willing to let [her] get away with pretty much anything.... But there’s one thing Edna’s fairly certain even she can’t get away with-her burgeoning romance with Mr. Howland, her fourth period Ceramics teacher.” While broaching a sensitive subject, the book “is more about the relationship between two people who both suffer in the end,” Levchuck summarizes. “And it is funny, too,” she adds, suggesting that even serious subjects can be examined through the lens of levity. While Levchuck claims that the idea for the story “just came to her,” she also acknowledges having been interested for a long time in issues facing adolescent girls. As the novel took shape. Levchuck shared sections with a few of her creative writing students at the Williston Northampton School, where she has taught for 10 years. “They made really great comments about making it more realistic to high school.” In the classroom, she shares both the pleasures and the frustrations of writing. Not infre­ quently a story resists the telling. “Some­ times, you just can’t know at 17 years old [what someone will achieve]... It doesn’t mean that someone can’t tell the story later,” she reasons, keenly aware of her own journey. Reflecting on her summers in Santa Fe, Levchuck credits the Graduate Institute with not only making her a better teacher, but also changing her approach to peda­ gogy. “My emphasis as a teacher shifted from talking to listening and responding,” she says, admiring the way her St. John’s tutors would approach ostensibly familiar texts “always with a sense that each discus­ sion might turn up something new.” �{Alumni Profile} 3a The Kid Who Ran Away With The Circus Buddy Mondlock (A82) BY Cathi Dunn MacRae f you listen to legendary folksingers -particularly Peter, Paul & Mary and Art Garfunkel-you may have been caught in the net of a spell­ binding song called “The Kid,” a contemporary classic written by Buddy Mondlock (A82). I I’m the kid who ran away with the circus Now I’m watering elephants If you were on the Annapolis campus in 1978 or 1979, Mondlock might have been sitting next to you in freshman or sopho­ more seminar. You couldn’t have missed the long-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken Mondlock playing guitar on the Quad, but even he couldn’t have imagined then the success he would later find as a musician and songwriter. Alumni who made it back to Annapolis for Homecoming in 2007 were treated to a concert of original music by Mondlockpoetic, punch-packing songs relieved by humor as gentle as his voice. Introducing his fifth album, The Edge of the Worldwinner of the Indie Acoustic Project’s Best Album in 2007 by a male singer-songwriter -Mondlock sang in the Great Hall about skin, mud, and the breakup of a marriage, ending with the affirming “I Count You My Friend.” Mondlock’s music features dramatic lyrics, entrancing melodies, and intricate guitar. “The Cats of the Colosseum” is hypnotic, with Roman cats “older than the ruins.” A sprightly dance down “Magnolia Street” transforms “a funk/Going ’round and ’round with thoughts you already thunk.” Mysterious “New Jersey Sunset” evokes uneasy flashes of “The Sopranos.” He first recorded his signature song, “The Kid,” in 1987 on his debut album. On the Line. David Wilcox gave it further exposure on his 1989 album. After Mond­ lock recorded it again on his self-titled 1994 album, Peter, Paul & Mary included it on their 1995 Lifelines album and then invited Mondlock to sing it with them in their 1996 TV special. It won the 1996 Kerrviffe Music Award for Song of the Year. Seeing it “headed for the canon of folk­ songs,” Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky and Dar Williams chose it for their rggB Cry Cry Cry album. Mondlock recorded it again with Art Garfunkel in 2002. Mondlock admits that he’s “the kid” whose circus is “this life as a folksinger/songwriter/troubadour. It’s a romantic notion to be traveling around as a professional musician, but in real life it has its ups and downs.” Is it scary without a net? He laughs. “Itwasn’t scary when I was younger. It’s scarier now! It’s been a mostly happy and rewarding life so far. Even though ‘The Kid’ has never been a big radio hit, people in the folk world have run across it, which means a lot to me.” Growing up in Park Forest, Illinois, Mondlock heard about St. John’s College from a neighbor. “The history of Western thought seemed so fascinating,” he says. “Part of my goal in going to college was to figure out what I wanted to do in my life. St. John’s seemed like a natural place to start.” Bonding with fellow Febbies, he was “into everything going on in my freshman year, Aristotle and Homer and all that really chewy stuff.” As a sophomore, he found the Romans and Aquinas “a lot dryer” than the Greeks, so he spent more time with his guitar. He had been playing since he was 10 years old, when he wrote his first song. After listening to Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles and harmonizing with his sisters on Crosby, Stills, & Nash songs, songwriting seriously snagged him at 16. Writing songs and performing ARE “inseparable” FOR BUDDY Mondlock (A8a), who has recorded albums with legends INCLUDING Art Garfunkel. {The College . St. John’s College . Summer 2008 } �33 {Alumni Profile} ""My [songwriting] workshops reflect what we were doing [at]St. Johns. ” Buddy Mondlock (aSs) Back home for the summer of 1979, Mondlock was encouraged by his musician cousin Ray to play open stages at a folk club, the Earl of Old Town in Chicago. Instead of returning to St. John’s, he “jumped into the music with both feet.” When he was 21, Mondlock opened a New Year’s Eve show for folk icon Steve Goodman. “Steve was a big influence on my style and one of the best performers I’ve ever seen. He had this impish light dancing in his eyes; he could totally capti­ vate an audience. Getting to open for him at such an early stage in my career was a real validation.” Mondlock’s own “No Choice” appears in the CD of songs inspired by Goodman that accompanies the recent biography, Steve Goodman: Facing the Music by Clay Eals. “No Choice” also launched Mondlock’s career. Influential songwriter Guy Clark, who hosted the open stage at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, reports: “This kid in a bathing suit walked up and played ‘No Choice’ to an audience of 30 to 40 people. By the time he got to the second verse, he had 200 people singing along with him. He blew me away! ” “Guy walked straight over to me after­ ward,” says Mondlock, “and asked for a tape of the song. I gave him the tape and didn’t expect anything more. A couple weeks later, I got this phone message: ‘This is Guy Clark and I hke the songs. We’ll see if we can get you into the music business.’ I’m doing back flips in the kitchen!” Clark’s recommendation “couldn’t have been a better calling card,” says Mondlock. “Guy Clark says listen and people listen.” Among those who heard was Bob Doyle from ASC AP, a performing rights organi­ zation. “Bob invited me to stay in his spare room in Nashville, and I thought, wow. I’m off!” Mondlock won Kerrville’s 1987 New Folk Competition for Emerging Song­ writers and released his first album. As a Nashville staff writer, he received “a draw every month, just enough to live on without having to work at 7-11. It was an advance against royalties I might make.” Collaborating with other songwriters, “you make appointments and get out your notebooks and trade ideas back and forth.” One collaborator was “a fellow from Oklahoma named Garth Brooks. We wrote several songs together.” When Brooks became a country mega-star, he recorded one of those songs, “Every Now and Then,” on his 1992 album. The Chase, which sold about eight million copies. Mondlock’s share of royalties amounted to “what a good dentist would make over a couple years.” When Mondlock played at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, Janis Ian turned up in the front row; they ended up writing songs together. “I brought Janis this raw stuff from sitting up in one of the writer’s rooms at EMI, looking out the window writing down images: ‘Just the pattern of sunlight on a building, just a flash in a window I was passing.’” Wondering where this haunted story was taking place, “we kicked names around: Cincinnati, Schenectady. One of us said Amsterdam.” His images became the first verse of “Amsterdam,” which appears on the Buddy Mondlock album and Ian’s album, Billie’s Bones. Ian played “Amsterdam” for her friend Joan Baez, who promptly recorded it herself. Mondlock’s most intensive collaboration began in 1999 when producer Billy Mann invited him to make an album with Art Garfunkel and Maia Sharp. “The chance to work with Art was pretty exciting,” says Mondlock. “We were both a little intimi­ dated because the songwriting process was new territory for Art.” Mondlock found the germ of their first song, “Perfect Moment,” in a poem in Garfunkel’s book, Stillwater. The album. Everything Waits to Be Noticed, features Garfunkel, Mondlock, and Sharp performing songs written together and with others. Mondlock’s and Garfunkel’s high tenor voices sing in unison for a double-tracked effect; Sharp’s harmonies weave around them. After the album was released in 2002, the trio toured 25 U.S. cities followed by a month in Europe, including a thrilling appearance at the Royal Albert Hall. Mondlock drives all over the countryand Europe-performing in folk clubs, house concerts, and festivals. He also presents songwriting workshops. “Writing {The College- a song is like writing a short story or character study. My songwriting work­ shops reflect what we were doing at St. John’s seminar: asking questions and not taking things for granted; looking deep into the words that are appearing in front of us; thinking things through logically and then emotionally; and looking at art in all the ways that it can impact us.” In Mondlock’s musical epics, Johnnies will discover an evolutionary song as well as cameos by Newton and Einstein. How does the writer in Mondlock interact with the performer? “Before I was writing songs,” he says, “I was playing music and loving it. But then the writing became such an important part of my art. To me, they’re inseparable. To write a song is to want to sing it, too.” St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } For more on Buddy Mondlock, visit: WWW. buddymondlock. com. Discography: On the Line. 1987. (Due back in print.) Buddy Mondlock. Doyle/Lewis Productions, Inc., 1995 and 2007. Poetic Justice. Sparking Gap, 1998 and 2007. Everything Waits to Be Noticed. Manhattan Records, 2002. The Edge of the World. Sparking Gap, 2007, �{AlumniNotes} 34 1946 Along with 200 other “last simdvors,” PETER WeISS (class of 1946) went to Vienna in May at the invitation of an organization sponsored by the Austrian government, which has put 40,000 high school and university students in touch with people who survived the camps or had to flee Austria after the Anschluss: “I visited both the high school I attended from 1935 to 1938 and the one to which I was expelled for reasons of ‘racial purity.’ Got my grades, could have been better. Meeting in Parhament on the theme ‘I was never a child.’ Gave human rights lecture at the faculty of law. Interesting but unsettling experience.” 1949 Allan Hoffman continues to be involved with the college: “I’m an honorary member of the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College and an emeritus member of the Alumni Association Board. At BVG meetings, I see Chuck Nelson (class of 1945) and Ray Cave (class of 1948). At N.Y. SJC chapter meetings and seminars, I frequently see JOHN VAN DOREN (class of 1947). I stiU ski and enjoy fishing and swimming. This June Margie and I will spend about four weeks touring Newfoundland by car on our own. We have four grandchildren; they keep us on our toes. We are looking forward to the Class of ’49s 60th reunion in the fall of 2009 in Annapolis. If any of you, dear friends, who read this have any ideas on how to make this Homecoming as good as possible, please contact me.” 1959 Patience Garretson Schenck wants her classmates to start planning now to attend their 50th reunion in 2009. “Let’s have a great turnout and opportunity to see classmates we haven’t seen in many years.” Immense Delight Vowels (A73) shares her “immense delight at being granted tenure at Washington College, and being promoted to associate professor. I teach Management Information Systems in the Department of Business Management, and I love being part of a wonderful liberal arts community while being able to share what I’ve learned in the world of industry. It has been a great joy to embark on this second career, and I am looking forward to many, many years of teaching.” usan A. 1965 Bruce Preston writes: “A couple of years ago I began to take classes at the National Cathedral, and evidently as a consequence, I was baptized this past Easter. I have just signed up for a four-year program given by the University of the South School of Theology. The program is called Education for Ministry and my motives, while not entirely clear to me, may have something to do with reconsidering questions raised by Kyle Smith (and others) in sophomore seminar: the garden, the serpent and the apple. In any event, this may keep me out of trouble as I begin to wind down my architectural practice and move into semi-retirement. I am also writing when I find the time, and I have a httle personaf essay coming out in the Washington Post in August.” 1966 Christopher Hodgkin has two new grandchildren to celebrate. “My identical twin daughters, having married identical twins, have within the pastyear each given us a wonderful grandson to enjoy. With both daughters living next door to us, we are able to see (andbabysit!) the grandchildren every day. I am continuing to slide out of my law practice into full-time retirement. Should be there within a year or two!” Sylvia Shapiro is retired and hving in Mexico: “My husband, Paul, and I have a lovely house with a huge yard and swimming pool with solar heat. We could not even afford an apartment in California for the rent we pay. I volunteered at the Animal Shelter for three years, acquiring five dogs. Now I am looking for more intellectual stimulation, playing Scrabble by S e-mail and applying for jobs that might interest me enough to return to California.” moved from an active retirement to an even more active semiretirement. 1967 1969 Karen Shaven is a doctoral Mike Anthony (A) writes: student in Educational Leadership for Changing Populations at the College of Notre Dame in Maryland. She passed her compre­ hensive exams and is working on her dissertation. In a moment of insanity, she was looking for another challenge, something completely different from her assessment work in beginning reading at the Maryland State Department of Education, so she joined the firm of Keffer Wdhams Realty in Baltimore. If you are thinking of buying, seUing, or investing, contact her. If she can’t help you, she can find an agent in your area who can! “On June i, my daughter, Efspeth Anthony, wilf be graduated from Linfield College/Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon, with a BS in Nursing. In July, Beth will start work in the ICU at Salem Hospital.” 1968 Byron Wall (A) writes: “I recently completed my term as Master of Norman Bethune College at York University in Toronto and am now enjoying the reward of a sabbatical at Cambridge University. When I return in the fall, I will take up a new position as coordinator of the new Science and Technology Studies Program at York. Last year I was also promoted to senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. This August, my son Alex (A03) will marry Kristin Ah in Toronto.” W. R. Alhury (A) writes: After retiring from full-time employment at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, Australia, at the end of 2004,1 was able to enjoy a few years devoted entirely to research, some consulting work and family responsibilities. At the end of 2007, however, I was appointed Chief University Ombudsman at UNE, giving me a new range of duties to fit in with my previous activities; so I have now {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 ) 1970 Rabbi Yehoshua (Jeff) Friedman (A) sends news from Israel: “My wife, Janet, and I just celebrated our sixth wedding out of eight children. We have 15 grandchildren, aU hving here in Israel. I teach at Yeshivat Ma’ale Efraim in Israel’s Jordan Valley. Anyone planning a visit to Israel or otherwise interested in �{AlumniNotes} conversation can contact me by e-mail at friedyoy® netvision.net.il, U.S. phone 216-455-0500 or Israel local phone oa-994-1965. Discussions of the Athens and Jerusalem question are especially welcome.” Les Margulis (A) writes: “I am semi-retired now, which means I consult rather than have a full-time job working for someone. Just as a reminder, I am in advertising and for the last three years hved in Kiev, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia. I am now back home in Sydney where the weather is a bit better. I have been lucky as far as assignments go. I spent two months in Johannesburg (scariest place I ever lived-everyone lives with violence every day of their hves). Then I worked in Israel for a month. I am going to Dubai for a month and America for several months. So I am keeping busy and trying to stay out of trouble. I hope the rest of the classmates are all good and I assume that most are looking at retirement jobs.” For the last several years, HUDI Podolsky (SF) has been teaching at San Jose State University in a master’s program for teachers who are seeking to become adminis­ trators and other types of educational leaders: “I also work with high schools that are engaged in restructuring into smaller learning communities. I volunteer with a non-profit school for children with disabUities, and I tutor in a wonderful middle-school reading program. After a long career in high tech. I’m back where I’m happiest-in education. My beloved husband, Joe Podolsky, died of lung cancer in July 2007.” 1972 Barbara Rogan (A72, graduated from Santa Fe in ’73) invites fellow alumni to visit her brand new Web sites and say heUo. Her home site, www.barbararogan.com, features her work as a writer, with lots of information on her eight novels and other books, a recently revised bio (why should politicians be the only ones who get to revise their pasts?), and “in the writers’ lounge, lots of useful information for published or aspiring writers, based on my checkered career in pubhshing as an agent, editor, and writer. I’ve also created a new site that focuses on my teaching and editing work: www.nextlevelworkshop.com.” 1973 Michael Aaron (SF) has been promoted to the role of IBM Director of Banking and Financial Markets, Asia-Pacific. In this role, Michael is responsible for the Banking and Financial Markets Industry vertical and joins the IBM executive team. Michael continues to hve in Sydney, Australia, with his wife, Danuta, and his two sons, Daniel and David. Richard Cohen (SF) has been a journalist for more than soyears and is currently the editor of two publications in the healthcare field: Healthcare Marketing Report and Physician Referral & Telephone Triage Times', and one in higher education: Admissions Marketing Report. “I am also the founder and chairman of our nation’s principal annual conference for healthcare call center managers. I have used St. John’s educational principles to great advantage both in journahsm and in conference planning. I hve in Decatur, Georgia, am married to a Unitarian-Universahst minister, and have a son, Ben, graduating college this year with majors in film and history.” Jon Ferrier (A) retired from the Family Court a lit tle over a year ago. “Sadly, I only lasted a couple months as a gentleman of leisure before I flunked my retirement and went back to work, part time, practicing domestic relations law with a firm here. It’s been a good move for all, and my long-suffering spouse is particularly pleased with the resumption of my productive life, given that she has a few years to go before she takes a crack at ‘retiring.’ I was starting to fear I’d have to push her out the door to continue working, had this new position not come along. It’s been an adjustment, the sometimes amusing spectacle of an old dog trying to learn new tricks, but I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to continue being of use. For those of my fellow alums burdened with the disturbing memory of my first novel, “My Long, Hard Journey to Enhghtenment,” the encouraging news is that you must wait a bit longer for the sequel! One of these days. I’ll get around to it, however, so take appropriate precautions. For now, my only writing will remain the oxymoronic ‘legal writing.’ Can it be only 35 years since we met Walter Cronkite’s mother at graduation? Reminds me of sophomore seminar with St. Augustine on time: when after about five minutes of preliminary silence, the seminar leader (forgotten who) finally remarked, ‘Time passes.’ The ever-sublime Fred Mattis (A73) replied: ‘Does it?’ That turned out to be the opening question that evening, and a good one to ask ourselves. From my perspective, the answer is yes! And the only real question is, ‘how did it pass so quickly?’ ” 1974 Karen Cook (SF) writes: “I graduated May 10 from the University of Alabama with my PhD in Communication and Information Sciences. My research was a history of the Mississippi Freedom Libraries, established by civil rights activists during the 1960s. Currently I am employed as the government documents librarian at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. My first grandchild, Moushumi Stella Huffman, will be one year old on August 15. (I could go on and on about my six children and daughters-in-law, so I won’t start.)” {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } 35 “How does anyone ever get anything done before retirement?” wonders MARGARET SanSOM (SFGI). “I have been so busy since retiring in June 2004 that I can scarcely believe I ever had time to work.” She has been traveling, taking courses, and starting a foundation, the Friends of Central High School, to award scholarships to students who have been out of school for a few years and have discovered the desire and/or necessity for further education/training to reali2e their dreams. “Central High is an alternative high school (where I taught for 34 of the 38 years of my teaching career) for those students who either do not want or are not allowed to remain in the regular high school program; therefore, many either do not graduate or do not continue their education beyond high school. Many finally find out that they do not want to remain in a dead-end job, but they often have no clue how to obtain assistance to become a barber, welder, chef, nurse, or whatever. This foundation will not only provide scholarship money but also aid in obtaining additional funding. It’s been exciting to finally realize a dream that I held for a number of years. We are in the beginning stages of fundraising and will kick into high gear this summer.” 1975 Mary and Peter Kniaz (both A) continue to live in Hopkinton, right outside of Boston. “Three of our children are at, or have graduated from Thomas More College in Merrimack, N.H.,” Peterwrites. “Thomas More College has a traditional liberal arts program somewhat similar to the St. John’s program.” After spending many years as a director of information technology, Peter is now working as a business development manager for a distri­ bution company in New England. “Mary continues to homeschool our younger two children.” �36 {Alumni Profile} Sting Operation Melanie Kirby (Sb'gy) Raises Gentle Bees BY Deborah Spiegelman queen bees) to other beekeepers and eing persistent, inquisitive, and open to various perspectives is are happy to share their expertise. a lesson from St. John’s that Concentrating less on honey produc­ tion and more on the propagation of apphes to many things in life, quality genetics, Kirby and Spitzig are says Melanie Kirby (SF97). It’s involved in a niche within a niche: especially important in her sustainable queen-bee rearing and work breeding productive and hardy queen beekeeping management techniques. bees, avocation she discovered through her Sustainability in the beekeeping work as a Peace Corps volunteer. Kirby joined the Corps after graduating industry means, among other things, from St. John’s, pursuing her grade-school avoiding use of commercial chemical dream and the path inspired by her mother’s pharmaceuticals, making sure that own journey in the late 1960s. “I recall her honeybees are placed in safe (organi­ sharing her stories fondly and I thought I cally certified) zones, and achieving would like to serve my country (without healthy bees through nature’s carrying a weapon) and immerse myself in a “survival of the fittest” dictum. different culture,” Kirby says. Her assign­ “Queen bees are the heart of their ment; agricultural sector beekeeping exten­ hives,” Kirby says. “Without them, sion volunteer, in Calle Mil, Guaira, there is no colony.” Paraguay. Assisted by a grant from Western “I was probably one of a few who penciled Sustainable Agriculture Research in [on the Peace Corps apphcation] that they Education for the Southwest Survivor wouldn’t mind working with stinging Queen Bee Project, Spitzig and Kirby insects,” she guesses. After her Peace Corps participate in a rigorous breeding stint ended, Kirby learned more about program to produce queen bees that commercial beekeeping and breeding thrive in the diverse, challenging through subsequent jobs with companies on microclimates of the Rocky Mountain the Big Island of Hawaii and in Florida. The regions. Their business caters to clients of aU “bees found me,” she says. “I also found that types-from amateur to professional-who the experience of keeping bees is profound.” have in common “the strange capacity to Zia Queenbee Co.-the name honoring her work with stinging insects” and who benefit pueblo (Tortugas) and southern New from the bees’ exceptional pollinating Mexican heritage-is based in Dixon, N.M. ability, whether the result is a glorious Partner Mark Spitzig established sister garden or robust crops. company Superior Honey Farms on Beekeepers require freshly mated queens Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They sell their on a regular basis. Kirby and her partner hardy and productive bees (Rocky Mountain share stock with other experienced Reinas and Great Lakes Sooper Yooper beekeepers, hoping to perpetuate “a quality genetic pool of honeybees chosen by beekeepers for beekeepers.” They also collabo­ rate with local research institu­ tions, community organiza­ tions, and others to develop B Top: Melanie Kirby breeds HARDY queen bees AT A TIME WHEN honeybees ARE ENDAN­ GERED. Bottom: Honeybees are POLITE AND gentle, SAYS KiRBY, WHO LEARNED HER PROFESSION AS A Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. {The Cxj.l lege • St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } sustainable, environmentally responsible projects and to inform people about the need to promote habitats for these beneficial polli­ nators. Honeybees originated in Europe, and today present as orange, black, eggplant, or a mix of browns, reds, and grays-not, Kirby says, the black-and-yeUow cartoon image which more accurately depicts yellow jackets or hornets. Worker bees are all female. And the worst enemies to honeybees, she says, are human beings. “Honeybees are quite polite creatures,” she explains. Kirby prides herself on raising gentle queens, which involves painstaking attention to behavior and other traits. Because keeping aggressive honeybees can be a liability and requires specialized management, gentle bees “who respond to Mother Nature’s dynamic interface are in high demand,” she says. For Kirby, beekeeping is a humbling profession. “It keeps me constantly yearning to learn more,” she says. “My mind repeat­ edly succumbs to the addictive Johnny-esque inquiries of‘why and what does that mean?’ The mystery is the allure.” �{AlumniNotes} K.C. Victor (A), an executive recruiter for lawyers in Los Angeles (www.victorls.com), is delighted to report that her good friend Ed Bronfin (SF78) has been appointed District Court Judge for the Second Judicial District of Colorado (the City and County of Denver), effective July i, 2008. 1976 Rick Lightburn (SF) has become a docent for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, giving tours on the “historic” and “modern” skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. Adam Wasserman (A) began working last March on the National Security Council’s staff in Iraq. Dinah Wells (A) has a solo art show running from June 29-July 23 in Stony Creek, Conn. The 33 paintings in the show are all watercolor insects. 1979 Marie Toler Raney (A) and Jon Raney (A74) “are getting close to our first offshore voyage in our intrepid steel sloop, Phoenix. Our plan is to hoist the sails June 16 in Washington state and arrive in Hilo, Big Island, Hawaii, in early July. We would spend a month saihng amongst the islands and then return to Washington in August. We are being joined on the outbound voyage by two good friends and able sailors: CHUCK Hurt (A79), who has quite a bit of offshore experience single-handing his sailboat based in Florida, and Warren Buck, who has done many voyages in the Atlantic tropical waters. More information can be found at our Web site, www.svphoenix.net.” 1980 This year the New York Public Library is commemorating the quadricentennial of the birth of the poet John Milton with a small but artful exhibition. WILLIAM Moeck (A) was responsible for putting together a series of free lectures on various Milton-related topics-blindness, heresy, Goethe, and Norman Mailer, to name just a few. More information is available at www.nypl.org/research/ calendar/class/hssl/talks.cfm. 1981 Buffy Bowser (A), now the Rev. Elizabeth Affsprung, is serving as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Sunbury, Penn., an hour up the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. Husband Eric is a psychologist in the counsehng center at Bloomsburg University. Their boys, Joe and Daniel, are into football and blacksmithing respectively, with acoustic and bass guitar thrown in. She writes: “Class of 81: please mark your calendars for Thanks­ givingweekend, come to our hometown of Lewisburg, and join us for a big 50th birthday party! ” Joshua Berlow (SF) is now a realtor in Baltimore! “Ifyou want to buy a house in Baltimore, please e-mail romarkin@gmail.com or call 443-858-5527. I’m with City Life Realty on The Avenue in Hampden. My real estate Web page is atwww.joshuaberlow.com/ real.htm. I’m also getting back into acting and recently appeared in a Heinz Ketchup commercial. My acting resume, headshot, and some chps (including the Heinz commercial) can be seen online at www.joshuaberlow.com/actor.htm. If there are Johnnies skilled in Web design who can suggest improvements to my Web site, I’d hke to hear from them. My daughter Meira is three and a half. Her favorite philosophers include Dora the Explorer, Spongebob Squarepants, and Hannah Montana.” Marilynn Smith (SFGI) retired from pubhc school teaching in 2002, but taught Enghsh part time at the community college in Palm Desert, Calif., for three more years. “In July 2005,1 sold my house in California and moved to Spring, Texas, about a mile from where my daughter and her family live. It’s much more interesting and fun to be here to watch three of my grandchildren grow up. They were in kindergarten, 4th grade and 7th grade when I moved here, and it’s wonderful to attend their field days, hoedowns, concerts, baseball games, gymnastics practices, etc. I’m stiU teaching-my grandchildren, tutoring at my church, and two online tutoring sites.” 1982 Phillip E. Bovender (A) writes: “Despite the divine retribution I deserve for my own student mischief (perhaps as a result of it), I have become a clinical instructor in Adult Health at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore. A perpetual student, I am following the education track for an MS in Health Services Leadership and Management. I just concluded 18 years at bedside in the multi-trauma ICU at Shock Trauma in Baltimore and look forward to being a teaching assistant in addition to being a student/ instructor this fall. My nephew, born my freshman year, just finished his MBA at Duke.” John (SF) and Elizabeth (SF84) Bush of Blacksburg, Va., having nothing major to report to fellow Johnnies and friends. Summer gardening and fly fishing are the two biggest things going on, as well as some camping and hiking in the {The College -St. John’s College . Summer stooS } 37 Blue Ridge Mountains. John is planning an addition to the house on 203 Wharton Street and also is trying to use his grill as often as possible. Elizabeth is hoping to be able attend the reunion this fall in Santa Fe and also visit with son Salem, who fives in Vail. “Warm wishes and summer fight.” Jonathan Edelman (A) has reason to celebrate: “I recently passed my PhD Qualification Exam in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford! Now I can go on to research and write my dissertation. My work goes under the title: The Agency ofRepresentation in Engineering Design. My wife, Annie, has found work in the Bay area as both a consultant and an actress. Our son Liam is nearly three years old and is a mean pirate! I would love to hear from you guys! You can e-mail me at: edelman2@stanf0rd.edu.” Peter McClard (SF) writes: “I’m currently running three businesses: Gluon.com, CaptureWorks.com, and TechneMedia.com, and raising my darling children: Sohan, 8, and Karina, 6, with my lovely Russian wife, Valeriya, in New Jersey. I still love my guitar(s) and I have an art persona which is viewable at www.tracymac.biz. So thanks, St. John’s, for fostering my inner Renaissance man! Now let’s hope our nation can rebirth itself to a greener, nicer, smarter, and more hopeful future. Love to all my actual and potential friends! pm@gluon.com.” 1984 Peter Green (A) is in New York where he’s a real estate editor for Bloomberg News, watching the U.S. housing market crash and burn, living la vida local, and learning Spanish. MarkNiedermier (A) recently completed his second year as head of school at Pacific Northern �{Alumni Notes} 38 Academy in Anchorage, Alaska. After serving 15 years as head of school for Friends School of Minnesota in St. Paul, he decided a change was in order and made the move north. His daughter Sophie just completed third grade at the school, and his son Caleb will enter the school’s early kindergarten this fall. His wife Karen is a provider at a pediatric chnic, and together they enjoy the unique mix of urban hving and wilderness access of Alaska’s largest city. integrating profit with social justice and environmental care. “Our daughters, Melissa and Faith, are now teenagers considering their own right livelihoods,” writes Demi. “We’re using our property for permaculture, developing resilience in our local communities, and striving to do good well.” 1986 Renee Bergland, (A), an 1985 Judy Houck (SF) recently earned tenure in the departments of Medical History and Bioethics, History of Science, and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University ofWisconsin, Madison. In 2006, Harvard University Press pubhshed her book Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in Modern America. News from Demi (A) and Eric (SF) Rasmussen: Eric finished his undergraduate work at Stanford while getting his MD. He was a Navy physician until 2007, retiring with 25 years of service as Chair of the Department of Medicine at Naval Hospital Bremerton. While in the Navy, he focused on refugees, weapons of mass destruction, and humanitarian assistance, carrying out the Strong Angel series of exercises and demonstrations (www.strongangel.org). He worked in Iraq in 2003, in New Orleans after Katrina, and in Indonesia after the tsunami. Eric is now CEO of InSTEDD (www.instedd.org), a nonprofit sponsored by Google and the Rockefeller Foundation that focuses on global information sharing for urgent pubUc health response. Demi received her MBA in Sustainable Business in 2007 from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.bgiedu.org). BGI is a triple-bottom fine start-up business school near Seattle, intent on changing business for good. She focuses her writing and editing on English professor at Simmons College, published a book this spring: Maria Mitchell and the Sexing ofScience: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics (Beacon Press) tells the story of a forgotten scientific heroine. “I couldn’t have written it without the solid background in history of astronomy that St. John’s gave me,” she writes. Michael Silitch (SF) writes: “After five years in Switzerland, we are back in Chamonix, France, where I run my small mountain guiding company. I guide people skiing and climbing around the Alps and have been developing spring and fall rock-climbing trips on Mediterranean Islands like Kalymnos, Sardinia, and Mallorca. My wife (Dartmouth ’94) and I have two boys now: Anders, 2, and Birken, 4. They are both dabbling in skiing-the younger one to try to keep up with his brother. Chamonix is a nice small town and a great place for the boys and for my business. I take the tram up into the high mountains in the mornings and am usually home for dinner.” 1987 From Michael Smith (A): “In May 20071 graduated summa cum laude from Wesley Theological Seminary, receiving my Master of Divinity degree with a concen­ tration on Biblical Interpretation. I was appointed to serve the Arkport United Methodist Church in Arkport, N.Y. My wife, Kristen, and I took up residence last summer. We love Arkport, a rural village in the Finger Lakes region ofwestern New York. In September, we added a new member to our family: a dog named Baby. We love to stay in touch with old friends, electronically or in person. I can be reached on the SJC alumni site or on Facebook. My email address is msmith@codefu.com. Blessings to all!” By day, Brett Surprenant (SF) teaches algebra to D.C. pubhc school students. At night, he is the father of three energetic boys, and a husband, and is pursuing a master’s degree from George Washington University in secondary mathematics. 1988 Rowing Champ Rachel Ankeny (SF) moved from Sydney to Adelaide, Australia, at the end of 2006, to take up a ike van Beuren (A75) captured the world position in the history department indoor title for his age group at the World at the University of Adelaide, Indoor Rowing Championships (also known teaching in a gastronomy (food as the CRASH-B Sprints) held at Boston studies) program and continuing University in February. (CRASH-B stands her research in the history/ for “Charles River All Star Has-Beens.”) philosophy of biomedicine and A lifelong rower and former crew team member and assistant bioethics. She was promoted to crew coach, van Beuren covered 2,000 meters in 6 minutes, associate professor of history in 45.1 seconds, on the ergometer. He won the title for the 2008 and also gave birth to a men’s 55-59 lightweight division, coming out on top in a field gorgeous baby boy, Luca De Grazia of II, and listing St. John’s College as his affiliation. Ankeny, in March. She and Luca A denizen of Hartland, Vt,, van Beuren was inspired to give unfortunately will be in London the competition a try as he faced the milestone of his 55th during the class reunion, but she birthday. He began training in May 2007 and put in some­ sends her best and would be pleased where between two to three million meters on the erg. He to hear from classmates, especially was awarded a golden hammer for his achievement, and he anyone traveling to Australia. Her listed St. John’s College as his affiliation. contact details are available on the For two months every year, van Beuren returns to University of Adelaide Web page. Annapolis to work with his old friend. Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A77), on coaching the St. John’s crew team. Pickens Shirley M. Banks (SF) writes: was mightily impressed with his friend’s dedication to the “I recently earned the credential of challenge. “In doing it by example, he’s helping me give our Certified Sexuality Counselor by rowers a workout,” Pickens told the Valley News, van the American Association of Sex Beuren’s local newspaper. Educators, Counselors, and For those who want to view van Beuren’s victory, the video Therapists. I was also named to the is available on www.youtube.com. M {The College ■ St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �{AlumniNotes} executive board of the Emory University President’s Commission on LGBT Concerns and will serve as Co-Chair in the aoog-aoro academic year. Other thrills come from maintaining hiking trails for the Benton MacKaye Trail and American Hiking Society. It has been a pleasure to re-connect with a few Johnnies lately via Facebook.” Ted (A) and Kate (Irvine) DedDENS (A87) are living in Owensboro, Ky. They classically homeschool their four children; Maris (15), Abby (10), Ted (7), and Samuel (whom they welcomed into their family on November ri, 2007) and just opened Tedtoy’s first retail store, Tedtoy: Miniatures, Books, and Toys. The store is a fusion of Ted’s military miniatures (www.tedtoy.com) and their small book business. Boarding House Books. This summer they are celebrating 18 years of Tedtoy Miniatures, almost a decade of homeschoohng, and their 20th wedding anniversary. They’d love to hear from you, so call (370-6894060), e-mail (cmided@aol.com) or visit them on the banks of the Ohio River. Bernard H. Masters (A) writes: “I can report that I left my law firm in Dallas after 17 years and decided to take an in-house position as associate general counsel with a company that moved its international headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. I have been here for one year and the family loves the change. I five in Cottonwood Heights and the really important news is that I caught a brown trout in the stream 15 minutes from my front door. I would love to hear from my classmates of 1988, particularly if they are going to be in town. I can be reached through the SJC Web site.” 1989 Burke Gurney (SFGI) and his wife, Deborah, have two children. He completed his PhD in physiology/biochemistry from the University of New Mexico in 3000, and is currently an associate professor in the Physical Therapy Program in the UNM School of Medicine. 1990 David Long (A) writes: “We have had a busy year. After turning around a financially troubled Chicago-based college, I have left my career as a corporate executive to launch Trapped Bee Productions, an independent film company. Back in February, Liz gave birth to our first child, Benjamin. When not filming or changing diapers, I consult for universities and companies seeking to launch new businesses. dblong@trappedbee.com.” David Marquez (SF) has returned to Santa Fe after nearly a decade away. “I am currently studying film editing at the New Mexico Filmmakers Intensive. Where Ufe leads at the conclusion of this five-month program is a mystery at this point, but no matter where I end up-New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, or good old Albuquerque-I’ll be happy to be in contact with any of my classmates (most of whom seem to be alive and well on Facebook, by the way).” Christopher Newman (A) is moving to Arlington, Va., this summer. “I will be starting my new job as assistant professor of law at George Mason University School of Law. I will be teaching Intellectual Property and Civil Procedure, and am looking forward to being back within day-trip distance of the AnnapoUs campus.” Joshua Kerievsky (SF) and Tracy Reppert Kerievsky (SF91) welcomed their third daughter, Eva Katherine, on March 30, 3008, in Berkeley. Michelle (Baker) Vest (SF) is happy to say that she and her family are doingvery well: “My husband. Matt, started a video editing company two years ago. Along with working, he is participating in a five-month editing intensive through the NM Film Institute, along with fellow classmate and core-group buddy for three of my four years at St. John’s, David Marquez (SF90). Our son, Wil, turns 3 this summer. He keeps us beyond busy. Thankfully, his energy is contagious.” 1991 39 1993 Jane McManus (A) writes: “I was just named the New York Jets beat writer at The Journal News, meaning I’ll be covering the NFL this season, and I am still working as an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I have also joined a roller derby league, and my alter ego, Leslie E. Visserate, will be competing all summer long. Johnnies in New York/Westchester can e-mail me at janesports@ hotmail.com to check it out or join.” James Lank (A) is now General Counsel of Tesco Corporation, an international oilfield services company based in Houston, Texas. He and his wife, Theresa, have three children. Kemmer Anderson (AGI) John C . Wright (A) has a new published an essay, “Those Tenured Tyrants: How Milton’s Tenure ofKings and Magistrates Influenced Jefferson’s Dedaraiion ofIndependence’' in the book. Milton in France. Last fall at the Milton Conference in Murfreesboro, Tenn., he presented a paper on “How Jefferson Might Have Read Milton’s Lycidasi” He win present a paper on “Gardening by the Book” at the 9th International Milton Conference in London, celebrating Milton’s 400th birthday. novel. Null-A Continuum, in bookstores now. “This book is a sequel to another author’s work: the Golden Age great A.E. van Vogt. His most famous book, now sadly neglected, was World OfNullA, first published in 1943. This book was a seminal attempt to use science fiction as a vehicle for exploring the concepts of the ‘NonAristotelean’ Philosophy (or ‘NuUA’) of Alfred Korzybski, a pioneer in multi-valued logic systems. This book had a profound effect on my youth and the development of my philosophy. It is the book on which I wrote my entrance exam to get into St. John’s. Desiring, as an adult, to write in the background of the most cherished storybook of my childhood, I contacted the Uterary agent representing the estate of van Vogt. He expressed reluctance: he said no pubUsher in the field could handle a new van Vogt book, except for one David Hartwell. It was with infinite pleasure that I told him David Hartwell was my editor. With that happy coincidence, the deal was made. It took over five years of negotiations to hammer out the JonArno Lawson (A) published two books this spring. Im Inside Out: Children’s Poets Discuss Their Work (Walker Books, London), he selected 34 different children’s poets from around the EngUshspeaking world and asked them to write about the origins of one of their poems. A VoweUer’s Bestiary (Porcupine’s Quill, Erin), is a book of hpograms for children. JonArno and his wife are also expecting their third baby in June. continued {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer zoo8 } �{Alumni Notes} 40 From Human Services to Social Solutions Adrian Bordone (AGIq6) BY Rosemary Harty altimore native Adrian Bordone (AGI96) was eagershows to leave hisas home ­ ­ Popular television such Homi townhave behind when he the cide and The Wire dramatized enrolled in the Graduate city’s problems for a national audience, Institute Fe.how but Bordone could see in forSanta himself social problems such as drug use and unemployment were hurting the city. It was a little ironic, then, that the classic texts Bordone read at St. John’s ultimately led him back to Baltimore, where he would work for seven years in human services before helping to launch a company devoted to helping nonprofits operate more efficiently. Bordone attended the Naval Academy for two years before deciding a military career wasn’t for him. He studied history at the University of Baltimore, where he discovered a desire to read and learn more. “The first seminar I did at St. John’s was on Lucretius, and it was every­ thing I hoped it would be,” he says. Books such as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics inspired him to think about justice, citizenship and social engage­ ment, he says. “I wanted to be a more active citizen.” He transferred to the GI in Annapolis and finished his last semester while working as a teacher for disadvantaged youth. Later, he joined an organization called the Learning Bank, where he developed and implemented coursework and activities designed to foster personal accountabifity and other employ­ ment-related skills in his students. “It’s unfortunate that in Baltimore, individuals and famihes can be beaten down by the chal­ lenges they face,” he says. “We were able to show folks a path through which they could move with our assistance to a more sustain­ able and long-term employment opportu­ nity.” Bordone left the Learning Bank to help start the Maryland Genter for Arts and Tech­ nology (MCAT), dedicated to improving training and education for Baltimore’s underemployed residents. Along the way, he reconnected with Steve Butz, a former Adrian Bordone (AGI96) never EXPECTED TO BE A SOFTWARE ENTREPRE­ NEUR, BUT HIS WORK IN HUMAN SERVICES LED HIM TO A NEW CAREER. B Yspent thefirstyear working in a coat—and loving it. ” Adrian Bordone (AGI96) colleague from the Learning Bank, who told Bordone about his efforts to develop soft­ ware to help nonprofit agencies better track their efforts and outcomes. Bordone had been trying to do the same thing at MCAT, where he became chief oper­ ating officer. He supervised six teachers, five case managers, a job developer and fundraisers, and spent much of his time tracking outcomes and crunching numbers for reports and grant applications. Butz and Bordone started out by adapting off-the-shelf software and from there devel­ oped their “Efforts to Outcome” program, a Web-based application that enables organi­ zations to measure the effectiveness of their programs. They released their first version in April aooa and today have 25,000 users in 5,500 nonprofit and human service agen­ cies. Their clients include the Girl Scouts, United Way, the New York City Department {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } of Education, and Casey Family Services. As vice president, Bordone works with new cfients, customizes the software to their needs, conducts training work­ shops, writes proposals, manages legal affairs including contracts, responds to requests for proposals, hires and manages staff, and does anything else a small business requires. Starting a new business just when the tech bubble was bursting meant Bordone and his business partner had to work harder to attract funding and prove their business model was viable. They launched Social Solutions in a warehouse that was leaky, windy, had no air-condi­ tioning, and very httle heat. “I spent the first year working in a coat-and loving it,” he says. “As a small business that was entirely self-funded, we’ve remained lean, and that’s helped us remain close to our chent base. We’ve always been very respectful of the few dollars we have.” Human service agencies typically have small budgets for administration, so the company has to demonstrate that their soft­ ware will help them serve their clients better. “We’re a tech firm by default, but more importantly, we are a firm that has a social venture,” he says. “Everyone who works with our cfients is a former practitioner of human services, and we understand the work that they do.” Social Solutions now operates in better quarters in an emerging technology center in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood. In aoo6, the company was named Maryland Incubator Company of the Year, and in 2007, one of 50 incubator companies nationwide. The tough part of Bordone’s job these days is frequent travel, long hours away from his family (his wife, Gatina, and three young children) and building a business with a very lean budget. “I’d love to say that I spend my spare time re-reading my copies of Moby-Dick and the Brothers Karamazov ” he says. “Right now, I work a lot.” �{Alumni Notes} legal details before all parties were satisfied, and, at times, the project seemed dead. I persevered and eventually prevailed. The book was written, sold, and is now pubhshed and distributed. Preliminary reviews have been positive. To write in your favorite author’s background and decide the fate of your favorite characters from childhood is a privilege few others have been granted. I also converted from atheism and joined the Roman Cathohc Church this year. My new name is John Charles Justin Wright, named after Justin Martyr, patron saint of philosophers.” 1994 Jean Holman (A) is pleased to announce her engagement to Youngstown, Ohio, native, Clinton Pavelko: “We will marry next summer in Erie, Penn. We live in Washington, D.C., and plan to settle there after the wedding. Clinton never went to St. John’s and never heard of it. Otherwise, he is handsome, young, and devoted. Besides a husband. I’ll be getting a stepson as well, Chris Pavelko, aged two and half” Mathieu de Schutter, (SF) MD, MPH, writes: “Sara (Roahen, SF94) and I have moved back to New Orleans from our post­ Katrina exile. Her book Gumbo Tales, about assimilating into the New Orleans culture while working as a restaurant critic, should be released as a paperback by now.” (Ross) Mosheh Vineberg (SF) writes: “I have been living in Jerusalem, Israel, for the last eight years. My wife, Tamar, is Israeli, we have a httle girl, Naomi, who is 2 years old, and we are expecting another baby this June. I am learning Torah in the mornings in a koUel, while my wife is finishing a medical degree in another two years. I’d love to visit Santa Fe again with my family. Maybe in a few years we’ll do it.” 1995 Geoff Giffin (AGI) writes: “ Life is good in White Rock, B. C., just a few kilometers from Vancouver (the best city in the world in which to live, according to many surveys). In my second year as a beekeeper here, I am struggling along with aU other beekeepers to understand what is happening to this most important of animals. We are not helped this year by having had a very long, cold, wet spring in the Northwest, but there are larger problems. Honeybees are responsible for about 30 percent of all human food and if they disappear, as they are increasingly doing, we will add yet another problem to the global food crisis. On the positive side, bees are endlessly fascinating and amazing stress reducers. I can watch mine for hours, seeing the foragers come home with different varieties of pollen, the guards inspecting everyone who approaches (Homeland Security should be so efficient!) and the signahng between individuals to pass on information about nectar sources, etc. “When I’m not working with my bees (which is most of the time), I am mentoring engineering/physics students at UBC, getting my 38' Ericson sailboat ready for summer cruising, reupholstering furniture and gardening. I also have a new job: I am the unpaid assistant to my wife, Senga, who after a long career as a teacher and school adminis­ trator has taken up a career in real estate. Anyone who wants to move to this most incredibly lovely part of Canada should contact me so that we can give you insight into what living here is really like.” Veronica Gventsadze (AGI) writes: “This spring I graduated with a veterinarian degree from the University of Guelph and two weeks ago launched a brand new career. My httle Yaris made it all the way across Canada to the mountains north of Vancouver. As I write, I hear a cat in the background complaining about the service in this hospital. I disagree: I think this hospital is a great place to work, though at times it feels overwhelming. The days go by fast, the learning curve is about as steep as the surrounding mountains, and my propensity for muffing things over is effectively curbed by the need to make prompt decisions. At the end of each day I take a miniholiday as I walk or bike the mountain trails. The mountains are majestic, the coastal rainforest must not have changed much since prehistoric times, and the real estate prices are obscenely high. (A popular excuse is that the 2010 Winter Olympics will be just up the road in Whistler.) There is even a new university up in the mountains. Quest University. I would love to hear from anyone who remembers me, and to catch up on our hves since St. John’s. You can reach me at vgventsa@telus.net.” Clara Murray (A) writes: Wesley and I were married in 2003 in a small but beautiful ceremony on the Hudson River. Several Johnnies were in attendance. Ezra Alexander Beato was born in December ’04. He’s a total joy­ intense, inquisitive, and very active. Talks nonstop from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. (Future Johnnie?) We are enjoying family life in Brooklyn, though occasionally dream of leaving the city in favor of a vegetable garden and preschools that cost less than St. John’s. We are both working, Wesley as a business research manager (I’m not sure what he does either, but suspect aU these years of ‘civilization’ help). I continue to work with Early Intervention, doing verbal behavior-a form of applied behavior analysis, with chUdren diagnosed with autism. I’m also enjoying classes at the Art Student’s League. Would love to hear from former classmates and friends. You can e-mail us at clmurray@usa.net.” {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } 4^ Heather Nordloh (AGI) writes: “CHRIS (AGI96) continues to serve as CFO for a Chicago­ based non profit. Nick is 31/2 and very into Spiderman. Chris and Nick Nordloh spent most of the spring in Hong Kong with Heather’s job.” Bethany O’Connell (SF) writes: “I find myself teaching and working on the alumnae magazine at Stoneleigh-Burnham School, an all-girls’ boarding and day school in Greenfield, Mass. While teaching French, I am often looking out for those young, inquiring minds who I can encourage to apply to St. John’s. I can stiU smell the pinon burning on a clear winter night! I hope to bring my family back for a visit soon.” Kira Zielinski (SF) is taking a break from flying helicopters and has turned her attention to learning the ropes of being a small business owner. “I bought a coffee shop here in Mobile, Ala., in March-the experience has been amazing! Little by httle my fiance, Nathan, and I are turning it into the community crossroad that we’ve been craving in our fife. Not to mention I’m enjoying the stress of syrup and whipped cream ‘emergencies’ to engine malfunctions over the Gulf of Mexico any day! Our first addition to the coffee shop was, of course, a library. You can catch a glimpse of our shop at drjava.com.” 1996 Jenny Bates Glaubrecht (A) is a second grade elementary school teacher in Palm Beach County. She earned her master’s degree in education, has acquired ESOL Endorsement, Gifted Endorsement and a real estate Ucense. J. Stephen Pearson (EC) passed his dissertation defense and will be graduating in August from the University of Georgia with his doctorate in Comparative Literature. �{AlumniNotes} 4^ Teresa Taylor (AGI) and her husband Steve Bromley gave birth to Brock Remington Taylor Bromley on May r, aoo8, at nearly to pounds. Teresa has been practicing law as an associate at the British law firm, Clifford Chance US LLP, in international white collar/litigation defense for financial corporate clients. She will be leaving the firm this summer following maternity leave in search of a law position that does not require extensive international travel and extreme hours so she can enjoy being a new mom. Prior to Clifford Chance, Teresa was a federal law clerk in Virginia, and previously spearheaded a non­ profit organization focusing on international humanitarian law violations and justice. Steve is also doing weU, having started a renovation company in Annapolis. Teresa would love to hear from former classmates. The Bromleys reside at 700 Caleb Lane, Annapohs, Md 21401. my PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. Living abroad was fantastic. Cambridge is an international and vibrant place filled with beautifid architecture, too many distracting activities (like rowing and May Balls), and fascinating and brilliant people. All the same, it’s good to be back in the U.S. to catch up with family and friends and enjoy the New Mexico culture and scenery.” Leah Fisch (SE) writes: “I am working as a reorganizer of businesses and homes here in NYC, Massachusetts and the tri-state area. Beginning in July, I will be offering workshops in the East Village to foster community between those with difficulty with clutter/efficiency, as well as offer easy-to-implement tips to reorganize on their own. If any Johnnies are interested in attending the workshops, please e-mail me at leah@leahfisch.com, or feel free to call me at 917-678-9634.” Will Gorham (A) writes: “Siobhan Boyer (SF99) and I 1997 Amy Ryce Knowles (A) writes: “1 teach mathematics at Durham Academy, and recently visited India to tour schools there. My husband is wrapping up a PhD at Duke University in Medieval English Literature. 1 have a 4-year-old son named James. I attribute my appreciation of math to the St. John’s curriculum. My encounters with Descartes, Apollonius, Newton, and Ptolemy continue to inform my teaching as well as my perspective. Working with teenagers is inspiring and because of them, there is never a dull day at work.” 1998 Jana Giles (A) is back in the U.S. “After four years of living in the United Kingdom, and wishing I’d taken even more Easyjet and Ryan Air flights to Italy, I’ve completed said our first “Hey, baby! ” to Larkin Rose Kate Gorham on April 23 in our new hometown of St. Petersburg, Fla., after 25 hours of... let’s call it ‘gentle coaxing.’ Larkin took in the scene, howled at the heavens, and began the long process of learning to love us for who we are. Other than that httle 7-pound 8-ounce bit of everything, not too much is new here in Paradise. Siobhan is bringing home the big slabs ofveggie bacon as an environmental biologist. I’m finishing a novel and also working for pay as a researcher at the St. Petersburg Times (where classmate WILL Van Sant [A98] also makes news/a hving). Our dog Hektor has giardia and our cats Mason and Dixon hate him for it since it means they can’t come out to play. Florida and parenthood are great. Both are tiring and exciting at the same time. Full of great ideas and weird, often stinky, results. We’d be happy to get coffee or worse with any Johnnies who come to the Tampa Bay area. We’ll drive you past ah the fancy mansions for {The College - foreclosure and introduce you to the Most Recklessly Sunburned Homeless Dude Ever. Ifyou’re here on a weekend, we’ll do even more.” Amy Marcetti Topper (A) is working as a consultant doing education research, and has enrolled in Arizona State University’s PhD program in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. “Claire, my daughter, is about to turn 3 and doing all those wonderful and frustrating things toddlers do at this age,” she writes. “Love to hear from SJCA friends: amtopper@hotmail.com.” 1999 Since graduation, Gary Temple (A) has been splitting time between China and Easthampton, Mass., working variously as a freelance writer, English teacher, music producer, mental health counselor and clothing designer. “These days I’m narrowing my focus to music production with a hit of newspaper writing and clothing design thrown in. This fall I’ll be starting a yearlong intensive Chinese language program in Beijing. Please let me know ifyou’re going to be in town, or if you need some music produced, or an article written, or some clothing designed.” 2000 Deberniere Torrey (AGI) is marrying Nathan Devir on June 27 at Penn. State University. The couple win move to Vermont in July, where Nathan will teach Hebrew at Middlebury College. Valerie G. Whiting (A) of Washington, D.C., recently returned from Antigua, where she was working to prevent HIV/AIDS through education as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer. The country of Antigua and Barbuda is located in the Eastern Caribbean in the middle of the St. John’s College • Summer 2008 } Leeward Islands. Whiting was working with the AIDS Secretariat to provide assistance in behavior change communication efforts. In doing so, she was to assist in the planning, designing, implemen­ tation, and evaluation of national HIV/AIDS public education and awareness activities. Whiting helped produce HIV education and awareness activities at national events and developed educational/promotional materials for local target groups. Whiting previously served as a community organization Peace Corps volunteer in Panama from 3001 to 3003. Among her accomplishments, she led a youth group that took part in national HIV/AIDS programs and also organized and succeeded in an effort to pave the five-kilometer entrance to her site. Whiting has begun a master’s program in international training and education at American University in Washington, D.C. Logan Wink (SF) writes: “I finally finished medical school and I am now busy working through my first year as a psychiatry resident at Indiana University School of Medicine. I married Chuck Pate last June, and we are hving and working in Indianapolis, Ind. No babies yet-I spend way too many nights at the hospital for that. Chuck finished his MFA in ceramics in December and is working on establishing his career (currently he is teaching kids to throw pots at the local community art center). Please look us up ifyour path leads you through the heartland! ” 2001 Riana Kettle (SF) is back in Colorado and getting married this summer. She also recently finished a master’s degree in secondary education in mathematics and has been teaching math for the past �{Alumni Notes} several years. “I’m still singing opera. Hope everyone is doing well!" Eric Maddox (SF) writes: “I just returned to the States in March after five months spent conducting research for my MA in Conflict Resolution. While based out of Ramallah and Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, I traveled around Israel and the West Bank filming interviews with elder Israelis and Palestinians who experienced the 1948 war that created the modern State of Israel and the first Palestinian refugee crisis, also known as Al Nakba or ‘The Catastrophe.’ The film footage will be used to produce a short documentary film project for Defense for Children InternationalPalestine. Concurrently working on my master’s thesis, which focuses on the role that these events have played in shaping the individual and collective identities of the Jews and Arabs who experienced the events of 1948. Hoping to do future conflict-documentary work (where I actually get paid) in the near future. Looking for opportunities in Africa, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East.” 2002 Jessica Godden (SF) and Peter Speer (A) were married on A Johnnie Haven ouisa Griffin Parkinson (SF93) is married and L succulents, everywhere I can place them. I’m also still fiddling with Web comics, Web pages, and dashing out strange stories when I get the chance. So I guess I am still figuring out what I am supposed to be doing, but I’m doing well regardless!” John Rankin (SF) writes: “This Justin (A) and Dillon (A05) Naylor will be serving as dorm fall I will leave my position as a spokesman at the U.S. Treasury Department to enroll in the MBA program at the University of California Los Angeles. This means the end to nearly five years in Washington, D.C., at various communications jobs in the Senate, on political campaigns, and in the Bush administration. After business school, I will probably shift my focus to the private sector. Johnnies in the Los Angeles area (or SF for that matter) should drop me a note at johnrankin@gmail.com.” Sean Nelson (AGI) is currently hving in Cairo, Egypt, and studying Arabic. 2004 Tatiana Hamboyan Harrison has two children, Mariana (4), and James (6). (A) has been busy doing a lot of They are “living luckily on the Eastern Shore of writing (trying to get a picture book Maryland in Easton, which strangely enough pubhshed!) and reading (mostly seems to be a Johnnie haven. Johnnies pop up books about writing): “I’m also everywhere: one instructs my children and me in having surgery on June 30 to get tennis at the Y, another teaches knitting at the local holistic my left wrist replaced. I’ve been arts center, while others still make local news by impeding doing quite a bit of beUy dancing airport growth via kick-ass estate planning. And without fail, I and have been very involved in my meet people at dinner parties and fundraisers who ‘wished Quaker meeting. Anyone who they’d gone to St. John’s’ but nonetheless satisfy their thirst for wants to contact me can do so by knowledge by attending some seminars ingeniously offered e-mail, or by visiting my Web site at through the college. Their enthusiasm really can make you feel www.thefunnel.org.” like a rock star! Anyway, greetings to all my fellow Johnnies in Santa Fe and Annapolis.” Conor J. Heaton (AGI), in his first year of lawyering, is a litigator in a small civil litigation firm in Dave Prosper (SF) writes: “As of Mark Stratil (SF) is hvingand Chicago. “I graduated from Loyola teaching high school physics in now I’m still living in Oakland, University Chicago School of Law Brooklyn. He and his band. Judge Calif., and working in IT at Bio-Rad and had the pleasure of studying Roy Bean (www.myspace.com/ Laboratories. I’m currently pulhng under JUDGE Thomas More judgeroybeanband), are celebrating double-duty and trying not to burn Donnelly (SF81). My wife, the release of their first album. out doing both as a support systems Ashley, is four months pregnant Shovelhead, available on iTunes. administrator and PC support for and we just bought our first condo “If any of you are going to be in my company’s Hercules, Calif., in the Lakeview neighborhood of New York this summer, come out location. I’m also gradually turning Chicago. I was delighted to hear and see a show! ” he writes. my apartment into a bizarre version that we defeated the Academy in of that garden ship from Silent this year’s non-sanctioned croquet Running (much to my roommate’s battle.” chagrin) with plants, especially Feb. 29, 2008. parents at Wyoming Seminary Preparatory School next year, where Justin teaches Latin and math. “We continue to grow vegetables, teach cooking classes, and cater private events at our farmhouse in northeastern Pennsylvania.Our son, Peter, will be a year old in July! We have a guest room and welcome visitors to the farm.” 43 2003 Aaron M ac Lean (A) was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps on November 30, 2007. “I’ve just learned that I’ve been selected to attend the Infantry Officer’s Course at Quantico, Va., this summer, which will put me out in the fleet as an infantry officer by this fall. Anyone who wants to is more than welcome to contact me at aaron.maclean@gmail.com.” Jeffrey Zwillenherg (AGI) was married last August to Jennifer Goulston: “We now five in our new house in Baltimore, Md. Most recently, I accepted a new job in development for a nonprofit organization (New Leaders for New Schools) in Baltimore. On another note, while snowboarding at Stowe in Vermont with CoREY HaydEN (AGI06), we encountered another Johnnie, owing to my St. John’s bcense plate. We are everywhere!” {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } Kimberly (Bryan) Gaud inski (A) and Martin Gaudinski (A) were married on December 29, 2007, at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Baltimore, Md. “Now local to D.C., we went on a phenomeno­ logical honeymoon to a plane of existing in the District that we will rarely inhabit until many years hence,” writes Martin. “We dined at some of the finest restaurants the city has to offer. While celebrating our marriage at Citronelle, Kimberly met the eidos of black beans. Martin finally understood Plotinus after his first sample of the Chateaubriand. Now firmly back in our normal fives, Kimberly is teaching kindergarten at Potomac Crescent Waldorf School in Arlington, while Martin is in his first year of professional training at Georgetown University School of Medicine.” ■ Kristi Meador (A) writes: “I’ve been sojourning these past two years in the former Soviet bloc �{Alumni Notes} 44 Gwen Gurley (A) writes: Happy in Alaska “I thought I would send an update letting the school know that I am receiving my master’s degree in Italian Studies with a focus on translation and linguistics from Middlebury College this August. I have been in Florence, Italy, for the pastyear working on my degree and will be home in July. From there I’m moving out to the West Coast, hopefully to Portland, Ore.” elissa (Fecht) Hougland M (SFGI06) moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in aooywith her husband, Jarrett, to take the associate director position with the Fairbanks Arts Association. “Seven months later, on November 15, 2007, we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy, Blaise Anthony Hougland. We are all happy here in Alaska, loving both the a4-hour summer sun and the -40 degree winters!” country of Belarus. I’ve also been blessed with visits to the Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, Denmark, Hungary, Egypt, and South Korea. My time has been focused on studying Russian, helping university students wrestle with important questions in their search for God and truth, and loving orphans and foster children. I’ve been reading a wide range of Russian hterature and after four years have found myself immersed in The Brothers K once again. My next destination is Kentucky, where I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of my fiitiue niece from Ethiopia! I’d be glad to hear from Johnnies. I can be reached at kristimeador@gmail.com.” 2005 Samantha Buker (A) writes from Baltimore, Md: “I’ve recently taken the mantle of associate editor and managing editor of five financial pubheations for a fabulous outfit caUed Agora Financial. In my spare hours. I’m writing a new novel-delightfully absent of murderers, devils, and afterlife sequences. Think the morally immoral French novels of Balzac and Zola meeting the vivid lyricism of Gatsby in the form of a hardboiled hero of contemporary Wall Street. Yes, as with Zola, there’s a courtesan. But unlike Nana, she’s no fool. Nor are the father whose mistress she is or his son (who is in love with her). At bottom, it’s a critique of the modern American financial system. And, unlike most who post to these pages.. .1’11 not tell you of nuptials or newborns. I subscribe to Gustave Flaubert’s style of living: Stay out of the thick of Paris, and when your lover barges into your study uninvited: throw him out! But true, close friends should plan to visit often: sam.buker@gmail.com.” Dwight Knoll (A) has become a partner at Music Works Publications (musicworkspubUcations.com). “Also the podcast I am working on at FAQautism.com is really starting to take off,” he writes. “Finally, I’m going to Delft, Holland, this July to participate in a servant evangelism event.” Miranda (Foster) Merklein (SFGI) is a PhD candidate in English / Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in many hterary j ournals and magazines, including The Columbia Review, South Carolina Review, Permafrost, and others. She is currently completing her first book of poetry. “I am a certified yoga instructor registered with Yoga Alliance and have my own yoga business. Yoga Edge, teaching privately at studios and at universities. My Web site is www.yoga-edge.com.” Jonathan Coppadge (A) is finishing up his year as a St. John’s admissions counselor. He wiU be returning to Phillips Academy Andover this summer to teach philosophy and French before coming back to Annapolis in August and beginning at Indian Creek Upper School in Crownsville, where he will teach English. He is happily settled into fife as an Eastporter, and reminds his classmates that they always have an open door and furnished table when they come back to town. “I am currently an AmeriCorps member building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Raleigh, N.C.,” writes DEBORAH ManGUM (A). “Anyone interested in traveling, experimenting with different fields, gathering different experiences after/during/before college should look them up at americorps.org.” Joshua Suich (A) was a youth Heather Cook (SF) earned her private pilot license in September 3007, and is enjoying flying around northern New Mexico in her Cessna i8a. She also wrote and published her first book, the Aviation Scholarship Directory 2008, in October 3007, which is helping flight students, pilots, and other aviation professionals to find and win aviation scholarships. Heather is stiU living in Santa Fe. Paul and Anita Fairhanks (SF) are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Charlotte Eden, on May 20, 2008: “She has brought us so much happiness,” Anita writes. “We are living in Columbus, Ohio, where Paul is studying business in preparation for dental school. I am simply enjoying motherhood; my current ambitions are to sing lullabyes and read great books aloud.” {The College. pastor in Florida for a year, then spent a little over a year teaching EngUsh in the public school system of Daigo, Ibaraki, Japan. “Daigo is the city, Ibaraki is the prefecture, which is a few hours north of Tokyo. I climbed Mt. Fuji and saw the sites and had a great time. I kept a travel blog of it: www.jsuich.blogspot.com. Right now I am back in my home town of Augusta, Ga., working as the head swim coach of the Augusta Country Club and will be going to GordonConwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., in the fall.” 2006 Erin Callahan (A) and Mark Ingham (A05) married on April 37, 3008. This August the Inghams move to Santa Fe to do the Eastern Classics program. Erin writes: St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in October; deadline for the alumni notes section is September 10. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. lohn’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �45 {Obituaries} Chris Colby Print Shop Manager, Annapolis Chris Colby, a 30-year member of the St. John’s College community, died of cancer on Thursday, March 27, 2008, at the age of 58. He joined the college in 1977 as assistant manager of the Print Shop and was promoted to manager in 1979. Earlier this year, he guided the purchase and instal­ lation of a new press that greatly expands the college’s printing capabilities. He was known by those who worked with him as a gentle and kind man, a hard-working and helpful colleague, and a talented artist and craftsman. He enjoyed-among many things-weaving, cooking for friends, writing short fiction, and sharing stories of his adventures in life. At a memorial service held at the college in April, friends, co-workers and students remembered Colby’s gifts to the community. John Chris­ tensen, the college’s director of admissions, said Colby missed vacations and weekends to finish Print Shop projects on deadline, but also “gave of himself’ in many ways outside of work. “For some, he built book­ shelves in our apartments or houses; for others he repaired harpsichords and other musical instruments; for still others he built kitchen cabinets and helped construct decks,” Chris­ tensen said. “He loved these projects for the lasting friend­ ships that often resulted, but also because he simply enjoyed putting his skills to use for others in the community. .. . “I think he was at his happiest in these activities, but he was also happy in another role-that of mentor and surro­ gate father for any number of students, some of whom worked for him and some of whom he met in the writing workshops he attended or through working with them on the Gadfly and Energia." Howard Morsberger worked alongside Colby since 1981. “He was so much more than just a ‘boss,’” he said. “He was above all a mentor, a friend, and a companion. Chris was a passionate, but calm and softspoken man who gave me room to make mistakes and grow from them.” Jack Brown (A08) described his initial dismay at being assigned to work at the Print Shop; as he grew to know Colby he realized how fortunate he was. “I had requested a job at the library, or IT, and did not relish spending a year standing in the dark making photocopies while a vaguely sinister-looking man looked on from the shadows,” Brown said. “As you can probably guess, that atti­ tude changed; the Print Shop quickly became my home away from dorm-room, and Chris my St. John’s mentor. It was in the Print Shop that I learned unofficially about the college. I heard the latest news, absorbed the 30 years of lore Chris had stored up in him and loved sharing. . . When I look back on four years here, Chris will be one of a few people who really stand out. He was one of the people I was most looking forward to keeping informed about what I was doing with my life, and visiting when I came back.” Colby became his unofficial mentor and career adviser. Brown added. “I will go better places for having known him, my experience at this school was enriched for having known him, and I cannot express my profound sadness for the knowledge that when I leave here. .. I will be leaving behind a school, a Print Shop, and a community that is a lesser place for having lost Chris Colby.” Colby’s wife, Mary-who worked for 15 years in the college’s Admissions officepreceded him in death. They are survived by their daughter, Yve. Associate Admissions Director Roberta Gable (A77) described how St. John’s was like another home for Colby. “He loved the college, and he loved the Print Shop, and he loved us,” she said. “And I would say that the Print Shop was the great love of his life if it weren’t utterly eclipsed by the great and steadfast and abiding love he had for Mary and Yve, a love which was, I think, the defining purpose of his life.” Also Noted Laurie Fink Colberg, class of 1966, June 21, 2007 IsAiAS Grandes del Mazo, class of 1955, February 22, 2008 Commander William W. Grant, class of 1941, January 4, 2008 Marigene Boyd Hedges, class of 1958, November 19, 2007 Lawrence Myers, class of In his 30 YEARS AT St. John’s, Chris Colby mentored STUDENTS, SHARED HIS STORIES AND TALENTS, AND EARNED THE FRIENDSHIP AND ADMIRATION OF THE GREATER COLLEGE COMMUNITY. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } 1951, February 2, 2008 Anjali Pai (SFGI08), March 30, 2008 Richard H. Pembroke, Jr., class of 1932, January 4, 2008 �46 {Obituaries} Al Toft He worked quietly at night in a basement work­ shop IN Mellon Hall, and laboratory in Annapolis relied on Al Toft. BY Mark Daly, Director of Laboratory Albert Ritchie Toft, who was a lab technician at St. John’s College in Annapolis from i960 to aoo5, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease April 30 in Annapolis. He was born August 1,1933, in Pasadena, Maryland, attended George Washington University, and was a scientist at Goddard Space and Flight Center in Greenbelt for 35 years. I heard about Al when I was hired as director of Laborato­ ries at St. John’s in July 1985. He worked as a machinist along with a carpenter named John Cooke in the laboratory’s physics workshop. The physics workshop was, and still is, located in the basement of Mellon Hall. As Director of Laboratories, one of my responsibilities was super­ vising the workshop. I would collect broken equipment, equipment that needed to be modified to suit the college’s needs, and pencil drawings of ideas from me, students and tutors, and place them on a workbench in the empty physics laboratory during the day. Al worked evenings and weekends, so I communicated with him through notes and pencil drawings. The next day I would return to find my equip­ ment repaired or modified, and my pencil drawing coming to life with a note, “Is this what you wanted?” Most of the time, Al would take our ideas and improve on them. I would push his creative talents further with a revised drawing, place it on the empty workbench, and the next day the new creation would take shape. I could dream, scribble down an idea, and put it on that empty work­ bench, and he, with his gifts of knowledge and creativity, would make it happen. When I finally got to meet Al, he lived up to the picture I had painted of him in my mind. I walked into the dusty old base­ ment workshop to be greeted by a cheerful, “Hello, young man.” Here was the man who could make those drawings come to life. He looked like a scientist: clean cut, dark­ rimmed glasses, and a lab coat. He was friendly and had an intelligence that commanded respect. Some time later, I visited Al at the Goddard Space and Flight Center, and he gave me a tour of the facilities. I came to realize the prize St. John’s was keeping in that dusty physics workshop. Al was hired at Goddard as an entry-level tech­ nician and worked his way up. He was now a leading scientist in the optics laboratory. His major contributions to the space program were inventing a new coating for the mirrors in space and inventing a way to coat them uniformly. He was a distinguished scientist with published works and his accom­ plishments were noted in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Al was a problem solver who loved a chal­ lenge. His posi­ tive outlook and problem solving abilities perme­ ated his entire being. As his Parkinson’s disease advanced, he remained upbeat and always talked about the future. I remember once he pointed to a dollar bill on the bench, and told me, “I couldn’t reach to pick up that dollar and put it in my pocket. I took my pill, sat down for five minutes, and now I can do it.” He was fascinated by his affliction; he looked at it as a scientist. Al was a caring and compas­ sionate man. When his good friend John Cooke was approaching 90, he was still working in the workshop. His vision was going, and his work suffered. Al wouldn’t hurt his friend and tell him to retire, so he came up with a way to do it gently. I learned from Al’s example, and when Al’s Parkinson’s began affecting his work, I offered him the same respect and compassion. Today as I walk through the laboratory classrooms in Mellon Hall, I see Al’s legacy around me. The equipment that was repaired, modified, or created by his hands speaks to me. Some speak to me of the brilliant scientist, the problem solver. Others remind me of his compassionate, friendly nature. They just say, “hello, young man.” {The College -St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } Rozanne Kramer (SFGI68) Rozanne Edwards Kramer, a St. John’s Santa Fe Graduate Insti­ tute alumnus and former manager of the St. John’s Annapolis bookstore, died March 31, 3008. Ms. Kramer was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, and as a child of an army colonel, she traveled extensively throughout her childhood. She earned a bach­ elor’s degree at Oberlin College and worked on The Evening Star in Washington, D.C., and The Evening Capital in Annapolis. She joined the St. John’s staff as manager of the Annapolis bookstore. When St. John’s opened its Santa Fe campus, she moved West with her thenhusband, Clarence Kramer. After earning her graduate degree at St. John’s, Ms. Kramer earned a second master’s degree in Special Education and enjoyed a 15year career as a teacher and drill team coach. She is survived by three children, five grandchildren, and three great­ grandchildren. John Droege (A85) John Patrick Droege, of Plymouth, Mass., died on January 38, 3008. He was 46 and was employed as a tech­ nical salesman. After graduating from St. John’s, Droege earned a master’s in American History from the University of Notre Dame. An avid outdoorsman, Droege was a member of the Manomet Center for Conservation Science. His parents, John and Aileen Droege, would love to hear from classmates and tutors who knew John; contact them at; JDroegei@comcast.net. �{Alumni Voices} 47 The Face of America BY Christopher Allison (SF97) was to discern those who planned to follow uring my years at the rules from those who did not in the St. John’s, I never space of a two- to three-minute interview. suspected that Thucydides, In places like India, where wages are lower Plutarch, and Machiavelli and poverty more widespread than in the were secretly preparing me I am a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) U.S., this is no simple task. I typically for a career in diplomacy, of the U.S. Department of State. FSOs did 75-roo interviews every day. It was hut in hindsight it seems so obvious. compose the U.S. government’s diplomatic interesting work, though often draining. corps, staffing embassies and consulates in At the conclusion of my assignment to more than 250 cities around the world. As India, I transferred to Japan to work at such, we represent the United States to the Embassy Tokyo. Japan and India could not governments of other countries and look be more different, and the abruptness of out for the welfare of American citizens this transition left me reeling. Where India abroad. As my employer frequently reminds is colorful, noisy, and a trifle chaotic, some me, I am the face of America overseas. I people find Japan to be grey, rigid, and know this may seem strange to some of my subdued. Despite its recent economic classmates who haven’t seen me in a few progress, India is still very much a devel­ years, but it couldn’t be a more natural fit. oping country, where the morning After joining the State Department in commute is regularly impeded by ox carts the spring of 2004,1 was first dispatched to or free-range cows blocking major thor­ interview visa applicants at the U.S. oughfares. Japan, by contrast, is one of the Consulate in Chennai, India. One of the most highly developed economies and most core functions of American consulates is orderly societies in the world. While I am reviewing visa applications of foreign normally the type of person to enjoy the nationals who wish to travel to the United sensory stimulation of the developing States. Though I joined the State Depart­ world, after two years of it, Tokyo’s more ment as an Economic Officer, adjudicating muted tones were a welcome change visas is a sort of rite of passage for FSOs. of pace. Every newly hired officer is required to do The work could not be more different as at least one year of consular work upon well. I currently work on the staff of U.S. joining the department, and this usually Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Schieffer, means working the visa line in a place helping to keep him informed about a wide hke Chennai. array of issues requiring his attention. (Incidentally, Ambassador Schieffer has a St. John’s connection: his son Paul gradu­ During my two years in India, I stood at a window much like one might encounter at the Department of Motor Vehicles and listened patiently as people explained why they needed to travel to the states. In order to approve most types of visa, an officer must be convinced that the applicant plans to depart from the states after a short period of time, regardless of why they wish to visit. Of course, there is also a responsibility to try to keep out criminals, terrorists, human traffickers, drug lords, and other undesirables. My job D {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } ated from the Annapolis campus in 2007.) In some ways, I am little more than a stan­ dard-issue bureaucrat: I read reports, I go to meetings, I brief people, I compile reports, and I push papers-some virtual, some made of actual paper-from one place to another. But that’s only one part of the job. I have a ringside seat for what former Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield famously called “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.” My boss is on the nightly news on a regular basis. In the next couple of months, Japan will host the G-8 Summit, and I’ll be in the middle of it. I have met cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, one former and one current Vice President, and the home run king of Japan. Not bad for a humble bureaucrat, if you ask me. This may seem like a strange career choice for someone who not that long ago spent his days playing Frisbee in front of Meem Library and his nights pondering Kant, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. The Foreign Service is, in some ways, like St. John’s: a small and somewhat obscure organization with a lot of tradition and a culture all its own. The variety of different skills-and different parts of my brain-that the work requires on a daily basis is also familiar. I have to speak persuasively, write clearly, struggle with foreign languages, and work through countless situations that lie outside of my core competencies. If St. John’s provides the ultimate generalist education, then the Foreign Service is the ultimate generalist career. The longer I do this and the more I come to understand the values of the Service, the more I feel like this is what St. John’s was preparing me for all along. Chris Allison (SF97) shown HERE WITH HIS WIFE, BeTH Rollins, at the statue of the Great Buddha of Kamakura, Japan, revels in Japanese culture and traditions. �{Croquet} 48 IN LOVE WITH CROQUET Jennifer Wright (Ao8), a wry observer oflife at St. John’s, offered this tribute to croquet, herfavorite time ofthe year, after her last match as a student. ’ve secretly smuggled a book to every football game my family has ever taken me to, raising my head only sporadically to say things hke, “when they jump on each other-is that good?” Usually around that point, the man sitting next to me spills a plate of nachos on me, possibly out of rage. 1 fare no better when it comes to understanding the rules of croquet. This is not for lack of trying on the part of the members of the croquet team, who have gallantly attempted to explain it to me. But they start rambhng about wickets and driving the ball into the ground, and I get distracted, and end up asking them what their costumes are going to be for the match this year. My total lack of understanding of the rules of the game has proved advanta­ for a group of people who don’t particularly geous, at least during freshman year. I heard care for sports. Much of our bookishness at wild cheers from the audience and assumed St. John’s may stem at least in part from our we’d won. We hadn’t. 1 went around inability to compete with our peers on the congratulating everyone. No one had the soccer field. While students at other schools heart to correct me until the next day. remember their winning touchdown, John­ That does not in any way change the fact nies remember striking out at T-ball. that croquet day is the best day of the year. Which makes it even more amazing that In fact, croquet is the perfect sporting event we’re good at croquet. In fact, we’re the top I ranked team in the country. My assuming we’d won was a fair assumption, considering the fact that we usually do. As a result, we’ve occasionally taken to having the victory party the night before croquet. And the party is almost as amazing as croquet day itself. The big band music plays hard and fast. And everyone is united in a single, bloodthirsty. Machiavellian desire to beat the Navy-though the bloodthirstiness, to be fair, is tempered by Cole Porter and straw­ berries and champagne. For one week in the spring, we have a bitter school rival. We chant things about how we will “sweep” by winning every round of croquet. I learned after freshman {The College- St. John's College ■ Summer 2008 } year that when members of the croquet team come up to you and scream “how are we like a broom?” the correct answer is to scream back “we sweep! ” and not to meekly reply “we remove debris?” We enact in essence, the rituals seen on most Big Ten campuses that rarely make their way to quaint little St. John’s. Because in a way, beating the tough guys at Navy at any sport seems to make up for the fact that were always picked last for dodgeball. Watching the Johnnies sweep on the croquet field, we feel, as we rarely do, like wild Spartan warriors. Just for a Uttle while though, before we go back to reading our T. S. Eliot for language class. So, if you haven’t yet made it, venture to Annapolis for croquet. You’ll be glad you did. And nobody will judge you for bringing a book. �{Croquet} Heavy rain 49 threatened cancellation of the CROQUET MATCH, BUT THE COMPETITORS PLAYED ON AND THE WEATHER IMPROVED. The result: 3-a St. John’s in a hard-fought and HONORABLE MATCH. OPPOSITE: IMPERIAL WiCKET Ian Hanover (A08), sporting a navy “uniform” BOUGHT online; Jennifer Wright and Jessica Perry (A09). Clockwise: John Ertle (A84) and HIS son, David, io, and President Christopher Nelson (A70); MaryIrene Ruffin Corrigan (A04) WITH DAUGHTER MACKENZIE; FASHIONABLY ATTIRED Johnnies: (l. to r.): Sasha Munters (A09), Ellen Barnhart (Aio), SamYelton (A09), Elizabeth Fleming (Aio) and Elsabe Dixon (Aio). Todd Grier (Class of 1938) opened the match by STRIKING THE CEREMONIAL FIRST BALL; MaRY GiLLMARTEN, MOTHER OF CHARLES (Ao8), OFFERED CUSTOM-MADE CROQUET COOKIES. {The College. St John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } �5° {Alumni Association News} accept his Award of Merit. (Mr. Ertegun continues to contribute to our community through the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund; Led Zeppehn reunited to raise money for scholarships on the Annapolis campus as well as several European schools.) Our Award of Merit winners represent a broad spectrum of alumni in many different fields. Also in the music industry, there’s Jac Holzman (A52), who started Elektra Records in 1950 when he was a student. In journalism, Ray Cave (A48), editor of Time magazine; in filmmaking, screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64) and cinematographer Tom Stern (SF69), whose many films include Unforgiven, American Beauty, and Mystic River, Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman (A67), was honored in 2002 for his work with the Touchstones Discussion Project. He shared the podium that year with classmates including Candace Brightman, who created the light ast night I saw Martin shows for the Grateful Dead. Our alumni Scorcese’s Shine a Light, a have also made tremendous contributions concert film of the RolUng in government, industry, and in not-forStones at New York City’s profits and non-governmental organiza­ Beacon Theatre. The final tions as well as significant contributions image of the film is a photo­ to the future of St. John’s. We recognize graph of Ahmet Ertegun, class of 1944; these at the Homecoming Dinner on the him is dedicated to his memory. Saturday night. Mr. Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Our Honorary Alumni are welcomed Records, was hackstage at the Beacon on into our community each year during the the hrst night of this concert, October 29, All-alumni Gatherings held during the 2006, when he suffered the fall that led to day on Saturday of Homecoming. These his death later that year. are individuals who have demonstrated Seeing that tribute from a remarkable an outstanding commitment to our hlmmaker to a legend in the recording educational program and the community. industry made me think about the ways in Last year, we gave the award to two which we honor people. St. John’s, unlike members of the Annapolis community, most other colleges and universities, Robert Hunt and Alton Waldron, each of doesn’t grant honorary degrees to the whom has participated in the college’s distinguished individuals who speak at community seminars for 50 years. Often, Commencement each spring. However, the we honor retiring tutors and long-time Alumni Association, since r949, has staff members, recognizing their honored people in two ways: granting the Award of Merit to our alumni “for distin­ guished and meritorious service to the United States, or to his/her native state, or to St. John’s College; or for outstanding achievement within his/her chosen field,” and granting Honorary Alumnus/a status to people who have had such close involve­ ment in the St. John’s community that we want them to join us as “permanent members of the college.” Ahmet Ertegun, who shaped the careers of so many amazing musicians and co­ founded Rock ’n Roll Hall of Eame, was proud to come to Homecoming in 1994 to From the Alumni Association President L These are individuals who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to our educationalprogram and the community. Jason Walsh (A85) {The College - Sr. John’s College • Summer 2008 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President - Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President - Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary - Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer - Richard Cowles (SFGI95) Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or rr6o Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. impact-people like Barbara Leonard (HA55) and Brother Robert Smith (HA90). Last year, we again honored Jeffrey Bishop (HA87), the long-time vice president of the college, who died last July. Jeff was one of the very few Honorary Alumni to also be recognized with an Award of Merit, presented posthumously, for his great contributions to the college. This year at Santa Fe Homecoming, the Alumni Association will also single out a special group for recognition: the Class of 1968, the first students to graduate from the campus. These men and women were bold enough to be the pioneers of an emerging campus and they deserve recognition. Complete lists of our Award of Merit recipients and Honorary Alumni are on the Alumni Association Web site. Go to the St. John’s Web site at: www.stjohnscollege.edu, and click on Alumni. If you would like to nominate indi­ viduals for the Award of Merit or as Honorary Alumni, contact the Alumni office on either campus: Jo Ann Mattson in Annapolis, jamattson@sjca.edu; or Michael Bales in Santa Fe, michael.bales@sjcsf.edu. The Nomina­ tions Committee of the Alumni Association will be pleased to consider your sugges­ tions. Jason Walsh (A85) Alumni Association President �{Alumni Association News} Seminars, Croquet and Fun California Johnnies Enjoy a Lively Chapter know, the quality of the readings for week after St. John’s put seminars, and whether a tutor is leading away Navy during the the discussion,” says Miranda. Younger annual croquet match in Johnnies, especially those new to the area, Annapolis, a group of tend to look for networking opportunities. Johnnies were carrying on “This is one of our great challenges, how the tradition 3,000 miles to better meet that need,” he adds. away by taking on some recent graduates Fortunately, the Northern California Informal happy hours for recent alumnifrom the University of California, Berkeley. chapter of the Alumni Association also coordinated by Laura Manion (A04) every carried on the tradition of winning. two weeks-have been popular among Co-Imperial Wickets Jessica Finefrock younger members of the chapter. (SF05) and Nathan Stalnaker {A04) led the Johnnies to a dramatic, down-to-the wire victory in the first-ever Westside Croquet Match. Stalnaker hit the winning stroke: “It went through two wickets-all from one swing,” he says. About 25 chapter Reynaldo Miranda (A99) members and friends attended the match and a picnic afterward at Lake Merritt in Oakland. The event could become another The 2008 season of seminars and tradition for this lively chapter that dinners was launched by a January visit combines social events and seminars that from Santa Fe tutor Phil LeCuyer, who led appeal to younger and older alumni alike. a seminar on Hans Jonas’ essay, “Is God a “The spirit of the chapter is fun,” says Mathematician? The Meaning of Metabo­ chapter president Reynaldo Miranda (A99). lism.” Fifteen chapter members attended Despite the challenges of travel the seminar, hosted by Neal Allen (SF78) distances and hectic schedules, chapter at McKesson Corp, headquarters in San events are popular draws for alumni of all Francisco. Then attendees drove an hour ages. “I think what inspires people to come to savor more conversation over dinner at and join in is seeing other Johnnies they Cafe Zoetrope, a restaurant at filmmaker A ^The spirit ofthe chapter isfun. ” 51 Valley. Andrea S. Hines (SF05) hosted the dinner. In February, Santa Fe President Michael Peters led a well-attended seminar on Shakespeare’s Henry V', about 65 alumni turned up for a reception afterward. Tutor Peter Pesic led two seminars on Heidegger in San Francisco, and many alumni traveled to nearby Moraga to attend Pesic’s piano recital at St. Mary’s College. The chapter also invites local tutor emeriti and former St. John’s tutors. For example, Jim Forkin, a former Santa Fe tutor, delivered a lecture on Shakespeare’s Tempest and Machiavelli. Former tutor and Annapolis dean Tom Slakey (HA94) of Sacramento usually leads one of the semi­ nars at the chapter’s annual summer Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars reunion in Napa, hosted by Warren and Barbara Winiarkski of the classes of 1952 and 1955 respectively. Last year, Howard Zeiderman (A67) drew a crowd of 49 for a seminar on Jorge Luis Borges’ stories “The Library of Babel” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quihote.” Participants filled a long confer­ ence-room table and some sat along the walls, but as big as the group was, the seminar worked, he says. “I think all the people participated. Also there was a wonderful blend of text, experience, and reflection on the college, so it was never merely academic.” Francis Ford Coppola’s winery in Napa CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-901^ rim2u@c0mcast.net CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-332-1816 emartin@crs. org DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbeU.net AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Toni Wilkinson, SFGI87 512-278-1697 wilkinson_toni @hotm ail.com DENVER/BOULDER Elizabeth Jenny SF80 303-530-3373 epj727@comcast.net BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 diannecowan@rcn.com HOUSTON Norman Ewart A85 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta resources.com MADISON Consuelo Sanudo, SGIoo 608-251-6565 sanudoc@tds.net PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 215-482-5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 6l2r822-32l6 Freem013@umn.edu PHOENIX Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 206-542-3441 jdoherty@mrsc.org NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com NORTH CAROLINA Rick Ross A82 919-319-1881 Rick@activated.com Elizabeth Ross A92 Elizabeth@ activated.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-4452 reynaldo .miranda@ gmail.com SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjani@yahoo.com FOR MORE ALUMNI WASHINGTON, D.C. Ed Grandi, A77 301-351-8411 egrandi@aol.com SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 916-967-2194 e.i.mhanlon@ gmail.com {The College. Sf. John's Providing OPPORTUNITIES College ■ Summer 2008 } WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org TO CONNECT MORE OFTEN AND MORE RICHLY �52. {St. John’s Forever} An Emerging Campus rider stops to gaze up at the worked with the architecture firm Holien St. John’s campus in the and Buckley on the master plan. early 1960s. A few years In a piece he wrote for a college promo­ before, St. John’s President tional brochure, Meem described the Richard Weigle described Territorial style and why it was right for the property-the bulk of St. John’s. “The buildings of St. John’s which was a gift from architect John Gaw College in Santa Fe will reflect practically Meem and his wife. Faith, as “240 acres of all the historical phases.... Their pinon- and juniper-studded land on the terraced, flat-roofed masses recall their lower slope of Monte Sol.” ancient aboriginal American origin; the This was the campus that greeted the balconies, portales and patios recall the members of the class of rgGS when they Spain they came from, and the stuccoed first arrived in Santa Fe. As Weigle raised walls with their brick cornices will remind funds to build the new campus, Meem us of our Territorial past.” A {The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } The campus’ design would be “completely contemporary and yet reflecting the rich inheritance of the past,” Meem wrote. “Perhaps in a small way, this may be a worthy symbol of the way St. John’s College looks at its task in the world.” Many more buildings have been added to the campus since, and more will be added in the next few years: a new residential center and the Dr. Norman and Betty Levan Hall, which will house the Graduate Institute.4" �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Make plans for Homecoming! Annapolis^ September 26-28, and Santa Fe. on October 10-12. See you there. Santa Fe Alumni Art Show: “The Lunatic, The Lover, The Poet” September 19 - October zi, 2008 A highlight of the fall semester in Santa Fe each year is the opening of the Annual AllAlumni Art Show, marking its eighth year in 2008. This year’s theme is inspired by a passage from Shakespeare’s^ Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains. Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet. Are of imagination all compact...” Eagerly awaiting the next Homecoming in Annapolis Opening Reception: Friday, September 19, 5-8 p.m. Closing Reception for Homecoming attendees: Saturday, October ii, 6-7 p.m. In Paca Garden, walled and dry they built the Old World in the New, and there walked girl and woman, I with man and boy (remember?), you. a flash of gold; I wore it round my neck for days. You wondered why I prized the broken chain you found; you feared and could not meet my eye. As if to keep all life at bay and shut our eyes to hear a story we dressed the truth in solemn play: my quiet house of ancient glory, We played pretend, but much came true: our Old World gave us the refrain, with words dictated by the New. I have, but never wear, the chain. linen and tea; your Russian home, the dying count, a summons back. Were those bricked streets our sunny Rome, or Paris? You spotted in a crack Like faery queen and knight of old we lingered in determined bliss: a string of nonsense, trampled gold, a small thing, but too bright to miss. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 } —Ruth Johnston (Stayer, A85) �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Annapolis, MD Permit No. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2008 Description An account of the resource Volume 34, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2008. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 34, Issue 2 Summer 2008 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Dempsey, Patricia (assistant editor) Hannifin, Jenny (Santa Fe editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Allison, Christopher Brooks, Ethan Gassaway, Shane Johnston, Ruth Dunn MacRae, Cathi Nugent, Tom Spiegelman, Deborah Stratton, Erica Wilson, Kea Wright, Jennifer Johnson, David The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/04f2e5973a9519d5d018d3bf1f840469.pdf 531bdd67c2dd2180e39de8baec734f42 PDF Text Text �STJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE On Mozart magine what Mozart would have thought of the sweeping claims made of his music today, and of the various commercial enterprises that sprouted up as a result. Listening to Mozart, according to some studies, can help produce smarter babies, stimulate creativity in adults, and even motivate cows to produce more milk. This report on the “Moozart” effect can be found on ABCNews.com: “On Hans Pieter Sieber’s Priegola dairy farm in Villanueva del Pardillo, Spain, the secret to success is not some newfangled technology or machine. . . Rather it is the dulcet, layered tones of classical music.” In this case, the report claimed, Sieber’s 700 heifers went more happily to their milking stalls when exposed to Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in D Major. As the recipient of a “Mozart effect” CD, I can find no evidence as to whether Mozart’s music has rendered anyone in my family smarter, more creative, or a better test taker. However, personal experience has shown that “5oare sia il sento” from Cosifan tutte, played on a continuous loop, has been proven to soothe both colicky babies and desperate adults in the middle of the night. While Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus gave Mozart a new prominence in the aoth century, it also reinforced in modern popular culture all the myths that begin as rumors soon after Mozart’s death in lygr. Here was a genius hounded, undermined, and ultimately driven to death by that sulking mediocrity, Salieri. The fact that Mozart died while trying in vain to finish his Requiem, along with reports that his body swelled up dramatically in his final hours, helped to contribute to the conspiracy theories. William Stafford debunks a dozen or so misconceptions about the composer in his book The Mozart Myths. In short, Stafford concludes: Mozart was not poisoned, but died from an infection; rheumatic fever may have factored in his rapid decline. Mozart didn’t suffer from mental illness, wasn’t the playboy or drunkard he is sometimes made out to be, and by most accounts was devoted to his wife, Constanze. Salieri, while no genius, really wasn’t such a bad composer. Mozart’s professional and financial failures had more to do with his inability to play along with the patronage system and to cater to the popular tastes of his time. At St. John’s, juniors discuss Don Giovanni in seminar and listen to several other Mozart works in tutorial. Annapolis tutor Bill Pastille says the opera is sometimes a challenge to discuss in seminar. For him, the archetypal Don Juan story of the libretto doesn’t quite measure up to the superb music of this opera, though he points out that Kierkegaard found the opera fascinating. Pastille prefers The Marriage ofFigaro, often discussed in music tutorial. “The last two minutes, the scene in which the countess forgives her husband, is a beautiful moment. It’s like grace shining into the world.” This issue of The College^ celebrates music at St. John’s by focusing on some of our tutors-and there are many more at the college than can be profiled in these pages-who share their musical talents with all of us. -KU I The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. postmaster: Rosemary Harty, editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jenny Hannifin, Santa Fe editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Ann Deger (SFii) Sara Luell (A09) Brooke McLane-Higginson (AGI09) Anna Perleberg (SF02) Deborah Spiegelman Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design J “ 170/^ J? Mixed Sources Product group from well-managed forests and other controlled sources www.fstorg Cert no. SW-COC-0024<M O 1996 Forest Stewardship Council �I -| College The ZINE FOR Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis {Contents} PAGE ZO DEPARTMENTS From Freshman to Johnnie Was it speaking up in seminar, finishing up the freshman essay, falling in love with Ptolemy? Members of the class of 2011 share experiences that helped make them feel like a Johnnie. PAGE Zz^ The Book that Changed My Liee Sometimes a book is so powerful it can change your life in subtle or dramatic ways, suddenly or over time. PAGE 2 FROM THE BELL TOWERS • • • • • • • • • • Celebrating campaign success Developing young leaders in Annapolis What the tutors did last summer Keeping the great books alive in Chicago It’s all about community in Santa Fe High praise for St. John’s The reading list A Graduate Institute family Levan Hall update News and announcements 9 LETTERS 30 BIBLIOFILE Toby Barlow (SF88) explores lycanthropes in love in Sharp Teeth-, also, new alumni books in brief, and what the tutors are reading. 2(0 Music in the Key oe Liee 34 ALUMNI Exploring another side of our multi-talented tutors. PAGE PROFILES 32 Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer (SF78) keeps law and order in Seattle. 36 Judge Jean K. FitzSimon (A73) aims for fairness in bankruptcy court. 38 Austin architect Francois Levy (SF87) designs sustainable buildings. 40 Abby Weinberg (SFoo) is saving forests. 28 Alumni Voices On Saturday nights, the fishnets are on and the gloves are off for Jane McManus (A93) and her roller derby alter ego, Lesley E. Visserate. 48 SANTA FE ALUMNI RETURN 50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS PAGE 32 ON THE COVER Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Illustration by David Johnson 52 ST. John’s forever �{From the Bell Towers} Celebrating Unprecedented Success Exceeding the most ambitious fundraising goal in the college’s history called for saying thank you in a big way, and of course, saying it twice: first in Santa Fe on July 25, when the college announced it had raised $134 million, and again in September in Annapolis. Alumni, parents, board members, community supporters, and friends from across the nation joined together to celebrate a land­ mark achievement. In both cities, the college marked how much has already been achieved through gifts to the campaign and thanked those whose contributions made the campaign a success. In Santa Fe, President Michael Peters hosted a distinc­ tively Southwestern-themed celebration that began with a reception in the tented parking Spirits were high at Santa Fe’s July 25 “Celebracion.” lot of the Student Activities Center. Monsoon rains that visited the campus earlier in the parents, and foundations, as well as its faculty and staff and the week yielded to sunny skies, and mariachis in studded charro suits communities it serves, is what has been most heartening to me.” greeted arriving guests. The main event took place in the SAC Among the speakers were Reed Dasenbrock, secretary of the basketball court, transformed by draping, banners, black carpet New Mexico Department of Higher Education, and Santa Fe and strikingly decorated tables. A jazz ensemble entertained as Mayor David Coss. Both expressed their appreciation for the guests enjoyed dinner and dessert. college. “I grew up with St. John’s as a neighbor, and I am proud “Without every gift, no matter how large or small, we would that St. John’s is here,” said Coss. “You fit in right from the very not be here tonight celebrating the campaign-a campaign that beginning.” achieved virtually every one of its goals-increased college Ray Cave (class of 1948), a member of the college’s Board of endowment, student internship programs, new dormitories in both Visitors and Governors and chairman of the college’s previous Santa Fe and Annapolis,” Peters said. “This enthusiastic participa­ campaign, was called upon to lead a champagne toast. He referred tion, the knowledge that St. John’s is valued by its alumni, friends. to a draft of a proposed new strategic plan for the college, which The Campaign for St. John’s College raised $134 million for the college, much of which is already at work in supporting the Program; • $43.6 for the support of financial aid • $14.4 for improvements to student life, the libraries, internships, and grants for teachers to attend the Graduate Institute • $29.3 million for increased faculty salaries and faculty development • $12 million for the construction of Gilliam and Spector halls in Annapolis • $13.5 million for the renovation of Mellon Hall • $5 million for the construction of Norman and Betty Levan Hall, to house Santa Fe’s Graduate Institute • $5 million for a new dormitory in Santa Fe {The College- states: “mere survival is no longer an issue for St. John’s.” “So I propose a toast. First: to a St. John’s where ‘survival is no longer an issue.’ Second: To the glorious prospect that-once again and for the foreseeable future-with due thanks to a successful capital campaign-the following teachers will return to St. John’s each fall: Homer and Plato, Kant and Descartes, Tolstoy and Twain-along with too of their friends,” Cave said. Although the news was already out, the celebration in Annapolis, held in the FSK Lobby, was no less ebullient. A group of grateful Johnnies sang “Ode to Joy” and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) thanked supporters for helping the college surpass the $125 million goal for the campaign. “We knew from the very start that to reach such an ambitious goal we would need the support of everyone who knew and cared about the college: our alumni, our friends in Annapolis and Santa Fe and across the nation, and the parents of our alumni and students-everyone had to play a part,” Nelson said. “And you St. John’s College ■ Fall 200S } �{From the Bell Towers} 3 Honoring Two Exceptional Supporters Ron Fielding (A70) is named a Fellow of the college, to the APPLAUSE OF (l. TO R.) AnNAPOLIS DeAN MiCHAEL DiNK (A75), BVG Chair Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), and Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. The July campaign celebration included a special presentation to two alumni whose contributions were essential to the success of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora and Annapohs Dean Michael Dink (A75) named two new Honorary Fellows of the College, a distinction that has been bestowed by the faculty of the college to just a handful of people over the years. Ronald Fielding (A70) was honored “in appreciation of his outstanding leadership as chair of the Campaign for St. John’s College, his extraordinary generosity to the college, and in recognition of his accomphshments in the field of finance.” Sharon Bishop (class of 1965) was recognized “in appreciation of her distinguished service as chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, her generosity and leadership during the period of the Campaign for St. John’s College, and her contribution to the field of human resources and social services.” Both were moved by the honor, with Bishop noting, “none of my tutors ever would have expected this from me! ” Philanthropist Paul Mellon (class of 1944) and Columbia University’s Mark Van Doren (HA46) were made honorary fellows of the college in 1958-59. In 1996, Ray Cave (class of 1948) and Stephen Feinberg (HA96), co-chairs of the Campaign for our Fourth Century were made honorary fellows. came through! Boy, did you come through! My heart is so filled with gratitude toward all of you for what you have done to secure the future of this small but important college. We can’t say thank you often enough for the good things you’ve helped us accomplish.” Before the speeches gave way to swing dancing, Elsabe Dixon (Aio) took a moment to thank donors for what their gifts make possible for St. John’s students now and in the future: “You have given us the ability to be a great college through your contribu­ tions to financial aid, student housing and student internships,” she said. “You are the ones who have put in the time as a commu­ nity to continue to support this community. And for everything that you all have done for me and my fellow students, I am grateful beyond what these words can say.” {The College. Above, clockwise: Santa Fe students offered a hearty thanks to CAMPAIGN donors; TUTOR ToM MaY AND HIS WIFE, PAMELA, AT THE Annapolis; Luke Russell, Sam Porter, and Robert Shaver (all Aog) perform; Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh, and BVG Member Michael Uremovich (SFGI05). reception in St. John’s College ■ Fall aooS } �{From the Bell Towers} Learning Leadership a Long Way from Home This past August, three St. John’s students and alumni traveled with five Annapolis teenagers to the Dominican Repuhhc, where they spent a week living and working in the remote mountain village of El Ramon. The service trip, designed to foster leadership skills to prepare the teens to make a difference in their hometown communities. was organized by Epigenesis, an outreach project created and led by Annapolis students. Last spring, the group’s founders (Jamaal Barnes, Aio; Raphaela Cassandra, Ato; Joshua Becker, Ao8; and Rachel Davison, Ao8) received a $10,000 peace grant from the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation for their program. They contacted local community groups to develop ideas and support for the program, then recruited their participants. Beginning last June, they met together in Mellon HaU for seminar-style discussions on topics including leadership, race, and social activism. The international trip offered the students an opportunity to put their training into action. Cassandra, Becker, and Adam Meyers (A07) made the trip, serving as chaperones for the teens. The Dominican Republic’s Ambassador to the U.N. met their plane in Santo Domingo. They stayed at a local Cathohc school near El Ramon for two nights, then packed up their gear and two heavy suit­ cases filled with books donated by The Annapolis Bookstore for the village’s library. Next came the steep ride up the mountain to El Ramon. “It was so steep we had to get out and push at Johnnies and their Epigenesis PARTICIPANTS IN THE DOMINICAN Republic. Back row (l. to r.): Yosy Valasquez, Bryanna Greene, Tobi Yusuf, Adam Meyers (A07), Joshua Becker (A08), Raphaela Cassandra (Ato); Front row: Timothy Greene and Tony Connor. What the Tutors Did Last Summer Ah, the lucky tutors. Each summer they get to delve into something new, seek a deeper grasp of a familiar work, or study unfamifiar subject matter to prepare for a class they have yet to lead. AU we get to do is go to the beach. In Annapohs, six tutors read Virgina WoolFs The Waves. Tutor Tom May, who led the group, said, “Our study of the novel ranged from close and lengthy consideration of the imagery of the interludes and their relation to the foUowing sections, to the development and aging of each of the six characters, to the larger effort that Woolf makes to refashion the novel as a literary form.” The group also read and discussed two poems that resonated with particular sections of the novel: Wordsworth’s “Lines Written on Westminster Bridge,” related to Bernard’s arrival in London, and W. H. Auden’s “Stop aU the clocks” in connec­ tion with NevUle’s account of Percival’s death. A group of Santa Fe tutors delved into comedic hterature with a study group that arose from tutor David McDonald’s {The College -5f. aooy lecture on Rabelais. The lecture sparked a dialogue between McDonald and tutor Alan Zeithn, and the two began discussing ways in which comedic works might be better apprehended in the Program. “Comedy has a reputation of being hard to talk about at the coUege,” said McDonald. The two had three principal aims for their summer study group: to help participants become better readers of comedic writings, to look at the many deep and intrinsically interesting questions raised by the study of these works, and to John’s College • Fall 2008 } times,” Cassandra says. In El Ramon, the group settled in on sleeping mats at La Esperanza Community Center, a concrete building with stone floors, but no running water or electricity. They shared long days of hard work and learned to dance the merengue at communal dinners with local village leaders. They also discov­ ered “the parallels to service work in the United States, and the ways we could have an impact back here in Annapolis,” says Becker. Working with Peace Corps volunteers and local leaders, the group conducted a census of the 350 families in El Ramon. They also ventured into the lush rain­ forest outside the village to dig up plants for a prayer garden they created near the village’s community center. “The garden was a way to cross the language barrier,” says Cassandra. “We learned how to work together, planting side by side.” For more on the project, visit the group’s Web site: www.epigenesisprogram.org. —Patricia Dempsey consider carefully the place of comedic works at the college. They set out to look beyond surface-level comedy to discover deeper meaning. “Being amused [by a work] too often means dismissal of its intellectual seriousness,” said Zeitlin. The group was startled by how different from each other various comedic traditions were-Aristophanes from Terence, Chaucer from Lucianyet all managed to show how our expectations of the world are at odds with our experience of it. “Comedy teaches us the hmits of being able to control our world,” said McDonald. �{From the Bell Towers} 5 Summer in Santa Fe In Santa Fe, the bustle of campus life doesn’t slow during the summer months-in fact, it just gets busier. January Freshmen and Graduate Insti­ tute students are joined by conference attendees from around the world. The campus hosted i6 groups this summer, including Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English, the Santa Fe Institute, the Glen Workshop, and a bevy of biolo­ gists, cosmologists and physi­ cists from Los Alamos National Labs. During the month of July the college also hosted partici­ pants in the Summer Classics Johnnies and Santa Feans of all ages spread blankets on the athleticfield. program, a diverse group of alumni, Santa Feans, and friends from across the nation who gathered for week-long seminars on works including the Mahabharata and the Iliad and on topics such as World War I in prose and poetry. This summer marked the third year of the college’s enormously successful Music on the Hill series, envisioned as a way to bring St. John’s and the Santa Fe commu­ nity together through family­ centered concerts. This year. Music on the Hill kicked off June II, beginning six weeks of performances that drew crowds of up to 1,500 people (up from 450 in the first year). National and local acts representing a range of styles from jazz to folk to reggae to blues graced the stage each Wednesday. John­ nies and Santa Feans of all ages spread blankets on the athletic field to mingle, picnic, dance, and enjoy music on beautiful summer evenings. This summer also saw the college’s participation in the 5th Annual International Folk Art Market, a global celebra­ tion of international craft tradi­ tions and the artists who partic­ ipate in them. More than 100 artists from 40 different coun­ tries attend the market, which provides an opportunity for artists and craftspeople to share their work, exchange ideas, and create sustainable economic opportunities for their home cultures. St. John’s housed artists in the dorms the first year of the market, and many of the original attendees recall their stays on campus fondly. Some, particularly those hailing from troubled or strife-torn regions, remarked that the market was “one place we could always feel safe.” As the event has grown. artists no longer stay on campus, but the college continues to sponsor the event, and President Michael Peters sits on the market’s board of directors. St. John’s also hosts and organizes the One World Dinner, a festive meal for more than 350 people that allows artists, organizers, sponsors, and international dignitaries to join together in cross-cultural conversation. The success of the International Folk Art Market played a role in Santa Fe’s recent designation as a UNESCO Creative City. —AnneDeger (SFii) Above: Participants in the International Folk Art Market. At left: Summer aoo8 MARKED THE THIRD SEASON OF Music {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 200S } on the Hill. �6 {From the Bell Towers} Supporting Chicago’s Great Books College Against all odds, a small, independent liberal arts college with a great books curriculum overcomes serious financial difficulties to survive. Sound familiar? Shimer College, “the great books school of Chicago,” shares many aspects of its history and educational mission with St. John’s. In addi­ tion, Shimer shares Christopher Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapohs campus and current chairman of the Shimer Board of Trustees. Since he joined Shimer’s board in 2005, Nelson has helped advise the college in critical matters such as fundraising and student recruit­ ment, a move from Waukegan to Chicago, and choosing an interim president. He also assisted in the search that led Shimer to its new president, Thomas K. Lindsay, deputy chair of the National Endow­ ment for the Humanities. Nelson has known of Shimer since the early 1970s, when as president of the Chicago alumni chapter, he met several St. John’s alumni who were teaching at the college. “I was very interested because Shimer has a core curriculum that looks a lot hke St. John’s and a faculty that was clearly dedicated to the college’s mission,” he says. Shimer was founded in 1853 in Mount Carroll, Illinois. Under Robert Hutchins’ guid­ ance, it became the great books college of the University of Chicago from 1950-1958. When Chicago pulled out, the great books remained. Falhng enroll­ ment and crushing debt led the college’s trustees to desperate measures in the 1970s. They voted to close the college and sell the buildings and campus in Mount Carroll; however, a group of faculty and students refused to give up. They borrowed money to keep the doors open, and the college moved to Waukegan in 1979. “A dedicated group of people kept it going,” Nelson says. “The faculty did all the administrative jobs, as well as teaching, and even the maintenance. Students continued their studies, and the college rebuilt itself.” In part because St. John’s also struggled to survive at times. Nelson finds Shimer’s story inspiring. Although students can choose major fields of study at the college, a required core curriculum includes seminars on the great works of Western civihzation. Nelson’s involvement with the college began when he became a friend of Shimer’s former president, Donald Moon, who remains on the faculty. Throughout the years, Nelson offered Moon advice and support, and he joined Shimer’s board at the invitation of Presi­ dent William Rice. Nelson even­ tually became vice chair and began his term as chair in 2007. Nelson is pleased that things are looking up for Shimer. Two years ago the college sold its Waukegan buildings and moved to the campus of the lUinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Last year, the college was profiled in the New York Times and earlier this fall, the college welcomed 45 freshmen, its largest entering class in 30 years. “It’s important that this school survive,” Nelson says. Cassie Sherman {A04) is one of four St. John’s alumni among Shimer’s faculty and staff; like Nelson, she’s determined to see Shimer succeed. As assistant admissions director, she does everything from visiting high schools to producing student recruitment material. “I feel hke I’m doing a good thing,” she says. {The College- As CHAIRMAN OF ShIMER ColLEGe’s BoARD OF TRUSTEES, AnNAPOLIS President Christopher Nelson (SF70) advises the college LEADERSHIP. “The Most Important Ideas of our Civilization” St. John’s is often mentioned favorably in books about educa­ tion, but it’s always nice when a highly respected figure issues high praise. In this case, it’s Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who for 30 years was the president of George Washington University. In his newly pubhshed memoir, Trachtenberg mentions St. John’s in a chapter titled “The Ideal University”: “St. John’s College ... is a smaU, intimate, teaching-oriented, classics-focused institution that is sometimes mentioned as one ideal. I remember when in 1954 a St. John’s representative came to speak to a parent/student meeting at my high school in Brooklyn. As interested as the parents were in what the man had to say about the college, it was clear that they were needlessly concerned that if their kids chose St. John’s, they wouldn’t be able to get into medical school. To them, it was, perhaps, too unconventional a place that was following a curriculum they perceived as too far from the norm to be recognized by professional schools as providing a legitimate education. But for many other people, St. John’s was and stiU is the very best form of undergraduate education, a chance to immerse oneself in the most important ideas of our civihzation.” St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{From the Bell Towers} Levan Hall Plans Approved Building in environmentally sensitive Santa Fe is never an easy feat, but the college’s longawaited center for the Graduate Institute, Levan Hall, has made its way through the city’s extensive review and permitting process, and building should begin in the spring. A gift from Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made the project possible. The first step, approval from the City of Santa Fe Planning Commission, was achieved in June. The next hurdle was cleared July aa, when the board approved a height exception (the building is 39 feet at its tallest, compared to the regulation 16 feet), but required college officials to return for approval of additional design features, including some varia­ tion in design from surrounding buildings, and the architect’s use of COR-TEN, a resilient steel designed to weather to a pleasing copper color. The review board approved the college’s plans on Sept. a3. Levan Hall is being designed With plans approved, the college should begin Levan Hall CONSTRUCTION NEXT SPRING. to achieve a silver rating in the United States Green Building Council LEED rating system. Reading List CHANGES In with Medea, out with the Rat Man The Instruction Committees on each campus have made some changes to the work in progress that is the seminar reading list. In Santa Fe, where the committee focused on All in the GI Family Two GENERATIONS OF THE ThOMAS/GrOENENDYKE FAMILY, SHOWN WITH President Michael Peters (l.), graduated from the GI last May. Abbie Thomas (not in regalia) received her degree in May in Annapolis. Her mother, Cheryl Groenendyke, and Cheryl’s HUSBAND, Richard (a BVG member), received their degrees a week later in Santa Fe. Ms. Thomas was awarded a prize for her preceptorial essay, “Rereading Proust,” an honor announced AT the Santa Fe ceremony. freshman and junior years, some of the more significant changes involve replacing Plato’s Sophist with the Protagoras, swapping “The Two-Part Prelude of 1799” for “Tintern Abbey,” and replacing Euripides’ Hippolytas with the Medea. All three replacement texts have been on various reading lists before, and it is likely that all will appear again in the future. One plan, adopted a few years ago, was to alternate the Sophist and the Protagoras on a regular basis. Similarly, Medea might likely find itself replaced with another Euripides play, and “Tintern Abbey” could give way to a different Wordsworth poem. To take the Sophist off the reading list is “to lose a great good,” says tutor Matt Davis, but the Protagoras has its own virtues. Considered one of Plato’s most dramatic dialogues, the Protagoras is a literary masterwork offering students an opportunity to learn about Protagoras-the representative of relativism-in more than one dialogue (Theaetetus being the other). By studying the dialogues together students learn more about one of the most important problems of our (The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } 7 time. The dialogue also allows greater insight into Socrates: readers see him in a slightly less saintly role and learn about his relationship to the Sophists. It has been about eight years since Medea was on the freshman reading list, Davis estimates. Medea elicits questions about the status of the Greek heroes and about mortals’ relations to the gods. “Tintern Abbey” can present a challenge in seminar due to its brevity, but one virtue in reading shorter texts is the opportunity for a deeper, more leisurely conversation. In Annapolis, freshmen will have two seminars on De Anima, with their Lucretius seminars moving to sophomore seminar. This exchange undoes a long-standing, but anom­ alous, departure from the rough chronological order that prevails through most of the reading list. Annapolis Dean Michael Dink (A75) says, “it is hoped that freshmen will benefit from bringing the three major Aristotle readings together: Physics, Metaphysics, and De Anima. The other changes all followed the principle that any author worthy of being on the Program is worthy of at least two seminars.” That means in sophomore year, a second seminar will be read on Calvin. Seniors will have two seminars on Faulkner, with additional selections from Go Down, Moses, and two seminars on Heidegger’s Intro­ duction to Metaphysics, instead of one on “What is Philos­ ophy?” Removed from the reading list are Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel in sophomore year. Sacrificed in senior year: Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” and Freud’s “Notes on a Case of Obsessional Neurosis” (Rat man). �{From the Bell Towers} 8 News & Announcements New Tutors The following tutors have joined the Santa Fe faculty: Arcelia Rodrigue/, received her BA, MA, and PhD in Government and Politics from the University of Mary­ land, College Park. Her areas of special interest include political philosophy and international relations. Seth Braver received his MA in Mathematics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his PhD in Mathematics from University of Montana. Before coming to St. John’s Braver was adjunct associate professor at the University of Montana. Topi Heikkero received his MA (Theoretical Philosophy) and MTh (Theological Ethics and Philosophy of Religion) from the University of Helsinki, Finland. He special­ izes in the ethics of technology and the philosophy of tech­ nology. Llyd Wells received his BA in Natural Science and Ancient Near Eastern Studies from The Johns Hopkins University, and his MS and PhD in Oceanog­ raphy from the University of Washington, Seattle. Before coming to St. John’s, Wells held a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and was scholar­ in-residence at Sterhng College, Vermont. Annapolis welcomed the following tutors: Michael J. Brogan earned a PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University, where he also earned his master’s degree. He was a visiting researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and earned his bach­ elor’s degree at Swarthmore College. Matthew S. Linck joins St. John’s from The New School of Social Research, where he was an adjunct professor in the New School for General Studies. He has also taught in the honors program of Long Island University, SUNY’s Purchase College, and New York University. He is author of The Ideas ofSocrates (London: Continuum, 2007). He earned a BEA in Painting at Syracuse University. Marcel Andrew Widzisz earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he also earned his master’s in Greek Litera­ ture. He earned three bach­ elor’s degrees from Southern Illinois University: in Classics, French, and Philosophy. A visiting tutor in the Graduate Institute this fall, Sarah Benson earned a BA in Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas, and a PhD in the History of Art from Cornell University. Members New BVG Members The college’s Board ofVisitors and Governors welcomed these members: John M. Belcher is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ARINC Incorpo­ rated. He has more than 30 years of experience in the aviation, information tech­ nology, and defense industries, and is a leading authority in aviation and air traffic services. Stephen Jon Bohlin (SF81) retired recently after a long investment career with Thornburg Investment Management in Santa Fe. He also serves on the New Mexico State Treasurer’s Investment Committee as a public member. Michele C. Farquhar is a partner at Hogan and Hartson law firm in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Cali­ fornia and Washington, D.C., bar associations and is on the board of trustees at her alma mater, Duke University. Jana Howard Carey retired as a Partner at Venable, LLP, in December 2003 after 26 years of law practice. She is an active of the aikido club go through their moves as part of a STUDENT activities FAIR EARLIER THIS SEMESTER. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } community leader in Maryland. Richard A. Groenendyke, Jr. (SFGI08) recently retired after a 35-year career in the law. Most recently, he was a share­ holder and senior litigator with Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden & Nelson, Attorneys at Law, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. John C. Jeeferies, Jr. recently stepped down as dean of the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a member of the bar in both Virginia and the District of Columbia. Awards In October, Annapolis Treasurer Bronte Jones was one of six recipients of the Fannie Lou Hamer Award, named for the groundbreaking civil rights leader. Presented by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Committee, the award recog­ nizes women who continue Hamer’s efforts. Jones was also accepted to the HERS Institute at Wellesley College. The Arts Council of Anne Arundel County earlier this fall presented Annie Awards to Lucinda Edinberg, art educator for the St. John’s Mitchell Gallery, and Anna Greenberg (HA96), honorary member of the college’s Board ofVisitors and Governors. Edinberg was named Arts Educator of the Year, and Greenberg was recognized as Arts Patron of the year. The Epoch Journal, a magazine on current affairs published by Annapolis students, was named a finalist in the American Collegiate Press’ 2008 Magazine Pacemaker Award, which recognizes excellence in student journalism. For more about the Epoch, visit the publication’s website: http://news. epochjournal, org/.-^ �{Letters} A Loss FOR THE COLLEGE On a hot summer day in 1997, Chris Colhy (HA08) showed me how to use the most intimidating machine in the Print Shop: an industrial-grade paper cutter, armed with a hlade powerful enough to sever a hand. 1 stiU recall Chris’ patient, soft-spoken manner when he explained how to operate the menacing machine. Thankfully, for my sake, the machine had a fail-safe method of operation, requiring the use of hoth hands to trigger the cutting mechanism. 1 had the privilege to know and work with Chris, not while I was a student, hut after I gradu­ ated. For a year, before 1 went to law school, 1 was a hookmaker, among other things, at the Touchstones Discussion Project, which required my almost daily presence at the Print Shop. Chris trained me in the art of paper cutting, binding, and copying. Soon, not only did 1 lose fear of operating copying machines, I also became part of Chris’ Print Shop family, and my tedious work became much more enjoyable. During my time at the Print Shop, Chris and 1 had many conversations about pretty much every subject. 1 recall one partic­ ular anecdote he related about his grocery shopping habits, which 1 try to practice to this day. He recommended going to the store with specific meals in mind so as not to overspend or buy on impulse, thus defeating the expectations of the grocers. Chris had a rebellious streak in him. He said, in his matter-offact way, that one saved much money that way. After threeand-a-half years of St. John’s (1 was a Febbie), 1 appreciated Chris’ real-world savoir-faire. While Chris.. .was unable to finish college, he was well-read, knowledgeable and informed. In his time at the college, he had caught the “Great Books bug,” having read many of the books Christopher Colby (HA08) students read, which always made for pleasant conversation, as we discharged our respective duties and tried to drown out the repetitive noise of the printing presses and the copiers. Chris also enjoyed an unexpected perk from the tutors who came every day with mate­ rial to copy for their classes. Chris would keep an extra copy of any material that interested him (short stories and poetry in particular) and would read them at his leisure. I last saw Chris during my 10year reunion in aooy. He showed me the many improve­ ments in equipment and tech­ nology that he had accom­ plished since I had left. As we toured the Print Shop, I could not help but think how proud Chris was of the changes that had occurred. He had brought the Print Shop from the Guten­ berg years to the aist century. Chris was a humble, loyal and dedicated member of the college community. I am not only saddened about his death, but also about the loss for the college. Juan Villasenor (A97) Applauding TheLogic of Desire I recently read and was entranced by.. .Annapolis tutor Peter Kalkavage’s The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology.... The book is a remarkable embodiment of the teaching art. Kalkavage creates a living joining of inwardnesses, which he is able to awaken and hnk in a remarkable way; the inward­ ness of Hegel’s written words, his own inwardness as medi­ ating presence, and the inward­ ness of the reader. The paradox to me was that when I’m able to teach like this, it’s because I can stand in the thing to be under­ stood and in the particular embodied learning soul of the student before me and adapt what I say to the way that student learns, while watching aU the time not only what the student says but the modulation in the student’s eyes, opaque or melting to insight, resistant or ardent. Kalkavage does the same thing, but without the individual student before him. Yet he addresses the reader in such a way as to reach a wide array of individual readers. His book is a model of this art. Kalkavage writes, “Commen­ taries on the Phenomenology tend to give the reader a summary of its conclusions and teachings, often brilhantly, without necessarily helping him become a better reader of Hegel’s book.” Becoming a better reader of Hegel’s book means to be able “to make sense of things from the inside as they unfold.” [This] points to a deeper effect of Kalkavage’s way of shaping our experience of reading his book. Let me try to say succinctly why this is so by starting with a comparison. Ifyou read John Bunyan’s great narrative. The Pilgrim’s Progressfrom This World to That Which is to Come, you will be able to share in the immediate experience of Christian as he moves from one crisis of Christian growth to maturity after another. This is aimed to support more of an inner transformation of the reader than a doctrinal summary of Christian teaching might do. Similarly, Hegel wrote The Phenomenology ofSpirit to enable the reader to share in the {The College ■ St. John’s College ■ Fall aoo8 } 9 immediate experience of spirit through its intrinsic and neces­ sary sequence of stages and transitions as it moves through one crisis of growth after another toward its complete realization. In helping us become better readers of Hegel, Kalkavage stays within the perspective of spirit at each point of its unfolding as Hegel represents it. In this way we are helped to pace and share an unfolding that is also happening in each of us. Thus Kalkavage’s commentary, as Hegel intends, supports a self-reflection that helps us discover who we are. Such more than personal yet also personal self-reflection as this enables is a great gift. Where do I find myself in Hegel’s great gallery of arche­ types of stages of spirit’s self­ consciousness? Master? Slave? Stoic? the Unhappy Conscious­ ness? Rameau’s Nephew? Beautiful Soul? Or any of the many other archetypal states of consciousness? I will confess only that I recognize myself only part of the way along the course of spirit to maturity and no doubt as I read I reduce Hegel’s description of what is ahead to fit the lens of my present consciousness of self and the world. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that I found myself, almost by accident, among “the courageous non-specialists” for whom Kalkavage writes. Richard Freis (class of ig6i) The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404. Letters can be sent via e-mail to Rosemary.Harty(@sjca.edu. �{The Program} IO FROM FRESHMAN TO JOHNNIE Interviews by Sara Luell (Aog) AND Jenny Hannifin he College posed this ques­ tion to members of the Class of 2011: Was there a moment during your first year when you felt like you really became a Johnnie? Their answers were as individual as their own personal experiences have been at St. John’s, but also reflective of the college as a community of learners. Hein Myatt, Santa Fe. “It was definitely the moment I first spoke in seminar. It took me a long time to speak up; it was very challenging for me. I’m from Burma, and we didn’t have these kinds of discussions in school. I wondered: ‘what if I say something really stupid in front of the class?’ My tutor, Ms. [Janet] Dougherty, was very encouraging. She said, ‘everyone says stupid things at times; you say them, and then you can learn from them.’ So, when we were talking about the Odyssey, I was moved by it, and I finally spoke. From there, it got a lot easier.” {The College* Jake Simon, Annapolis. “I really became a Johnnie when I realized how deep the Program was, during freshman essay writing. When I was writing on The Sophist^ I turned in a rough draft to my language tutor. She told me just to reread it with a question in mind. WTien I was rereading it, I realized that there is so much more going on than I thought was possible. And then I was like, ‘Oh wow, aUofthe Plato that I’ve read, I haven’t read it at all.’ Then feeling that I could spend years going over just this book. The Sophist, just with one question in mind. It makes you feel incredibly impotent, going up against these great minds.” Natasha Barnes, Santa Fe. “There are so many little times when an experience allows you to step outside of yourself for a second and say, ‘Oh wow! I’m really a part of this.’ It usually hits you right after a class. You’re so engaged when you’re in the class, so if you’re going to have a great experience it’s because you aren’t thinking about other things in the middle of it. You get out of seminar and start talking to people about it, and all of a sudden you think‘Oh my gosh! This is crazy! I’m in the middle of this, which is exactly why I wanted to be here. So that I could have this kind of experience.’ I feel like [as a freshman] you feel something starting, because it’s really a longer process. Because you’re never aware that it’s actually happening until later in the year: you realize that something has changed from when you first got here. That now you’re not looking at this community of thinking, you’re in the middle St. John’s College * Fall 2008 } �{The Program} of it as much as anybody else is. And that happens throughout the whole year.” Freshmen still have to contend WITH their first DON RAG, BUT AT LEAST “running THE GAUNTLET” IS ONE FRESHMAN EXPERIENCE TODAY’S STUDENTS don’t HAVE TO ENDURE, AS THESE Johnnies did in 194a. Lucy Ferrier, Annapolis. “I think the first time that I sort of became aware that I belonged was coming home from Thanks­ giving break. Coming back to the campus, I felt like I was coming home. You have to be away to appreciate it. Everyone was running up to me saying, ‘Hi, how are you?’ I was back with people I knew, everyone knew who I was, I knew where my stuff was and where my life was based.” After years of self-identifying as a liberal arts major. I’ve discov­ ered a deep love for lab tutorial. The study of grammar now beguiles me, instead of boring me. I even like Ptolemy. I did not expect to love the Program itself as much as I do, even as I find I do not love the culture of the school, the culture that brought me here.” Anne Deger, Santa Fe. “Although my feelings about being a Johnnie changed over the course of the first year, at the end of the first seminar, sitting around the table, I definitely experienced an ‘I’ve come home’ feeling. But I think the most compelling momentof-Johnnieness I’ve had has come this year, after talking to freshmen. I feel more a part of it now that I’m introducing other people to St. John’s, so perhaps it just took a while to find my place. I am an older student, and this may be part of the problem. I’ve been disappointed in the lack of rigor I see in some of my fellow students, though I hope that much of this may be attributed to the process of growing up. And that learning to live in a community takes time. Still, that’s a poor excuse for skipping readings or coming to class stoned. My ovm expectations of the school varied as wildly from the college’s nature as my classmates’ natures. I’m happy to have had some of those expectations proven false. {The College- Nathaniel Torrey, Annapolis. “I would say the moment when I really felt like I was ‘in the club’ was the night I turned my freshman essay in. As soon as that seminar was over, I was in it to win it. From then on I was like, ‘I made it.’ Because every­ thing else was a weird freshman trial at the college, it was so unknown. I felt like I had done the big thing that everyone else does every year. I wasn’t just a freshman who had just shown up. I had actually proven my mettle, I fought, and I deserved to be here.” Nareg Seferian, Santa Fe. “‘Does it bother anyone else that these figures can be conceptualized, but not visualized?’ Thus spoke a classmate, as we were starting Euclid. No, the circle or triangle, as he describes it, simply cannot exist in ‘the real world’ (whatever that is). We can think of it, though, think in terms of it, work with it, prove things with it. I think all the time, about all sorts of things, but there come these moments- St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �la {The Program} Tutor William Darkey leads a math­ ematics TUTORIAL FOR THE FIRST FRESHMEN IN SaNTA Fe, IN I964. HoW MANY FRESHMEN LEARNED TO LOVE MATH BECAUSE OF EuCLID? and I’ve had a fair few at St. John’s already over the past six months-where one is compelled to be extra pensive. It’s invig­ orating and refreshing. ‘Good for the soul’ is a classic way of expressing it. This ‘antiquarian’ sense that comes with St. John’s is reinforced in Santa Fe by an idyllic setting: nestled amidst hills, with arcades of pillars supporting a small commu­ nity of learning. Some may criticize the philosophy behind the college, and in response to that, all I can say is this: St. John’s is indeed not for everyone, but it fulfills the function of filling the very unique gap it fills, for those who yearn for just such a place. That’s what it does for me, anyway.” Dave Maher, Annapolis. “The first time I realized I was a Johnnie was the first time in seminar when I realized that someone hadn’t done the reading, and it made me very, very angry. The college is essentially a communal effort to come to learning and these people were not doing their part.” {The College. Anna Goold, Annapolis. “Before I got here I had a different view on what I thought a Johnnie was. I just assumed that all my classes and all my seminars would be perfect, that we would get somewhere with all of them, and we would come to great conclusions. I think that changes when you start having classes that aren’t that way, and you realize that everyone is struggling through everything. That was the big differ­ ence for me, when I felt like I belonged here. It probably was by the end of the first semester freshman year, when I was able to differentiate between it being just seminar and it being awesome. Being able to look at each problem we were discussing, whether it was good or bad, whether I thought it was going somewhere or not, whether I thought it was perfect or not. I think a lot of people [come to the same conclusion]. For a lot of us, this was the only school we applied to and we worship it as this ideal institution. It is kind of when we realize it is not ideal that we realize we are just people grasping at ideas.” Kyouhee Choi, Santa Fe, “Was there a moment when I felt like I really became a Johnnie? Sure. When I balanced a seminar chair. When we do Archimedes, we learn about balance. There’s a saying that seniors have: if you can balance the seminar chair, you’ll graduate, and if you can’t, you won’t. I knew that it was stupid and not true, but it irked me anyway. So I was really relieved when I balanced the chair. I even took a picture.” Martin Greenwald, Annapolis. “I think it was in the period of the couple of seminars before winter break, when we were reading Thucydides and the Republic, when the workload had picked up, and our seminars picked up. Everyone settled into their routine, everyone got what was going on. One big thing St. John’s College . Fall 2008 } �{TheProgram} [about being a Johnnie] is being able to take the attitude we have in seminar and try to cultivate that in everyday conversa­ tion, try to bring the respect and open-mindedness of seminar to conversation anywhere. Always looking at a text for what it is worth, without prejudging it beforehand. Trying to get a coherent view of the Western canon and our civilization, and where it’s been and where it is taking us.” Han Qi, Santa Fe. “One who has gone to a normal college probably would never think of college as personal and humane as St. John’s. I certainly never did. From my experience, when a student registers for four courses at a generic school, four professors each demand a considerable portion of his time according to some regimented syllabus, expecting him to produce projects almost every other day-a five-page interpre­ tation of a Shakespeare sonnet on Monday; a Microeconomics presentation, Tuesday; a quiz on Spanish verb forms, Wednesday; and on Thursday, he is supposed to know the difference between Paul’s messages to the Corinthians and the Romans. Students at work in a freshman laboratory STUDENTS STILL READ GaLEN AND HaRVEY. class, circa 1945. The {The College. 13 It is sheer madness. At St. John’s there are fewer readings in mathematics, language and laboratory classes, but more focus and more time to reflect and remember. Tutors let students digest rather than devour. A school does not become personal just by having a small pool of students. It has to give students space and time to connect their learning with their life. The moment I felt I became a Johnnie was in my first don rag. A tutor criticized me for being overly prepared. Something as singular as this has only happened to me at St. John’s, and I am convinced that for a place so special, you cannot prepare to be ready. You must be here in person to experience it.” Matt Hendershot, Annapolis. “It sort of came gradually, after winter break, maybe, when you’re coming back onto campus, and you’re no longer a novelty. You’re no longer some little freshman, wide-eyed and rubbernecking, talking about how excited you are about the Program. You’re still excited about the Program, but you are excited to be a part of it, now. You’ve faced down your first don rag, sat in real open-faced criticism ofyourself andthe wayyou conduct yourself. There’s a lot of overblown talk about how it is all about finding a personal philos­ ophy, or coming to rest at home in the classics, but plenty of people do that without ever being John­ nies. What really makes you a Johnnie is the fact that you are here with all sorts of other people that really want the same thing out of life and out of their educa­ tion. You and the people around you really come to accept that when you’ve made it through that first semester. It can be tough. I know my class lost a few, even in the first couple weeks. So I feel like you are really here to stay, and people sort of know that when you step off the plane, and you come back, and it is like coming back home.” labs may be more modern, but St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{books} 14 THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE he College asked alumni to to me about the anti-historical approach that the Program describe a book that was represented. I did not return to the college that fall. I did manage to important in their lives. What resolve my dilemma, as it were, and returned to St. John’s we received in return were the following fall, to graduate three years later with my stories of career paths found, “new” class of 1954. But Spengler has remained the single greatest influence in my life. He gave me a context in which dilemmas resolved, passion I could comprehend various stages, or the ‘development’ of and purpose discovered, faith strengthened, a particular people (for example, the Greeks, or time, or how to imagine what Beethoven’s late quartets meant in our and questions answered. T “A Fruitful Tension” Edward Bauer (Class of 1954) I spent the summer after my freshman year at St. John’s (1949-50) at home, trying to come to terms with the Program’s total absence of “historical background,” which of course is an issue of critical importance for the Program. I don’t remember how I came upon Oswald Spengler’s huge work. The Decline ofthe West. But I soon became convinced that a broad knowledge of the history of an era (or of a work of literature, or a particular architecture or art form, etc.) was absolutely necessary for understanding it. Since I felt that so strongly, I did not see how I could return to St. John’s in the fall. I wrote to Mr. [Jacob] Klein, the dean, and tried to explain my decision, and I will always be grateful to him for his understanding and for taking the time to write {The College- earlier Western culture). I also understood howwhat we are experiencing now in the late stages of Western civilization is one more historical example of the birth, growth, achievement, and decline-the biological analogy, in a word-of a particular cultural entity. In a very real way, my whole life has exemplified this tension between historical and anti- (or un-) historical. I would like to believe it has been a fruitful tension. “A Meaningful Life” Isaac Smith (A03) I tend to date the point when I stopped being a teenager and started to become an adult to the time I was reading Middle­ march in junior seminar. Middlemarch being, of course, the great novel of dashed hopes and bruised idealism. It had been a few months after the September ii attacks, and I was coming to grips not only with my own mortality (the passage when Casaubon stares death in the face is one of the novel’s St. John’s College - Fall 2008 } �{books} high points) but with my own anonymity, the knowledge that all my deeds, thoughts, and high ideals would be swallowed up by time and forgotten. As a result, I strongly identified with Dorothea, Ladislaw, and Lydgate, and their attempts to carve out a meaningful life for themselves even if the results weren’t what they intended. For similar reasons, I also fell in love with Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being-'which in its own way grapples with the same themes. BOOKS HAVE THE POWER TO INFLUENCE OUR LIVES, EVEN WHEN We’rE NOT AWARE OF IT AT THE TIME. school, which turned me into quite a little snot until St. John’s classes and discussion thankfully beat that out of me. My first big-people book was War ofthe Worlds by H.G. Wells when I was 8, so that set the stage for everything. “The Question “Watching Stars and Planets” of Opportunity” Jennifer Hoheisel (AGI89) by Dave Prosper (SF02) I suppose an actual Program book that changed my life would be Ptolemy’s Almagest. As wrong as he turns out to be, I found his descriptions of how to watch the sky extremely useful, and thus I tend to stay up watching stars and planets and debating if I should just ditch the computer-job thing and become an astronomer. Then I remember that my math skills are lacking and decide against it. There was also Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World., which was a nice skeptical smack in the brain. I realized that my weird dreams when younger were just memories of weird dreams and not weird memories of actual aliens poking around in my room. I can blame a Johnnie by the name of Whitley Strieber (A67) for that earlier confusion, thanks to Communion and his vivid descriptions of naughty, nosy aliens. I also read The Prince and Johnny Rotten’s autobiography simultaneously during high {The College- 15 Before reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that for centuries many women were in a cycle of constant pregnancy and childbirth that left little energy or brain power to do much that was academic. Personally I was in no frame of mind to do philos­ ophy for at least a few months after each of our two sons was born-although I know women who feel otherwise. The cycle of frequent childbirth also was bound to interrupt the studies of those few women who did have access to higher education. All of this helps to explain why we don’t have many works from women prior to the advent of birth control and the opening of many institutions of higher education in the 20th century. (I know there are exceptions; I was writing a disser­ tation about a 14th-century female mystic when I was in grad school at Georgetown.) Woolf’s book speaks about the need for women to have both the time and the financial independence to be able to write. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{books} l6 Y discovered thepower ofsheltering myselfinside a story Erin Martell (A98) Not only did the book cause me to think about texts from women, it also made me realize how few women had been part of my higher education to that point. As an undergraduate majoring in Classical Civihzation at the College ofWilliam and Mary, I never had a female professor, and at St. John’s, all my tutors were male. I am not saying that there is anything inher­ ently different about male and female scholars; rather, it made me think again about the question of opportunity. In my own family, my extremely bright grand­ mother was sent to work in order to send her brother-a man who took seven years and didn’t finish the degree-to college. In the next generation, my mother was given the opportunity to go to college and was expected to excel, but her parents then assumed that she would marry, raise a family, and not work outside the home. When my sister and I arrived, we were expected to go to college and establish ourselves doing what we loved before we even thought about marriage. It was quite a difference among the three generations. Woolf’s book caused me to think about all these issues related to scholarship and opportunity for the first time. It made me appreciate anew my room in Humphrey s Hall and the luxury of time to read and read deeply. “A Profound Experience” Erin Martell (A98) One of the first “big kid” books my mother read me was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Order triumphed over chaos and I discovered the power of sheltering myself inside a story. I tore through the remaining books as fast as my newly-learned-to-read brain could process. I read This PresentDarkness\3y Frank E. Peretti at a time in my life when I was seeking the answer to a question I didn’t even know I had. As I finished the book, I realized with sudden clarity that I couldn’t accept the religious precepts I’d been taught, their fundamental contradictions caused my constant struggle against the church, and that it was time to give up, be free and figure out what I believed on my terms. Last, as it {The College- A Room OF One’sOwklw Jennifer Hoheisel (AGI89) TO THINK ABOUT women’s OPPORTUNITIES. was for many others. War and Peace was a profound experience for me. I don’t think I captured the thoughts quite right in my senior paper, hut the idea that difficult things are worth doing and worth surviving even if the surviving is all you have in the end has stayed with me. “Challenged and Transformed” Laura Anne Stuart (A93) When I was a sophomore in Santa Fe, I came upon the book Angry Women while browsing at a record store in town. This book contains interviews with women artists, activists, and writers, most notably sexuality educators Annie Sprinkle and Susie Bright. My view of femi­ nism and female sexuality was challenged and transformed, and I began to think that the field of sexual health might he where my passions lay. It hadn’t even occurred to me before then that it could he a job! While at St. John’s, I followed my passion by co-coordinating the Women’s Literature Study Group and organizing trips to Washington, D.C., to attend the 1992 March for Women’s Lives and the 1993 March for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. After graduating from St. John’s, I earned my master’s degree in public health and worked as a sexuality educator for more than a decade. This year, I published a sex education curriculum for young adults and became the proud owner of a sex toy store in Milwaukee, the Tool Shed. When I finally met Susie Bright, she was amused to know that one interview that she had given years ago had started me on my career path. I spend a lot of time teaching and mentoring young people and hope that I can inspire someone in a similar way. St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 } �{books} 17 Ybelieve only authors are capable ofchanging our lives. Christopher Benson “A Lifetime’s (SFGI07) Christopher Benson says authors, NOT books, have THE POWER TO Pursuit” Harrison Sheppard (Class of 1961) CHANGE LIVES. Plato’s Apology did not merely change my life; it virtually formed it. When I was 16, an uncle of mine-who had introduced me to “literature” when I was eight years old with an eight-volume set of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughsgave me a small volume containing five of Plato’s dialogues: the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Sympo­ sium, and Republic. I vividly recall the moment, more than 50 years ago, riding on a Philadelphia subway train, when I finished my first reading of the Apology. That Socrates was willing to give up his life, defiantly, rather than abandon the search for knowledge as he had been pursuing it, had a stunning effect upon me, an effect that was simultaneously thrilling and exalting. I left that train transformed. It was a year later that I learned about St. John’s College. But it was the Apology that awakened me to a lifetime’s pursuit of self-knowledge in its deepest sense, the difference between what appears to be and what is, and living with integrity based upon one’s self-recogni­ tion. Along with my experience at St. John’s, it also accounts for my chosen professions as a lawyer and writer and my enduring devotion to what one might yet learn from reading Plato and his companions in “The Great Conversa­ tion” (as Robert Hutchins termed it). “In Search of Resonant Voices” Christopher Benson (SFGI07) To the shock of every Johnnie, no book has changed my fife! I believe only authors are capable of changing our lives. St. John’s was a transformative experience for me because the institution facihtated an intimate encounter between reader and author, an encounter that crosses time and culture. I read in search of resonant voices. To borrow an insight from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a resonant voice is “spoken over the round world” but comes “home through open or winding passages.” {The College- It is a voice that I ought to hear, that belongs to me, that vibrates on my ear, consoling me when I am downtrodden and guiding me when I am lost. It is a voice of inex­ haustible pleasure and needful wisdom, never flattened by the tyranny of time or the vicissitudes of fife. It is a voice that treats my dark inertia, risks my securities, heals my hidden wounds, deepens my faith, awakens my somnolent imagination, expands my imper­ fect sympathies, and shapes my “final vocabulary.” I am tempted to mention other favorite authors-Dante, Shakespeare, Pascal, Thoreau, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Dick­ inson, and Frost-hut I will discipline my list to include only the resonant voices: Jesus: His subversive wisdom and edifying teaching inaugurate an upside-down kingdom-both in my soul and in the world-where the low is brought high and the high is brought low. Saint Augustine: When the Bishop of Hippo authored his autobiography. Confessions, he authored the biography of every Ghristian. His prayers and tears are my prayers and tears. His conversion is my conversion. He reminds me of a terrible truth, “Without God, what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?” Gonsequently, “nothing is nearer to God’s ears than a confessing heart and a life grounded in faith.” Soren Kierkegaard: In Fear & Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and Works of Love, Kierkegaard goads me, against my own sheepish obstinacy, in two directions: to enter the prodigious paradoxes of the Ghristian faith and to five the scandal of the Gospel. G.S. Lewis: I read the apologetic works of Lewis-Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, and The Abolition of Man-tsot as an “outsider” who surveys the St. John ’5 College • Fall 2008 } �{books} i8 ''Thatfateful, rainy Saturday morning, I wanted something to read... Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) landscape before undertaking a difficult journey, but as an “insider” who leaves the famiharity of the boat for a thrilling deep-sea dive. The analogical imagination of Lewis turns the Christian faith intelligible, challenging, and winsome. No one has done a finer job of holding the Fact and Myth of Chris­ tianity together. His translation of theology into the vernac­ ular is magical, leaving me with goosebumps of wonder, just as Lucy experienced when she first beheld Narnia. “More than Thought” Steven T. Brenner (SFGI83) When at age 15, I read Albert Schweitzer—An Anthology (edited by Charles R. Joy) I knew I’d been spared a lifetime of susceptibility to the dogmas and pretenses of the world, for which in return I would owe a lifetime debt of higher endeavor. Schweitzer’s thought is more than thought; it is heroically won conviction born of total engagement with the mysterious condition in which we find ourselves. It never ceases to challenge me to revolutionary change in my own thought and way of life. Until I discovered Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil 37 years later, I had no idea that such knowledge was avail­ able to human beings in their mortal state. Overwhelming as it is on first impression, a single reading of this human and cosmic creation poem-the most profound, most difficult, most beautiful work I know-barely contains a glimpse of its true riches. I still don’t understand a tenth of it, but I know there’s nothing to fear. “A Second Chance” Charles Green (AGoa) Pride and Prejudice, in addition to being the funniest novel I’ve ever read, also showed me the importance of giving books a second chance. I first read the novel in loth grade, and failed to see its point. Re-reading it during my junior year in college, I was amazed at how accurately Jane Austen captured aspects of myself in the main characters. I could see that some days I’m Elizabeth Bennet, witty and charming, while at other times I’m like Mr. Darcy, haughty and isolating, and every once in a while. I’m a silly, shame­ less flirt like Lydia Bennet. {The College. “The Wonder of Life” Valerie Pawlewicz (A89) A book that affected my life-although I didn’t know it at the time-was a garden book called Making Things Grow by Thalassa Cruso. She was a British gardener who hved in the Boston area and in the 1960s and 70s had a gardening TV show called-ta da!-“Making Things Grow.” In a bunch of books my mother sent me when cleaning her house out about IO years ago, in the middle of my busy life, I found this book about keeping houseplants ahve. At the time I was working at the Smithsonian, commuting, putting in intense hours, and not quite content with the frenetic way of hfe in the Big City. That fateful, rainy Saturday morning, I wanted something to read, and on a whim, I opened this book. Inside I discov­ ered a world of calm, of green living things, and good, plain common sense. What surprised me was her delightful prose style. It was like having breakfast with a good, enjoyable friend. She would tell a story, give plant characteristics as if they were people, throw in details about growing up in a great house in England before World War II, explain what she looks for in buying plants from a local nursery, and share personal failures (growing gardenias) as well as successes (growing almost anything else). The reason that this book “changed my hfe,” as I see it now, was that it inspired me to learn more about gardening. I don’t grow many houseplants, and I don’t really work that hard to maintain the ones that I do. But I have learned to acknowledge my love of being outdoors and being with green things as a worthwhile way to spend my time and earn my money. I had always thought that working outdoors and gardening was for other people, a waste of my education beneath a “true” career. During the next 10 years, I took courses on the side, experimented in my garden on sunny weekends, and read more gardening books on rainy week­ ends. Along the way I found other good garden writers like Geoffrey Hamilton, Penelope Hobhouse, and Michael Dirr, who add as much personality as information when they write. Eventually, four years ago, I turned to gardening full-time and now run my own personal gardening business, working only with private residential clients to help them to infuse something of themselves in their private gardens. I came to gardening late in life, being too busy to realize it was okay to be happy while I was busy. Now I have a business that is hard St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{books} 19 ''From all sides, friends offered su^esfions ofbooks to read... Christopher Sullivan {A89) work but a delight. It involves my brain and body equally. It requires patience, research, labor, focus, art, and lots of techne. I also work closely with my clients to introduce them to the wonder of life growing right outside their door. For some clients, I am the most regular person in their lives-someone who knows about their worries, their careers, their doctor’s visits, their dogs, their chil­ dren, their security codes, their birth­ days, their art, and their opinions about the upcoming election. I am the only person in the lives of my clients who knows their outdoor spaces as well as their personalities. I don’t think I’ve actually read the hook in years-I just remember the feeling I got the first time I opened it up and became involved in her story. Now I feel I am living the book. Thalassa would like that. “Attending the Particular” Alan D. Hornstein (AGI86) Reading Vico’s Nuova Scienza in a preceptorial with [tutor] Howard Fisher transformed my way of thinking. As the product of American legal education and with a career as a law professor, I had generally approached matters through the manipulation of ahstractions-a thoroughly conceptual approach not only to the life of the mind, hut to life itself. Vico’s (and Fisher’s) insistence on attending the particular, in all its singularity, was a revelation-one that I continue to struggle with, hut which has also enriched my life and understanding enormously. “A Very Metaphysical Place” Christopher Sullivan (A89) Following several sudden and unexpected deaths of people close to me, I fell into a miserable depression revolving around the fear of my own mortality and the mortality of those dearest to me. From all sides, friends offered sugges­ tions of hooks to read, people to talk to, workshops to take. Law professor Alan Hornstein (AGI86) FOUND A REVELATION IN ViCo’s NVOVA Scienza. mind-hody work to do, and medica­ tions to take to try to lessen the hitter sting of the depression. I read Viktor Frankl, the Dalai Lama, Epictetus, Lin Yutang, and so many more, hut for months, no matter what I tried, no matter how much wisdom from throughout the ages I exposed myself to, that grim, immohilizing fear held its horrible grip. Then in a slow process of distrac­ tion that led me from gym workouts to reading mystery novels and almost everything in between, someone recommended yet another book, one I’d never thought I would read, though I’d heard of it-even thought of as a joke!-foryears. Surprisingly, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill offered the first chink in the depression’s armor that finally let me begin to climb out and get back to my life. After several chapters of vague and business-oriented ideas, in chapter 15, he shifts into a very metaphysical place. Addressing the fear of death, he reminds the reader that as we learned in elementary physics, the entire world is made up of only matter and energy. According to the concept of conservation of energy, one can transform into the other, but neither can be created or destroyed. Suddenly my years of worrying and wondering about soul and afterlife and reincarnation and death came to a peaceful resolution. At death, I realized, whatever energy makes each of us the person that we are loses its connection to our body, but it is not lost or destroyed. From there, all those ideas about “we are all one with the Universe” or “God is within” or that life and death are an unending cycle came, finally, into a clearer focus. Exactly what becomes of that energy, that “soul,” remains a mystery, but I found it hugely comforting to recognize that simple, physical, scientific truth. And I’m immeasurably grateful. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{Musical Tutors} MUSIC in the KEY OF LIFE BY Deborah Spiegelman AND Rosemary Harty ach Friday afternoon, after the last elass ends, Annapolis tutors Carl Page and Eric Stoltzfus join with seven students to sing sacred music. From the Pendulum Pit, the voices of Primum Mobile send the beautiful sounds of Palestrina’s “Missa Papae Marcelli” resonating through Mellon Hall, a gift to everyone else within earshot. Around lunchtime on the Fishpond Placita, Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney (A75) may be found opening his guitar or banjo case, ready to play and sing with any music lover who has the time and inclination. Spontaneous dancing is always welcome, too. Just as conversation spills out of the classroom at St. John’s College, music enlivens and unites our college communities beyond the bounds of freshman chorus and sophomore music tuto­ {The College- rial. Many talented tutors help make it possible: through formal groups and polished perform­ ances, community sing-a-Iongs and Collegium, jam sessions, and musical mentorship to students. The college is fortunate to have gifted pianists in Elliott Zuckerman in Annapolis and Peter Pesic in Santa Fe. On Wednesday evenings in Annapolis, Peter Kalkavage leads a commu­ nity chorus of students, staff, and tutors emeriti that practices all year for a spring performance. In Santa Fe, Phil LeCuyer and John Cornell collaborated on “To Strike the World,” a performance of orchestral music and spoken word that brought together musical tutors and students last December. Among the tutors profiled in these pages are individuals who found their passion for music later in life and those who had early and exten­ sive training. Several perform regularly as part of professional music groups. Some compose, one won’t sing, but all consider music one of the great passions of their lives. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{MuSICAlTuTORS} 2,1 "There s this tension between the intellectual and this wacko rock bass-playing side ofme thatsjust been something Tve decided to negotiate all my lije. ” Henry Higuera It’s only rock ’n {The College roll but St John’s College • Fall 2008 } Henry Higuera likes it. �{MusicalTutors} Long Live Rock______________________________ Henry Higuera play lead guitar on some of his favorite rock songs. When he came to St. John’s, he sometimes joined up with students who put on loud concerts in the Coffee Shop. Marriage (to tutor Marilyn Higuera, current director of the Annapolis Graduate Institute) and children (Adam and Helen), along with the busy life of a tutor, meant his instruments were often at rest in the basement. Having a steady group of musicians and singers at the college (with various membership over the years) has given him more opportunities to play, and he’s always eager to strap on the Gibson or the Fender for a concert. “There’s this tension between the intellectual and this wacko rock bass-playing side of me that’s just been something I’ve decided to negotiate all my life,” says Higuera. “It’s so intense, it’s so loud. The only thing more exciting than being at a concert is being on stage five feet in front of your own large amphfier. You can see how it can get in the way of other more refined pursuits you have in your life.” In tutor Henry Higuera, a rock star lurks beneath the surface. Just watch him strum his Fender Telecaster, even when it’s not plugged in, and you’U get a hint that here is a man on the verge of rocking out. In 1966, Higuera bought a bass guitar. (His first instrument was a ukulele.) With his neighborhood friends in Evanston, Illinois, he formed a garage band called the Knight Lords. They played songs hke “Louie, Louie” and “Gloria” on second-hand instruments and with amplifiers heldtogetherby duct tape. After listening to Beatles songs on his transistor radio, Higuera learned that rock music opened up to him in a whole new way when he first heard songs from the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane on a good stereo. “The songs to me sounded a million times better, and what made the difference was the bass,” Higuera explains. “The bass sings —Rosemary Harty underneath the melody. It’s not obvious, but it gives the song its structure.” Fantasy for Violin____________________________ In junior high, Higuera invested $300 in his first quality bass, a Christine Chen Gibson EB-3. The Knight Lords never made the big time, but they played teen clubs, parties and junior high dances. They were an Santa Fe tutor Christine Chen’s proclivity for music became enthusiastic group, Higuera remembers. “But we would have made evident when she was quite young. Her instrument of choice was a lot more money if any of us had been able to sing,” he says. a Quaker Oats cereal box and her bow a ruler. “It was in the key of Music followed Higuera to Cornell, where he earned his under­ granola, ” she says ofher makeshift violin. graduate degree. He joined a band of hippies that played in Ithaca’s most popular bars, and Higuera was good enough to consider pursuing music as a career. But watching musician friends eke out a meager existence and traveling from gig to gig made it all seem less romantic. “It was really part of my identity, and I had to rework that,” he says. “After junior year, I wasn’t playing, but I always had the bass with me.” At the University of Toronto, as a doctoral student in political philosophy, he played music for fun with housemates and friends. One of his professors was Allan Bloom, author of The Closing ofthe American Mind. “That book was based on an article he wrote for the National Review, and I was his ‘big expert’ on rock,” says Higuera. Higuera tried to make a case that rock ’n roll was about more than just sex and drugs; it could play a powerful role in political reform. But by the time Bloom began working on the book, Higuera was “dethroned” as Bloom’s rock expert. Santa Fe tutors David Bolotin and Christine Chen have performed together Higuera was teaching at Dickinson College when SEVERAL times AT THE COLLEGE, BOTH AS A DUO AND AS PART OF A TRIO, IN WORKS FROM he bought the Telecaster, a six-string that lets him Bach to Shostakovich. {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{MusicalTutors} Equipped with a more responsive instrument, she soon embarked on a 13-year journey through the competitive world of adolescent classical musicians. Under the tutelage of Eudice Shapiro at the University of Southern California School of Music, Chen seriously considered a career in music. “I thought long and hard about conservatory, but I decided I’d rather have a liberal arts degree,” she says. While Chen earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Wellesley, Harvard, and Yale, her music remained a central part of her life. She played in the first violin sections of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Her teachers included Nancy Cirillo of the New England Conser­ vatory and Sidney Harth, former concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony and professor at the Yale School of Music. As a doctoral student at Cambridge University, Chen helped found the Rusalka String Quartet. When she spotted an ad for St. John’s tutor positions, Chen thought, “this is really perfect for me.” That was more than three years ago, and Chen has successfully fit music into the challenging work of being a tutor at St. John’s. Weaving in the musical context during seminar discussions is “a way of connecting disparate parts of learning,” Chen suggests, adding with a laugh, “I prob­ ably [do it] to an annoying extent.” Chen has discovered that a surprising number of tutors play an instrument, including a group that regularly plays bluegrass music. Ensemble playing involves the “necessity of being better attuned to the other musicians,” she observes. Along with colleagues including David Bolotin, Chen played the viohn in the 2007 performance “To Strike the World.” Bolotin introduced her to a 70-year-old cellist in town, which led to the formation of an all­ female string quartet with seemingly unbounded energy for music. In addition, Chen will soon appear with The Serenata of Santa Fe, a professional chamber music group. In a setting where the emphasis is on the mind, Chen finds it refreshing to be able to step into the realm of music.The college, she adds, has given her the encouragement and support to perform in addition to teaching. “Music reminds me that there’s something else besides what I’m doing,” she says. “It is deeply important that a college has a sustained musical life.” a3 “I always told myself that I’d return to the piano,” Bolotin says. He began piano lessons at age 6. Music followed him to college, but slowly receded to the background as lessons became increas­ ingly sporadic. Engaging with academia more fully, Bolotin thought his piano-playing days were over. Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Bolotin earned a doctorate at New York University and lectured in classics at Yale before joining the Annapolis faculty in 1974. In 1981, he trans­ ferred to the Western campus. Four years ago, music reentered his life. “I saw an ad for a digital piano, and then suddenly I had one,” Bolotin says. He played casually for about eight months until a student showed him a book of 17th-century songs. While Alexis Segal (SF05) set about mastering the vocals, Bolotin accompanied her. Thor­ oughly hooked, he resumed his long-discarded practice of regular lessons and loved it. Musical performance also found its way into a seminar on Chekhov. When the discussion focused on a passage the class found depressing, a student suggested that “in a musical, this would be the cue for an upbeat song.” Bolotin challenged the young man to write the piece. The student not only wrote it, but also found a fellow student to present the song. Bolotin has been taking lessons for more than three years from Jacquelyn Helin, an internationally known classical pianist and teacher who lives in Santa Fe. Since the auspicious digital-piano purchase, Bolotin has acquired an upright piano as well as a grand. “Two years ago, we remodeled our house to make a sound­ proof piano studio out of our former one-car garage,” he adds. What Bolotin really enjoys about music is the intimacy of performing with others. Ensemble playing-collaborating with both students and fellow tutors-is a source of deep satisfaction. He was Segal’s accompanist in a recital this spring. “ She wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Bolotin recalls. Most recently, he joined tutor Christine Chen and recent graduate Susanne Ristow (SF06) in July in a performance of Brahms and Haydn piano trios in the college’s Great Hall. “I’m so lucky to have a community to make music with and a hall to do it in,” Bolotin says. — Deborah Spiegelman Deacon Blues — Deborah Spiegelman T. Andrew Kingston Piano Man David Bolotin When Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin talks about music, his voice is unmistakably reverential, which might have something to do with his recent reunion with music after a hiatus of nearly 40 years. {The College- Four years ago, while awaiting the arrival of his moving van and family from the East Coast, T. Andrew Kingston occupied himself much as any new musician on the scene would: he found a blues club in Santa Fe and became a fixture there-at least until it was time to unload the truck. St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �2'4 {MusicalTutors} Raised in Chicago and Washington, D.C., Kingston came to music through classical training on the piano and his parents’ influence. Both amateurs, his father favored the church organ and his mother lyric opera. In high school, Kingston played various instruments in school bands. He credits two people with bringing him to jazz; Miles Davis, whom he heard in concert in 1981, and a teacher at Kenyon College who was a jazz pianist. Resuming regular piano lessons, Kingston began exploring what many jazz musicians insist is true American clas­ sical music. During his junior year abroad in Padua, Italy, he traveled with a local blues group. At Boston University, his graduate studies in an interdisciphnary program combining the philosophy of aesthetics and music were largely financed by his blues and jazz gigs around town. While at BU, Kingston learned of a pianist and teacher proficient on a wide range of instruments. Three years after putting his name on Charlie Banacos’s waiting fist, Kingston began lessons. “He is a great jazz educator,” Kingston says, and in a month of lessons, “he changed my fife.” Ultimately, the hard fife of a full-time musician wasn’t for him. Instead Kingston returned to Kenyon to teach before becoming a tutor at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where his musical and teaching fives are well integrated. “Tfie seminar is like jazz interpretation,” Kingston notes, sharing an observation made by a fellow tutor. The greatest jazz musicians are those who can listen and work with others, similar to seminar in that individual contributions create a whole piece. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on interpretation and improvisation. Musical expression is a regular feature of campus fife, including botfi scfieduled performances and spontaneous jam sessions. Kingston offers piano lessons informally and has helped form a number of jazz groups, alternately composed of students, tutors, and local musicians. “There is a chance to work with the students who are here,” he says, noting that an instrument that might not fit, strictly speaking, into an ensemble presents an opportunity for some innovative arranging. Kingston has kept his hand in the music scene in Santa Fe (his latest endeavor: salsa gigs), and is grateful for the freedom to play {The College- Like jazz, the seminar moves along on INTERPRETATION AND IMPROVISATION, SAYS Santa Fe tutor T. Andrew Kingston. music at his own pace. “Music is a way of talking about being human.” — Deborah Spiegelman Songbird Judy Seeger Judy Seeger is always singing. The Annapolis tutor sings at home, she sings in the car, she sings with colleagues and students in formal groups and impromptu gatherings. When she gave the Commencement speech in 2006, it was natural for her to urge everyone to join her in a chorus of “The Water is Wide,” even though she was struggling with laryngitis. There is no occasion, Seeger believes, that can’t be made more joyful by adding a song. “My mother tells me that I sang before I talked,” says Seeger. Her earliest memories are of singing in her family’s Pittsburgh home with her father, a Gulf Oil executive who loved to play the piano. Seeger sang while her father played music from Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and others from a collection of songs stashed in the piano bench. “Not Bach,” she says. “My father was not a fan of Baroque music.” As a child, she studied the piano, but like her father, she always preferred to play in accompaniment to a song. A love of music brought Seeger together with her husband, Tony, a member of a musical family (folk singing legend Pete Seeger is his uncle). The two met as youngsters in New York City, and in their teens, they both attended the Seeger family’s Camp Killooleet, where campers sing folk music and traditional songs all summer long. Seeger also learned to play the acoustic guitar at the camp. “Music was one of the things that brought us together, and it’s one of the things we keep on doing together,” she says. Seeger earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and master’s and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Chicago. Her husband became an ethnomusicologist. Together they spent nine years in Brazil St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �a4 {Musical Tutors} Raised in Chicago and Washington, D.C., Kingston came to music through classical training on the piano and his parents’ influence. Both amateurs, his father favored the church organ and his mother lyric opera. In high school, Kingston played various instruments in school bands. He credits two people with bringing him to jazz: Miles Davis, whom he heard in concert in 1981, and a teacher at Kenyon College who was a jazz pianist. Resuming regular piano lessons, Kingston began exploring what many jazz musicians insist is true American clas­ sical music. During his junior year abroad in Padua, Italy, he traveled with a local blues group. At Boston University, his graduate studies in an interdisciphnary program combining the philosophy of aesthetics and music were largely financed by his blues and jazz gigs around town. While at BU, Kingston learned of a pianist and teacher proficient on a wide range of instruments. Three years after putting his name on Charlie Banacos’s waiting list, Kingston began lessons. “He is a great jazz educator,” Kingston says, and in a month of lessons, “he changed my fife.” Ultimately, the hard life of a full-time musician wasn’t for him. Instead Kingston returned to Kenyon to teach before becoming a tutor at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where his musical and teaching fives are weU integrated. “The seminar is like jazz interpretation,” Ki ngston notes, sharing an observation made by a fellow tutor. The greatest jazz musicians are those who can listen and work with others, similar to seminar in that individual contributions create a whole piece. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on interpretation and improvisation. Musical expression is a regular feature of campus fife, including both scheduled performances and spontaneous jam sessions. Kingston offers piano lessons informally and has helped form a number of jazz groups, alternately composed of students, tutors, and local musicians. “There is a chance to work with the students who are here,” he says, noting that an instrument that might not fit, strictly speaking, into an ensemble presents an opportunity for some innovative arranging. Kingston has kept his hand in the music scene in Santa Fe (his latest endeavor: salsa gigs), and is grateful for the freedom to play {The College. Like jazz, the seminar moves along on INTERPRETATION AND IMPROVISATION, SAYS Santa Fe tutor T. Andrew Kingston. music at his own pace. “Music is a way of talking about being human.” — Deborah Spiegelman Songbird Judy Seeger Judy Seeger is always singing. The Annapolis tutor sings at home, she sings in the car, she sings with colleagues and students in formal groups and impromptu gatherings. When she gave the Commencement speech in aoo6, it was natural for her to urge everyone to join her in a chorus of “The Water is Wide,” even though she was struggling with laryngitis. There is no occasion, Seeger believes, that can’t be made more joyful by adding a song. “My mother tells me that I sang before I talked,” says Seeger. Her earliest memories are of singing in her family’s Pittsburgh home with her father, a Gulf Oil executive who loved to play the piano. Seeger sang while her father played music from Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, and others from a collection of songs stashed in the piano bench. “Not Bach,” she says. “My father was not a fan of Baroque music.” As a child, she studied the piano, but like her father, she always preferred to play in accompaniment to a song. A love of music brought Seeger together with her husband, Tony, a member of a musical family (folk singing legend Pete Seeger is his uncle). The two met as youngsters in New York City, and in their teens, they both attended the Seeger family’s Camp Killooleet, where campers sing folk music and traditional songs all summer long. Seeger also learned to play the acoustic guitar at the camp. “Music was one of the things that brought us together, and it’s one of the things we keep on doing together,” she says. Seeger earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and master’s and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Chicago. Her husband became an ethnomusicologist. Together they spent nine years in Brazil St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } J �{MuSICALTuTORS} living with the Suya Indians and studying the role of music and song in their culture. In 1989, Tony joined the Smithsonian Institution as Curator of the Folkways Collection and Director of the Smithsonian’s Folkways Recordings, and Seeger joined the St. John’s faculty. The place of music at the college, both in and outside the classroom, was one of the factors that drew Seeger to St. John’s. “The whole college is a musical community,” says Seeger. “Where else do all the freshmen sing?” With Annapolis tutors Jon Tuck, Henry Higuera, and Chester Burke, and Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney, Seeger is a part of a continuing tradition called “Begone, Dull Care,” a musical gathering meant to brighten the winter doldrums. The event started at the behest of Eva Brann, who was looking for an event to brighten the dark days between winter and spring breaks. After a few experimental years-including a performance in the Pendulum Pit with Seeger, tutor George Doskow and then-music librarian Tina Davidson, the gath­ ering found its home in the Great Hall. A folksy, high-spirited community sing-along that takes place every winter in Annapolis, “it lifts people’s spirits,” Seeger says. A song has the unfailing power to get people to put aside their individual pursuits and come together. “We do music at St. John’s the way we read books,” she says. “You read the book by yourself, butthat’s not the end ofit-it’s when we come together and talk about it that the magic happens. It’s the same way with music.” — Rosemary Harty as Galloping on the Guitar Chester Burke (A74) Playing the pedal steel guitar takes more than just musical ability, says Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74). It’s a feat of coordination and concentration. Burke was first drawn to the challenge by the sounds he heard in country music: a happy twang, a mournful wail, a nameless longing, all produced by masters of the steel guitar. But there’s great risk involved: when played poorly, the steel guitar can produce some of the most wretched sounds known to the human ear. The pedal steel guitar has two necks, each with 10 strings. It has seven pedals and five knee levers, which control the volume and pitch of the string. With his right hand, Burke plucks the strings with two finger picks and a thumb pick; the left hand (instead of pressing against the fret on a guitar) moves the steel “bullet” up and down the frets to raise and lower the pitch of the notes he’s plucking out on the strings. “It’s many instru­ ments in one instrument, and it takes longer than most instru­ ments to master,” he says. Burke has been a serious musician since childhood, starting with the violin, cello, and piano before setthng on the flute as an object of serious devotion. After graduating from St. John’s he studied music and performed in Paris. He returned to the states to earn a master’s degree in performance at the Univer­ sity of Michigan. Since 1982 when he returned to the college, initially as lab director, he has played the flute professionally as a member of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. The steel guitar began to intrigue him, especially when he became the temporary custodian to colleague Walter Ster­ ling’s treasured collection of classic country music. “In the country venue, the steel guitar is the instrument that best accompanies the singer,” Burke says. “It best imitates the emotions.” Determined to play the difficult instrument, Burke took lessons from one of the best in the business. Buddy Charlton, who played with Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours. He invested la years in lessons and practice before he was comfortable performing before an audience, but he began carting the instrument along with his flutes for concerts and special events. Burke is now turning his efforts to the acoustic guitar. So far, he’s not producing the sounds he so admires in Andres Even if she wanted to, SINGING. {The CoLLEGE-5f. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } Judy Seeger couldn’t keep from �2.6 {MusicalTutors} Segovia, but he’ll keep trying. “The sound of the guitar intrigues me,” he says. “But it’s much harder to play than the flute, and 1 feel I’ll never get very good at it.” At St. John’s, every musician is fortunate to have receptive audiences, whether it’s Purcell in the Great Hall or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on the quad. “As audiences go, the St. John’s community listens very well-we make a practice of hstening to one another with respect and appreciation, and it’s a pleasure to perform here,” Burke says. And while he’s game to try almost any instrument, Chester Burke will never sing. “I’m terrified of singing,” he says. — Rosemary Harty Practice Makes Perfect Stephen Houser Santa Fe tutor Stephen Houser routinely powered his habit of practicing the guitar into the early morning hours with peanut butter-and-jeUy sandwiches-but that’s getting ahead of the story. Growing up in Lakewood, Colorado, Houser started taking piano lessons at the age of five, received a guitar for Christmas at ten but “didn’t do much with it,” and played oboe in the juniorhigh band. A high-school friend with an electric guitar was his first musical influence. Together, they bowdlerized several guitars to create their Frankenstein, dubbed “the Astrocaster.” Houser later upgraded to a better electric guitar, with which he dutifully annoyed his family. During his first semester at St. John’s in Santa Fe, he met a fellow student who played clas­ sical guitar. “I was mesmerized,” he recalls. “He helped me choose a clas­ sical guitar to buy, and I practiced my brains out.” Houser saved up money from a job with the U.S. Postal Service and invested in a steel-string guitar, a 1943 Martin. He dedicated his summer after freshman year to music, prac­ ticing IO hours every day, and made a habit of daily practice through college and after graduation. Returning home in the evenings from his day job as a paralegal, he would eat his sandwiches and practice until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. But Houser “had an itch” to pursue music more seriously. So he enrolled in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied, took master classes, and played in a bluegrass band until the money ran out. Returning to Santa Fe, he taught guitar and “on a lark,” applied to the college as a tutor. He joined the faculty in August 1983. Houser has been at St. John’s ever since, except for sabbaticals and the 1987-1990 academic years, when he pursued his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia. He tried to keep up practice, but it became too difficult as he became more involved in extracurricular obligations at the college. Music, however, continued to play a role in class discussions. “I rely on the common experience that students-sophomores, juniors, and seniors-have with music,” he says. “Music was a very important part of my St. John’s experience [as a student]. It was natural and easy for musical things to happen.” Houser has collaborated musically with students and tutors, including playing the lute with young singers and accompanying a tutor who played the recorder. More recently, he has been concentrating on the violin-guitar repertoire and currently is partnering with a viohnist from Santa Fe Pro Musica on “enough pieces for a concert.” He is hoping to reach beyond the St. John’s audience to make a contribution to the community. Houser also understands the soothing quality of music, having in the past played guitar for the residents of nursing homes and, most importantly, for his mother as she battled a form of bone-marrow cancer. When his mother moved to Alaska to be cared for by Houser’s sister, he sold his 1943 Martin and bought recording equipment to make CDs of his guitar music for his mother’s solace. After 25 years at St. John’s, Houser consciously integrates music into his fife as a tutor. “I want to make some space for my music,” he explains. On sabbatical for the 20082009 academic year, he will be doing just that. —Deborah Spiegelman Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74) PLAYS flute for the BALTIMORE Chamber Orchestra, but says the guitar is the hardest instrument he has tried to learn. {The College s?. John’s College • Fall 2008 } �{MuSICAlTuTORS} Johnnie Song Book ”" hen a group of St. John’s tutors performs for special events, these two Johnnie clas­ sics are showstoppers. Tutor Henry Higuera wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters” in the early 1990s, after someone announced a contest for a new St. John’s anthem. Although the contest never materialized, Higuera’s muse took over. “I was idly amusing myself with various joke anthem ideas when all these great lines from specific books started occurring to me, all set to the tune of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’” Higuera explains. “After about a year of this I showed it to some seniors, and the rest is history.” Tutor Jon TRick’s “The Western Canonball” was inspired by both Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, published in 1995, and a lively song about a train. “There was a certain pomposity about the book that I found amusing,” says Tuck, who has always liked Roy Acuff’s “The Wabash Cannonball.” “I put the two of them together, and just started fiddling around with it. My words are funnier when you know the original lyrics of the song.” Audiences love his booming, Opry-inspired delivery of the song, but Tuck remains modest. He loves performing for college events, big or small. “It’s a wonderful fringe benefit of being at St. John’s,” he says. “You don’t have to be any good. I’m always invoking what I call the Pyramus and Thisbe principle: the worse you are the better you are.” W The Western Canonball From the great Atlantic Ocean, from that European shore. From Athens and Jerusalem come the authors we adore. They’re dead and white and masculine, they’re known and loved by all. They’re the regular combination of the Western Canonball. [Chorus: ] Oh, listen to the Logos, and listen to your heart. As you glide through all the authors, through every lib’ral art. Hear the mighty rush of the Freshmen, hear the lonesome Seniors call, “I’m traveling through the jungle on the Western Canonball.” Now the Eastern books are dandy, say the folks in Santa Fe, From the Vedas to Confucius, and Lao-Tse by the way. But we won’t give up Plotinus, till the darkness round us fall. No changes can be taken on the Western Canonball. [Chorus] Here’s to our daddy classics, may their name forever stand, And always be remembered, and taught throughout the land. Though their earthly race may falter, in the West’s decline and fall. Still we never study history on the Western Canonball. [Chorus] The Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters My mind has seen the glory of th’ Idea of the Good, That it’s not the same as pleasure I have firmly understood. And I wouldn’t take a tyrant’s power even if I could. I’m marching from The Cave! Marching, marching towards the sunlight. Marching, marching towards the sunlight. Marching, marching towards the sunlight. I’m marching from The Cave! The Fool conceives of God but thinks the faithful are deceived, BUT a “Greatest Being” whose reality is not believed Is a being than which something greater still can be conceived, Which contradicts itself! Ontological rebuttal. Ontological rebuttal. Faithlessness will ever scuttle, For it contradicts itself! The State of Nature’s character we know from good report To be very solitary, nasty, brutish, poor and short. So let’s give the Sovereign all our rights and every gun and fort. And then we’ll all survive! Ratify the Social Contract... Deterministic limits on my freedom are erased By the transcendental ideality of time and space. So my atoms are determined but my will’s a different case. It’s pure autonomy! Hail the Transcendental Ego... They came from old Chicago U. some sixty years ago; As they rolled into the Program, you could hear the whispers go: “There’s Homer, Hobbes and Hegel, there’s Plato and St. Paul, They came with Scott Buchanan on the Western Canonball.” [Chorus] I’ve been through all the steps in my phenomenology. So it’s Master, Slave or in between it’s all the same to me. I’m Unhappy and I’m Conscious so I’m absolutely free. I’m fully synthesized! I’ve undergone the Dialectic... {The College - 27 John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �2,8 {Alumni Voices} The Secret Life of a Roller Derby Queen Dressing Up and Acting Out on a Saturday Night BY Jane McManus (A93) it was my first night scrim­ maging. I was part of a visiting roller derby team in an ancient skating rink called Roller Magic. The women there had names like Bleeding Rainbow and Pinky Swears, and I knew once we got started they were going to try their hardest to knock me off my skates and onto the polished wood floor. And as much as I had butterflies, I wanted to get at them first. My 5-year-old daughter was at the snack bar, playing with some of the other kids tagging along with moms, and a few fathers, tattooed or nose-ringed, casually watched over them. First two-minute jam, I was a capable blocker. I can do this, I thought, and I rammed into Pinky. Once I got comfort­ able, one of the veterans threw me the jammer helmet cover, meaning I was the only one who could score points for the team. The whistle blew, and I cut through the pack of skaters quickly and cleanly, beating the other woman at the spot. I skated out fast and glanced at the tables to see Jean jumping up and down. “Go, Mommy, go!” I knew I was going to like roller derby before I pitched the story to the newspaper I write for. The Journal News in the New York City suburbs. I’ve worked as a sports­ writer for the last to years, covering most sports from amateur to professional. Some I try, some I like better than others. I loved roller derby from the start: the physicality of it, the speed and, let’s face it, the fishnets, I joined the local league. Suburbia Roller Derby, and adopted a name a sports­ writer can live with-Lesley E. Visserate. I got an e-mail from longtime sports broad­ caster Lesley Visser after I told her. Subject In ordinary life, Jane McManus (A93), on the right in this promotional poster, is a jour­ line: “How are we doing?” nalist AND the mother OF TWO LITTLE GIRLS. On SATURDAY NIGHTS, SHE BECOMES LeSLEY E. Visserate, roller derby queen. Some background on me. I am in my, ahem, 30s and I live in the New York suburbs. I have two little girls, ages 5 and 3. Stockings, stripes and Jolly Rogers But I love derby for the same reasons you Although I got my first tattoo at age 19, you colliding in a tangle of wheels and limbs. I can find features on the sport in any news­ wouldn’t know about it unless you work out like the theater of it, and the fact thatpaper lucky enough to have a hometown at my gym or know me really, really well. So before the crowd and the DJs at a public league: it ’ s sex and violence in one sporty I’m not the usual derby demographic on bout-it’s just a group of women practicing package. the surface. T SATURDAY. JUNE 28 - 7pm {The College- St. John’s College - Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Voices} for months on a dusty sport court at the police gym in Yonkers, drenched with sweat hy the end of the night. For me and for a lot of women who I play with, roller derhy means getting out of the nest, out of the life that has been made comfortable. Out of the world of white­ collar workers and academia, out of affluence and covering other people’s achievements. For a night, it’s my chance to be cheered, to dress up and act out. In the last five years, roller derby has attracted thousands of women. And, in an age when the WNBA has to beg for the insignificant coverage it gets, women in ponytails and skates get the front page of the sports section. It reminds me of the mid-1980s, when a women’s basketball team had players dress in unitards to titil­ late the fans. I am a basketball player first, even now, so that double standard irks me. But I don’t blame derby for being sexy. Wlien she bats her pretty eyes at me, it’s hard to stay mad. American audiences still have a hard time with women and sports. Tennis has short skirts, so it gets a pass. Softball might have lesbians, so that’s scary. Volleyball players are in bikinis, which is awesome. Just like in life, pretty athletes get the coverage-why, hello, Danica Patrick! Who are you wearing? Given what I do for a living. I’ve given this some thought. I also noticed that it was really hard to find a women’s basketball league nearby. After the passage of Title IX in 1973 and the millions of women who started playing sports, I assumed there would be legions of women playing basket­ ball once I got out of St. John’s in 1993. I’m still waiting. ''Although Igot myfirst tattoo at age ig, you wouldn i know about it unless you work out at my gym or know me really, really well So Im not the usual derby demographic on the surface. ‘7 sat on the chicken sandwichfor the go-minute drive home, shifting uncomfortably in my seat the whole way I thought about what I was doing— wedgingfrozen meat under my tailbone—and whether it was really a sensible decisionfor me to play a sport like this. ” And so are a lot of soccer players, lacrosse players-in fact, most anyone who played a team sport. Adult women’s leagues are few and far between in my area just north of New York City. I did a story on this a year ago, and I actually sat down and counted, calling up leagues and recreation departments and talking to women who once played a sport in high school. You want to know why so many women run? It’s because there aren’t a lot of other options, and it’s easy to schedule. I’ve talked to women who hate running, but hate being inactive just slightly more. Some of those women come over to the dark side. Kimberly O’Leary, a woman who goes by Vixen Von Bruisen on Suburbia, played seriously in high school. You can see it from the way she leads practice, very hard physically, but fun. As much fun as it is put on a flirty uniform on the Saturday nights we hold our bouts at E.J. Murray’s Memorial Rink in Yonkers, there is a ton of work leading up to it. We are a young league, just a year old, and we are still learning. Some of our players come from other leagues and could mop up the court with us rookies, but it really is a cooperative environment where we try to help each other get better at the basic skills. My learning curve is slow. I have a competitive streak, and I want to be the best player out there immediately, which I definitely am not. I throw my elbows, which is just one of the illegal habits I have. There have been nights I’ve been so frustrated with myself that I wanted to quit, and other nights when I wondered if I was insane. In early February, I was blocking Jeri Fling’her (a mother of two and health tech­ nician who lives in Connecticut). I was a little off balance but thought I had her. I missed her and fell backwards, slamming my tailbone on the floor. It hurt, but I told myself to get the $ *#% up and finish the jam. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } After practice, I drove to a gas station in a crappy part of town and asked, through the bulletproof glass, for a frozen sandwich. The guy tried to sell me a refrigerated Hot Pocket but I said, “No, it has to be solid ice.” Just then my teammate Black Star Heroine pulled up in a station wagon to ask if I was OK-a woman in a sketchy neighbor­ hood wearing fishnets-and I paid for a chicken sandwich. I told her what happened and that I was in a lot of pain. “Oh, that happened to me, too,” Black Star said. “It’s probably going to wake you up for the next few nights.” I sat on the chicken sandwich for the 30minute drive home, shifting uncomfortably in my seat the whole way. I thought about what I was doing-wedging frozen meat under my tailbone-and whether it was really a sensible decision for me to play a sport like this. I did wake up in pain. I popped Advils. I couldn’t drive my stick shift for weeks. It is a solid six months later, and my tailbone still aches. You know it’s the one bone they can’t do anything for when it breaks? Still, I was back at practice the next week. Call it my midlife crisis. I’m staving off the creep of mediocrity. I had my lame old tattoo redone in brilliant colors and invested in fishnets of every variety. My body has emerged from the years of preg­ nancy and nursing, wonderful in their own way, but over. I have abs again. This might not last forever. I’m covering the New York Jets for the first time this season, and I’m aware that I could get an injury tomorrow that causes my little hobby to intrude on my real life. But I will savor my tenure as a roller girl while I can. �30 {Bibliofile} Ee, tutor Ben Kraus had a trunk fuU of Marvel comics. I was always moving between the trunk of comic books and the great books.” Sharp Teeth Toby Barlow (SF88) HarperCollins, aoo8 A lover’s revenge takes on satisfying and creepy possibilities in Toby Barlow’s darkly humorous thriller, Sharp Teeth. Early in the story, set in the sprawl! ng neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a certain “She” muses about a failed romance with yet another lover. “She” finds comfort on the shoulder of Lark, a successful attorney, werewolf pack leader, and long-time friend. As they have a latenight chat Lark promises her something that will change her “completely...with it comes a certain power.” Instead of offering another glass of wine. Lark slices open his forearm and invites her to mingle her blood with his. By morning “She” wakes up as “her own brand of beast,” a werewolf in Lark’s pack. Sharp Teeth is a romantic thriller that threads multiple plot lines teeming with rival gangs of lycanthropes, high-stakes card games, dog traffickers and catchers, and organized crime in the seething underbelly of Los Angeles. In blank verse that jumps like rap music, Barlow dances between human consciousness and the musings of lycanthropes. With almost scientific authority Barlow sifts through the centuries, describing how small packs survived, biding their time, roaming the wilderness and surviving by killing “men that no one would miss.” Rest assured, Barlow chants, despite technology and surveillance, “the blood sugar fever still survives.” Barlow dispels the myths about how humans transform into lycanthropes: “It’s not the full moon. That’s as ancient and ignorant as any myth. The blood just quickens with a thought... So that one can self-ignite...becoming something rather more canine.” Unlike popular science fiction stories in which aliens inhabit human bodies (revealed when one is face-to-face with their green reptilian eyes) there are no clues-only surprises-as to who is and isn’t a werewolf in Sharp Teeth. “Even the werewolves do not recognize another werewolf,” says Barlow. Yet what makes the novel so gripping is not so much the strangeness of the mysterious crossover into a fycanthrope that characters like Lark deftly navigate. Rather it is the human struggles-the beast that resides within each of us-the desires, rages, loves, competitions, that makes the book a page turner. “A classic werewolf fears the transforma­ tion and the deeds he might do as a beast. —Patricia Dempsey Racing Odysseus: A College President Freshman Again Becomes a Roger H. Martin University of California Press, 2008 deeds he will not remember; but my were­ wolves, like humans, are wholly conscious,” says Barlow. They remember their blood­ thirsty deeds, and like us, they have long­ ings, regrets, dreams, and heartbreaks. Sharp’s Teeth is populated with hip char­ acters such as a persistent LAPD detective, a blonde surfer-chick (who is also a werewolf), a Hispanic meth manufacturer, and Cutter and Blue, bridge tournament finalists who just happen to be werewolves in Lark’s pack. These lycanthropes are clever. So is Mr. Venable, a mysterious sage that Barlow says “pays homage to an old tutor at St. John’s, Bruce Venable. He was a man out of time, a dichotomy, and a tremendous amount of fun. Like my tutor, Mr. Venable in the book embraces fife in all its highs and lows.” Barlow, an executive creative director at an advertising agency in Detroit, didn’t plan on writing a book. But several years ago when he was living in a Chicago hotel room, an article on a dogcatcher caught his eye. “I needed something to pass the time and at a certain point the char­ acters came alive.” Barlow did intend for Sharp Teeth to be visu­ ally rich, just like the comic books he discov­ ered at St. John’s. “When I got to Santa {The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } When he was 61 years old, and then still the president of Randolph-Macon College, Roger Martin decided to become a freshman again-at St. John’s College. Having survived melanoma against tremendous odds, Martin was looking to find new perspective and new challenges when he joined the freshman class in the fall of 2004. He sat in on freshman seminar, became a member of the crew team, and even attended waltz parties in the Great Hall. In this honest and deeply personal memoir, he chronicles his journey from a life in which he was an over-controlling, efficient time manager to a life in which he became a student immersed in the liberal arts. At St. John’s, Martin writes, he redis­ covered the art of questioning, conversa­ tion, and contemplation. He shares his great admiration for St. John’s students and tutors, and has special words of praise for Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78), whom Martin got to know well as the harddriving coach of the St. John’s crew team. Toward the end of his stay at St. John’s, Martin wrote: “I have arrived at seminar 15 minutes early...I am finally enjoying myself. I’m enjoying being a member of the crew. I’m enjoying reading the Great Books. I’m enjoying hanging out in the Coffee Shop and meeting students. I’ve attained nirvana.” Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table Sara Roahen (SF94) W.W. Norton, 2008 There are as many gumbos in Louisiana as there are accents writes Sara Roahen in her book. Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place �{Bibliofile} at the New Orleans Table. But in New Orleans her favorite gumbo is “as thick as a cypress swamp in flavor.” In post-Katrina New Orleans, Roahen finds another reason to savor gumbo-as a symbol for the city’s resilience. Roahen lived in the Crescent City for several years, while her husband attended medical school. In August 2005, Hurri­ cane Katrina disrupted their lives and forced a move to Philadelphia, but Roahen frequently returned to New Orleans to taste gumbo and other favorites. The result is not a compendium of recipes, but essays about food and place. She cobbles together aromas and flavors, conversations with patrons at local eateries, oral histories, and food history in this personal celebration of the city’s culture. Roahan explores the wonders of familiar dishes such as po boys, red beans and rice, crayfish bisque, coffee and chicory, beignets-“naked or sugared”-as well as dishes introduced by the city’s varied cultures, including Vietnamese pho and Sicilian braciolone. Roahen and her husband, Mathieu DeSchutter (SF94) are now back in New Orleans. Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research and Public Policy___________________________ Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile (A86), Katherine Buckley Oxford University Press, aoo8 Do violent video games contribute to aggres­ sive and violent behavior? Douglas Gentile (A86) has coauthored an insightful explo­ ration of this question that incorporates both scientific research and pubhc policy in an exploration of a possible link between violent video games and aggression. Gentile is a developmental psychologist, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and director for the National Institute on Media and the Family. Violent Video Game Effects presents the results of three studies that use various measures of aggression and research on elementary, high school, and college-age students. The authors note that critics confuse the scien­ tific question (Are there harmful effects?) with the legal question related to First Amendment rights. In the meantime, as the debate rages on, the book offers tips for choosing video games and a wealth of What the Tutors Are Reading Frank Pagano, Santa Fe: “I am revisiting Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. The novel is not about the (late) ‘60s generation so much as what they reacted against: the perfect American, Roth’s Seymour Levov, the Swede. Roth brings to life the all-Amer­ ican boy, and shows why the baby boomers chose to make him the enemy.” David Levine (class of vjhy), Santa Fe: “I’m just finishing Henry James’ The Princess Casamassima, which is the first James novel I’ve read. Published in 1886, it’s about the fate of culture amidst the rise of popular democratic movements.” David Carl, Santa Fe: “Steven Pressfield’s The Virtue of Warts a work of historical adventure fiction based on the fife of Alexander the Great, which gives a very engaging fictionalized vision of the fife of the great Macedonian general. Pressfield is perhaps most famous for his novel Gates of Fire, a fictional account of the Battle of Thermopylae (before the comic book and movie goo brought it to pop culture atten­ tion). Pressfield’s portrayal of Alexander is an inspiring vision of conflicted leadership, perhaps even of the tension between philosophy and politics.” Nick Maistrellis, Annapolis: “I’m on sabbatical leave so I have much more time to read. I have read a novel named/ZZZ, by Phillip Larkin who is a well-known English poet. The novel is about a lower middle­ class scholarship student at Oxford in 1940 and his attempts to fit into an upper-class world. The novel is beautifully written and quite moving. I’m also reading Out ofthe Labyrinth, by Robert and Ellen Kaplan. It {The College- St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 } 31 resources on how to be an involved consumer and citizen. Says Gentile, “The media are far more powerful than we want to admit, but we are far from powerless to control the effects.” The Theater of Insects___________ Jo Whaley, contributions by Linda Weiner Chronicle Books, 2008 Santa Fe tutor Linda Weiner wrote the primary essay for The Theater ofInsects, a new book by Jo Whaley. Weiner’s identifi­ cation of the insects accompanies Whaley’s dazzling, theatrically-staged photographs of butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and other colorful bugs. The collaboration resulted in a work that echoes the style of natural history dioramas, and-thro ugh Wiener’s contribution-offers a thoughtful reflection on the intersection of art and science. The Theater ofInsects, titled after a 1658 work of the same name, is published to coincide with a series of exhibitions across the country, including the Photo Eye Gallery (Santa Fe, N.M.), the National Academies Keck Center Gallery and National Academy of Sciences (both in Washington, D.C.).-^ is the best book on teaching and learning mathematics I have seen.” SamKutler, class ofig54, Annapolis: '''The Warriors, by J. Glenn Gray. He describes many of the horrors of war and reflects on them. My father was in the first World War, and my childhood is steeped in memories of the second World War. The day he received his doctorate in philosophy. Gray received a letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt which began ‘Greet­ ings.’ He found that all the philosophy he had been studying no longer meant anything to him because the war became his whole world.” Pamela Kraus, Annapolis: "Posthumous Keats by Stanley Plumly. I have a long­ standing interest in Keats, so I read a lot of things by and about him. Plumly, who is a poet and occasional essayist, has written a reflective account of Keats as living on through his fife, poems, and reputation. It’s a lovely book.” dlk �32 {Alumni Profile} Seattle’s Philosopher Cop Clark Kimerer (SC78) BY Patricia Dempsey the distant horizon but completely here have been misses the immediate threat.” moments in his 25When making split-second year career when decisions, Kimerer can’t afford to Seattle’s Deputy Chief be contemplative. “It’s a time to of Police Clark stand watch. If you think too much, Kimerer (SF78) has you won’t survive.” questioned his line of work. In Kimerer honed his ability to aoo6 when a Seattle gunman shot make split-second decisions several young adults at a rave dance during stints as a patrol officer, after-party and then pulled the SWAT Team training officer, chief trigger on himself, Kimerer and his hostage negotiator, captain boss. Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, charged with vice and narcotics, were called to the scene. Kimerer and today as head of emergency had to share the grim news with the preparedness for the city of victim’s families, brief the media, Seattle. After he joined the force as and console the teenagers who were a patrol officer 25 years ago, his grieving for their friends. “It was survival depended on being one scene of human despair after constantly alert and mindful another over a six-hour period,” because “the situation could says Kimerer. “When it came time degenerate instantly.” Kimerer to walk through the scene, I turned excelled at making critical deci­ to Gil and said, ‘I’m not sure if I sions under pressure and in 1985 want to walk through another became a SWAT Training Officer slaughter. I see my own kids every and Team Member, handling lifetime I do.’” and-death situations every day. He “You have to do it,” Kerb kowske trained “the guys [who] crash told his deputy chief. “One, you through the front doors, the have in your life been devoted to deadly force cadre [whose] goal understanding this. Everything you always is to save lives. I had to have read and thought about the create a curriculum dealing with human endeavor to find out what is these issues as well as post-trau­ good in the world, you have devoted matic stress syndrome. We were yourself to. Two, you have to do it to often faced with making a good show the world that you care. And choice among many bad options.” three, you have to do it to show Kimerer’s education at St. John’s yourself that you care.” “is a real conversation starter when As Kimerer walked through the In his 25-YEAR CAREER, Clark Kimerer (SF78) rose from sitting in a roomful of pohce grisly scene, trying to make sense PATROL officer TO SECOND-IN-COMMAND OF ONE OF THE NATION’S LARGEST POLICE FORCES. He’S GAINED A NATIONAL REPUTATION chiefs.” He is a gifted leader who of what his eyes were taking in, he FOR HIS EXPERTISE IN EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND HOMELAND studied at the FBI, Northwestern thought of readings from Plato, SECURITY. University, and the Program on Montaigne, Homer, and Hegel. Negotiation at Harvard Law “Snippets went sweeping through School. He is a philosopher cop my mind: What is good? How can who reads voraciously and is as you find sense in this kind of Yet Kimerer is quick to note that deep compassionate as he is rational about his slaughter? How do you make peace with reflection does not always have a place in fellow human beings. Kimerer volunteers to what is bad? If you don’t make peace, the the line of duty. “Where do the readings not help disabled adults, particularly the home­ alternative is despair. Kierkegaard was belong? They do not belong when there is a particularly poetic in how he explored this.” danger in thinking too much. In Moby-Dick, less, and embraces Oscar Romero’s libera­ tion theology, which maintains that values Each day Kimerer asks himself, “How do Melville describes how the last person you and ethics should be part of public policy. these great works have a place in my small want in the crow’s nest is someone ‘given to Kimerer never loses sight of the irony that life as a police officer? To make sense of the unseasonable meditation’ up there with a he has “one of the most unusual job good is one way of dealing with the bad.” copy of the Phaedo, because he’s looking at T {The College. 5t. John’s College • Fall aooS } �{Alumni Profile} descriptions in civilization” and as deputy chief, he uses “coercive force to keep law and order.” As second in command of the igth-largest municipal police department, with a $aa6 million dollar annual budget and 1,870 employees, he also investigates cases, prevents human misery, and “protects every citizen, day in, day out.” Ultimately Kimerer is a public servant, “bound by duty and responsibility, rather than authority and prerogatives.” Kimerer also oversees emergency preparedness and homeland security for the city of Seattle. Most city police departments do not oversee large-scale emergency and disaster response; however Seattle is a port city and headquarters of the Microsoft Corporation, a symbolic target for terrorist threats. Seattle is also vulnerable to natural disasters such as windstorms, landslides, and earthquakes. In 2001 the Nisqually Earthquake (magnitude 6.8) under the Puget Sound caused over $200 million in damage, and in 1999 the city’s New Year celebration was cancelled when a man was caught smuggling bomb-making materials into the U.S. at Port Angeles, with plans to stay in a hotel near the city’s famed Space Needle. To keep abreast of emergency­ response and terrorist-prevention methods, Kimerer travels globally to meet with his counterparts in various governments and also advises the Major Cities Chiefs, an organization for the chiefs of the nation’s 56 largest police and sheriff departments, on such strategies. “Here in Seattle we have a leading edge with data and communications systems that are interdependent. All these things help us to manage disaster.” Just five years into his career, Kimerer faced disasters of a different kind. He was tapped from SWAT Team training to become Chief Hostage Negotiator (a posi­ tion he held from 1985 to 1992). In the midst of a tense situation, Kimerer learned to calmly persuade another human being by hstening and asking questions. “It’s a real devotion to understanding through listening,” he explains. “Basicallyyou’re trying to get a desperate person, someone who’s taken over a hostage, on a wavelength where you can reason with him or her.” Kimerer has seen 300 to 400 such scenarios in the past 25 years. “There are so many causes-behavioral disorders, chem­ ical disorders-but the one thing each hostage taker has in common is singlemindedness, an inabihty to look beyond a self-formulated view of a course of action to be taken.” As a crisis negotiator, Kimerer built a rapport. “I had to convey a profound level of attention to the person. I had to try to let the subject construct a larger universe, one that had options and other choices than suicide or murder.” Just as the horrific shooting scene from the rave after-party lingers in Kimerer’s mind, so too does one hostage episode in which a suicidal-homicidal man, obsessed with his caregiver, barricaded himself and the woman in a clinic. “In this incident, you’re looking at a lot of things. Sometimes that person wants to do what’s called ‘suicide by cop.’ He wants the cops to kill him in front of someone that he’s angry with; he wants to act out in a murder/suicide in front of those who have wronged him,” says Kimerer. “I’ve seen hundreds of those cases.” ''How do these great works have aplace in my small l^e as apolice officer? To make sense of the good is one way of dealing with the bad. Clark Kimerer (SF78) In this case, Kimerer took it step-by-step. “The first thing I had to decide was who not to involve, such as the ex-spouses and psychiatrists. A lot of hostage takers have issues with authority and even clergymen can create problems. There are a lot of sensitive spots and each situation is different. The second thing I did was try to draw the hostage taker out to assess his personality by constantly asking question after question: ‘Why would you want to put her at risk?’ ‘Let’s not do anything until we can keep exploring this. Let’s keep talking.’ ‘Where’s the weapon?’ I get him to put the weapon down, if possible. It’s a dialectical exercise. It’s Socratic. We know what we want the answer to be. It’s not an openended, unconditional exploration. But you only see hostage takers change when they learn for themselves and discover for themselves.” {The College -John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } 33 Finally there was a breakthrough. Says Kimerer, “The subject admitted that the woman was I ike his mother and he was abused as a kid. Here was a chance to make contrasts, to point out that the woman he was keeping as hostage and planning to murder was not his mother. I could progress the dialectic along, tell him, ‘This is not your mother. Let’s talk about the differ­ ences and start creating some separation and some options.’” Kimerer’s ability to walk such delicate situations with skill and patience makes him a natural for law enforcement. Yet even though he grew up in a police family, Kimerer had no intention of joining the force. “My stepfather and my mother were both assistant police chiefs. My mother was the highest-ranking policewoman [in the country]. When she retired, she became a U.S. Marshall. My great uncle was a fire chief, my brother was chief of police, so the whole family was involved in the police force. I grew up socializing with the chiefs, so I was never intimidated by them or the paramilitary culture.” After he graduated from St. John’s, Kimerer worked as assistant director of admissions in Santa Fe and studied at the Graduate Institute while his (now) wife Julie Berg (SF79) finished as an undergraduate. Today they live in Seattle and are raising three teenage sons. When they first moved to the city in 1979, Kimerer worked in a small business for several years, but he wasn’t fulfilled. As a Big Brother volunteer, he got involved in a case where he worked closely with police detectives who were on the trail of a child molester. The criminal was sent to prison for several years, and Kimerer gained appreciation for the detec­ tives’ dedication. “I discovered that I was really excited about justice, even if it’s not perfect justice,” he says. From his 8th-floor office with views of the Puget Sound, Kimerer recollects the dangerous days of his career; “I lookback on my life, my St. John’s education, the cop who spent four years looking at great books and argues vehemently for the rights of the downtrodden. Is this unusual? I don’t know, but this is where my life has gone.” Today Kimerer is more likely to be dashing to a meeting than to a crime scene. “When I’m called out, that’s when it’s really bad, like the mass killing at the rave after-party. Otherwise, the biggest threat I might encounter these days,” he says, “is a paper cut. �{Alumni Notes} 34 1935 Richard S. Woodman writes that he is still enjoying life and the practice of law in lovely upstate New York. 1937 Jack Owens sent a poem to The College: Let the music and adventures play on Until we must give up the gift of life Then comes a place of mercy to give us relief and liberation from The tangled web we have woven in our busy life in wonderland Full of good works, and vanities, plus all the ills and pains We leave all of these our history. Our love will live forever So sail away to this new place of supreme rest and peace Now when friends and family, smell a new blown flower. Or hear a joyful tune, or see a graceful wild bird-they will think of you 1943 “Peg and I have been married for 65 years,” writes BURTON Armstrong. “And it all started at St. John’s.” 1953 “In a spirit of reason and good will,” Jennie Alexander has put away her former name, John D. Alexander, Jr., and gender. She continues to perform with the Baltimore Jazz Trio. Indeed the trio once again performed at McDowell Hall during Homecoming. Alexander also continues her study of American vernacular post-and-rung chair making and 17th century joinery. She has recently co-authored an article on chair making to be published in American Furniture 2009. 1954 Bernard Jacoh completed 29 years as a law teacher at Hofstra University Law School and was granted emeritus status as of the 2008-09 academic year. 1962 My profile in View, the journal of the Library of American Landscape History, describes me as a “preservation hero” because of my efforts at Hampton in Maryland; Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio; and Ford House in Grosse Point Shores, Mich. I retired June 30, 2007,” writes JOHN FrankLIN Miller. Steve Almy writes: “My wife and I are happily retired in California, on the western slope of the Sierras, a really beautiful spot. I am the president of our local chapter of the National Active/Retired Federal Employees Association, Hangtown Chapter 1503, in Placerville, Calif. Our goal is to protect the earned benefits of retirees from the federal government. Congress has tried to cut our pensions but we have (so far) successfully resisted. We were visited recently by another class member, George Jones, and his beautiful wife. I wonder how many classmates realize we have a genuine war hero among us. I spend my time Ashing, reading and gardening, very relaxing after a lifetime spying against our country’s enemies. My wife is the world’s greatest cook of food from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where we lived for so many years, so I am constantly fighting the battle of the bulge. I’d like to hear from anyone in our class, particularly if you’re going to be in the area and can drop by, Yia sasC Cecil Wade reports that his daughter Cynthia won the Oscar for Short Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards ceremonies. 1966 Barbara Hockman just retired 1964 i960 teaching English in China. “My kids are a lot more daring than I am! ” she writes. Arlene Andrew is still working full time as a senior planner for the city of La Verne, 3.3 miles from her home in Claremont, Calif. She has no immediate plans to retire. Her daughter, Abby Banks, has had a book published: Punk House, a photo­ documentation of the homes of groups of “punk” young people she visited as she traveled across America. Her son. Josh, is after 30 “delightful and intense years” teaching English as a Second Language at the City College of San Francisco: “I taught all levels and types of ESL from vocational and crosscultural studies to many years of advanced academic classes. I was helped in my work by my St. John’s foundation followed by five years abroad, teaching in Japan, and traveling overland around the world. Now I’ll have time to paint and focus on my Tibetan Buddhist studies and practice (ongoing for more than Decorating Idea Leo Pickens (A78) wants to give alumni the first shot at a bargain: two classic wooden AyLING sweep oars, made in 1971, WITH THE DISTINCTIVE St. JoHn’s ORANGE-AND-BLACK DESIGN ON THE BLADE. They’re 12' long, ideal for either dedicated rowers or those WITH AVERY BIG HOUSE TO DECORATE. PiCKENS IS ASKING $250 OR BEST OFFER, AND SAYS ALL PROCEEDS GO BACK TO SUPPORT THE ROWING PROGRAM. Call 410-268-2558 or e-mail leo.pickens@sjca.edu. (The College -Sr. John’s College . Fall zoo8 } �{AlumniNotes} 25 years), simplicity dictated by a teacher’s pension. Feel free to send me an e-mail.” 1967 Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. He is married to Susan Keens, PhD, a clinical psychologist. Daughter Jenny is a fifth-grade teacher, and will be married this summer. Son Peter is a computer programmer. Ezra Harris (A) and Eve Cohen Olman (A6g) got married about three years ago at the Keren Or center for special education in Jerusalem. “It was a gas. We have recently been blessed with the birth of our fourth grandchild. Praise the Lord!” 1968 More retirement news, from M. Joy Avery (SF): “After completing three careers, I finally retire at 62 years: 5 years as a technical writer, 26 years as an interpreter to the deaf, 10 years as an occupational , therapy assistant.” Tom Keens (SF) is the chair of the Pediatric Pulmonology Sub-board of the American Board of Pediatrics: “This is a seven­ member board who writes the board examination for pediatric pulmonology, which aU physicians wishing to be certified in this subspecialty must take and pass. Members serve a seven-year term. In my last two-years, I was elected chair of the subboard. I was initially reluctant to agree to serve, but I realized that this group has important obligations not only to write the board examinations, but also to determine the knowledge area which defines pediatric pulmonology as a subspecialty. It has been a very interesting seven years.” Tom is also a Professor of Pediatrics, Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and he holds a faculty position in the 1969 Joseph P. Baratta (A) writes: “My big book. The Politics of World Federation (2004), continues to make slow, scholarly progress. It has been reviewed eight times. It has been cited in the first note of Paul Kennedy’s The Parliament ofMan. It is also cited in a note in Joshua Goldstein’s International Relations and in a Wikipedia article on “world government.” My website on the book contains the introduction and pictures of me, worn out with labors to realize the dream of world peace and justice: http://web.mac.com /Josephs aratta. ” L. Luis Lopez (SFGI) has published three books of poetry. Musings ofa Barrio Sack Boy, A Painting ofSand, and Each Month I Sing (October 2008). He teaches Latin, Ancient Greek, Greek and Roman Literature, and Mythology at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo. His daughter, Reina Lopez, is preparing to enter the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe in January. “To all who wished me well,” writes BARBARA MORDES BOSS (A), “it has been six years since I was hit by a truck and I am finally feeling good. The hardest part of healing was going to the doctors. Most doctors merely prescribed drugs, and then more drugs. Two months ago, a new doctor. Dr. Brilliant and Beautiful, ran her fingers over my body, from my ears to my wrists, and then from the back of my head to my {The College. 5f. 35 Dancing All Night DELL Kesselman (SFGI76) has been working in Phoenix for four-and-a-half years as a psychotherapist at a nonprofit agency, “using my liberal education daily. In March, my only child became a Jewish wife, and I danced and smiled all night. Living with my two cats, I continue to sing and purr with abandon, laughing more as I near 60 than ever before.” I wrist. She then forcefully declared that I must decaffeinate and she immediately ordered an echocardiogram. I stopped all drugs as so ordered and after one week, felt better than normal. Still do. Last week I went to the heart ultrasound doctor. I was not able to see the screen as he probed and muttered, but what I heard was rather creepy; retarded valves not quite clapping, coughing and wheezing, as they applauded the heart. (The doctor had muttered ‘What a beautiful heart!’ upon finding a good viewing spot. At 60, any compliment to a body part is nice to hear.) Through the splashing and whistling he made comment on my ‘heart murmur’ describing my weak mitral valve. If any friends have advice please pass it on. Truth, Beauty, and the Good have not languished in my heart but is there not an aspect of each, particular for the aged? Any thoughts, let me know. I do not dream of my Rock ’n Roll time; not Dylan, The Stones, The Doors, Jimi, nor even Hiatt... every night I dream of St. John’s!” “Retired, built a new house (Curmudgeon Castle West), got a new dog (Simon) and kept the important stuff: wife (Sarah), health (like bull) and business (for the dogs),” writes JAMES Scanlon (SF). The view to Monte Sol is a bit dim; it seems to be just over the curvature of the earth from here (about 4000 miles). Reflection on the St. John’s experience progresses from pricey at the time to priceless over time.” 1971 George Elias (A) writes: “After more than 20 years seUing businesses, I have embarked on a new career as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley. I am part of a new program that began late last year in New York and is now piloting in San Francisco. My job is to help people preserve and grow their financial assets- so that they can enjoy a long, comfortable retirement. A curious fact: two members of my office are longtime clients and admirers of Dan Sullivan (A71), President/Owner of the Strategic Coach. Go Dan!” Susan Volkmar (SF) moved from Raleigh, N.C., to the Boston area. She continues to be active with the National Association of Science Writers and the New England Science Writers. 1972 Melissa Kaplan Drolet (SF) was happy and proud to attend the graduation of her daughter, Megan Josephine Drolet (SF08) in May: “Also in attendance were my sister, Sharon Kaplan Wallis (Class of 1964) with her husband Leonard Weeks and my brother, cont. onpages'^ John’s College . Fall ^008 } �36 {AlumniProfile} The View from the Bench Jean FitzSimon (A^g) BY Rosemary Harty he Philadelphia couple was drowning in deht. They hoth held low-wage jobs: she as a waitress, and he as a retail clerk. A compulsive gambler, the man hid $120,000 in credit card bills from his wife. When he finally hit the jackpot, he spent some of the money and gave her the rest to pay off their mortgage. But other creditors were waiting, and that’s what brought the man before Judge Jean K. FitzSimon (A73) in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania last year. In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a debtor can seek a discharge of certain debts, preventing creditors from taking further legal action to collect. It’s unusual for FitzSimon to deny a discharge, but in this case she ruled that the man intended to “hinder, delay, and defraud” his unsecured creditors. “This is not the action of an Presiding over the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Judge ‘honest but unfortunate debtor’ seeking a Jean FitzSimon (A73) seeks the gray areas in the cases that come before her. fresh start,” she wrote in her ruling. Reflecting on the case later, FitzSimon said it was a difficult one for her. “It’s not ever forced to use a credit card, but teaser She later moved to Chicago, where she was my fault that this man gambled. But you interest rates, credit checks, confusing appointed Acting U.S. Trustee for the have this poor woman and her two children language, and other marketing devices are Northern District of Illinois, gaining who will effectively be out on the street at best ethically questionable, FitzSimon expertise in bankruptcy law. unless they can refinance their home,” she says. And no one in Washington paid atten­ After IO years with the government, she says. “It was very clear that these were tion when the economy was booming. needed a new challenge and launched a poor people who were in a bad situation, FitzSimon speaks from personal experi­ private practice in Phoenix, working on but the code was clear. The only thing ence. Right out of law school (the Univer­ behalf of debtors. Apart from the long that’s harder in what I do is when someone sity of Notre Dame), she acquired two hours, she enjoyed working on her own. actually has to lose their house.” credit cards, each with an $1,800 limit. She But a headhunter led her to a job as in­ At a time when many Americans are used them to equip her first apartment, house counsel for Sears, which was dealing struggling financially, FitzSimon sees the buy work clothes, and acquire the neces­ with legal troubles stemming from its debt human costs of ready credit. In the case of sary elements for “building a life” as a staff collection practices. In less than two years, the lottery winner, she wonders: how did a attorney with the Department of Justice. she became the company’s chief compli­ man earning $19,000 a year acquire 9 Concerned about mounting debt on top of ance officer and vice president. Her skill in credit cards and a $200,000 line of credit? school loans, she kept her spending down. digging Sears out of legal quagmires led “There are people out there digging “I was smart enough to know I had to pay her to Whitehall Jewelers, which was strug­ themselves into a hole who are not plan­ more than just the minimum, but it still gling with financial difficulties and fending ning to pay off their debt,” FitzSimon took me three full years to pay those cards off a proxy fight. As part of a small execu­ acknowledges. “But there are also people back down to zero,” she recalls. She has tive team, she sometimes put in 100 hours who lost their jobs, or they have illnesses never carried a balance since. in a workweek, but she enjoyed great and medical bills they can’t pay. So they FitzSimon was attracted to the law for the discounts on jewelry. put it on the credit card this month, same reason she was drawn to St. John’s: Climbing the corporate ladder and thinking that maybe next month they can the freedom to pursue a wide range of inter­ keeping abreast of developments in the law get a second job, that somehow they can ests. She began her legal career at the left little time for a social life. But catch up. But they never do.” Justice Department, where she started out FitzSimon’s life changed when she made There’s plenty of fault to spread around in the Office of Information and Privacy. time for a summer alumni program in for the credit crisis, she adds. No one is T {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Notes} Bart Kaplan (Class of 1965), with his wife, Betty Kaplan. Greatly missed at the graduation was Megan’s father, Raymond Drolet (SF69), who passed away September 27, 2007.” Geraldine Kline (SFGI) is returning to Cochabamba, Bolivia, this September, for the 20th anniversary of INFANTE, an organization she founded in 1988. INFANTE has as its mission the protection and education of women. Among other activities, the organization began and fosters transitional homes for abandoned babies and national adoptions for Bolivian families. 1973 Mary L. Batteen (A) has been chair of the Oceanography Department at the Naval ’ Postgraduate School for seven 37 Deep in the Mountains ews from Susan Read (SFGI85): “My son, Harry, is now 13 and able to do some of the repairs around our old Victorian house-1837, colorful history. I still teach English at Wooster School, but I also now do the yearbook, which provides a kind of tedious creativity. I built an Adirondack lean-to last week, deep in the mountains with 15 friends. All is well.” -*■ years: “I am a professor of oceanography and am about to write a book on ocean dynamics that I hope will inspire a new generation to study climate change.” In August, Batteen gave a seminar at the Ocean and Climate Sustainability Conference on “Science and the Public” and on reaching an understanding on global climate change. “I hope to visit the original St. John’s College, our college while in Oxford! ” Jan Lisa Huttner (A) writes: “Approximately five years ago, I created a movement that is now known as WITASWAN (wit-uhswan = Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now). After three increasingly successful annual programs in Chicago, WITASWAN transformed this year into International SWAN Day when the Fund for Women Artists joined the cause. Over 160 groups in ii countries on 4 continents celebrated the first International SWAN Day on March 29, 2008, and we have just received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to spread the word about the next International SWAN Day on March 28, 2009. (International SWAN Day will always be on the last Saturday of every March as the wrap-up event of Women’s History Month.) For more info, see my blog www.TheHotPinkPen.com and/or www.SwanDay.org.” 1974 News from MARTHA (Mackey) Pendleton and Randal O. Pendleton (both SF): Randy has retired and the Pendletons expected to start renovating their home this year. Son WALKER (A99) is married to Rachel Vedaa (SF99). The Pendletons’ cont. on page gg Santa Fe in 1986, where she was intro­ duced to therapist Lee Fischler (SF68). They married in 1987. Philadelphia is Fischler’s hometown, and his love for the city is one of the reasons FitzSimon put her name in the hat when the bankruptcy court vacancy came up. As a merit appointment, not a political one, the post was within her reach, but she was still surprised to be offered the job. “Did you mean to call Jean FitzSimon?” she asked the Circuit Court judge who called her with the news. With the court­ room filled with friends and family, she was sworn in on Aug. 16, 2006. She and Fischler found a place close to the Philadelphia Art Museum, and she settled into her chambers in the city’s massive Robert C. Nix United States Courthouse. A year later, FitzSimon is still pinching herself. “In spite of the long hours, I have enjoyed all my jobs,” says FitzSimon. “But never in my life have I been as satisfied as this.” To an outsider, it may seem that her court is where the American dream comes to die. But FitzSimon tries to make the system work for everyone. Few individuals get the opportunity to interact with the legislative or executive branches of Amer­ ican government; FitzSimon wants citizens to see the judiciary at its best. “I have the opportunity to give people a magnificent experience of the court system,” she explains. “They may not agree with what I do, but they feel that they are heard and that I mean to be fair. If you’re ever going to have the sense that government can be trusted, it’s going to be with the judiciary. It’s incredibly important that we treat people with respect and listen to them.” After she’s reviewed a case, FitzSimon may point out the weaknesses and strengths she sees and give the parties a chance to come to an agreement before she makes her official ruling. “Sometimes if the borrower can come up with any kind of plan, any source of funds, the creditor may be better off. Then they can both walk away with half a loaf,” she says. It takes more time in court to do things this way, FitzSimon says, but it’s closer to her idea of justice. She explains her approach by employing the men-de construction from Ancient Greek: on the one hand this, on the other hand that. {The C o l l e g e . St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } “I’ve never been good at seeing things in black and white,” says FitzSimon. “I think the world is largely gray.” In a bankruptcy court, helping each party see the other’s side often leads to a better solution. The creditor recoups some money; the debtor regains a measure of control in his or her life. There are days, though, “when I can’t make magic happen,” FitzSimon says. “There are the days when someone has to lose their house.” After 30 years of impossible hours FitzSimon is enjoying more free time: to spend with her husband, enjoy Philadel­ phia’s cultural offerings, and sample the city’s fine restaurants. A former member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Gover­ nors, she hopes to become more involved with the college again. But as enjoyable as her job is, it can be unpredictable: “There are days when I read the pleadings and it looks like an easy, straightforward case. Then the lawyers start talking, and it’s ‘whoa, Nelly, bar the door-we’re going to be here a while,”’ she says, “It’s not always pretty. But it’s justice. And it works.” �38 {AlumniProfile} A Sense of Place Francois Levy (SF87) BY Anna Perleberg (SFoa) orn in Paris and raised in the U.S., Francois Levy gradnated from the Santa Fe campus in r987. He’d come to St. John’s “1 thought architecture sounded ­ at the tender age of inter i6, and esting, so didleft diplomacy foreign withoutand a clear direction. service. So I applied to a lot of different grad schools, and the architecture schools accepted me.” This Aristotelian accident led him to a career he loves. Levy moved to Austin (where he still lives with his wife and three children) to attend the University of Texas’ first profes­ sional degree program for students who, like him, had not studied architecture as an undergraduate. It was during a srx-month internship in Australia that he “finally fell in love with architecture-before that we were just dating.” After graduating with his master’s in 1993, he plied his new trade with several noted Austin firms, while also teaching at UT and, in 1995, working briefly in Paris on a new bne of the Metro. Architecture, says Levy, is as much science as art-perhaps more. “While you make use of your artistic faculties, in the end, you have to end up with a building that people can inhabit.” The most B gorgeously conceived structure is useless if it doesn’t stay up. But there’s certainly a creative dimension-“pure functionality leads to things like strip malls. There’s a really fine line you have to walk between self-indulgence and prac­ ticality, between ego and humility. You have to invest yourself in the building or it won’t be any good.” On the other hand, when an archi­ tect becomes too self-centered, “you get buildings neighbors love to complain about.” In May 2008, Levy received another UT graduate degree, this time in architectural engineering. He’d returned to school for a variety of reasons-for one, he says, “I’ve always been a frustrated scientist,” and the refinement of techne offered by the disci­ pline was “a way to scratch that itch.” But he also, in the progress of his career in mostly residential architecture, found his concerns shifting from buildings them­ selves to their interaction with, and impact on, the environment. “I was working on an 8,ooo-square-foot house for empty nestersit wasn’t even their primary residence. I kinda felt like a fiddlemaker for Nero.” Levy’s attraction to the trend of sustain­ ability comes from his concept of architec­ ture as beholden to place, “the intersection of climate, technology, and society.” Houses were formerly built of necessity, using materials at hand-earthen struc­ tures in desert New Mexico, wooden cabins in forested Wisconsin, half-underground sod houses in treeless, humid Kansas. Without climate control or artificial lighting, buildings were oriented to take advantage of sun and wind; the size of a residence depended not just on the comfort of the inhabitants, but the practi­ cality of heating, cooling, and maintaining the structure. Technological advances in building tech­ niques and materials have meant that, provided with the means, homeovraers can impose any look or style they want on their dwellings, ignoring landscape and climate. At its most innocuous, this attitude leads only to incongruous eyesores, but as Amer­ ican houses get bigger and families get smaller, resource and energy consumption per capita explode, negatively impacting the disregarded environment. In a worst­ case scenario, the sudden re-introduction of the outside world can make ill-suited Built around two relocated rooms of a German homesteader’s cabin, Francois Levy’s MoonRise Ranch was designed to EXIST IN COMPLETE HARMONY WITH ITS SITE IN THE Texas Hill Country. {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Notes} daughter. Laurel, is fundraising for La Clinica de la Raza in the San Francisco Bay area and attending graduate school at California State East Bay. “After 30 years of grueling trial practice, I needed a change,” writes MiKE PANTER (A). “I had taught one class in litigation at my law school, DePaul, and I asked them about a full-time job. Law professors are usually credentialed academicians, which definitely rules me out, but I proposed a new idea. A small class of law students sitting around a table would meet to debate and discuss a different issue each week. Each week, a different lawyer would pay the law school $350 to bring in an open issue on an active case for the students and lawyer to workshop together. I call it ‘Litigation Lab.’ The school agreed to give it a try. Last night we finished our 32nd session and it’s a smashing success. Some of the students call it the best class they had in law school. Lawyers come back for two and three sessions. They credit us for giving them thoughts and ideas that directly lead to better results for their clients. Everyone learns, even the seasoned lawyers; everyone teaches, even the inexperienced law students. People don’t leave-they hang around talking long after class. Whatever I do in this class, I 39 think always of what I did in my year at St. John’s with my great tutor, Eva Brann and classmates like Chester Burke and Mike Blaustein. If this program is a success, it is certainly due to the principles of learning that I learned in even one year at St. John’s, 38 years ago.” and I engage in a collaborative process of inquiry to generate and test hypotheses regarding the causes and effects of their abrasive behavior. Late this year I plan to open the Boss Whispering Institute to share this method with other executive coaches.” “I’m almost done with the treehouse,” writes JEFF ViCTOROFF (A). “Maia and Ivan are jumping up and down! Next week: our first sleepover.” 1977 1975 Laura Craws haw (SF) writes: “Following the publication of my book Taming the Abrasive Manager: How to End Unnecessary Roughness in the Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 2007), I relocated my coaching firm (The Executive Insight Development Group) to Portland, Ore. I research and coach abrasive bosses as part of my mission to reduce suffering in the workplace. Also known as The Boss Whisperer, I will be speaking at the Sixth Interna­ tional Conference on Workplace Bullying in Montreal this June. I’ve put my St. John’s education to good use, having incorporated a technique I’ve termed Socratic whispering into my coaching method, through which my client continued houses the cause of needless human suffering. Levy sees this as one of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina: “I saw a connection between how we choose to develop on a large scale and the inevitable effect of natural disasters. When you build responsibly to the climate, when you don’t have conveniences, it’s less of a hardship.” His master’s project was entitled “Indoor Air Quality Engineering Chal­ lenges in Lunar Habitats,” based in part on 1979 Kevin W. Parker (A) writes: Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF, SFGI79) is baking for the fourth summer in plain oT Texas. She is a user-experience architect (designing web applications), which is the “best career for a right-thinking person who learned to be left-aligned at SJC.” She volunteers as a literacy tutor. 1978 Lucy Tamlyn (A) just finished up a three-year tour as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in N’Djamena, Chad. “I am currently posted as Regional Coordinator for the Kurdistan Region in Erbil, Iraq. The Regional Office is an outpost of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. We represent the United States in the region and coordinate U.S. assistance in support of reconstruction efforts. Children Ben (16) and Filipa (13) are in a paper he delivered (with J. Fardal) at the 2007 Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settle­ ments, exploring the impact of radon-emitting lunar soil in the hermetically sealed environments future settlers might five in. Concerns like these, though currently theoretical, are a logical extension of the idea of responsible architecture as subservient to a location’s available resources. Though Levy has been practicing in his field since 1993, with his own firm since 1997, he feels his career is just beginning. {The College . S:. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } boarding school in the U.S.; my husband is planning some motorcycle trips across Europe and possibly all the way to Central Asia. We are all hoping the next overseas posting will be easier for visiting friends and family! ” “I just received my diploma for a master’s degree in astronomy from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. The degree program was quite an interesting experience, all done through the Internet and in some ways just the opposite of the St. John’s experience, as there was no direct human contact at all unless you count e-mail (which I don’t!). I’m still working as a software engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center and my wife, Tina Rhea (also A79), and I celebrated our a5th wedding anniversary last year.” 1980 Gina Ironside (SF) and Ben Goldstein (SF79) report that their son, Ben, is 13 and that the family is still enjoying home schooling. He and his dad are both playing soccer intensely. “One of the really beautiful things about architecture is that you don’t really hit your stride until you’re 50. You peak when you’re 70. Hot young designers maybe the darlings of the magazines, but their work isn’t necessarily profound-the profession’s not like football, more like baseball. Or curling.” More about Levy's design philosophy andphotos ofhis work can befound at francoislevy. com. �{AlumniNotes} 40 Making a Case for Endangered Forestland Abby Weinberg (SFoo) BY Brooke McLane-Higginson (AGI09) n her work as manager of the Conservation Research Program at the Open Space Institute in New York City, Abby Weinberg (SFoo) finds the ideas of John Locke and Adam Smith helpful in under­ standing the challenges to conserving the nation’s endangered forest and farmland. It isn’t easy balancing private property rights and free markets with the less tangible benefit of a forest as a good in itself, but Weinberg uses research to make the case for conservation-with good results. Weinberg brought her enthusiasm for the outdoors to St. John’s, where her studies of Smith and Locke helped her better understand the formative philoso­ phies driving human’s interaction with the natural environment. After graduating from St. John’s, she worked as an economic analyst for the Federal Trade Commission. Four years later, Weinberg earned a master’s degree in Forestry at the Yale Progress needs to be considered not just from the standpoint of what we produce from School of Forestry and Environmental FORESTS, BUT ALSO BY WHAT WE GAIN BY LEAVING THEM AS THEY ARE, SAYS AbBY WeINBERG (SFoo). Studies. She worked as a forest technician at the City of Seattle’s 90,000-acre water­ shed before joining the OSI in 2004. agriculture than the market would other­ destroying it. However, these days, land The Institute protects scenic, natural, wise dictate. On the other hand, “Adam prices are driven more by development and historic landscapes to ensure public Smith argues that agriculture is inherently than the potential for forest products. enjoyment, conserve habitats, and sustain contrary to economic development, Development speculation has driven prices community character. Weinberg’s work because division of labor doesn’t apply to three or five times what can be justified for focuses on evaluating and developing tools forestry conservation, she says. agriculture,” Weinberg explains. “The for the conservation of actively managed same person plows, sows, and reaps, It’s part of Weinberg’s job to make a case forest and farm landscapes in the making it hard to increase production for the value of preserving forests. One of United States. without increasing labor costs.” her first research projects at OSI was to Although one-third of the country is In her work at the Institute, Weinberg complete an assessment of conservation in forestland, “people don’t necessarily see relies on economic research and land Massachusetts for the Kohlberg Founda­ the value of standing forestland,” Wein­ use analysis to recommend changes to tion. Her work led to the creation of an berg says. “Some of this goes back to Locke conservation and public policy. Up until entirely new grant program for conserving and his idea about labor and ownership. 2000, the amount of forestland in the U.S. forest and farm landscapes in the area and The labor of clearing trees and planting was actually increasing as marginal farm­ the dedication of another $6 million agricultural products is evidence of owner­ land was allowed to return to forests, towards land protection. ship, whereas people assume the forest is a explains Weinberg. With lessons from Locke and Smith, public resource that takes care of itself and The picture changed dramatically as Weinberg has found a way to address both isn’t necessarily worth paying for even suburban sprawl, fed by rampant real natural and economic issues by researching though it is the source of our clean air estate speculation, began encroaching how to conserve forests while using their and water.” more urgently on forests. “In the tradi­ resources sustainably. The traditional idea Such ideas have made agriculture more tional analysis of forestland prices you of progress, that is, the conversion of our prominent in our society, Weinberg don’t assume someone is going to cut the natural resources for economic goods, she explains. Agriculture receives more entire forest at once,” she says. Instead, says, “is in many ways no longer valid when government subsidies and funding than “you need to know what you can earn from we recognize the values lost when a forest forests, to the point that more land is in sustainably harvesting the land” without is cut down. I {The College. Si. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{AlumniNotes} Ben is coaching, too. Ben’s web engineering company. End Point Corporation, is doing beautifully (visit endpoint.com). Several Johnnies have turned up among their recruiting respondents! Gina attends the alumni seminars in New York City from time to time, and enjoys Scottish country dancing: “The balls remind me of St. John’s waltz parties, only better, with the men in full highland dress (kilts). Best wishes to all.’’ “We have enjoyed looking at colleges with our 17-year-old daughter, Michelle,” says Debra Ann Rutherford (SF). “St. John’s College is still the best!” 1982 Stanley Schiff (SF) has been practicing tai-chi and chi-gong for 35 years. “I became a certified Lifetime Practitioner who uses both modern healing techniques and the ancient energetic and spiritual techniques of China and India.” 1985 Jeffrey Wilson (A) serves as associate dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he has taught philosophy since 1995. “As a hobby, I participate in recitals and other events for amateur classical pianists. One of my best St. John’s memories involved Douglas Allanbrook giving me the combination to the Steinway in the Great Hall for early morning practice, where housekeeping staff would listen from the balcony. Today, I practice on a restored 1897 Steinway and take special pleasure in sharing live classical music with those who may otherwise have no access to it.” 1986 privilege of working with an Iraqi intelligence officer who was by far the best officer in the division, if not the Iraqi Army, and we put many insurgents behind bars, or in the ground, and won the hearts of the people in our area­ well worth the trip.” Todd W. Masilon (A) has just returned home from a year in Baghdad working as an Intelligence Operations Advisor to an Iraqi Army battalion, “ready to hang up my captain’s bars after 10 years in the Army. I’ve been away from wife, Renee, daughter Molly, and son Ian for 3 1/a of the last 3 years (training/ Afghanistan/Iraq), audit’s their turn now. I have a new job already as a contractor working with the Army Test and Evaluation Command. I’m glad to be back as the first seven months of the deployment were consumed by daily fighting in the main AlQaeda stronghold in Baghdad at the time (we fought alongside our Iraqi battalion in the one square mile of B’dad with the highest density of insurgent activity in all Iraq). It was sad, horrifying, frustrating, and terrifying on a daily basis. Fortunately, I had the Barbara A. Roberts (SFGI) made her eighth visit to the Pilgrim Center of Avatar Meher Baba in Meherabad, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State, India. 1987 “My husband and I welcomed our second child, Samantha Danielle Lewin last July,” writes Sallie M. Fine (A). “Samantha and her now 5-year-old brother, Benjamin, made their first visit to St. John’s for Homecoming this past September, and while I’m not sure if there is a second generation of Johnnies in our future, everyone had a great time. I am head of the English department at Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, “Absolutely Proud” lizabeth Natterman (Ara) has made Jeff Natterman (AGI93) a happy father: “I want to E 41 and I am grateful every day to have a job in which I can always find meaning.” After years of teaching, Elisabeth DuRard Keller (SF) is currently Director of Education Programs at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum. “It was great fun working with fellow alum Jason Scott until he left for graduate school at Stanford in June and much fun working with current Johnnie interns. Past development director at the college. Ginger Roherty, is also at the museum and we enjoy talking about our shared connections. I recently attended a wonderful afternoon of tea and poetry at Will (SF86) and Janette (Hradecky, SF85) Fischer’s. Love raising my family and enjoying the sky in beautiful Santa Fe.” 1989 Jennifer Lee (SF) writes: “Dimitri, I, and our daughters, Fani (14) and Maro (ri), are happy in Baltimore. I am teaching fifth grade at the Park School and loving it. I will finish the Johns Hopkins Creative Writing program this fall and plan to start guitar lessons again. I have also taken up running in my middle years (who would have thought!) and have completed a few triathlons.” share how absolutely proud I am that 15 years after I graduated from the Graduate Institute, my daughter is now a freshman on the same Earlier this year George campus. When I first was accepted into the T urner (A) acquired an electric program in the early 1990s, Elizabeth was only about ayearbike to make his nine-mile and-half old. We toured the campus, and my wife, Donna, took commute to and from work, to a picture of us in front of the Liberty Tree. For years, I boasted save on gas, and to save the of my life-altering experiences at St. John’s. And foryears Eliz­ planet: “So far I’ve only used it abeth listened to my stories, intrigued by the tales of my three times. So much for having taken classes in the cupola, pausing the conversation grandiose plans.” each time the bell rang. Or, my silly refutation of the asymp­ totic triangle as a mere intellectual play on words. Last week, we watched Elizabeth shake Chris Nelson’s hand after her name was called at the Convocation ceremony, and receive her Greek lexicon. I nearly burst with pride. I only wish the Liberty Tree was still around so I could take a new picture with her when she graduates. Now that’s priceless!” {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �4a {Alumni Notes} it up in the slam pit that formed late in the night, amongst a group of rabbis, Talmud scholars and Israeli settlers that responded to the Hassidic band’s rendition of a popular Nirvana ode. In June, Michael and Yael returned to Hollywood, Cahf., where Michael runs a law practice concentrating on trial work in the areas of criminal defense, personal injury and employment litigation. Jessica Trupin (A) is returning Blake Sitney (SF91) has been making a difference for orphans in Thailand. The Ban Mae Maeh ORPHANAGE IN THE ChIANG MaI PROVINCE HAD BECOME UNREACHABLE DURING THE MONSOON SEASON AND WAS IN DESPERATE NEED OF BOTH FOOD AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES. WiTH THE HELP OF A LOCAL RESIDENT NAMED JONG, Sitney was able to deliver rice, fruit, noodles, and other food, as well as school supplies to the ORPHANAGE. SiTNEY ALSO PROVIDED THE CHILDREN WITH ART SUPPLIES SUCH AS CRAYONS, COLORED PENCILS, AND WATERCOLORS SO THAT THEY COULD EXPRESS THEIR CREATIVITY. SiTNEY HAS CREATED A PHOTO ESSAY WEBSITE TO SHARE THEIR ARTWORK WITH THE WORLD. HTTP://cOMMUNITY.LrVEJOURNAL.COM/aRTFORORPHANS/. to the New York City area to launch a startup nonprofit called Bees Without Borders (www.beeswithoutborders.org). She expected to be in the city all summer, just bringing husband Dave and eight-year-old daughter Bridget for the first couple weeks, working on the nonprofit and at the farmer’s markets. Michael Zampella (A) and 1990 Kilian Garvey (A) was recently named to the editorial boards of The Journal ofSocial, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology and The Journal of Evolutionary Studies. He is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. thought to who might want to place a baby for adoption. We are so very glad to be parents.” Geneva M. Fulgham (SFGI) published a book about secondary school teaching. Wit and Wisdom Needed in the Classroom (Rowman & Littlefield 2006). “I’m entering in national, state, and local poetry contests and sell the occasional opinion essay,” she writes. Lila Kerns (SF) and Kevin Depew (Ago) are delighted to Kevin (SF) and Khin Khin Guyot Brock (SF88) are delighted to announce the adoption of their son, Christopher Arden Brock, born February 18, aoo8. “Christopher is more wonderful than we imagined,” writes Khin Khin. “Christopher’s birth parents, teenage sweethearts, are kept informed of his development via e-mail, photos and, in time, visits. Thank you to all who saw our earlier appeal and gave some School (a prep school in Pebble Beach): “I am married to a woman named Andrea Price, and we have an infant daughter named Siri who was born on Nov. 7, 2007, and two spotted dogs. It is quite a full house. I am enjoying life here, balancing work and time in the ocean with the new responsibilities of fatherhood. If you are in the Monterey area, look us up.” 1991 “Retirement is enriching,” writes Ronalie a. Moss (SFGI). “I am rereading The Ramayana-a new translation.” 1992 Charlie Henrikson (SF) is living in Pacific Grove, Calif., teaching science at the Stevenson {The College -5t. announce the birth of their daughter, Lucinda Lee Kerns Depew (Class of 2029, expected), born April i, 2008, in New York, N.Y. Michael Kopple (SF) was married in Jerusalem in May 2008. His wife, Yael, is Israeliborn and hails from a family of 12 children who grew up in the West Bank settlements. Luke Warren (SF92) and his partner, Patricia, attended the wedding. Witnesses report that Luke was seen mixing John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } his wife, Caitlin, are happy to announce his commissioning as a Naval Intelligence Officer in the United States Navy Reserve. “I want to reassure my fellow alumni that this will in no way affect my support of my alma mater during the USNA/ St. John’s Croquet Match.” 1993 J. Walter Sterling (A) and Meghan Haid were married at sunset, on Father’s Day, June 15, at the Hyatt Tamaya on the Santa Ana Pueblo. In attendance were alumni Noah Kay (SF92), Elliott (A92) and Amy (Johns, A91) Callahan, Melissa Duke, (SFGI07), and Susanne Ristow (SF06), playing her cello, and tutors David Carl and (of course) WALTER Sterling (class of 1963), pere. The weekend of vigorous celebration included a long Friday night at �{AlumniNotes} the Cowgirl. Walter is a tutor in Santa Fe. Meghan is a DPT (doctor of physical therapy). would love to hear from any of my old friends via email: deslong@yahoo.com.” Stella Schindler (AGl) 1994 Colin (A) and Emiko (Ima) Ray (SF) still live in Tokyo. Their daughter, Marina, is 3. Son Thomas Michael (Tom) was born on January 8, 3007. They enjoy meeting up with any Johnnies who happen to be in town. “John and 1 are very happy to announce the birth of our second son, Gilpin Edward Turkington Ruhl,” writes IVY Turkington (A). “His big brother Henry is certain this guarantees him a sailing crew member for the rest of their lives, but I guess we’U see whether Gilpin is captain or crew material in about 8 years. Gilpin was born September 34 (8 lbs, ii oz, 30 inches) and we are aU rejoicing much though sleeping little.” announces the release of her new CD, Distant Hum. 1997 Patience Melnik (SF) writes: “John Kochendorfer (SF95), our three-year-old, Abe, and I just moved from California to Knoxville, Tenn. John has a post­ doc at the National Oceano­ graphic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Oak Ridge, and 1 will attend the graduate program for architecture at the University of Tennessee. We just tried chowchow for the first time and think we’ll be all right here. If anyone rolls this way, e-mail us at patiencemelnik@gmail.com.” 1998 1996 Jennifer (Wamser) Deslongchamps (AGl) has indefinitely postponed work on her doctoral thesis (she started a PhD program in Medieval Philosophy at Yale in 1997 and is now ABD) in order to care for her growing family: “Our son Thomas Robert was born in 3000; Elena Margaret, 3003; Camille Therese, 3003; Charles Joseph, 3005; Zachary Louis, 3006 and our 3008 edition, Stephen Benedict, was born three months ago. Needless to say I have been keeping very busy, although I am woefully behind on my reading! I remember with great fondness my days in the GI, discussing life’s deepest questions with such wonderful tutors and fellow students. 1 “I have made some big changes (professionaUy) this summer,” writes Dawn Star Borchelt (A). “I left my position at the Unitarian Universalist church where I was Director of Religious Education for 10 years. I will continue to do some consulting and contract work with UU organizations and congregations. but I also have enrolled in the Birthing From Within Mentor and Doula Certification program. I am starting a private practice as a childbirth educator and doula in the Washington, D.C., area, so if you are having a baby, especially near the nation’s capital, get in touch! I am doing exactly what I want to do, and I am working on remembering it aU of the time. My spouse and two young children, the dog, and the birds are all fine, too.” GlenScott Thomas Copper (AGl) retired from teaching last year and is finishing the novel he began writing his first summer at St. John’s in 1994. Tobin Shulman (SF99) and Julie Gronneberg (SF) report that Tobin finished his master’s in Architecture last May, and Julie is the senior designer at the MFA, Boston. “Our best design project so far has been our sonLincoln Olav-who loves guitars, the ocean, and dinosaurs,” and turned 3 in July. 1999 George Finney (SF) graduated from Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law in May 3008 with a Juris Doctorate. From A to /J. Bottom 43 Kara Luna (Fenske, A) and Richard Luna (Schmidt, A96) are excited to announce the birth of their daughter, Evie Teresa Luna, on April 13, 3008. Mom, dad, and baby are all healthy and happy. Sheridan Phillips (EC) is ABD at the European Graduate School. From across the pond, Patrick Reed (AGI) reports that he and his wife, Jana, celebrated their daughters’ 3rd and ist birthdays this summer (Lucille and Anja, respectively). They are loving life in Europe and recently competed in an ultra marathon competition, in Davos, Switzerland. Check out the website at www.swissalpine.ch. Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A) are proud to announce the first birthday of their third child, Cecilia Anne (born June 3007). Mike, Abby, Lucy (41/3), John (almost 3), and Cecilia live in Los Angeles, where Mike is a tax attorney and Abby stays home with the kids. They’d love to see any Johnnies in the area (or hear from any not in Southern California) at msoejoto@pircher.com or asoejoto@sbcglobal.net. 2000 D. Read Lockhart (SF) was awarded the Shapiro Grant from the Art Students League in New York City to paint in Europe. Last spring, he was in Oslo after having been to London, Paris, and Amsterdam. He expected to conclude his studies in Italy and Vienna and return to New York in September. ow many heavy metal bands went by the name “Absurdity”? We have Dan Nelson (A95) to thank for the answer: seven. Nelson’s tome. All Known Metal Bands, is simply that: an alphabetical listing of every heavy metal band (as of 3007). Opening with a quote from For the past two years, Andre Blaise Pascal, Mr. Nelson lists about 51,000 bands, including 30 different known “Genocides.” Learn more about Rodriguez (SFGI) has been working as the staff attorney at Nelson’s book, on his MySpace page: myspace.com/ the YMCA International Services allknownmetalbands. H {The College- St. John's College • Fall 2008 } �{Alumni Notes} in Houston, Texas, representing immigrants, especially refugees and victims of human trafficking-modern day slavery. In addition, he teaches an undergraduate course at the University of Houston. Deberniere Torrey (AGI) plans to marry fellow Penn State comparative hterature graduate student, Nathan Devir, on June 27, followed by a move to Vermont in July. Nathan will teach Hebrew at Middlebury College and Deberniere will continue working on her dissertation and related projects. 2001 Colin King (SF) writes: “Anna Canning (SFoa) and I were married July 19 under an old sugar maple on my family’s farm in Clotho, Minn. An unusually heavy rainstorm dropped more than two inches before blue sky appeared and sunlight filtered through maple leaves. We were blessed by the presence of family and friends, including several Johnnies.” SUZANNAH LATANE SIMMONS (SF) has been living in Washington, D.C., for two years. “A group of us SJC alums have been working on fostering a stronger chapter. There is now a Facebook page for all interested D.C. (and surrounding area) alumni to join. Please check it out. It is called St. John’s College Alumni, Washington, D.C. ‘Social’ Chapter. As of June, we have 66 members. I am working at Whole Foods Market at Tenleytown in the District. I am an Assistant Team Leader for their Specialty Department (wine, beer, cheese and coffee). Stop by and see me if you are in the area. I make decent pairing suggestions.” 2002 Jim Crotty (SFGI), of Monk Media made his mark as the “dashboard publishing” pioneer of Monk: The Mobile Magazine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M onk_Magazine), author (www.jamescrotty.com/), multimedia auteur {Playboy, Voyager), blogger (WWW. crottyfarmreport. com), media rep (www.rumpleville.com, www.HoleintheHeadmovie.com, www.johnfrummovie.com www.boristhedog.tv), and filmmaker (www.resolved.tv). With fellow ‘Monk’ Michael Lane, Jim is the co-founder of Monk Media (www.monk.com), a global branding concern. Jim will work with anyone who takes the time to complete the Monk survey at this link: www.monkmedia.net/client/. Patrick W. Harris (EC) begins doctoral studies this fall at Western Michigan University, where he will focus on the history of medieval Iberia. The Sullivans have been busyas usual. Rachel (A) just graduated from medical school in May, and will begin her residency training for psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in July. At the same time she was promoted to captain in the Army, and continues to be among the ranks of active duty soldiers. Michael (SF) is nearing the end of his PhD in Philosophy at Catholic University, and hopes to finish next fall. Clare celebrated her 4th birthday in May, and Grace is looking forward to her 2nd birthday in the end of July. The girls are healthy, happy and begging for more siblings! “This May I completed my Master in Arts in Art History from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.,” writes Laura Thayer (A). “My master’s qualifying paper was titled ‘Rebuilding Identity: The Nineteenth-Century Faqade of the Duomo of Amalfi.’ Now that I am done with school, I look forward to spending as much time as possible in Amalfi, Italy, continuing to study Italian, figuring out what happens next in my life, and maybe even getting around to finally reading Proust!” 2003 “I just finished my first year of teaching philosophy at the University of Nevada. Kathy is working on her PhD in English literature,” writes John Anders (SF). Meg Eisenhauer Barry and Thomas Barry (both SF) welcomed their second daughter on April 27. “She shares her mama’s birthday! Liesl Jane was born at home on a beautiful spring morning. She joins her elder sister, Aviva, age 3, in keeping our home a very lively place indeed. Best wishes to all!” Aaron Foster (A) is leaving behind his “beloved” New York City to move to Inman Square in Cambridge, Mass., with his girlfriend Eva: “Boston Johnnies should feel free to look me up (aaron.foster@gmaiLcom). Recently, I’ve been consulting for a major specialty food distributor, mostly about cheese. In Boston, I’ll be looking into opening a bar focused on craft beer.” Abram Trosky (AGI) is the recipient of Boston University’s highest academic scholarship, the Presidential University Graduate Fellowship. Trosky has been Presidential University Teaching Fellow for the department’s introductory courses in Political Science, aty (Christopher) Davis (SFoi) writes: “Billy American Politics and Interna­ (Davis, SF02) and I are living on a beautiful tional Relations, has solo taught homestead in northwestern Oregon with my Introduction to Political Theory mother and our i-year-old son, Sam. We’re busy and has guest lectured for building our own cabin and raising chickens, Modern Political Theory. A goats, sheep, and alpacas-it’s wonderful to be University Scholar in Philosophy exactly where we want to be. Though we haven’t yet reached our goal of self-sufficiency, we’re getting closer and are thoroughly at Washington and Lee enjoying ourselves. For now Billy is still commuting part time University, Abram has been into Portland, but expects to become self-employed by the end steeped in classical pohtical of the year; I am fortunate enough to be able to stay home with theory and Socratic-style our wonderful, adorable child and run the farm while helping pedagogy, but has an abiding my mother with her craft business. If anyone’s interested, we interest in international relations occasionally post on this blog: www.arcadiafarm.blogspot.com; and postmodern political and post pictures at: http;//si75.photobucket.com/albums thought. He has studied abroad at /wi37/samsilverlock/.” -tjk Raising Chickens K {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } �{AlumniNotes} the University of Melbourne under the auspices of The Ashworth Centre for Social Theory and in the U.K. as a junior fellow of the EnglishSpeaking Union. Abram passed his qualifying examinations in February 3008 and is currently in Vienna as a visiting junior fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences where he will be researching the matrices between cosmopolitanism, cognitive development and moral philosophy for his dissertation proposal. At the termination of his fellowship he plans to attend the Institute’s intensive summer program in International Relations in Cortona, Italy, before traveling from the Balkans to Scandinavia with his girlfriend. He will return to co­ teach the History of American Foreign Policy, 1865-present, at BU this fall. Namir Yedid (A) was appointed “I’m serving my first tour as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service in Rangoon, Burma,” writes ChELSIA WHEELER (SF). “Between political protests and a major cyclone, it has been an interesting experience so far.” graduated summa cum laude from the Dickinson School of Law; he was also valedictorian. 2004 Suzanne Vlcek (SF, EC05) is two-thirds of the way through chiropractic school and looking forward to starting her own practice in the spring of 2010 in the San Francisco Bay area: “I will begin seeing patients at the Palmer West Clinic, San Jose, Calif., in January 2009, so if anyone is in the area please stop in and let me practice my skills. This summer, I completed a 200houryoga teacher training program and have begun teaching classes on a regular basis. Life is good!” yth-grade dean at Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, Calif., where he teaches English and social studies. “I’ve led the design of an integrated curriculum and have gathered administrative and community support to make our school carbon-neutral.” Kelly Zeibak and Alexander Kantner (both SF) were married in the redwoods on June 21,2008, and enjoyed a wonderful honeymoon in Vietnam and Cambodia. They recently earned their teaching credentiasl, in mathematics and English respectively, and are currently teaching on the north coast of California. 2005 Gregory W. Bair II (A) Christopher DeManss (AGI) is celebrating the worldwide release of his first solo album. The act is entitled Vib and the album. The Letter K. It’s available in stores and through the Internet. A fair collection of the songs was crafted while attending St. John’s College. “In other news,” he writes, “with every day comes reflection upon the beauty of my St. John’s experience.” Paul and Anita Fairbanks (SF) are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Charlotte Eden, on May 20, 2008. “She has brought us so much happiness. We are living in Columbus, Ohio, where Paul is studying business in preparation for dental school. I am simply enjoying motherhood; my current ambitions are to sing lullabies and read great books aloud.” 45 Very Busy ndy and Katie (Lehner) Patton A (AGI05 and AGI04, respec­ tively) have welcomed William Kelly Patton (Liam) into their little family. He joins hig brother James (a), who is working on his PhD in Dump Trucks; both keep Katie very busy. Andy is interning at an investment bank in Nashville and starts the MBA program at Vanderbilt this fall. “Send money,” they write. Amy Taylor (A) writes: “I am completing my PhD coursework in clinical psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. In the past year, I completed my MA in psychology and a graduate portfolio in women’s and gender studies. I’ve recently made several conference presentations and earned two awards for my writing on identity development and how individuals represent themselves to others (currently beginning research into how we ‘write ourselves into being’ on Internet communities). Next year I will continue to teach undergraduate courses and practice psychoanalyticallyoriented psychotherapy with clients from the Pittsburgh community and from a local liberal arts college. Missed you at Croquet, hope to see you at Homecoming.” Jonathan Morgan and Allison Kilgore (both SF) are enjoying their third summer in Seattle, and are slowly growing accustomed to the intervening winters. Allison is working as an investment analyst at a retirement finance company, and Jonathan currently works as a web editor at a dot-com well past its glory days. He will begin a PhD program at the University of Washington in User-Centered Design this fall. These two can often be found palling around in bars and coffee shops with Maia {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 3008 } Swanson (SF03) and overheard lamenting the dearth of Johnnies and good green chili in the Northwest. 2008 Shant Shahrigian (A) is off in search of la dolce vita in Milan, Italy, paying the bills by editing for a new website. He tells his fellow Johnnies: “Holla!” What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in February; deadline for the alumni notes section is January 5. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �{Obituaries} James W. Stone, Class of 1955 Jim Stone of Arlington, Va., a retired linguist and active St. John’s alumnus, died in a boating accident on the Chesa­ peake Bay on July 27 when his i6-foot catamaran sailboat capsized in a brisk wind, Jim earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971. His career as a linguist spanned more than 40 years, nearly 25 of which he spent as a supervising linguist and language training specialist at the U.S. Depart­ ment of State’s Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. There, he oversaw training in various languages including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Nepali, Amharic, and Persian. After retiring from the State Depart­ ment, Jim was Director of Translation Services at the Center for Applied Linguistics for II years. Sailing and music were life­ long passions. Jim began sailing at age 15 when he was a Sea Scout, and he later sailed as a member of the St. John’s Boat Club. He loved choral music and other vocal music in the clas­ sical tradition, and for 30 years he sang as a member of the Cathedral Choral Society in Washington. Classmate Dorothy Olim, who attended some of his choral performances, recalls “seeing the joy on his face as he sang.” Jim traveled extensively for work and pleasure in the U.S. and abroad. He and his wife of 39 years, Crawford “Corky” Feagin Stone, had been plan­ ning a trip to Yellowstone National Park to celebrate his 75th birthday, which would have been on August 10. Jim maintained close ties with classmates and other members of the St. John’s community. He enjoyed being part of a Wash­ ington area St. John’s alumni reading group and, in 2005, James Stone served as the class of 1955 reunion leader. Classmate Jane Gerber Denison remembers Jim as someone who was gracious and “the quintessential gentleman,” Others, like Sam Kutler, recall his quiet intel­ lect. Jim is also remembered for his unassuming ways. His great-niece, Allison Dietz (Aio), recalls the way he intro­ duced her to St. John’s without saying a word-when she was still in elementary school, Jim gave her a St. John’s sweatshirt. Among the St. John’s friends who attended Jim’s funeral service July 31 were Dorothy Olim (Class of 1955), Jane Gerber Denison (Class of 1955), Emily (Class of 1955) and Sam (Class of 1954) Kutler, Diana Cartier (Class of 1956), Sandy and Joe (Class of 1956) Cohen, Nancy Eagle Lindley (Class of 1958), Mark Lindley (Class of 1967), and Paula DelPlain Binder (Class of 1959). He was president of the Hunt Family Foundation, a charitable trust set up to serve nonprofit organiza­ tions in the El Paso region. He had recently been named chairman of REDCO, the Regional Economic Devel­ opment Corporation of El Paso, Las Cruces, and Ciudad Juarez. Mr. Hunt was actively involved in economic devel­ opment in the El Paso area, having served as a board member of the El Paso/Juarez World Trade Center and the Camino Real Angels, and as a member of the Paso del Norte Group. He was on the boards of the New Mexico Nature Conservancy, the El Paso County Historical Society, Project Arriba, the Trans-Pecos Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization, and the Lydia Patterson Institute. After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. Hunt studied law at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He is survived by his wife, Stacey, and their two daughters, and had been eagerly anticipating the birth of a son in August. Memorial contributions can be made to Texas Tech School of Medicine-Department for Mental Health Research, 4800 Alberta Avenue, El Paso, Texas 79905; or The Nature Conser­ vancy of New Mexico, 212 E. Marcy St. Suite 200, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-2049. Marcel Fremont Marcus Hunt (SF95) (SFoi) Marcus Hunt, businessman and philanthropist from in El Paso, Texas, died on June 24, 2008, in La Jolla, Calif. A fourth­ generation in the Hunt family businesses, he served as the financial manager for invest­ ments of Hunt Companies, Inc., and affiliate companies, as well as the Managing Partner for Hunt Holdings, L.P. by Kee Zublin (SFoi) There’s a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez entitled “The Handsomest Drowned Sailor in the World” that I never understood until the morning I Marcel Fremont {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } read Veronica Fremont’s account of her son Marcel’s burial. Marcel David Fremont (SFoi) died on June 25, 2008, when his motorcycle collided with a truck in Montana. He was traveling around the country to visit family and friends before he was to begin his doctoral studies in neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. Veronica described how at Marcel’s burial the mourners gathered around the grave site to toss in a few mementos: a $2 bill, a sprouting potato. Then, as the attendants began to lower the pine box, one whis­ pered, “It doesn’t fit.” Atten­ dants and foreman cranked the coffin back to the surface, and friends and family began strip­ ping off pieces. The bereaved removed poles, bolts and blocks as they tried three times to consign Marcel’s mortal remains to the earth. One of those present commented, “He wasn’t ready to go.” Marcel’s father, Rick Fremont, countered that Marcel was a “connoisseur of awkward situations” and that he knew his friends and family “weren’t ready to let him go.” Although I was not in that group, as I read Veronica’s account I could picture why Marcel’s coffin wouldn’t fit: He was simply too big for any hole in the ground. Everything about �{Obituaries} Marcel was too big to go easily into the ground: his shoulders were too broad, his legs too long, his heart and brain too oversized. And suddenly, I understood Marquez’s story: A drowned man washes to the shore of a tiny island village. The man is large, so large that the children who find him at first think he’s a ship or a whale. When they lay him in one of the village homes, there is barely enough room on the floor. Even when they merely look at the man, there is “no room for him in their imagi­ nation.” The villagers grow to love the man, whom they name Esteban, and so they hold “the most splendid funeral they could conceive of for an abandoned drowned man.” And, as they carry him to the sea, they become “aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they face the splendor and beauty of their drowned man.” They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they never would be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams...and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among stones and planting flowers on the cliffs... My friend Marcel’s life was too brief. But in 29 years, he knew and loved many people, and it is indeed true that where he has been we look around and realize that we are no longer all present and never will be. It is also true that we can fill the big empty space he left behind with some­ thing beautiful. To make room for Marcel’s memory, we can build wider doors and higher ceilings, live less confined lives, think bigger thoughts. And we can honor our friend by emulating his insa­ tiable curiosity and creativity, searching in unlikely places for water to bring forth flowers. Marcel could always see the hidden potential of little things. He was big that way. In Marcel’s memory, parents Veronica and Rick, and brother Nathan, have established “The Marcel Fremont Fund,” admin­ istered by the Oak Park, River Forest Community Foundation (www.oprf.org). The fund will make small donations for causes related to education, arts, sciences, recreation, and the environment. For more information, e-mail Veronica at marcelsmom@comcast.net, or visit Marcel’s memorial website at www.marcelfremont. com/wp. Anjali Pai (SFGI08) Last spring, the Santa Fe college community lost one of its Grad­ uate Institute alumnae, Anjali Pai, who died March 30 from injuries suffered in a car acci­ dent the previous day. Anjali completed the Liberal Arts program in December 2007, and those who knew her remember her bright person­ ality and love for education. Born in Ottawa, Canada, she earned a bachelor’s degree at Lake Forest College and a master’s from the University of Toronto, where she focused on the study of music. While in Santa Fe, Anjali worked as a tutor for at-risk Santa Fe teens as part of the Advancement Via Individual Determination program, tutored at Santa Fe Community College, taught as a substitute at Santa Fe Prep, and worked as a freelance editor. She described herself as “proudly Canadian, 100% (East) Indian, surrogate Scottish, and over­ identified with the underdog.” Anjali wrote a novel at age 13, rode horses, was an accom­ plished singer and musician (violin and piano), and directed musicals when she was in high school. She had read the complete works of Shakespeare long before enrolling in St. John’s, and published more than 150 short stories on her website. She had more than 1,000 Anjali Pai’s sister Tanya RECEIVES AnIALi’s DIPLOMA FROM President Michael Peters at COMMENCEMENT LAST MaY. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } 47 friends worldwide with whom she kept in touch. The Pai Memorial Fund has been established to provide annual funding to a graduate student who plans to become an educator and hopes to make a difference in the lives of chil­ dren from disadvantaged back­ grounds. The fund’s first recip­ ient will be a fall 2008 graduate student. To contribute to the Anjali Pai Memorial Fund, please contact Penelope Bielagus at 505-984-6113 or pbielagus@sjcsf.edu. ALSO NOTED Frank Bannerman (class of 1938), July 12,2008 William Barrett (class of 1956), May 17,2008 Victor Barton ( class of 1947), DATE UNKNOWN George Gerlach (class of 1953 June 23,2008 Rosemary Ingham (AGI95), July 13,2008 Ogden W. “Peter” KelloggSmith (CLASS OF 1943) May 28, 2008 Edward Lee (class of 1952), July 17,2008 Renee Ronelle Letven (SF69), July 12,2008 C. Ranlet Lincoln (class of 1950), Nov. 15,2007 Jane Mill (SFGI85), July 19,2008 Pasquale “Pat” Polillo (class OF 1956), Sept. 4,2008 Charles Powleske (class of 1953), Aug. 1,2007 Michael Slota (SFGI86), July 31,2008 John Williams (class of 1946), July 17,2008 Gerald Zentz (class of 1954), June 2,2008 �48 {Alumni} Return of the Pioneers July Reunion Brings Together Santa Fe's First Classes BY Harold Morgan (SF68) Tth the aid of a decision to move Santa Fe’s Homeborrowed MacBook, coming to the fall. During the summer Bruce Baldwin (SF68) of 2007, the idea of a summer reunion tuned a harpsichord for emerged, and a group of alumni settled Roy Stegman (SF68), on a full week-July 13-19-of activities. who was leading a tuto­ Phil Chandler (SF68) conceived of the rial on “Bach’s Temperament ” in the format, and Lindsay Ridgeway (SF68) Peterson Student Center. The computer pitched in as organizing committee provided the note-perfectly, of course­ chair and treasurer. Organizing and allowing Baldwin to tune each string to the planning took place via e-mail, the computer’s purity. college provided meeting rooms for In the tutorial, Stegman described a the gathering, and Santa Fe Alumni recently rediscovered keyboard tuning Director Michael Bales (SF06) helped system Bach used, and he demonstrated on coordinate activities at the college. the instrument: a 1968 harpsichord, an Santa Fe President Michael Peters and his appropriate choice for Santa Fe’s pioneering wife, Eleanor, hosted a reception class of 1968. The tutorial was one of a welcoming alumni and their families back number of offerings-inteUectual and social- to campus. organized by a group of alumni for a July The reunion attracted 29 alumni from reunion of the pioneers, their families, and classes through 1971, 8 tutors and 35 others members of the classes who shared the including alumni from later classes. From campus with them: the classes of 1969,1970, as far away as Gbteborg, Sweden, alumni and 1971. came to see the remarkable changes to the The self-organized reunion grew from campus, catch up with one another, and objections by some alumni to the college’s enjoy a host of options for spending their W time in Santa Fe, from seminars and lectures to an evening at the Santa Fe Opera and a morning rafting the Rio Grande. “It was a wonderful experience,” says Rick Wicks (SF68), who with 5,000 miles to travel from Sweden was a vocal proponent for a summer reunion. “Usually at a Homecoming one only knows one’s own classmates, because most of the others are younger (or older) in multiples of five years,” he explained. “But here we had members from the next three classes, not all of whom I knew before, but all of whom I very much enjoyed getting to know better. Organizing the reunion also brought me into contact with members of the class of ’68 who had dropped out before I arrived in Santa Fe for my junior year, again a very rewarding experience. By the time my family and I arrived, participants had already been there for several days, so there was an active community into which we walked. It felt very good.” The reunion week featured six seminars (including two on the Odyssey), led by tutors emeriti, alumni, or both together. In addition there were several tutorials, including a session by Beth Kuper on the Above, Joy Avery (SF68) catches up with TUTOR EMERITUS CuRTIS WiLSON (HA83), ONE OF THE FIRST FACULTY MEMBERS IN SaNTA Fe. Left, Claudia Nordstrom Larcombe (SF69) AND Antigone Phalares {The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } (SF68). �{Alumni} I Ching and feng shui. Tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson (HA83, one of the first faculty members on the new campus) gave an informal lecture, “Reflections on Lunar Theory,” and tutor Peter Pesic performed a concert. Outdoor activities included the rafting trip and a hike up Monte Sol. In between scheduled events, alumni enjoyed several ad hoc get-togethers, restaurant meals, and gatherings in the homes of Santa Fe alumni. The closing event was a Quaker-style meeting, led by Kuper and Phil Chandler, focusing on the theme: “What have you learned since leaving St. John’s?” Maurie Wills Scott (SF68) was very glad she made time to attend: “I realized what wonderful friendships I had,” she said. “It 49 was easy to talk with people, and our shared background laid the groundwork for recon­ necting.” Harold Morgan attended St. John’s in Santa Fefor three semesters. An Albuquerque resident, he is a syndicated columnist and blogger. Left, Enjoying the view from Monte Sol are Antigone Phalares (SF68), Gus Goldstein (SF68), Ellinor Garbring, Linnea Garbring-Wicks, and Rick Wicks (SF68). Right, Jeff Hockersmith (SF69), at Sunday brunch. The Pioneers On October a, 1964, the opening day of classes for the Santa Fe campus, 8a freshmen signed the college Register at Convocation. Everything was new and unsettled. After all, “colonizing a college,” in the words of then-president Richard Weigle (HA49), wasn’t easy. The campus had three buildings: a student center, one classroom building, one laboratory building, and a cluster of dormitories on the upper campus. One women’s dorm had ground-level windows facing south to the pinon trees. A year later, to discourage male visitors, a spot­ light was pointed toward the trees. On its second night in place, the spotlight turned a flashing red. The Rolling Stones and the Beatles were featured artists in common room parties. There was no television on campus. Ford K. Brown was a kind of genial god of the II tutors, bringing wisdom, humor and deep experience to the classroom. and Hendrik In February 1966, St. John’s drew a visit from Beat poet and anti­ war activist Allen Gins­ berg, who traveled to campus in a 1960s icon, the battered Volk­ swagen mini bus. For the pioneers, their years at St. John’s coincided with a time of great social upheaval. The graduation year, 1968, was marked by momentous events: the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, a riot at the Democratic Students play a spirited volleyball game on the Santa Fe National Convention in CAMPUS IN 1964. Chicago, and Vietnam War protests. culture, but lacking older models, Looking back years later, Weigle students had to figure things out them­ wondered whether importing a seminar­ selves, with the help of their tutors. size group of juniors could have helped And in time, they did. ♦ younger students adapt to the college {The College. St. John's College ■ Fall 2008 } �5° {Alumni Association News} From the Director OE Alumni Relations Dear Alumni, It’s been a busy couple of montbs in Alumni Land, and if we’re running around, it’s because you’ve been especially activeand believe me, we’re not complaining! St. John’s alumni came out in unprece­ dented numbers to support the college’s capital campaign. When Jeff Bishop (HA96) told us in aoo6 that the goal was $125 million-by far the most ambitious goal the college had ever attempted-I don’t think anyone believed we would reach it without a miracle. It turned out that the miracle was you. With the inspirational challenge from Ron Fielding (A70), we alumni helped the college to not only meet that goal, but to exceed it by more than $9 million! Thank you! Alumni participation in the campaign really caused the college to sit up and take notice of you, the only permanent members of our community, and it prompted us to ask the question: how can we work with the Alumni Association to make our programs better for you? I’m very grateful that a small team of alumni, led by Ray Cave (class of 1948), has begun working together with an outside consultant to tackle this very question. The group is called the Alumni Task Force, convened by our presidents, Christopher Nelson (SF70) in Annapolis and Michael Peters in Santa Fe. Other members of the Task Force are Dave Heimann (A87, vice chair), Jason Walsh (A85), Steve Thomas (SF74) Patricia Sollars, (A81), PheloshaCollaros (SFoo), Brett Heavner (A89) Matt Calise (Aoo), Pam Carter, (SFGI08), Jo Ann Mattson (A87), and the college’s vice presidents for advancement, Barbara Goyette (A73) and Jim Osterholt. The Task Force met for the first time on October 23. If there had been an opening question it would have been, “How can the college better serve its alumni and how can our alumni better serve the college?” We barely scratched the surface in attempting to answer that question after four hours of discussion. And we all have homework due by the next meeting on November 13: to research alumni programs at other comparable colleges. We’re all really excited about the impact the committee’s work will have on the future of alumni relations at St. John’s. Another new development on the alumni front is the amazing growth of activities in alumni chapters and groups. To keep up with the expanding endeavors of our chapter leaders, the college has hired a new parttime employee in the Alumni Office. Torii Campbell joined the Annapolis team, although she will be working with alumni groups across the country, as coordinator of regional chapters and groups. You can look forward to Torii helping your chapter plan parties, seminars, and other activities, as well as work to get the word out about these events to the broader alumni community. Feel free to send her an e-mail to introduce yourself. She’d be happy to hear from you at torii.campbell@sjca.edu. Thank you to all the chapter presidents whose efforts with alumni have made this position a necessity. Finally, I need to say a word about the current alumni directory project managed by Harris Connect. First, a little history: up until eightyears ago the Alumni Association used a significant portion of the money they received from your alumni dues to pay for an alumni directory that was delivered free of charge to all alumni. Contact and employ­ ment information was gathered from alumni every five years, and the college used this information to update its database. About seven years ago, the Alumni Association decided to support the college’s onhne alumni community. But unless we continue to sohcityour most recent contact and career information we will not have an up-to-date database. Harris Connect is the company we’ve always used for this project; indeed, Harris is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to producing print directories. Their arrangement is that they will gather the data for us for free and offer you a directory for sale. I understand it costs as little as $80 for {The College -St. John’s College . Fall 2008 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President - Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President - Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary - Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer - Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. the book and as much as $120 for the book and CD. I appreciate all of you contacting Harris and giving your time to update our records, but I’m concerned about the reports I’ve heard about some aggressive sales representatives on the Harris end. I’m sorry about this, and I’m working with Harris to resolve it. Please don’t feel an obligation to buy the book. It is expensive, although a treasure for alumni, with photos and personal stories-more fike a yearbook than a phonebook. Again, it’s very impor­ tant for the Admissions, Career Services, and the Advancement offices to have your most current information, so we are all very grateful for your participation. The Harris directory is not intended to replace our online Alumni community (which is still free). It’s an excellent resource for staying in touch with your classmates, sharing your news and photos, career networking, and finding Johnnies wherever you go. Find out more at: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/ Thanks to all of you who attended Homecoming in Annapolis and Santa Fe! We’U talk more about that in the next issue of The College. Keep in touch, Jo Ann Mattson (A87) Director of Alumni Relations jamattson@sjca.edu �{Alumni Association News} 51 It’s Always Homecoming for the Annapolis Chapter ""There are Memories Here ” “We had 15 participants for the first ike most women, Annapolis seminar in 2002,” Gammon says. “It was a chapter president Beth great start. We typically have about 12 to 20 Martin Gammon (A94) participants, but there are certain readings, juggles career and family such as Shakespeare, that draw a specific with one or more other crowd.” passions. In Gammon’s case, Typically, it’s St. John’s College, where she has rein­ participants include both and graduate alumni who vigorated the Annapolis chapter undergraduate of the range in age from 20 to 80. “There is a Alumni Association. Her husband, Alex wide range of life perspectives in the mix,” (A94), is one of her biggest supporters, but says Gammon. “I find the different lenses they can’t attend chapter meetings together. “We take shifts to take care of our to be fascinating and welcome the chance to revisit Program readings now that I have two-year-old so one of us can attend the had more life experience. But we’re all still monthly chapter seminar gatherings,” she Johnnies, still approaching the readings in says. the same way.” When Gammon joined the Annapolis Last spring, the group read and chapter in 2001, the chapter had been inac­ discussed Thucydides over three seminars. tive. With assistance from the Alumni In September they went more modern, with office, she built a network and began The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. sending postcard announcements about chapter seminars. Alumni are on the invita­ Madame Bovary was planned for October. “We do a mix of literature from the tion list; spouses and friends are usually Program and some philosophy,” says welcome. A core group of regulars attends Gammon. Gammon acknowledges that her the monthly seminars, held in the private dining room in Randall Hall. This dedicated family’s busy lifestyle helps drive the chapter’s reading list. “When I have more group includes Paula Binder (class of 1959), time we’ll do more philosophy,” she Melvin Bender (AGI05), Jerome May explains. “Right now, with a two-year-old, I (AGI92), Joan Vinson (AGI81), Valerie don’t have enough time to prepare those Garvin (A96), Charles Green (AGI02), and readings!” retired tutor George Doskow and his wife, In the future. Gammon hopes to work Minna (AGI71). L CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-^75-9012 rim2u@c0mcast.net ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410332-1816 emartin@crs.org AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Toni Wilkinson, SGI87 512-278-1697 \vilkinson_toni @hotmail.com CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 ricklightburn@alumni. stjonnscollege.edu DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net DENVER/BOULDER Elizabeth Jenny, SF80 303-530-3373 epj727@comcast.net HOUSTON Norman Ewart, A85 BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta 617-666-4381 resources.com diannecowan@rcn.com Beth Martin Gammon helped to rejuve­ THE Annapolis chapter by organizing monthly seminars. nate with her fellow volunteers to launch an occasional social event, such as an evening gathering at the Boathouse. For now, socializing is informal, as attendees stroll over to a nearby restaurant after seminar. “We’re lucky to have the familiar turf of the campus,” Gammon says. “We don’t have the challenge of convincing people to come to an unknown place. There are memories here.” —Patricia Dempsey MADISON Consuelo Sanudo, SGIoo 608-251-6565 sanudoc@tds.net PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 2i5-482r5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu PHOENIX Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, SFGI76 2o6-542r344i jdoherty@mrsc.org NEWYORKCITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com NORTH CAROLINA Rick Ross, A82 919-319-1881 Rick@activated.com Elizabeth Ross, A92 Elizabeth® activated.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-445^ reynaldo.miranda@ gmail.com {The Coll eg e SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 916-967-2194 e.i.mhanlon@ gmail.com • St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjani@yahoo.com Providing OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE ALUMNI WASHINGTON, D.C. Ed Grand,! A77 301-351-8411 egrandi@aoLcom WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org TO CONNECT MORE OFTEN AND MORE RICHLY �5a {St. John’s Forever} his picture from 1900 evokes lacrosse, basketball, baseball, football, and two bygone aspects of life at tennis. The college’s biggest rival-espeSt. John’s College: the days cially in lacrosse and football-was Johns when the college fielded Hopkins University. Compulsory military teams in many different training was discontinuedin 1923, the intercollegiate competitions, same year the college switched to an elec­ and a time when military trainingtive wassystem. President Stringfellow Barr compulsory for every student. These ­ to intercollegiate competition put John an end nies, posed with their trophies, were part soon after the New Program began in 1937. of a strong athletic program at the college. In 1908, the college began construction In addition to track, students also on what was to become Iglehart Hall, competed in boxing, fencing, crew. named for Lieutenant Edmund Berkeley T {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2008 } Iglehart, an 1894 graduate who was a base­ ball and football star and later returned to the college as a faculty member. Next year, the college will mark the looth anniversary of Iglehart Hall, where runners put in laps on the suspended running track, and fierce intramural competition takes place on the basketball court. �{Alumni Events Calendar} :a Alumni Calendar ■roquet; i St. John’s College vs. the United States Naval Academy, in the quest for the Annapolis Cup Piraeus 2009 Join us in Santa Fe or Annapolis--and this year, in Washington, D.C.-for Piraeus, the college’s continuing education program for alumni. I p.m. Sunday, April 19 Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, led by David Starr and Keri Ames January r6-18, aoog, Santa Fe Cost: $375 person, including all seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch. Registration and payment deadline is January 5, aoo8. Milton’s Paradise Lost, led by Eva Brann and David Carl June 4-7, aoog, Annapolis Cost: $400 per person, including all seminars, receptions and Sunday brunch. On-campus room and board is $200 per person for three nights. Registration and payment deadline is May 15, aoog. Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, led by Michael Rawn and Ned Walpin June 14-19, aoog, Santa Fe Lee Branner (A07) brought her grandfa­ ther, Frank Branner, to campus for a Piraeus weekend on the Odyssey. The week begins with a welcome dinner Sunday evening. The program will consist of seven seminars spread over the week. There will be a morning and an evening seminar on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The final seminar will take place Friday morning followed by a closing lunch. Wednesday is a free day to enjoy Santa Fe and prepare for the final three seminars. Cost: $475 per person, including all seminars, lunches, and dinner on Sunday. On-campus room and board is $350 per person for five nights. Registration and payment deadline is May 33, 3009. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2008 } Shakespeare In Performance King Lear, led by Louis Petrich and Jon Ihck Acting Instruction by Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting June i8-ai, aoog Harman Center for the Arts, Washington, D.C. In collaboration with Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, this combination seminar/performance-based workshop will feature stimulating scholarly discussion integrated with an exploration of the actor’s craft and approach to classic text. This weekend is packed with activity, beginning with a Thursday noon registration, a tour of the new Harman Center for the Arts, an afternoon seminar and Shakespeare Theatre Company’s performance of King Lear. Mr. Petrich and Mr. Tuck will participate in the performance workshops and lead two other seminars before the closing session Sunday afternoon. Cost: $990 per person, including all seminars, ticket to performance otKing Lear, instruction, breakfasts, receptions and tours. Registration and payment deadline is June 5, 3009. �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ADDRESS service REQUESTED Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Annapolis, MD Permit No. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollege2001 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2008 Description An account of the resource Volume 34, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2008. Misnumbered as volume 3. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol 3, Issue 3 Fall 2008 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Hannifin, Jenny (Santa Fe editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor) Deger, Ann Luell. Sara McLane-Higginson, Brooke Perleberg, Anna Spiegelman, Deborah Johnson, David The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e8fb73191eafc1ae927a3251830dd11b.pdf 1fdff55111f71a9c5a817cb933b30e63 PDF Text Text Charter and Polity of the College ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND ~ SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO Amended and Restated October 2014 Founded as King William’s School, 1696 Chartered as St. John’s College, 1784 �Since this Polity can be amended between printings, the current official Polity is kept in the offices of the Presidents of St. John's College. HISTORY St. John's College was founded in 1696 as King William's School in accordance with a Petitionary Act for free-schools of the General Assembly of the Colony of Maryland. Following the Revolutionary War, the General Assembly of the new State of Maryland granted a Charter to St. John's College pursuant to and as a part of Chapter 37 of the Laws of Maryland of 1784. This Charter was subsequently amended by the General Assembly through Resolution No. 41 of 1832. The Visitors and Governors of St. John's College in 1950 revised the Charter to eliminate extraneous and obsolete matter and to make certain other amendments consistent with present requirements and conditions. It was the opinion of the Attorney General of Maryland that the original Charter of the College was subject to the general Corporation Laws of Maryland and might accordingly be amended by the Visitors and Governors, pursuant to these laws, without legislative action by the General Assembly. Subsequent amendments were made in 1961, in 1963, in 1965, in 1970, and in 1975. When the decision was reached to establish a second St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, amendments were made to the Charter to authorize branches or extensions of the College. The Charter was then filed with the Corporations Commission of the State of New Mexico as a foreign corporation. The College was thus empowered to grant degrees in New Mexico under the provisions of its Maryland Charter. A Polity for the College was first suggested at a faculty meeting in 1943 by the Dean. A faculty committee was elected and drafted a Polity, which was then promulgated by the President. In April 1949 the Faculty elected a committee to revise the Polity. The resulting document was approved by the Faculty on April 9, 1950, and was adopted by the Board of Visitors and Governors on July 8, 1950. Subsequent quinquennial reviews were made by elected faculty committees, and desired amendments were recommended by the Faculty to the Board of Visitors and Governors. The Polity was thus amended at regular meetings of the Board held on May 14, 1955; May 21, 1960; May 15, 1965; June 6, 1970; April 19, 1975; January 16, 1982; April 19, 1986; and October 19, 1991. Other amendments were adopted by the Board at regular meetings on February 22 and December 9, 1961; February 23 and September 28, 1963; October 3, 1970; February 18, 1972; October 25, 1975; January 24, 1976; November 6, 1982; July 21, 1984; April 20, 1985; October 25, 1986; April 11, 1987; October 19, 1991; July 18, 1992; April 17, 1993; April 22, 1995; April 19, 1996; April 24, 1999, and November 6, 1999; January 27, 2001, April 26, 2003; April 24, 2004; January 27, 2006; April 22, 2006; April 25, 2009; April 24, 2010, October 29, 2011, and February 23, 2013. �CHARTER OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE WHEREAS, institutions for the liberal education of youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order to train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest men for discharging the various offices and duties of life, both civil and religious, with usefulness and reputation, and such institutions of learning have accordingly been promoted and encouraged by the wisest and best regulated States; And whereas, it appears to this General Assembly that many public spirited individuals, from an earnest desire to promote the founding a college or seminary of learning on the Western Shore of this State have subscribed and procured subscriptions to a considerable amount, and there is reason to believe that very large additions will be obtained to the same throughout the different counties of the said Shore, if they were made capable in law to receive and apply the same towards founding and carrying on a college or general seminary of learning with such salutary plan and with such legislative assistance and direction as the General Assembly might think fit, and this General Assembly, highly approving those generous exertions of individuals, are desirous to embrace the present favorable occasion of peace and prosperity for making lasting provision for the encouragement and advancement of all useful knowledge and literature through every part of this State; BE IT ENACTED: II. That a college or general seminary of learning by the name of "St. John's College" be established on the said Western Shore upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles; namely, first, the said college shall be founded and maintained forever upon a most liberal plan for the benefit of youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education and to all the literary honors of the college, according to their merit without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular religious worship or service other than what they have been educated in or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend; nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a Principal, Vice-Principal or other Professor, Master or Tutor in said college on account of his particular religious profession, having regard solely to his moral character and literary abilities and other necessary qualifications to fill the place for which he shall be chosen. IV. That the governing body or board of said College shall consist of not more than sixty nor less than thirteen Visitors and Governors, to be chosen and to hold office in such manner as the said Visitors and Governors may determine and prescribe by their fundamental ordinances; provided, however, that the Governors of the States of Maryland and New Mexico shall act ex officio as two of the total number of Visitors and Governors of said college during their respective terms in said offices; and that the said Visitors and Governors and their successors duly chosen shall be and are hereby declared to be one community, corporation and body politic to have continuance forever by the name of ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE and by the same name they shall have perpetual succession. �VII. That if the City of Annapolis should be fixed upon as a proper place for establishing the said intended college, this General Assembly give and grant, and upon that condition do hereby give and grant to the Visitors and Governors of the said College by the name of "The Visitors and Governors of Saint John's College in the State of Maryland," and their successors all that four acres within the City of Annapolis purchased for the use by the public and conveyed on the 2nd day of October, 1744, by Stephen Bordley, Esq., to Thos. Bladen, Esq., then Governor, to have and to hold the said four acres of land with the appurtenances to the said Visitors and Governors and their successors for the only use, benefit and behoof of the said college and seminary of universal learning forever. VIII. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors by the same name shall be able and capable in law to purchase, have and enjoy to them and their successors in fee, or for any other less estate or estates, any lands, tenements, rents, annuities, pensions or other hereditaments by the gift, grant, bargain, sale, alienation, enfeoffment, release, confirmation, or devise of any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate capable to make the same, and such lands, tenements, rents, annuities, pensions or other hereditaments or any less estates, rights or interests of or in the same at their pleasure to grant, alien, sell and transfer in such manner and form as they shall think meet and convenient for the furtherance of the said college; And also that they may take and receive any sum or sums of money, and any kind, manner or portion of goods and chattels that shall be given, sold or bequeathed to them by any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate capable to make a gift, sale or bequest thereof and employ the same towards erecting, setting up and maintaining the said college in such manner as they shall judge most necessary and convenient for the instruction, improvement and education of youth in the vernacular and learned languages, and generally in any kind of literature, arts and sciences, which they shall think proper to be taught for training up good, useful and accomplished men for the service of their country, in church and state. IX. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors by the name aforesaid shall be able in law to sue and be sued, plead and be impleadable in any court or courts, before any judge, judges, or justices within this State and elsewhere in all and all manner of suits, complaints, pleas, causes, matters and demands of whatsoever kind, nature or form they be and all and every other matter and thing therein to do in as full and effectual a manner as any other person or persons, bodies politic or corporate within this State or any of the United States of America in like cases may or can do. X. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors shall have full power and authority to have, make and use one common and public seal and likewise one privy seal with such devices and inscriptions as they shall think proper, and to ascertain, fix and regulate the uses of both seals, by their own laws and the same seals or either of them to change, break, alter and renew at their pleasure. XI. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors from time to time and at all times hereafter, forever, shall have full power and authority to constitute and appoint in such manner as they shall think best and most convenient, a principal, a vice-principal of the said college and professors with proper tutors and assistants for instructing the students and scholars of the said seminary in all the liberal arts and sciences, and in the ancient and modem tongues and languages; and the said principal, vice-principal and professors so constituted and appointed from time to time �shall be known and distinguished forever as one learned body or faculty by the name of "The Principal, Vice-Principal and Professors of St. John's College"; and by that name shall be capable of exercising such powers and authorities as the Visitors and Governors of the said college and their successors shall by their ordinances think necessary to delegate to them for the instruction, discipline and government of the said seminary and of all the students, scholars, ministers and servants belonging to the same. XIV. That a majority of the said Visitors and Governors for the time being and duly assembled at any meeting upon due notice given to the whole body of Visitors and Governors shall have full power and authority to make fundamental ordinances for the government of the said college and the instruction of youth as aforesaid, and by these ordinances to appoint such a number of their own body not less than seven, as they may think proper for transacting all general and necessary business of the said seminary and making temporary rules for the government of the same; and also by the said fundamental ordinances to delegate to the principal, vice-principal and professors such powers and authorities as they may think best for the standing government of the said seminary and of the execution of the ordinances and rules of the same; provided always that they be not repugnant to the form of government of any law of this State. XV. And for animating and encouraging the students of said college to a laudable diligence, industry and progress in useful literature and science, be it enacted that the said Visitors and Governors and their successors shall by a written mandate under their privy seal and the hand of someone of the Visitors and Governors to be chosen annually as their President, according to the ordinance to be made for that purpose, have full power and authority to direct the principal, vice-principal and professors to hold public commencements either on stated annual days, or occasionally as the future ordinances of the said seminary may direct and at such commencements to admit any of the students in the said college or any other persons meriting the same (whose names shall be severally inserted in the same mandate) to any degree or degrees in any of the faculties, arts and sciences and liberal professions to which persons are usually admitted in other colleges or universities in America or Europe; And it is hereby enacted that the principal, or in the case of his death or absence, the vice-principal, and in case of the death or absence of both, the senior professor who may be present, shall make out and sign with his name diplomas or certificates of the admission to such degree or degrees, which shall be sealed with the public or greater seal of the said corporation or college and delivered to the graduates as honorable and perpetual testimonials of such admission; which diplomas, if thought necessary for doing greater honor to such graduates, shall also be signed with the names of the different professors or as many of them as can conveniently sign the same; provided always that no student or students within the said college shall ever be admitted to any such degree or degrees, or have their name inserted in any mandate for a degree, until such student or students have been first duly examined, and thought worthy of the same. XVI. That the ordinances which shall be from time to time made by the Visitors and Governors of the said college and their successors with an account of their other proceedings and of the management of the estate and moneys committed to their trust, shall when required be laid before the General Assembly for their inspection and examination, but in case at any time hereafter through oversight, or otherwise through misapprehension and mistaken constructions of the powers, liberties and franchises in this Charter or Act of Incorporation granted, or intended to be �granted, any ordinance should be made by the said corporation of Visitors and Governors or any matters done and transacted by the corporation contrary to the tenor hereof, it is enacted that although such ordinances, acts and doings shall in themselves be null and void, yet they shall not, however, in any courts of law, or by the General Assembly, be deemed, taken, interpreted or adjudged into an avoidance or forfeiture of this Charter and Act of Incorporation, but the same shall be and remain unhurt, inviolate and entire unto the said corporation of Visitors and Governors in perpetual succession; and all their acts conformable to the powers, true intent and meaning hereof shall be and remain in full force and validity, the nullity and avoidance of such illegal acts to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding. XVII. That this Charter and Act of Incorporation and every part thereof shall be good and available in all things in the law according to the true intent and meaning thereof, and shall be construed, reputed and adjudged in all cases most favorably on the behalf and for the best benefit and behoof of the said Visitors and Governors and their successors, so as most effectually to answer the valuable end of this Act of Incorporation towards the general advancement and promotion of useful knowledge, science and virtue. XVIII. That the College may establish and operate one or more branches in one or more states of the United States. �Polity of St. John's College Preamble Education is the making of men and women out of children by bringing them into the world of inherited customs, intellectual traditions, and spiritual ties. Institutions of learning are set up for this purpose. Beyond this they should also seek to develop the moral and intellectual powers of their students to enable them to fulfill best their freely chosen tasks and thus to take their own responsible part in shaping the future. St. John's College is a community of learning committed to holding these ends constantly in sight and to seeking the best means of attaining them. St. John's College strives to illuminate the common heritage of humanity in a persisting study of the great documents in which that heritage can be found. It is concerned with the unity of knowledge, an understanding of the great issues, and the moral foundations on which men and women may conduct their lives. To provide proper conditions for the pursuit of these ends, we, the Board of Visitors and Governors, after consultation with the Faculty, do ordain and establish this Polity for St. John's College. Article I THE COLLEGE (1) St. John's College is by its Charter a legal entity, carrying on its functions from its campuses in Annapolis, Maryland, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Under the Charter of the College, all power, authority, and responsibility pertaining to the College are vested in the Visitors and Governors. (2) The College consists of the following: The Board of Visitors and Governors, the Faculty, the Graduate and Undergraduate Students, the Alumni and the Staff, and other members who may be named from time to time by the Board of Visitors and Governors. (3) Under the Charter, "the said Visitors and Governors, and their successors, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, forever, shall have full power and authority to constitute and appoint, in such manner as they shall think best and most convenient, a principal and vice-principal of the said College, and professors, with proper tutors and assistants, for instructing the students and scholars of the said seminary in all the liberal arts and sciences, and in the ancient and modern tongues and languages; and the said principal, vice-principal, and professors, so constituted and appointed from time to time shall be known and distinguished forever as one learned body or faculty, by the name of 'The Principal, Vice-Principal, and Professors of St. John's College;' and by that name shall be capable of exercising such powers and authorities as the Visitors and Governors of the said college and their successors shall by their ordinances think necessary to delegate to them for the instruction, discipline, and government of the said seminary and of all the students, scholars, ministers and servants belonging to the same." (a) The "principal" shall be the Presidents. When 'President' is used in this Polity it shall mean: �(i) with respect to membership on the Board of Visitors and Governors, in the Faculty, on committees of the Board, and sitting ex officio with the Instruction Committee, and for presentation of, and response to, the Statement of Educational Policy and Program (Article V (l)(c)), the President of the Annapolis campus and the President of the Santa Fe campus; (ii) with respect to membership on committees or sitting ex officio with committees, and actions or procedures relating to one campus, the President of that campus; (iii) with respect to actions under Article II (13)(b) or actions or procedures involving the entire College under Article X (l)(a)(i) and Article X (l)(a)(iii), either President. (b) The "vice-principal" shall be the Dean who is serving as the Chair of the Instruction Committee. (c) There shall be a Dean of St. John's College in Annapolis and a Dean of St. John's College in Santa Fe. (d) The "professors, tutors and assistants" shall bear the title Tutor or Tutor Emeritus. Tutors who have completed their tenure appointments by retiring shall be Tutors Emeriti. (e) There shall be Vice-Presidents for College Advancement and Treasurers. (f) There shall be Associate members of the Faculty, hereinafter called Associates, as provided in Article VIII. (g) The "one learned body or faculty," composed of the Presidents, the Deans, the other Tutors, the Tutors Emeriti, the Vice-Presidents for College Advancement, the Treasurers, and the Associates, shall bear the title the Faculty of St. John's College. (h) All who have formally matriculated, are at the present enrolled, and are in good standing shall be called Students of St. John's College. (i) The Associate Deans and the Tutors of the Graduate Institute shall be called the Faculty of the Graduate Institute. (j) All who have been awarded a degree by the College shall be called Alumni. In addition, all who have completed at least one semester of undergraduate study or at least one segment of Graduate Institute study, but who are not currently enrolled, shall be called Alumni either a) in the case of undergraduate students, when the class with which they matriculated has graduated, or b) in the case of Graduate Institute students, at the end of three full sessions of the Graduate Institute after the one in which they last enrolled. All who have been designated as honorary members of the Alumni Association of St. John’s College shall be called Alumni. All who have ever been Alumni shall continue to be. �(k) The Staff shall consist of all persons appointed by the President who are not members of the Faculty of St. John's College. (l) There shall be no discrimination at St. John's College in appointments, conditions of employment, admissions, educational policy, financial aid programs, athletics, or other activities, on the basis of race, religion, age, sex, national origin, color, disability and/or handicap, sexual orientation, or other characteristic protected by any applicable federal, state or local law. Article II VISITORS AND GOVERNORS (1) Qualifications for Membership. Persons shall be eligible for membership on the Board of Visitors and Governors who are concerned for the maintenance, progress, and vitality of St. John’s College’s educational program and who are willing and able to discharge the responsibilities of trusteeship with devotion and energy. (2) Members. The Board of Visitors and Governors shall consist of not more than thirty four members, comprising the Presidents, the Deans, the Governors of Maryland and New Mexico, and the President of the St. John’s College Alumni Association, ex officio, twenty-seven members, of whom not more than twenty-four shall be elected by the entire Board, and of whom not more than three shall be elected by the Alumni of the College, all in the manner and for the terms hereinafter provided. In recognition of meritorious service to the College, Visitors Emeriti may be elected to the Board who may attend all meetings of the Board, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. Retired members of the Board who have served six (6) terms on the Board as members in good standing may be designated as Honorary Board Members upon election by the Board. Honorary Board Members will receive minutes of the Plenary Sessions of the Board, may, as a guest, attend the Plenary Sessions of all regular meetings of the Board, and may be asked to assist on Board Committees. (3) Elections by the Board. At each annual meeting, the Board shall elect a class of members for a term of three years, to succeed those members whose term expires at the conclusion of said meeting. Those members elected shall begin their term upon the conclusion of the meeting of their election. The procedure for nomination and election shall be as follows: There shall be a Trustee and Governance Committee of the Board appointed by the Chair. The Chair and the Presidents shall sit with the committee, ex officio, when nominations to Board membership are being considered. The Trustee and Governance Committee shall recommend to each member of the Board in writing, not later than thirty days prior to the annual meeting at which the election is to be held, at least one candidate for each of the places to be filled by such election, including each position as an officer of the Board. Additional nominations may be made in writing, addressed to the Chair, signed by at least five members of the Board, prior to the date above provided for the report of the Trustee and Governance Committee, and any such additional nominations shall be reported to the Board by the Committee at the time of its report. �Voting on nominations at annual meetings may be by ballot, each member present to vote on said nominations. In case the balloting results in a tie for one or more positions, the Board shall determine the procedure to resolve the tie. No nominee for member or officer of the Board shall be deemed elected who has not received the affirmative votes of at least a majority of the members present at the meeting. If there should be fewer than eight members in any class prior to the end of the term for such class, any vacancy may be filled pursuant to the procedure provided above for regular elections, except that the election may take place at any regular meeting. A member elected to fill any such vacancy shall hold office for the remainder of the term of the class in which such vacancy occurred. (4) Elections by the Alumni. The voice of alumni being of particular value to the Board, each year one of the college’s alumni shall be elected to membership for a term of three years, in such manner that there shall be three members of the Board elected by the alumni, consisting of three classes of one member each. Outgoing members so elected shall continue to serve until their successors’ term of office begins. Such elections shall be conducted in accordance with the By-laws of the Alumni Association of St. John’s College. A representative of the Alumni Association Board shall consult with the Chair of the Trustee and Governance Committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors concerning the Association’s nominees and shall advise the Trustee and Governance Committee of its nominees in advance of the Board of Visitors and Governors’ mid-year meeting so that the organizations’ respective nominations can reasonably be coordinated. In the event that for any reason there should be fewer than one member so elected in any class prior to the end of the term of that class, the vacancy may be filled by the Alumni Association of St. John’s College. Newly elected alumni shall begin their terms immediately following the annual meeting of the Board. (5) Faculty Representation at Board Meetings. Three members of the Faculty shall be elected by the Faculty on each campus to attend all regular sessions of the Board on the campus to which they belong, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (6) Student Representation at Board Meetings. Two students shall be elected by the Students on each campus to attend all regular sessions of the Board on the campus to which they belong, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (7) Associate Dean for Graduate Programs Representation at Board Meetings. Each Associate Dean for Graduate Programs may attend all regular sessions of the Board on such Associate Dean’s campus, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (8) Graduate Institute Student Representation at Board Meetings. A student of the Graduate Institute shall be elected by the Students of the Graduate Institute on each campus to attend all regular sessions of the Board on such student’s campus, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. �(9) Staff Representation at Board Meetings. The Staff on each campus shall be invited to send two representatives to all regular sessions of the Board at that campus, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (10) Reelection: A member of the Board elected by the Board or the Alumni may be elected for not more than two consecutive terms, but may, after a second consecutive term, be reelected by the Board or the Alumni to membership at their respective annual meetings in the year following the expiration of the member’s second term. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in extraordinary circumstances, the Trustee and Governance Committee may recommend the reelection of Board members for an additional term of up to three years. (11) Meetings of the Board. (a) The Board shall hold at least three regular meetings annually, at least one of which shall be held on each campus. The last meeting of the academic year shall be called the annual meeting. The time and place of regular meetings shall be determined by the Chair, in consultation with the President, and notice of regular meetings shall be given not less than fifteen days prior to such meetings. (b) Special meetings of the Board may be called by the President, the Chair, the Executive Committee, or any nine members of the Board, not less than seven days after the dispatch of written, faxed, or e-mail notice of the time, place, and purposes of the meeting. Such notice may be dispensed with if waived in writing by all members of the Board either before or after the meeting. (c) Any business may be conducted at a regular meeting without specific notice of such business (except that which is required by law or as provided herein as to elections and amendments), but no business shall be conducted at any special meeting unless notice of such business has been given, or has been waived as above provided. (d) One third of the members of the Board shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. (e) The Board in regular session is open to elected and ex officio members, to Visitors Emeriti, to Honorary Board Members as guests, to Associates and others invited by the President, and to official representatives of the Faculty, Students, Graduate Institute, and Staff. Attendance at Executive sessions shall be limited to voting members and Visitors Emeriti. Public sessions shall be open without restriction. The Chair of the Board, in consultation with the Presidents, shall determine whether any meeting or portion of a meeting shall be in regular, executive, or public session. (12) Officers of the Board. At each annual meeting the Board shall elect a Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary, to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected. Vacancies in any such offices may be filled at any regular meeting, or any special meeting �called for that purpose. Such officers shall perform the customary duties of such offices, and such other duties as the Board may from time to time direct. (13) Committees of the Board. (a) Executive Committee. (i) The Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Presidents, Deans, Chairs of the Finance, Advancement, Visiting, and Trustee and Governance Committees, the immediate past Chair of the Board (for the remainder of the past Chair’s current Board term), and two other members chosen annually by the Board at the annual meeting shall comprise the Executive Committee of the Board. In intervals between meetings of the Board, the Executive Committee may act for the Board, except in those matters expressly delegated to some other committee, person, or persons. Eight members of the Executive Committee present at a meeting shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. The Executive Committee shall determine the compensation of the Vice Presidents and Treasurers. The Executive Committee shall recommend to the Board the compensation of the Presidents and shall also recommend to the Board the identity and tenure of the Chair of the Management Committee. (ii) There shall be a College Policy Subcommittee of the Executive Committee composed of the Chair of the Board, one additional member the Board designated by the Chair of the Board for a term of three years, and the Chair of the Management Committee, the Presidents and the Deans. The College Policy Subcommittee with approval from the Executive Committee may act on behalf of the Executive Committee on matters of college-wide policy, except in those matters expressly delegated to some other committee, person, or persons, and is charged with responsibility for the resolution of college-wide policies in a way consistent with the broad objectives of the Board. The Chair of the Board shall chair the College Policy Subcommittee. (b) Presidential Search Committee. There shall be a Presidential Search Committee to recommend the appointment of a President as provided in Article IV(2). (c) Trustee and Governance Committee. There shall be a Trustee and Governance Committee which shall be responsible for the nomination, orientation, and assessment of members of the Board as provided in Article II(3), and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall charge. (d) Visiting Committee. There shall be a Visiting Committee, which shall meet at least once annually with the Instruction Committee on one of the campuses. The Visiting Committee shall discuss the Statement of Educational Policy and Program of the Chair of the Instruction Committee and become acquainted with the aims of the College and how they are being realized, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall charge. The Deans shall be members of the Committee, ex officio. (e) Finance Committee. There shall be a Finance Committee which shall be responsible for recommending to the Board the annual budgets, policies for the expenditures from endowments, major capital expenditures, and policies for the investment of College assets. �It shall be responsible for the oversight of the College’s financial matters, physical plant and compensation policies for faculty and staff, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall charge. The Presidents, Treasurers, and Chair of the Board shall sit on the Committee, ex officio. (f) Audit and Compliance Committee. There shall be an Audit and Compliance Committee, including a Chair, appointed by the Chair of the Board. The Committee shall be responsible for the review in detail of the annual report of the independent auditors and the discussion of audit findings with the auditors, unattended by employees of the College. The Committee shall recommend to the Board the appointment or reappointment of independent auditors to conduct the audit for the next fiscal year. The Committee shall further be responsible for the regular review of compliance by the College with all applicable local, state and federal laws, rules and regulations. The Committee shall report to the Board annually on its review of the audit and of compliance matters, shall bring to the attention of the Board any matters related thereto requiring Board action, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall determine. The Treasurers shall serve as non-voting Staff to the committee. (g) Polity Review Committee. There shall be a Polity Review Committee appointed by the Chair every fifth year. The Chair of the Board shall appoint one of the members to be Chair of the Committee. The Committee shall receive from the Faculty Committee an account of the Faculty’s vote on proposed amendments. The respective Chairs of the Board and Faculty Review Committees shall make such arrangements as they deem appropriate for joint consultation prior to and after the adoption of the report by the Faculty. (h) Advancement Committee. There shall be an Advancement Committee which shall be responsible for the oversight of the College’s fundraising, communications, and alumni relations functions, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall determine. The Vice Presidents for College Advancement shall be members of the Committee, ex officio. (i) Other Committees. The Chair may appoint such other standing or special committees of the Board as the Chair deems desirable or which the Board may request. (j) Former members of the Board and Visitors Emeriti may be appointed by and at the discretion of the Chair to serve on committees. (k) Except for the Presidential Search Committee and the Polity Review Committee, committee appointments shall be made annually. Members of the Committees serve until their successors have been appointed. (l) Any member of the Board may, without invitation, attend any Board committee meeting, except those of the Presidential Search, Trustee and Governance, and Executive Committees, but without vote. �(m) Whenever a Capital Campaign is in progress, its Chair shall be an ex-officio voting member of the Finance and Executive Committees. (14) Execution of Contracts, Transfer of Securities, Etc. All contracts of $50,000 or more, notes, deeds, leases, mortgages, releases, bonds for security or indemnity, negotiable instruments, stock certificates, transfers, and powers, and like papers and documents on behalf of the College or the Endowment Funds shall be executed by two persons, of whom one shall be the President, the Chair, or a Vice-Chair, and of whom the other shall be the Secretary of the Board or the Treasurer of the campus concerned. (15) Signing of checks, drafts, etc. All checks, drafts, acceptances, and similar orders for the payment of money on behalf of the College may be signed by the same persons authorized to execute contracts, etc., pursuant to Section (14) hereof, but may also be signed by such persons, and in such manner, as the Board may from time to time direct by appropriate resolution. (16) The College shall indemnify, to the full extent permitted by law, any current or former member of the Board or officer of the College or any person who, while a member of the Board or an officer of the College, may have served at the College’s request as a director, officer, partner or trustee of another entity, against any judgments, penalties, fines, settlements and reasonable expenses actually and necessarily incurred by him or her in connection with the defense of any action, suit or proceeding to which he or she is made a party by reason of being or having been such member of the Board or officer of the College. Article III THE FACULTY The Visitors and Governors by these ordinances hereby delegate to the Faculty of St. John's College, the Presidents, the Deans, the other Tutors, the Tutors Emeriti, the Vice-Presidents for College Advancement, the Treasurers, and the Associates "powers and authorities" for the "instruction, discipline, and government" of the College. Article IV THE FACULTY: THE PRESIDENT (1) There shall be a President for the Annapolis campus and a President for the Santa Fe campus, each appointed as provided in Article IV (2). There is delegated to each President by the Visitors and Governors executive responsibility and authority for the instruction, discipline, and government of the President’s campus, and the President, in turn, may delegate such authority. In the interest of the orderly conduct of business and of maintaining and promoting the unity of the College, the Presidents shall regularly consult and communicate with each other and, as appropriate, with other College officials, on matters of common concern. The �delegation of campus executive responsibility and authority made by the Visitors and Governors in this paragraph is not intended to be in derogation of Article XVIII of this Polity. (2) The President shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of a Committee composed of five members of the Board of Visitors and Governors appointed by the Chair of the Board, at least one of whom is an alumnus, the Deans, and one Tutor having tenure from each campus elected by the Faculty on that campus. This Committee shall be known as the Presidential Search Committee. It shall consult with the continuing President in a regular and timely fashion. Prior to making its final recommendation, it shall, on both campuses, consult with all other appropriate persons and shall arrange for the final candidates to meet with the Faculty and the Instruction Committee. (3) The President shall concurrently be a Tutor, but the provisions of Article VI need not apply. (4) The President and persons to whom the President delegates authority shall consult with the Deans, other appropriate persons, and appropriate Faculty committees in matters of policy, initiation of programs, and setting of priorities affecting the general welfare of the College. (5) There shall be a Financial Committee on each campus consisting of the President as Chair, the Dean and Treasurer of the campus, and other members the President may appoint. It will review proposed budgets prior to their being presented to the Finance Committee of the Board. It will also meet prior to Board meetings to review performance in the fiscal year to date and emerging budgetary strengths and weaknesses. (6) The President shall appoint, or delegate the power to appoint, other committees as may be necessary for the carrying out of the President’s duties for which no provision is made under Article IX. (7) If in the judgment of the Board of Visitors and Governors, the College is facing a financial exigency at either or both of its campuses which could call for a reduction in the number of Faculty positions, both Presidents shall immediately advise the Faculty of the nature and extent of the financial difficulty and consult with them concerning the best way to address the situation. The Faculty may then make a formal recommendation to the Presidents on ways to meet the problem, or, if the Faculty fails so to act, the Deans and the Instruction Committee shall propose a plan to the Presidents. The Presidents shall jointly then determine a plan which specifies a preferred course of action to be taken. All necessary steps must be taken in timely fashion as prescribed by the Board. Nothing herein provided shall limit the power of the Board to act otherwise in the event of need to reduce or eliminate Faculty positions. Article V THE FACULTY: THE CHAIR OF THE INSTRUCTION COMMITTEE AND THE DEANS (1) The Chair of the Instruction Committee. �(a) There is delegated to the Chair of the Instruction Committee responsibility and authority for the organization of the program of instruction in the liberal arts that is followed by the Tutors and the Students. (b) The Deans shall serve alternately, for a term of one year, as Chair of the Instruction Committee. (c) Each year the Chair of the Instruction Committee shall, after consultation with the Instruction Committee on the Chair’s campus, and after discussion with the Instruction Committee of the College, submit a Statement of Educational Policy and Program to the Faculty as a whole for discussion. The Presidents shall present the Statement, together with an account of the Faculty discussion of it, and their responses to it, as a report to the Board of Visitors and Governors for its consideration. (d) Should the Chair of the Instruction Committee or the Chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors deem it appropriate, the Chair of the Instruction Committee shall report to the Board on instructional matters, and shall respond to such questions as the Board, through its Chair, may ask. (2) The Deans. (a) There is delegated to the Deans on their respective campuses responsibility and authority for the supervision of the program of instruction and for the general welfare of the students and for whatever government of the students be necessary for the greatest possible attainment of aims of the program. Each Dean shall be the Chair of the Instruction Committee on such Dean’s campus. In carrying out the Dean’s duties, each Dean shall consult regularly with the President and with the Instruction Committee and the other appropriate Faculty committees on that campus. (b) The Deans shall be appointed for terms of five years from among the Tutors by the Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President after consultation with a special committee of seven, four from the campus for which the Dean is being chosen and three from the other campus, selected from among themselves by the Tutors having tenure. (c) A Dean shall be appointed from among the tutors who have themselves been appointed in accord with Article VI(3). If non-tenured, the appointee shall acquire tenure upon becoming Dean, in which case the provisions of Article VI(3)(a) regarding reappointment schedules shall not apply. (d) To assist them in carrying out their duties, the Deans shall recommend one or more Tutors to be appointed by the President with the title of Assistant Dean. (e) During the absence of the President from either campus, the Dean on that campus shall if necessary exercise the President's prerogative of final decision. �(f) During the absence of the Dean from either campus a Tutor with tenure named by the Dean shall act for the Dean. (g) The Dean on each campus shall appoint such committees as may be necessary for the carrying out of the Dean’s duties for which no other provision is made. Article VI THE FACULTY: THE TUTORS (1) The primary responsibilities of the Tutors are to teach and to make themselves as competent as possible in all parts of the St. John's Program. (2) The Tutors shall have authority to recommend to the Visitors and Governors candidates for degrees of their respective campuses. (3) Appointment and Reappointment of Tutors. Tutors shall be appointed by the Visitors and Governors upon recommendation of the President in accordance with the recommendation of the Dean and the Instruction Committee on that campus where the Tutors so appointed shall teach. (a) The schedule of regular appointment of Tutors on each campus shall be either (i)(A) or (i)(B) below, to be decided by the President in accordance with the recommendation of the Dean and the Instruction Committee on that campus where the Tutors so appointed shall teach: (i)(A) New Tutors shall be appointed for one year unless they are appointed at mid-year, in which case the initial appointment shall be for a year and a half. First reappointments shall be for one year. Second and third reappointments shall be for two and three years respectively. (i)(B) New Tutors shall be appointed for two years unless they are appointed at mid-year, in which case the initial appointment shall be for a year and a half. First and second reappointments shall be for two and three years respectively. (ii) A Tutor who has completed a three-year appointment must either be given a tenure appointment or not be reappointed as Tutor. A Tutor may, however, be given a tenure appointment as early as the conclusion of the first year of a three-year appointment. Procedures leading to a recommendation for an early tenure appointment shall be initiated by the Dean and Instruction Committee, but not without the consent of the appointee, and shall not prejudice subsequent consideration for a tenure appointment. Tenure appointments shall not continue beyond retirement. Tutors Emeriti shall retain their privileges and responsibilities in voting at Faculty meetings. �(iii) Before making recommendations to the President on tenure appointments the Dean on each campus shall consult with the Instruction Committee on that campus, after seeking the advice of the Tutors on that campus. (iv) A Tutor, to be recommended for a tenure appointment, must have served full-time at the campus where the recommendation is to be made for the two years immediately preceding the year in which that recommendation is made, the provisions of (ii) above notwithstanding. In ordinary cases, these two years of service will be the second year of a two-year appointment and the first year of a three-year appointment. These requirements may be waived by the President on the recommendation of the Dean and Instruction Committee on that campus. (b) A non-tenure appointment as Tutor establishes the possibility, but not the presumption, of its renewal and the granting of a tenure appointment. Procedures for considering non-tenure appointments differ from those for considering tenure appointments. Satisfaction of appointment criteria admits of degree. With each successive reappointment, the criteria are applied more rigorously. For a tenure appointment the application is especially strict. (c) For the purpose of temporary transfer between campuses, special appointments of one or two years may be granted to a Tutor in addition to his or her regular appointments. The Tutor may ask that such an appointment be counted as a regular appointment for the purpose of (a) above. In the case of a permanent transfer a Tutor may ask that years of service at the other campus be counted toward tenure according to the provisions of (a) above. Nevertheless, the provisions of (3)(a)(iv) prevail. (d) Special one-year appointments and reappointments may be given to Tutors who intend to teach on a part-time basis only. Such a Tutor may subsequently apply for and receive a regular appointment. Special part-time appointments may then be counted on a fractional basis toward eligibility for tenure, subject to the provisions of (3)(a)(iv). In establishing eligibility for sabbatical leave, special part-time appointments shall be computed proportionately. (e) Visiting Tutors may be appointed for a term or a year. (4) Notification. (a) A Tutor under consideration for a non-tenure appointment to begin in a certain calendar year shall be notified by the President no later than December 15th of the preceding calendar year whether reappointment will be recommended to the Board of Visitors and Governors. A Tutor who is reappointed shall be notified by the President by March 1st of the calendar year in which the new appointment is to begin. (b) A Tutor under consideration for a tenure appointment to begin in a certain calendar year shall be notified by the President no later than May 31st of the preceding calendar year whether the appointment will be recommended to the Board of Visitors and Governors. A �Tutor who is appointed shall be notified by the President by July 31st of that same preceding year. (5) A Tutor may apply to the Instruction Committee of the College not later than January 15th for a transfer of campus for the next academic year. Transfers shall require approval of both Deans after consultation with their Instruction Committees. (6) (a) A Tutor’s appointment may be terminated by the Board of Visitors and Governors for one of the following reasons only: (i) failure or inability to perform teaching duties in a satisfactory manner, or (ii) moral turpitude. The President shall make such a recommendation to the Board of Visitors and Governors only with the concurrence of the Dean and the Instruction Committee of the campus concerned. Before making such a recommendation, the President shall advise the Tutor affected, and the Tutor shall have the right to be heard by the Instruction Committee or, at the Tutor’s option, by another committee to be designated by the President for this purpose. (b) Either Dean, with the approval of the Instruction Committee on the campus concerned, may recommend to the President that in the interest of instruction a Tutor be temporarily relieved of duties in whole or in part at any time. When such action is taken, the Tutor's salary shall be continued for the remainder of the current academic year. (7) The sabbatical leave program is designed to provide Tutors with an opportunity for study, rest, and renewal of spirit, in anticipation of future teaching. It is the objective of the program to grant all applications for sabbatical leave meeting the conditions for eligibility set out in (a) of this section. It is understood that Tutors on such leave will not undertake full-time remunerative employment elsewhere and will return to the College. (a) Eligibility for sabbatical leave shall be upon the following conditions: (i) A Tutor who has received a tenure appointment may apply for a full year of sabbatical leave at full salary, to be taken upon completion of the equivalent of seven full years of service to the College since the original appointment, or the equivalent of six full years of service since any previous sabbatical leave. (ii) Such a Tutor may apply for an earlier sabbatical leave of a full year at partial salary, or a partial year at full salary. The fractional salary or fractional year shall be determined by the number of years of teaching completed in relation to the prescribed total for either an initial or a subsequent sabbatical leave, as the case may be. In no case shall a Tutor be paid more than the Tutor’s regular salary. (iii) Upon completion of sabbatical leave, a Tutor is expected to return to the College for at least two more years. �(b) If, in the judgment of the President, financial or academic needs at a campus should require that fewer sabbatical leaves be granted there in a given year than there are qualified applicants, and if the number that can be granted there should be smaller than one-sixth of the number of Tutors at that campus having tenure and not on full-time leave under the provisions of section (8) below, the President shall so notify the Board of Visitors and Governors and seek its approval for delaying a sabbatical leave for one or more of the applicants. (c) If in a year there are more qualified applicants for sabbatical leave at any one campus than there are leaves to be granted at that campus, then those members shall have precedence who meet the following conditions in the order set forth: (i) Those who have served for the greater number of years since their first appointment as Tutor or since their last sabbatical leave, whichever is more recent; (ii) Those whose service has been continuous throughout those years; (iii) Those whose last sabbatical leave was postponed because of the financial or academic needs of the College; (iv) Those who have seniority of appointment. When there is a conflict of precedence, the Dean and the Instruction Committee on the campus concerned shall be consulted. (d) A Tutor eligible for sabbatical leave shall make application to the President before November 1st for leave to begin the following July 1st, and shall be informed of the action upon the application not later than January 1st. (8) The President, with the concurrence of the Dean after consultation with the Instruction Committee on the campus concerned, may grant leaves of absence to Tutors for a period of one year or less. At that time it shall be determined whether the leave shall be counted as service to the College with respect to eligibility for sabbatical leave and, if so, how. The decision with respect to a request for leave of absence shall be made in the light of the requirements both of the applicant Tutor and of the whole College. (a) Leave of absence may be renewed upon request but not more than twice in succession except in extraordinary circumstances. (b) A request for a leave of absence shall be submitted to the President as early as possible in the academic year before the year in which the leave is to be taken, but not later than January 15th of that year. Requests for leaves of absence may be withdrawn at any time prior to April 1st of the year in which the request is submitted. Requests for leaves of absence for the second semester must be submitted no later than October 15th. �(c) Tutors on sabbatical leave or leave of absence remain members of the Faculty with the right of full participation in Faculty meetings and all other College exercises. Article VII THE FACULTY: THE VICE-PRESIDENTS FOR COLLEGE ADVANCEMENT AND THE TREASURERS (1) The Vice-President for College Advancement on each campus shall be responsible to the President for the supervision and development of all programs in fund-raising, public relations, and alumni relations on their respective campuses. (2) The Vice-President for College Advancement on each campus shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President made after consultation with the Dean on that campus and a committee constituted by resolution of the Faculty on that campus. (3) The Treasurers shall have charge, on their respective campuses, under the supervision of the President, of all funds and property, and shall have authority to carry out fiscal and property transactions, and to receive and disburse funds, subject to the provisions of this Polity and other directions and arrangements pursuant thereto. (4) The Treasurer on each campus shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President made after consultation with the Dean on that campus and a committee constituted by resolution of the Faculty on that campus. (5) The Vice-Presidents for College Advancement and Treasurers may be appointed Tutors under the provisions of Article VI(3)(d). Article VIII THE FACULTY: THE ASSOCIATES (1) Associate members of the Faculty on each campus shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President in consultation with the Dean of that campus. On each campus, the President shall have ultimate executive authority over the Associates. (2) Associates may be appointed Tutors under the provisions of Article VI(3)(d). �(3) The Associates on either campus may establish for themselves an Associates' Council for the purpose of considering College matters of concern to them and communicating with other members of the College. (4) The Associates' Councils may establish such committees as they deem appropriate. (5) There shall be the following Associates, as deemed necessary by the President on each campus, with the powers and responsibilities provided. (a) The Registrars. The Registrars shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses. They shall prepare and supervise the registration of students and shall be responsible for the academic records and schedules of students. (b) The Librarians. The Librarians shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for the operation of the library. Appointments of professional members of the Library Staff shall be made upon the recommendation of the Librarian to the Dean on each campus. (c) The Director of Student Activities and the Director of Athletics. The Director of Student Activities and the Director of Athletics, as the case may be, shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for devising and directing programs of recreational activities. (d) The Directors of Admissions. The Directors of Admissions shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for the annual enrollment of qualified freshmen. (e) The Directors of Alumni Activities. The Directors of Alumni Activities shall be responsible to the Vice-Presidents for College Advancement. Their primary duty is to enable the College and the Alumni Association to be of service to alumni. (f) The Directors of Financial Aid. The Directors of Financial Aid shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for the administration of financial aid programs. (g) The Directors of Career Services. The Directors of Career Services shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for helping and counseling students with respect to graduate and professional schools and careers. (h) The Director of College Information Technology Services. The Director of College Information Technology Services shall be responsible to both Presidents for the development and management of information services college-wide. (i) The Directors of Laboratories. The Directors of Laboratories shall be responsible to the Dean, in consultation with the Laboratory archons, for training and directing the student laboratory assistants, designing experiments for the laboratory program, and purchasing and maintaining laboratory equipment. �Article IX THE FACULTY: FACULTY COMMITTEES (1) College-wide Committees (a) The Instruction Committee (i) The Instruction Committee shares with its Chairs responsibility for the program of instruction of the College. It shall consist of twelve Tutors in addition to the Deans. The Presidents shall sit with the Committee ex officio. Six of the Tutors shall be elected from each campus of the College. The Instruction Committee shall meet annually. On each campus the members of the Instruction Committee and the Dean as Chair constitute the Instruction Committee of the College on that campus. The President sits ex officio with the Instruction Committee on each campus. (ii) Each of the members of the Instruction Committee shall serve for a term of three years, and the terms shall be arranged in such a way that each year the terms of two members at each campus shall expire. Terms begin and end the day following commencement exercises. Annually, and separately at each campus, the President with the Dean on his campus, after consulting with the Instruction Committee and seeking the advice of the other Tutors on that campus, shall at the last regular Faculty meeting on that campus nominate four Tutors of whom two shall be elected by the Tutors to membership on the Instruction Committee. The Faculty shall be informed of the names of the nominees prior to the meeting at which the election occurs. At the expiration of the three-year term a member of the Instruction Committee shall for one year be ineligible for reelection. (iii) If for any reason a member of the Instruction Committee is unable to serve for a part of his or her term, another Tutor shall be chosen to serve for that part of the term. For this purpose the President and the Dean, in consultation with the Instruction Committee on the campus where the vacancy occurs, shall nominate two Tutors of whom the Tutors shall elect one in a regular Faculty meeting. (iv) If the Instruction Committee resigns with the Deans on a matter of confidence and the resignations are accepted, the President, in consultation with the new Deans and after seeking the advice of the other Tutors, shall nominate nine Tutors for the six vacancies on each campus in such a manner that two out of each three nominees shall be elected by the Tutors for each of the three classes to fill the unexpired terms. �(b) The Tutors' Compensation Committee (i) There shall be a Tutors' Compensation Committee of six Tutors, three to be elected by the Tutors on each campus, and the chair shall annually alternate between campuses. The Committee shall advise the Presidents concerning Tutors' compensation and related matters; it shall make annual reviews of the College's statement of Tutors' salaries and other compensation of Tutors and report to the Tutors and the Presidents recommendations consequent upon the review. (ii) Members of the Committee shall be elected annually on each campus for terms of three years in such a manner that the term of one member on each campus terminates each year. The Tutors' Compensation Committee on each campus shall provide the Tutors on that campus with two nominations for each vacancy on the Committee on that campus. Additional nominations may be made at the Faculty meeting when election shall be made. (2) Campus-specific Committees (a) The Campus Planning Committees. The Faculty on each campus shall elect five of its members as a Campus Planning Committee. Two members shall be elected to the Committee annually except in every third year, when one member shall be chosen. The President, the Dean, one of the Assistant Deans, and the Treasurer on each campus shall sit ex officio with the Committee on that campus. It shall be the duty of the respective committees to advise the President on the construction of new buildings, the renovation of old buildings, landscaping of grounds, and all matters relating to the maintenance and development of the campus. (b) The Library Committees. The President on each campus, in consultation with the Librarian and the Dean, shall appoint three Tutors on each campus to serve as a Library Committee. The President, the Dean, and the Librarian shall themselves be ex officio members of the Committee, and the Librarian shall serve as Chair. It shall be the duty of the Library Committees to assist the Librarians in making the Libraries serve the ends of the College and its program; it shall be their duty to advise the Librarians in regard to Library policy and acquisitions. (c) The Information Technology Committees. The Dean on each campus shall appoint three Tutors to serve as an Information Technology Committee, one of whom shall serve as Chair. Each Tutor shall serve a three-year term. The Dean, the Director of College Information Technology Services, and the Librarian shall be ex officio members. It shall be the duty of the Information Technology Committees to advise the Director of College Information Technology Services in regard to the needs of the College and its Program. (d) The Prize Committees. The President on each campus shall appoint Tutors on each campus to supervise the awarding of prizes on the respective campuses. The �Committees shall have full authority to decide what prizes shall be awarded and to name the recipients of the prizes. (e) The Fellowship Committees. On each campus there shall be a Fellowship Committee appointed by the President. It shall be the duty of this Committee to inform students of fellowships for which they may be eligible, to assist them in applying for fellowships, and to act on behalf of the College in any matter relating to application for fellowships. (f) Other Committees. The Faculty on each campus shall have authority to elect, or to request the President to appoint, additional committees that may from time to time become necessary. Article X THE FACULTY: FACULTY PROCEDURE (1) Procedure for Instructional Proposals. (a) (i) Any proposal concerning matters of instruction that may affect the College as a whole shall originate with the Dean and the Instruction Committee on either campus. A decision as to whether a proposal is college-wide or campus-specific shall be made by the Deans and Instruction Committee of the College. They shall make this decision after notifying the Faculty on both campuses and inviting their comment. Written statements of college-wide instructional proposals shall be distributed to the Faculty at least two weeks before the Faculty meeting at which they are to be presented; the proposal shall be presented to the whole Faculty by the Chair of the Instruction Committee, either in person or through the other Dean. If, after full discussion of any proposal so presented, there be no objection on the part of any Tutor, the measure stands approved and becomes effective as of the date specified. If, after full discussion, a Tutor objects to the proposal and holds to the objection, the proposal shall be submitted to vote of the Tutors at special Faculty meetings called by the Presidents within a month. Any objections that have been made and held to and submitted in writing shall be transmitted immediately in writing to the whole faculty. Any objections that have been made and held to but not submitted in writing shall be reported immediately in writing to the whole Faculty. If, after discussion, any objection has been made and held to, the Presidents, in calling special Faculty meetings, shall report the statement of the Chair of the Instruction and the Dean on the other campus as to whether it be a matter of confidence; and in submitting the proposal to vote, the Chair of the Instruction Committee and the Dean on the other campus shall, at the special Faculty meetings, repeat their statement as to whether it be a matter of confidence. The vote may then be taken and tallied by the Presidents in such a fashion that the Tutors shall have recorded their decision acting as a whole. If the proposal be one that the Chair of the �Instruction Committee and the other Dean have declared a matter of confidence and if it be defeated by majority vote, the Deans and the Instruction Committee shall immediately resign. If it be passed by majority vote, it shall become effective as of the date specified therefore. For the confidence procedure a quorum shall consist of three-fourths of all resident Tutors on each campus. (ii) Any instructional proposal that has been deemed campus-specific shall be subject to the procedure set forth above, except that, if an objection is made and held to on either campus, voting shall proceed only on the campus were the proposal is intended to be put into effect. Any objections that have been made and held to and submitted in writing on the other campus shall be transmitted immediately to the voting Faculty. Any objections that have been made and held to but not submitted in writing shall be reported immediately in writing to the voting Faculty. If the confidence procedure is invoked, it shall be only by the Dean on the voting campus, and it shall affect the Dean and the Instruction Committee only on that campus. (iii) The President may refuse to accept the resignation of the Deans or the Instruction Committee, any or all of them, whenever in the judgment of the President such resignation would be detrimental to the proper functioning of the College; provided, however, that if any six or more Tutors shall petition the Visitors and Governors, the latter shall review the President's decision within four weeks, during which time the Deans and the Instruction Committee shall continue in office. (iv) In the event that the proposal be defeated and the resignations be accepted, the President shall proceed to the choice of new Deans in accordance with the provisions of Article V (2)(b). (b) Upon either a petition of not less than one-tenth of the Tutors on either campus or a request from the President, the Dean and Instruction Committee on that campus shall consider any recommendation concerning instruction and shall report to the Faculty within one year concerning it. If the Dean and Instruction Committee make a proposal, the procedure of Article X(1) shall apply. (2) Faculty Meetings. (a) Regular monthly meetings of the Faculty shall be called upon due notice by the President; except that in the period comprising the months of December and January only one regular meeting need be called. The President or, in his absence, the Dean, shall preside. In the absence of the President and the Dean, the Faculty shall elect one of its members to preside. (b) Special meetings of the Faculty may be called upon due notice by the President alone or at the request of five Faculty members. (c) Due notice shall be construed to mean no less than three days notice, except in cases of emergency. �(d) A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Faculty in residence except as otherwise provided. (e) Only Tutors may vote on instructional matters. All Faculty members may vote on all other matters not specifically restricted in the Polity. (3) The Secretary of the Faculty. At the last regular meeting of an academic year, the Faculty on each campus shall elect one of its members, then in at least his or her third year at the College, as Secretary. The Secretary shall assist in the preparation and circulation of the agenda for Faculty meetings, shall keep the minutes of such meetings, and shall collect and circulate reports of Faculty committees. Article XI THE SCHOLARS-IN-RESIDENCE AND THE ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE The Scholars-in-Residence and the Artists-in-Residence shall be appointed from time to time by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President after consultation with the Dean and the Instruction Committee on the campus where the Scholars and Artists shall reside. Article XII THE STUDENTS (1) The primary responsibilities of the Students are to study and to make themselves as competent as possible in all parts of the St. John's Program. Their advice and service shall be sought by the Faculty in such matters and in such ways as may best serve the general welfare of the College. (2) The Students of St. John's College shall constitute the Student Polity of St. John's College in Annapolis and in Santa Fe. (3) The Student Polity in Annapolis or Santa Fe may establish for itself a government which is representative of all polity members. The Dean on each campus may delegate to the Student government a share of the responsibility for the general welfare of the Students and whatever government of the Students may be necessary for the greatest possible attainment of the aims of the program. The duties of the Student Government may include: (a) the management of funds available to the Student Polity; (b) the sanctioning of all student clubs, organizations, and activities, and their regulation, if necessary; �(c) the representation of the Students of St. John's College to the community outside the College; (d) the establishment and maintenance of formal channels of communication between the Students and the Faculty; and (e) any other duties agreed upon by the Students and the Dean. Article XIII THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE (1) The Associate Deans for Graduate Programs. (a) There shall be an Associate Dean for Graduate Programs on each campus to whom shall be delegated responsibility and authority, under the Chair of the Instruction Committee, for the organization and supervision on the Associate Dean’s campus of the graduate program of instruction in the liberal arts and for matters concerning the general welfare of the students. Concerning matters that affect the Graduate Institute as a whole the Associate Dean shall, in consultation with the other Associate Dean, be responsible to the Chair of the Instruction Committee. Concerning matters limited to one campus, the Associate Dean on that campus shall be responsible to the Dean on that campus. (b) The Associate Deans shall be appointed for terms of four years from among the Tutors by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President, after consultation with the Deans and a special committee consisting of five members, three from the campus on which the new Associate Dean will serve, and two from the other campus, selected from among themselves by the Tutors having tenure. (c) Every three years, in alternation, one of the Associate Deans shall write a Statement of Educational Policy and Program for the Graduate Institute. The Associate Dean who writes the Statement, after consulting with the Committee for the Graduate Institute on his or her campus, and with the other Associate Dean, shall submit the Statement to the Instruction Committee for discussion at its joint meeting. Should an Associate Dean be asked to write a statement in the first year of his or her term, the Associate Dean may delay this statement for a year. In such a case, the other Associate Dean shall write his or her statement in the following year. (2) The Faculty Teaching in the Graduate Institute. (a) Each Associate Dean, after consultation with the Committee for the Graduate Institute on that campus, and in accordance with the recommendation of the Instruction Committee on the same campus, shall recommend to the President Tutors for appointment in the summer session of the Graduate Institute. �(b) During the summer term the Tutors teaching in the Graduate Institute on each campus shall have the authority to recommend to the Board of Visitors and Governors candidates for degrees. (3) Committees for the Graduate Institute. (a) On each campus the Committee for the Graduate Institute shares with the Associate Dean on the same campus responsibility for carrying out the Graduate programs of instruction and for the general welfare of the students. (b) Each Committee shall consist of three Tutors who have experience in the Institute, in addition to the Associate Dean, who shall serve as Chair. (c) Members of each Committee shall be appointed by the Associate Dean with the concurrence of the Dean on the same campus after consultation with the Committee for the Graduate Institute on that campus. (4) Proposals concerning matters of instruction or policy shall originate with one of the Associate Deans, after consultation with the other Associate Dean and with the Committee for the Graduate Institute, and shall be submitted to the Dean on the originating campus for handling in accordance with Article X(l)(a)(i). Article XIV THE ALUMNI (1) Alumni shall be life-long members of the College, since St. John's College is a community not limited by geographical location or fixed periods of time. (2) The Alumni Association is the formal means by which Alumni participate in the life of the College. Through the election of alumni members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, Alumni share in the direction of that life. In these and other ways, Alumni shall be given the opportunity to serve the College. (3) The College shall cooperate with the Alumni Association to enable Alumni to assist in providing services such as recruiting and interviewing prospective students, placing graduates in appropriate employment, and advising students concerning careers and admission to graduate and professional schools. (4) The College, in cooperation with the Alumni Association, shall provide seminars and other appropriate educational activities in Annapolis, in Santa Fe, and in other places. �Article XV THE STAFF (1) Members of the Staff assist with the administration and maintenance of the College, performing duties necessary to its well-being. They are subject to appropriate Staff rules and regulations. (2) Members of the Staff on either campus may establish for themselves a Staff Council for the purpose of better communication and understanding of College policies as a benefit to the College as a whole. The Staff Council shall seek to establish and maintain formal channels of communication among the whole Staff and between the Staff and the appropriate College Officers. The Treasurer on each campus shall review Staff employment regulations with the Staff Council and discuss with them any changes proposed. (3) The Staff Council may establish such committees as it deems appropriate. Article XVI AMENDMENTS AND REVIEW (1) Amendments to this Polity may be proposed by a majority of the Board Polity Review Committee, or by a petition submitted by not fewer than ten percent of the members of the Board, or by the Faculty as provided for in section (2) and (3) below. Written notice of a proposed amendment must be provided to the Board and to the Faculty not less than 30 days prior to the date of the Board meeting at which the amendment is to be considered. The Faculty shall have the right to inform the Board in writing of its recommendation with respect to the proposed amendment by the time of that meeting. This Polity may be amended by a two-thirds vote of those members voting at any regular or special meeting of the Board, provided that the votes of no fewer than one-third of the members of the entire Board eligible to vote are in favor of such amendment. (2) Amendments may be proposed at any regular meeting of either the Faculty in Annapolis or the Faculty in Santa Fe upon petition of not less than ten percent of the members on either campus. No such proposal shall be acted upon earlier than the next regular meeting of the Faculty, whether in Annapolis or in Santa Fe. A two-thirds vote of the entire Faculty in residence, including at least a simple majority vote of the Faculty in residence on each of the campuses, shall be required for approval and the amendment shall not become effective unless approved by the Board in the manner set forth in Section (1) above. (3) Every five years this Polity shall be reviewed by a committee of six, three to be elected by the Faculty on each campus. The report of the Committee shall be submitted to one regular Faculty meeting and voted upon at the next regular Faculty meeting. A two-thirds vote of the entire Faculty in residence, including at least a simple majority vote of the Faculty in residence on each of the campuses, shall be required for approval of any proposed amendments. �Whatever action is thus recommended by the Faculty shall be submitted to the Board for final decision in the manner set forth in Section (1) above. Article XVII COMPLIANCE WITH LAW No provision of this Polity shall be construed to contravene any applicable federal or state law. If any provision is determined to contravene any such law, that provision shall be deemed not a part of this Polity, and this Polity's remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect. Article XVIII COLLEGE-WIDE MANAGEMENT (1) There shall be a Management Committee for the College composed of the Presidents and Deans of both campuses. The Chair of the Management Committee will report to, and be appointed for a period of up to four years by, the Board of Visitors and Governors. The Chair may be one of the two Presidents or Deans. With the advice of the Committee, and in a collegial manner making due allowance for campus flexibility, the Chair shall exercise authority for decision making and execution of policies over the College as a whole with respect to: (a) College-wide strategic planning, including defining the processes for strategic thinking, leading conversations regarding strategic decisions, and presentation of and planning for the strategic goals of the college and their accomplishment; (b) College-wide communications policies and practices; (c) College-wide advancement, including capital campaigns, outreach programs of the College, external relations and publications, common college-wide donor information and databases, oversight and implementation of ongoing development initiatives, and oversight of alumni relations efforts, including the work of the Alumni Relations directors and that portion of the work of Career Services directors pertaining to alumni; (d) budgeting and resource planning, preparation of college-wide budgets, including approval of campus-specific budgets oversight and implementation of a college-wide information management system. (e) approval and monitoring of admissions and financial aid policies for both; and (h) such other matters as may be assigned to the Chair from time to time. Regarding major policy changes the chair of the Management Committee will recommend a course of action to the College Policy Sub-Committee of the Executive Committee, and the chair of the Management Committee will be charged with the responsibility to carry out such actions. �The Management Committee shall not have executive authority over instructional matters assigned to the Instruction Committee and its Chair under Articles V and IX(1) of the Polity. (2) There shall be a College-wide Financial Officer (the “CFO”), who may be one of the Treasurers. The CFO shall be an officer of the College appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on recommendation of the Chair of the Management Committee. The CFO shall assist the Chair of the Management Committee in oversight and implementation of consistent accounting, audit, and financial reporting processes, including the regular preparation of audited college-wide financial statements. and shall report to and advise the Chair of the Management Committee on all college-wide financial issues. The CFO shall certify all college-wide financial statements. � 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 Charter and Polity of the College Description An account of the resource Revised and amended editions of the St. John's College Charter and Polity.<br /><br />The College's first Charter and Polity was published as the <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3768">September 1950</a> issue of the <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37">Bulletin of St. John's College in Annapolis</a></em>. Revised and amended versions were published as individual issues of the <em>Bulletin</em> in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3746">1951</a>, <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7844">1960</a>, <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7845">1963</a>, and <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7846">1965</a>. <br /><br />The Charter and Polity was published as a separate document in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7850">1955</a> and again from <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7851">1970</a> forward. The most recent version of the Charter and Polity is also available on the College's <a href="https://www.sjc.edu/about/leadership/board-visitors-governors/charter-polity">website</a>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Items in the Charter and Polity of the College Collection" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?tags=Charter+and+Polity&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate">Items in the Charter and Polity of the College 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College 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 PDF Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 32 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Charter and Polity of the College, 2014 Description An account of the resource Charter and Polity of the College, amended and restated October 2014. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-10 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Legal instruments Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC Polity October 2014 Charter and Polity https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c31006301547cf74718332e6c2c7b0bf.pdf 5476000426cfcb7dd3df21a39e549846 PDF Text Text In the year 610 of the Christian Era, a merchant of the prominent Quraysh tribe sat meditating in a cave on Mt. Hira near Mecca. He heard a voice saying, Recite: In the Name of thy Lord who created. created man of a blood clot. Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the Pen, taught Man that he knew not. [96.1-5] Thus began the youngest of the major world religions and one of the most successful lives in world history. As a religious, political, and military leader, Muhammad (570-632) is without equal. Only Moses comes close, but Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, while Muhammad returned to Mecca as a victorious conqueror. We are. moreover, fortunate to have better documentation for his life than for that of Moses, Jesus, or the Buddha. On any reckoning, Muhammad’s biography is one well worth studying. If you read the Qur'an, you may want to read along with it the most important early biography, the Life of Muḥammad by Ibn Isḥāq. Today, however, our primary goal is to become acquainted with the Qur’an. While some light may be shed on this great book by a fuller knowledge of its historical context, nothing replaces study of the text itself. Thus, most of my talk will focus on the primary text, though I will first discuss some of the major events and issues that form the background of the Qur’an. Muhammad was an orphan. His father died before he was born and his mother when he was six years old. His grandfather took care of him for two more years before he died #1 �as well. Thereafter his uncle Abu Talib, head of the Banu Hashim clan, assumed guardianship of the boy. Thus Muhammad grew up as something of an outsider within Meccan society. Although he did belong to its most prominent tribe, the Quraysh, he was a weak and vulnerable member of it. He rose to prominence, however, due to his skills as a caravan trader, as well as for his reputation of honesty. When he was 25, the wealthy widow Khadija, rather impressed, asked for his hand in marriage, was accepted, and became his first wife. Mecca was a major hub of the Arabian caravan trade routes that connected the Byzantine Empire in the north with the spice-exporting Yemen in the south. The Quraysh not only dominated Meccan trade but also were custodians of the Kaaba, the central shrine for the still largely pagan Arab tribes. The word Kaaba, related to our word "cube", refers to the cubical structure enclosing the Black Stone, a sacred object traditionally venerated by the pagan Arabs and possibly of meteoric origin. Mecca and the Kaaba were already sites of pilgrimage before Muhammad's time, the time that Muslims refer to as Jahiliyya, or the time of ignorance. During their sojourn there, the Arabs would hold fairs, including competitions in poetry, still a largely oral art. Several of these pre-Islamic poems survive. Some of them are known as the "Hanging" or "Suspended" Odes and were supposedly hung up in the Kaaba as a token of honor. Although Arab polytheism still flourished at its major center of Mecca, monotheistic religions were common not only in the surrounding areas but even with Arabia itself. Orthodox Christianity was the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, while the #2 �Sassanid Persian Empire supported Zoroastrianism, arguably a monotheistic faith, although a highly dualistic one. Many Christians, of various sects, were spread througout Arabia, and there was a sizeable Jewish community in the city of Yathrib. Thus when Muhammad brought forward his monotheistic message, he had many enemies. Although he had hoped to find a receptive audience among the “People of the Book”, i.e, Jews and Christians, in this hope he was largely disappointed. The fiercer and earlier struggle, however, was against the leaders of his own city and tribe, the polytheist Quraysh, for Muslims, like Jews and Christians before them, not only believed in the existence of one God, but held that God to be a jealous god, a god who would “have no other gods before him.” Polytheism was not simply mistaken, but even a direct affront to God and could not be tolerated. Polytheism is more tolerant than monotheism. The chief god of the Arabic pagan pantheon was Allah, or "the God." "Allah" simply comes from a common Semitic root for "god" and is cognate with Hebrew Elohim and Ugaritic El. The pagan Arabs had traditionally associated other gods with Allah and worshipped these other divinities, in particular Allah’s daughters (al-Lat, Manat, and al-Uzza). The polytheists could well accept that Allah was the one supreme god; they could not, however, accept that he was the only god or the only god to be worshipped. Particularly offensive to this traditional tribal society, however, must have been the claim that their ancestors, by worshipping associates alongside of Allah, were now burning in hell. Moreover, Muhammad’s attack upon polytheism was a direct threat to their domination of the Meccan trade and shrine. #3 �The polytheists challenged Muhammad to prove his apostleship by performing a miracle. He replied that it was not in his power to perform miracles, but only in God’s power to do so, and that the Qur’an itself was the miracle. A noble, elevated discourse spoken through an illiterate merchant, the Qur’an impressed both believers and nonbelievers alike. Muhammad challenged his opponents to sit down and produce something like it. If they could not do so, the argument goes, then the Qur’an must be a work of greater than human creation. Besides the Qur’an itself, there is one other miracle involving Muhammad that cannot be passed over in silence, since it is the basis of the Muslim claim on Jerusalem as a holy city. It is reported that one night as he was sleeping in Mecca, Muhammad was transported by the fabulous winged beast Buraq to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, whence he was allowed to ascend the seven heavens and discourse with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Thence he was brought back to Mecca the same night. More than half a century after the Muslims conquered Jerusalem from the Byzantine Christians, the Umayyad Caliph Abd-al-Malik, had the Dome of the Rock constructed on the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram es-Sharif. The hostility of the Quraysh leadership could well have led to the murder of Muhammad, if it had not been for the protection of his still pagan uncle Abu Talib. The killing of somebody under tribal protection would have led to a blood feud. So instead of attacking Muhammad directly, the polytheists persecuted his followers. Despite persecution, Islam grew, attracting in particular many of the alienated members of Meccan society, such as freedmen and slaves. When Abu Talib died, however, (619) and #4 �the new leader of the Banu Hashim, Abu Lahab (another uncle of the prophet) withdrew protection from him, Muhammad looked for another home for the Muslim community. When an opportunity for refuge and alliance presented itself in nearby Yathrib, he and his Muslim followers migrated there. This migration, or hijra, is the beginning of the Muslim epoch. Up to this point, Muhammad had been a religious leader. Now he became a political leader by founding the nascent Islamic state in Yathrib, now known as Madinat an-Nabiy, that is, the City of the Prophet, or Medina. The revelations of the Medina period show a much greater concern for political matters and laws relevant to the foundation of a state. The hostility between the Muslims and the polytheists of Mecca did not end then, however. Muhammad insisted that the Muslims be allowed to worship at the Kaaba, which he claimed had been originally a monotheist shrine founded by Abraham and his son Ishmael. The Meccans had also confiscated Muslim properties in Mecca and the immigrants to Medina turned to the Arab tradition of caravan raiding to make a living. This hostility broke out into open war when Muhammad led the Muslims in a raid on a Meccan caravan at Badr (624). Engaging with reinforcements from Mecca and outnumbered by more than three to one, the Muslims won a decisive victory. After further battles with mixed results, Muhammad entered Mecca as a conqueror in 630, pardoned nearly the whole population, and purified the Kaaba of its idols. Muhammad only lived for two more years. In that time he completed the conquest and conversion of Arabia and unified the Arab tribes for the first time in history, a unification made possible perhaps by religion alone. He thus provided the basis for the #5 �astonishing Arab military expansion that was to explode onto the world scene shorty after his death. He had no surviving sons, however, and his only significant failure as a leader was that he did not appoint a clear successor or establish a clear policy of succession. This failure resulted in a series of civil wars after his death and in the schism of the Islamic community into Sunni and Shi’ite sects that has remained of fateful importance even to the present day. The majority sect, the Sunnis, accepted Abu Bakr as the caliph or successor to Muhammad, whereas the Shi'ites believed that Muhammad's nephew and son-in-law 'Ali should have been recognized as the first caliph. Even if Muhammad had only united the Arab tribes, he would be remembered as an eminent political and military leader. But his importance as not merely an Arab leader, but also as a world leader rests on his prophetic mission. For although the Qur’an is in Arabic and addresses Arabs most directly, its message is of universal import. From the beginning, Islam, like Christianity, has seen itself as having a universal mission. So without further ado, let us turn to the Qur’an. When we first encounter with the Qur’an as Westerners, we are likely to be puzzled. This is not a book like the books we are familiar with. It does not tell a story like the Iliad or War and Peace. Although it has many themes in common with the Bible, it lacks the narrative frame that organizes many, if not all, of the books of the Bible. Although it has chapters, or suras, there is little or no apparent connection between a given chapter and the one that comes before or after it. Even within a given sura, one can encounter a bewildering mixture of prophetic warnings, stories, and legal stipulations. So our first question is, “What kind of book is the Qur’an?”. #6 �Just as the Bible is not one book, but a collection of many books, so too the Qur’an is not a single revelation but a collection of several revelations. If one were to sit down and read the entire Bible, one would be rightly puzzled if one were to find the book of Joshua next to the Gospel of Matthew, the Song of Songs next to Paul’s Letter to the Romans. It is not surprising to find diversity within the Bible, a collection of texts spanning some thousand years, written by different authors, addressing different audiences in widely divergent circumstances. Since the Qur’an, however, was all revealed within a span of some 23 years, and to one man, Muhammad, we might have expected a high degree of uniformity, and while there is more uniformity in the Qur’an than in the Bible, there is still a surpising amount of diversity, as we shall see. When I say that the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad, I do not wish to take a stance on the question of divine authorship, but I do want to emphasize that Muhammad did not compose or write this book. According to all accounts, both those supportive of and hostile to him, Muhammad spoke forth individual suras while in a kind of trance or ecstatic state. Some believed that he was receiving communication from the angel Gabriel, others that he was possessed by a genie or demon. The former, of course, took him to be the latest prophet and became his first followers; while the latter accused him of being a “poet possessed,” alluding to the traditional Arabic view of poets as being possessed by some divine or demonic spirit. The Arabic word for "crazy," majnun derives from the same root as jinn or genie. While some thought that he spun old wives’ tales, there is no contemporary accusation that he was simply “faking” an ecstatic state for some ulterior motive, e.g., a #7 �political one. This, I have no doubt, is how Machiavelli sees Muhammad, thus joining him with Numa and Moses as political leaders who feigned divine communication in order to bolster a political order. But telling against this view is the fact that when the Quraysh offerred Muhammad political leadership in exchange for ceasing to preach monotheism, he refused. Muhammad spoke forth individual revelations or suras when he fell into an ecstatic trance. He and many of his followers were illiterate, so although some may have been written down by his literate followers, by and large the revelations were passed on by word of mouth, until they were all written down and collected by the third caliph ‘Uthman (c.656). Although traditions had passed down some information about when the various suras were revealed, in particular whether during the Meccan or the Medinan period, ‘Uthman did not attempt to arrange the suras chronologically. Instead, by and large, and with the exception of the first sura, the suras are arranged from longest to shortest. It turns out that the Meccan suras tend to be shorter than the Medinan suras, so the Qur’an roughly moves in a backwards chronological order. Thus the traditional Muslim way of learning the Qur’an in Arabic—beginning with the end of the book—also makes chronological sense. A concern with chronology, however, is a largely Western concern, for Muslims would deny that there is any change or development in the message revealed in their holy book, whereas Westerners are always looking for development, even where there is none to be found. Although I would argue that there are interesting differences between the Meccan and Medinan suras, it is still debatable how significant those #8 �differences are. The Meccan suras tend not only to be shorter, but also often use beautiful natural imagery to discuss the coming Day of Judgment. The Medinan suras, by contrast, are not only longer, but often deal with many of the social and legal issues that needed to be addressed by the nascent Islamic state in Medina. So the Qur’an is not a composition, if by “composition” we mean an arrangement ordered according to a certain principle, so that it would be impossible to move pieces around and still have the same thing. Exodus cannot come before Genesis, the death of Patroclus cannot come before the anger of Achilles, Proposition I.47 of Euclid cannot come before proposition I.1. Nothing is lost, I would argue, by reading the Qur’an backwards. This is another way of saying that the Qur’an is a collection rather than a composition. But perhaps a more important point to emphasize is that each sura is meant to stand on its own. The longer suras, one might argue, are even meant to present the whole truth. Thus to go from one sura to another in sequence is not like adding pieces together to form a whole picture but is like revisiting the same truth again and again, sometimes from a slightly different angle. Thus a key feature of the form of the Qur’an is repetition. While this may be tedious for a Western reader who is used always to encountering something new in the next chapter, this formal feature also reinforces one of the central points of the content of the Qur’an: human beings’ central failing is that they are forgetful. Prophets come to remind us of the truth that we have forgotten or that we would like to forget. And as anybody knows who has tried to learn a foreign language, repetition is the key to remembering. #9 �To fend off the accusation that Muhammad was just another “posessed poet,” the Qur’an itself is claimed not to be poetry, altough it does make use of many poetic techniques. The suras are composed of verses and make extensive use of end rhyme. I will now play for you a recitation of the first sura, “Al-Fatihah”, or “The Opening.” Notice the end rhyme on “-im, -in.” I hope this excerpt, even through the medium of a foreign language, gives you a sense of the beauty, power, and appeal of the original. These features of language, in particular of poetic language, suffer the most in the process of translation. Nor are they thought to be extrinsic to the essence of the Qur’an. For the Qur’an tells us more than once that it is written in clear, noble Arabic. The incomparable beauty of the language is the main argument for the Qur’an being a divine revelation. The verses are called ‘ayāt,’ which literally means “signs.” Just like the beautiful and powerful cosmic signs such as the sun, the moon, and the stars, the verses of the Qur’an are taken to be signs that point to the power, goodness, and wisdom of the Creator who made them. Having touched briefly on the form of the Qur’an, I will now turn to its content. The first and most essential part of this content is the theology. A concise statement of its theology is provided by sura 112: Say: ‘He is God, One God, the Everlasting Refuge, who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and equal to him is not any one.’ #10 �Thus God is one and without associates. That he neither begets nor is begotten not only rules out the Arab polytheist beliefs that he has daughters but also the Christian trinitarian doctrine. He is eternal and absolute. Elsewhere we are told that he is allknowing and all-powerful. He created everything, not only inanimate things like the sun and moon, stars and earth, but also the different orders of living things—the angels, the jinn, and human beings and plants and animals. God is not only just but also "compassionate and merciful." He commands human beings to do good and resist evil, but is compassionate towards those who turn to him and ask for forgiveness. On the Day of Judgment, human beings will be resurrected and summoned before God. Their good and evil deeds will be recorded and weighed in a balance. Those whose good deeds prevail will be rewarded will eternal life in Paradise. Others will be cast into the pit of Hell to suffer eternal torment. When God created Adam he commanded the angels to bow down before him. All did so except for Iblis (Satan), who thereby became man’s bitter enemy. Adam and Eve were cast from the Garden for eating of the fruit of the tree of life, contrary to divine prohibition. There is no Islamic doctrine of original sin, however. We are not being punished now for the sin that Adam and Eve committed. We have, however, inherited their forgetfulness. In particular, human beings get caught up in pursuing their individual self-interest, such as accumulating wealth, and forget divine warnings. We will all die and cannot take our wealth with us. We will all be judged and our wealth will not help us. We are commanded to provide for the more vulnerable members of society—the #11 �widow, the orphan, the poor. We are commanded to do so by paying the alms tax, the zakat. Failure to do so will result in grievous punishment in the hereafter. Prophets have been sent to all peoples and have by and large been ignored. Even after punishment came upon certain cities that ignored a prophet’s warnings, others did not heed those examples. God has even sent down two books, the Torah and the Gospel, to be constant reminders. The people who preserve those books, the “People of the Book” (i.e., Jews and Christians), continue to bear witness to the one true God, although even they have altered the true message by corrupting the divine text with human interpolations. During to these corruptions, Islam, unlike Christianity, does not regard earlier biblical texts as part of its canon. All the truths of the Torah and Gospel are also to be found in the Qur'an itself. Muhammad has now been sent as the final prophet, as the “seal of the prophets,” so this is humanity’s last opportunity to finally get the message. The message has been essentially the same ever since Abraham, the first monotheist, brought it to human beings. By submitting his willing to Allah, the one God, Abraham became the first Muslim, (“one who submits”). The word muslim comes from the same root as the greeting salām, and is cognate with the Hebrew shalom. According to Islam, Islam did not begin with Muhammad but rather with Abraham. Muhammad’s importance lies not in founding Islam, but in restoring it and in being the final prophet. Together with his son Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs, Abraham built and consecrated the central shrine of Islam, the Kaaba in Mecca. To receive the message brought first by Abraham, restated by Moses and Jesus, and finally restored by Muhammad, is to be a believer. To ignore or reject the message is to #12 �be a non-believer, or infidel. Since the essence of the message is monotheism, infidels and polytheists are seen as one and the same. Because prophets have been sent to all peoples, there are no “innocent” polytheists: every people has had an opportunity to accept the monotheist message. Since there are clear signs everywhere pointing to the existence of one God, rejecting the oneness of God is taken to indicate not mere ignorance, but willful ignorance. Polytheists reject God because they want to, not because they are clueless. Some passages suggest a doctrine of predestination: "God guides whom he wills and leads astray whom he wills." The “People of the Book” are not infidels, nor are they believers in the proper sense. While they have accepted the core of the message—i.e., that God is one—they have become confused as to other aspects of it. Christians, for example, have mistakenly taken their prophet Jesus to be not a mere messenger of God, but to be God. Jews have wrongly rejected Muhammad’s prophetic mission. Islam asserts a strong dualism of good versus evil and sees them as in constant struggle with one another. Struggle, or jihād, is a central concept of Islam, although it is not quite one of the pillars of the faith, at least for Sunnis. Just as in the universe, so too amongst human beings and in the human soul there is a constant battle between good and evil, a battle that will last until the Day of Judgment, when all will be resolved by God. Since God is good, and believers are the ones who have taken God’s side, believers are inherently on the side of good. This does not mean that believers cannot fall into evil or err, but it does at least mean that they are on the right side of the cosmic struggle. Contrariwise, to disbelieve is to go against God, to side with evil against good. Thus #13 �whatever meritorious action, such as feeding a beggar, disbelievers may do, that action cannot override the fact that disbelievers have taken the wrong side in the battle of good versus evil. While they continue in their disbelief, they cannot be saved. Believers, on the other hand, are not guaranteed salvation, but they will at least receive God’s open ear and mercy when they ask for forgiveness for their sins. The struggle against disbelief and evil in oneself and in the world has important implications for how the Islamic community defines itself in relation to others. During the Meccan period, when Muslims were a perscuted minority in a largely pagan city, the message preached sounds something like a message of toleration, as we can see from sura 109: Say: ‘O unbelievers, I serve not what you serve and you are not serving what I serve, nor am I serving what you have served, neither are you serving what I serve.’ To you your religion, and to me my religion!’ Now this sura can be taken in more than one way. The weakest reading is that it is a mere observation that Muslims and polytheists have different religions. But since this is said directly to polytheists, it is at the very least an act of defiance, for polytheism seeks to incorporate new gods and cults within itself. It may even, as we can see from Herodotus, deny the existence of different religions. This sura may be a way of saying, “You may say that both you and we worship Allah, but in fact we don’t worship the same thing, for #14 �we worship Allah alone, while you worship him alongside of his supposed daughters and other false gods.” The last line is thus an assertion of an impassable barrier between Islam and polytheism. Another intriguing possibility lies in an ambiguous word in the last line. The word translated as “religion,” din, can also mean “judgment,” as in the expression, yawmu d-din, the “Day of Judgment.” Thus we could translate instead, “To you your judgment, and to me my judgment.” This could be a way of saying, “We fundamentally disagree, and God will decide between us on Judgment Day.” Whichever of these possible readings we adopt, something like tolerance is still being proposed, for in this sura the believer is told to speak the truth to the non-believer, rather than to attack, oppress, or kill the unbeliever. It does not, however, go against the idea of a fundamental struggle between good and evil, or between believers and nonbelievers. The Muslim community in Mecca was not in a position to take the offensive against the Meccan polytheists, so the most that can be expected of them is to maintain the integrity of their belief by bearing witness to it, i.e., being martyrs for it, in the face of persecution and oppression. Once the Muslims migrated to Medina, however, and became powerful enough to assert themselves against the Meccans, they did so. And the suras from that period reveal a more aggressive and militant policy against polytheism. Muslims are commanded to fight the polytheists of Mecca until they cease oppressing Muslims and allow them to worship in the sacred mosque of Mecca: “Fight them, till there is no persecution and the #15 �religion is God’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.” (2.193). Thus Islam is not a religion that says “Turn the other cheek.” On the other hand, Muslims are explicity warned not to be the aggressors, “And fight in the way of God with those who fight with you, but aggress not: God loves not the aggressors.” (2.190) Thus only defensive warfare is justified, and it is not only justified but even commanded. Moreover, while Muslims are commanded to spread the word, forced conversion is explicitly forbidden, “No compulsion is there in religion.” (2.256). The People of the Book have a special status within Islam. While conflict between Muslims and polytheists is seen as nearly unavoidable, the People of the Book should be granted tolerance as fellow, although erring, monotheists. Tolerance in this context means that Jews and Christians living in a Muslim society are allowed to practice their own religion under their own laws so long as they recognize Muslim superiority and pay a tax in exchange for Muslim military protection. While this policy is not explicitly stated in the Qur’an itself, it did become enshrined in the shari’a or Muslim law. The Qur’an itself is equivocal on the relations between Muslims and Jews or Christians. To cite a favorable passage: Dispute not with the People of the Book save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong; and say, ‘We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered.’ (29.46) #16 �We also read: Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry and the Christians, and those Sabaeans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness—their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow. (2.62). If we turn to the structure of the Islamic society, we find it bound together by religious and social duties. Although the Qur’an itself does not assign a particular number to these duties or refer to them as “pillars,” different Islamic sects have enumerated different “pillars of the faith.” The majority sect, the Sunnis, enumerate five such pillars. Besides payment of the alms tax, or zakat, that we have already mentioned, we also find the prescription of five daily prayers, or salat, the pilgrimage to Mecca, or the hajj, as well as the fast of Ramadan. The remaining duty, the shahada, or testimony of faith, is not explicitly prescribed as a duty in the Qur’an but may be seen as a precondition for accepting the Qur’an as a revealed word at all. It goes, “I testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.” What kind of society do these duties promote? First of all, it is one that struggles against the selfishness of individualism. There is nothing wrong with becoming wealthy in itself, but there is if one does so at the expense of others, or if one refuses to contribute to the welfare of those less fortunate. The Qur’an does not seek to abolish or level existing social hierarchies, whether of rich vs. poor, free vs. slave, or man vs. woman, but #17 �it does accept the spiritual equality of all before God and insists that all have a duty to attend not only to the spiritual, but also to the physical, welfare of all others in the community. The opposition between the spiritual and the physical, between the spirit and the “flesh,” so marked in Christianity, is not so strong in Islam. Islamic paradise includes flowing water, flourishing plants, abundant honey, and beautiful virgins and youths. Christians have long been scandalised, but that only shows that Muslims do not war against the flesh as Christians have for so long. Given that God has made both our bodies and our souls, our flesh and our spirit, to reject the physical is to reject part of God’s creation. While Islam does believe in a strong opposition between good and evil and does contrast this current inferior world with the superior world to come, it does not show a marked contrast between flesh and spirit, nor does it brand the “desires of the flesh” as inherently evil. There is nothing wrong with desiring and enjoying beautiful things. This world is inferior to the world to come not because this world is physical and the next world is spiritual. Even Christians, after all, insist on the resurrection of the body, and what would a body be good for in a purely spiritual realm? This world is inferior to the next rather because it is fleeting and filled with injustice and selfishness. To take one particular example. Islam prohibits the consumption of alcohol not because it excessively titillates our appetite for gustatory relish, but rather because it inhibits our ability to act as responsible members of society. Likewise, its sexual regulations, against adultery and fornication for example, are justified in terms of mainting a well-regulated society. There is nothing wrong with sexual pleasure per se, #18 �much less with sexual desire. Modesty in dress is prescribed for both men and women, although it is more strictly expected of the latter. Let us take another example. Islam, along with Judaism and Christianity, prohibits usury on loans to one’s fellow citizens. While economists will rightly point out that prohibiting usury is both ineffective and inefficient, that criticism misses the point, for the economists are presupposing a core human selfishness that Islam is striving to overcome. It is possible to feed the poor to bolster one’s sense of grandeur, or one’s ranking on some list; it may even work well when all in society simply pursue their enlightened self-interest. But to do the right thing for the wrong reason is still not to act morally: one should support charity just because it is the right thing to do. This is much more that one could say about the Qur’an. I hope the little that I have said gives you some sense of the context in which it was revealed, of its form and content, and also of how it conceives of the nature of Islamic society and the relation of Islam to other religions. #19 � 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 St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 19 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Qur'an : an introduction for Johnnies Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on June 16, 2021 by Ken Wolfe as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. Mr. Wolfe provided this description of the event: "In this introduction to the Qur'an, I will explore the context of its composition within the life of Muhammad and 6th century Arabia, its form and content, its relation to other texts and traditions (the Bible, Judaism, Christianity), and its influence upon certain aspects of the Islamic tradition." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wolfe, Kenneth 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 Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-06-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Qur'an Islam Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_WolfeK_The_Qur'an--An_Introduction_for_Johnnies_2021-06-16 Graduate Institute https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d5acc93c621a8dedf412a3ac5ee13a20.pdf 3bd2a1f096955e45730363b61ba84861 PDF Text Text Charter and Polity of the College ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND ~ SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO Amended and Restated February 2020 Founded as King William’s School, 1696 Chartered as St. John’s College, 1784 �Since this Polity can be amended between printings, the current official Polity is kept in the offices of the Presidents of St. John's College. HISTORY St. John's College was founded in 1696 as King William's School in accordance with a Petitionary Act for free-schools of the General Assembly of the Colony of Maryland. Following the Revolutionary War, the General Assembly of the new State of Maryland granted a Charter to St. John's College pursuant to and as a part of Chapter 37 of the Laws of Maryland of 1784. This Charter was subsequently amended by the General Assembly through Resolution No. 41 of 1832. The Visitors and Governors of St. John's College in 1950 revised the Charter to eliminate extraneous and obsolete matter and to make certain other amendments consistent with present requirements and conditions. It was the opinion of the Attorney General of Maryland that the original Charter of the College was subject to the general Corporation Laws of Maryland and might accordingly be amended by the Visitors and Governors, pursuant to these laws, without legislative action by the General Assembly. Subsequent amendments were made in 1961, in 1963, in 1965, in 1970, and in 1975. When the decision was reached to establish a second St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, amendments were made to the Charter to authorize branches or extensions of the College. The Charter was then filed with the Corporations Commission of the State of New Mexico as a foreign corporation. The College was thus empowered to grant degrees in New Mexico under the provisions of its Maryland Charter. A Polity for the College was first suggested in 1940 by St. John’s College President and New Program founder Stringfellow Barr, who requested that the instruction committee, “investigate thoroughly the type of polity that might service the college community best and would be appropriately adapted to and coordinated with the aims of the program.” In November 1943, the faculty elected a committee to draft this Polity, which was completed on January 14, 1945, and ultimately instituted by President Barr on March 3, 1945. In 1949, during the first year of Richard Weigle’s presidency, the faculty elected a second committee to revise the existing Polity. Among the provisions was a mandate for future quinquennial Polity reviews by the faculty and the Board. This Polity revision was approved by the faculty on April 9, 1950, and adopted by the Board of Visitors and Governors on July 8, 1950. Since that time the Polity has remained the College’s principal governing document, overseen by the Board in consultation with the faculty. The Polity was thus amended at regular meetings of the Board held on May 14, 1955; May 21, 1960; May 15, 1965; June 6, 1970; April 19, 1975; January 16, 1982; April 19, 1986; and October 19, 1991. Other amendments were adopted by the Board at regular meetings on February 22 and December 9, 1961; February 23 and September 28, 1963; October 3, 1970; February 18, 1972; October 25, 1975; January 24, 1976; November 6, 1982; July 21, 1984; April 20, 1985; October 25, 1986; April 11, 1987; October 19, 1991; July 18, 1992; April 17, 1993; April 22, 1995; April 19, 1996; April 24, 1999, and November 6, 1999; January 27, 2001, April 26, 2003; April 24, 2004; January 27, 2006; April 22, 2006; April 25, 2009; April 24, 2010, October 29, 2011, February 23, 2013, June 17, 2016, November 9, 2019 and February 29, 2020. ii �CHARTER OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE WHEREAS, institutions for the liberal education of youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order to train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest men for discharging the various offices and duties of life, both civil and religious, with usefulness and reputation, and such institutions of learning have accordingly been promoted and encouraged by the wisest and best regulated States; And whereas, it appears to this General Assembly that many public spirited individuals, from an earnest desire to promote the founding a college or seminary of learning on the Western Shore of this State have subscribed and procured subscriptions to a considerable amount, and there is reason to believe that very large additions will be obtained to the same throughout the different counties of the said Shore, if they were made capable in law to receive and apply the same towards founding and carrying on a college or general seminary of learning with such salutary plan and with such legislative assistance and direction as the General Assembly might think fit, and this General Assembly, highly approving those generous exertions of individuals, are desirous to embrace the present favorable occasion of peace and prosperity for making lasting provision for the encouragement and advancement of all useful knowledge and literature through every part of this State; BE IT ENACTED: II. That a college or general seminary of learning by the name of "St. John's College" be established on the said Western Shore upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles; namely, first, the said college shall be founded and maintained forever upon a most liberal plan for the benefit of youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education and to all the literary honors of the college, according to their merit without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular religious worship or service other than what they have been educated in or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend; nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a Principal, Vice-Principal or other Professor, Master or Tutor in said college on account of his particular religious profession, having regard solely to his moral character and literary abilities and other necessary qualifications to fill the place for which he shall be chosen. IV. That the governing body or board of said College shall consist of not more than sixty nor less than thirteen Visitors and Governors, to be chosen and to hold office in such manner as the said Visitors and Governors may determine and prescribe by their fundamental ordinances; provided, however, that the Governors of the States of Maryland and New Mexico shall act ex officio as two of the total number of Visitors and Governors of said college during their respective terms in said offices; and that the said Visitors and Governors and their successors duly chosen shall be and are hereby declared to be one community, corporation and body politic to have continuance forever by the name of ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE and by the same name they shall have perpetual succession. iii �VII. That if the City of Annapolis should be fixed upon as a proper place for establishing the said intended college, this General Assembly give and grant, and upon that condition do hereby give and grant to the Visitors and Governors of the said College by the name of "The Visitors and Governors of Saint John's College in the State of Maryland," and their successors all that four acres within the City of Annapolis purchased for the use by the public and conveyed on the 2nd day of October, 1744, by Stephen Bordley, Esq., to Thos. Bladen, Esq., then Governor, to have and to hold the said four acres of land with the appurtenances to the said Visitors and Governors and their successors for the only use, benefit and behoof of the said college and seminary of universal learning forever. VIII. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors by the same name shall be able and capable in law to purchase, have and enjoy to them and their successors in fee, or for any other less estate or estates, any lands, tenements, rents, annuities, pensions or other hereditaments by the gift, grant, bargain, sale, alienation, enfeoffment, release, confirmation, or devise of any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate capable to make the same, and such lands, tenements, rents, annuities, pensions or other hereditaments or any less estates, rights or interests of or in the same at their pleasure to grant, alien, sell and transfer in such manner and form as they shall think meet and convenient for the furtherance of the said college; And also that they may take and receive any sum or sums of money, and any kind, manner or portion of goods and chattels that shall be given, sold or bequeathed to them by any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate capable to make a gift, sale or bequest thereof and employ the same towards erecting, setting up and maintaining the said college in such manner as they shall judge most necessary and convenient for the instruction, improvement and education of youth in the vernacular and learned languages, and generally in any kind of literature, arts and sciences, which they shall think proper to be taught for training up good, useful and accomplished men for the service of their country, in church and state. IX. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors by the name aforesaid shall be able in law to sue and be sued, plead and be impleadable in any court or courts, before any judge, judges, or justices within this State and elsewhere in all and all manner of suits, complaints, pleas, causes, matters and demands of whatsoever kind, nature or form they be and all and every other matter and thing therein to do in as full and effectual a manner as any other person or persons, bodies politic or corporate within this State or any of the United States of America in like cases may or can do. X. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors shall have full power and authority to have, make and use one common and public seal and likewise one privy seal with such devices and inscriptions as they shall think proper, and to ascertain, fix and regulate the uses of both seals, by their own laws and the same seals or either of them to change, break, alter and renew at their pleasure. XI. That the said Visitors and Governors and their successors from time to time and at all times hereafter, forever, shall have full power and authority to constitute and appoint in such manner as they shall think best and most convenient, a principal, a vice-principal of the said college and professors with proper tutors and assistants for instructing the students and scholars of the said seminary in all the liberal arts and sciences, and in the ancient and modem tongues and iv �languages; and the said principal, vice-principal and professors so constituted and appointed from time to time shall be known and distinguished forever as one learned body or faculty by the name of "The Principal, Vice-Principal and Professors of St. John's College"; and by that name shall be capable of exercising such powers and authorities as the Visitors and Governors of the said college and their successors shall by their ordinances think necessary to delegate to them for the instruction, discipline and government of the said seminary and of all the students, scholars, ministers and servants belonging to the same. XIV. That a majority of the said Visitors and Governors for the time being and duly assembled at any meeting upon due notice given to the whole body of Visitors and Governors shall have full power and authority to make fundamental ordinances for the government of the said college and the instruction of youth as aforesaid, and by these ordinances to appoint such a number of their own body not less than seven, as they may think proper for transacting all general and necessary business of the said seminary and making temporary rules for the government of the same; and also by the said fundamental ordinances to delegate to the principal, vice-principal and professors such powers and authorities as they may think best for the standing government of the said seminary and of the execution of the ordinances and rules of the same; provided always that they be not repugnant to the form of government of any law of this State. XV. And for animating and encouraging the students of said college to a laudable diligence, industry and progress in useful literature and science, be it enacted that the said Visitors and Governors and their successors shall by a written mandate under their privy seal and the hand of someone of the Visitors and Governors to be chosen annually as their President, according to the ordinance to be made for that purpose, have full power and authority to direct the principal, vice-principal and professors to hold public commencements either on stated annual days, or occasionally as the future ordinances of the said seminary may direct and at such commencements to admit any of the students in the said college or any other persons meriting the same (whose names shall be severally inserted in the same mandate) to any degree or degrees in any of the faculties, arts and sciences and liberal professions to which persons are usually admitted in other colleges or universities in America or Europe; And it is hereby enacted that the principal, or in the case of his death or absence, the vice-principal, and in case of the death or absence of both, the senior professor who may be present, shall make out and sign with his name diplomas or certificates of the admission to such degree or degrees, which shall be sealed with the public or greater seal of the said corporation or college and delivered to the graduates as honorable and perpetual testimonials of such admission; which diplomas, if thought necessary for doing greater honor to such graduates, shall also be signed with the names of the different professors or as many of them as can conveniently sign the same; provided always that no student or students within the said college shall ever be admitted to any such degree or degrees, or have their name inserted in any mandate for a degree, until such student or students have been first duly examined, and thought worthy of the same. XVI. That the ordinances which shall be from time to time made by the Visitors and Governors of the said college and their successors with an account of their other proceedings and of the management of the estate and moneys committed to their trust, shall when required be laid before the General Assembly for their inspection and examination, but in case at any time hereafter through oversight, or otherwise through misapprehension and mistaken constructions v �of the powers, liberties and franchises in this Charter or Act of Incorporation granted, or intended to be granted, any ordinance should be made by the said corporation of Visitors and Governors or any matters done and transacted by the corporation contrary to the tenor hereof, it is enacted that although such ordinances, acts and doings shall in themselves be null and void, yet they shall not, however, in any courts of law, or by the General Assembly, be deemed, taken, interpreted or adjudged into an avoidance or forfeiture of this Charter and Act of Incorporation, but the same shall be and remain unhurt, inviolate and entire unto the said corporation of Visitors and Governors in perpetual succession; and all their acts conformable to the powers, true intent and meaning hereof shall be and remain in full force and validity, the nullity and avoidance of such illegal acts to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding. XVII. That this Charter and Act of Incorporation and every part thereof shall be good and available in all things in the law according to the true intent and meaning thereof, and shall be construed, reputed and adjudged in all cases most favorably on the behalf and for the best benefit and behoof of the said Visitors and Governors and their successors, so as most effectually to answer the valuable end of this Act of Incorporation towards the general advancement and promotion of useful knowledge, science and virtue. XVIII. That the College may establish and operate one or more branches in one or more states of the United States. vi �Polity of St. John's College Preamble Education is the making of men and women out of children by bringing them into the world of inherited customs, intellectual traditions, and spiritual ties. Institutions of learning are set up for this purpose. Beyond this they should also seek to develop the moral and intellectual powers of their students to enable them to fulfill best their freely chosen tasks and thus to take their own responsible part in shaping the future. St. John's College is a community of learning committed to holding these ends constantly in sight and to seeking the best means of attaining them. St. John's College strives to illuminate the common heritage of humanity in a persisting study of the great documents in which that heritage can be found. It is concerned with the unity of knowledge, an understanding of the great issues, and the moral foundations on which men and women may conduct their lives. To provide proper conditions for the pursuit of these ends, we, the Board of Visitors and Governors, after consultation with the Faculty, do ordain and establish this Polity for St. John's College. Article I THE COLLEGE (1) St. John's College is by its Charter a legal entity, carrying on its functions from its campuses in Annapolis, Maryland, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Under the Charter of the College, all power, authority, and responsibility pertaining to the College are vested in the Visitors and Governors. (2) The College consists of the following: The Board of Visitors and Governors, the Faculty, the Graduate and Undergraduate Students, the Alumni and the Staff, and other members who may be named from time to time by the Board of Visitors and Governors. (3) Under the Charter, "the said Visitors and Governors, and their successors, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, forever, shall have full power and authority to constitute and appoint, in such manner as they shall think best and most convenient, a principal and viceprincipal of the said College, and professors, with proper tutors and assistants, for instructing the students and scholars of the said seminary in all the liberal arts and sciences, and in the ancient and modern tongues and languages; and the said principal, vice-principal, and professors, so constituted and appointed from time to time shall be known and distinguished forever as one learned body or faculty, by the name of 'The Principal, Vice-Principal, and Professors of St. John's College;' and by that name shall be capable of exercising such powers and authorities as the Visitors and Governors of the said college and their successors shall by their ordinances think necessary to delegate to them for the instruction, discipline, and government of the said seminary and of all the students, scholars, ministers and servants belonging to the same." 7 �(a) The "principal" shall be the Presidents. When 'President' is used in this Polity it shall mean: (i) with respect to membership on the Board of Visitors and Governors, in the Faculty, on committees of the Board, and sitting ex officio with the Instruction Committee, and for presentation of, and response to, the Statement of Educational Policy and Program (Article V (l)(c)), the President of the Annapolis campus and the President of the Santa Fe campus; (ii) with respect to membership on committees or sitting ex officio with committees, and actions or procedures relating to one campus, the President of that campus; (iii) with respect to actions under Article II (13)(b) or actions or procedures involving the entire College under Article X (l)(a)(i) and Article X (l)(a)(iii), either President. (b) The "vice-principal" shall be the Dean who is serving as the Chair of the Instruction Committee. (c) There shall be a Dean of St. John's College in Annapolis and a Dean of St. John's College in Santa Fe. (d) The "professors, tutors and assistants" shall bear the title Tutor or Tutor Emeritus. Tutors who have completed their tenure appointments by retiring shall be Tutors Emeriti. (e) There shall be Vice Presidents and other officials, as necessary, as provided in Article VII. (f) There shall be Associate members of the Faculty, hereinafter called Associates, as provided in Article VIII. (g) The "one learned body or faculty," composed of the Presidents, the Deans, the other Tutors, the Tutors Emeriti, the Vice Presidents, the College-wide Officials, and the Associates, shall bear the title the Faculty of St. John's College. (h) All who have formally matriculated, are at the present enrolled, and are in good standing shall be called Students of St. John's College. (i) The Associate Deans and the Tutors of the Graduate Institute shall be called the Faculty of the Graduate Institute. (j) All who have been awarded a degree by the College shall be called Alumni. In addition, all who have completed at least one semester of undergraduate study or at least one segment of Graduate Institute study, but who are not currently enrolled, shall be called Alumni either a) in the case of undergraduate students, when the class with which they matriculated has graduated, or b) in the case of Graduate Institute students, at the end of three full sessions of the Graduate Institute after the one in which they last enrolled. All who have been designated as honorary members of the Alumni Association of St. John’s 8 �College shall be called Alumni. All who have ever been Alumni shall continue to be. (k) The Staff shall consist of all persons appointed by the President who are not members of the Faculty of St. John's College. (l) There shall be no discrimination at St. John's College in appointments, conditions of employment, admissions, educational policy, financial aid programs, athletics, or other activities, on the basis of race, religion, age, sex, national origin, color, disability and/or handicap, sexual orientation, or other characteristic protected by any applicable federal, state or local law. Article II VISITORS AND GOVERNORS (1) Qualifications for Membership. Persons shall be eligible for membership on the Board of Visitors and Governors who are concerned for the maintenance, progress, and vitality of St. John’s College’s educational program and who are willing and able to discharge the responsibilities of trusteeship with devotion and energy. (2) Members. The Board of Visitors and Governors shall consist of not more than forty members, comprising the Presidents, the Deans, the Governors of Maryland and New Mexico, and the President of the St. John’s College Alumni Association, ex officio, thirtythree members, of whom not more than thirty shall be elected by the entire Board, and of whom not more than three shall be elected by the Alumni of the College, all in the manner and for the terms hereinafter provided. In recognition of meritorious service to the College, Visitors Emeriti may be elected to the Board who may attend all meetings of the Board, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. Retired members of the Board who have served six (6) terms on the Board as members in good standing may be designated as Honorary Board Members upon election by the Board. Honorary Board Members will receive minutes of the Plenary Sessions of the Board, may, as a guest, attend the Plenary Sessions of all regular meetings of the Board, and may be asked to assist on Board Committees. (3) Elections by the Board. At each annual meeting, the Board shall elect a class of members for a term of three years, to succeed those members whose term expires at the conclusion of said meeting. Those members elected shall begin their term upon the conclusion of the meeting of their election. The procedure for nomination and election shall be as follows: There shall be a Trustee and Governance Committee of the Board appointed by the Chair. The Chair and the Presidents shall sit with the committee, ex officio, when nominations to Board membership are being considered. The Trustee and Governance Committee shall recommend to each member of the Board in writing, not later than thirty days prior to the annual meeting at which the election is to be held, at least one candidate for each of the places to be filled by such election, including each position as an officer of the Board. 9 �Additional nominations may be made in writing, addressed to the Chair, signed by at least five members of the Board, prior to the date above provided for the report of the Trustee and Governance Committee, and any such additional nominations shall be reported to the Board by the Committee at the time of its report. Voting on nominations at annual meetings may be by ballot, each member present to vote on said nominations. In case the balloting results in a tie for one or more positions, the Board shall determine the procedure to resolve the tie. No nominee for member or officer of the Board shall be deemed elected who has not received the affirmative votes of at least a majority of the members present at the meeting. If there should be fewer than ten members in any class prior to the end of the term for such class, any vacancy may be filled pursuant to the procedure provided above for regular elections, except that the election may take place at any meeting or by electronic vote pursuant to Section (11) (e). A member elected to fill any such vacancy shall hold office for the remainder of the term of the class in which such vacancy occurred. (4) Elections by the Alumni. The voice of alumni being of particular value to the Board, each year one of the college’s alumni shall be elected to membership for a term of three years, in such manner that there shall be three members of the Board elected by the alumni, consisting of three classes of one member each. Outgoing members so elected shall continue to serve until their successors’ term of office begins. Such elections shall be conducted in accordance with the By-laws of the Alumni Association of St. John’s College. The president of the Alumni Association Board shall consult with the Chair of the Trustee and Governance Committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors concerning the Association’s nominees and shall advise the Trustee and Governance Committee of its nominees in advance of the Board of Visitors and Governors’ mid-year meeting so that the organizations’ respective nominations can reasonably be coordinated. In the event that for any reason there should be fewer than one member so elected in any class prior to the end of the term of that class, the vacancy may be filled by the Alumni Association of St. John’s College. Newly elected alumni shall begin their terms immediately following the annual meeting of the Board. (5) Faculty Representation at Board Meetings. Three members of the Faculty shall be elected by the Faculty on each campus to attend all regular sessions of the Board on the campus to which they belong, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (6) Student Representation at Board Meetings. Two students shall be elected by the Students on each campus to attend all regular sessions of the Board on the campus to which they belong, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (7) Associate Dean for Graduate Programs Representation at Board Meetings. Each Associate Dean for Graduate Programs may attend all regular sessions of the Board on such Associate Dean’s campus, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (8) Graduate Institute Student Representation at Board Meetings. A student of the Graduate 10 �Institute shall be elected by the Students of the Graduate Institute on each campus to attend all regular sessions of the Board on such student’s campus, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (9) Staff Representation at Board Meetings. The Staff on each campus shall be invited to send two representatives to all regular sessions of the Board at that campus, with voice in deliberation, but without vote. (10) Reelection: A member of the Board elected by the Board or the Alumni may be elected for not more than two consecutive terms, but may, after a second consecutive term, be reelected by the Board or the Alumni to membership at their respective annual meetings in the year following the expiration of the member’s second term. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in extraordinary circumstances, the Trustee and Governance Committee may recommend the reelection of Board members for an additional term of up to three years. (11) Meetings of the Board. (a) The Board shall hold at least three regular meetings annually, at least one of which shall be held on each campus. The last meeting of the academic year shall be called the annual meeting. The time and place of regular meetings shall be determined by the Chair, in consultation with the President, and notice of regular meetings shall be given not less than fifteen days prior to such meetings. (b) Special meetings of the Board may be called by the President, the Chair, the Executive Committee, or any nine members of the Board, not less than seven days after the dispatch of written, faxed, or e-mail notice of the time, place, and purposes of the meeting. Such notice may be dispensed with if waived in writing by all members of the Board either before or after the meeting. (c) Any business may be conducted at a regular meeting without specific notice of such business (except that which is required by law or as provided herein as to elections and amendments), but no business shall be conducted at any special meeting unless notice of such business has been given, or has been waived as above provided. (d) One third of the members of the Board shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. (e) From time to time, administrative matters of the College may require a vote of the full Board without the necessity of calling a special meeting. Such votes may be requested of the full board electronically and conducted electronically without specific notice of said votes (except that which is required by law or as provided herein as to elections and amendments). If, upon receipt of the request for such vote, at least three members of the Board respond that a special meeting of the Board is needed for discussion, the vote will be suspended and procedures for a special meeting will be implemented. A quorum of the Board must respond to such vote in order for the action to be valid. Any action approved by voting outside a meeting of the Board must be ratified in a Plenary Session at a subsequent meeting of the Board. 11 �(f) The Board in regular session is open to elected and ex officio members, to Visitors Emeriti, to Honorary Board Members as guests, to Associates and others invited by the President, and to official representatives of the Faculty, Students, Graduate Institute, and Staff. Attendance at Executive sessions shall be limited to voting members and Visitors Emeriti. Public sessions shall be open without restriction. The Chair of the Board, in consultation with the Presidents, shall determine whether any meeting or portion of a meeting shall be in regular, executive, or public session. (12) Officers of the Board. At each annual meeting the Board shall elect a Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary, to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected. Vacancies in any such offices may be filled at any regular meeting, or any special meeting called for that purpose. Such officers shall perform the customary duties of such offices, and such other duties as the Board may from time to time direct. (13) Committees of the Board. (a) Executive Committee. The Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Presidents, Deans, Chairs of the Finance, Advancement, Visiting, Trustee and Governance, Audit and Compliance Committees, and Chairs of any other committee of the Board at the discretion of the Chair of the Board (such discretion to be exercised annually), the immediate past Chair of the Board (for the remainder of the past Chair’s current Board term), and two other members chosen annually by the Board at the annual meeting shall comprise the Executive Committee of the Board. In intervals between meetings of the Board, the Executive Committee may act for the Board, except in those matters expressly delegated to some other committee, person, or persons. Eight members of the Executive Committee present at a meeting shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. The Executive Committee shall recommend to the Board the identity and tenure of the College-wide President. (b) Presidential Search Committee. There shall be a Presidential Search Committee to recommend the appointment of a President as provided in Article IV(2). (c) Trustee and Governance Committee. There shall be a Trustee and Governance Committee which shall be responsible for the nomination, orientation, and assessment of members of the Board as provided in Article II(3), and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall charge. (d) Visiting Committee. There shall be a Visiting Committee, which shall meet at least once annually with the Instruction Committee on one of the campuses. The Visiting Committee shall discuss the Statement of Educational Policy and Program of the Chair of the Instruction Committee and become acquainted with the aims of the College and how they are being realized, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall charge. The Deans shall be members of the Committee, ex officio. 12 �(e) Finance Committee. There shall be a Finance Committee which shall be responsible for recommending to the Board the annual budgets, policies for the expenditures from endowments, major capital expenditures, and policies for the investment of College assets. It shall be responsible for the oversight of the College’s financial matters, physical plant and compensation policies for faculty and staff, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall charge. The Presidents, Treasurers, and Chair of the Board shall sit on the Committee, ex officio. (f) Audit and Compliance Committee. There shall be an Audit and Compliance Committee, including a Chair, appointed by the Chair of the Board. The Committee shall be responsible for the review in detail of the annual report of the independent auditors and the discussion of audit findings with the auditors, unattended by employees of the College. The Committee shall recommend to the Board the appointment or reappointment of independent auditors to conduct the audit for the next fiscal year. The Committee shall further be responsible for the regular review of compliance by the College with all applicable local, state and federal laws, rules and regulations. The Committee shall report to the Board no less than annually on its review of the audit and of compliance matters, shall bring to the attention of the Board any matters related thereto requiring Board action, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall determine. The Treasurers shall serve as non-voting Staff to the committee. (g) Polity Review Committee. There shall be a Polity Review Committee appointed by the Chair every fifth year. The Chair of the Board shall appoint one of the members to be Chair of the Committee. The Committee shall receive from the Faculty Committee an account of the Faculty’s vote on proposed amendments. The respective Chairs of the Board and Faculty Review Committees shall make such arrangements as they deem appropriate for joint consultation prior to and after the adoption of the report by the Faculty. (h) Advancement Committee. There shall be an Advancement Committee which shall be responsible for the oversight of the College’s fundraising, communications, and alumni relations functions, and shall have such other responsibilities as the Chair of the Board shall determine. The Vice Presidents with responsibility in the areas of Development and Alumni Relations shall be members of the Committee, ex officio. (i) Other Committees. The Chair may appoint such other standing or special committees of the Board as the Chair deems desirable or which the Board may request. (j) Former members of the Board and Visitors Emeriti may be appointed by and at the discretion of the Chair to serve on committees. (k) Except for the Presidential Search Committee and the Polity Review Committee, committee appointments shall be made annually. Members of the Committees serve until their successors have been appointed. 13 �(l) The Chair of the Board shall determine whether any meeting or portion of a meeting shall be in regular, executive, or public session, except that meetings of the Presidential Search, Trustee and Governance, and Executive Committee shall be held in executive session. Any member of the Board may, without invitation, attend any Board committee meeting in regular session with voice but without vote. Committee meetings in public session shall be open without restriction. A committee chair may enter into executive session during a committee meeting if the need arises. Attendance at committee meetings in executive session shall be limited to voting members of that committee and any other person invited by the chair of such Committee or authorized by the Chair of the Board in consultation with the Chair of such committee. (m)Whenever a Capital Campaign is in progress, its Chair shall be an ex-officio voting member of the Finance and Executive Committees. (14) Execution of Contracts, Transfer of Securities, Etc. All contracts of $500,000 or more, notes, deeds, leases, mortgages, releases, bonds for security or indemnity, negotiable instruments, stock certificates, transfers, and powers, and like papers and documents on behalf of the College or the Endowment Funds shall be executed by two persons, of whom one shall be the President, the Chair, or a Vice-Chair, and of whom the other shall be the Secretary of the Board or the Treasurer of the campus concerned. (15) Signing of checks, drafts, etc. All checks, drafts, acceptances, and similar orders for the payment of money on behalf of the College may be signed by the same persons authorized to execute contracts, etc., pursuant to Section (14) hereof, but may also be signed by such persons, and in such manner, as the Board may from time to time direct by appropriate resolution. (16) The College shall indemnify, to the full extent permitted by law, any current or former member of the Board or Officer of the College or any person who, while a member of the Board or an Officer of the College, may have served at the College’s request as a director, officer, partner or trustee of another entity, against any judgments, penalties, fines, settlements and reasonable expenses actually and necessarily incurred by him or her in connection with the defense of any action, suit or proceeding to which he or she is made a party by reason of being or having been such member of the Board or Officer of the College. Article III THE FACULTY The Visitors and Governors by these ordinances hereby delegate to the Faculty of St. John's College, the Presidents, the Deans, the other Tutors, the Tutors Emeriti, the Vice Presidents, the Treasurers, College-wide Officials and the Associates "powers and authorities" for the "instruction, discipline, and government" of the College. 14 �Article IV THE FACULTY: THE PRESIDENT (1) There shall be a President for the Annapolis campus and a President for the Santa Fe campus, each appointed as provided in Article IV (2). There is delegated to each President by the Visitors and Governors executive responsibility and authority for the instruction, discipline, and government of the President’s campus, and the President, in turn, may delegate such authority. In the interest of the orderly conduct of business and of maintaining and promoting the unity of the College, the Presidents shall regularly consult and communicate with each other and, as appropriate, with other members of the College, on matters of common concern. The delegation of campus executive responsibility and authority made by the Visitors and Governors in this paragraph is not intended to be in derogation of Article XVIII of this Polity. (2) The President shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of a Committee composed of five members of the Board of Visitors and Governors appointed by the Chair of the Board, at least one of whom is an alumnus, the Deans, and one Tutor having tenure from each campus elected by the Faculty on that campus. This Committee shall be known as the Presidential Search Committee. It shall consult with the continuing President in a regular and timely fashion. Prior to making its final recommendation, it shall, on both campuses, consult with all other appropriate persons and shall arrange for the final candidates to meet with the Faculty,the Instruction Committee, and, to the extent they have been formed, the Associates Councils and the Staff Councils of each campus. The compensation of the President shall be determined by the Chair of the Board in consultation with the Vice-Chair of the Board and the Chair of the Finance Committee. (3) The President shall concurrently be a Tutor, but the provisions of Article VI need not apply. (4) The President and persons to whom the President delegates authority shall consult with the Deans, other appropriate persons, and appropriate Faculty committees in matters of policy, initiation of programs, and setting of priorities affecting the general welfare of the College. (5) The President shall appoint, or delegate the power to appoint, other committees as may be necessary for the carrying out of the President’s duties for which no provision is made under Article IX. (6) If in the judgment of the Board of Visitors and Governors, the College is facing a financial exigency at either or both of its campuses which could call for a reduction in the number of Faculty positions, both Presidents shall immediately advise the Faculty of the nature and extent of the financial difficulty and consult with them concerning the best way to address the situation. The Faculty may then make a formal recommendation to the Presidents on ways to meet the problem, or, if the Faculty fails so to act, the Deans and the Instruction Committee shall propose a plan to the Presidents. The Presidents shall jointly then 15 �determine a plan which specifies a preferred course of action to be taken. All necessary steps must be taken in timely fashion as prescribed by the Board. Nothing herein provided shall limit the power of the Board to act otherwise in the event of need to reduce or eliminate Faculty positions. Article V THE FACULTY: THE CHAIR OF THE INSTRUCTION COMMITTEE AND THE DEANS (1) The Chair of the Instruction Committee. (a) There is delegated to the Chair of the Instruction Committee responsibility and authority for the organization of the program of instruction in the liberal arts that is followed by the Tutors and the Students. (b) The Deans shall serve alternately, for a term of one year, as Chair of the Instruction Committee. (c) Each year the Chair of the Instruction Committee shall, after consultation with the Instruction Committee on the Chair’s campus, and after discussion with the Instruction Committee of the College, submit a Statement of Educational Policy and Program to the Faculty as a whole for discussion. The Presidents shall present the Statement, together with an account of the Faculty discussion of it, and their responses to it, as a report to the Board of Visitors and Governors for its consideration. (d) Should the Chair of the Instruction Committee or the Chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors deem it appropriate, the Chair of the Instruction Committee shall report to the Board on instructional matters, and shall respond to such questions as the Board, through its Chair, may ask. (2) The Deans. (a) There is delegated to the Deans on their respective campuses responsibility and authority for the supervision of the program of instruction and for the general welfare of the students and for whatever government of the students be necessary for the greatest possible attainment of aims of the program. Each Dean shall be the Chair of the Instruction Committee on such Dean’s campus. In carrying out the Dean’s duties, each Dean shall consult regularly with the President and with the Instruction Committee and the other appropriate Faculty committees on that campus. (b) The Deans shall be appointed for terms of five years from among the Tutors by the Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President after consultation with a special committee of seven, four from the campus for which the Dean is being chosen and three from the other campus, selected from among themselves by the Tutors having tenure. 16 �(c) A Dean shall be appointed from among the tutors who have themselves been appointed in accord with Article VI(3). If non-tenured, the appointee shall acquire tenure upon becoming Dean, in which case the provisions of Article VI(3)(a) regarding reappointment schedules shall not apply. (d) To assist them in carrying out their duties, the Deans shall recommend one or more Tutors to be appointed by the President with the title of Assistant Dean. (e) During the absence of the President from either campus, the Dean on that campus shall if necessary exercise the President's prerogative of final decision. (f) During the absence of the Dean from either campus a Tutor with tenure named by the Dean shall act for the Dean. (g) The Dean on each campus shall appoint such committees as may be necessary for the carrying out of the Dean’s duties for which no other provision is made. Article VI THE FACULTY: THE TUTORS (1) The primary responsibilities of the Tutors are to teach and to make themselves as competent as possible in all parts of the St. John's Program. (2) The Tutors shall have authority to recommend to the Visitors and Governors candidates for degrees of their respective campuses. (3) Appointment and Reappointment of Tutors. Tutors shall be appointed by the Visitors and Governors upon recommendation of the President in accordance with the recommendation of the Dean and the Instruction Committee on that campus where the Tutors so appointed shall teach. (a) The schedule of regular appointment of Tutors on each campus shall be either (i)(A) or (i)(B) below, to be decided by the President in accordance with the recommendation of the Dean and the Instruction Committee on that campus where the Tutors so appointed shall teach: (i)(A) New Tutors shall be appointed for one year unless they are appointed at midyear, in which case the initial appointment shall be for a year and a half. First reappointments shall be for one year. Second and third reappointments shall be for two and three years respectively. (i)(B) New Tutors shall be appointed for two years unless they are appointed at midyear, in which case the initial appointment shall be for a year and a half. First and second reappointments shall be for two and three years respectively. 17 �(ii) A Tutor who has completed a three-year appointment must either be given a tenure appointment or not be reappointed as Tutor. A Tutor may, however, be given a tenure appointment as early as the conclusion of the first year of a three-year appointment. Procedures leading to a recommendation for an early tenure appointment shall be initiated by the Dean and Instruction Committee, but not without the consent of the appointee, and shall not prejudice subsequent consideration for a tenure appointment. Tenure appointments shall not continue beyond retirement. Tutors Emeriti shall retain their privileges and responsibilities in voting at Faculty meetings. (iii) Before making recommendations to the President on tenure appointments the Dean on each campus shall consult with the Instruction Committee on that campus, after seeking the advice of the Tutors on that campus. (iv) A Tutor, to be recommended for a tenure appointment, must have served full-time at the campus where the recommendation is to be made for the two years immediately preceding the year in which that recommendation is made, the provisions of (ii) above notwithstanding. In ordinary cases, these two years of service will be the second year of a two-year appointment and the first year of a three-year appointment. These requirements may be waived by the President on the recommendation of the Dean and Instruction Committee on that campus. (b) A non-tenure appointment as Tutor establishes the possibility, but not the presumption, of its renewal and the granting of a tenure appointment. Procedures for considering non-tenure appointments differ from those for considering tenure appointments. Satisfaction of appointment criteria admits of degree. With each successive reappointment, the criteria are applied more rigorously. For a tenure appointment the application is especially strict. (c) For the purpose of temporary transfer between campuses, special appointments of one or two years may be granted to a Tutor in addition to his or her regular appointments. The Tutor may ask that such an appointment be counted as a regular appointment for the purpose of (a) above. In the case of a permanent transfer a Tutor may ask that years of service at the other campus be counted toward tenure according to the provisions of (a) above. Nevertheless, the provisions of (3)(a)(iv) prevail. (d) Special one-year appointments and reappointments may be given to Tutors who intend to teach on a part-time basis only. Such a Tutor may subsequently apply for and receive a regular appointment. Special part-time appointments may then be counted on a fractional basis toward eligibility for tenure, subject to the provisions of (3)(a)(iv). In establishing eligibility for sabbatical leave, special part-time appointments shall be computed proportionately. (e) Visiting Tutors may be appointed for a term or a year. 18 �(4) Notification. (a) A Tutor under consideration for a non-tenure appointment to begin in a certain calendar year shall be notified by the President no later than December 15th of the preceding calendar year whether reappointment will be recommended to the Board of Visitors and Governors. A Tutor who is reappointed shall be notified by the President by March 1st of the calendar year in which the new appointment is to begin. (b) A Tutor under consideration for a tenure appointment to begin in a certain calendar year shall be notified by the President no later than May 31st of the preceding calendar year whether the appointment will be recommended to the Board of Visitors and Governors. A Tutor who is appointed shall be notified by the President by July 31st of that same preceding year. (5) A Tutor may apply to the Instruction Committee of the College not later than January 15th for a transfer of campus for the next academic year. Transfers shall require approval of both Deans after consultation with their Instruction Committees. (6) (a) A Tutor’s appointment may be terminated by the Board of Visitors and Governors for one of the following reasons only: (i) failure or inability to perform teaching duties in a satisfactory manner, (ii) moral turpitude, or (iii) violation of the College’s Sexual Misconduct Policy or Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy, where a violation has been found and invocation of Article VI, 6(a) of the Polity is determined pursuant to the relevant Policy to be an appropriate sanction, after all provided appeals under the relevant Policy have either been exhausted or not taken. With respect to termination recommendations made pursuant to 6(a)(i) or (ii) above, the President shall make such a recommendation to the Board of Visitors and Governors only with the concurrence of the Dean and the Instruction Committee of the campus concerned. Before making such a recommendation, the President shall advise the Tutor affected, and the Tutor shall have the right to be heard by the Instruction Committee of the campus concerned or, at the Tutor’s option, by another committee to be designated by the President for this purpose. With respect to termination recommendations made pursuant to 6(a)(iii) above, the President shall make such a recommendation to the Board of Visitors and Governors after consultation with the Dean and the Instruction Committee of the campus concerned. When making such recommendation, the President shall note whether the Dean and the Instruction Committee of the campus concerned concur in the recommendation. Before making such a recommendation, the President shall advise the Tutor affected, and the Tutor shall have the right to be heard by the Instruction 19 �Committee of the campus concerned or, at the Tutor’s option, by another committee to be designated by the President for this purpose. (b) Either Dean, with the approval of the Instruction Committee on the campus concerned, may recommend to the President that in the interest of instruction a Tutor be temporarily relieved of duties in whole or in part at any time. When such action is taken, the Tutor's salary shall be continued for the remainder of the current academic year. (7) The sabbatical leave program is designed to provide Tutors with an opportunity for study, rest, and renewal of spirit, in anticipation of future teaching. It is the objective of the program to grant all applications for sabbatical leave meeting the conditions for eligibility set out in (a) of this section. It is understood that Tutors on such leave will not undertake full-time remunerative employment elsewhere and will return to the College. (a) Eligibility for sabbatical leave shall be upon the following conditions: (i) A Tutor who has received a tenure appointment may apply for a full year of sabbatical leave at full salary, to be taken upon completion of the equivalent of seven full years of service to the College since the original appointment, or the equivalent of seven full years of service since any previous sabbatical leave. (ii) Such a Tutor may apply for an earlier sabbatical leave of a full year at partial salary, or a partial year at full salary. The fractional salary or fractional year shall be determined by the number of years of teaching completed in relation to the prescribed total for either an initial or a subsequent sabbatical leave, as the case may be. In no case shall a Tutor be paid more than the Tutor’s regular salary. (iii) Upon completion of sabbatical leave, a Tutor is expected to return to the College for at least two more years. (b) If, in the judgment of the College-wide President, after consultation with the other campus President and the two Deans, financial or academic needs of the College should require that fewer sabbatical leaves be granted on either or both campuses in a given year than there are qualified applicants, the College-wide President may, with the approval of the Chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, set a maximum number of sabbatical leaves for one or both campuses for that year. If the maximum number of sabbatical leaves on a campus is to be set based on the academic needs of the College, the approval of the Dean of that campus is also required. (c) If in a year there are more qualified applicants for sabbatical leave at any one campus than there are leaves to be granted at that campus, then those members shall have precedence who meet the following conditions in the order set forth: (i) Those who have served for the greater number of years since their first appointment as Tutor or since their last sabbatical leave, whichever is more recent; 20 �(ii) Those whose service has been continuous throughout those years; (iii) Those whose last sabbatical leave was postponed pursuant to 7(b); (iv) Those who have seniority of appointment. When there is a conflict of precedence, the Dean and the Instruction Committee on the campus concerned shall be consulted. (d) A Tutor eligible for sabbatical leave shall make application to the President before November 1st for leave to begin the following July 1st, and shall be informed of the action upon the application not later than January 1st. (8) The President, with the concurrence of the Dean after consultation with the Instruction Committee on the campus concerned, may grant leaves of absence to Tutors for a period of one year or less. At that time it shall be determined whether the leave shall be counted as service to the College with respect to eligibility for sabbatical leave and, if so, how. The decision with respect to a request for leave of absence shall be made in the light of the requirements both of the applicant Tutor and of the whole College. (a) Leave of absence may be renewed upon request but not more than twice in succession except in extraordinary circumstances. (b) A request for a leave of absence shall be submitted to the President as early as possible in the academic year before the year in which the leave is to be taken, but not later than January 15th of that year. Requests for leaves of absence may be withdrawn at any time prior to April 1st of the year in which the request is submitted. Requests for leaves of absence for the second semester must be submitted no later than October 15th. (c) Tutors on sabbatical leave or leave of absence remain members of the Faculty with the right of full participation in Faculty meetings and all other College exercises. Article VII THE FACULTY: THE VICE PRESIDENTS AND OTHER OFFICIALS (1) A Vice President with responsibility in the areas of Development and Alumni Relations on each campus shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President made after consultation with the Dean on that campus. Upon the recommendation of the College-wide President, and approval of the Board of Visitors and Governors there may be a Campaign Director. (2) The Vice President of Enrollment shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the College-wide President, in consultation with the 21 �other President and the two Deans, and shall be responsible for the supervision of the Admissions and Financial Aid Directors. (3) There may be such other persons appointed with the title of Vice President as deemed appropriate by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the College-wide President made after consultation with the other President and the two Deans. (4) The Treasurers shall have charge, on their respective campuses, under the supervision of the President, of all funds and property, and shall have authority to carry out fiscal and property transactions, and to receive and disburse funds, subject to the provisions of this Polity and other directions and arrangements pursuant thereto. (5) The Treasurer on each campus shall be appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President made after consultation with the Dean on that campus. (6) There shall be a College-wide Chief Financial Officer, appointed by the Board of Visitors and Governors upon the recommendation of the College-wide President, in consultation with the other President and two Deans. (7) The compensation of the Vice Presidents and the College-wide Chief Financial Officer shall be set by the College-wide President, in consultation with the Chair of the Board. (8) The following are the College-wide Officials: (a) the Vice Presidents with responsibility in the areas of Development and Alumni Relations; (b) the College-wide Chief Financial Officer, and (c) such other officials as the Board shall approve upon the recommendation of the College-wide President, in consultation with the other President and the two Deans. (9) The Vice Presidents, the Treasurers and other College-wide Officials may be appointed Tutors under the provisions of Article VI(3)(d). Article VIII THE FACULTY: THE ASSOCIATES (1) Associate members of the Faculty on each campus shall be appointed by the President in consultation with the Dean of that campus. On each campus, the President shall have ultimate executive authority over the Associates. (2) Associates may be appointed Tutors under the provisions of Article VI(3)(d). (3) The Associates on either campus may establish for themselves an Associates Council for the purpose of considering College matters of concern to them and communicating with other members of the College. 22 �(4) The Associates Councils may establish such committees as they deem appropriate. (5) There shall be the following Associates, as deemed necessary by the President on each campus, with the powers and responsibilities provided. (a) The Registrars. The Registrars shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses. They shall prepare and supervise the registration of students and shall be responsible for the academic records and schedules of students. (b) The Librarians. The Librarians shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for the operation of the library. Appointments of professional members of the Library Staff shall be made upon the recommendation of the Librarian to the Dean on each campus. (c) The Director of Student Activities and the Director of Athletics. The Director of Student Activities and the Director of Athletics, as the case may be, shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for devising and directing programs of recreational activities. (d) The Executive Director of Campus Health and Wellness. The Executive Director of Campus Health and Wellness shall be responsible to the Presidents on their respective campuses on matters relating to the physical and mental health and well-being of the Students. (e) The Directors of Admissions. The Directors of Admissions shall be responsible to the Vice President of Enrollment for the administrative functions on their respective campuses. Since it belongs to the Deans to supervise the composition of the student body with a view to the conduct of the Program of Instruction, admissions policies will be decided in concert with the Deans, and the Deans shall have final authority over who is admitted. (f) The Directors of Alumni Relations. The Directors of Alumni Relations shall be responsible to the Vice Presidents with responsibility in the areas of Development and Alumni Relations. Their primary duty is to enable the College and the Alumni Association to be of service to alumni. (g) The Directors of Financial Aid. The Directors of Financial Aid shall be responsible to the Vice President of Enrollment for the administration of financial aid programs. Since it belongs to the Deans to supervise the composition of the student body with a view to the conduct of the Program of Instruction, financial aid policies will be decided in concert with the Deans. (h) The Directors of Career Services. The Directors of Career Services shall be responsible to the Deans on their respective campuses for helping and counseling students with respect to graduate and professional schools and careers. 23 �(i) The Director of College Information Technology Services. The Director of College Information Technology Services shall be responsible to the Collegewide Chief Financial Officer for the development and management of information services college-wide. (j) The Directors of Laboratories. The Directors of Laboratories shall be responsible to the Dean, in consultation with the Laboratory archons, for training and directing the student laboratory assistants, designing experiments for the laboratory program, and purchasing and maintaining laboratory equipment. Article IX THE FACULTY: FACULTY COMMITTEES (1) College-wide Committees (a) The Instruction Committee (i) The Instruction Committee shares with its Chairs responsibility for the program of instruction of the College. It shall consist of twelve Tutors in addition to the Deans. The Presidents shall sit with the Committee ex officio. Six of the Tutors shall be elected from each campus of the College. The Instruction Committee shall meet annually. On each campus the members of the Instruction Committee and the Dean as Chair constitute the Instruction Committee of the College on that campus. The President sits ex officio with the Instruction Committee on each campus. (ii) Each of the members of the Instruction Committee shall serve for a term of three years, and the terms shall be arranged in such a way that each year the terms of two members at each campus shall expire. Terms begin and end the day following commencement exercises. Annually, and separately at each campus, the President with the Dean on his campus, after consulting with the Instruction Committee and seeking the advice of the other Tutors on that campus, shall at the last regular Faculty meeting on that campus nominate four Tutors of whom two shall be elected by the Tutors to membership on the Instruction Committee. The Faculty shall be informed of the names of the nominees prior to the meeting at which the election occurs. At the expiration of the three-year term a member of the Instruction Committee shall for one year be ineligible for reelection. (iii) If for any reason a member of the Instruction Committee is unable to serve for a part of his or her term, another Tutor shall be chosen to serve for that part of the term. For this purpose the President and the Dean, in consultation with the Instruction Committee on the campus where the vacancy occurs, shall nominate two Tutors of whom the Tutors shall elect one in a regular Faculty meeting. 24 �(iv) If the Instruction Committee resigns with the Deans on a matter of confidence and the resignations are accepted, the President, in consultation with the new Deans and after seeking the advice of the other Tutors, shall nominate nine Tutors for the six vacancies on each campus in such a manner that two out of each three nominees shall be elected by the Tutors for each of the three classes to fill the unexpired terms. (b) The Tutors' Compensation Committee (i) There shall be a Tutors' Compensation Committee of six Tutors, three to be elected by the Tutors on each campus, and the chair shall annually alternate between campuses. The Committee shall advise the Presidents concerning Tutors' compensation and related matters; it shall make annual reviews of the College's statement of Tutors' salaries and other compensation of Tutors and report to the Tutors and the Presidents recommendations consequent upon the review. (ii) Members of the Committee shall be elected annually on each campus for terms of three years in such a manner that the term of one member on each campus terminates each year. The Tutors' Compensation Committee on each campus shall provide the Tutors on that campus with two nominations for each vacancy on the Committee on that campus. Additional nominations may be made at the Faculty meeting when election shall be made. (2) Campus-specific Committees (a) The Campus Planning Committees. The Faculty on each campus shall elect five of its members as a Campus Planning Committee. Two members shall be elected to the Committee annually except in every third year, when one member shall be chosen. The President, the Dean, one of the Assistant Deans, and the Treasurer on each campus shall sit ex officio with the Committee on that campus. It shall be the duty of the respective committees to advise the President on the construction of new buildings, the renovation of old buildings, landscaping of grounds, and all matters relating to the maintenance and development of the campus. (b) The Library Committees. The President on each campus, in consultation with the Librarian and the Dean, shall appoint three Tutors on each campus to serve as a Library Committee. The President, the Dean, and the Librarian shall themselves be ex officio members of the Committee, and the Librarian shall serve as Chair. It shall be the duty of the Library Committees to assist the Librarians in making the Libraries serve the ends of the College and its program; it shall be their duty to advise the Librarians in regard to Library policy and acquisitions. (c) The Information Technology Committees. The Dean on each campus shall appoint three Tutors to serve as an Information Technology Committee, one of whom shall serve as Chair. Each Tutor shall serve a three-year term. The Dean, the Director of College Information Technology Services, and the Librarian shall be ex officio members. It shall be the duty of the Information Technology Committees to advise the 25 �Director of College Information Technology Services in regard to the needs of the College and its Program. (d) The Prize Committees. The President on each campus shall appoint Tutors on each campus to supervise the awarding of prizes on the respective campuses. The Committees shall have full authority to decide what prizes shall be awarded and to name the recipients of the prizes. (e) The Fellowship Committees. On each campus there shall be a Fellowship Committee appointed by the President. It shall be the duty of this Committee to inform students of fellowships for which they may be eligible, to assist them in applying for fellowships, and to act on behalf of the College in any matter relating to application for fellowships. (f) Other Committees. The Faculty on each campus shall have authority to elect, or to request the President to appoint, additional committees that may from time to time become necessary. Article X THE FACULTY: FACULTY PROCEDURE (1) Procedure for Instructional Proposals. (a) (i) Any proposal concerning matters of instruction that may affect the College as a whole shall originate with the Dean and the Instruction Committee on either campus. A decision as to whether a proposal is college-wide or campus-specific shall be made by the Deans and Instruction Committee of the College. They shall make this decision after notifying the Faculty on both campuses and inviting their comment. Written statements of college-wide instructional proposals shall be distributed to the Faculty at least two weeks before the Faculty meeting at which they are to be presented; the proposal shall be presented to the whole Faculty by the Chair of the Instruction Committee, either in person or through the other Dean. If, after full discussion of any proposal so presented, there be no objection on the part of any Tutor, the measure stands approved and becomes effective as of the date specified. If, after full discussion, a Tutor objects to the proposal and holds to the objection, the proposal shall be submitted to vote of the Tutors at special Faculty meetings called by the Presidents within a month. Any objections that have been made and held to and submitted in writing shall be transmitted immediately in writing to the whole faculty. Any objections that have been made and held to but not submitted in writing shall be reported immediately in writing to the whole Faculty. If, after discussion, any objection has been made and held to, the Presidents, in calling special Faculty meetings, shall report the statement of the Chair of the Instruction and the Dean on the other campus as to whether it be a matter of confidence; and in 26 �submitting the proposal to vote, the Chair of the Instruction Committee and the Dean on the other campus shall, at the special Faculty meetings, repeat their statement as to whether it be a matter of confidence. The vote may then be taken and tallied by the Presidents in such a fashion that the Tutors shall have recorded their decision acting as a whole. If the proposal be one that the Chair of the Instruction Committee and the other Dean have declared a matter of confidence and if it be defeated by majority vote, the Deans and the Instruction Committee shall immediately resign. If it be passed by majority vote, it shall become effective as of the date specified therefore. For the confidence procedure a quorum shall consist of three-fourths of all resident Tutors on each campus. (ii) Any instructional proposal that has been deemed campus-specific shall be subject to the procedure set forth above, except that, if an objection is made and held to on either campus, voting shall proceed only on the campus were the proposal is intended to be put into effect. Any objections that have been made and held to and submitted in writing on the other campus shall be transmitted immediately to the voting Faculty. Any objections that have been made and held to but not submitted in writing shall be reported immediately in writing to the voting Faculty. If the confidence procedure is invoked, it shall be only by the Dean on the voting campus, and it shall affect the Dean and the Instruction Committee only on that campus. (iii) The President may refuse to accept the resignation of the Deans or the Instruction Committee, any or all of them, whenever in the judgment of the President such resignation would be detrimental to the proper functioning of the College; provided, however, that if any six or more Tutors shall petition the Visitors and Governors, the latter shall review the President's decision within four weeks, during which time the Deans and the Instruction Committee shall continue in office. (iv) In the event that the proposal be defeated and the resignations be accepted, the President shall proceed to the choice of new Deans in accordance with the provisions of Article V (2)(b). (b) Upon either a petition of not less than one-tenth of the Tutors on either campus or a request from the President, the Dean and Instruction Committee on that campus shall consider any recommendation concerning instruction and shall report to the Faculty within one year concerning it. If the Dean and Instruction Committee make a proposal, the procedure of Article X(1) shall apply. (2) Faculty Meetings. (a) Regular monthly meetings of the Faculty shall be called upon due notice by the President; except that in the period comprising the months of December and January only one regular meeting need be called. The President or, in his absence, the Dean, shall preside. In the absence of the President and the Dean, the Faculty shall elect one of 27 �its members to preside. (b) Special meetings of the Faculty may be called upon due notice by the President alone or at the request of five Faculty members. (c) Due notice shall be construed to mean no less than three days notice, except in cases of emergency. (d) A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Faculty in residence except as otherwise provided. (e) Only Tutors may vote on instructional matters. All Faculty members may vote on all other matters not specifically restricted in the Polity. (3) The Secretary of the Faculty. At the last regular meeting of an academic year, the Faculty on each campus shall elect one of its members, then in at least his or her third year at the College, as Secretary. The Secretary shall assist in the preparation and circulation of the agenda for Faculty meetings, shall keep the minutes of such meetings, and shall collect and circulate reports of Faculty committees. Article XI THE SCHOLARS-IN-RESIDENCE AND THE ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE The Scholars-in-Residence and the Artists-in-Residence shall be appointed from time to time by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President after consultation with the Dean and the Instruction Committee on the campus where the Scholars and Artists shall reside. Article XII THE STUDENTS (1) The primary responsibilities of the Students are to study and to make themselves as competent as possible in all parts of the St. John's Program. Their advice and service shall be sought by the Faculty in such matters and in such ways as may best serve the general welfare of the College. (2) The Students of St. John's College shall constitute the Student Polity of St. John's College in Annapolis and in Santa Fe. (3) The Student Polity in Annapolis or Santa Fe may establish for itself a government which is representative of all polity members. The Dean on each campus may delegate to the Student government a share of the responsibility for the general welfare of the Students and whatever government of the Students may be necessary for the greatest possible attainment of the aims of the program. The duties of the Student Government may include: 28 �(a) the management of funds available to the Student Polity; (b) the sanctioning of all student clubs, organizations, and activities, and their regulation, if necessary; (c) the representation of the Students of St. John's College to the community outside the College; (d) the establishment and maintenance of formal channels of communication between the Students and the Faculty; and (e) any other duties agreed upon by the Students and the Dean. Article XIII THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE (1) The Associate Deans for Graduate Programs. (a) There shall be an Associate Dean for Graduate Programs on each campus to whom shall be delegated responsibility and authority, under the Chair of the Instruction Committee, for the organization and supervision on the Associate Dean’s campus of the graduate program of instruction in the liberal arts and for matters concerning the general welfare of the students. Concerning matters that affect the Graduate Institute as a whole the Associate Dean shall, in consultation with the other Associate Dean, be responsible to the Chair of the Instruction Committee. Concerning matters limited to one campus, the Associate Dean on that campus shall be responsible to the Dean on that campus. (b) The Associate Deans shall be appointed for terms of four years from among the Tutors by the Board of Visitors and Governors on the recommendation of the President, after consultation with the Deans and a special committee consisting of five members, three from the campus on which the new Associate Dean will serve, and two from the other campus, selected from among themselves by the Tutors having tenure. (c) Every three years, in alternation, one of the Associate Deans shall write a Statement of Educational Policy and Program for the Graduate Institute. The Associate Dean who writes the Statement, after consulting with the Committee for the Graduate Institute on his or her campus, and with the other Associate Dean, shall submit the Statement to the Instruction Committee for discussion at its joint meeting. Should an Associate Dean be asked to write a statement in the first year of his or her term, the Associate Dean may delay this statement for a year. In such a case, the other Associate Dean shall write his or her statement in the following year. (2) The Faculty Teaching in the Graduate Institute. (a) Each Associate Dean, after consultation with the Committee for the Graduate Institute on 29 �that campus, and in accordance with the recommendation of the Instruction Committee on the same campus, shall recommend to the President Tutors for appointment in the summer session of the Graduate Institute. (b) During the summer term the Tutors teaching in the Graduate Institute on each campus shall have the authority to recommend to the Board of Visitors and Governors candidates for degrees. (3) Committees for the Graduate Institute. (a) On each campus the Committee for the Graduate Institute shares with the Associate Dean on the same campus responsibility for carrying out the Graduate programs of instruction and for the general welfare of the students. (b) Each Committee shall consist of three Tutors who have experience in the Institute, in addition to the Associate Dean, who shall serve as Chair. (c) Members of each Committee shall be appointed by the Associate Dean with the concurrence of the Dean on the same campus after consultation with the Committee for the Graduate Institute on that campus. (4) Proposals concerning matters of instruction or policy shall originate with one of the Associate Deans, after consultation with the other Associate Dean and with the Committee for the Graduate Institute, and shall be submitted to the Dean on the originating campus for handling in accordance with Article X(l)(a)(i). Article XIV THE ALUMNI (1) Alumni shall be life-long members of the College, since St. John's College is a community not limited by geographical location or fixed periods of time. (2) The Alumni Association is a means by which Alumni participate in the life of the College. Through the election of alumni members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, Alumni share in the direction of that life. In these and other ways, Alumni shall be given the opportunity to serve the College. (3) The College shall cooperate with the Alumni Association to enable Alumni to assist in providing services such as recruiting and interviewing prospective students, placing graduates in appropriate employment, and advising students concerning careers and admission to graduate and professional schools. (4) The College, in cooperation with the Alumni Association, may provide seminars and other appropriate educational activities in Annapolis, in Santa Fe, and in other places. 30 �Article XV THE STAFF (1) Members of the Staff assist with the administration and maintenance of the College, performing duties necessary to its well-being. They are subject to appropriate Staff rules and regulations. (2) Members of the Staff on either campus may establish for themselves a Staff Council for the purpose of better communication and understanding of College policies as a benefit to the College as a whole. The Staff Council shall seek to establish and maintain formal channels of communication among the whole Staff and between the Staff and the appropriate members of the College. The Treasurer on each campus shall review Staff employment regulations with the Staff Council and discuss with them any changes proposed. The Staff Council, if formed, shall meet at least twice annually with the President on its campus and the Staff of that campus. (3) The Staff Council may establish such committees as it deems appropriate. Article XVI AMENDMENTS AND REVIEW (1) Amendments to this Polity may be proposed by a majority of the Board Polity Review Committee, or by a petition submitted by not fewer than ten percent of the members of the Board, or by the Faculty as provided for in section (2) and (3) below. Written notice of a proposed amendment must be provided to the Board and to the Faculty not less than 30 days prior to the date of the Board meeting at which the amendment is to be considered. The Faculty shall have the right to inform the Board in writing of its recommendation with respect to the proposed amendment by the time of that meeting. This Polity may be amended by a two-thirds vote of those members voting at any regular or special meeting of the Board, provided that the votes of no fewer than one-third of the members of the entire Board eligible to vote are in favor of such amendment. (2) Amendments may be proposed at any regular meeting of either the Faculty in Annapolis or the Faculty in Santa Fe upon petition of not less than ten percent of the members on either campus. No such proposal shall be acted upon earlier than the next regular meeting of the Faculty, whether in Annapolis or in Santa Fe. A two-thirds vote of the entire Faculty in residence, including at least a simple majority vote of the Faculty in residence on each of the campuses, shall be required for approval and the amendment shall not become effective unless approved by the Board in the manner set forth in Section (1) above. (3) Every five years this Polity shall be reviewed by a committee of six, three to be elected by the Faculty on each campus. That committee shall notify, to the extent they have been formed, the Associates Councils and the Staff Councils of each campus and give consideration to any views expressed by those Councils. The report of the Committee shall be submitted to 31 �one regular Faculty meeting and voted upon at the next regular Faculty meeting. A twothirds vote of the entire Faculty in residence, including at least a simple majority vote of the Faculty in residence on each of the campuses, shall be required for approval of any proposed amendments. Whatever action is thus recommended by the Faculty shall be submitted to the Board for final decision in the manner set forth in Section (1) above. Article XVII COMPLIANCE WITH LAW No provision of this Polity shall be construed to contravene any applicable federal or state law. If any provision is determined to contravene any such law, that provision shall be deemed not a part of this Polity, and this Polity's remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect. Article XVIII COLLEGE-WIDE MANAGEMENT St. John’s College is one college, with two campuses. The officers of the College shall manage its resources in such a way as to strengthen the College, and thereby improve each campus, in a collegial manner and making due allowance for campus flexibility. (1) The Board of Visitors and Governors shall appoint one of the Presidents as a College-wide President, with the title “President, St. John’s College.” a. The term of the College-wide President shall be up to four years. b. All College-wide associates and College-wide Officials shall report to the Collegewide President, and the College-wide President shall have the authority to determine policies and supervise the execution of policies in those college-wide matters supervised by the College-wide associates and officers. c. The College-wide President shall have a cabinet consisting of the College-wide President as chair, the other President, the two Deans, the College-wide Financial Officer, and other members whom the College-wide President may appoint. It will review proposed budgets prior to their being presented to the Finance Committee of the Board. It will also meet prior to Board meetings to review performance in the fiscal year to date and emerging budgetary strengths and weaknesses. 32 �d. The College-wide President shall not have executive authority over instructional matters assigned to the Instruction Committee and its Chair under Articles V and IX(1) of the Polity. (2) The President of the other campus shall have the title “President, St. John’s College, Santa Fe” or “President, St. John’s College, Annapolis” as appropriate. The President shall assist the College-wide President in his or her formulation and execution of College-wide policies, and report to the Board concerning matters specific to his or her campus. (3) The following persons are Officers of the College: a. The Presidents b. The Deans c. The Treasurers, and d. The College-wide Officials. 33 � 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 Charter and Polity of the College Description An account of the resource Revised and amended editions of the St. John's College Charter and Polity.<br /><br />The College's first Charter and Polity was published as the <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3768">September 1950</a> issue of the <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37">Bulletin of St. John's College in Annapolis</a></em>. Revised and amended versions were published as individual issues of the <em>Bulletin</em> in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3746">1951</a>, <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7844">1960</a>, <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7845">1963</a>, and <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7846">1965</a>. <br /><br />The Charter and Polity was published as a separate document in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7850">1955</a> and again from <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7851">1970</a> forward. The most recent version of the Charter and Polity is also available on the College's <a href="https://www.sjc.edu/about/leadership/board-visitors-governors/charter-polity">website</a>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Items in the Charter and Polity of the College Collection" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?tags=Charter+and+Polity&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate">Items in the Charter and Polity of the College 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College 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 PDF Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Charter and Polity of the College, 2020 Description An account of the resource Charter and Polity of the College, amended and restated February 2020. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020-02 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Legal instruments Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Charter_and_Polity_St_Johns_College_2020 Charter and Polity https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ead8a0ba76c93341ebef5b265269e9d9.pdf 0352fbc2003ae50c2e7049079dc78f18 PDF Text Text THE BADFLY Photo by Elizabeth Dowdy, A’23 “I just feel like I can't even trust the administration anymore! Are we a joke to them? Standing on the quad cluelessly, hands empty, hips still? Expected to chat with my fellow peers naturally?” Where are the Hula Hoops?, pg 13 St. John’s College Vol. XLII, Issue 01 Annapolis, Maryland April 30, 2021 �{expose} Investigation of the Migrating Johnnie Chairs Rose Zhang D ear Mr. Morris, In my last email, I told you about the strange phenomenon I’ve most recently encountered. Students have repeatedly reported the odd occurrence in room 305 of Mcdowell Hall: no matter how they take away the chairs from that room, 305 always ends up with more chairs they began with. There are rumors spreading that the building is haunted. So I have begun my research according to a group of student’s bequests upon the “migrating chairs” in Mcdowell Hall. And I’m very pleased to inform you that I have made tremendous progress in this investigation. While the Johnnie chair has its unique aesthetic, nevertheless, I find it unpleasant to sit in for a long period. I still cannot fathom how each of those chairs costs around 300$ (although I’m not certain of this information since I heard it from a fellow student’s remark.) I always thought the chairs had souls in and of themselves, as they would make noise at the most inconvenient time in class, or fall backward. But my apologies, I digress, I shall refrain myself from expostulating about the questionable quality of the chair I find myself sitting in. After I finished my work, it was past midnight. As I walked through the Great Hall, however, I could hear the sound of a chair, or multiple chairs, scratching the floor. The sound came inconsistently. Remembering the investigation on hand, I went upstairs. And my intuition was correct, for the sounds were true, coming from room 305. 2 Yet, when I opened the heavy door, the clamor immediately ceased. I promise you, I am not making this up, Mr. Morris. A chill went down my spine. The silence was alarming. There was nothing abnormal about the classroom. It was perfectly organized, the blackboard still filled with the math demonstrations, nothing more. I closed the door and decided that I had misheard out of my fatigue. As I walked out of the McDowell hall through the empty quad, I saw the most unbelievable thing: a Johnnie chair moving across the field. It was too far away for me to judge if it was being carried by a person, floating in the air, or sliding across the ground. But it was certainly moving. For the sake of the time being, I will save you the pain of all the details and add them up when we meet in person. I caught the chair. It moved in the most disturbing way possible, like a cockroach. I rather it moved like a cat or a dog, but no, it slid around as if a huge wooden cockroach. SO much that it made me think whether the chair was possessed by the soul of a cockroach. (Yes, I am aware bugs do not have souls for they are unable to contemplate. Thank goodness it did not have the form of a chair and a soul of a cockroach, can you imagine that?) When I grabbed the handle of the chair, it screamed at me. “What do you want?” It yelled hoarsely at me. It didn’t have a facial feature, but it was certainly the chair Isa Kiedrowski the Cadfly / May 20, 2021 �speaking. “You’re a walk… I mean crawling Johnnie chair?” “Yes, if you have eyes, which you do, and a sound mind, hopefully, you do, if you’re a Johnnie, that’s obvious isn’t it?” Seemed like the chair wasn’t a happy chair. I wondered whether it sat through the Nicomachean Ethics seminar at all. Or maybe that’s exactly why it wasn't happy. I questioned why all the chairs end up in room 305, and what it was doing on the quad. It didn’t answer me. I asked why chairs seem lifeless during the day, why they can move and speak. It evaded my question by asking me what I meant by “chairs,” “what does it mean to be a Johnnie chair,” and “what defines life.” Certainly, this particular Johnnie chair has mastered sophistry better than the Sophist himself. Seeing that the chair would not cooperate with my inquiries. I dragged it down to the basement of Mellon and tied it up there. Indeed, conversation is helpful with most problems, and that is what we practice at the college. But sometimes violence has more efficacy in dealing with bloviating and obstinate souls like this one. If you happen to know anyone who has a saw or even a candle (those fake ones work too) please let me know. I’m determined to figure out the end goal of these Johnnie chairs. As I’m typing this email out, this Johnnie chair is stomping its leg violently behind me. I need to go and tighten the rope. I’ll see you soon. Yours, M.J. Car Horns Go Brrrr.... Daniel Nathan T he time is perpetual 8:22 a.m — I know this. A symphony of infinite car horns will soon blast off incessantly in the near distance, redistributing their decibels and spreading their soundbites evenly amongst each and every pair of ears in the greater Annapolis area. This ill-defined caravan of middle-aged defiance lurches itself forward, in an unidentifiable protest procession, doing slow-moving laps around the Statehouse, circling the drain. Awaiting the imminent audio barrage of bad drivers, I try craning my neck to check the clock hanging on my wall, but I’m still too groggy and braintoo-empty to logic my way through reading anything analog or to wrap my head around the concept of minute hands. So just like everyone else these days, I make the jump and go digital, scanning for the beacon of my stateof-an-art AM/FM alarm clock radio that I think might still be plugged in. It is. Although, showing 8:29 a.m, the light-up display proves me a liar, with a neon red glow staring back at me like the eyes of the Mothman. In exactly one minute, I know, my alarm will go off, playing the soothing sounds of drive-time commuter radio Two morning shock-jocks fading in and out of static, relaying lukewarm hottakes and light-hearted verbal jousts, slinging overeager zingers at one another. But I won’t be able to hear the lively back-and-forth on 105.7 The Groove through subwoofers and bullhorns, blaring “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, scorching straight into my window, into my soul. Consider it waking up au naturael, as they say, blindingly bright and blisteringly early. Like how a rooster is able to wake up on the whims and wisdom of Mother Nature. Except in this case, I’m the rooster and my Mother Nature is “fed-up with Biden’s radical socialist agenda” and drives a four-cylinder Honda Odyssey minivan with dust-plated rims and the muffler removed. And boy, oh boy, does she have a bone to pick with the Maryland State Legislature. All through my days and night(mare) s, I await the 109 dB shelling — the Morning Hate — indignant and selfrighteous bombardement, pumping my skull full of chaos emitting from some sort of protest about some sort of issue, co-opting some sort of boomer anthem like “Born To Run” or just about anything by Twisted Sister. These aimless chest-thumping car horns, sounding off at-scale at least a hundred-fold — a metric, by the way, that I’m sure J.D Power is not keyed into come awards season— seep into the rhythms of my deep unconsciousness. The sound screeches, the blasts banshee, the buzzing blurs, the clamor clangs slouching into sonic silence. And just like that, starting right on the dime, at 8:30 a.m, the honking starts up back again for another shift, and the horns kill me: an I.V. drip of an F sharp note needled straight into whatever’s left of my eardrums. the Radfly / May 20, 2021 3 �{interview} Where are the Hula Hoops? A commentary on Coffee on the Quad by Linda Bellamy, ‘24 O n 1 April, students on campus were alerted to a new social event on campus. “Coffee on the Quad” was introduced to rekindle the tradition of post-seminar conversation. The email announcement for the event advertised hot coffee and, in an unexpected win for enthusiasts of aerobics and Polynesian culture, free hula hoops. As crowds of students gathered on the quad to participate in the hula hooping, they were horrified to discover the toys absent — missing, non-existence, unbelievably not there! Wye Knee-Man (A’23) expressed his ire with the catastrophe: “I just feel like I can't even trust the administration anymore! Are we a joke to them? Standing on the quad cluelessly, hands empty, hips still? Expected to chat with my fellow peers naturally?” Now, students flock regularly on Monday and Thursday nights in hopes of one day being surprised by the presence of the beloved plastic rings. “It's the nostalgia for me. As children, my friends and I did nothing but hula hoop and sip Capris Suns,” Peter Pansyndrome (A’21) said. “I mean there was no need to socially distance and I didn’t have to wear a mask. But still the sentiment remains.” Students have decided to take action, and organizer Audrey Fox (A’24) is mounting a campaign to Boston-TeaParty the quad. “The gist is to make your cup of coffee, take a few sips (it's not not bad), and then dump it all out,” Fox said. “Give me hula hoops or give me death.” If the hoops are ever actually offered for student use, some foresee a bright future for the toys’ inclusion in the Intramurals program. Some Polity-members see them becoming the next big Covid-safe sport on campus. “I honestly think this could replace Stringfellow Ball,” Oscar Gonzales (A’24) said. {short story} Fabella Oculāris: Monitum ad Caulātōrēs Joseph Richard Olim, invidō sub aspectū hominum divōmque voluptāte; in mediīs partibus vitiūm meūm; paulō ante futurās rēs, talpulam invēnī canēntem aviās hās Milesiās: “Ἐν ἀρχῇ, in principio?” inquit talpula mea, “saltem ab initio monstra complura notissima nocte tē visum venerunt; triangulī, orbia, coni omniō assilentēs undique, salientes, cacābant, cacābant, cacābant quasi pullī infernō raptī sine pullāriō.” “Ecce, mī puer,” ea narratitat, aspiciēns vultum meum, “oculī tuī quibus tibi vidērī possum; geōmetricīs in verbīs, ‘circlī’--” hīc rīdēns, “dīcuntur.” Tum, parvissimīs eī manibus, amōre et mollītiā, rēpente contractāvit vulsitque oculōs meōs ut haec dēmōnstret. Talpula, torquēns intrā oculā digītā ei, clāmāverat sīc: “Oculī! Lūmina animī; deūm cor; horreum gāzārum.” Deorsum, sūrsum oculōs torquēns meōs. Statim, statim complānāvit meōs oculōs! Sannā malā, dixerat: “Timeō geometricōs, et vim ferentes; et sic, tibi oportet Π. et Ψ. Λοσοφῳ.” 4 the Badfly / May 20, 2021 Timothy Treadwell Looking like a lasagna Had integrity... Bridget Mace �{interview} At the Speed of Fast Speed Reading At St. John's Takes On New Meaning by Daniel Nathan, ‘24 W ith a tuft of blondeapproaching grey hair; eyes with a glint like a tire fire, refusing to adhere to any commonly known conception of a color wheel; and the moxie and gusto of a boulder, history has been made. Freshman-turnedalumnus, Lurk “Junk” Grok (A21) has recently reached new heights of brain function, shattering the school record for the fastest speed-run through the entire catalog of the St. John’s College program. Some say he reminds them of Heinrich Himmler, some say a meanspirited Tom Petty, and some say he’s the human embodiment of a Chrysler PT Cruiser — the reality likely exists somewhere in the intermediate. The previously held record of 8 months and 21 days, set in 1953 by a student named Alfred Existentialisman (A53), was, until now, thought unbreakable: an insurmountable Triumph of the Will, the spirit, and body. But this Lurk Grok is fast — blink-and-you’ll-misshim fast. From the Iliad to Phaedrus through to Genesis and Tempest on to Don Quixote and War and Peace culminating finally back around again to Phaedrus, his journey through the arc of the Western canon took him a mind-bending, God-destroying time of just 22 hours and 42 seconds to complete. Noticeably exhausted after being put through the nearly day-long ringer, Grok remained even-keeled as classmates (or colleagues, as he’d refer to them) popped bottles of $8.99 champagne, spraying and soaking the celebration in boozy foam residue. Reigning in all plausible hints of emotion and/or sentience, the speed-demon spoke of his seemingly inhuman feat with stoic restraint, flashing his trademark dead-eyed charm/smarm.“I am not illiterate, therefore I read. Please leave me alone.” he said, spittle flying from his mouth as he spoke, watering the grass and saving the planet, doing his part to stay ever environmentally conscious. To shave precious milliseconds off his time during the speed-run, Gork methodically paced his already shallow breathing, and held his bladder (successfully) throughout the trial’s entire duration, as best he knew how. Electing to eat only Adderalls and whatever leftover bits of food were stuck in his teeth from previous meals, the speedster was able to remain dialed in and undisturbed by anything besides speed and his utter need for it. Maybe even more astonishing, the longest break Grok allowed himself was a sneeze while reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which lasted .4 seconds, through which he kept his eyes open, defying biological notions and baffling a panel of medical experts. The newly-minted graduate let it slip that he found Marx’s Capital, which he read in 12 seconds flat, to be the text that he most thoroughly enjoyed reading during the run, referring to it as “a wonderfully fun and inane little parody of political thought” and “Satanic dribble.” The runner-up for his favorite texts would have to be The Decline Of The West by Oswald Spengler, an elective reading for Seniors, which he called “fucking electric,” followed closely behind by One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Disappointment. In the meantime, the school now expects an influx of underprepared, starry-eyed new students to try their own luck speeding through the Great Books in time-trials, though there are doubts as to whether this new record will be broken any time soon. Scoffing when questioned about the longevity of his status atop the leaderboard, Grok sure doesn’t think his spot will be going anywhere. “What’s Next for Lurk ‘The Junkman’ Grok?” seems to be the question now occupying everyone’s minds. When asked what he had in store for himself, as a champion and now a graduate, moving forward after his towering triumph, the wunderkind replied, “First Disneyland, then the World.” Isa Kiedrowski the Crapfly / May 20, 2021 5 �ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE For more information, contact us via email at sjca .g adfly@gmail.com “ Every field that you think exists as a separate task in the world is actually made up of everything that we study, it's made up of all of the components of a liberal education” - Rachel Gordon “ I feel like St John’s has empowered me. Every single tutor is like, “why would you think that you're not capable? It doesn't make any sense” Ms. Brann told me sophomore year ‘We don't need more assertive people in the world, you're fine the way that you are’” - Elsa Ordahl W e wish our seniors the very best in their future endeavors, and will miss their presence on campus. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Microsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine. Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, staff, and alumna of the Annapolis campus. ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Microsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 OF THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER the Gadfly / May 20, 2021 Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine. For more information, contact us via email at sjca .g adfly@gmail.com ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 6 Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, staff, and alumna of the Annapolis campus. � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 6 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLII, Issue 04 [The Badfly] Description An account of the resource Volume XLII, Issue 04 special Badfly issue of The Gadfly. Published May 20, 2021. The paper copy was published tête-bêche (upside down) as part of The Gadfly, Vol. XLII, Issue 04. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Page, Lysithia (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-05-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Badfly Vol XLII Issue 04 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/15d28ec4dc0a77f885d4b0834120f053.pdf 922934514f7a330ff7d3f5c8b64b38ff PDF Text Text THE GADFLY Photo by Lysithia Page, A’23 “And to let every word every chapter speak for itself has been one of the biggest ways I've changed with patience, kindness, and openness.” What is a St. John's Education?, pg 4 St. John’s College Vol. XLII, Issue 04 Annapolis, Maryland May 20, 2021 �From the Editor’s Desk: CONTENTS Logos As the year crawls to a close, changes abound. Seniors graduated last Sunday, and this is the final day of classes for freshmen. Art with a Heart What is a St. John's Education? 3 4 Symposiun How Personal is Too Personal? 6 Polis Polity Poetry Forks The Song of Class Unity Badfly Where are the Hula Hoops? Fabella Oculāris At the Speed of Fast Migrating Johnnie Chairs Car Horns Go Brrr.... 7 8 10 12 12 13 14 15 The first part of this issue is a regular Gadfly. We pondered the passage of time with graduating seniors, and reported on Mitchell Gallery happenings. There is, of course, the usual motley of opinion, poetry, and musings. Notably, within the second half of the issue, we have printed the Badfly. Lovingly crafted just once a year, the Badfly is the only satire publication of St. John’s. Some advice: if you count yourself a sensitive soul, proceed with caution. Like that one person in seminar, we don’t hold back. Our multitude contains multitudes. In these pages, members of the Polity rejoice, lampoon, and reflect. As in the Athens of Pericles’ funeral oration, there’s something for everyone. Sincerely, Lysithia Page P.S. Everytime a Polity member submits something to sjca.gadfly@ gmail.com, a gadfly sprouts its wings. So do that! THE STAFF THE STRUCTURE Logos holds news reports and narratives of immediate relevance to the Polity. The purpose here is to develop a shared reservoir of information relating to campus life and the community.  Symposium offers the opportunity for our readers to thoughtfully consider contrasting opinions regarding a particular topic.  Polis serves as a platform for elevating voices in our community. Here we find letters to the editor, columns, cartoons, and submitted pieces. The Badfly is a satirical reflection of the regular Gadfly operations, providing members of the staff and Polity with an outlet for comedic expression. 2 the Gadfly / May 20, 2021 EDITORS Lysithia Page Elizabeth Dowdy Alayna Raymond LAYOUT BOARD Cooper Ussery Nathan Martin Diana Villegas GADFLY STAFF Linda Bellamy Britt Lamson Isabella Kiedrowski Daniel Nathan Dagny Kulkarni Joseph Padgett INTERESTED IN WRITING FOR THE GADFLY? EMAIL ALAYNA RAYMOND AT AKRAYMOND@SJC.EDU �{community} Art with a Heart Johnnies hold community art exhibition by Jonah Donis, ‘23 T he end of spring semester brings many milestones in its wake: graduation, Don Rags, fair weather, and community art. For the past 31 years (barring pandemics), the Mitchell Gallery has showcased the artistic endeavors of the community by showcasing Polity art on the walls of the gallery. All artistic mediums are welcome and this year there was a dynamic range of artwork, ranging from resin statues to painted rocks, black-and-white photography to oil paint on canvas. Particularly exciting is what the seniors submit, not only concluding their time on campus, but also vying for the Charles Vernon Moran Prize. Since opening The St. John’s College Community art exhibition 31 years ago, the Charles Moran Prize has been a highlight of the exhibit. The award goes to the senior who “exhibits a mastery of technique and original thought.” There were many contenders for this year's prize from Adam Schulman’s painted sketches of his animated work, Virginia Deaver’s loose painted canvas titled Armor, Sera Johnson’s Bedford landscape, and Sophia Cote’s ceramics and drawings. The prize was awarded to Sophia Cote’s Tea Set, a 7-piece ceramic tea set made with found wood, wire, and of course, clay. Although there can be only one winner, every senior deserves a round of applause for the work and dedication they put into art. Looking forward, the new academic year will no doubt bring many new student creations through the plethora of resources available in the dark room, pottery, and art studio. Sofe Cote (A21) Tea Set, 2021 Ceramic, found wood, wire the Gadfly / λόγος / May 20, 2021 3 �{senior perspective} What is a St. John's Education? On making free adults by Alayna Raymond, ‘23 Isa Kiedrowski W hen a senior at any institution looks back on their education, they may reflect on things like classes, grades, social life, or job prospects. While it is certain that St John’s seniors do partake in these sorts of thoughts, there is an aspect to their reflection that takes on the spirit of inquiry fostered at the College — What is the Program? What does it do for us after 4 years? The straightforward response may be “a liberal arts degree,” but the seniors with whom I spoke did not once provide this answer. Instead, what ensued was a conversation that, by virtue of its existence, encapsulates what the Program does for people who have finished it. by emotionally-packed laughter. Of course, they had more to share. Gordon spoke to the general change she experienced over the four years: “It was a transition from thinking about the world and how all of these books may be applied to the world or applied to outside situations. And then by the end of senior year, I think about myself and my identity and who I am, and the books, they guide me in understanding that. And I think about myself in relation to others, rather than just myself in relation to the world.” “I think for me, it's like a long instruction in openness and letting things penetrate into you, and how to completely open up to other people and other people's ideas and the books first spoke with Rachel Gordon that you're reading, and letting it just (A’21) and Elsa Ordahl (A’21). They become part of you,” Ordahl added. came onto the call teary-eyed following their final Sicut Sing and last day of his sort of openness was also tutorials. Funnily enough, the first mentioned in my discussion with response to the question “How would Rediet Worku (A’21), who spoke you define a St John’s question” was about it in relation to approaching the “one long therapy session” followed texts. “I remember ferociously taking I 4 T the Gadfly / λόγος / May 20, 2021 notes in freshman seminar, but now I just allow myself to completely be immersed with the text, and not judge the text be it positively or negatively before I encounter it,” Worku said. “And to let every word every chapter speak for itself has been one of the biggest ways I've changed with patience, kindness, and openness.” The final senior I spoke to mentioned this openness anecdotally. “I've learned to be less demanding of others. One thing that happened in a freshman seminar, this was not my seminar, but what I heard was that someone brought up Percy Jackson, during the Illiad seminar or the Odyssey seminar. And you know, if you heard that as a freshman or sophomore, you would say, ‘Oh, that's ridiculous, why would you do that?’ But then you start to consider it, well, maybe this, that is the only thing they know, at the time. That's how they want to join the conversation,” said Bao Le (A’21) T his cultivation of character did not come without its challenges. Worku spoke to her own personal growth extensively in our conversation: “There is in no way anything that makes me similar to the person who walked in at convocation. And I think we all know this at St. John's. But I didn't maybe understand that at some points, because change, right, like in physics, when you're turning direction, you face inertia. And that resistance, when I felt that within, I thought ‘No, perhaps I'm not really meant for the Program.’ But that resistance has been key in interacting with things I never thought I'd be capable of interacting with.” �Le also reflected on the change he perceives in himself.“ The point is to be challenged in things you're not ready to be challenged by,” Le said. “I was not ready to be a student of philosophy or liberal arts. When I joined I was a STEM kid through and through, but somehow I've managed to write a senior essay on Plotinus.” Senior essays are a culmination of thoughts and experiences accumulated over the four years students spend with the Program. Gordon expressed that the senior essay offers students the opportunity to develop an intimate awareness of their own thoughts, or, in other words, to know themselves.“ I feel like writing gives you such an interesting metric for where your mind is in relation to what you're learning or what you're reading about,” Gordon said. “ I think it's just so interesting the way we all came to our senior essay topics. It's an expression of who we are as people.” A s this chapter closes in the lives of our graduating seniors, I wanted to know what wisdom they could impart upon both their past selves and Johnnies going through the process. “ Don't rely on the program to change, I think that would be a good thing to say to my younger self, that I definitely did change me, don't get me wrong, but you can't go in here expecting that you'll come out, you know, the perfect human being that you want yourself to be. That's not what the Program does. The Program is here to force you to change yourself. That you have to look within and see that you're missing things. That you thought you knew everything, but you don't.” - Bao Le “ So the first thing is, do not take the resistance to mean something is wrong, embrace it, be uncomfortable every single way. Because that shows you're changing, right? Someone was telling me that when a child is coming to like some big step, they're in distress for some time, and they don't know how to express it so they're always crying. And I think mentally we experienced that at the College, because you're continuously in positions that challenge you. So truly, allow yourself to be uncomfortable. There isn't anything wrong with you, there isn’t anything wrong with your interaction with the program. Give it time, sit with it. And that will transmit itself to the joy part as well.” - Rediet Worku continued on page 11 the Gadfly / λόγος / May 20, 2021 5 �How Personal is Silas Pillsbury Too Personal? I ’ve often struggled with this problem at St. John’s: When first reading a text, I can’t help but relate the book to my own experience. I don’t know how to read something without somehow making it about me. However, I don’t think this inclination disqualifies my philosophical inquiry — I have a vivid memory of walking into the Barr-Buchanan Center and seeing a plaque on the wall stating that all great books are about the readers. I would like to essay as to what this plaque’s message means, and how I can make use of such a concept in my studies at St. John’s. Montaigne seems like a good place to start in answering this question. A writer who believes in highly personalized essays, Montaigne has much to say about the value of experience. In his essay On Experience, he says, “There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all ways that can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ experience, which is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thing that we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it.” If experience is so lacking, books must teach us something about ourselves that would otherwise take an entire lifetime to learn through activity. Socrates says that he neither knows nor supposes that he knows, and thus will not foolishly assume himself to be making a just decision when he really is not. Thus he is better off than those who know nothing and think they know something. This seems true to me, but arriving at this conclusion would take an entire lifetime — I can’t imagine culling such an idea from only a few experiences. Learning the extent of my ignorance would take very many failures. Now when it comes to failures, I often hear my classmates complain that their seminars fail by venturing ‘too far from the text.’ I appreciate what they are saying, and indeed sometimes an entire seminar goes off the rails into the muck of petty arguments, but I believe this not a great danger. There is danger, I think, when we treat a text as something greater than the reader. When we regard it as something written not by mortals but by untouchable idols, we turn its wisdom into rhetoric. Words themselves become less tied to experience, opinion, or past knowledge, and rather more so to other words. We can foolishly think we understand what we mean while circular definitions will and must abound, and semantics, instead of being genuine attempts at meaning-gathering, become pointless. In short, we must put the text level with our own experience, lest we turn the text into sophistical trickery instead of real wisdom. I don’t mean to say by this that personal experience is an equal source to the texts at St. John’s, but rather I find it helpful to imagine how I myself could have discovered what is being written, and thank God I did not have to on my own. Thus my final question: if great books are about us readers, how much of the books should we try to remember? Often when writing an essay for an assignment, I find I’ve misremembered large portions of the text or interpreted sections with faulty logic. With time, the passages seem to reveal themselves, whereas some words fade back into obscurity. What at first seemed the most important paragraph in the whole book may lose significance, and instead my concentration may bend towards other portions. I may read one of Achilles’ speeches, thinking the weight of the whole book rests on it; upon rereading it, I find my entire perspective isn’t consistent through the text, and I have to start again. I often find that as soon as I learn a single plotpoint, I find myself having to rework or even forget an entire point of view. Sometimes the text will recommend a better point of view, but more often than not, I am left more confused than I was before. And I don’t mean to say I can’t articulate my previous opinions, but rather I can’t remember what it was like to believe them. In the midst of this, I am forced to adopt new opinions, and make the book be more about me, but not the version of me that is a vessel for muddled, stuck opinions, but rather the mode of personality that is deeply invested in interpretation and growth; when the text will not explain itself, I choose how to explain it, and I learn the consequences of my reasoning whenever I return to the text. In this way of thought-challenging and reason-tempering, great books that change minds aren’t about our beliefs, opinions, or sense of identity — they are about the soul that expounds and lives out these ideals. Personal anecdotes are ineffective in class discussions not because they’re too personal — they’re not personal enough! Personhood is not reducible to anecdotes or opinions, and if we focus on the specific units of identity, we may forget the self that does the living. Instead, we should be ever striving to understand the part of self that creates ideals, instead of assuming our opinions are us. We are challenged to forget our short-sighted perceptions of self, and instead cultivate a more holistic and free identity. 6 the Gadfly / συμπόσιον / May 20, 2021 �{poetry} {poetry} Passings Doorman Louis Petrich George Kalandadze Expect this not, to live for long. Less some, more others, never one. You translated our quantities, not meant to be right known by race of men Prometheus much loved. Fire evens odds with hope that way. My hopes partake of seeing you brace black that knocks out being there; although his lithe dumb plunging tongue roots mounds behind come due—so long forfended dipping climb!--we few will savor every taste fortuned! Pray next our passage free beget surpassing new, us promise-paid: as always, beggars, woman-bathed. In this brief stay, O darlings, stood you all my love, near licked, fell bent-but wonderful--upright again! Fine word, again. Necessary, by physics gaming finitude. Once more the bell rings on, The street sound shuffles through the door, They come and go, hats, umbrellas, heels and brooches. Swinging doors create the storm, Of wind, of perfume, of rainy floor. And there he stands with posture strong, And smiles to all who come so close. But in his mind, there are no smiles, No sun is shining, nobody’s crying. The time now strikes past quarter eight, The king abandons his good faith. The yokes of clothes in suit and ties, Are left behind in dungeon dark. Up the stairs, into his room Where sorrow dwells beneath the tombs. He enters, puts the mask aside, No smile is needed, when there’s no eyes. And drifts as if the steam of tea, Into the homely malady. --Louis Petrich, May, 2021 {poetry} το του παιδος σπηλαιον Avery Laur i cast shadows on these dimly lit walls so that my youth and innocence may only know safety and comfort with the world i give them the Gadfly / πόλις / May 20, 2021 7 �{elements of etiquette} Forks Isa Kiedrowski So…which fork do I use? “I don’t need to learn about etiquette; after all, it’s just about which fork to use, and stuff like that.” This phrase could probably be found on the list of “50 Signs That Point Towards Civilization’s Inevitable Decline,” right up there with “What decline of civilization?” I will say this but once: etiquette is not merely about which fork to use. However, knowing which fork to use is part of table manners. Which in turn is part of etiquette. So there. And let me be clear: you do not need to know which fork to use. Very rarely will you find yourself in a life-or-death situation and think, “Sink me! I wish I knew which fork to use!” Fortunately, the Spanish Inquisition is over,1 so your chances of being brutally murdered for not knowing how to use cutlery are markedly lower. But I will point out: St. John’s produces a high volume of PhDs. And should you find yourself venturing into academia, you will inevitably have to deal with faculty dinners, or at least a few functions at which you will be faced with forks plural. And while you’re staring at the blinding array of silverware before you, your rival for tenure has smoothly picked up his fish fork and is tucking in to the slightly overcooked trout with lemon sauce. And you know who appreciates good manners? The department chair. Now, I’m not saying tenures have been lost over this, but I’m not saying they haven’t.2 Having suitably terrified you with professional suicide by fish fork, let’s examine the dizzying array of cutlery which awaits you in the real world. Observe the diagram below, presenting your worst-case-scenario: the 12-course dinner, numbered for your convenience. 1. Escargot Fork—two long, pointed tines aid in dragging the hapless gastropod from its garlicky, buttery lair. The shell is clamped in tongs (not pictured), while you wrestle with your appetizer. The snail’s revenge comes when you spill garlic butter all over yourself. 2. Fish Fork—used, as one might expect, for the fish course in conjunction with the fish knife (opposite side of plate, fourth from the left). Contains four inward curving tines. 3. Lobster Fork—it’s your third fish-related fork, but don’t despair. Not to be confused with a buttonhook, it will help you get all every morsel of lobster or crab out of those claws. Theoretically, a medium-sized buttonhook could perform the same job. 4. Entrée Fork—four equal tines, used to spear one’s entrée (whatever it happens to be) before delivering it to the mouth. 5. Meat Fork—the Main Fork. The Fork of Forks, if you 8 the Gadfly / πόλις / May 20, 2021 will. It’s the fork we all know, and the one you’ll be spending the most time with during your meal. 6. Salad Fork—has a cutting edge to allow larger pieces of salad to be broken down on the plate, rather than in the mouth, where the process unfortunately resembles cudchewing. Not to be confused with the Lettuce Fork (see below). 7. Ice Cream Fork—a delightful spoon/fork combination, for the express purpose of eating ice cream. Let us never call them “sporks” again. 8. Dessert Fork—Salad Fork’s dainty, prettier cousin. Also comes with a cutting edge, this time for breaking cake into attractive, bite-sized morsels. 9. Oyster Fork—a small, thin fork with three sharp tines. Traditionally for eating oysters on the shell (although slurping is considered by some to be more fun), it is also used for other types of shellfish, at which point it becomes a Seafood Fork. �Isa Kiedrowski The rule of thumb for what order to use the forks is from the outside in, ie. left to right. The order in which you would use the above service is a bit more complicated, beginning with the mother-of-pearl caviar spoon on the far right, and then moving through forks 1, 9, 2, 3, 4, 7, 5, 6, 8. Some honorable mentions—oddly specific forks. Terrapin Fork—like an ice cream fork, but for turtles’ insides. Toast Fork—a wide, flat fork for the express purpose of serving toast. Butter pick (honorable mention)—not a true fork, since it consists of one narwhal-horn-shaped tine. Used to impale and transport butter pats. Strawberry Fork—three very long, very sharp, very deadly tines pierce strawberries to be dipped in the topping of choice. Whipped cream is a personal favorite. Fruit Fork—two tines, used for the cheese and fruit course of those meals where one does under no circumstances whatsoever touch one’s food. It will be used to spear individual grapes, the occasional piece of melon (which, incidentally, has its own fork), or possibly hold a peach in place while one painstakingly skins it. Pastry Fork—the manufacturers sneakily alternate between calling this a Pastry Fork one year, and a Pie Fork the next. You only need one set, and could comfortably use a Dessert Fork instead—after all, who serves cake and pie at the same dinner? Pickle Fork—specifically designed for getting pickles out of jars. What won’t the good people at Oneida think of next? Melon Fork—this ingenious implement comes with its own built-in knife, useful if you’ve got to decimate an entire melon one-handed. And would you believe me if I told you that we’ve barely disturbed the surface? There’s knives, and plates, and fingerbowls, and crystal, and napkins…one gets dizzy at the very thought. We’ll be back next year, with all the stemware the world has to offer. the Gadfly / πόλις / May 20, 2021 9 �{politics} The Song of Class Unity Max Mersmann-Jones T he Great Depression of the 1930s brought about Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Great Recession of 2008 has had no such wake. In the former, the working class seized this country’s largest financial crisis and used it to radically restructure both economic and social policy for decades and perhaps centuries to come. The latter has rung in an era of party infighting, identity politics, and desperate attempts to return to the status quo that caused this crisis. Past success and present failure in moving forward from collapse rest on the same change: the disappearance of unity and mobilization of the working class. Our contemporary political arena has no place for class politics. Labor unions which once played a fundamental part in pressing for the New Deal are at their weakest point since the industrial revolution. We take for granted a system of two parties unchecked at the helm, but the last few decades are the first time in history that the Republican and Democratic parties have existed without labor exerting significant force. In the absence of union presence, the torch of class politics hasn’t been taken up by either party. Instead, political boundaries are now drawn almost entirely on social policy. With Democrats on the social left and Republicans on the right, fiscal policies are, more than ever, nonpartisan. Look no further than last November’s election results. Joe Biden won the working-class (income under $50,000) vote by 11% - half of what Obama won by and less than the margin of any other modern Democratic president. Economics are no longer a key predictor of party affiliation. Instead, both the left and right broadcast images of rising up against the (insert opposing political party) elites to win a victory for the little guy. For the left, that’s beating evil corporations and sleazy Republican billionaires for its intersectional and underprivileged voters, while for the right, it’s toppling coastal elites and scoring a victory for small-town hard-working America. Neither side is particularly wrong in this messaging — class politics are a muddled and confusing mess with wealthy elites at the top of both parties. When political engagement is largely limited to checking off Democrat or Republican, the lack of a party that truly represents class interests is felt hard. Proponents of current party lines will argue that this system trades class alignment for parties mobilized and ready to take action on important social issues. That’s not the case. Take race for example — a party system divided 10 the Gadfly / πόλις / May 20, 2021 economically would mix in Trump’s base of low-education white rural voters with higher-education multiracial metropolitan demographics. Our current structure aligned on social issues may at first seem better equipped to tackle issues of race, but without class unity it doesn’t matter. As the way we discuss racial issues progresses, we evolve from debating individual acts of racism (which are increasingly widely criticized) and move towards critical analysis of the racial power structures baked into the class system of society. Systemic racism is an imbalance in power, and power is money. Structurally ignoring class politics created a socially left party that can do little more than scold. It is incapable of meaningfully taking on systemic racism because it is ruled by the same power structures that set up the system in question. It is as tactless as it is torn, a party for the protesters and brunch getters to waste their ballots on alike. The same process applies neatly to other social issues; injustice is power imbalance, power imbalance is wealth imbalance, and when both parties are ruled by the wealthy, they are both ruled by the privileged and incapable of making real change. Throughout his career Joe Biden has always loved to reach across the aisle, finding allies in fellow wealthy and powerful Republicans. It took workers engaging in largescale equivalents of that same process, in the form of labor unions, to push for the New Deal. The rich and powerful know how to practice class solidarity, and until the working class learns to do the same, we are helpless to reclaim our political voice. Isa Kiedrowski �ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE For more information, contact us via email at sjca .g adfly@gmail.com “ Every field that you think exists as a separate task in the world is actually made up of everything that we study, it's made up of all of the components of a liberal education” - Rachel Gordon “ I feel like St John’s has empowered me. Every single tutor is like, “why would you think that you're not capable? It doesn't make any sense” Ms. Brann told me sophomore year ‘We don't need more assertive people in the world, you're fine the way that you are’” - Elsa Ordahl W e wish our seniors the very best in their future endeavors, and will miss their presence on campus. Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, staff, and alumna of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Microsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. For more information, contact us via email at sjca .g adfly@gmail.com Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Microsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine. Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, staff, and alumna of the Annapolis campus. ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 the Gadfly / May 20, 2021 11 THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 11 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLII, Issue 04 Description An account of the resource Volume XLII, Issue 04 of The Gadfly. Published May 20, 2021. The paper copy was published tête-bêche (upside down) with The Badfly. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Page, Lysithia (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-05-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLII Issue 04 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2a785ba729249ee8272a7fa526fc933b.pdf b7f99b986be79875925870b26e5329cb PDF Text Text THE GADFLY Photo by Elizabeth Dowdy, A’23 “What if being really smart, and knowing a lot of books, and having all this classical knowledge didn’t make you a better person?” Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Page 3 St. John’s College Vol. XLII, Issue 03 Annapolis, Maryland April 30, 2021 �From the Editor’s Desk: CONTENTS Logos Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? Hodson Boathouse Reopens The Sicut Sing Saga Symposiun Dueling Systems Machiavelli on Religion and the Duty of the Citizen in a Republic Polis Socrates and the City Water Warring On Music Elements of Etiquette 3 4 5 The command to know oneself is a tall order. Like Odysseus, we are πολύτροποι — many-sided, full of twists and turns, complex. If we’re all players acting out our many parts in our respective times, how are we to perceive ourselves upon the stage? Discerning the being that lies beneath our changeable qualities seems a formidable challenge. 6 7 Books and conversation help. By butting up against other minds, we map the outskirts of our own. Despite its inherent discomfort, the undertaking is necessary and worthwhile. In this issue, our Symposium writers examined the relationship between the individual and the state. I encourage you to see feelingly their reflections on the subject. Consider this request an invocation to muse. 8 9 10 12 The namesake of this publication garnered a reputation for asking difficult questions. So too do we commit ourselves to stirring contemplation in our city. From time to time, our writers may press your buttons. This is a reminder that you, reader, are wholly welcome to reciprocate. May mutual loving critique deliver self-knowledge for us all. Our eyes and ears are but an email away at sjca.gadfly@gmail. com. THE STRUCTURE Logos holds news reports and narratives of immediate relevance to the Polity. The purpose here is to develop a shared reservoir of information relating to campus life and the community.  Symposium offers the opportunity for our readers to thoughtfully consider contrasting opinions regarding a particular topic.  Polis serves as a platform for elevating voices in our community. Here we find letters to the editor, columns, cartoons, and submitted pieces. CORRECTIONS In a report on the removal of campus ashtrays (page 24, March 2021), we included a quotation in which the speaker expresses that a crane was used to carry out the removal. This phrase, however, was hyperbolic. No cranes were used to remove the ashtrays. THE COVER Pictured: James Siranovich (A’22) and Rebecca MacLeay (A’24) from the KWP production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 2 the Gadfly / Apr 30, 2021 Sincerely, Lysithia Page Editor-in-Chief THE STAFF EDITORS Lysithia Page Elizabeth Dowdy Alayna Raymond LAYOUT BOARD Cooper Ussery Nathan Martin Diana Villegas GADFLY STAFF Linda Bellamy Britt Lamson Isabella Kiedrowski Daniel Nathan Dagny Kulkarni Joseph Padgett INTERESTED IN WRITING FOR THE GADFLY? EMAIL ALAYNA RAYMOND AT AKRAYMOND@SJC.EDU �WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? BERRETTINI DEAVER PETERSON DENNIS-SIRANOVICH POWERS MACLEAY TORRES T onight at 8 p.m., the King William Players (KWP) will perform Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? The play follows a night of cocktail-imbibing and riotous conversation between two sets of couples — washed-up, middle-aged George and Martha, and the younger Nick and Honey. The crackling dialogue considers the slings and arrows of married life. Due to present health concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the KWP have decided to stage the show virtually via Zoom live-stream. Using Delegate Council funding, the theater troupe rented an Airbnb house in downtown Annapolis to serve as the set. Moreover, the cast and crew received increased Covid testing and self-isolated so that they could work safely together in close quarters. I talked with some of them about the quirks of pandemic-era theater, as well as this particular production. On the Play “My general thought is that the question of the play is like, ‘What if being really smart, and knowing a lot of books, and having all this classical knowledge didn’t make you a better person? What if these things gave you more ability to hurt the people around you?’” -Berrettini “The way I see it, [the play] asks, ‘What happens when the person you hate the most is also the person you love the most?’” -Powers “There’s always something under the surface, like a wolverine claw that comes up.” -Siranovich Cast Martha – Virginia Deaver (A’21) George – James Dennis-Siranovich (A’22) Nick – Adam Powers (A’24) Honey – Rebecca MacLeay (A’24) On the Zoom Production “I knew that I wanted it to happen at some point. And I realized that it’s now or never, essentially. And then when we did get back, it was a question of how it was going to work with COVID. We’re lucky enough that conditions are improved just enough that we can stream it and have the actors all in the room together with proper precautions.” -Berrettini On the Set “I want it to look like a tutor’s house, where you have the accumulation of all this knowledge. You’ve got all these books.” -Berrettini “I did bring in a lot of my books because George is a history nut, I’m a history nut. George has a trained voice, I have a trained voice. But I’m very, very happily married to a man, and he’s very, very unhappily married to a woman.” -Siranovich Crew Director – Sam Berrettini (A’21) Assistant Director – Jessica Peterson Photos and Article by Lysithia Page, ‘23 (A’21) Tech Director – Ciel Torres (A’21) the Gadfly / λόγος / Apr 30, 2021 3 �{athletics update} Hodson Boathouse Reopens New opportunities for aquatic recreation on campus by Cooper Ussery, ‘23 N orth of the tennis court and west of the suburbs, there stands a building on the banks of College Creek. Straddling the sloping terrain that leads to the lower field and nestled in the furthest corner of back campus, this building is the Beneficial-Hodson Boathouse. The building was originally constructed in 1934 following the College’s commitment to diversify campus activities and expand the athletic program. This initiative was part of a larger effort to attract more students after the College found itself in dire financial straits due to the stock market crash of 1929. The boathouse is an intriguing structure, with wood shingle cladding and asphalt roofing, setting it apart from other buildings on campus. For many students, the boathouse can seem forbidding and uninviting, as the “front door” appears almost hidden behind surrounding trees and vegetation and the other obvious entrances are accessible only by traversing an intimidating wooden ramp. In reality, however, the boathouse is a welcoming place for all Johnnies to learn about and experience the wonders of the waters. The two-story building is broadly separated into two parts: the first story is a boat room with racks for canoes and kayaks lining the walls and workbenches for maintenance built into the wide bays’ central divider. The second story is a banquet room consisting of a large space with wooden floorboards and several seating areas surrounded by huge windows and comfortable porches. Historically, this room has hosted crew banquets, scholarship luncheons, and a number of other events, but like the rest of the boathouse, it hasn’t seen much activity 4 in the wake of pandemic restrictions. In more typical times, the Hodson Boathouse is a hub of activity for several different groups of people, serving as home base for the crew and sailing teams and opening its doors for the Polity to use any of the kayaks, canoes, sailboats, and paddleboards during the warmer months. Students working for the College in the boathouse usually assist with this process, but these students — known as Boathouse Stewards — do more than just clip on life vests and put people in boats. “There were two main stages of working in the boathouse,” said Kasparas Adomaitis (A’23), an RA who worked as a steward last year. “During the season when you can actually take boats out and use them, you have a lot of people coming in, and they usually require attention. We have to get them ready, do all the safety precautions, carry the boats out to the water, and sometimes teach them the basics. Then there’s the crew team, and one steward last year would be there at the boathouse at 6 in the morning preparing everything.” Stewards are also required to the Gadfly / λόγος / Apr 30, 2021 procure boating licenses in order to operate motor boats around College Creek and the adjoining Severn River. During the winter months, stewards spend the time restoring old crew boats, dinghies, and sailboats. “It could get a little tedious sometimes, filing old boat shells. It can [also] be very physically demanding… but having that physical outlet helps clear the mind. Being so focused on books and reading, and then having this physical, manual labor is definitely beneficial,” Adomaitis said. “[Working at the boathouse] felt special. It’s one of those jobs where you actually end up working, not just sitting there. I ended up learning quite a bit, and the boathouse really felt like being part of a small community,” Adomaitis enthused. During the Fall 2020 semester, the boathouse was available for recreational use by appointment from August to November; since then only the second story has been available for use. However, services resumed on April 25, and students interested in working as Boathouse Stewards should contact Athletics Director Chris Krueger. Photo courtesy of Maryland Historical Trust �{johnnie lore} The Sicut Sing Saga Tracing the history of a returning tradition by Dagny Kulkarni, ‘24 D ue to high demand, Sicut Sing has returned. After a year of online singing, the Polity buzzes with excitement at the rekindling of this ageold tradition. Senior Jessica Peterson, current organizer and conductor of Sicut Sing, recounted the enthusiasm of her peers: “The number of people that asked me about it was really surprising...it was really nice to see that it was something that was missed by a large chunk of the community,” she said. Unable to take music classes as a senior, Peterson communicated the desire to integrate music into her experience in some way. “It’s all about getting that well-rounded, stereotypical liberal arts education,” she said. “You want to be able to keep seeing the music in everything you do.” “I t’s all about coming together for the sake of beauty,” said Eric Fricke, founder of Sicut Sing. As a student at St. John’s from 2010-2014, Fricke enjoyed singing Sicut Cervus in freshman and sophomore music, and pitied the long faces of the juniors and seniors walking by. During his junior year, he decided to incorporate casual community singing into campus life. Fricke and his classmates especially missed Sicut Cervus, and after dance parties in McDowell, they would gather in the quad to sing it. Fricke recounted how previous President Chris Nelson asked the students to sing Sicut Cervus, without prior notice, at a Convocation ceremony. Tutor Eric Stoltzfus also recalled President Nelson creating the tradition by which returning students sing Sicut Cervus to welcome freshmen. “[Nelson] liked to tell Sicut stories in his speeches about what makes St. John’s unlike any other College,” Stoltzfus remembered. The ease and enthusiasm with which it was performed inspired Fricke: “That was when I knew we had an opportunity. I guess that experience kind of shaped everything, and I knew that we could make it happen.” Fricke thus founded the weekly event he dubbed ‘Sicut Cervus Sing.’ Fricke chose the Pendulum Pit as the setting for its acoustics and convenient location. Funnily enough, after questioning faculty members, he came to the realization that no one knew who was in charge of the Pendulum Pit. He went ahead and hung up his flyers, displaying his catchphrase: “It only takes 5 minutes!” On the following Wednesday afternoon, many students and tutors came, excited at the prospect of singing as a community outside of class. “It celebrates the uniqueness of St. John’s. I can’t really think of any place in the world that could do this,” said Fricke. W hile we recount the origins of this quintessential tradition, the question ‘Why Sicut Cervus?’ springs to mind. Retired tutor Tom May first introduced this piece into the Program during the academic year 1994-1995. Having led Freshman Chorus several times in the ‘80s, May was approached by former Dean Eva Brann and Tutor Peter Kalkavage, and asked to revive the class, which was languishing. At the time, Sicut Cervus was not part of the Freshman Chorus repertoire. May explained how he chose music for the Program: “My principal of selection was two-fold: sing pieces as great as the works we read and study in the other parts of the program, and find the best examples possible in accord with the study of the elements of music in sophomore year.” The discovery of Sicut Cervus was like finding a gold mine. May recounted his students’ excitement: “I will never forget the student, one of our first undergraduates from the People’s Republic of China, who, with a look of awe on his face, came up to me after we had sung all 4 parts of Sicut together, and asked, ‘“Mr. May, who was this Palestrina?!”’. After serving as Associate Dean for the Graduate Institute, May resumed teaching Chorus in 2002. By then, singing Sicut Cervus at various events was a well-established tradition, and had become one of the pieces that was sung at the Senior Dinner before Commencement. continued on page 13 Isa Kiedrowski the Gadfly / λόγος / Apr 30, 2021 5 �DUELING SYSTEMS A ccording to anthropologist Robert Dunbar, humans can maintain stable relationships with up to 150 people. Within that group, it is reasonable to know the characteristics of each person and value of their word. But, as societies grow, we are faced with a modern problem: by what means can we come to know the trustworthiness of a stranger? Of course, should we calculate incorrectly, we each have recourse to the legal system. However, in the time it takes to engage the law, we lose money, time, and other intangible goods. So then, how might we, fellow citizens and the government alike, create standards to communally monitor trustworthiness? One option is to build systems based on values, and watch to see whether any of those stated principles are violated. If the community of Wethersfield, Connecticut values honesty among its 26,000 residents for example, there is a likelihood that if someone were to lie, cheat, or steal, such labels would be attributed to that person’s name. However, in an era characterized by mobility, a more commonly accessible record of a person’s actions is necessary. The U.S. and China are home to diverging systems of this type. While the U.S. relies on Credit Risk Scores (CRS) assigned to each citizen, China is in the multiyear process of unveiling its newly minted Social Credit Score system. Both systems aim to log the actions of individuals as a means of measuring their ability to adhere to a set of values; however, the values around which they organize and intended beneficiaries of the system vary greatly across each country. WHAT WAS THE GENESIS OF EACH SYSTEM? hat is the genesis of each system? The U.S. credit risk system is one with roots deep in private entrepreneurship. In 1899, Equifax, one of the “Big Three” credit bureaus widely known today, was founded by two brothers who compiled lists of patrons who frequented their grocery store. They compiled the list of customers whom they considered to be worthy of credit based on transaction and repayment history. Other merchants bought this information in order to mitigate the inherent risk in extending credit to relative strangers.. Nearly 60 years later, the Fair Isaac Company, launched a credit scoring system numerically analyzed the credit reports sold by credit bureaus like themselves and Equifax. As a result, financial histories were used to tabulate what is now known as a FICO score, or a Fair Isaac Company score. Across the globe in the early 2000s, China’s foray into credit systems was spurred on by public demands, rather W 6 the Gadfly / συμπόσιον / Apr 30, 2021 How Chinese and American Credit Scores Highlight the Relationships We have to Our Governments and Each Other By Diana Villegas GI ‘22 than private ones. At the time, China was engaged in talks to join the World Trade Organization; however, despite being poised to grow after admission to the organization, the country’s economy was stifled by rampant fraud, corruption, and intellectual property law infringement. In response, China made the rehabilitation of trust in the market economy, identified the creation of a credit system as a matter of national security, and charged the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences with the task of finding a solution. The result was a report that lauded the U.S. credit risk system that would act as a basis for the Chinese Social Credit System now in use today. WHAT IS BEING MEASURED? part from the diverging origins of the two national systems, one born from private interest and the other from public, the inputs and means employed are equally dissimilar. Prior to the U.S. FICO Score, private citizens met with representatives of banks who determined worthiness to obtain credit based on an imprecise and unregulated character assessment. Following the expansion of the newly-invented FICO system, credit scores were based on a number of numerical factors including payment history, length of credit history, amount owed, and newly opened lines of credit. Notably, the factors from which we derive scores consist entirely of empirical numbers, which are based on values gleaned from transaction records. Ideology, criminality, and other social factors are not taken into account. Further, the score is updated via a computational algorithm and is beyond the discretion of any public or private entities. This system, once again, stands in stark contrast to the Chinese Social Credit System, which is composed of records from 44 government agencies; if put in terms relative to U.S. agencies, the compilation of information would equate to the sum of the “IRS, FBI, EPA, USDA, FDA, HHS, HUD, Department of Energy, Department of Education, and every courthouse, police station, and state agency.”1 Rather than finding a basis of measurement in individual consumer transactions, the Chinese system is based on the reports of government agencies. As such, the Social Credit System is based on adherence to policies set at the discretion of the party. Similarly, select infractions can be pursued at the discretion of individuals within a given agency, rather than a computer system that automatically tabulates transactions. Continued on Page 13 A �W hat duty do individual citizens owe to their republic, that is, a government in which citizens rely in part or wholly on majorities of themselves for their governance? By what necessity are citizens obligated to their republic? According to Machiavelli, the republic provides security for the common good and the freedom of its citizens to prosper. The fact of freedom and prosperity, however, do not ensure a sense of duty to one’s country, as to love freedom and prosperity is not so much to love their sources, but the things they perceive to be sources. It is easy, especially in a nation of any great size, for citizens to attribute their security to themselves, and to ignore the more distant government which is responsible for their freedom and security on a grander scale than directly concerns their particular life. Yet, among the ancients, prosperity and freedom were closely associated with their republic, and also to their religion, as Machiavelli points out in Book II of his Discourses on Livy. Religion being an understanding of the cosmos and humans in it, it would follow that religion would demonstrate the proper relation of a citizen to their republic, since religion offers an account of what is good and how it can be obtained. Since a republic offers security, which is good because it allows its citizens the freedom to have possessions and prosper, religion provides a larger model in which the relationship of citizen to republic is analogous to that of a human to the cosmos. How good comes to a human through the cosmos will inform how they view good to come through their republic. to the ancient mode of religion, and contrasts that strength of duty amongst ancient citizens with the weakness of the citizens of his contemporary republics. According to Machiavelli, much violence and slavery in Italy resulted from the apathy of fellow Christian citizens in their political duty. Machiavelli observes Christian doctrine to encourage humility and to bear hardship. As a religion focused on matters of the next world, Machiavelli criticises its followers on neglect of their current world, where to his view they let bad people get away with crimes. Machiavelli’s claim is that the republic is the highest good in the can appease those laws which provide security and allow freedom. Sacrifice is variously done through rituals, moral codes, or the sciences, whereby an individual gives up particular activities and resources, like time, to influencing outcomes. The ancients sacrificed animals to win the favour of their gods, so that they could succeed in their wars and other endeavours, and modern people sacrifice money on medicine, thinking it will be good for them. In both cases alike, the religion consists of giving up something of value for something else of value: cattle for a victory in war, or money for a long and healthy life. This understanding of the cosmos as an exchange of cause for effect aligns with Machiavelli’s description of the republic. The republic, by providing security for its citizens and allowing them the freedom to enjoy their families and the prosperity they labour for, demands sacrifice to ensure its preservation. For Machiavelli, this sacrifice is most called for in and by war. The strength of the ancient religion was that it accustomed men to giving blood to obtain what they wanted, so that the transition from animals in their appeals to the gods to their own blood on the fields world, and to use religion to ignore of battle was simple and natural. And the obligations of one’s republic is though Machiavelli saw military duty absurd. What is the nature of ancient as the primary arena of duty to one’s religion, that it obliges its practitioners state, it would seem generally that to their republic? Why is Christianity acting towards the benefit of one’s different? What of modern religion, republic ensures the benefits republics which disdains the appellage God, and confer; security and freedom to enjoy is called atheism? the fruits of one’s labours. R eligion is the individual’s understanding of the cosmos. There are two sorts of understandings: the first sees and acts on the postulate that humans can take advantage of achiavelli praises the strength the laws governing the cosmos, and of the duty felt by the citizens the second is Christianity, which of the ancient republics which denies this postulate. In other words, resisted the Roman empire, which he all religions save Christianity persist attributes the strength of their duty in the ancient belief that sacrifices M W hat sets Christianity apart from this sort of religion, and muddles this reasoning of citizens being bound to do good for the republic because the republic is good, is that Christianity is not a religion of exchange, but rather one of forgiveness. Continued on Page 14 the Gadfly / συμπόσιον / Apr 30, 2021 7 �{johnnie life} socrate s an d t he Sophia Webster ci ty W alking around Annapolis, it is all too easy to tell Johnnies apart from their Townie or Middie counter-parts. The contrast — with the Townies’ “Simply Southern” long T-Shirts, Middies in full uniform, and Johnnies in eccentric dress — is almost comedic. Polity style nearly defies categorization. Here are students’ reflections on the subject: Photo by Elizabeth Dowdy, ‘23 What exactly is Johnnie fashion? “Not a thing. Catholic/Dude/ArtBoy, and you can’t tell them apart.” Mohab Syounis (A’22) “Unique, but in pretty much the same way.” Avery Lehr (A’24) “Edgy.”’ Nalini Venugopal (A’24) “Discount Camus or a little too close to Woody Allen.” Lukas Wieland (A’24) “WASP.” Jack [Annelise Ivanescu A'24] [Kelly Kane A'24] “Johnnie fashion must have started with whatever Diogenes dropped off at Goodwill.” Noah Zaleman (A’25) Photo by Elizabeth Dowdy, ‘23 [Liz Dowdy A'23] [Avery Lehr A'24] “All SJC fashion is androgynous, preppy, or altogether confusing.” Chris Musick (A’22) “Rich kids shopping at Goodwill to look working class.” Clare Collins (A’22) “Everyone dresses exactly like their soul and everyone’s soul is different.” Carrie Cecci (A’24) “Eclectic.” Kate Kennedy (A’24) Photo by Elizabeth Dowdy, ‘23 8 the Gadfly / πόλις / Apr 30, 2021 Photo by Elizabeth Dowdy, ‘23 �{poetry} Water Warring Daniel Nathan Bottle of water, my dullard potion— left too much water for not enough ocean; a liquid world in ordinate squalor, all for one, for corporate conquer. Financial markets flex in flux, and flow to reflex back to status quo; They boom and bust, then bust to bust Stock bubbles burst and fatten up the family trusts. But water is life, which is stored in plastics, produced by Dow Chemical, and padded with government grants & relaxed taxes; With help from the Deregulators of the state of Decay, the fines handed down by the courts in class-action suits have been hush-money paid or were “clerical errored” away. So they say , thank God for toxic sludge and God damn the EPA Pay no mind to the industrial fog; a healthy life requires a healthy dose of smog. Instead think of the views as the waves crest & crash; the golden-glow glittering, splintering as the sea & sky scratch. The unending blue—the breathtaking bruise of absence so vast, gazing out at the horizon from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And when Nēstlē is forced to ration out its supply of unlimited water, throes of thirst will divide the merely Poor from the dried-out gasps of the pauper. and so Sacred is life, so bless-ed be our water; let us pray for our low-price, single-use bottles: the vessel of “life” that keep it contained. It’s never all for one, if you’re just one of the others; Well if water is life, then don’t you miss when life was sponsored? the Gadfly / πόλις / Apr 30, 2021 9 �Isa Kiedrowski {on music} Blasts from the Past and Present Perambulations Britt Lamson “You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop — The Twilight Zone.” – Rod Serling ...And all music is much the same. Music, playing forward in time but existing from the past to be played again in recording, is both within and without time. Music is caught in an indefinite realm between light and shadow, art that carries our minds and hearts beyond ourselves into other worlds of our imaginations. Blast from the Past ~ An Album Anniversary Dave Clark Dave Clark’s Time - The Album Released: April 9, 1986 (35th Anniversary) Dave Clark’s Time is a concept album and musical detailing a narrative about humanity’s progress in the eyes of the larger universe with a featured medley of several talented musicians and their characters. The cast includes the likes of veteran actors and voices Laurence Olivier and Cliff Richards, to the inimitable likes of Freddie Mercury, Leo Sayer, Steve Wonder, and Dionne Warwick. The concept behind the whole album sees fictitious rock musician Chris Wilder and his band transported to the High Court of the Universe, located in another civilization in the Andromeda 10 Galaxy. Earth’s early efforts at space exploration have been noticed by the High Court, and the musicians have been chosen to represent and defend Earth before the court and the Time Lord Melchisedic (whose character is inspired by the titular character and civilization of the same name in Doctor Who). This whole project was orchestrated by Dave Clark of the British Invasion group The Dave Clark Five and David Soames, with music and songs by Jeff Daniels (not the actor) and David Pomeranz. A wild ride of rock-opera madness, theatrical magnificence, the Gadfly / πόλις / Apr 30, 2021 layered harmonies, reflective speeches and bombastic performances, I recommend this album to anyone and everyone for all of those aspects and reasons. �Present Perambulations ~ A Recent Album clear and so evenly balanced that the album — dare I say — shines brighter than the most polished of metals. The entire album is a danceable popLady Gaga sensible parade with a variety of Chromatica influences—from 1990’s club music, Released: May 29, 2020 electronica, pop of all eras and aspects of musical theatre liking backing A return to the musical stylings orchestration for a rich textural sound of her early career, Lady Gaga’s to a simple four-on-the-flour beat. Chromatica is a smash hit that takes Gaga contemplates what it means to from past club and house music exist in a celebrity-idolizing world culture, adding her signature catchy and how to achieve happiness through vocal melodies and harmonies with healing and growth. This album is her strong but warm lower register. highly recommended for anyone who The mixing and parts are so clean, so has enjoyed Lady Gaga’s previous career works and for anyone who fancies a thumping, danceable time or a good sit-down listen with lyrical themes of introspection. If you have any album recommendations of recent releases or upcoming anniversaries that you want to spread the word about, please send them to: sjca.gadfly@gmail.com Who knows — one may even end up in a future issue! Enjoy, and may the music take you on astounding journeys, from the innermost depths of your soul to the farthest reaches of space. the Gadfly / πόλις / Apr 30, 2021 11 �{elements of etiquette} On Masks Isa Kiedrowski E lements of Etiquette is a column dedicated to etiquette beyond “what fork to use.” Etiquette isn’t about rules— it’s about knowing how to make others feel at ease, with the idea that if everyone tries a little harder, we’ll all be much happier and more comfortable. It isn’t only for the English royal family, and it certainly isn’t snobbish. With that in mind, we’ll be examining etiquette in all its forms, vintage, modern, or medieval—whatever Miss Kiedrowski happens to be interested in that week. If there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s that etiquette is for everyone. You can take or leave what you want from it, from business cards to greeting diplomats to learning how to write the perfect thank you note (that one isn’t optional, by the way. Everyone should know how to write a thank you note). And yes, we will eventually cover which fork to use. On Masks COVID-19—or as we were formally introduced to it, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2— has drastically (and, one hopes, temporarily) altered the manner in which we interact with the world. It used to be so simple: make introductions (gentlemen to ladies, then ladies to gentlemen, and then only if the lady accepted the acquaintance), shake hands, kiss cheeks if one found oneself in certain regions of the Continent, and leave with one’s circle of acquaintances slightly enlarged. But in these days of physical distancing (the author insists on the word “physical,” because although we find ourselves in unprecedented circumstances, we are still remarkably social creatures), etiquette has taken on a different flavor. As shaking hands is unsafe—and quite frankly impossible from six feet away—and kissing—on the cheeks or elsewhere— tantamount to signing one’s own death warrant, the idea of “good manners” has now expanded to include avoiding people entirely, keeping them at more than arm’s length, and of course mask wearing. 12 the Gadfly / πόλις / Apr 30, 2021 Mask wearing is currently the highest form of good manners available to us. As wearing a cloth mask serves to protect those around the wearer more so than the wearer themselves, doing so signals to everyone in the immediate vicinity (and there shouldn’t be too many), that the wearer cares about them and their safety. And since etiquette, at the end of the day, is more about putting those around us at ease, rather than following an iron-clad set of rules with kamikaze-like dedication (mind, however, that there are still some rules the author considers iron-clad), maskwearing is a constant display of good manners. Masks come with their own etiquette, as well. Not wearing a mask makes one appear rather selfish (and yes, while appearances aren’t everything, one has to admit an awful lot gets assumed based off of them)—see above for what wearing a mask does make you look like. One step up from not wearing one at all is the half-hearted wearer, or the “just for appearances.” This is the individual who either wears their mask under their nose or chin most of the time, yanking it up whenever someone approaches them. While slightly less offensive than not wearing a mask at all, the author has to admit that it still sends a message of not taking things seriously. Since the total death toll for the United States now exceeds that of the Second World War, and is approaching that of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, it’s probably time to take things seriously, in the interest of avoiding a death toll similar to that of the Civil War. The author will allow herself a small slip when she says, “Just wear the damn mask. Properly, please.” Besides, wearing a mask does come with its own set of advantages. Those who formerly had trouble schooling their faces into acceptable expressions will rejoice at the notion that this is no longer a necessity. While smiling is nice, a mere crinkling of the eyes will suffice in getting the message across, as one hastily crosses the street to avoid an oncoming mask-less individual. �continued from page 5 Stoltzfus further emphasized the significance of Sicut Cervus as an established tradition in recounting the 2002 Palestrina Choir (resident choir of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Dublin) performance in the Great Hall. The performers were amazed at the attendance; students filled the hall and leaned over the balcony to listen. At the end of the performance, Sicut Cervus was requested and the Choir was more than happy to oblige. What they weren’t expecting was for the entire Great Hall to join in. “Loud was the cheering and ovation at the end,” Stoltzfus remembered. “As one amazed Renaissance singer told me afterwards, ‘“I thought I was a rock star!”’ Fricke further commented on the significance of Sicut Cervus as a song. He noted that it is unaccompanied, allowing it to be sung at any point, given that you have the right amount of people. However, he also emphasized the difficulty of singing a four-part polyphony: “It takes a right amount of engagement and focus to be able to do it...you have to be attentive to your part and the parts around you.” He also noted how the song impacts the dynamic in a group of singers. “I think it has a way of bringing people together, not just because of the popularity of it, but because when you’re experiencing it, the parts move independently, but in respect to each other, so that the harmony lines up. When it doesn’t line up, it creates this beautiful dissonance that is also very compelling,” Fricke explained. Additionally, the brevity of the piece is suited to the casual singing setting. “You show up, you sing for a couple minutes, you feel great, and you leave,” Fricke said. FINAL THOUGHTS Articles continued from earlier in the issue continued from page 6 LOCKE Vs. HOBBES: What then is to be made of these dueling systems? To better understand the question, it is helpful to view the dichotomy through the lens of two competing political theorists, John Locke, author of the Second Treatise of Government, and Thomas Hobbes, author of the Leviathan. According to the Lockean conception of government, communities are only formed when men give their free consent to form ties with one another and divest themselves of their natural liberty so that they may live comfortably amongst one another. Central to this theory is the notion that government is formed from the bonds between men and for the sake of facilitating those relationships. In the view put forth by Hobbes, governments are formed by individual consent given to the sovereign for the sake assuring their physical security. Thus, the relational chain, rather than giving primacy to peers’ relationships as seen in the Lockean formulation, is formed by an individuated relationship between the sovereign and the citizen who legitimizes him. Once the government is established, all values and actions necessary to maintaining the security of the nation are subsumed by the sovereign. In the U.S. and Chinese credit systems, these parallels persist. The U.S. Credit Risk Score system, born from entrepreneurship of private citizens, seeks to increase trustworthiness between citizens for ease of commerce. The horizontal, Lockean relationship is one between peers who consent to a system amongst each other. As a result, individuals with low credit scores retain the liberty to take loans from persons willing to issue financing. Following the Hobbesian archetype, the Chinese Social Credit system is one instituted by the government out of concerns stemming from national security. As such, it is erected between private citizens and their government. Thus, while the U.S. system primarily concerns individual spenders and private lenders, the Chinese system considers individuals as citizens in relationship to their government. Financial habits constitute a portion of the behaviors tracked that include any non-financial private activity deemed relevant to national policy; for example delinquency, traffic violations, disorderly public conduct are all data points included in the score. Will the Lockean system and its inability to account for non-financial actions prove to be less agile and a missed opportunity for government enforcement of domestic policies? Will the Hobbesian system prove too restrictive on personal freedoms? The result is to be played out over time as the dueling systems renew the familiar Hobbes-Locke debate on the battlefield of credit scores. 1) Schaefer, Kendra. “China’s Corporate Social Credit System.” Trivium China, 16 Nov. 2020. the Gadfly / πόλις / Apr 30, 2021 13 �continued from page 7 For the Christian, the republic can not offer security and freedom because rather than being subject to the Christian’s control, it is subject to God’s control. What then is the duty of such a citizen, who owes no obligation to the state directly? Machiavelli insists that this sense of duty exists, nor am I inclined to disagree. Indeed, it would seem that in the case of the republic, a citizen who made no demands of his republic would be superior to the one who, viewing their republic as a tool for freedom, submitted to that republic only out of desire for personal gain. Machiavelli describes the republic as aimed at the common good, since it is ruled by a majority which suppresses the minority so that all may enjoy their freedom more fully than under a tyranny. In this latter form of government, a minority oppresses a majority and a smaller number of citizens (the tyrant and his supporters) enjoy security and freedom. It is also the case in a republic that the greed of its citizens (which Machiavelli sees as applying equally to all, regardless of religion) increases the security and prosperity of the republic. But contrary to Machiavelli’s view, the Christian citizen is less mindlessly pursuant of material wealth or having a family, and more so preoccupied with contemplation of God. Machiavelli criticises Christian apathy toward politics as incomplete contemplation of God, especially if that contemplation is to take the form of deeds. In the vein of Calvin or James, every Christian is obliged to know God through action in every part of life, and Machiavelli recognises that politics is a part of life. Therefore it would be remiss of them not to glorify God through action. Examples of such active duty might range from paying their taxes to serving in the 14 the Gadfly / Apr 30, 2021 FINAL THOUGHTS military as their republic called it forth, since in all of these activities the Christian recognises that by rendering to the republic what it claims from them, they are actually in that way serving God. Contemplating God through action in this manner also distinguishes the two aforementioned sorts of religion, while reconciling Machiavelli’s virtue with Christ’s command. The non-Christian citizen of the republic acts according to the commands of his republic insofar as he trusts his republic will provide security and freedom to him; meanwhile, the Christian citizen is called to act in accord with the republic, by either conforming to its laws or by breaking them and suffering the punishment decreed. The duty of either citizen, the one with a religion of exchange or a religion of gratitude, does not vary externally; both are to act with the interest of their republic in mind, since that interest is one which contains their common good. The difference between the two lies internally, where the citizen with a non-Christian religion has loyalty when the republic benefits him. This occurs most of the time, since the majority-based system of a republic tends to favour most of its systems. By contrast, the Christian citizen finds their own good in doing good for others, which broadens the question of common good into a more Thomistic than Machiavellian sense. The Christian asks “How can I love everyone?” rather than the Machiavellian question: “What is the minimum of love needed to secure my personal good?” �What is the Polity Reading? Freshmen: Euripides, The Bacchae Juniors: Kant, Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER Sophomores: Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE Seniors: De Beauvoir, The Second Sex Philosophy and Politics and Theology: Society: Kierkegard, Marx, The GerPhilosophical man Ideology Fragments Tocqueville, Nietzsche, BeDemocracy in yond Good and America Evil Preceptorials: Joyce, Ulysses Beowulf Arendt, Life of the Mind Dostoevsky, The Idiot Aristotle, On the Soul Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, staff, and alumna of the Annapolis campus. Continuing the Conversation: Below are questions based on the preceding articles to take with you into the community: 1. Boathouse Reopens: Where do you go to think? 2. Dueling Systems: What would a Hobbesian-like Credit System look like in the U.S.? 3. Machiavelli on Religion: If two citizens act in the republic’s advantage, is either citizen better, if one acts out of selfishness and the other in service of God? How can citizens fail to place the republic as the highest good in their lives and still be called good? Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Microsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. For more information, contact us via email at sjca .g adfly@gmail.com 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 the Gadfly / Apr 30, 2021 15 �ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 16 the Gadfly / Apr 30, 2021 � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLII, Issue 03 Description An account of the resource Volume XLII, Issue 03 of The Gadfly. Published April 30, 2021. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Page, Lysithia (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-04-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLII Issue 03 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a9c63d9c4f25fcce037d7f6eedcf9307.pdf a6132c3a4ef0ac7534e7eded0a9de007 PDF Text Text Democratic • 05 The in • Reexamining 'Right' & 'Left' • ST. Jmw's COLLEGE• 60 COLLEGE AVE, ANNAPOLIS, J\1I) 21401 •OCT. 15, 2013 • VoL. XXXV • IssUE 04 �02 THE GADFLY . THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 60 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 SJCA.GADFLY@GMAIL.COM Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine. STAFF Nathan Goldman• Editor-in-Chief Ian Tuttle • Editor-in-Chief Hayden Pendergrass • Layout Editor Sasha Welm • Illustrator Sebastian Barajas • Staff Andrew Kriehn • Staff Robert Malka • Staff Sarah Meggison • Staff CONTRIBUTORS Thomas Braithwaite Nicholas Gazzola Patrick Kelly Micaela MacDougall Tim McClennen Pavlas Papadopoulos Zeke Schumacher ·.'V v . . . .. . . . . . .. Alurrtni .OndlJs. "l X Then I applied to be the student representative to the Alumni AssoV V ciation Board of Directors, I didn't know anything about what I was going to be doing, except that it would be something to do with alumni. I have always been intrigued by our alumni; they are something of a window into the future of the current student body. Mr. Pickens, the Director of Alumni Relations, invited me to attend the Alumni Association board meeting on the Friday before Homecoming. Fifteen alumni on the Board met to talk about the College. The first thingthat surprised me was the meeting's length- eight hours! The second was how all in attedndance were energized, joyful, and took their responsibility seriously- and they stayed that way all the way through the day. They discussed a lot of different things. The main topic I want to share with you is how they are working on reaching out to the students, and to a larger group of alumni, seeking ways to bring both groups together more often. All the members of the Board are working on coming up with the best ways to accomplish this goal. The Board wants us to try reaching out to them when we feel it necessary to share our opinions and provide feedback. It is astonishing to realize that I will be an alumna in less than two years. Seniors have less than a year. Even the freshmen will join the Alumni in fewer than four years! Let's work together to make the connection stronger. Contact me or Leo Pickens (at the new Hodson House) with questions or ideas in person or via e-mail to find out how! Gurer Gundondu, A'lS gurer.gundondu@sjca.edu leo. pickens@sjca.edu ver the last several months, our SJC A'93 Facebook group began to buzz more than usual for two reasons. The first was our upcoming 20th reunion- yes, now we were going to be "those old people" trespassing on campus. The second was the College's "re-branding"/Siegelvision controversy. These two events got some of us thinking of how much we loved and respected the education we got at St. John's, and how many of us felt there were still enough Johnnies in the world-if only we could reach them. There are about 100 Johnnie FB groups already, and they all discuss what they discuss, but the thing we could not find was a place where people were sharing their favorite quotations from Program books and authors. Many of us treasure these pearls decades later. We wanted to build a campfire where the SJC spirit could gather and where people from any class or campus could share their passion for these timeless and timely texts. Johnnie Quote is now open for business. It's a ''Virtual Quad" where we can share the bon mots we love, whether they are wise or sad or funny or political. No arguments about tuition increases or re-branding. It's a lot more fun to have it powered by everyone's enthusiasm than just by Google, so please send us your favorites. Share the wisdom: Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/johnniequotes Twitter @johnniequote. Email: johnniequote@gmail.com O Special thanks to classmates: Henri Nicolas, Michael Camper, Kate Rooney and Dierdre Crosse. Nicholas Gazzola, A'9 3 �THE GADFLY 03 The Democratic Prejudice I hope to have misunderstood Mr. Lacy's article ("From the self-examination. (Again, I leave aside whether the College is Sidelines of Modernity," Gadfly, September 24). The fol- unique or in what respect. I say only that it is excellent.) In suggesting that St. John's deny its uniqueness, Mr. Lacy is lowing is a quarrel with what I hope is not the heart of his calling on the College to conform to one of the great prejudicargument, but which seems to be precisely that. Mr. Lacy admits that he is not suggesting es of our time: the democratic or egalitarian faith, which, as such, denies greatness. any specific change to the program. Instead, he asks that the College change its self-un- ( ( In suggesting that St. This conformity may, in some way, be true derstanding- that it drop "the claim that we John's deny its unique- to the New Program as it exists or as it once existed. But by doing so without having disare doing something 'inherently different' ness, Mr. Lacy is callputed the College's uniqueness, Mr. Lacy from other schools." We Johnnies "believ[e] ing on the College to seems to be censoring the College on beourselves to be privileged" in our education. conform to one of the half of that prejudice. This prejudice is not Mr. Lacy's request that the College efface its great prejudices of our without its merits, but it is nevertheless a claim of uniqueness came as a surprise to prejudice, and should in collegiate contexts me, especially because Mr. Lacy makes no time: the democratic be treated as such. Tocqueville, Nietzsche, effort to contradict it and does not even state or egalitarian faith, Strauss, and others identified this prejuhis own opinion on the matter. His recomwhich, as such, denies dice and its dominance in our time as the mendation is apparently limited to how the greatness. result of a great historical shift, a change College brands itself, and does not touch the that thoughtful persons could study and truth or falsehood of the matter. I will leave it to others to defend or discome to understand by one way or another. pute the College's uniqueness. I would like to address Mr. These thinkers understood that the more this democratic/ Lacy's suggestion that the College deny this uniqueness, and egalitarian prejudice developed, the more it would be conthat Johnnies check their privilege, without his having dis- tradicted and offended by any notion of greatness (including, puted the College's uniqueness and the privilege thereby con- for our purposes, the greatness of books, ideas, and authors). I ferred. This suggestion smacks of ideology, an inquisition on cannot say what such diverse thinkers would say about a colbehalf of our era's most sacred cow. A St. John's education is lege education in our time and place. But I do think that they, supposed to provide like so many of the teachers and students who have shaped its students with the and continue to shape St. John's College, would highly value tools to examine their the effort to recognize this reigning prejudice and to examine opinions and liberate it, and thereby to free oneself from it as a prejudice, for the themselves from faulty sake of intellectual liberty and the ennoblement of the soul. ways of thinking. Our Whether this prejudice holds a special place in our education opinions include or not, it should at the very least be subject to the same examiprejudices that we nation as every other prejudice, and its prescriptions should possess as individ- not be accepted without question. Mr. Lacy clearly desires a great change in the substance as uals with particular backgrounds well as the rhetoric of St. John's, although the kind of change and life experi- he would propose remains somewhat opaque to me from what ence~, as well as he has written. I have argued that, insofar as he critiques the those we absorb assertion of an "inherent difference" and the concomitant en masse as resi- sense of "privilege" without entering into the merits of these dents of the 20th and 21st . claims, he undermines the governing principles of the Colcenturies. I do not know lege as generations of students have experienced it- the "good whether the one is more philosophy" of education which is, perhaps, still "good mardifficult to confront than keting." I repeat: I hope to have misunderstood him in this 1 the other, or even if they are respect. If I have not, I think the two of us have lost a great separable except in speech. I part of the common ground for discussing the purpose of a St. do know that the St. John's John's education, and the inseparable question of its presentaCollege I attended excelled tion to potential students. + in alerting students to the ED: As the re branding process continues, we encourage Johnnies task, and even in helping to keep the conversation alive in our pages. For further commenstudents begin the labor of tary on the rebranding, don't miss page six of the current issue! �04 THE GADFLY ob , or A ttob ? • are not the But here is where the similarity stops: Four lines after the fter this column and my column from last issue, many of my fellow students may ask some simple questions: Preamble to the Polity Constitution ends, we find Article 1, "What does the Delegate Council do? And, if it does anything Section 2, which states: "The Delegate Council shall pursue at all, why should I care?" Stick with me through the dry part the objects stated in the preamble, and to this end, may interof this column, and I'll do my best to provide informative and pret this constitution as is necessary and proper." Why does this matter? Recall that the Polity Constitution compelling answers. begins, 'We, the students"-and we the students didn't vote Very simply, the Delegate Council does two main things: 1) hands out about $50,000 per year for this Constitution. We didn't "orto students on campus ( almost a year's dain and establish this constitution ( (And if we don't care to influ- for [our own] government." We didn't full tuition and board); and 2) picks students to represent cureven elect our representatives for the ence our government now, rent students to the Board of Visitors when it is the most accessible purpose of drafting and passing a new and Governors and to sit on the Stuto us that it will ever be, how Constitution! Did I miss the convendent Committee on Instruction, and the tion? can we expect to go out into Alumni Board, amongst other things. Remember who voted to ordain and the wider world and engage establish this constitution? The DelThere's a lot of money at stake, and how the entire student body is repreegate Council did. Seventeen students our government in an efsented to the BVG and the Instruction fective manner, a manner wrote a constitution, passed themCommittee, etc., depends on whom the that expresses our will, oper- selves the "authority" to select a new Delegate Council picks for the job. Constitution, and then set it above us ates under our consent, and all. Why is this concerning'? Because it In my last column on this issue, I res;oe,cts our stressed two fundamental philosophical clearly indicates that the Council has considerations that call into question used its power to "interpret this conthe legitimacy of our new Polity Constitution" so that 'We, the students" stitution. But all too often, the philosophical does not impact actually means 'We, the 17 members of the Delegate Council our lives-at least, not in an immediate way. So what is so bad who vote for something." You and I and every other student on about this new Constitution? If it's better than the last one, this campus who did not vote for this new Constitution were why does any of this matter? removed of our right to a government representative of our First and foremost, in the Delegate Council's most egre- will. The old, flawed Constitution had the foresight to begin, folgious overstepping of its authority, the D.C. determined that all the rest of us who were not on the council did not count as lowing the preamble, with a definition of the Student members of the Student Body. Polity: "All undergraduate students currently How do I know the Delegate Council does not enrolled with the Registrar of St. John's Colconsider those students not on it not to be students lege in Annapolis, Maryland shall be considat all? The answer lies in the Constitution they ered members of the Student Polity." passed. The new Constitution's preamble begins So what do do? \Ve and ends with the following: care. This college, this Pol'We, the students of St. John's College in ity, and our own self-goverAnnapolis, Maryland, recognize: our right nance-these are all prepato establish an instrument of governance... rations for real life. And if we [and] do therefore ordain and establish this don't care to influence our governconstitution for the government of the ment now, when it is the most accessible Polity of St. John's College in Annapto us that it will ever be, hmv can \Ve exolis, Maryland." pect to go out into the wider world and The above sounds innocuous and faengage our government in an effective miliar-patriotic, even-in its evomanner, in a manner that expresses cation of our own American Conour will, operates under our consent, stitution: "We, the students" is and respects our boundaries? our version of "We the people," I reiterate my challenge to the Poliand the American Constitution ty to become involved in its direction and clearly states at the end of the preamble that We the government, and I call upon everyone to clamor for the rePeople "do ordain and establish this Constitution turn of their right to self-governance. There must be a reffor the United States of America"-just like our erendum on this Constitution, and it must be written ovvn Polity Constitution now does for us. to respect each of us and our fundamental rights. + �05 THE GADFLY LL F I E E ' • 'm still not all that used to the fact that I'm a junior. I know siasm that one has during freshman year. After you've been I've been at St. John's for over two years of my life, but at here a while (in my experience, anyway) it can get hard at the same time I still sometimes feel like I just got here. But times to keep that enthusiasm alive. It's good to be reminded as I get older and move up in the years, new cadres of fresh- that St. John's is a weird, confusing, beautiful place worth bemen come to inherit the torches. And sometimes things hap- ing proud of. It's good to renew your sense of wonder and appen when my cold junior heart needs some warming; like the preciation every now and then. Writer David Foster Wallace gave a comrecapturing of the Randall flag. So this thing happened toward the end mencement speech for Kenyon College of September. I was walking back to cam- ' ' After you've been here in 2005 entitled "This Is Water" (which a while (in my experi- you should totally go look up right now; pus from a CVS run, intending to go straight back to Pinkney to take a nap. But as I got it's amazing). He begins the speech with a ence anyways) it can story about fish, and one says to the other closer to campus, I was lured back to the get hard at times to Quad by "Love Shack" blasting from the keep that enthusiasm something about the water in which they windows of Randall. So earlier in the year, are swimming and the other one replies, alive. good to the Randall kids made a flag for their dorm, ''What the hell is water?" Wallace eventureminded that St. which was subsequently stolen by the inally says that liberal arts education teaches habitants of Campbell (Randall was none John's is a weird, con- us how to stay conscious and not just go too happy about it). At some point, someone fusing, beautiful place through the motions of life; it helps us to displayed the Randall flag from a Campbell worth being proud of. recognize and remind ourselves that "this is water, this is water." The Randall Flag Inwindow. All of a sudden, everyone ran out of cident has been a part of a series of "this is Randall and charged to Campbell to successfully take back the flag. Afterwards, they played, ''We Are The water" moments for me, reminding me of where and who I am Champions" from the Randall 2nd window. It was a glorious and what I'm doing. So, Class of 2017, you guys are all right. Carry the torch of moment. When I was a freshman, I lived on Randall 3rd. The dorm legacy proudly. holds a special place in my heart; I am Team Randall (yeah, I Classes of 2016 and 2014 are awesome too. Class of 2015 is know, I spent most of my social time in Campbell, whatever). obviously the best. This whole episode reminded me of that special sort of enthuRANDALLFOREVER!+ �06 GADFLY Get Your Food On! www.gastrokitty.blogspot.com I t has been over two weeks since Homecoming weekend, but I still remember her so vividly. The dimly-lit Coffee Shop-turned-dance-floor reverberated with rock tunes. I heard few of the words but felt every beat as I jived and vibed. Then I saw her-the woman in blue, dancing. She was a short (about 5'2") and stout middle aged Latina, or perhaps Native American. Her shoulder-length hair was black and her dress was a navy blue, or at least so it appeared in the light. Approaching her, I stooped over and whispered into her right ear: ''Your dancing makes me so happy," or some version of that. All she did was smile, and give me a look that said, "I'm not quite sure what you said; I fear that in your slightly inebriated state it was super weird. But never mind, let's dance." And then we danced. I never heard her voice, and against the loud backdrop, I doubt that she ever heard mine. Yet we conversed in a gazillion words. With every hip SV\ring, arm flair, neck twitch, hair whip, foot slide, waist thrust, wrist flick, she spoke to me and I to her. I say with Emma Watson's conviction in Stephen Chobsky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower: "in that moment I swear we were infinite." Though dancing always makes me feel free and happy-like everything is all right in the world-there was something extra about my short dance with the woman in blue. Perhaps it was because she was barefooted and I admired the guts of someone who could do that on such ( ( 'I want to have the a grimy, beer- and sweat-splattered, guts to dance bareslippery floor. Perhaps it was her foot in a room full of dance group hopping and interstrangers; I thought. mittent solo sessions-belying that she knew very few people, if any, in 'I want to dance the room. Perhaps it was that dethe strangers. I want spite this she danced all night long, to alone. I want not shying away from the eyes of to whip my hair like strangers; not afraid to dance with nothing else matters. them, and not afraid of dancing solo. Though my feet took me away I want to be like as I danced \Vi.th friends and strangers alike, my eyes often returned to her-the woman in blue, dancing. 'I want to have the guts to dance barefoot in a room full of strangers,' I thought. 'I want to dance with the strangers. I want to dance alone. I want to whip my hair like nothing else matters. I want to be like you. 'I want to be like you beyond the dance floor. I want to be like you right now in seminar.' These thoughts flitted through my mind during a Marx seminar a few days later. There I was-arms crossed, my normally sunken forehead sunken yet further by a frown. There I was-fists clenched, lips only slightly apart in non-speech. As I sit there, I am afraid. I am afraid-and perhaps rightfully so-that I did not do the ..-.o,,r,,.,..,,,, enough. I am afraid that my words will not be coherent enough. I am afraid that I have not listened carefully enough to the preceding conversation. I am afraid that my words will be ignored; that I will dance and no one will join in. Then, I remember the woman in blue. I unclench my fists, massage my forehead with my fingers, and smile. I sway slightly, imperceptibly from side to side. I open my lips wide apart. As I offer my thoughts on Marx, I say confidently: "Seminar is a dance party; life is a dance party and I am the woman in blue. Shall we dance?" + �07 THE GADFLY • 1 ' • 1 ' ' • 1 ' session, where real discussion happened, and real decisions were discussed. They did not sit in blocks, but all mixed, and gave every member an independent vote. On June 19, this mixed body, which had begun calling itself the "Commons," arrived at the hall where the Estates General traditionally met, and found it locked and guarded by soldiers. They simply walked down the hall and sat in an indoor tennis would like to begin by thanking Mr. Ian Tuttle for his dedi- court. After being kicked out of the tennis court a few days cation to "Bursting the Johnnie Bubble." Such is a worthy later, the met in a nearby church. Upon moving to the tennis endeavor, and a time-consuming one. Reporting the happen- court, the body changed its name to the National Assembly, a name which they kept thereafter. ings of the world at large to our Polity helps The National Assembly had one agenda: to keep us relevant. It is also a big job, and one ( ( The interesting end the pain in France. That was composed that could benefit from a division of labor. A thing about mod- of three parts: fund the government, feed division of labor is what I hereby offer. I am a ern American poli- the peasants, and restart business. When liberal in just the way that Mr. Tuttle is a contics is that both they met they did not divide their seating servative: with respect for those who disagree ·with him, and with humility in his own beliefs. parties are now, by by estate, even though all estates were repI 1Arill try to write with this level of maturity French standards, resented. They divided their seating by proposed solution. One group wanted to reverse and restraint. conservative. any changes which had been made since the Now, the words "liberal" and "conservalast time life was tolerable. That is: recreate tive" have drifted in meaning considerably since they were first coined, but I have always believed that the policies and conditions of the last time when the peasthe first step towards understanding a modern word is to un- ants had food, business was moving, and the government had derstand its historical meaning. If one can follow the course funds. The other group believed that the present pain was an of its change in meaning, then one truly knows the meaning inevitable successor to the previous order and that, even if the previous order could be created and the pain stopped, the the of the world. In June 1789, the king of France convened the Estates Gen- pain would return. They proposed creating a previously uneral, a royal act whose most recent precedent had been in 1614. imagined order. The first group were called "Conservatives" The French government was bankrupt, the peasants were and the second "Liberals." When they met, the Conservatives sat to the right of the podium, and the Liberals to the left of starving and the economy had stalled. There was at level. The wanted the Estates it. These directions prevail to this day, so whenever you hear General to advise him on solving the problem, but even more, someone talking about the "left" or the "right" in modern polihe wanted them to lend legitimacy to any unpleasant deci- tics, whether or not they include the adjective "far" they are sion that he felt he had to mal<:e to solve the crisis. The Estates referring to the National Assembly in France in 1789. The interesting thing about modern American politics is convened, and were seated in the same configuration used in 1614: the Clergy (first estate) and the Nobility (second estate) that both parties are now, by French standards, conservative. were seated in blocks, equally close to the podium. The third The so-called liberals want a return to the policies and orders estate (composed theoretically of everyone else but actually of the period from the end of the Second World War until... It composed almost entirely of business men) was seated behind is very hard to say when that period ended, as each of the polithe first two. The third estate had been invited to send twice as cies was overturned one at a time. The so-called conservatives many representatives as either of the other two, but they were claim that they want a return to the period around the end then informed that each estate as a whole got only one vote, of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. nullifying the effect of their large size, except as an impedi- Now, one could argue that either side was ignorant of history, ment to :flexibility. Not only were they shut out of the proceed- and what they claim is a return is actually a push towards a previously unseen order. That would make that party the libings physically, they were also shut out procedurally. The third estate started holding meetings in between the of- erals, but I am not going to discuss that here. However, I will ficial sessions of the Estates General, trying to actually solve admit that it seems that I have just declared myself a conserthe problems of that beset the nation. Soon, members of the vative: I would like to see a return to some of the New Deal Clergy and Nobility started joining them in these unofficial policies.+ I have spent more than three years climbing this cardboard, paper, and linen tower of ours. While I am not so hubristic as to imagine that I have reached the top, I do make it a habit to seek out a window at every landing. Thus I appoint myself watchman, to inform the people below, and those who look only inwards, of what can be seen in the lands about. I �08 THE PRECIOUS COLLEGE UPCOMING VENTS Tuesday 10/15 Kunai Volleyball 4PM Wednesday 10/16 Reasonball DvG, 2:45 PM SvW, 4PM St. John's Chorus, Great Hall 7PM Friday 10/18 Kunai Volleyball 4PM Lecture: "In the Wilderness: Moses as Founder and Lawgiver" by Prof. Ronna Burger, Tulane University FSK Auditorium 8PM Saturday 10/19 Reasonball Wv lPM GvH, 2:45 PM Sunday 10/20 Soccer Gv lPM WvH,2:45PM If you would like to see your event on the weekly schedule, please email sjca.gadf:ly@ gmail.com. Smeagolvision's 4 ( ore) Points of Rebranding 1. Reframe the current emphasis on "the Books." Move the College's emphasis from Books to Riddles. Incorporate the ancient riddle game into all classes, playing for life and death stakes. What does it have in its pocketses, precious? 2. Reframe negative-sounding "lack of choice" or "all-required" lifestyle. Accentuate the positive diversity of secret paths, mountain tunnels, and food choices, which include fish, worms, beetles, fish, raw rabbits, and fish, that you alone enjoy! 3. Differentiate from other Rings ofPower. V\Thy engage in the fight to save the embattled Rings of Power? Explain how the One Ring is indeed "the One." And, if needed, use a suitable alternative label, e.g. My Precious. 4. Broaden criteria for potential ringbearers beyond "needle in the haystack." Create a narrative and supporting communications that are pitched to independent adventurers, good burglars-yes-who are also regular hobbits who share, with other hob bits, the love of eating, drinking, and smoking. Bagginses are welcome but not exclusively courted. � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly 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. 8 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XXXV, Issue 4 Description An account of the resource Volume XXXV, Issue 4 of The Gadfly. Published on October 15, 2013, 2013. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goldman, Nathan (Editor in Chief) Tuttle, Ian (Editor in Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-10-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XXXV issue 4 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b55e3b53a71a230c68232ee5a688288b.pdf 20848ef762e13b8b7fe3d591cef0ebdc PDF Text Text Photo by Rose Pelham �The BAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaadfly 02 The Dreams of Drumpland I began compiling other people’s dreams in late 2019, as the slide into the historical era we have just exited was becoming inevitable due to the discovery––by certain politicians–– that even things which are blatantly true can be contested, if only one bands together with enough fellow deniers of reality. With this discovery, it became possible to justify eliminating the ultimate check against the abuse of power, by transforming a trial into a political contest. Consequently, the only check that remained was that of the following election, which was to have its integrity defended by an entirely depopulated Federal Election Commission, and utterly no protection against hacking to speak of, since this, too, proved politically inconvenient. What necessarily followed could be easily guessed at by any careful observer of the times, but nonetheless looked too much like something out of dystopian fiction for us to believe what we were seeing. I compiled dreams until 2023, when I had to flee the country. With the recent collapse of the regime, I have finally been able to publish my collection to be read in its country of origin, where it should appear early next year. The following is a set of dreams excerpted from The Dreams of Drumpfland in chronological order, which my publisher, AK Press, hopes will stimulate interest in my book. -- The dream of a conscripted soldier: I was in the conference room [of the army base] and “the Miller” ––as we called him––had come from the WH to give a very important lecture. A fellow private leaned over and said to me: “I’m very shy, but could you ask for me how many wives does he have?” Incredulous and a little nervous, I repeated, “How many wives?” “Yes, that’s the right question.” At this point, “the Miller,” carefully feeding wheat into the left ear of a soldier, which was excreted as a white powder from the right, overheard us, and turned to address me, saying, “I have twelve wives to protect against the threat of replacement! Do you not have twelve wives!?” “I have no wives,” I said, feeling the snickering gaze of the other conscripts upon me, as if I alone were ignorant of some essential fact. To this he replied: “you are supposed to have as many wives as possible! Everyone knows we must be able to out reproduce our enemies! It is the destiny of our nation that we emerge from the deep mines with the largest population so we may conquer the Earth!! If you don’t have enough wives, I can’t guarantee you a place in the mineshaft when the war comes! Don’t you want us to out reproduce our enemies!? DO YOU STAND BETWEEN US AND OUR NATIONAL DESTINY!?” At this point, I woke up, terrified I may have shouted in my sleep. -- A college student’s nightmare: I was about to take my final exam, which would decide whether or not I graduated. I was certain I was ready for it. After the customary anti-cheating precautions/rituals (including all manner of searches and warnings against even so much as using your own watch or seeing with the aid of your own, non-standard testing-center issued, glasses) we were told that the test would begin. But first, we each had to swear allegiance to the flag, individually, to make sure we were loyal citizens. One by one, each of my classmates pledged allegiance to the flag, our leader’s twelve fertile wives, and the great, heterosexual Marlon Bundo––but when the proctor reached me, I couldn’t speak. Gasping, she shouted: “WE FOUND THE WITCH!” The testing room was full of security guards, who each immediately pledged allegiance to our national trinity, lest they be suspected of my heresy. I was then taken down the hall to another room, sat down in a chair, and given a test on my knowledge of alternative facts. The first question asked: “which is truer: a) 2 + 2 = 4, or b) 1 + 1 + 1 = 3?” -- An office worker’s dream: The desert militiamen wore nothing but leather and red hats and drove around in spiky dune buggies that kicked up clouds of dust. I could hear them shouting “PEACE ON EARTH! PURTY OF ESSENCE!” in the distance. It was their purpose to guard the nationally important deep mineshafts from boarder infiltration. All along the way to the mineshafts, I left bottles of water on the trail behind me, so I could find my way back by the spaces they were no longer in once other people took them. It was very important to leave bottles of water on the trail, but I could not remember why, until I was stopped and interrogated by a block of very cold salt. Then I remembered and used the warm water to dissolve the salt and run away. But the militiamen saw me, for the salt signaled my location to them in the agony of its dissolution. But just then, I caught sight of my friends, who would help me escape! (How did I know they were my friends?!) I was on the cusp of reaching them when the militiamen in leather and red hats caught me. I was taken down into the mineshafts to be interrogated. A strange machine with many wires was attached to my head, so they could see what I was thinking. They saw that I was dreaming, and that in my dream I was being interrogated by them with just this machine. They said that was good, and that I could wake up now, but I kept on dreaming, which they said was bad, because I meant I was disobedient. Then I woke up. �20 The BaRdfly largest New report concludes Johnnies to be TAM O’SHANTER, ts ha er pp da STAFF REPORTER consumer of The results are in – a new report by the Annapolis Headgear Society concludes that Johnnies form the core consumer group for dapper hats. Local hat vendors described a significant increase in sales directly proportional to the tuition drop. As one student noted, “less debt, more hats.” Economics aside, however, hat enthusiasts have described an almost spiritual connection to the cranial attire of the community. brimless, felt cap worn in Illyria, Etruria, Ancient Greece, Pannonia and surrounding regions. “Welcome to the only place on Earth where nineteen year-olds know that,” sophomore Ray Goolar-Guy said. “Also, I’ve stopped keeping count of the fedoras.” Both students and administrators remarked that hats are at the core of the campus culture. “We really celebrate diversity,” director Jess Sayin said. “There are pork pies, bowlers, berets, tricorns and even a coonskin or two.” “I saw someone walk around wearing basketball shorts and a Greek helmet,” This point of pride even holds significance local hat historian Costard Coverage in the playful competition between students said. “I knew I had found home.” Dr. Cov- at St. John’s and the Naval Academy. “A miderage is the author of The Phenomenology of Cephalic Apparel, to be released by Harvard University Press in Fall 2020. “We’re intellectuals,” sophomore Prett Enshis said. “What more is there to say?” Enshis then launched into a ten minute oration on the virtues of the pileus, a Gadfly Publishes News Article for Once Spector Cockroach FINALLY Graduates!!! Clad in top hat and festive scarf, Freshman Leo Brooks ponders the epistemological meaning of Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements whilst smoking a cigarette. �Johnnies Anger Gods After Not Pouring Libations From Last Mint Pod On Campus 52 Tutor Spends Entire Class Defending Lifestyle as Straussian The BangFly �The BOOMfly 00 This Actor Had Their Shirt On Wrong the Whole Play! Here Are 10 Other Mishaps You Missed in The Shape of Things. sks Johnnie chairs to be dethroned by standing de Students vying for a seat at the table need not fret– soon there won’t be any to covet. Citing budget cuts and health concerns about sedentary lifestyles, college administrators have decided to do away with the time-honored Johnnie chair in favor of…nothing. Or rather, as the marketing team has begun to advertise the substitution, ‘standing desks’. Johnnie Air.” The Student Committee on Instruction has scheduled a meeting to discuss possible uses for the repurposed chair materials. According to several students, there is a movement to indulge the Annapolis Ghost Tour employees by building a big bonfire and dancing around it while singing “Sicut Cervus.” ASS PERCH, STAFF REPORTER “More likely, we’ll probably just save the wood for a rainy day – or the next time a dorm burns down,” administrator Sitzfleisch Holder said. “As for the wicker, an underwater basket-weaving preceptorial could be in the works.” “It’s likely we’ll raise the tables to standing height by stacking old books from the library underneath the legs,” financial aid advisor Penny Cheep-Skeight said. Proponents of the move to repurpose Johnnie chairs have also referred to Program readings. “This is what joining the tradition of questioning tradition looks like,” freshman Angus T. Yoothe said. “It’s been on my mind ever since we read The Upright Posture in Lab.” Even a few tutors have publicly endorsed the standing desks. “I mean, Socrates said it first: ‘The children now love luxury.’ ” Tutor O’Kay Boomer said. “And what screams luxury more than a curved back chair carved from aged cherry wood?” Regardless of the widespread approval of the decision, it is clear that removal of the Johnnie chairs will have significant cultural impact. “We’re brainstorming what to rename the student blog,” junior Ba Tumzup said. “A current favorite is the Students and the administration are in communication over how to repurpose wood from Johnnie chairs. According to several students, there is a movement to indulge the Annapolis Ghost Tour employees by building a big bonfire and dancing around it while singing “Sicut Cervus.” �The Bastardfly --- Johnnie Bubble Ruptured After City of Annapolis Realizes It Exists “Hey, is anyone reading this?” “I didn’t know it would end like this”: Don Rags as Leading Cause of Death at the End of the Semester Me mb er o Exp e f r i m Clu ent b al It’s that time of year! The weather is crisp, the chocolate is hot, and the christmas carols mingle beautifully with the sobs coming from Mellon. CONTINUED ON PG. 24 Phi lo sop Someone Played hy archon was spotted hurriedWhat’s New Pussy- This ly shutting locking the doors of McDowell on Saturday mid-party. cat 10 Times at Sources say that flashing green lights and the heavy coat of fog were acnicely affected by the mellow the Reality Event! tually mellow tones of Tom Jones. In fact, some people found that they wantArchons Have ed to attend a reality party for the first time. A member of the delegate was overheard saying, “ FiPlaced the Party council nally, the school’s money is going to into Severe Lock- something fucking worthwhile”. CONTINUED ON PG. 31 down �The BoopboOp 1 Which Johnnie Aesthetic Are You? All Johnnies fit into one of four categories. Take the quiz and find out which Johnnie you are. This is about as accurate as the Myers-Briggs Test. 1. Do you come to class? a. In your pajamas 30 minutes late? b. In your lace cravat 30 minutes early? c. Drunk/High d. Only if I have my Fjall-Raven Kanken on hand 2. How do you meet people? a. On the quad b. During class c. In the coffee shop at 3am d. On Tumblr 3. When do you cry? a. After every tutorial. b. Once in the middle of seminar c. Twice coming down from ketamine d. Watching 500 Days of Summer 4. Which Book describes you most? a. The Stranger by Albert Camus b. The Bible c. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson d. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur 5. Which Item describes you most? a. Chipped black nail-polish b. Chastity ring c. My Custom Dab Rig d. Polaroid camera 6. Thoughts on a higher power? a. God is dead b. I teach Sunday School c. I thought I saw God on a trip d. I don’t know if there is one, but the closest I have is Jonathan Van Ness If you got... 1. mostly A’s, you’re ~edgy~ as heck 2. mostly B’s, you probably know how to waltz and you came to St. John’s because of the sophomore reading list 3. mostly C’s, congratulations we’ll be seeing you on Paca-quad! 4. mostly D’s, your VSCO feed is excellent, and you probably own too many plants �The BAaAAaa :// Prospies Accept Offer of Admission under Assumption that Great Books Program Refers to YA Novels SCI Forums Start Servin g Alcohol in Bid to Inc rease Attend a nce The meeting last Wednesday got heated when one student (two Natty Bo’s in, started yelling at the Committee members about how “We Shouldn’t read Plato! We Shouln’t READ PLATO! WE SHOULD NOT READ---” ra, u c s b O a r e m a C uilds B t p e c e r P s c i t p n u Student in O S e h t o t n i s k o Immediately Lo CONTINUED ON PG. 4 “Well, I just wanted to see if I could see the Forms as Plato talked about them,” said the student. “I guess the universe just wanted to punish my hubris”. Keep an eye out for this bandaged student, and try to help out your fellow egotistical johnnie! CONTINUED ON PG. 209 DID YOU FIND THE SECRET MESSAGE? HERE’S A HINT:KEEP AN EYE ON ALL THE CAPITAL LETTERS IN THIS ISSUE! THE FIRST PERSON TO FIND THE MESSAGE WILL WIN A PRIZE. SEND THE COMPLETED MESSAGE THRU CAMPUS MAIL TO THE ONE OF THE EDITORS TO CLAIM YOUR SPECIAL PRESSENT! � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 8 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, December 2019 [The Badfly] Description An account of the resource December 2019 issue of The Gadfly. Special issue: The Badfly. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Page, Lysithia (Editor-in-Chief) Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Winter 2019 Badfly Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/66e952f1eeb582e4b966e43a1710d820.pdf 32ad6af2e8603b0ff8e19d79389f90c3 PDF Text Text T H E G A D F LY St. John’s College Volume XLI, Issue 06 Annapolis, Maryland January 27th, 2020 Letter from the Editor Looking Back on 40 Years of the Gadfly Page 2 News New Decade, New Delegate Council Page 4 Opinion On Campus Housing Page 8 Features TEDx premiers at St. John’s Page 16 Celebrating 40 Years of Publications �Looking Back on 40 Years Of The Gadfly O Written by Rose Pelham n January 1st 2020 The Gadfly turned 40, making it comfortably more than twice the age of its average member. Though 40 is yet a half decade shy of officially middle-aged, within the perspective of a student––confined more or less to four academic years––the origins of the paper are as lost to time as the name of the editor before last. (Though I do not believe this bothers Sebastian Barajas too much.) Even five years ago has nearly slipped into time immemorial, leaving behind a partial archeological record of old issues that may nonetheless be one of the richest accounts of student life through the last four decades. (The Gadfly issue dated September 11th, 2001 is blissfully unaware of the events of that day––an instant relic.) As our luck would have it, the original issue of The Gadfly––dated January 1st, 1980––survives, perhaps not in corporeal form, but scanned and uploaded to a digital afterlife on internet advice. In it, the founding Editor-in-Chief, Rick Campbell, wrote the original letter from the editor about why he decided to found the new publication. Forty years on, I believe The Gadfly very much lives up to its founding goals, which you may read in its entirety quoted below: 2 �Raison D’Être By Rick Campbell “Why do you want to put out another paper?” I’ve been asked that question many times in the past week. I believe there is a need for a newspaper at St. John’s. A newspaper whose concern is serving the entire community, not only a part of it. Serving the community means providing it with the information it needs on a timely basis. It means addressing the problems of the community in a responsible and critical manner. There are problems within our community. Sometimes they are brought out, often they are hidden. In the spirit of the free and critical mind our program is to develop, this newspaper will practice those skills we are taught on the best subject possible––ourselves. Mr. DeMartini, the polity president, has spoken of the problems within the student body, but that is only one problem. There is also a problem with communication between students and faculty. Some students get along fine with some tutors, but for the majority of us there is something lacking in the relationship. What that is and how it can be remedied, I don’t know. I hope that this newspaper will contribute something towards identifying the problem. The community is primarily the students and faculty. It is also our alumni. THE GADFLY is being sent to local area alumni in hopes of bringing them into a more active participation in the community. They have experience in the ‘real world’ which THE GADFLY hopes to tap to help our undergraduates with the period after graduation. I also have personal reasons for starting THE GADFLY. It is where I can practice writing, editing and organizing. I am an active person, not metaphysical. THE GADFLY is where I can act and see immediate results. This newspaper is also_ for anyone who is interested in journalism, satire, parody, etc. If you have an idea for an article but don’t want to write it, or if you want to write but have no ideas, let’s get together. For those who asked ‘’why,” this is it. 3 �News New Decade, New Delegate Council Written by Sophia Heimbrock and Javier Romero A Recently inaugurated president Andrew Hill and other officers at a meeting of the Delegate Council. Photo by Rose Zheng. s the new semester and new decade begin, the polity welcomes several new officers to the Delegate Council (DC), including your president, Andrew Hill (A21). The Delegate Council is an elected body of student representatives whose primary responsibilities include “the representation of undergraduate student interests to the Dean” and “the management of funds available to the Student Polity.” 4 A primary issue raised in the election was whether the representation of student interests to the administration should be the chief concern of the DC. Hill’s campaign centerpiece was to create an organization independent of the Delegate Council, whose proposed function would be to coordinate communication between students and the Dean, while leaving budgetary responsibilities to the DC. �H istorically, the DC has relegated the task of representing student interests to subcommittees within the Council. The Committee for Student Life (CSL), now defunct, dissolved and “quietly abandoned,” according to Polity Herald Sam Berrattini, was one such subcommittee of the DC that attempted to engage students in the political process, and to represent their concerns to school administrators. Hill suggests creating a system in which the student body would be able to directly participate “Bringing the CSL back as it [was] does not do enough. [...] What we really need is a body in which students can organize,” Hill said. To prevent a fate similar to the CSL, Hill suggests creating a system in which the student body would be able to directly participate. “Where the CSL was appointed by the DC, the student union […] would be voted on by the [student] body at large.” In short, the DC would not directly oversee the student union; rather, the union would be an autonomous organization. However, confidence among officers in Hill’s ability to fulfill his campaign promises is inconsistent. “I have some reservations about Mr. Hill not attending a lot of the meetings and not seeming to me as dedicated to the Delegate Council as Sera [Johnson] was,” DC secretary Lexi Morrill (A21) said. “And I think that goes to the fact that he was in a political position [in the Maryland General As- News sembly], which I believe he still holds.” Berrattini (A21) expressed a more favorable view of Hill’s tenure. “He’s always been more involved than the average delegate, and I respect that,” Berratini said. However, Berrattini expressed hesitance regarding Mr. Hill’s platform, saying, “His ideas seemed to me not to resonate with the general ideas of the Delegate Council.” His first step will be to create a committee to write a charter for the student union R egardless, Hill remains confident that the proposed student union will receive a stamp of approval from the Delegate Council. His first step will be to create a committee to write a charter for the student union. “I’m hoping that the people who will turn out are going to be the people who can really truly engage in the system with the best interest of creating a student union,” Hill said. “Next week I’m going to try to devote the agenda to the creation of this committee.” St. John’s College Delegate Council meetings are on Wednesdays at 11:45 A.M. in the Higgins private dining hall and are open to the polity. 5 �Features Room Inspections Planned for Over Long Weekend O ver the upcoming long weekend, St. John’s administrators will conduct room inspections. This decision is due to administration’s increased concerns about fire safety, due to the fire at Paca-Carroll House last May, and was prompted by Danielle Lico, Director of Student Wellness. “[The Room Inspections are] primarily about the fire we had last year,” Taylor Waters, Director of Student Services, said. “[Fire Safety] is the emphasis,” Robert Mueck, Director of Public Safety, echoed. Room inspections taking place over the long weekend is an attempt to limit disruption to students. “We will do a couple minute scan of the room, and make sure the power strips aren’t overloaded,” said Waters. Room inspections will maintain the current policy on looking through a student’s space. “We are going to be completely respectful to your space,” Waters said, and affirmed that students’ desks and drawers would not be searched. “It’s not about disciplining, it’s about educating,” Waters said. Waters intends to send an email communicating to students what administration will be looking for during inspection, describing the goal as to “give students the opportunity to check themselves.” “When I used to do [room inspections], I would hesitate to even enter the room. This is someone’s living space,” said Waters, laying out administration’s hesitation. 6 Written by Miles Johnstone “This is an administrative search. This is not us going in as public safety officers, as police…the goal is not for this be some invasion of privacy.” Mueck said. “This is an administrative search... the goal is not for this to be some invasion of privacy.” Room inspection of this nature would not be unique to St. John’s. “When I [worked] at George Washington University [and] the University of Maryland, that was done,” Murek said. Administration’s stated leniency does not extend to covering fire alarms.“That is really putting another student’s life at risk. That is one of the things that really gets a bee in my bonnet,” Waters said. “Thank god that sprinkler system worked,” Murek said, reflecting on the Paca-Caroll fire. Waters emphasised that students who covered fire alarms would receive fines. “It takes a lot of action to climb up there and cover (it) up,” Waters said. �R oom inspections will not be limited in scope to fire safety concerns.“The other thing we will be looking for is maintenance things,” Waters said. “Buildings “We will do it three times a year, two of them will be announced. One of them will be unannounced.” and Grounds [says to me], ‘If we had known [about maintenance issues in rooms], we could have started repairing two weeks ago.” Waters said. Features Another goal of the room searches is to take an inventory of furniture, Waters said, expressing concern that College property, like furniture, sometimes don’t remain in buildings. It is not only rooms that will be inspected. “I will be looking at hall things, like if people are storing bicycles in halls. So, I will be looking generally, in addition to individually,” Waters said. “We will do it three times a year, two of them will be announced. One of them will be unannounced, and that will probably be in the fall of next [academic] year.” said Waters on future plans for room inspections. Students will be subject to room searches over long weekend, but not to worry — drawers and desks will not be rifled through. 7 �Opinion On-Campus Housing T Written by Joe Cunningham he class of 23’ has begun reading Ethics, much is hoped for as to their moral improvement. One of the first things Aristotle let them know is to expect only as much precision as his subject matter permits. I would like to make the same appeal for the subject of on campus housing. The first big reveal is that the identity of the person with complete control of the housing situation is one Mr Noman. Power alley contains many decision makers who influence housing, but no one is all powerful. However, if it were possible for one person to be in charge of it all, it would be Taylor Waters, Director of Student Services. Here as well, St. John’s claims its metric is conversation. Ms. Waters wants the polity to know she is always listening. Based on what she hears from parents, RAs and students, she forms an overall idea of how each class is doing, and each year, the feedback informs a review of housing policy. Here as well, St. John’s claims its metric is conversation. Ms. Waters calls the backdrop to this ongoing process the “master plan,” which dictates that all students should live on campus, baring special accommodations. This plan has been realized in Santa Fe, but here the supply of housing has never been sufficient to implement it. 8 There is a ghost of a dorm that exists somewhere outside the tennis courts, which has been a part of the plan for decades. Scattered around the college, there are remnants of the historic housing capacity from the days when it was fully residential. The college used to own lovely housing donated for the use of tutors, which it sold. It used to provide student storage facilities, where now it provides a photon lab. Our small college has a big premium on space. On the maintenance of existing buildings Nathan Dugan, Assistant-Dean, refuses to paint a rosy picture of all needs being �Opinion addressed in two years, but Buildings and Grounds is performing walkthroughs to assess those needs. The concrete plan is for Randall to be refitted, and further developments have been mooted for the non-historic side of Paca-Carroll. pus housing is disproportionately expensive. There is also a note of caution to add to the argument that a community reinforces behaviours. Sometimes those behaviours aren’t positive. ow I think we’ve all heard rumors they do more hard stuff in Santa Fe. But in search of how housing policy might change the academic culture, talk to Mr. Dugan. He says that if students make it through the first two years of the Program, they are far more likely to finish it. The change in housing policy is to benefit these students. Mr. Dugan described how Junior Lab classmates have had time to figure out that they are all strugglingly horribly, but in Sophomore Language, however, students might not realize that they share a burden, if they live off-campus. Being present together supports behaviors like attendance, so there’s more immersion in the program, and the The financial reality is that most college students have to work, and on-campus housing is disproportionately expensive. N The admin … strongly believe the support of on-campus housing is necessary to lower attrition in the first years of college bonds between students grow. They get a more rounded idea of each other’s characters by spending time together outside of class. This vision of a deeper sense of campus community doesn’t feel accessible for all Johnnies. The financial reality is that most college students have to work, and on-cam- U nfortunately, there are limited possibilities for bringing the benefits of off-campus housing onto campus. Adding flexibility to the meal plan has been considered a number of times, and rejected as unfeasible, because for colleges this small food is a package deal. Ms. Waters’ conviction that the meal plan provides, in her words, “a good variety of delicious food” has been key to the housing decision. On the cheapness of off-plan food Mr. Dugan had this to say: “I don’t want to be paternalistic, but if we’re going to have people living off ramen, I’d rather it wasn’t the sophomores.” Ms. Waters added she was working to pass on the savings of triples to students, but as of now, they cost the same as doubles. The administration is aware of these challenges, but they strongly believe the support of on-campus housing is necessary to lower attrition in the first years of college, something which has its own set of financial consequences for students. Their assessment is that the supply of campus resources like 9 �Opinion work study, emergency housing and community mental health won’t be affected by the change, as the absolute numbers of students won’t change, just the proportion of upperclassmen on campus. Students are encouraged to come to student services for everything short of legal advice U pperclassmen who wish to stay on campus face a much tighter housing lottery. There is resistance to the idea of creating principles for selection that would influence the lottery. People are encouraged to come talk to the administration if they have problems with that. Those with disabilities are assured that they will continue to be accommodated . For those of you who do get the boot, Danielle Lico, Director of Student Wellness, has written a pamphlet about off-campus housing. Ms. Waters also points to resources such as a senior notice board, planned mixers and forums for rising sophomores, ranging from how to cook to how to file a tax return. For students who have problems with their landlords, there is another pamphlet on renters’ rights. Students are encouraged to come to student services for everything short of legal advice, as Ms. Waters has experience talking to tricky landlords on behalf of students. 10 I asked Ms. Waters and Mr. Dugan if they expected the sense of community they were trying to incubate to express itself in a more organised student voice, through the Delegate Council (DC) for example. Both expressed interest in the DC taking a larger role in the area of student life. They want students to take the initiative in leading the community they are trying to build on campus, but at the same time they are committed to letting this housing policy run its course. This last question was prompted by the Ethics. For if students are faced with a complex and fluid set of problems, Aristotle seems to expect them to turn toward the political science and think about the interests of their whole polity. Even if the latter can only be captured in outline. The Gadfly will be there to tell those stories. �Community Voices She Loves You, You Piece of Shit. Written by Hope Taglich She loves you, you piece of shit. She has pushed out your kids, And remained a size 6, And she has paid your bills and in darker days sustained your will to live And now we lay, having slept the night away, At 11 a.m. on a sunny day, Awaiting eternal damnation. You will go home, inevitably, In an hour or two or three And she will kiss you as you walk in through The door, and ignore that your breath bears the stench of manicotti And kush and strange pussy. She loves you as I do. They say I can do better, and that may be true; yet if I could do better, I don’t want to. I met her once. She looked at me, wordlessly, Dark eyes filled with defeat, and for a second I savored Her sense of inadequacy. I am twenty-three, and I revel in My visibility; I tell myself that one day I’ll be As invisible as she. She loves you enough to cede Piece by piece of you to me, and I love you enough to be At ease with a piece. 11 �Student Life Finally an Event That’s Not Sorta Bullshit F Written by Tamblyn Mitchell, and Elli Rees ull of eager energy, the Mellon dance studio was transformed on Friday as a mass of Johnnies came together to celebrate the student musicians assembled for the (semi) weekly untitled techno show. With the smell of cigarettes wafting in from the loading dock outside, the disorienting and mystifying light display, and a massive wall of sound provided by each performer, the individual attendees formed a sort of collective body, united in appreciation of music. The first act of the night was Last chance, lovingly referred to as “the Fe boys” by junior musician Rigel Turner, presented their “sad cowboy music” with all the passion and charm one could ask for. Their ability to move a crowd leaves no question as to why they have become regular players in the musical world of St. Johns. They were followed by the acoustic stylings of Zach Leveroni (A 20), who performed with commanding power despite his set consisting only of himself and a guitar. Ellie Gott (A 22) appeared next, playing a series of mellow original songs which managed to capture the attending polity’s attention more fully than any Friday Night Lecture. They swayed softly, seated or standing with many people in various stages of embrace. 12 Gott was followed by S.I.D.S. (Sudden Idiot Death Syndrome), the sole freshman-only act of the night. The band brought everyone back to their feet, the music radiating into the crowd, providing a hard-hitting, foot-stomping bridge to the more avant garde acts of the night. With Preswerve, Elaina Bowman (A 22) unveiled a multimedia “fever dream,” in the words of freshman Liz Dowdy, a thoughtful and impressive development from her projects’ debut and the Energeia launch party. Presiding over the whole evening were the techno party’s founders and final performers, Rigel Turner(A 21) and Noah Negri (A 23), with their own project known as “Spark.” The pair’s relationship has been entirely founded on music. They met as many Johnnies do – smoking cigarettes in the quad – and bonded over the experimentalist psych-rock group King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Turner described the live techno shows as emerging from “a certain musical quest, if you will,” but also as a natural progression of their growth as producers. In fact, their first partnership with the Fe Boys developed from their appreciation of the musicianship which Will and Kai (A 21) brought out into the quad while the weather was warm. �Student Life N “For as long as I have been at the college, all of the student-led events have been kind of by and for the purpose of continuing one certain faction of the student body,” — Rigel Turner egri and Turner have assembled an eclectic and diverse group of sounds to fill out their event, while incidentally developing a microcosm of artists who represent the mess of a polity at St. John’s. The techno shows have become some of the most well attended events in our community, perhaps because they represent, in the words of Turner, “the opportunity to get out and do a student-led event that’s not uhhh… I don’t know… sorta bullshit.” Negri “did assume it [the techno show] would take off,” after seeing the success of past musical events such as Laundry-Fest. What they couldn’t have known, however, was that they were creating an inclusive community drawing from all parts of the polity. “For as long as I have been at the college, all of the student led events have been kind of by and for the purpose of continuing one certain faction of the student body,” Turner said. “The techno show seems to have opened a space which provides for every type of Johnnie. There are no prerequisites – you only have to bring yourself.” 13 �Student Life Connecting, Fighting I Written by Silas Pillsbury, Staff Reporter didn’t feel like I had an understanding of things like courage or thumos, so I wanted to try it,” John Paul Asijah (GI) said. Asijah is an Archon of Experimental Philosophy, a club devoted to classical Greek culture in all its forms, but particularly relating to the warrior’s life. with stress. “Sometimes you know, you just get a little angry, and you can come out and you can take your anger out in a healthy way at Experimental Philosophy,” Kelly said. But beyond this, Kelly has a pitch for Every Johnnie has a different way of why you may consider joining. “When [you] grappling with the great books. Some have were younger, [you] wanted to, I don’t know, long discussions, some reread religiously, go be a knight or something, and [you] wantand others profess select ed to play with swords Sometimes you know, you and stuff. And there’s no program books as handbooks on how to live. just get a little angry, and reason why that should Whatever your method, you can come out and you have disappeared, somethe boldest of them all times you gotta learn to can take your anger out in a is to join Experimental play again, channel your healthy way at Experimental Philosophy. inner child,” Kelly said. Philosophy “Experimental philosophy was born of reading about classical virtues — specifically for me, it was the Nicomachean Ethics and reading about bravery,” Asijah said. A talkative, twinkly-eyed Graduate Institute student at St. John’s, Asijah was dissatisfied with just reading about martial virtue. So he “gathered some rudimentary equipment, and I gathered some people, and we started trying it! And people started showing up and asking ‘can we try too?’ ” Asijah said. Jack Kelly (A23), another archon of club, consistently attends. Kelly takes advantage of the physical nature of the club to deal 14 Experimental Philosophy meets weekly on Saturdays, rain or shine. They dress in historical garb, and practice historical fighting techniques. Equipped with foam swords and shields, they duke it out on the St. John’s green. Many of the members are just looking to have fun swinging foam swords at people, but according to Asijah, there are many lessons to be gleaned from the experience. “We have learned things about martial virtue I think one of the big things is — we’ve really drilled fighting as part of a phalanx; we’ve formed shield walls, we march as a unit,” Asijah said. �To an outsider, the aesthetics may seem ridiculous. Gallivanting on the lawn, they make quite a spectacle. Beneath the surface, however, there is something unavoidably serious about this activity. “We’ve learned that if you try to be a hero, if you try to charge ahead of the rest of the group, you’re going to lose — quickly. You have to work together. You have to sublimate your desire for glory into the group,” Asijah said. Asijah connects this lesson to his experience in class. “I feel like that’s also part of what happens in seminar. In my first seminar, I wanted to be like ‘everybody is going to think I’m a genius’. But that’s not really the purpose of seminar. It’s to arrive at new learning together. And what we do in experimental philosophy is just a physical manifestation of that,” said Asijah. But sparring isn’t everything they do. Experimental Philosophy has an interest in historical recreation as well. “Fighting is 51% of what we do. But a lot of what we do is we try to recreate historical clothing, we recreate historical food — you know bread and oil, I’m a big fan,” Asijah said. Asijah is so committed to historical recreation that he is attempting to grow an ancient form of wheat. Student Life “We’ve started to research historical grains — we wanted to see if you we can grow a little bit to make a more historical bread,” Asijah said. On the side, Asijah has spirits brewing. To complete the historical experience, he wants to taste the ancient wine so often mentioned in antiquity. “I’m a winemaker, I started making wine a few years back. I’ve actually started digging through and finding ancient greek wine recipes, and I’m getting grapes shipped to me from across the world, and I press them. I make it in the ancient style.” When asked as to the purpose of all this historical recreation, Asijah had a Johnnie style thesis. “I’m way more connected to [history]. It’s not just like ‘I know evolution happens, and bread is different now.’ It’s ‘this is what tastes different about the bread.’ Once you can do that, you can say, ‘Well what do I like better? Has modernity been worth it?’ And I look forward to finding out.” E xperimental Philosophy is rooted in an effort to connect with the past, to understand the trajectory of the human experience. Beneath the spectator sport lies a dialogue about the books we read, from where and whence they come, and how we combat the ideas inside. 15 �Features Lights, Camera, Λογος: TEDx premiers at St. John’s Written by Lysithia Page The first TEDx event in the history of St. John’s premiered on January eighteenth, 2020. Photo by Jordan West-Guzman. L ights dim. Cameras start rolling. Eyes stare at the stage in wonder – months of preparation had lead up to this moment. Hosts Avi Kumar, Head of Marketing (A21), and Ece Tuglu, Operations Manager (A21), began to speak. The first TEDx event in the history of St. John’s premiered on January eighteenth, 2020. Speakers were comprised of six students, three alumni and an IT manager. The endeavor was student-led and culturally diverse. 16 “Our organizing team [was] made up of six people, and [we were] representing six different countries. Somehow all of us knew about TED,” said Tuglu, who also held the title of operations manager. Andrew Hill (A21) and Rei Osmani (A22) were co-curators, Shweta Aggarwal (A23) was student speaker director and Yunju Park (A20) was the head of design. �TED is an American media organization which posts videos of speeches, or “TEDtalks,” online. The organization’s catchphrase is “Ideas worth spreading.” “The purpose of a TEDx talk isn’t to explain an idea, but to inspire using that idea,” Chris Liu (A22) said. As they were trying to decide upon a theme, the organizers emailed alumni and asked them to sum up their experiences at St. John’s. A majority cited their intellectual growth. As Tuglu put it, “The only constant is change.” In the end, the organizers chose the theme ‘On Second Thought.’ We had to make [our speeches] stop sounding like a paper, and start sounding like a conversation “Everyone in their lives at St. John’s at some point goes, ‘On second thought, I’m not sure what I said holds true,’ ” Tuglu said. In the words of Panayiotis Kanelos, president of the Annapolis campus, the event was about sharing “[a] culture of thoughtfulness and reflection with the world.” In his opening speech, Kanelos touched upon λογος, a Greek word with many translations, including “speech,” “account,” “reason” and “ratio.” Indeed, the sentiment of conversation as a means to speak about big ideas lay at the heart of the event. Features like a conversation,” Sylvie McKnight-Miles (A23) said. In her TEDtalk, McKnight-Miles spoke about the physics of time. P reparations for the event began in March of last year. Student organizers approached the administration to request usage of Francis Scott Key (FSK) auditorium. Additionally, student organizers had to make contact with TED in order to procure a license to hold the event. Tuglu noted that in previous years, students had discussed staging a TEDx event at St. John’s, but this was the first time they had been able to get the license. Next, the organizers pitched the event to the Board of Visitors and Governors (BVG) in order to fundraise, and received $13,000. In September, an email was sent out to the St. John’s polity advertising the opportunity to speak at the event. The organizers made sure to involve the Graduate Institute in this process, and also sent emails to alumni. Once they chose the speakers, each were assigned a “point person,” as Tuglu called them, to collaborate on the drafts of their speeches. While the organizers planned the timeline well in advance, everyone experienced the intensity of preparing for the big day. In the words of McKnight-Miles, “It taught me time management.” “We had to make [our speeches] stop sounding like a paper, and start sounding 17 �Features Before Winter Break, the speakers and organizers began meeting together to practice in anticipation of the day of the event. Speaker Justin Horm, who is the senior network manager at the college, would bring a loaf of home-made sourdough bread to each of these meetings. Finally, the day came. Volunteers arrived at 9:00 A.M, and audience members started trickling in around 11:00 A.M. In the lobby, Daryl Locke (A23) was commissioned to write poetry for guests on a vintage typewriter belonging to Javier Romero (A23). Reflecting on the event, Tuglu emphasized that because it was the first of its kind, Johnnies don’t just sit in their rooms and think. They go out into the world and make things happen it was bound to be a situation of trial-and-error. “No matter what you do, you’re going to fail so much. But that’s the fun of it. You learn how to fix things,” Tuglu said. Although there were mishaps with the lighting and clickers, student volunteer Aidan Durias (A23) asserted that these were all part of the process. Durias recalled how he had signed up to be a regular volunteer, but then started helping out with the projector. “I was being just as flexible and proactive backstage as I was in the lobby,” Durias said. 18 L ooking forward, the BVG has expressed interest in holding TEDxStJohnsCollege events in subsequent years. Tuglu was grateful for the amount of underclassmen who volunteered, and hopes they will continue to be involved. Liu remarked that by inviting members of the greater community of Annapolis to attend, what resulted was a celebration of how Johnnies interact with their surroundings. “Johnnies don’t just sit in their rooms and think. They go out into the world and make things happen,” Liu said. After the closing remarks, Tuglu and the four other organizers hugged each other. Audience members spilled out into the FSK atrium, and congratulated the student speakers and organizers. According to Tuglu, it was a surreal experience to meet people whom she had emailed months earlier to fundraise for the event. “It just [clicked] in my head, ‘yeah, this person gave us $2,000 out of nowhere,’” Tuglu said. The crowd soon evaporated, and the organizers, volunteers and speakers began to clean up. Elizabeth Dowdy (A23), who volunteered at the event, reckons they had been at work for eight hours. When there was nothing left to do, Tuglu took her shoes off and walked back to her dormitory in the rain. �Play At St. John’s Dear Polity, I imagine some of the Buildings and Grounds crew might have different opinions, but one of the things I love most about the winter and spring semester at St. John’s is how refreshing snow can be on campus. There’s a novel and delightful physicality to it—the soft orange glow of a snowy night, the quieting of all sounds, the satisfying shape of the first steps through freshly fallen powder. Snow smooths the world’s rough edges. These refreshing delights are not insignificant, but I don’t think they’re what makes the snow so special for me. What’s so special is what the snow does to us. Winter can seem long and dark. The buildings (and our bones) creak and groan in the cold wind. And spring semester, with its essays and plans for the future, can be an awful lot to manage. But when it snows, we slip and slide around. We become like children again, building forts and deviously crafting snowballs. We sled. We make fires and hot cocoa. We see the world like new again. When it snows, the whole world invites us to play. Psychiatrist Stuart Brown—founder of the lovely-sounding National Institute for Play—compares play to oxygen. He writes, “… it’s all around us, yet goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing.” One of Dr. Brown’s colleagues, Scott G. Eberle, says “play is a process, not a thing…it begins in anticipation and hopefully ends in poise, and in between you find surprise, pleasure, understanding—as skill and empathy—and strength Community Voices Written by Chris Krueger of mind, body, and spirit.” I believe that one of the finest aspects of our shared endeavors at this college is how the opportunity to play is almost always all around us. Most significantly, our academic program is quite in line with how Scott Eberle describes play: it’s a process that involves much anticipation wherein we’re often surprised, must empathize, and through which our full humanity is strengthened. Moreover, our distinctive location—the relatively spacious, open, semi-urban campus; our waterfront; our general location in tiny, strange Annapolis, with its gaggles of ghost-tour takers—these aspects of where we are invite play. And it’s the same with our lives outside of the classroom, with our wide variety of student activities and clubs, as well as in our sports programs. Here, opportunities for play abound, and what’s true in our sports programs is true in most other activities, too: you are invited and welcome to start to play whenever the spirit moves. If, this winter and spring semester, you find difficulty and heavy breath amidst the weight of the cold, the dark, or the thin air that can surround decisions about the future, remember what Dr. Brown said comparing play to oxygen, and this semester, don’t forget to get involved with something playful. Play board games. Invent your own game. Fill your lungs with a walk in the snow. Draw. Write. Come try a new sport. Just be certain to never forget how special our propensity for playfulness is, and always remember that, here, you’re always welcome to play. 19 �Student Life Working in the House where History and Charity Collide A Written by Lysithia Page day at work for Hannah Glick (A23) includes leading tours on floorboards older than the Declaration of Independence and making bean soup. Glick works at the Chase-Lloyd House, a national historical landmark and independent living facility for elderly women. Through her work at the Chase-Lloyd House, Glick has had multiple opportunities to engage hands-on with historical artifacts. Recently, for example, Glick was tasked with transporting an antique silver tea set belonging to previous resident Hester Chase Rideout. The house’s construction was completed in 1774, and not much has changed since. Chase-Lloyd house is an authentic example of American Federalist architecture and decor – complete with a grandfather clock and sword once owned by Horatio Sharpe, a colonial governor of Maryland. When asked why a mirror in the house was cracked, Glick replied: “It’s older than America” When asked why a mirror in the house was cracked, Glick replied “It’s older than America.” The history of the house even intertwines with that of St. John’s – one resident, by the name of Mary Tayloe Lloyd, became romantically involved with Francis Scott Key (A1769). “[Key] would write her poems, and she was like, ‘these are so cheesy, I’m going to make hair curlers out of them,’ ” Glick said. “And then they got married.” To this day, Lloyd’s portrait hangs in the dining room. (On the topic of any spectral residents, Glick responded, “If you believe in ghosts, most definitely.”) 20 “I had to move it the other day because the Women’s Auxiliary was like, ‘I don’t want this here,’” Glick said. G lick expressed gratitude for the variety of work she undertakes at ChaseLloyd, and additionally emphasized that the house management team is still hiring. Jobs are currently available in gardening, elderly care and historical restoration. As for Glick, she loves her work at the Chase-Lloyd house. “I get to feed my love for history, as well as serve the community and give back to women in need,” Glick said. �Student Life Hannah Glick (A23) points at a marble mantlepiece imported from England. Mary Tayloe Lloyd, wife of Francis Scott Key, lived in the Chase-Lloyd House. 21 �Student Life Featured Photos from the Energeia Launch Party Written by Lysithia Page Energeia, the St. John’s arts publication, held a party in the fishbowl on January tenth, 2020. “We wanted to give the polity the feeling that the art community is something that we can all work on. There’s no exclusivity, no prerequisites. We just want people to express themselves,” Adam Schulman (A21) said. Photos by Lysithia Page 22 �Student Life Sofe Cote (A21) designed stickers featuring mathematical propositions for the party. Daryl Locke (A23) emceed the event and published several poems in this issue. 23 �Co-Editors in Chief Athena Berreles-Luna Rose Pellham Managing Editor Lysithia Page Layout Board Cooper Ussery Shen Zhou Hong Staff Reporters Joe Cunningham Sophia Heimbrock Miles Johnstone Tamblyn Mitchell Silas Pillsbury Alayna Raymond Elli Rees Javier Romero Tessa Wild Rose Zhang Contributors Chris Krueger Jakob Stief The Student Newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7 PM in the BBC. For more information, contact us via email at: sjca.gadfly@gmail.com � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 06 Description An account of the resource Volume XLI, Issue 06 of The Gadfly. Published January 27, 2020. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief) Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020-01-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 06 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/23ddb62cc72a433a5cbeedef7aaea091.pdf e94a58f824b8a8e5a111c3d3c73f5ed2 PDF Text Text THE GADFLY Radio Address • 04 Law in Matthew Part 2 • 06 The Life and Art of Mary Petty • 07 St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • December 2, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 05 Photo by Rose Pelham �The Gadfly 02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7 PM in the BBC. We always need editors, layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com for more information. Staff Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-inChief Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Chief Contributors William Braithwaite Lucinda Edinberg Chris Krueger Yunju Park Rose Pelham From the Editors: The Gadfly hopes you have had a restless holiday full of unfulfilled yearning and ennui in the face of the desire to be productive. We wish this as a curse upon the protestants and their work ethic, who arrived at Plymouth Rock, started a series of wars with their neighbors, and plastered over their violence with this past Holiday. - The Gadfly On writing an Open Letter to my Senators Just before the week of Thanksgiving, I wrote my Senators an open letter urging them to remove Trump from office through impeachment. At the time of writing––several days later––I still have limited knowledge of whether or not this letter will be published, and as to what effect, if any, it may have. Nonetheless, it represents a rather extreme effort to communicate with my Senators as to what actions represent me as their constituent. My open letter would be the fourth letter I have sent to both my senators on the same subject since the beginning of the impeachment inquiry. Each of these letters, or rather, emails, I have written individually and with great care to make them as persuasive as possible. I could have sent pre-written emails instead, but to do so would go against my sense of individuality and pride––not to mention hubris––as a writer. For this effort, I have received a handful of responses, all pre-written, and for the most part, all perfectly identical to each other. Only one reply–– which was no less a stock response–– had any tangential relevancy to my words insofar as it was a generic statement on impeachment. None of this has amounted to anything approximating a conversation, and it would be absurd to expect that there was ever a chance it would. We generally take for granted that our representatives have no time for our communications with them, and there is no lack of truth in this. How could one be expected to maintain a thousand individual correspondences across email with any degree of real attention? Even the assistants and interns tasked with the work only engage in it part time. A friend of mine, who has interned in the offices of politicians, tells me that all communications from constituents, regardless of medium, Rose Pelham A‘20 are taken by the politician’s staff, and converted into numerical data. This is common knowledge, or not far from it, but the substitution of data for words is worth considering as if it were more novel than it has become. Data is a great homogenizer, which can convert any quantity of distinct instances, each different in innumerable ways, into a number of repetitions of the same event. A flood of emails in this way becomes a representation of the relative balance of constituents for or against a position on a given issue. The words on paper, regardless of their meaning or truthfulness, are irrelevant except insofar as they can be converted into a number. This homogenization really does strip away the individuality of one’s communications in such a way as to make them one amongst an indistinguishable mass, and consequently, eliminates their effect as words. This was why I turned to writing an open letter. Public communications with representatives, in contrast with “private,” demand specific attention. This is in no way on account of any difference in the writing, but only because of their appearing in public, where they present themselves for all to see and, at least potentially, be persuaded. The only problem is that the opportunity to speak in public, or rather, have one’s writing appear there, is uncommon. This is not the same as writing on social media, which may be visible to a large number of people, but is never exactly public or private, but virtually always social. Rather, the primary way to appear in public, in a society as large as ours and where in-person community meetings are generally impractical, is through the news. The news, regardless of the medium by which it is broadcast, is truly the most public space we have, even, �The Gadfly 03 perplexingly, more so than the internet. Specifically, the news is our space of public appearances, since it relates directly with whatever is the most immediately relevant to its audience, which is all of society. For this very reason, it is where our political debates take place and opinion pieces disseminated, and not just the location where current events are written down for posterity. It operates as the center of a polis that is too large to have a physical gathering place at the heart of it. Getting into the news, even for one who already has a partial presence there, is difficult, if one aims to write it, as opposed to being its subject. Newspapers and websites tend to prefer those who are already known to their pages, since strangers are always somewhat risky: you never know when they might say something embarrassing. At the same time, smaller newspapers are becoming less common as more and more of them are destroyed for the profit of their apathetic owners. For this reason, it seems we live in a society where speaking in the public realm, as opposed to being seen in it, really is inaccessible to the vast majority––a rather peculiar feature for a democracy, if a commonplace one. In all likelihood, my letter will not be published, since one newspaper has rejected it already, and the other has not replied. In a few days, I will probably try again with a new letter updated to reflect the changes in the political situation and, hopefully, be more appealing to newspapers where I hope it might appear in print. The fact that I have a chance at publishing an open letter, and therefore subjecting my representatives to my public speech, is itself an immense privilege. It means that I may be able to engage them as an individual whose words matter more than mere data, in distinction to being one amongst a mass of indistinct constituents, as I have been. I wonder: what does it mean to live in a society where one must commit to painstaking effort in order to ascend to a political individuality in this way?t Yunju in Places - McDowell Great Hall Now, take a moment and think about it: what is the first image that pops into your head when you think about St. John’s College? My first party at St. John’s College was The Achilles Rager, which occurred in McDowell Great Hall. At first, I was not sure if some of my dance moves would be appropriate for Great Hall since there were these great men looking at me from their portraits. Only after I found that the reality already took care of it and covered their eyes with fire shaped post-it, I felt more comfortable being myself there. Last September, I went to my last Achilles Rage, finally, as a senior. There was a change in the wall of McDowell Great Hall: we got one more portrait, another beautiful, thoughtful, and intellectual person who just happened to be a white male. Whoever met our past president, Mr. Nelson, knows that he is so much more than a mere white male. I truly appreciated his work and his care for the community. Without him or other past presidents, I would not have been able to get the education that I am getting today. However, when he is next to all the other great men in the hall, it is hard not to notice the pattern in how these great men looked like; I am not the only one who is noticing it. One of my favorite parts of working at Admissions is giving tours. It is always pleasant to share what we are doing here and meet people who are as excited as I am about the program. For my tour, the last stop is often McDowell Great Hall. For me, the hall is somewhat physically, but also emotionally, the center of our college. It is where we lined up for the first time as fellow johnnies on our convocation day. It is where we painfully endured each other’s singing every Thursday morning, not to mention the beautiful moment of singing Sicut Cervus all together at the end of the collegium. I try not to forget mentioning each of Yunju Park A‘20 these moments to prospective students. Then they (usually not the kids but their parents for some reason) say ‘Huh! Lots of white men!’ They never say it in an accusatory fashion. It is simply what they notice. I tell them how they looked like is not the point here. The important thing is what they did and the community they built. Indeed, despite some prospective students’ concern on our program being too limited in a sense it covers only the development of “western” thought and there are very few non-male authors, St. John’s College is where I learned how to articulate why “the thing you just did was sexist and why I am not allowing that is happening in my life”. We learn and grow up by questioning building our own ideas with the help of texts. At the end of four years, what we are gaining is more the mere sum of books we read. Still, what they see does not change, neither what we see. It is something to think about. Merely looking at the picture of French Fries made me go to a coffee shop and get some between my 1 pm class and 2:20 class (I am not proud of that incident). Image matters; what we see shapes our thoughts. Now, what kind of thoughts does our current image of McDowell Great Hall bring us? What do we want to see at the heart of our college? What is the core of our community and what is the value that gathered us together? What do we want our college to look like in 10 years? Does the current image of McDowell Great Hall go with your answers? Whichever answers we have for these questions, we must be mindful that those images we put in the great hall have the power of shaping our today and our future. t �04 In recent weeks, substantial changes have arisen in the structure of intercollegiate NCAA sports. What might this have to do with our small but mighty college? Read on! The principal NCAA change is that participants in NCAA sports will in the near future be eligible for financial compensation for use of their likenesses etc. Previously, this had been forbidden, and there was much controversy about the restriction. Some considered it inherently exploitative for colleges to make millions off sports programs without formally compensating the athletes. The counter-argument was often made that the reason for the compensation restriction was to preserve the amateur essence of college sports, and that this essence was important, in part, for preserving eligibility for participation in the Olympics. This amateurism argument has, for quite a while, been clearly absurd, and anyone paying attention could see significant professionalization in collegiate athletics. In fact, around this time of year in 1938, St. John’s College President Barr delivered the radio address transcribed below which cited the professionalization of collegiate athletics as one reason why the college would be withdrawing from intercollegiate sports, despite significant accomplishment—including undefeated Radio Address seasons—in both intercollegiate football and lacrosse. I submit the text below in part for its relevance to the current events described above, but also because of the context it provides regarding the early days of our present athletic program. The Gadfly Chris Krueger liberal education in a democracy. The system of intercollegiate athletics which has developed during the past twenty years will no longer support the prime purpose of a liberal college. I suppose I ought to have foreseen this, but I didn’t. CerIntercollegiate Athletics tainly, there have been enough Stringfellow Barr, President St. Carnegie reports, enough magJohn’s College azine articles by candid writers Radio Address, Nov. 20, 1938 like John Tunis to convince men of my generation that we are I propose to discuss an sheer sentimentalists and ignoraimportant step which St. John’s muses if we suppose that interCollege has taken within the past collegiate athletics are the same ten days. Many of those who are thing we remember from twenty listening to me, including alumni years back. They do things better members of the College, will by now, with Rose Bowls, Cotton now almost certainly have been Bowls, and Sugar Bowls; with told by somebody that the Colcostly equipment, transcontilege administration has abolished nental journeys, and big money; athletics. Those who believed with costly coaches and costly this statement should, it seems quarterbacks. I knew all this. to me, be gravely disturbed. I The first thing I learned about think I ought promptly to disathletics on arrival at St. John’s abuse them. To keep the record was that we were booked to play straight, I shall therefore first our unnatural rivals—Army and state the facts. Athletics have not NYU—in an effort to keep down been abolished, but the College the high cost of modern athletics has decided that after the close by earning a good “gate.” But still of the present academic session, I thought it might be possible to athletic facilities will be inadapt intercollegiate athletics to creased and at the same time will educational ends, to pare down be placed on a strictly intramural schedules, to decline with thanks basis. such games as Army and NYU, I am explaining tonight and to protect the coaches from why significant changes have criticism if they lost games by been announced in the athletic refusing to hire athletes. I was system at St. John’s, to take effect mistaken. next September; but in explain The thing that taught ing these changes I am discussing me I was mistaken was what �The Gadfly 05 happened when intercollegiate athletics collided with a curriculum that really required work. Yet I should have known this by analogy. I had known countless students who withdrew from intercollegiate athletics when they entered medical or other professional work. They withdrew because they knew, along with everybody else, that you have to study to earn an M.D. while ordinarily you don’t have to study to earn a B.A. The undergraduate fills in his idle time with athletics, which at its most professionalized is a lot better thing to fill idle time with than some other things I know. But suppose there isn’t any idle time? Suppose there is just enough leisure time for healthful outdoor games? Then every athletic trip becomes a crisis and not what is known as an “athletic excuse.” For students who are really doing serious work know without being told that you can’t “make up” for something you should have learned but didn’t, by using the magic word “excuse.” An excuse may square you with the Dean. It won’t convert ignorance into knowledge. There is no reason on this round earth why securing a liberal education in an undergraduate college should be a less serious business than acquiring a medical education in a medical school. But if it is a serious business, then it had better steer clear of another very serious business, indeed a highly organized “big” business: intercollegiate athletics. For this big business has its own exigencies: those who won’t meet them had better keep out. That big business substitutes spectator psychosis for actual participation, cheering sections for playing teams, an orgy of sports-goods equipment for costumes fit to have fun in, large business staffs with longterm schedules for the old-time impromptu challenge of natural antagonists, monotonous physical drill for learning to play by playing, pressure from fellow-students for zest to play, the exhibitionism of star performers for the satisfaction of playing well because it is more fun to play a game well than badly. The sum total of these things is hysteria, lost motion, the death of the amateur spirit, and an athletic system that competes with study instead of supplementing and strengthening it. We have all known these things for years, unless we have been ostriches or Rip Van Winkles. But I repeat, they don’t prove fatal so long as undergraduate education is run in low gear. In fact, I should insist again that, so long as education is run in low gear, these things are better than idleness. But there is something better still, and that something is amateur athletics—amateur athletics of a quality no college can achieve so long as it is meshed in with the new kind of athletics, the big-business kind. The educational program now going on at St. John’s must have the support of amateur athletics. It must have it, because amateur athletics is rich in terms of health, recreation, skill, and co-ordination. To get that support, it will expand its intramural athletics. More varieties of sport will be offered and more facilities. Our colleges are often abusively called country clubs. I want to see St. John’s offer the sort of athletic facilities a good country club offers. Every game we now play we shall continue to play, except that the six-man football we started this year will replace the standard game. In addition we want to expand water sports, with particular emphasis on sailing. The alumni have already given us one sailboat; we shall acquire five more. A tutor with wide athletic experience will be placed in charge, but he will need a number of student assistants. To secure good assistants, we propose to offer athletic scholarships. In my own limited experience, this will be the first legitimate use to which athletic scholarships have been put by an American college. I think you may rest assured there will be plenty of excellent candidates. I hope you will help me find the best candidates. Sooner or later, I hope sooner, the present system of semi-professionalized intercollegiate athletics will hang itself. When it does, the problems that caused us to take our present stand will disappear. When it does, we shall doubtless play games with other colleges as naturally as such games were once played. Meanwhile athletics at St. John’s will be for the student, not the student for athletics. t �06 LAW IN MATTHEW’S GOSPEL, Part 2 The first part of this commentary (Gadfly XLI, No. 4, Nov. 6, 2019) began with Jesus’ claim that he comes not to destroy but to “fulfill” the law, and put as a first question what He means by “law.” In this part, I begin to inquire what he means by “fulfill.” I consider here the first two of the six pairings Jesus makes in Mt. 5.21-48, comparing the new law and the old (“what was said by them of old time,” v. 21, or simply “what has been said,” vv. 31, 43). The topics addressed are murder, adultery, marriage, telling the truth, retaliation, and love of enemies. What is the principle of order of this sequence? A preliminary observation: the last injunction, love your enemies, may be the most demanding. Cain did not love Abel, nor Jacob, Esau; so, too, with Joseph and his brethren. How can Jesus suppose it possible to love our enemies when we feel murderous hatred even for those from the same womb? (Cf. Augustine, Confessions, I.6-7, on the sins of his infancy). This list begins with the harsh truth that of all God’s creatures (Gen. 1.20-28), man alone kills his own kind not for food but out of hatred. It ends with the implausible proposal to turn human nature upside down: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” We may note in passing that this last item (love of enemies) has the same number of verses of explication and examples, six, as the first (murder). As to the third, fourth, and fifth items, two verses address marriage (31-32), and five are given to each of truth-telling (33-37) and retaliation (38-42). Jesus approaches the last injunction, that we demand of ourselves what seems impossible to achieve, through the five pairs of oppositions that precede. The first is murder vs. anger without cause. Old law: “Thou shalt not kill; whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment” (v. 21). New law: “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (v. 22). Is it in anger that murder begins? Is it simply happenstance that the first human crime in the Bible is Cain’s murder of Abel, and our oldest Greek poem begins with the rage of Achilles? Is thumos, in all its forms and varieties, the primeval driving force of our lives? Dante proposes that those who lack it are not even worth punishing (Inferno 3.31-51). Aristotle suggests the spirited part of the soul has to be ruled as a father rules a son, by “chastisement and encouragement” (Ethics I.13.1102 b 29 et seq., Sachs tr.). Augustine, as a grown man, has a love-hate relation with the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic he was, as a boy, beaten into learning— an experience as hateful to him as learning Greek (Confessions I.13). But “those first lessons were surer…. [For with them] I acquired the power to read what I find written and to write what I want to express ….” Anger; spiritedness; thumos; the irrational part of the soul: whatever name we give it belongs to something we have without wanting or seeking, which we cannot live fruitfully without, but which is the source of our greatest crimes and may be the source of what we need for our greatest tasks. The second pairing is adultery vs. lust in the heart. Old law: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (v. 27). New law: “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (v.28). Cf. Job: “I made a covenant with mine eyes; Why then should I think upon a maid?” (31.1). See, also, Inferno 5.124-38, where Francesca, after it is too late for repentance, learns that the “first root” of her and Paolo’s illicit desire for one another was their reading together a story about the illicit love of Lancelot and Guinevere. The commandmant forbids the action. Jesus teaches that the action begins with a seeing, with an itching of the eyes: “and from the roof [David] saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon” The Gadfly William Braithwaite Tutor (II Sam. 11.2). In Aristotelian terms, Jesus puts thumos as the first problem, eros as the second. For Paul, though, the primary problem seems to be the body’s carnal desires rather than the hatreds that fester in our souls. Indeed his words can strike some readers as coming from a man who hates his body. “For that which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I…. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing ….” (Rom. 7.14-15, 18). James, on the other hand, suggests that restraining our speech, that is, our angry words (see, e.g., Iliad, Book I), may be as hard, or harder even, than restraining our bodily appetites: “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain…. Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. Even so, the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire ….” (Letter of James, 1.26; 2.3-6). Both the old law and the new law address a permanent dilemma of our lives as human beings: two powerful forces contend within us, and their war with one another gives us no rest. The only escape, according to Dante, is to live “without infamy and without praise” (Inf. 3.34-36). This is the life of cowards, those who deserve nothing, neither blame nor reward, because they never risked anything, in either love or hate. Christ the Judge says to Laodicea: “because thou are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Apocrypha 3.1516). (To be continued). t �The Gadfly 07 This Petty Place: The Life and Art of Mary Petty The fall exhibition in the Mitchell Gallery features New Yorker cartoonist Mary Petty (1899-1976) and her husband Alan Dunn (1900-1971). Through the watercolor magazine covers, and crayon and ink cartoons, one can see how their work exemplifies the creative and pithy humor upon which the magazine’s reputation stands. Mary Petty began cartooning for The New Yorker in 1927, shortly after her marriage to fellow artist Alan Dunn. Dunn received training at the National Academy of Design and other venerable institutions, while Petty had no formal art training. It was Dunn’s encouragement that led Petty to submit her cartoons to the magazine. Petty was extremely shy, and it was reported that Petty was not personally seen in the New Yorker offices for several years upon first hiring. As Petty became more and more preoccupied with the upper class society who inhabited the brownstones and mansions that dotted New York’s Upper East Side, the lifestyle and attitudes of wealthy, ‘old money,’ and Victorian style society provided the grist for Petty’s keen observations. The life and quirks of Petty’s fictional “Peabody” family in this exhibition brings plenty to smile about. The dowager Mrs. Peabody and her obedient and spirited maid, Fay, appear in various rooms and activities in the city brownstone mansion and the country estate. Fay is seen sneaking off to try her skills at archery, dancing undetected in another room (while Mrs. Peabody plays the French Rococo harpsichord), distorting her reflection in polished silver, and other escapades of an era gone by. A sampling of Dunn’s cartoons is included in the exhibition to provide insight and context of his influence on Petty’s illustrations. While Dunn’s work focused on architectural lampoons and political/social satire, Petty’s humor was more attuned to women’s domestic and social issues. She created about 275 cartoons and 38 covers, of which two cartoons and 30 covers are included in the exhibition. Dunn was a prolific cartoonist whose creativity focused more on cartoons—2,000 of them--with nine covers for The New Yorker. Dunn’s skillfully executed works give witness to how little the gauge in civilized behavior has moved over history. Just like the drawings created over 75 years ago, we still worry about nuclear energy, too much “screen” time, money, and unreturned love. These works give us opportunity and permission to laugh about ourselves. The Mitchell Gallery was pleased to welcome former New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff as the guest lecturer for the Petty exhibition. His inside knowledge of the cartooning process provided an interesting backstory on Petty and Dunn and how they continue to be much revered in the cartooning world. Mankoff quoted Lord Chesterfield, “The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people Lucinda Edinberg often smile, but seldom laugh.” I hope you will see the exhibition, enjoy the beautiful artistry, laugh with a full heart, and change the world. An after Seminar reception will be held on Thursday, December 5 at 10 p.m. The gallery will be open and refreshments served through the generosity of Mitchell Gallery members Peter Bungay and Deborah Coons. The exhibition, which is on loan from the Syracuse University Art Collection, remains on view through December 15. Lucinda Dukes Edinberg Art Educator, The Mitchell Gallery Postscript: For those of you who knew the late SJC tutor, Mr. Elliott Zuckerman, a 1945 volume on Mary’s Petty’s work was donated to the Greenfield Library from his personal library.” t Mary Petty, Fay Trying Archery, “The New Yorker,” cover illustration, July 15, 1950. Watercolor and ink on paper. Courtesy of the Syracuse University Art Collection. �08 The Gadfly ACROSS PTOLEMY ON HORSEBACK With his hypothesis of uniform circular motion, Ptolemy can account for all the apparent changes of speed we observe in the heavenly bodies. According to this hypothesis, the unequal length of days and nights during the course of a year, and the unequal length of the four seasons, are geometrically explainable by supposing that the sun’s daily path is parallel to the celestial equator, but that during the course of a year, these 365 movements cumulate to describe a path—the ecliptic—that is not parallel to the equator, but tilted 24 degrees to it. This tilt explains the unequal length of the seasons (III.3). Ptolemy proves that the sun’s appearances (daily and seasonal changes of speed) can be explained by one circle or by two. One has a center that is not earth; it is “ek-centric” because its center is out of, away from, the center of the celestial sphere, which is earth. The other circle is an epicycle on which the sun moves, while the epicycle itself is carried on a circle, the deferent, concentric with the celestial sphere. As for the planets, they appear to change speeds in two ways, latitude (north and south) and longitude (east and west). This fact obliges Ptolemy to combine the two models by putting the planets’ epicycles on deferents that are eccentric. The combination is found to fall short, however, of explaining where the planets, at particular times, actually are, that is, in the zodiac (taken, here, to be un-moving). Venus, for example, is several degrees away from the place Ptolemy’s epicycle on an eccentric deferent would put it. The hypothesis (uniform circular) motion thus requires a further adaptation to what appear to be “the facts.” Ptolemy proposes a third center, the equant, or equalizing, point, as the center of uniform speed. The equant center is different from the center of the eccentric deferent that carries the epicycle. Ptolemy’s application of geometry to astronomy, his effort to find a nomos, a law, for the heavenly bodies, requires us to imagine four circles (or maybe five) and their centers. First, the center of the celestial sphere; for Ptolemy, this is the earth. Second, the center of the eccentric deferent that is the center of motion; then the equant center, the center of uniform speed; and also the moving center of the epicycle that carries the planet. His hypothesis, to fit all of what we observe, requires supposing that the planets stay always the same distance from two centers (that of the eccentric deferent and that of the epicycle), but that the epicycle’s uniformity of speed on the eccentric deferent is attributable to a different eccentric deferent, the equant circle. If the center of uniform distance (i.e., radii) is different from the center of uniform speed (the equant point), what is the relation between the distances and the speeds? If the movements of the heavenly bodies are indeed uniform, or “regular” (according to a rule), should not their apparent speeds be proportional to their distances from us? But without some unit of measurement, we can number those distances only rati- William Braithwaite Tutor ometrically (diameter, 120 parts; circumference, 360). Central to Ptolemy’s astronomy, his nomos of the stars, is his correlation of speeds (greatest, least, mean) with places on the circles of revolution (apogee, perigee, opposition). This correlation, of the phenomena of speeds and places, with circles representing the spheres that carry the bodies, presents the heavens as the place of an order that is both intelligible and mathematically beautiful. Are its beauty and its mathematical intelligibility somehow one and the same? Copernicus will call what Ptolemy has presented us a “monster” (Preface). He will show us that speeds “falsify” the order of the planets (I.10). But his re-arrangement, the heliocentric hypothesis, keeps Ptolemy’s circles, almost (V.4). Then Kepler will show us that the orbits are really not circles at all, but ellipses, and that in consequence, what matters is areas, not lines (i.e., distances). Today we take for granted the truth of what Copernicus and Kepler (and Galileo and Newton) have shown about the motions of the heavenly bodies. We might ask these questions: why did these discoveries require the work of 1700 years? And does Ptolemy’s demonstration that the heavenly motions are mathematically intelligible stand on the same level with his successors who worked out the mathematics more precisely? Why do we believe precision matters so much? Does number rule all? t � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 8 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 05 Description An account of the resource Volume XLI, Issue 05 of The Gadfly. Published December 2, 2019. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief) Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-12-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 05 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/42ce7d76810f82172d8d68bd6fb06228.pdf d65692350d6db25dc9b8f8ebc98eeef7 PDF Text Text GADFLY Law in Matthew • 02 Reproductive Rights • 03 When the Teacher's not There • 04 St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • November 6, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 04 Photo by Rose Pelham �The Gadfly 02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7 PM in the BBC. We always need editors, layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com for more information. Staff Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-inChief Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Chief Mira Kobylski • Staff Contributors William Braithwaite Mira Kobylski Rose Pelham Abigaile Petrich Hope Taglich From the Editors: The Gadfly hopes you have had a sober and academically responsible parents’ weekend. We understand the extent to which the presence of one’s parents encourages wild partying and binge drinking. We hope that by drawing attention to the issue, we may support more wholsome behavior. To that end, the current leadership promises to host sober events for the next parents' weekend. - The Gadfly Law in the Gospel of Matthew William Braithwate Tutor In a passage that Sophomore Seminar conversations often touch, or dwell upon, Jesus says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Mt. 5.17). What does Jesus mean by "law"? And why does he link "the law" with "the prophets" as a source of authority for those he is speaking to ("the multitudes," 5.1)? If by "law" Jesus means authoritative command, we could say that the first law in the Bible is, "Let there be light" (Gen. 1.3). God's power of command extends over the primeval chaos out of which He creates the world as an ordered whole (Gen. 1.1-2.3). This power is akin to Jesus being able to walk on water (Mt. 14.25), to calm the stormy sea (8.23-27), even to restore the dead to life (9. 18-19, 23-25). "I am not come to destroy [the law]" seems, at the very least, to mean that Jesus is not speaking about the laws that govern the physical order of the world. The Biblical account of the world puts God's power, and Jesus' power as His Son, above the power of what we call nature (phusis). As Creator, or maker, or author of the natural order, God is superior to it, as the potter is superior to the clay he molds to form a winejar. It is He who so arranges the material of the world that the heavy tends toward center, fluid unconstrained forms a sphere, and E=m times c-squared. We call gravity, Archimedes' postulate, and Einstein's equation "laws" of nature. But the idea of Nature seems to belong not to the Biblical world, but to the Greek world. Whatever Jesus means by "law" in 5.17, it is not "law of nature" as we understand that idea. Descending from the created whole to man, and his place in it, we could say that the first human law, the first law for human beings--as distinguished from those living beings we call "plants" and "animals"--is the prohibition, "Don't eat that fruit" (Gen. 3.3). This law belongs to the Bible's account of proto-man, mankind in the most distant past, known only through those orally transmitted stories some call myths. In Jesus' understanding, is prohibition the essence of law? Does the story of The Fall suggest that man is the animal that most of all needs restraint? So far, "law" in the Bible appears as coming from the Sovereign (what rules all), in the form, first, of a command ("Let there be light", addressed to the non-living things), then, later, in the form of a prohibition ("Don't eat that fruit"), addressed to one particular species of living beings, the human kind. This prohibi- tion is about what man eats, what helps sustain his body. Is the prohibitory character of the first human law, and its being a prohibition apparently about food, consistent with "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man" (15.11)? Jesus' claim that he comes not to destroy but to fulfill the law is made in his first public speech, called "The Sermon on the Mount," Matthew, Chapters 5 through 7. In the course of Chapter 5, he refers five times to what we may for convenience call the "old" law. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill ..." (5.21). "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery ..." (5.27). "Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself ..." (5.33)."Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ... (5.38). "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy ..." (5.43). The first three of these examples refer, respectively, to the Sixth, Seventh, and Third Commandmants found in Exodus, Chapter 20, the prohibitions against murder, adultery, and the use, or mis-use, of oaths. The last two examples refer to the law of retaliation (Ex. 20.24 et seq.), and to Lev. 19.18: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ...." In the next installment of this inquiry, each of these examples will be examined in detail, along with the "new" law interpretations Jesus gives. William Braithwaite, Tutor u �03 On Reproductive Rights Lately, I’ve been thinking about my eighth grade health class a lot. My eighth grade health class was taught by a man we called Coach Ryan. He was also the gym teacher. He would eventually be fired by our school after our principal, Sister Cathy, discovered that he did not have a valid teacher’s license, but this was before then, when he was just your average Long Island Catholic school gym-cum-health class teacher. I remember we discussed pregnancy and the intricacies of the reproductive process in class, once. Our health textbooks reviewed the stages of pregnancy and fetal development; they were godless textbooks, having been issued by the district instead of the diocese, and so they made no mention of the immortality of the soul or of the sanctity of life or any other concepts that we were taught were of the utmost importance. I remember Coach Ryan reviewing the concept of a zygote, or a recently fertilized egg, and then growling: “Now the book doesn’t say this, but when does life begin?” Everyone was silent. “Conception,” he said. “You’ll get a lot of people, when you grow up, telling you that it doesn’t begin at conception, but you can’t listen to them, because life begins at conception.” This was something I repeated to myself throughout my early teenage years; I had doubts on its veracity, but I managed to convince myself that my doubts were due to the Devil’s temptation. I lay awake at night, profoundly distrustful of my own thoughts. I had not known any women who had had abortions, and—having heard indictments of them in church and at school on a regular basis—I was convinced that they were, at best, horribly misled, and at worst, evil. Moreover, they were determined to mislead me, too. I had this unshakeable fear that the part of me that doubted that they were evil, that doubted that life began at conception, would eventually take over and my descent into the abyss would be complete. I would become a monstrous latter-day Medea, who watched Girls and wore pink sneakers in solidarity with Wendy Davis. I feared that I would accept sin due to a lack of resolve and succumb to the wiles of Satan. I have. Well, I don’t own a pair of pink sneakers, and I have no desire to watch Girls. But I am pro-choice, and proudly so, and I would like to preface this article with an address to my younger self: Thirteen-year-old Hope, even if Coach Ryan had a proper teacher’s license, he still would not be a viable authority on what you can do with your uterus. Your uterus is a tabula rasa. You are entitled to complete dominion over your own body. When I write these words, however, I feel increasingly discouraged. They should be empowering; however, they ring hollow in light of a reality wherein women are deprived of their bodily autonomy more and more each day. They should be true, but they aren’t. Earlier this year, Georgia passed a law prohibiting abortions after six weeks, around the time most women realize that they are pregnant; shortly afterwards, Alabama banned abortion altogether. The 2018 appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court entails the possible repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which—according to Planned Parenthood—would cause nearly 25 million women to lose access to abortion. The most heavily impacted by the repeal would be black and Hispanic women. Texas law requires that women seeking abortions be first told that abortions cause breast cancer, a scientifically baseless and intentionally misleading claim. Finally, the Title X Family Planning Program—which provides reproductive health and family planning services for low-income individuals, particularly women—is at risk. The Trump-Pence administration has proposed a prohibition of abortion referrals; a removal of objective and nonpartisan counseling regarding pregnancy options (thus depriving a woman considering abortion of her right to informed consent); The Gadfly Hope Taglich A’21 and defunding of agencies that provide abortion services, among other comprehensive changes. Yes, one has the right to believe that life begins at conception; however, it is crucial to recall that “life begins at conception” is a belief. Its justification is strictly theological; therefore, it has no place in politics. There is no solidly factual basis for it. The argument against legalized abortion is rooted in theocracy, and is thus profoundly un-American. The separation between church and state outlined in the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment is a response to the insidiousness of such theocracy; its originator, Thomas Jefferson, identified largely as a secular Deist. (Moreover, if one wants to argue theology, the Bible explicitly permits abortion; Numbers 5: 11-31 states that if a woman has become pregnant due to an extramarital affair, she must drink a potion to induce a miscarriage). Banning abortion is also inherently abusive. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, “Reproductive coercion is a form of power and control where one partner strips the other of the ability to control their own reproductive system.” On a macrocosmic level, federal and state governments are abusing women. The right to choose is a human right, one that is violated more and more with each passing day; legally infringing on it is a form of reproductive terrorism that is heralded as moral by the likes of the National Right to Life, Kay Ivey, Kanye West and Donald Trump. In the face of abuse, it is crucial that Americans write to legislators. It is crucial that Americans donate to Planned Parenthood. It is crucial that, as a collective, we accept that a woman has a right to choose; pro-life individuals must acknowledge that their beliefs cannot be legally imposed on others. Personally, we can agree to disagree; legally, it is imperative to realize we cannot. t �04 When the Teacher is Not There Biology October 23, 2019, 9:10 am I walked into the classroom and immediately I could sense something was off. I didn’t know what it was at first, but something felt strange, a kind of lingering anticipation in the air. Then I noticed that the lights were off and an unusual amount of glee was present in room 340. It came to me in a flash-- Mrs. Hannahs, our teacher, wasn’t there yet. The thing lingering in the air was hope--that neither Mrs. Hannahs, nor a substitute, would come. If you remember your high school years, then you can imagine how elated we felt as it became evident that by some mistake or other in the offices, no teacher was coming that morning. We were like a bunch of balloons someone had blown up and let go to the skies. But of course, balloons ran out of air pretty quickly, especially when there are snitches in the room. “We’re not allowed to be in a room without a teacher,” said the sophomore who hates us because we are freshman. “Yea, we should go get a teacher. I can go. I’m like a teacher magnet,” said Natalie. “No! why would we do that?” everyone exclaimed. Nobody liked Natalie or the sophomore. You probably know why already, but I’ll elaborate. Natalie always found the biggest words to express the simplest ideas, I guess to feel proud of herself, but her answers made her sound ridiculous rather than intelligent. Most of us freshman were known for being rowdy and stupid--or fun--depending on who you asked. For that reason alone the sophomore hated us. Anyway, as we were dancing in circles and singing merry tunes, Natalie picked up the classroom telephone and prepared to call the office. I stood still, mouth gaping, shocked and afraid. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a football player, a Abigail Petrich Prospie hero. He jumped over chairs, slid under tables, and sprinted to the teacher’s desk, where Natalie and the evil phone conspired. When he reached the desk he furiously and repeatedly tapped the button that ends a call. The class cheered, and Natalie went into shock. Yeh!--the gods are just after all! But our celebration was short, because the sophomore and Natalie decided to walk to the office and alert the administrators of our freedom and delights. Like traitors, they were. Eventually, a teacher arrived to restore boredom in the room until a substitute could be summoned. He seemed just as unhappy about it as we were, though he did make us do our work. He even frowned at Natalie and the sophomore while the class booed its displeasure. I began to think about things . . .like what makes a person do that? The sophomore I understand--he did it out of hate. But Natalie? What did she gain? The satisfaction of pride? Did she do it because it seemed like the right thing to do? How can something be right, if it pleases no one and blackens everyone, including the doer’s reputation? And if it is the right thing to do, while making everyone miserable, should you do it? We warned Natalie that “snitches are witches who end up in ditches” (we may not have exactly said ‘witches,’). But she snitched anyway. We have been told all our lives that we shouldn’t care about what other people think of us. But why shouldn’t we care? Aren’t our consciences formed by other people’s opinions? So if public opinion doesn’t matter, what will prevent someone from doing much worse things than snitching? My dad said none of this would have happened if we had wanted to be there learning biology, with or without a teacher. I don’t think he understands high school. --Abigail Petrich, Freshman, Severna Park High School and prospective Johnnie t The Gadfly Hustlers v. Spartans Reasonball Mia Kobylski A’23 It’s Oktoberfest weekend – kegs and pumpkins are plentiful; a cool autumn breeze blows up from college creek and the campus trees are turning shades of orange. However, despite the pit beef and the fall flavored desserts, a group of Johnnies gathers on back campus for Reasonball. The Spartans and Hustlers warm up, tie their flag belts, and talk strategy. 80’s jams, specifically a Queen medley, radiates through the air from Oktoberfest, adding to the overall vibe. The game begins with Chris’ signature, “Let’s play!” Nine Hustlers and nine Spartans take the field. Within the first two plays, Hustlers make a touchdown, as the Spartans’ butterfingers cannot quite grasp the flags. During the middle and end of the first half, the teams struggle to find their groove and play is littered incomplete passes and rule debates. A young family passes by the field, and the children exhibit a great deal of confusion while watching the game, reducing Reasonball to some sort of odd flag football where players can seemingly pass to themselves. The second half starts strong for the Spartans. The team is able to catch longer passes and move closer to the endzone each play, resulting in a touchdown. The Hustlers also have a new energy coming into the new half, twice running the ball down the majority of the field. Each of these strategies seems to work for the respective teams. By the 10th play in the second half, each team is tired due to a lack of subs, but the fighting spirit still remains. The Hustlers score a touchdown after Spartan possession is intercepted to score yet another long run to the endzone. The Hustlers take the game, and the Spartans are defeated, a rare occurrence for the team. The start of the Reasonball tournament commences the following week with the Hustlers seeded first, followed by the Spartans, Druids, Guardians, and lastly, Greenwaves. Who will be crowned victor of this quintessentially autumn and uniquely Johnnie pastime? t � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 4 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 04 Description An account of the resource Volume XLI, Issue 04 of The Gadfly. Published November 6, 2019. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief) Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-11-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 04 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a7b2142fdd95a28d825a0c5096173bee.pdf ed5a55872b3060467ff9efbf4d7c659b PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 62.1-2 (Fall 2020-Spring 2021) Double Issue Editor William Pastille The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Panayiotis Kanelos, President; Joseph Macfarland, 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 or to Review@sjc.edu. © 2020 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 ��Contents Arbores Vitae William Darkey The “Mysteries of Moderation” and the Education of Socrates Janet Dougherty On Dante’s Commedia: The Fact of the Fiction and the Truth of the Poem Jason Menzin Please Note: This is a double issue containing both numbers 1 and 2 of volume 62. A separate number will not be published in the spring of 2021. 1 9 29 ��Arbores Vitae William Darkey When I was a child I think I knew that the trees played a very great role in my life, though I could not have reflected much about it. It was simply a fact of my existence among many others. Now, in recollection, I can see it in a different way, can separate out this aspect of my life for examination, can collect my separate memories of the trees and try to compose them as a theme. As a child I lived among the trees. My earliest memory—of the bedroom in which I was born—contains a tree—a great maple tree just outside the window. It whispered to itself, and I remember the sound. It tossed its branches in the storms. A pair of orioles hung their nest there every spring. The milkman stopped his big bay horse under it in the morning. Its great roots, mysteriously underground, heaved the brick sidewalk where I rode my wagon, and my father, looking at the swell, would say, “I guess that tree’ll have to come down some day. I’ll hate to see it go.” I didn’t quite know what he meant, but it seemed a dreadful prospect. I think that tree must have been my symbolic exit from the house to the world of nature, as it plunged its roots deep into the earth and tossed its head into the sky. And, truly, it did seem to lift itself into the blueness. I can see in my mind’s eye the rough, giant shagginess of its trunk. And I can still feel that roughness in the palm of my hand, and feel the life of the great trunk, feel the dynamic tension of holding the head up by the grip of the roots. Oh, I knew it was alive, all right. Alive, and other. Not smooth like my skin, not smooth like the walls and floors of the house or the wooden posts of the front porch. Stronger than anyone I knew. I recognized it as a kind of tutelary presence, living, mighty, sheltering, benign, yet awesomely other. It William Darkey (1921-2009) was a tutor at St. John’s College for over six decades. He was a founding member of the Santa Fe campus and also served as its Dean. This reminiscence was discovered among his papers by his stepson, Peter Nabokov, who is a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) was the first tree I ever knew, a kind of patriarch. For me, an incarnation, I suspect, of Ygdrasil. It is so deeply rooted in my memory, indeed in my life, that I would not be who I am if it were not there. This is so true that although I know the fancy is false, I cannot help imagining that everyone has some kind of first tree inside him, a personal axis that centers him between earth and sky, and that fixes him all his life for better or for worse to some inner native landscape, consummating a union of person and place. For me, that tree has no name, no private designation. It has no symbol. It is simply itself. It is possible that that same tree could fulfill the same role for another person, but it seems altogether unlikely that it should be so. It (and the pronoun is wrong, because there are no proper pronouns for trees) and I are a unique pair, or so it seems to me. Fifteen years ago, returning to Cumberland, I passed that house on Patterson Avenue. The tree had been cut down. I suppose that, as my father had long ago predicted, the roots bad heaved too much of the paving. The house looked shorn, unsheltered and unsheltering, naked to the street, unrelated either to the earth or to the sky. Unrelated to people. It didn’t look like a good place to be born. I can imagine a sort of fairy tale in which a man is born in relation to a tree, and that when the tree is cut down, the man suffers a kind of death. Now if all of this seems fanciful or, worse, precious or sentimental, what on earth do we mean by our metaphor when we speak of “roots”? When I was five years old, we moved to another bouse, not far away from the one I was born in, but at the end of a street on the edge of town and on the edge of a wood. The land there until the turn of the century had been part of a large estate. The section where our house stood had been the middle of an apple orchard. Most of the apple trees bad been cut down or had died, and the land had gone back into second-growth woodland wild cherry, thorn, locust, and ash, with generous quantities of wild honeysuckle vines and poison ivy. Scattered here and there were a few ancient apple stumps and a number of second-growth apple trees mostly untended and wild, though some half dozen in the lot next to our house had been pruned and trained and, along with one lone pear tree, still bore a quantity of reliable fruit for whoever might want it—usually small boys perched aloft who ate the �ESSAYS | DARKEY 3 apples green with salt on them, and later with the air of successful primitive gatherers took home bagsful of apples to be made into applesauce. These apple trees were heavily leaved and well-domed, with branches low to the ground, very convenient for climbing. They taught me that trees are for climbing. At a certain stage of life, climbing is what you do about a tree. And not just to get its fruit. The tree lifts you up into another world, a swaying, creaking, rustling world between earth and sky; a world perfumed by the dry smell of the bark, the green smell of the leaves, and in the spring by the smell of the blossoms; a world shared cautiously with wasps and bees and occasionally, if you are very still, with the robins and catbirds who are the natural denizens of that world. The tree world is very quiet and private. Generally, other people don’t know you are there, and unless you tell them, they don’t often think of looking for you up there. Such presence with invisibility is an altogether godlike feeling. And like some other kinds of pretensions to divinity, it can get you into trouble when you are found out, by parents who want you for dinner. Up in a tree is the ideal place in all the world for thinking whatever it is that children think about. Not, it seems to me, as a retreat from the world, or as a refuge, at least in a negative sense. Being in a tree is like paying a call on a wise friend, like conversing, or perhaps sometimes like playing a kind of grave game with the tree. It is quite simply what you do with a tree. And, of course, reciprocally, it is what a tree does with you. The wild cherry trees always seemed to me to be like girls, small among the other trees, slender, swaying, and in the springtime decked out in lacey tassels. The bark of the young trees is smooth and red. The branches you climb on often become quite polished. One such small tree was a favorite refuge of mine. I recall quite vividly how, when I was told of the death of a favorite cousin, I left the house and climbed up into that tree. I do not yet know why I did that, and I recall that even at the time the impulse seemed to come from outside me; but it seemed clearly the thing to do. After a while my father came and got me. I didn’t know how he knew where I was; maybe he watched me go. I think he understood a child’s grief. Maybe he even understood what the tree had to do with it. �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) The woods extended along a ridge into the town in a narrow peninsula whose tip was just across the street from our house. After about fifty yards the land fell away very steeply towards the Potomac River. That slope no doubt had been timbered and burned over, but to judge from the growth of the trees on it, it must have been untouched for seventy-five or a hundred years. There were a few large ash trees, but most were tall, spreading white oaks, quite unclimbable by small boys, and therefore rather fierce and forbidding. It was a mysterious region, and I didn’t often venture far down into it. Several things of great interest, however, were to be found near its border. The first of these were some flowering Judas trees (we called them redbuds), and we took branches of it home to our mothers in the spring. Bloodroot also grew there, and we would dig the roots and paint ourselves with the vermillion juice. And there was sweet anise; we dug the roots and chewed them for “lickerish.” Violets grew there in profusion, and spring beauties. Once on a solitary quest for one or another of these plants, I went a little farther down the slope than usual and saw in the middle distance the trunk of a tree I could not recognize. When I reached it, I found it was well over a foot in diameter, very straight and vertical, and its top had somehow broken off long before about twenty feet above the ground, so that it stood like what seemed to me a mysterious pillar or monument alone in the mysterious oakwood. I thought it a very important thing to have discovered, so I told no one about it for a long time. One day I pulled off some bark and recognized it as a cedar, since it smelled like our cedar chest. After a while, I took my father to see it, and he told me the tree had been struck by lightning. This confirmed my conviction of the tree’s importance; and I tried to imagine the awesomeness of the thunder-stroke. I didn’t entirely know what I meant by my thought, but it seemed mysteriously wonderful and frightening and thrilling to lay my hands on that being that once long ago the lightning had selected. It is not easy to understand how we come to our understanding of time, of what it means to be very old, older than, for instance, one’s grandmother, who has white hair. That isn’t quite what one means by very old. For me, at least, I think it was the trees that helped me to approach that mystery. Only three trees of my acquaintance ever had proper names. They were, respectively, the Old Apple Tree, the Old Willow, and the Old Oak. The Old �ESSAYS | DARKEY 5 Apple Tree grew on our own land and was one of the trees of the original orchard. It was the snag of a stump, good-sized for an apple tree, coming out of the ground at a slant and rising in a flat S-curve until its upper third was almost horizontal. None of its original branches remained at all—I suspect that the storm which blew the top out of the tree broke the trunk off below the branches—but the old tree had put out new stems, one horizontal and one vertical. The latter, as if ignorant of its lower parts, was simply an ordinary ten-foot tree which blossomed and bore fruit, unmindful of its age. But anyone could see that the supporting trunk was not only of another generation but even of another age, so gnarled and twisted was it, so much larger and more powerful, that it had endured. It wasn’t that anyone explained to me what was meant by “old,” but when they called this tree “the Old Apple Tree,” I could see what they meant. I felt something like respect for the tree, and I never walked under the slant of the trunk on the downhill side. The Old Willow was a similar case. It had been an unusually large weeping willow that had been topped perhaps first by a storm and later by pollarding, since it grew on a street corner. Now I knew weeping willows—we had one in the yard, and it tossed its hair in the wind and dropped its leaves in the fall and put forth its little greengold leaflets which in the spring smell like nothing else in the world. This tree was an altogether charming girl. But the Old Willow on the street corner was a frightening travesty of her, with a huge stumpy trunk surmounted by short, thick branches raised at right angles like threatening arms. Grotesquely in the springtime it put forth the same little greengold leaves, shed the same pungent odor, tossed the same tresses. I had the feeling that something lived inside the trunk of that tree, and at night I would pass it on the other side of the street. The Old Oak was my great friend. He—for he was without any doubt masculine or the equivalent of it in the world of trees— stood on the top of the ridge and on the edge of the slope down to the river. He was taller by far than any other tree around and of greater girth. Anyone could plainly see that he was the king of the woods. Everyone I knew called him The Old Oak, so in a sense that was his proper name; but in another sense, it wasn’t a name at all, and my great friend was as anonymously individual as his whole race and was designated only as the Old one of that race. That was not his real name, but only our name for him. And �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) so we’d say to one another, “I’ll meet you at the Old Oak.” or “Let’s have the Fourth of July picnic under the Old Oak.” Long before I knew him, someone had built a fire against the base of his trunk, so that there a charred hollow curved into the base of his trunk just above ground level; and the great tree had compensated as it could by putting out a compensatory curve of growth on the opposite side. When I first walked into his shade I was a very small child, and I suspect that I was not aware at all of the oak’s vast upwardness, but saw only the elephantine great gray bole and the first spread of branches. Later, even though I was learning to climb into the kingdom of the trees by way of the lesser and more domesticable apple and cherry, it did not occur to me that one could climb into the Old Oak. From a practical point of view, the trunk was too huge to get any purchase on, and the limbs, even at the first crotch, were far beyond my reach. More importantly, there was a presence about this great being that forbade intrusion into his domain. In due course, however, as we both grew, and I much faster, I discovered certain knots and knobs and stubs that were within my extremest reach, so that with a certain amount of scrambling and what seemed to me death-defying lurches into nothing I managed to attain the first crotch. To get back down from there by the way I had come up was out of the question, and I solved the difficulty by dropping from the lowest branch into a pile of oak leaves. (It may be said in passing that the kingdom of the trees is like fairy land in many ways, and not the least in that it is a realm which, as a rule, one may enter more easily than he can depart, and rash intruders have been known to return crippled or worse.) For quite a long while, I think, I was content to climb to the first stage and never thought seriously of going higher. Naturally, however, that thought eventually did come. I wondered what it would be like to be in the very top of the tree. How far would I be able to see? I had already known the delight of being in a tree top in a strong wind, and it seemed to me that the Old Oak might sway more widely than any of the dwarfs at his feet. One evening I had been called in from play, and had washed and changed into clean clothes for supper with unaccustomed dispatch. I found myself with nothing to do and half an hour left till suppertime. I knew at once that this was the time to climb to the top of the Old Oak. The tree was less than a hundred yards from the house, and I was there in a moment. Up into the first �ESSAYS | DARKEY 7 crotch. Then a long upward look. The tree forked, and the twin trunks soared upwards almost parallel to one another. The righthand fork looked more promising, and up I went by that way, shinneying, holding on to small shooting branches and then, having accepted their help, I had to overcome the hindrance they presented as I tried to get around them. After some initial success and considerable elation at being already above the common level of the woods and looking down on the other treetops, I found my way blocked by a growth of shoots that I could only have passed by cutting them off. The other fork was behind me, perhaps three feet away. Manoeuvering desperately and summoning all my courage, I made the leap, clutching the trunk with arms and legs. Safe. I hung on for a while until I recovered my nerve and started up again. And I made it to the very top. The breeze blew; the tree swayed, and I swayed blissfully. I had done it. No other boy I knew had ever done it, not even my cousin George who was three years older and could do everything. Speaking of George, as I looked at his house I could see that I was significantly higher than the attic windows and that I was actually looking down on the slate roof. The thought made a flutter in my stomach, and I gripped the tree more tightly. Then I heard my mother’s voice calling me for supper. I suddenly realized I hadn’t thought about getting down, and I’d done enough tree-climbing to know instinctively that it was likely to be a problem. I felt foolish. And increasingly scared. So I didn’t answer. Mother knew I wasn’t far away, so she walked across the street and up the path to the clearing where the oak tree stood, and called again. She looked very small to me down there. I knew she’d be frightened, and I hated to do that to her. She called again, and I knew I had to say something. “I’m up here,” I said in what must have been a small and sheepish voice. She looked up, but couldn’t see me in the foliage. “Where?” she said. “Up here in the Old Oak,” I said. She moved about until she located me. I saw her turn pale. “How ever did you get up there?” she said. It wasn’t a question. Controlling herself, she said, “Well, you’d better come down right away. Dinner’s ready.” �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) “I don’t think I can,” I said. “I’ve never done it before.” “Well, you’ll just have to,” she said. Then, seeing that my fear was increasing, she said, “Come on. You can do it. I know you can. After all, you got up there.” “It’s a lot harder getting down,” I said. “Well, you can’t stay there all night,” she said. “Listen. I’ll help you. Tell me just exactly what you did to get up, and then we’ll just do it backwards.” And it worked. She talked me backwards down out of that tree. Even across from the one fork to the other. She was surely more frightened than I was, but she didn’t let it show in her voice. When I hit the ground she said, “You pick the darnedest times to do things. Look at you. You’re a sight. Go get washed for supper.” “Gee, thanks, Mother,” I said. “I couldn’t ever have gotten down without you.” “Sure you could,” she said. “But I’m glad I was here.” Even then I knew what I’d said was pretty inadequate, but I knew she knew I knew, so it didn’t matter too much. In 1936 we got the edge of an Atlantic hurricane, and the Old Oak went down. In the morning we found it lying headlong down the hill towards the river. It had never occurred to me that a god was mortal. I’ve never forgotten. �The “Mysteries of Moderation” and the Education of Socrates Janet Dougherty Xenophon celebrates the gentlemanliness of Socrates in the Memorabilia. In that work he demonstrates Socrates’s virtue, in particular his justice and beneficence, and shows that he in no way deserved his fate. Xenophon does this by recollecting what he knew and had heard of Socrates, who spoke “always” about the human things and, while he persisted in examining “what each of the beings is” (Memorabilia 4.6.1),1 knew in particular the things a gentleman must know (1.1.16; 4.7.1). Others came to him for guidance in how to be gentlemanly (1.2.48). In the Oeconomicus Xenophon addresses Socrates’s education in gentlemanliness. Most of the Oeconomicus is devoted to Socrates’s recounting of an earlier conversation he had with Ischomachus, a man reputed to be a gentleman truly deserving of the epithet. Literally the Greek term for gentleman means: “noble (or fine or beautiful) and good” (kalos k’agathos). The gentleman must be a good citizen and he must manage well his household, including his family, servants and slaves. Ischomachus thinks of gentlemanliness primarily as a form of mastery. At the end of the dialogue Ischomachus sums up his standard for judging any master, including the manager of an estate, praising most highly he who rules over willing subjects. [I]f . . . he filled each of the workers with spirit, a love of victory vis-à-vis one another, and each with the ambition to be most excellent, then I would assert he has something of a kingly character. And this is the greatest thing . . . in any work where something is achieved by human beings, in farming as in any other. Yet I do not say, by Zeus, that it’s possible to learn by seeing it or hearing of it once, but I assert that the one who is going to be capable of it needs education, a good nature, and most of all, to become divine. For it seems to me that this good—to rule over willing subjects is not altogether a human thing, but, Janet Dougherty is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 1. References to the Memorabilia may be found in Xenophon, Memorabilia, tr. Amy L. Bonnette (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) rather, divine; it is clearly given only to those who have been genuinely initiated into the mysteries of moderation (τοῖς ἀληθινῶς σωφροσύνῃ τετελεσμένοις); but tyrannical rule over unwilling subjects, it seems to me, they give to those whom they believe worthy of living like Tantalus in Hades, who is said to spend unending time in fear of a second death (Oeconomicus 21.12).2 Ischomachus is proud of his effective governance over other members of his estate: he is quite prosperous and has a largely favorable reputation. But he cannot be confident he has attained the divine status he describes here. Neither he nor Xenophon’s readers can affirm the willingness of Ischomachus’s subjects to submit to his rule, for most of his servants are slaves. The standard he sets for ruling is inspiring; the likelihood that it describes any gentleman’s household management is small. The pretense, however, is salutary: Ischomachus aims at a benign form of mastery, if only to avoid the fate of Tantalus. He may be able to convince his servants that he deserves his role. Ischomachus is neither an overt tyrant nor divine.3 But what of Socrates? The mature Socrates did not rule others, but he set a standard for those who attended to him (Memorabilia 1.2.18). He willingly offered counsel. A few of his followers—Critias and Alcibiades are named—turned dramatically away from him and became arrogant, but when they were associating with Socrates they were better behaved—more moderate, Xenophon says (1.2.25-26). He records a wide array of examples from Socrates’s life of his beneficial guidance of many and various human beings, including those who sought high political positions. His continence with respect to physical pleasures was legendary,4 and he encouraged it in others. Continence is not yet virtue, although Xenophon’s Socrates insists that it is a necessary condition. It seems closest to the virtue of moderation. Xenophon’s praise for Socrates implies that if anyone is moderate, it is he. Moderation, like all virtue, for Socrates, is wisdom (3.9.4-5). He seems never to have misjudged an individual, or to have pursued any good to the neglect of another of higher rank (4.8.11). Is this 2. Carnes Lord’s translation in Robert Bartlett, Xenophon: The Shorter Socratic Writings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). 3. See Xenophon’s Hiero on the possibility of benign tyranny. 4. Plato, Symposium 216 d-219d and Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.3.5-15. �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 11 the height of moderation that Ischomachus refers to in his final speech? Socrates reports the conversation with Ischomachus, which occurred at an unspecified time in the past, to Crito’s son Critobolus who urgently needs instruction in the art of managing a household. He seems to have come to Socrates, thinking that he might have the necessary understanding, maybe even the skill, though he has no estate. The recounted conversation serves as a substitute for instruction in the art that Socrates has never practiced. Just before he relates the conversation to Critobolus, Xenophon has Socrates refer briefly to an important transition in his life—indeed, the inception of political philosophy. He sought to understand gentlemanliness, the ‘noble-and-good’ and looked first toward the most handsome (kalos) men he encountered. Presumably he considered the kalos part of the compound ‘beautyand-goodness’ to be visible to the eye. That effort proved disastrous, for he found that these men had depraved (mochtherous) souls (Oeconomicus 6.16). No longer trusting in his ability to see the thing itself he turned to the use of the term in speech. Everyone, he seems to say, referred to Ischomachus as a gentleman. Socrates not only attended to what he heard from others about this reputedly most gentlemanly man; he also conversed as soon as he was able with the man himself.5 He presented himself to Ischomachus as an aspirant to gentlemanly virtue in need of instruction. By chance, presumably, Socrates came across Ischomachus in the marketplace, waiting for foreigners who never turned up. Already frustrated in his effort to understand gentlemanliness, Socrates engaged the gentleman in a lengthy conversation. Ischomachus willingly reported on the art of household management as he practiced it and, when Socrates pressed him, on the details both of how he governed servants and of the art of farming. Despite his own reputation as an idle chatterer, Socrates knew that he was capable of learning and said so to his instructor. But he was an odd sort of pupil: he owned no land or slaves over whom he could exercise the proper sort of mastery, nor did he have any prospect of acquiring these things. In Xenophon’s dialogue Socrates does not say whether he was convinced that 5. Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 147-150. �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) Ischomachus deserved his reputation, and he does not claim to have developed all the same virtues. What could he have hoped to learn from Ischomachus? What did he learn? Plato’s depiction of Socrates in the Phaedo and Socrates’s account of his “turn” in that work (99e-100a) is rather different from Xenophon’s, but the two are compatible, just as Socrates’s beneficence toward others is compatible with the generosity he shows his followers in Plato’s account of his last day alive. In the Phaedo Socrates acknowledges that in his earlier days he sought direct knowledge of the beings. He thought at first he would find support in his quest for such knowledge from authors such as Anaxagoras, but he was sorely disappointed. His response was to turn away from the study of the beings themselves for fear that his studies would, as it were, lead him to blind himself as men do who look directly at the sun during an eclipse.6 He maintained the hope of understanding the beings in general but he redirected his inquiry, taking as hypotheses what seemed to be “most compelling” (ἐρρωμενέστατον). He devoted his attention primarily to the speeches of human beings. Their speeches, he notes, include words like ‘justice’ and ‘good’ and acknowledge that these things motivate actions. His own account of his unwillingness to escape Athenian justice exemplifies the tendency. To explain his mature approach more fully to his companions he announces that he assumes there is something good or beautiful simply and reasons from these beings to prove the immortality of the soul. Xenophon discusses neither the young Socrates’s efforts nor his dying days, and he says nothing about immortality, but the conversation with Ischomachus that he has Socrates recount in the Oeconomicus illuminates the same change in Socrates’s habits. The Clouds is part of the almost explicit background of Socrates’s conversation with Ischomachus, who complains to him that he does not know how to “make the weaker argument the stronger.”7 Aristophanes depicts Socrates in The Clouds as continent, indeed ascetic, with respect to physical pleasures, but immoderate in his offer of education to those least suited to benefit from it, and indifferent to justice. His effect on his pupils, Strepsiades and Pheidippides, is to erode their self-restraint. In the conversation with Ischomachus Socrates refers to 6. Plato, Phaedo, 99d-e. 7. Aristophanes, Clouds, 888-1104. �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 13 his own bad reputation, an effect of Aristophanes's play;8 he doubts that he can advise Ischomachus given his infamy (Oeconomicus11.3). But Xenophon’s Socrates shows that he has already learned the error of the ways Aristophanes attributes to him: he does not offer to teach Ischomachus, responding instead that maybe he is unable “to make the untrue true.” On this occasion, Socrates is not only more cautious than in The Clouds. He is also inclined to defend himself from thoughtless criticism: his nature is good, he asserts, and his poverty does not detract from his ability to pursue virtue (11.4-5). He repudiates the attack on his reputation while acknowledging his lack of the virtue Ischomachus displays. He seeks to acquire it, starting “tomorrow,” he says (11. 5). The Memorabilia presents us with a pious, law-abiding Socrates whose life was wholly respectful of the ways of the city. His indictment and execution appear simply unjust; his thought is unwaveringly benign towards the city and its citizens. Since this was not always Socrates’s reputation either earlier reports were false or they were reports of the immature character of the thinker. If Socrates’s encounter with Ischomachus was the turning point in his development of gentlemanliness, the Oeconomicus must be examined with care. While addressing the question what Socrates learned from Ischomachus we must consider others: Does Socrates learn by imitating Ischomachus, or in some other way? What part does moderation play in Socratic gentlemanliness? I will conclude by considering how Socrates’s report of his conversation with Ischomachus may facilitate the education of Critobolus. ***** There are three parts to Ischomachus’s account of his way of life. The first focuses on his education of his wife; the second on his manner of ruling subordinates; and the third on the details of farming. Each points to a striking contrast between Socrates and his instructor: Socrates clearly does not educate Xanthippe as Ischomachus does his (nameless) wife; he is master of no one; and he never owns land enough to farm. If learning requires 8. Plato, Apology, 19c-d. �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) practice,9 Socrates cannot learn the arts of the gentleman, for he apparently has no occasion to practice those arts. In the conversation with Critobolus that occupies the first six chapters of the book Socrates acknowledges both that he knows something of the art of household management and that because of his lack of experience he could easily destroy rather than enhance Critobolus’s wealth should he take charge. He compares household management to flute playing: it is not enough to learn about it; one must possess a flute and play.10 The implication is that if there are some arts that are exhausted by knowing, and whose practice requires no prior acquisitions—mathematics is an obvious example11—managing is not among them. No instruments other than natural possessions are needed for one to practice the arts of rhetoric and dialectic. The corresponding virtues do not require wealth in the ordinary sense, nor do they produce marketable goods. These are the sort of virtues Socrates exhibits in his interactions with others. But wealth, as Critobolus and Socrates agree, lies not merely in material possessions. It may include friends and even enemies, anything and anyone which one can use to one’s benefit (1.5-7). The mature Socrates not only finds ways to live comfortably but shares good things with others, according to Xenophon.12 He practices a kind of economic art and manages his companions.13 Still, he will not manage Critobolus’s estate. The household, as Ischomachus presents it, aims at maintaining and producing material possessions, things that satisfy needs and produce a surplus as well. He describes the household itself as a harmonious blend of nature and convention. The gentleman’s wife, according to Ischomachus, is by nature suited to pre9. See Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.19 on the need for practice to develop virtues. 10. Although Ischomachus convinces Socrates through questioning that he knows the art of farming, he denies that Socrates can learn the art of flute-playing through questioning. The less “philanthropic” arts conceal themselves. But farming, too requires practice. (Compare 2.12-13 and 19.14-19). 11. Plato, Meno, 82b and 85e. 12. Memorabilia, 1.6.14. 13. See Thomas Pangle, “The Socratic Founding of Economic Science,” Interpretation 45:3 (2020). �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 15 side over the activities that occur within the house just as the man is by nature suited to outside activities. If her education is successful, she will accept her permanent confinement to an inside life and commit herself entirely to the prosperity of the household. Her lack of individuality is so complete that Ischomachus never mentions her name. Lacking earlier education—her mother apparently told her only to be moderate— Ischomachus’s wife is dependent on her husband for guidance in all her daily tasks. She must first learn to put all their possessions in order according to the frequency and kind of their use. This requires that she recognize both the character of each object and the customs and conventions as well as the natural needs it serves. Ischomachus, confident in his knowledge of all these things, instructs her. The wife must rule over a hierarchy of subordinates, including those who have authority over the lowliest inside workers. She must know each of their tasks and how to accomplish it. She is, according to her husband, like a queen bee, but he also compares her to a general. If the latter comparison is meant as flattery, it suggests that she would prefer to be recognized for manly virtues than for simply natural ones. The queen bee is a natural ruler; she needs no education. The general, by contrast, is elected to his office and must please the populace, just as Ischomachus’s wife is obliged to please him. He must impose order on his soldiers to make them parts of an unnatural but effective whole that can be victorious in conflicts. The use of the general as an analogy with the woman of the house implies that she is responsible for the defense of the wealth of the household against its potential destroyers. It also implies that she must rule as human beings rule over others. Her role may be in accord with nature but it requires a good deal of conventional support. Ischomachus doesn’t insist that all the members of the household are by nature suited to their positions, although he does distinguish among them. He works with his wife, for example, to select an appropriate housekeeper, someone who is continent, uses forethought and desires to please (9.11). In the larger world, Ischomachus acknowledges to Socrates, human beings cannot always be found in their places: the foreigners whom Ischomachus intended to meet never arrived. It is this accident of misplacement that enables Socrates to converse with him at such �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) length.14 But the proper places for individuals even within the household may not be obvious, and therefore it requires significant exertion for the mistress to maintain order. For example, barriers must be placed between the men’s and the women’s quarters so that the slaves will not produce children unwanted by the mistress and master. The workers, mostly if not exclusively slaves, must be kept at work. It would be very difficult to maintain that this is ruling over willing subjects, and it is certainly not rule for the sake of the ruled. At best, the members of the household accept that they can do no better than to work well and win the rewards with which they are encouraged, even if these are meagre—better clothing and shoes. But Ischomachus’s wife is quite willing to tend the sick among them for she hopes thereby to win their affection. She understands at least that they are beings capable of love and hate, loyalty and the opposite, and that she must strive to win the responses she prefers (7. 37-38). Socrates raises no objections to Ischomachus’s account of his education of his wife, and he may hope that Critobolus will attend to its details. Critobolus clearly has done nothing to educate his own wife and is nonetheless inclined to blame her for bad management (3. 10-15). Socrates's relationship with Xanthippe, we learn from Xenophon’s Symposium, is utterly different from Ischomachus’s with his wife. Whatever the truth about Socrates’s marriage, it seems true that Socrates wanted to be able to deal with human beings as they are.15 If he learned from Ischomachus’s account that he must attend to human needs and differences, he surely noticed that the order of the gentleman’s household conceals as well as reflects natural aspects of human beings. The Socrates of The Clouds made a consistent effort to understand the objects of his studies on their own terms. In Aristophanes's play he seems to break from the human scale to understand nature and not to return to it. Fleas, for example, jump some number of flea feet, but Socrates’s companions are pale and emaciated. He accepts as students those who have no commitment to truth, and he teaches them to disdain the custom14. It is an accident from Socrates’s point of view. 15. See Xenophon’s Symposium 2.10 on the benefit to Socrates from Xanthippe’s unruliness, in Robert C. Bartlett, ed. and tr., Xenophon: The Shorter Socratic Writings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 17 ary understanding of what is good and bad, beautiful and repulsive, without concern for practical consequences. Socrates must learn to see and accept human beings as they are. Human beings “as they are,” with rare exceptions, are not independent of groupings that incorporate conventional standards.16 Aristophanes's Socrates’s failing is that he gives no thought to what enables citizens to thrive together in a family or a city. When Strepsiades takes revenge on Socrates for his son’s corruption, he displays his intolerance for the destruction of the family, which concerns him even more than his debts. The Socrates of The Clouds attends to the needs of human beings so little that he causes if not his own demise, the destruction of his school, his followers, and his place in the city. The Socrates of the Memorabilia is different, and it seems likely that Ischomachus’s instruction has helped to alert him to the surface of human life. He has moderated his drive to unearth truths that are hidden with the understanding that humans seek, as individuals and in common, both what is good and the beautiful. Ischomachus believes the inside space of his home reflects the cosmic order that accommodates human needs and provides advantages for human life. It is orderly and functional, and it supports the variety of human activities, both essential and choice worthy.17 The gentlemanly Socrates respects the assurance of Ischomachus that the gentlemen’s rule gracefully blends convention with nature. As Xenophon presents him in the Memorabilia, Socrates obeys the Athenian laws and upholds the standards of justice and piety they embody. He examines without violating the things gentlemen like Ischomachus believe they know: piety, nobility, justice moderation and courage, and more (Memorabilia 1.1.16). Like the people with whom he converses, Socrates strives to live well within the larger whole of the city. Like the household manager, he is thoroughly devoted to the human good; in his case, his interlocutors’ good as well as his own. To reconcile the goods of individual and community is a noble as well as 16. Aristotle, Politics, 1.2.12-14. 17. Thomas L. Pangle, Socrates Founding Political Philosophy in Xenophon’s Economist, Symposium and Apology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 95-96. Ischomachus improves upon the conventions; his regime might even accommodate the philosopher. �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) a moderate goal. Socrates combines this goal with thoroughgoing awareness of discord. The household order is impermanent and must be maintained with continuous labor. Ischomachus and his wife know this but reflect little on the limits to their ability to reform natural beings they possess. In general, Ischomachus lacks Socrates’s distinguishing characteristic: the awareness of his limitations. Socrates sends his companions to learn from others when he cannot instruct them (Memorabilia, 4.7.1); there is no evidence that Ischomachus seeks another’s aid except when he hints Socrates might help him to defeat his accusers (Oeconomicus, 11.25). He acknowledges no faults, nor any uncertainties. He appears to understand everything he knows exclusively in relation to its utility for satisfying needs or procuring wealth. If he misses essential characteristics, he will not notice, unless they impact the usefulness of an object. Ischomachus’s belief that the order he imposes reflects the larger order of the cosmos seems willfully naïve (7. 16-34). Yet if there is no such order, if things are not organized according to kinds that have definite relations to one another in a larger whole, they may not be knowable at all. Ischomachus’s well-ordered household provides an image of order that contrasts with Aristophanes's Socrates’s badly managed household, the Thinkery, where beings must be encountered one at a time. The permutations of language alert him to the suspect character of the distinctions by kinds in speech just as the clouds reflect not the truth but the characters and imaginings of those who perceive them. But Socrates’s clever insights preoccupy and distract him from both the good and the noble.18 The gentlemanly method of ordering household possessions requires that their uses and their beauty be taken into account. Socrates learns to take seriously these criteria, and to consider to what extent knowledge of any being requires understanding its place in relation to others.19 18. The Socrates of Aristophanes's Clouds treats matters of human concern like justice and injustice as matters of indifference: the unjust speech wins simply because most people are already corrupt. See lines 1088-1104. 19. Ischomachus’s education of his wife is also an education of Socrates, who was concerned not only with the order of things that pertain to gentlemanly life, but also with the cosmic order. See Strauss, Discourse, 147-150. �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 19 Xenophon recollects Socrates as an exemplar of self-knowledge who sees other humans truly, as they are immersed in the life they share within the city. His self-knowledge includes knowledge of needs, desires and aspirations, some of which he shares with other human beings and some of which distinguish him. He avoids the danger that one who lacks such knowledge imposes one’s wishes and fears on other beings or fails to recognize theirs. Socrates learns better how to investigate the beings from attending to Ischomachus’s account of the flawed education of his wife.20 ***** After recounting his education of his wife, Ischomachus goes on, with a bit of prodding from Socrates, to talk about his day to day outside activities. He gives Socrates a list of what he prays for as well as a description of the way he spends most of his days (11.8-18). Much of his activity is devoted to preparing his skills and his body for war, should he ever have to defend his land and his city. He must leave his estate fairly frequently and go into town to attend to his citizen duties. The labor that makes the farm productive is done by subordinates, mostly slaves. Just as Ischomachus is confident that he can leave the inside tasks entirely to his now educated wife, he is equally confident that his stewards and other servants will in his absence manage his affairs just as he would himself. He is so certain of this that when he talks with Socrates he is in no rush at all to get home. Socrates presses him for an account of how he makes his subordinates both diligent and loyal. Both parts of this task are difficult. But Ischomachus makes an even greater claim: he makes some of his servants gentleman, he says, and he treats them as such (14.9). He fails to mention whether he arms them. Ischomachus admits that not all his servants can be made diligent. He supplements nature by punishing those who do not follow orders and rewarding those who do. He imitates, he says, both Athenian and Persian law: he doles out both punishments and rewards. The method of reward works with those who love gain and have the foresight to work for their advantage. He distinguishes those “who are induced to be just, not only through 20. See Strauss, Discourse, 157-158 for speculation on Ischomachus’s wife’s later activities. �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) having more than others as a result of their justice, but also through desiring my praise” (14.9). The only praise they are likely to earn is his, so they strive to demonstrate what he perceives as loyalty. Ischomachus claims that he educates his stewards to rule (13.4), and that he treats some of them “as free men, not only enriching them but honoring them as gentlemen” (14.9). But especially if they are slaves, even the “gentlemanly” servants, are compelled to accept Ischomachus’s authority because it has the backing of the laws of the city. Still, he is no doubt correct in noting that some men are motivated only by the satisfactions of needs and gain in general, while others crave honor too. In the Memorabilia Socrates converses with and benefits both types. Those who desire honor, the lovers of nobility, believe that holding high public office establishes their worth. In pursuit of noble ends even the best of these at times forget to secure their own good. Socrates educates them in the political things, things they need to know in order to manage whoever they aspire to govern, whether it be the cavalry, the entire army, or the city as a whole (Memorabilia, 3.1-7). He helps them to know better both the demands of the office and their own natures. Socrates evidently learns not from Ischomachus’s virtues alone but also from his defects. While Ischomachus exploits his servants’ dependence, Socrates helps some of his interlocutors to see the tension between what benefits them and what is honored in the city (3.5.28; 3.7.9). Since he is not moved to seek honor for himself, he does not rule them but rather gives them the means to rule themselves. The well managed household helps to illuminate the problematic character of the pursuit of nobility generally: in the household one man determines who is honored; in the city presumably all citizens must share in the appreciation of noble acts, which aim to secure the safety and well-being of the city as a whole. When the gentleman prospers, he has the wherewithal to reward his servants; when the city prospers its defenders flourish and their reputations soar. In both cases, the individuals who win their master’s praise may sacrifice much for little prosperity of their own. Still, the standard for success in ruling the city seems less arbitrary. The difference is not insignificant;21 the similari21. Socrates obscures the difference between household and city especially in Mem.3.4.12. But see Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 63. �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 21 ties point to the fact that the city may require its most distinguished citizens to sacrifice their own good for the questionable good of the whole.22 In the Memorabilia, Socrates obscures the differences between the household and the city. For example, in his conversation with Nicomachides, a soldier who hoped to be elected general, he praises the virtues of the householder as preparation for rule in the city. He goes so far as to claim that the wealthy man with no experience of war who has been elected general is a good choice. Nicomachides is, not surprisingly, astonished. Although his indignation is probably justified,23 his claim to the office he coveted is not. His experience in facing danger is insufficient to prepare him to lead others. The elected general, Antisthenes, has been successful in other endeavors—he has, for example, led a chorus - and has shown his ability to delegate authority to men who have the necessary understanding and skill. What he supplies is money and the determination to win. Antisthenes is more of a businessman than a genuinely noble man of distinction. He wishes to be superior to other men but he does not care to cultivate the virtues for which men are justly praised. That the citizens have elected him is likely a sign that they are less impressed by individual virtue than by success. Socrates’s defense of the choice seems to have similar grounds: the virtues of the household or business manager develop out of a straightforward pursuit of goods humans seek. In this case neither candidate for general seems to consider the good of the city his own good. Young Pericles, a general and the son of the renowned leader of Athens, provides a different example. Socrates encourages and instructs him, for his devotion to the city is genuine and his understanding is strong. Socrates also warns Pericles that his efforts may fail to secure the good of the city; even so he will be noble (kalos). Pericles died unjustly at the hands of the city’s leaders after the successful battle at Arginusae.24 22. In Memorabilia, the most prominent example is young Pericles. See especially 3.5.28. 23. Thomas Pangle, The Socratic Way of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 125. 24. Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 228; Xenophon, Hellenica 1.6-7. �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) Aware of its dangers, Socrates takes nobility seriously. The aspiration to the most splendid (kalos) deeds, including those deeds possible only for those who hold high public office, indicates nobility of character. As they protect the city men like young Pericles exhibit the ability to devote themselves to a good greater than their own. Socrates teaches thoughtless and ambitious men what noble action would require (3.3 and 3.6). Good and noble things become visible in the shared life of members of the household and the city, but they are not exhausted in these environments. Perhaps because he sees the disparity between worth and honor, Socrates does not share the aspiration to do great deeds. Perhaps too he lacks means. It seems most likely, however, that the pursuit of friendship with the best men he can find to associate with supplants public recognition. Socrates encourages friendship both with and among his companions. Those who aspire to be the best men they can be are most attractive as friends (2.6.28). The friendship between carefully selected friends is more moderate and no less admirable than public service: it is directed to the common good of the friends and less subject to the whims of public caprice. Socrates shared with his friends the good things they found in books and in conversation. Xenophon quotes Socrates’s description: [R]eading collectively with my friends, I go through the treasures of the wise men of old which they wrote and left behind in their books; and if we see something good, we pick it out; and we hold that it is a great gain if we become friends with one another.” (1.6.14) Such good things are of a more reliable and enduring sort. ***** Ischomachus’s household, in contrast with Socrates’s companions, enjoy in common many goods that satisfy human needs and provide comfort. The prosperity of Ischomachus’s household benefits the owner most, but especially if Ischomachus rewards his servants as generously as he indicates, it benefits all its members. But he aims at creating a surplus. Ischomachus’s praise is manipulative: he gives it, no doubt, to those who best serve his interests, not out of love of nobility. The steward’s love of praise enables the master to train him; the steward in turn must recognize and exploit the differences �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 23 among lower servants, mostly laborers, with respect to the power of gain and of praise. He must be sure to benefit and to praise those who serve the advantage of the master. No doubt a steward intelligent enough to apply these lessons would be intelligent enough to see that the master is applying the same understanding to himself. The skills Ischomachus’s stewards exercise in directing the laborers who improve the land and make the farm productive are useful. Within their smaller domain under Ischomachus’s rule, they rule also, and all prosper if they rule well. Socrates focuses Ischomachus’s attention on the difficulty that a capable steward would want to serve primarily (if not exclusively) himself. Even if Ischomachus treats some of his subordinates as gentlemen, he cannot treat them as equals. And even if they are his superiors in merit and ability, Ischomachus must treat them as inferiors who ought to be satisfied with his praise. The city resembles the household in that its members strive to please those who wield power: the powerful in turn sometimes strive to serve the city. Convention obscures as well as reveals what is best in human beings. In practice the art of household management cannot avoid imposing conventional distinctions and thereby obscuring natural similarities and differences among men. If justice requires that each individual be given a place in the whole that corresponds to his abilities and merit, the household, like the city, is never perfectly just. If moderation implies ruling without exploitation, Ischomachus is not altogether moderate. The renowned gentleman doesn’t seem to notice the difficulty, and it would be unhelpful if he did. He is very fortunate if his stewards and ambitious servants are similarly obtuse. Ischomachus instructs Socrates in moderation, in part by falling short of his own articulated standard. Socrates voices no objections, but he displays greater virtues: He always had advice to offer those who sought it, Xenophon reports, and he never misled anyone. He encouraged those who came to him to govern themselves. He had over others a natural superiority that was evident to most. They offered their gratitude and companionship. Socrates and his companions as Xenophon represents them in the Memorabilia could be likened to a household—some followed Socrates assiduously over a long time—but their relations are based almost entirely on their natural characteristics, and no competition arises over the goods they share. Only a few could �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) have been fellow inquirers into the natures of the beings; many more must have appreciated the “good things” Socrates delighted in sharing with them. Socrates’s friendships were gentlemanly associations; his guidance was truly moderate rule. Xenophon calls him “blessed” (makarios) (1.6.14). The common good Socrates shared with the men who sought him out was not wealth but friendship, or something akin to it. Socrates humbled those who pretended to know more than they did and then guided them toward what he thought best for each.25 Since he did not always know the things he thought each one must learn, he directed some of his followers to appropriate teachers. But it was Socrates to whom men came for counsel in gentlemanliness when their fellow citizens and the laws were inadequate teachers. He knew the things a gentleman must know, and his knowledge went beyond the conventional understanding. Socrates’s manner of instructing Critobolus in the Oeconomicus is an example of his disinterested and generous pedagogy. It is up to the young man to choose how much he will follow Ischomachus’s example in order to maintain and even increase the worth of his estate. Socrates gives him an opportunity to compare the way of life of the successful gentleman with Socrates’s truth-loving pursuit of the good life. The contrast Xenophon draws between the philosopher and Ischomachus is unmistakable. Ischomachus relies on observation: he expects the truth about the beings to be visible to the eye. If his slaves are docile, their docility is treated as willingness to serve. Socrates’s discussion with Critobolus of what constitutes wealth demonstrates that while he attends to appearances, he does not limit his examinations of the beings, or their uses, to their visible surfaces. In the earlier conversation with Socrates Ischomachus distinguished farming from other arts as the most generous and open to observers. It has no secrets; its well-bred practitioners do all that they do unconcealed from others and happy to share what they know. When a farmer is unsure what to plant, he observes his neighbors’ crops and even nearby uncultivated lands. Farming requires careful observation: plants show what is best for their growth in their natural tendencies, and the farmer must imitate these. Still, Ischomachus insists, because nature shows itself 25. See Socrates’s treatment of Euthydemus in Memorabilia, 4.2.40; also 4.7.1. �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 25 to the careful observer no particular virtues apart from diligence are necessary to farm successfully. According to him his father’s (and implicitly his own) love of labor explain his success. But Ischomachus cannot deny that to practice the art of farming one needs land. He fails to mention the good fortune of his inheritance of substantial landed wealth. Ischomachus’s insistence on the democratic character of farming has the rhetorical advantage of deflecting envy, but he surely exaggerates. He persuades Socrates that he, the philosopher, possesses the art of farming because he can answer questions like how deep to plant seed, how many crops to plant in a season and when, and his answers accord with Ischomachus’s views. He denies that Socrates could similarly be persuaded that he knows, for example, flute playing, the art to which Socrates compares household management when he converses with Critobolus (Oeconomicus 1.12). Socrates does not quarrel with his instructor about the accessibility of the art of farming—after all, he has indeed observed a great deal without making a formal study of local crops, and he may wish to encourage Critobolus to make similar progress. He does challenge Ischomachus’s claim that his father was a lover of labor and of farming. Since Ischomachus’s father repeatedly bought uncultivated land and sold it for a profit once it was cultivated, Socrates compares him with a merchant: he was less a lover of art or of labor, Socrates avers, than a lover of gain. Socrates generalizes: men often claim that they love things that they believe benefit them. The true good for human beings is not always evident. For anyone who is listening with care Socrates clearly points to the question, what is truly good. Socrates observes other beings just as he observes humans, with no inclination to exploit or manipulate them. The good and the noble, and much else that matters to human beings, are not immediately apparent to the observer. Socrates does not merely observe: he inquires into what each of the beings is. Socrates shows great respect for the renowned gentleman throughout their conversation but he has no intention of emulating his way of living. The art of economics as Ischomachus practices it is finally devoted to acquiring means without any limit or �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) end.26 Still, Ischomachus’s household is ordered in a way that reflects natural as well as conventional differences. The master of the household knows that it is best to rule over willing subordinates who each pursue their own good, understood as gain and in some cases honor. The highest honor belongs to the one who rules them successfully and in doing so, increases his wealth. In his closing speech Ischomachus affirms that the art of ruling is unlike the art of farming: it requires “education, a good nature, and most of all, to become divine” (21.12). Ischomachus’s rule depends upon the laws and conventions of the city; his household reflects the order of the city and helps support it. It indicates to Socrates and any serious observer the needs that compel human beings to order themselves into some kind of whole. All this testifies to Ischomachus’s and in general to gentlemanly moderation. At the same time it points to the question whether the fulfillment of the needs the household addresses adequately represents the good of the human beings so ordered. The household and the city that provides for its stability provide a context for Socrates’s friendships and his inquiries, including the inquiry into what is truly good. Socrates’s appreciation of that context links him to the conventional gentleman and is at the heart of his moderation. He does not claim to possess the ruling art but his nature, and his education, are exemplary. The mature Socrates Xenophon presents to us in the Memorabilia neither seeks office nor governs the members of a household. He responds to the requests made of him by a wide array of interlocutors and seeks out some to educate. Those who follow him willingly and become continuous companions27 may be said to be willingly governed. Even so, Socrates tries to educate them for their own good alone. To that end, he promotes first of all continence, and then self-knowledge, the knowledge in particular of what sort of pursuits are appropriate for each individual. Only 26. See Wayne Ambler, “On the Oeconomicus” in Xenophon: The Shorter Socratic Writings, ed. Robert C. Bartlett (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 106 and 109. In the conversation with Critobolus, Socrates emphasizes benefit over acquisition. Socratic economics differ from Ischomachus’s understanding both in emphasizing the goodness of the soul and in eschewing the restrictions imposed by justice and nobility. The latter point is elaborated in Pangle, “Economic Science,” 392-3. 27. Memorabilia, 1.2.48; 4.2.40. �ESSAYS | DOUGHERTY 27 some are suited to the pursuit of high office; more are suited to the gentlemanly management of their households. Very few are suited to the deepest sort of inquiry into “what each of the beings is.” Socrates does not try to make them into what they are not. The Socrates of the Memorabilia is unambiguously a citizen, a member of the largely conventional ordered whole that is the polis. He is not just an observer of the cosmos set by accident into the city and looking down on human beings from on high. If Aristophanes's Socrates is not a simple fabrication, the excesses of Aristophanes's character must reflect Socrates’s youthful, immoderate pursuit of truth at the expense of the human good. His education in gentlemanliness is the source of his moderation; it explains the transformation from his depiction in The Clouds to the Memorabilia. Socrates’s first serious interest in gentlemanliness, as Xenophon presents it, parallels his turn to focus on the speeches of human beings as Plato’s Socrates represents it in the Phaedo. As in the Phaedo, Xenophon’s Socrates’s turn enables him to examine nobility and goodness without undermining their pursuit. The conversation with Ischomachus gives Socrates an understanding of the life of the Athenian gentleman and the good that such a life serves, as well as its defects. Ischomachus’s instruction helps Socrates to find his place in the polis, and to reconcile his unwavering pursuit of the truth with the necessarily conventional character of the city and in general of human life. For the truth is consistently the goal of Socrates’s inquiries, whether in Aristophanes's presentation or in Plato’s or Xenophon’s. Ischomachus does not know the difference between making the untrue true and making the weaker argument prevail. The good and the noble, and the pursuit of both together, manifest themselves in the city, and are hard if not impossible to discern apart from it. Friendship too thrives within the city where there is a common understanding of good and noble pursuits. Nonetheless the city has a limited horizon: what is sought and honored is not necessarily truly noble or good. Socrates’s place in the city is that of the gentlemanly philosopher, who discerns shortcomings as he seeks to understand what the city points to but no set of citizens grasps. Xenophon celebrates the reconciliation, however tense and impermanent, between Socratic inquiry and the city, and downplays Socrates’s role as a critic. In the Memorabilia Xenophon calls him not only good or beneficent but also noble, kalos k’agathos, for �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) neither relying on the conventions for instruction nor disdaining them, he knows the things a gentleman must know. Socrates displays the gentlemanly virtues, but without the usual apparatus. He consistently practices justice, understood primarily as obedience to the laws of the city, and he is as thoroughly moderate as any human can be. Insofar as it is possible, he cultivates the human good. Xenophon’s overriding goal seems to be not merely to defend Socrates but to establish the recollection of his way of life as the foundation of a tradition. That tradition entails the pursuit of the good and the noble independent of opinion and convention, for these things are central to understanding the peculiar beings known as humans. More generally, it is a tradition of philosophic inquiry moderated by understanding of the political things.28 Where does this leave Critobolus, who loves comedies more than labor and who will no doubt suffer if he loses his material wealth? Socrates cannot decide for him how he is to proceed. He is not likely to abandon his land to imitate fully Socrates’s way of life. Will he give up his passion for comedies? Socrates, it would seem, does not object to Critobolus’s laughing at Aristophanes’s Socrates or at the pretenses of other gentlemen, but he must begin to take responsibility for the pursuit of his good. Critobolus must learn to practice moderation or suffer the loss of his wealth. He may be inspired by Ischomachus’s praise of moderate, gentlemanly, rule. He would improve his holdings in the city if he imitated the sober gentleman. Farming would serve Crito’s son well, for it provides goods without which life is impossible, while it never loses touch with living beings as they are. An exemplary managed household provides a context in which the human good and the passion for distinction become visible. Gentlemanliness requires that Critobolus not devote himself exclusively to the most noble pursuits.29 Socrates’s instruction is not as transparent as the art of farming (see 21.12). Socrates learned moderation from Ischomachus, but he practices it differently, by eschewing mastery for the sake of an understanding of the good. Socratic moderation is more perfect. His gentlemanliness is the foundation of political philosophy. 28. Pierre Manent, The Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic, tr. Marc LePain, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 18: “We could say that the things in themselves are the political things.” 29. See Strauss, Discourse, 129. �On Dante’s Commedia: The Fact of the Fiction and the Truth of the Poem Jason Menzin The infernal poetics of the first canticle of Dante’s Commedia center on Geryon, the monster of fraud at the middle of Inferno. Through Geryon, an imagine of unnatural poetry, Dante prompts the reader to consider the damning potential of human poeisis, calling into question the truth of his own poetic endeavor. Over the course of the Commedia, however, Dante purges and finally spiritualizes his self-conscious act of world-making. He recasts the character of his poem and the sense of a center. Geryon, a multi-formed figure of fraud, appears to Virgil and the pilgrim Dante at the structural mid-point of Inferno:1 [H]e came on, that filthy effigy [imagine] of fraud, and landed with his head and torso but did not draw his tail onto the bank. The face he wore was that of a just man, so gracious was his features’ outer semblance; and all his trunk, the body of a serpent. (Inf. 17.7-12) Jason Menzin has a BA from Columbia University, an MA from St. John's College (Annapolis), taught philosophy at Boston College, and is completing a PhD in English at University College London. 1. Note the difference between the world imagined and the poem of that imagining—that is, the difference between the spatial midpoint of hell (at the fifth of nine circles, demarcated ultimately by the gate of Dis in Cantos 8 and 9) and the structural midpoint of the Inferno canticle (Canto 17, if Canto 1 is treated as a proem to the entire Comedy). Note too that Dante devotes one half of the material text of Inferno to various formulations of fraud (in Cantos 17 through 34), filling circles eight and nine of hell. Translations are by Allan Mandelbaum from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (New York: Bantam Books, 1980, 1982, and 1984). �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) This composite creature bears the face of “a just man,” as if wearing a piece of woven cloth that belies the monster beneath.2 He is a fusion of characters from Genesis, of Adam and the serpent—part rational, part bestial—and so a figure for the Fall. He is the deception that works against the goodness and truth of the Creator and creation.3 Geryon is the lie that looks like the truth— dangerous, unconstrained, destructive, repulsive—as Virgil declares in the opening lines of Canto 17: Behold the beast who bears the pointed tail, who crosses mountains, shatters weapons, walls! Behold the one whose stench fills all the world! (Inf. 17.1-3) Like an infernal parody of the God-man who saves the world, Geryon, dwelling in the middle of Inferno, is the man-beast whose rot fills the earth.4 But in Dante’s telling, Geryon is also much more than that. The figure of fraud bears a striking resemblance to the artifice of poetry, to the product of the act of poeisis: he had two paws, with hair up to the armpits; his back and chest as well as both his flanks had been adorned with twining knots and circlets. No Turks or Tartars ever fashioned fabrics more colorful in background and relief, nor had Arachne ever loomed such webs. (Inf. 17.13-18) Geryon is “adorned,” and not merely with the face of a just man. The monster has been made beautiful to our material eyes, bearing “twining knots and circlets,” more “colorful” that any Turkish fabric “ever fashioned,” more well “loomed” than any web of Arachne. In other words, the monster at the middle of Inferno is a poem, an infernal poem, compelling and treacherous. Geryon is woven, even as Dante’s poem is woven, even as the world of 2. Cf. other double-sided figures in Inferno: the Minotaur of Canto 12, the Ovidian moments of human-serpent and serpent-human transmutation in Cantos 25 and 26. Contrast the divine nobility of the Griffin in Canto 31 of Purgatorio. 3. Cf. Genesis 1:4: “it was good,” and 1:31: “it was very good.” And John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” 4. Cf. Lucifer with his three faces woven into a single head, an infernal parody of the Holy Trinity at the spiritual center of Inferno in Canto 34, the bottom of the pit and the material center of creation. �ESSAYS | MENZIN 31 Dante’s poem is woven. Knots and circlets; canticles and cantos and terza rima; realms and circles and rings. Having just encountered the sinful poesis of the sodomite-poets in the second ring of the seventh circle, how ought the reader understand the poet Dante’s emphatic placement of this well-woven fraud in the eighth, at the midpoint of his text? If Geryon stands as a figure for both poetry and human deceit, how ought the reader weigh the truth or fraudulence of Dante’s own poetic world-making? Just before the encounter with Geryon, who ultimately conveys pilgrim and teacher into the sphere of liars and lies, Dante the poet-narrator prompts the reader to question the veracity of his own poem: Faced with that truth which seems a lie, a man should always close his lips as long as he can— to tell it shames him, even though he’s blameless; but here I can’t be still; and by the lines of this my Comedy, reader, I swear— and may my verse find favor for long years— that through the dense and darkened air I saw a figure swimming, rising up. (Inf. 16.124-31) Dante acknowledges that his account of Geryon seems beyond belief, but then at once swears to its truth, swearing (perhaps ironically, certainly self-referentially) to the truth of his poetic account by swearing upon “the lines / of this my Comedy” and upon any future “favor” they may find. Assuming the posture of a worldly and rational sophisticate, the poet suggests that a wise man ought to keep his mouth closed about something that seems false. He says not to speak the truth that seems a lie, but then proceeds to speak it. And that truth? A lie that seems like truth. But why? Why does Dante-poet make so acute the question of the truth of his journey and of his poem? Why place a woven monster at the middle of a woven poem about a woven cosmos and, by swearing to the truth of his account, call that very account into question? It is possible that the reappearance of Geryon later in the Commedia suggests a path to respond to these questions. Geryon—effigy of the sickness of the world and figure for the dangers of fallen poesis—returns to the Commedia in Purgatorio, not in body, as in Inferno, but upon the lips of Virgil moments before Dante enters the refining fires: �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) My son, though there may be suffering here, there is no death. Remember, remember! If I guided you to safety even upon the back of Geryon, then now, closer to God, what shall I do? (Purg. 27.20-24) Of the many terrifying figures of Inferno—Cerberus, the fallen angels, the Malebranche, Lucifer himself—why should the poet of Purgatorio bring back this monster at the critical moment of Dante-pilgrim’s purification? Perhaps because Geryon—the possibility of infernal poetry, the seeming fraud at the middle of the first canticle, the false face of fallen poetics—perhaps because that monster must be purged from Dante’s own art in order for his poem to ascend higher. Perhaps this is how Dante-poet enacts in his poem the spiritual transformation from “worm” to the possibility of “angelic butterfly”—by letting go of poetry as fraud, as unnatural creation, artful, seductive, destructive, dangerous (Purg. 10.124-125). In the mere span of eight lines, Dante-pilgrim endures excruciating pain in the mountain’s fire and emerges to a new life even as the sun sets, feeling “the force / within” his “wings . . . growing for the flight” (Purg. 27.49-57, 27.122-123). And just so, one form of poetry falls away, as a new form readies itself to soar. Purgatorio is rich in inversions and images of transformation. Early in the journey through Purgatory and only moments after Virgil laments the limits of his human reason, Dante comes to tell the older poet what to do: While he, his eyes upon the ground, consulted his mind, considering what road to take, and I looked up around the wall of rock, along the left a band of souls appeared to me to be approaching us—but so unhurriedly, their movements did not show. “Lift up your eyes,” I told my master. (Purg. 3.55-61) Virgil, “eyes upon the ground,” works alone within “his mind,” whereas Dante, in a gesture of faith and spiritual curiosity, looks beyond himself, “up around the wall of rock.” The gazes of the two poets literally and figuratively form together a coupled-contrary: downward and inward, upward and out. In Dante-poet’s remembering, this moment subordinates earth-bound, rational mediations to the possibility of something more; it prefigures in �ESSAYS | MENZIN 33 small the conclusions of Purgatorio and the trajectory of Paradiso. And in an instance of inversion here before the mount of purgation, the place of hope, student temporarily becomes teacher, guided becomes guide, when Dante instructs Virgil to “Lift up your eyes.” Just so, Dante recognizes the mount as a place of celestial inversions, when he again looks upward: My eyes were first set on the shores below, and then I raised them toward the sun; I was amazed to find it fall upon our left. (Purg. 4.55-57) To Dante’s amazement, here sunlight falls upon the land from another part of the sky. In Purgatory, souls purge themselves of sin and learn to let go; the habits of mortal life are loosened and then left behind, ushering in a better kind of experience. And as Virgil explains, the mount itself reveals the shape of that better possibility, in another inversion of what Dante (and we) have so far known: This mountain’s of such sort that climbing it is hardest at the start; but as we rise, the slope grows less unkind. (Purg. 4.88-90) Eventually, “this slope” will seem so gentle that climbing farther up will be as restful as traveling downstream by boat. (Purg. 4.91-93) In a reversal of earthly experience, an ascent of this mount moves toward sabbatical “rest,” the “climbing” a figure of spiritual growth. And whereas late in Canto 20 Dante “feel[s] the mountain tremble like / a falling thing,” he comes to learn from Statius in Canto 21 that “it only trembles […] / when some soul feels it’s cleansed, so that it rises / or stirs to climb on high” (Purg. 20.127-128; 21.58-60). What feels, in other words, like “a falling thing”—a reminder of the Fall and of the fact of death—reveals itself to be a soul as it rises, an inversion that points to the central Christian paradox (Purg. 21.59-60). We must lose our life in order to gain it, must seem to fall in order actually to rise. We are doubtless “worms,” but we are also “born / to form the angelic butterfly that soars” (Purg. 10.124-5). Through the second canticle, Christians (including Christian poets and their poems) who are “arrogant, exhausted, wretched,” with “intel- �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) lects” that are “sick and cannot see,” may learn to fly (Purg. 10.121-123). In Purgatorio, Dante moves to purge the infernal poetics of Inferno, hopes to make his “poem”—this poem and the poem to follow—“rise again from Hell’s dead realm” (Purg. 1.8). He is, in other words, attempting to enact an artistic resurrection. For example, where Dante, poet of Inferno, characterizes Geryon as the “gross effigy of fraud” (sozza imagine di froda), Dante poet of Purgatorio re-imagines the imagine, recasts the word in order to save it and the poem. Near the “bordering bank” of the First Terrace in Purgatory, Dante-pilgrim experiences God’s art in the image of Gabriel announcing the moment of divine condescension, the pattern of all humility. The angel . . . after long interdict, appeared before us, his gracious action carved with such precision— he did not seem to be a silent image [imagine]. (Purg. 10.34-39) Dante sees in Gabriel “the effigy [imaginata] / of one who turned the key that had unlocked / the highest love” (Purg. 10.34-43). In God’s better art, marble images seem to speak and move. What feels impossible becomes wondrously possible. The monstrous imagine of Inferno yields to the better imagine and imaginata of Purgatorio. Here silence speaks, and it says neither “death” nor “pride” nor “fraud,” but “peace,” “new life,” and “love” (Purg. 10.34-43). The “effigy” of Gabriel’s Ave to the Virgin supplants in the reader’s experience the destructive “effigy” of Geryon’s wholly earthly, fallen, and unnatural art. Acts of artistry in the new poem purge the old, enabling the poetic resurrection. Other “effigies of true humility” (l’imagini di tante umilitadi)—including David and Trajan—appear too, offering better art, “because He was their maker” (Purg. 10.98-99). No unnatural poeisis, no usury, no alchemy, only God’s art, where there is no fraudulence, no deception, no false faces, only things as they are and should be: “The dead seemed dead and the alive, alive” (Purg. 12.67). Near the end of Purgatorio, Dante enables his reader to sense the shift into paradisal poetics, to feel the purged poem in a place where sin is impossible. He enters a garden where the wind gently blows life into the trees, stimulating the little birds upon the branches in the practice of their arts; �ESSAYS | MENZIN 35 for to the leaves, with song, birds welcomed those first hours of the morning joyously, and leaves supplied the burden to their rhymes. (Purg. 28.14-18) This is poetry in the region that never fell, where morning birdsong “rhymes” and the natural singers’ art receives its musical “burden” in the repeating sounds of leaves on wind-moved “trembling boughs” (Purg. 28.10).5 Like Dante-pilgrim’s rectified will—“free, erect, and whole”—the birds of the earthly paradise sing the poem of nature healed in a place of purity and claritas (Purg. 27.140, 28.28-30). The force of God’s better art, as of the unfallen creation, recurs in Purgatorio during a moment of poetic elevation in Canto 28, when Dante-poet translates an instance (and perhaps too the entire genre) of bawdy pastoral into paradisal terms. The transformation begins as Dante-pilgrim meets Matilda, the “solitary woman moving, / singing, . . . gathering up flower on flower” within the earthly paradise (Purg. 28.40-41). In the passage’s brief colloquy, the tantalizing motions and sounds, the glances, the garden—in all of it, Dante’s contemporary readers would hear echoes of Cavalcanti and poets like him. The reader would expect to find a “little shepherdess” with “light-blond, curly hair / And eyes full of love,” ready to consummate the amorosa voglia at the heart of “In un boschetto trova pasturella.”6 Having established those connections in the first moments of the pilgrim’s encounter with Matilda, Dante-poet exploits them to profound spiritual effect. Over the course of the Canto, he refines the motifs and figures of the pastoral love song into something holy. In purgatorial translation, the Cavalcanti-esque scene becomes a moment of chastity, of “chaste eyes,” “intelligible” sounds, and “light” (Purg. 28.57-60, 28.80). The maiden’s song 5. As Matilda comes to explain, the “wind” in this place is not what we understand as wind, not the result of weather, certainly not the result of Lucifer’s freezing wingbeats, but an echoing effect of celestial mechanics. What moves the boughs moving the leaves accompanying the rhyming birds is better weather, sublime wind (Purg. 28.97108). 6. Guido Cavalcanti. “In un boschetto trova pasturella” in Introduction to Italian Poetry. Edited by Luciano Rebay. (New York: Dover Publications, 1991) 18-19. �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) proves not lustful but psalmic. The pilgrim finds satisfaction with hearing and seeing and with questions answered. In this place of virgin-flowering, of a seedless “engender[ing]” that is more than natural poeisis, Matilda—la “donna innamorata”— does not sing the sexual line from Cavalcanti, but “Delectasti” and “Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata” (Purg. 28.67-69, 28.81, 29.1-3). She sings thanksgiving to God and for the blessings of sin forgiven. Poem and poetess are startlingly pure. Purged. They signal Dante’s new poetics, spiritual poetry elevated through the mountain’s fire. In Paradiso Dante approaches the point beyond space and time—“there / where in one point, all whens and ubis end”—recentering the center of all things and recasting the character of his poem (Par. 29.11-12). Beatrice provides the terms for this better understanding, extending the proleptic inversions of Purgatorio to their more than natural conclusions. Through a vision of the cosmos and divinity, Dante’s paradisal guide clarifies the final sense of material distance and structure through their subordination to the higher claims of spiritual insight. It is an ultimate inversion, foreshadowed not only through the translations and elevations of Purgatorio, but also perhaps by the literal peripeteia of the pilgrim and Virgil at the dead middle of the cosmos, upon the body of Lucifer at the bottom of Hell (Inf. 34.76-81). Late in Paradiso (and appearing in her own beauty beyond all “nature or art”), Beatrice observes the supernatural sense of heaven, of the whole creation’s dependence on a more than material, more than rational foundation (Par. 27.91). She describes a divinely intellectual reality beyond the here and now, the “heaven” that “has no other where than this: / the mind of God” (Par. 27.109-110). It is, as Dante-poet comes to reflect, a “truth that is unlike / [our] present life” (Par. 28.2-3). Ready to see more, in Canto 28 Dante has a vision of “a point” of blazing light, surrounded by nine concentric rings of fire, each rotating around the center (Par. 28.16-34). The rings circle in descending order of speed and in a descending sequence of purity from the center, from smallest to largest (Par. 28.34-39). The fastest, most ardent, most pure, is nearest the central point of light (Par. 28.41-45). And as Beatrice begins to teach Dante the mystery, to characterize the non- �ESSAYS | MENZIN 37 material shape of spiritual reality, she frames the impetus behind the moving world: On that Point depend the heavens and the whole of nature. Look at the circle that is nearest It, and know: its revolutions are so swift because of burning love that urges it. (Par. 28.41-45) Dante-pilgrim is coming to see, with better eyes, the basis of the world. He “look[s]” in order to “know” the burning love behind “the heavens and the whole of nature.” He now sees in order to understand. But as Dante observes, the common sense, sensible framework of the cosmos (and the path too of his journey in Paradise, of the ordering in Paradiso from the moon to the stars) fails to correspond to Beatrice’s descriptions. The material world, in fact, is a complete inversion of what he now hears: in the world of sense, what one can see are spheres becoming ever more divine as they are set more distant from the center. (Par. 28.49-51) Beatrice’s spiritual sense of things turns the world inside out. The sizes of the material spheres in the sky prove merely signs of their spiritual significance: The size of spheres of matter—large or small— depends upon the power—more and less— that spreads throughout their parts. More excellence yields greater blessedness; more blessedness must comprehend a greater body when that body’s parts are equally complete. (Par. 28.64-69) In Beatrice’s spiritual decoding of cosmic structure, the most distant sphere from the material center of things is the actual center of reality, the innermost material point, the most distant spiritual sphere.7 Reading these ideas backwards into Inferno suggests that although Geryon swims at the material center of the first canticle and Lucifer freezes at the material center of the earth and Dante’s cosmos, it is the Trinity that dwells, despite appearances, at the spiritual center of the poem and creation. In other words, seen 7. Clive Stapleton Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 58, 116. �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 62.1-2 (2020-2021) through spiritual eyes, the material center is merely the periphery (the most distant point from God), while the most remote sphere of Paradiso is the eternal center, “no other where than . . . / the mind of God” (Par. 27.109-10). The end of the poem is the heart of the whole. If so, then perhaps an act of spiritual poeisis (such as “this sacred poem”) may seem like fraud to those who read with wholly material eyes, may feel like complete fiction to those who have “lost,” as Virgil suggests of the shades in Inferno, “the good of the intellect” (Par. 25.1; Inf. 3.18). And if this is so, then (despite his infernal playfulness) perhaps Dante does “swear” genuinely upon the truth of his poetic account, affirming finally not the material and literal meaning of his journey and retelling, but its imaginative and spiritual sense. In this context at the close of Paradiso, the monster Geryon returns for a third and final time in the Commedia, not in body (as in Inferno), nor in speech (as in Purgatorio), but in artistic form, in the elevation of spiritual word-play. Geryon, infernal poem in the midst of Inferno, returns at the conclusion of Paradiso, in the midst of spiritual truth, as “one single volume,” the spiritual book of making in which is “ingathered / and bound by love . . . what, in the universe, seems separate” (Par. 33.85-87). The artful “twining knots” adorning the monster in Inferno (le coste / dipinti avea di nodi) return in Paradiso as the knot of eternity (La forma universal di questo nodo), “the universal shape / which that knot takes” (Inf. 17.14-15; Par. 33.91-92). The gross effigy of fraud (sozza imagine di froda) returns as our image (nostra effige), the more than human mystery of how “our human effigy / suited the circle” (l’imago al cerchio) of the second person of the Trinity (Par. 33.137-138). The monstrous poem is replaced imaginatively, spiritually, with the eternal book, the knots (nodi) of fallen artistry with the knot (nodo) of all reality, the image (imagine) of fraud with the image (imago) of Christ.8 Fraud yields to the absence of sin, and the absence of sin 8. What is more, the “circlets” (rotelle) of Geryon at Inf. 17.15 return elevated through paradisal word-play in the divine “circles” and “circle” (cerchio) of Par. 33.115, 138. The adornment of the monster (with flanks dipinti) at Inf. 17.15 appears revivified in the final adornment of the begotten circle, “painted with our effigy” (pinta de la nostra effige) in Par. 33.131. �ESSAYS | MENZIN 39 yields to a final, affirmative, and mystical goodness. Worm to butterfly. Perhaps all of this points to the final recognitions, the final inversions of our habitual human responses in the here and now. If God is no “where,” then the center of Inferno, the center of Hell, the center of the physical cosmos, all of it must give way before the heart that is not in any place or moment, the spiritual center that is everywhere and always. The risk of unnatural poeisis must yield before the activity of the supernatural Maker. If so, then our journey, the reader’s journey, like Dante’s own, occurs not finally in space and time, but in and through the poet’s imagination, enacting in imitation the creative act of divinity from eternity. No material poem in the end then, only spiritual, or only a material poem spiritualized, raised: when la scritta morta (dead writing) ascends to become lo sacrato poema (the sacred poem), itself ultimately only a shadow of God’s greater Commedia (Inf. 8.127; Par. 23.62). � 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. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974.  It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection. 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. 43 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2020-Spring 2021 Description An account of the resource Volume 62, Numbers 1 and 2 of The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2021. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). Office of the Dean. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020-2021 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Philosophy--Periodicals Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Menzin, Jason Dougherty, Janet A. Darkey, William A. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context St Johns Review Volume 62 Numbers 1 and 2 Fall 2020-Spring 2021 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/395fe6f2b8804b1b070963ce09d7f3e1.mp4 39e11fea1fcb27c9fbbe9e4f0100a4da 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/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data live YouTube webcast Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:52:03 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 <span>Ulysses: Does Your Life Matter? The Conspiracy Against Knowing Who You Are and How to Fight This Conspiracy with Amor-Matris</span> Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered by Annapolis tutor David Townsend on March 26, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr Townsend describes his lecture: "Ulysses names Amor Matris—mother-love—as the passion most strongly opposing the tyrannical conspiracy against knowing who you are. Mothers are certain that their children deserve love and freedom. People infused with Amor Matris cannot be dominated without their consent. Tyrants cannot control people who love this deeply. Via the stories of the three main characters, Ulysses gives you a purpose-driven way to free yourself, your native land, your dearest associations, your working life, your family and friends, and your soul." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Townsend, David L., 1947- 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-03-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Love, maternal Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Ulysses Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Townsend_David_2021-03-26 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2245dede91fafb15975b14900a1bc6e5.pdf e2fe3ad97bb1d47441bd1e121c7fbc6f PDF Text Text GADFLY Intramurals• 02 Does music make a Sound? • 03 First Weeks as Freshmen • 04 St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • October 4, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 03 Photo By Rose S. Pelham photo by Rose Pelham �The Gadfly 02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7 PM in the BBC. We always need editors, layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com for more information. Staff Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-in-Cheif Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Cheif Lynn Christian • Staff Cartoonist Alayna Raymond • Staff Contributors Lynn Christian Daniel Harrell Alayna Raymond Mia Kobylski From the Editors: To the tutors I saw dancing at the rock party at 10pm on Saturday night over Homecoming: Rock the f*#k on! It’s really nice to be reminded that our tutors are people who like to have a good time and don’t just think about silly things like Plato and Homer all the time. Plato sucks! Reinstate Grace Villmow 2k19! - The Gadfly A Freshman’s Inquiry into the World of Intramural Sports One often equates St. John’s with high academic rigor, a beautiful, historic campus, and old-fashioned croquet matches. However, one doesn’t tell new students about the way time passes strangely, axolotls living happily in tanks, or the possibility of a visit from a number of rumored ghosts. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the college is the unwavering participation in intramural sports. Similar to the fictional school of Hogwarts, the polity is split into five teams: Druids, Greenwaves, Guardians, Hustlers, and Spartans who compete on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays in a variety of games. While standing on the sidelines refereeing Reasonball and soccer, the purpose of intramural sports became clear to me. The sense of community at St. John’s stems beyond the Seminar table. Athletic background or not, each student is given equal playing time to make their mark on the game. Those who are apprehensive are encouraged by the captains on the sidelines shouting plays and praises. Mia Kobylski A’23 The sports culture at St. Johns is not one of competition and intimidation. The goal is to have fun while being physically active. Johnnies, such as myself, have fallen into the trap of sitting inside reading for the entirety of the day, but getting outside for an hour or two is proven to be beneficial. Just this past weekend, I had the opportunity to play Reasonball and soccer as a member of the Guardians. Win or lose, I made new friends and became better acquainted with people who are in my classes. Johnnies unfairly get the reputation of being less than athletic. Who says you can’t be well versed in Plato and also be a beast at soccer? Even on the field, Johnnies have the nature to think critically, drawing diagrams and questioning the integrity of plays. As someone who had never touched a soccer ball in my life and definitely passed to the wrong team, I felt welcomed. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of the experience was that we called each other by first names, a rare occurrence on campus. �05 Does music make a sound? The Gadfly Daniel Harrell Tutor One must make music to the point of identifying the melody obtain silence. with its movement—when none of —Vladimir Jankélévitch the notes in it strictly moves. What we hear, we might conclude, is a Does music make a sound? movement that happens not by the The obvious answer is that it does. notes but through the notes, in what After all, if it didn’t make a sound again means a relation between notes, then what do we hear when listening making what would otherwise be a to music? mere succession of sounds into the movement we hear. Still, I want to suggest that music makes no sound, and that what Or rather “hear”: since again we hear when listening to music is a it is the notes we strictly hear, making kind of silence. One reason for the the movement through them somesuggestion is that it is not what we thing it seems we feel more than hear. hear in notes that makes for music but Related to this is the rhythm we sense rather between notes. In this sense, in music, and sometimes use our for example, we could say that the bodies to imitate, as if it were indeed notes of a melody, just on their own, more felt than heard, in another sign would not form a melody but rather that music’s sense has more to do with be a mere succession of sounds. To silence than with sound. form a melody is to be a succession, instead, of relations between sounds, There is finally the matter of whether we conceive these relations harmony in music, where we “hear” as intervals or as dynamic quantities. consonance and dissonance. But again this is a consonance or disso Or to reach the same connance not in notes but between notes; clusion about a melody through a and it is only the notes we strictly different route: we might ask why we hear. So the consonance or dissohear movement in a melody—even to nance between them seems another example of feeling rather than hearing. But suppose from this we grant that music is not a matter of its sounds but of the relations between its sounds, and that these relations are not heard but felt. Still, why call these relations between sounds a form of silence rather than simply a derived or second-order form of sound? Sound that is felt rather than heard? I leave my answer in the form of another suggestion. To think of these relations as another form of sound is perhaps to think of music more generally as a mode of creation. But it is worth considering a second possibility: that music is actually a mode of revelation. In this second way of thinking, the notes are selected rather than created, and the relations between them abide, in a realm that cannot be built but only bid into being. And what we feel in these relations would therefore have the significance, in silence, of a world past saying. �06 First Weeks as Freshmen I conducted a survey among freshmen to find out some of their current favorite things at St John’s as well as how they’re doing in their first few weeks. These answers do not fully encompass how freshman as a cohort reflect on these subjects, but do provide some unique insights. The Gadfly Alayna Raymond A’23 Favorite Class? Favorite Tutors? Favorite Activities? 38.5% - Seminar 23.1% - Language 23.1% - Laboratory 7.7% - Mathematics 7.7% - Laboratory 1) Mr. Haflidson 2) Mr. Kalkavage 3) Ms. Sitzmann 4) Ms. Lee 5) Ms. Paalman 1) St John’s Chorus 2) Intramurals 3) Board Game Club 4) Sailing 5) Crew What books are you looking forward to this year? 1) Plato’s Republic 2) Any Aristotle 3) The Odyssey 4) Herodotus’s Histories What do you wish you knew before arriving on campus? “How many clubs and activities are unique to SJC.” “Just how prevalent smoking is.” “What fast food places do and don’t deliver.” “To bring more t-shirts.” “I would’ve liked to have known what my dorm room looked like space-wise before arriving.” What’s your favorite facet of the St John’s community? “The memes that are created from only things Johnnies would understand.” “Tutor accessibility.” “The amount of academic discussions taking place outside of class. Also, the tightness of the entire community. I feel like I’ll know everyone by the end of the semester.” “Everyone panics the same amount. Also the memes.” “How conversational and interesting each individual is... It’s hard to go a day at St. John’s without saying you had a good conversation with someone.” How have you been doing in these first few weeks? “I’ve figured out how to manage my time in order to meet the course load. It’s been easy to make friends in class, as we’re basically forced to talk to each other.” “The first few weeks have been a bit rough. Acclimating with a whole new group of people is tough, but the Johnnie community is very welcoming.” “I’m pretty happy. I’ve got friendly roommates, the food is good, and the classes are fun. Not much else to ask for.” “Horrendously.” “It’s been difficult, and I’m very tired, but I’m glad I’m here.” “I’m more busy than I’ve ever been and feeling pretty burned out, but I’m having SO much fun.” What surprised you about St John’s or just college life in general? “How open people are to talk about almost any topic and how genuinely nice they are.” “How fun and social mealtimes still are. I assumed people drifting in and out would make it hard to regularly sit with friends, but nope!” “The amount of partying. It intrigues me how dedicated some people are both to partying and their coursework.” “How people completely disregard personal hygiene” “Lots of smokers.” “Campus life is much more fast paced.” It is my hope that by reading what others are also thinking it will help you feel closer to your peers in knowing that you’re not alone in your experiences. So long as we maintain the support of each others personal and academic journey, this community will continue to thrive. - Alayna Raymond, Freshman. � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 4 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 02 Description An account of the resource Volume XLI, Issue 02 of The Gadfly. Published October 4, 2019. Cover is misnumbered as Issue 3. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief) Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-10-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 02 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bcb2dc19e337d4540b0958acf5322a03.pdf 3578524a7f4422c2de06e6b051328076 PDF Text Text GADFLY Rose's Rager 4 • 02 A Fundamental Question? • 04 Joker Reveiw • 06 St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • October 16, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 03 Photo by Rose Pelham �The Gadfly 02 Rose's Rager 4: The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7 PM in the BBC. We always need editors, layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com for more information. Staff Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-inChief Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Chief Mira Kobylski • Staff Rediet Worku • Staff Alayna Raymond • Staff Contributors Lynn Christian Jean Hogan Dimple Kaul Mira Kobylski Marielle Morley Kyla Murphy Rose Pelham Alayna Raymond Hope Taglich Tatum From the Editors: The Gadfly is banning all pretentious writings from publication. All submissions must henceforth be mortified least any lofty airs escape notice of the editors and enter publication! Authors guilty of submitting pretensious works will be required to self-flagillate and repent! This decision is final. - The Gadfly The Last Rager Rose Pelham A '20 It has been a long time since I began this series, the first of which marked my entrance into this college, and the last of which now marks my senior year. I have been through a great deal to keep it going this long. It seems uncanny in hindsight, but it was only two years ago when the second addition of this satire was met with public outrage for its reversal of trans/ homophobic logic. I mention this because I hope, with the intervening time, we may have grown enough as a polity to cringe with some embarrassment at the recollection. There was no need, after all, to be outraged by a satire mocking homophobia. Satire, at least as I have used it, is the great litmus test for prejudice. The transphobe and homophobe may pass me in the street every day without revealing themselves, but when I act out the absurdity of their arguments, I know the prejudiced by their reactions. There is no need to be outraged by the fact that transphobia and homophobia are absurd, but then, the question whether or not one is outraged has always been the litmus test. Now, I will administer it one last time… -1 The loss of the Patroclus Pre-Party was announced by email, much to everyone’s consternation, leaving me with no other recourse than to spend more quality time with my future wife––which was, as a general rule, very pleasant. That the pre-party should be called off for “budget cuts” at a moment when the D.C. runs an unprecedented budget surplus, however, bodes ill for clubs. Clearly, the D.C. has decided to subject us all to severe austerity in anticipation of the coming recession––or, perhaps, to do its part in bringing it about all the sooner. Either way, it seems we can look forward to one of those periods in which capitalism seemingly ceases functioning for all but the rich––its more or less usual condition––and more rapidly redistributes the wealth to those who already possess far more of it than they need, depriving those in need of what little they have. I wonder if this time we’ll realize it’s a pyramid scheme… The economy notwithstanding, the D.C. seems uninclined to part with students’ money, even when holding onto it jeopardizes its possession. Alas, the great surplus nourishes mold at the back of the refrigerator, having been left utterly untouched while it was ripe for consumption. But what other outcome were we expecting from the ad nauseum fetishization of fiscal conservatism? For all the schemes imagining how we might use this money “saved” from past years of students, it seems it will bear no orchards and no fruit––and no metal workshops either. But, if I had $30,000 in my pocket that I could actually use, and as much means of hiding it from public attention, I would not buy myself with scheming about it. Instead, I would make campaign contributions to members of Congress! After all, the Supreme Court says money is protected free speech, and it certainly �The Gadfly 03 speaks louder than the emails of constituents, since money, unlike constituents’ emails, tends to deposit the listener into the speaker’s pocket. So it is that a few very deep pockets hold a considerable amount of government, which has become increasingly cozy inside of them, and has vowed never to go outside again. (Woe be to the politician who has no pocket in which to make their home, for they shall be exposed to the wrath of their rivals in selling-out.) So it is that I would take up my civic duty and make my pocket a home to a politician, who I anticipate shall be grateful and willing to return me many favors––if not proper responses to my emails. But alas, this has become irrelevant to the Rager. -2 Rest assured, there came a point in the night at which I did, in fact, attend the Rager, so that I might convincingly write something about it, despite my tendency to become sidetracked. That point came sometime around ten in the evening, when I reluctantly departed from my partner’s side, and marched off to meet the inevitable head on. Walking up from back campus, I thought I was slightly late, but the freshmen––seemingly all men––remained by the observatory, giving the impression that they too had missed the moment of their departure and were waiting without end. I wondered for a moment if they would become sensible of their error. They never did, but if all events occurred in synchronized lateness, or if I were just earlier than I thought, it made no difference. The party proceeded according to its own time, which was sufficiently congruent with itself, if not the rotation of the Earth, the arbitrary contrivance of hours, or the desire to wake up early the next morning without a hangover. I was curious to know the freshmen’s thoughts about the Rager, but like any woman who generally prefers the companionship of the nominally same gender, not nearly so curious as to stay and hear them. The quad presented itself to me as a territory possessing a lower population of exposed male nipples, as if it knew that this were a persuasive enticement to emigrate. I did so, counting it lucky not to spot armed fascists in red hats at the border, and found myself in gayer environs, where I was informed––for the first time this year––that I am a middle-aged mom who drinks wine. About a week later I would be informed of this fact for a second time, and in about a week from now I anticipate I will be informed for a third. Perhaps then I shall adopt a child and age twenty years in one day. It would be, after all, consistent with the zeitgeist of a moment in which “alternative facts” exist and are treated as if they became truer the more they are repeated. The quad was, both in theory and practice, the place to be to observe events without the risk of taking part in them, and this brought a great many people there, since certain rumors had not yet proven themselves false. Tentatively, the original population of the quad approached the Rager behind the main force of freshmen, who were ambushed with balloons and speeches. The latter I cannot recall, not because how long it has taken me to write this, but because I forgot them as I heard them. In many ways, the balloons proved themselves one of the most fascinating elements of the party without ever possessing the requisite permission to be so. They popped off, frequently in large number and quick succession, emitting a machine gun rattle that reverberated out from the great hall and across the quad, echoing off nearby dorms. It was in this way that they projected their presence in Leibnizianly minute units of hyper-bombastic oration the summation of which would require counting to some indefinite number. They never quite became true white noise, being much too loud and infrequent, like ill-concealed sex in the middle of the day, which is private only to its participants. These intermittent bursts of explosive noise did not, however, anticipate the context they were broadcast into, in which guns possess more protections than people. This peculiar imbalance of priorities that grants murder weapons greater protections than their victims is frequently termed “freedom,” which its most vehement supporters say they would die to defend, though usually they are on the side of the killing, if not by direct involvement, then by complicity. -3 Sometime not long after the freshmen’s’ entrance, the balloon drop, and the subsequent speechifying, I remembered that I am 21, proceeded to the bar, and procured slightly less than a glass of wine. This I did for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could, and to experience the novelty of it. Around the same time, I encountered Mr. Doherty, spoke with him for a moment, and to my horror may have been mistaken for a heterosexual by an unknown passerby, who I had to forcibly restrain myself from correcting. I then left the building and was informed by Mr. Harrington that I had missed the senior class meeting, for which reason I discovered I was in imminent mortal peril, as I was in ignorance as to the truth of being a senior. Ms. Evans was at no point present in either of these conversations, but asked that I include her around this point, since she would not be in attendance at the Rager. After I did not have the chance to speak to Ms. Evans, I spent my time having conversations with other people––because I have resolved never to dance at parties, and to always do whatever loud music makes the hardest. This may appear to be a strange principle, but it is no less strange than any number of those upon which modern society is founded, as I have demonstrated already in propositions 1 and 2. This was, in truth, how virtually all the substance of my night passed. There were, however, other things that happened for which I was not present. For instance, I have heard a rumor, hopefully untrue, that one freshman decided to take a trip down the rabbit hole into wonderland, only to discover that his particular method of entering it led not to Alice but an ambulance. If this did occur, it was sometime after I left, and that night I slept all the better for my ignorance. As it is, the overly masochistic culture of last year’s freshmen, who seemed uniquely obsessed with cultivating cases of alcohol poisoning and accidental arson, has given me cause to be more anxious every time I hear sirens. (I will mention here in passing, though, that I do possess a surefire way of preventing the latter type of incident. It involves the threat of a trebuchet and has, I have been told, become infamous amongst this year's freshmen.) -4 I lingered on the quad, between clouds of those toxic fumes that are still so popular to consume here, waiting for one of those transcendentally strange moments that is the lifeblood of this series. None presented themselves, the novelty of my own experience having worn thin. I was left with an echo three times removed from the source, with all its rough edges smoothed by the loss of the distinct initial impressions. The great trial was two years over, and was now assimilated into my narrative, but for that reason could not be rediscovered, for to travel backwards is only to measure how far you have come. I left for my dorm room, to return to the comfort of home and homosexuality, where the warm embrace of Lynn’s arms awaited me. On the way back, I remembered the essence of my old “doom prophesy” and the not wholly untruthful quality of its hyperbole: “Repent: the end of gender (as we know it) is nigh! The great heterosexual phase of history has ended! There shall no more be cisgender man and woman! The spell is to be cast that shall make us all become trans! The straight agenda shall be rebuked! The gay agenda shall come to fruition! No more heterosexuality, no more opposite-sex marriage, no more gender reveal parties! It shall be glorious, wonderful, liberating––and all shall come to pass by 2050!” This time, if you take me too literally, or not literally enough, I have op-ed in the Georgia Voice waiting for you.u �The Gadfly 04 What is a Fundamental Question? Alayna Raymond A’23 There has been a consistent predicament in my life where I didn’t know quite how to tackle deep issues with relevance to myself. In simpler terms, I didn’t know how to perceive the world around me without being told what I should see because of who I am. I’ve decided to start a series that I hope will aid in parsing through my personal conundrums with the world and how our inherent human conditions plays into that. The Great Books Curriculum already does much of this for me, but I want to extend it beyond the classroom and not only develop a deeper internal thought process’, but also discuss topics with my peers that go beyond ourselves. I believe the Gadfly is intended for increasing volume in the student voice. I want to understand others thoughts with the selfish ambition of my own personal growth. I am also extremely curious, but aren’t we all? Moreover, I'd like to make this initial publication in my series entitled “Conundrums of the Human Condition” by first introducing the kinds of questions I want to ask. A tutor of mine referred to this particular type of inquiry as a ‘fundamental question’. His definition was not necessarily concerned with what it was, but what effect it has when you answer it. In slightly paraphrased form, a fundamental question is a question such that when you answer it “you will change the way you think or live”. How does thinking about something differ from it influencing the way you live? I propose that they’re not very different at all, since maintaining a particular mindset in effect tends to extend itself into the decisions one makes and thus the way we live. Though if answering such a question can change the way we think or live, what is the journey we must take in order to reach that point? Are there credentials, or is that too confining? Does the effect of reading through what I call the ‘fundamental answer’ bring about a universal epiphany for anyone whoever graces their eyes over the words? How do we know the question has been fully answered? That’s the funny thing about this: I don’t think we’ll ever know when we’ve answered the question. If you attend St John’s you probably knew this would happen. Socrates is in no position to tell us what virtue is so I am certainly unable to answer any sort of fundamental question to its greatest extent. The wonderful thing about work- ing toward answering a question is that it only induces growth within those who dare to take a chance. Settling on a finite answer may be the greatest injustice you can commit, because these questions have so much potential! You can allow the question to creep into daily life and enable you to change the way you live. Exploring options and changing habits is integral to going through life’s turbulence, so why not add another tool to your personal cache about working through difficult questions? This column is a communal effort to understand some of the many issues we endure with the human condition. Relieve the mind of some of these burdens by opening up to new paths of thought. It would bring me great joy if you contacted me about having a conversation about a fundamental question you have. u Reasons to Visit the Mitchell Gallery this month: Jean Hogan A’20 • The second quietest place on campus (Right after any given seminar room at 9:59) • Impressionism is a tremendous way to view of the majesty of nature while pondering Lucretius • Great place to hang in that awkward pre-lecture period (6:45-7:45!) • SJC can be a small school – you’ll get tired of the back campus landscapes • St John’s is a place to explore various patina’s, try a different vintage. • Patrons hot takes on the art are informative and scalding • Remember how gorgeous spring can be before snow descends on our little town • It’s much easier to look smart at a gallery than in class - the occasional “hm” will take you far The Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12-5 pm, in addition it is open from 6:45 to 7:45 on Friday night.u �05 Music as a Spiritual Journey The following is a short piece I wrote for Mr. Townsend’s Sophomore Music class two years ago, and is to date the most memorable assignment I have had at St. John’s. It is an example of a musical experience we cannot anticipate but is novel in how we are affected. In this case it was a gauntlet to which I was initially subjected, but from which I emerged more whole and free. I hope that by sharing it, others will be encouraged to discuss their own profound musical moments. Specifically, not simply the way a song makes you feel, but how a distinct musical event caused a movement within you demarcating a before and after in your life. I hope you enjoy. Brahms Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, August 6, 2017, St. Francis Auditorium, Santa Fe, NM: As the soft melody of the third movement began, I was struck by a wave of melancholy. I was reminded of my recent shortcomings in personal discipline and compassion towards others. While I felt satisfaction in the quality of the performance, I couldn’t help scowling as a knot tightened in my chest. My mind wandered from the music as the prickly feelings stewed. The musicians continued to strain at their work, but I was removed from the setting, deaf to their notes. I reminisced on the times people had dismissed my approaches for friendship. I felt unwanted, unloved. Without realizing that the The Gadfly Morgan Ballard-Wheeler third had ended, the fourth movement began. The melody quick and light, the instruments played in unison, driving forward with a powerful momentum. I was immediately drawn from my shell of despair, listening intently to each note. I took a sudden, involuntary inhale and felt empowered to detach myself from unwarranted negative emotions. For despite intellectually telling myself to release these emotions every day for the past few months, somehow this music — and this performance in particular — finally gave me emotional permission to do so. My applause to the musicians was out of gratitude for their healing work, and to Brahms, wherever he may be.t The Blue Light Dies First Marielle Morley she dies to find life again but only manages to make faces at the indigestible licorice soul each piece as repulsively aged as a crunchy chewed up cigarette blowing clouds of shadows and smoke, crushing herself with weight on her shoulders, following her breath how did she expect to feel after all the travels through muck and soot, never to be clean again attempting to bathe but she will never be clean again the wet sunrise she tastes with the bitterness of an overripe melon, pungent and fermented to dry herself she finds a blanket but it only soaked each sadness as it highlighted the dirty and after hours of attack it turns in on itself retreating back into the floor and wall touching burned incense sticks lit to cover the smell of gooey sadness black and reeking like melted tar falling greedily into the crustacean pit the well that’s been digging since the first ever primordial rhyme holding out for each thing lost and forgotten as ancient as her thirst, drinking with lips pressed the white and pink meet each memory, a parasite the well water wells as she unravels her grievances it doesn’t matter what she’s seen in the sage of her oblivion there is a resurgence and the ringing doesn’t stop t �06 The Gadfly Musings of a Senior It is quite funny, and appropriate, perhaps, that through some four years of association with Mx. Johnnie at the college, I have watched them become more beautiful (handsome, perhaps) in proportion that I have become less so. Beauty befits them, I think, and I mean no belittling in this. Their comments are so oft well composed, and indeed come so seldom that they may well have been composed, that with the flowering of their handsomeness, the image of a wizening, maturing human, comes one of a mind doing the same. It is funny, then, for what wilting I see in myself comes too with a great and continuous shaking of my confidence that I, of all people, have the authority to speak beautifully of the program books, so often things so beautiful. Tatum It is as though beauty comes to those who claim it, that in this to strive is to succeed, and perhaps, to not strive is to be rejected. spirit in me that insists Although Mx. Johnnie’s example is eminent, four years have been an exercise in repetition, to watch the same follow suit for my peers about me. the last of a lineage with no equal in itself, As they are (or seem to be) subsumed to their own degree in thought and style, the dregs I brought with me have seemingly multiplied! making a coat of my past, and my reconsiderations of the same. A’20 I am the only ambassador of my past, a sole survivor of a world not quite another. If then I am lesser in my own heart’s evaluation, I think that I might yet be fortunate, On gloomy Sunday nights, I sometimes find myself daydreaming of other selves, as though from the image of beauty I could find for myself the secret of a soul saddled with it; to rise to the greatest height of my station— but it is a belligerent and persistent as my sister, my brother. t and if lacking in feeling the heart of another to count on myself A Beloaned Student’s Guide to Dining in Annapolis Maybe you’re off the meal plan. Maybe it’s 7 o’clock, and you don’t like eating dinner at the hyperbolic asscrack of dawn. Maybe you’ve grown tired of hotdog pizza. Whatever the circumstances that led to your predicament, you now find yourself standing on Main Street with $5 in your pocket and a need for an unreasonably priced meal. Without further ado, I present to you A Beloaned Student’s Guide to Dining in Annapolis. To save you the trouble and embarrassment, I have shamelessly slithered into many local restaurants and composed a list of the meals that can be purchased for less than $5 (keep in mind this does NOT include a tip. Tip your servers, Goddammit!) Let’s start with a timeless classic: Chick & Ruth’s. I will note that many items can be purchased at this establishment for under our meager allotment of $5, so for the sake of ef- ficiency, I will list my top five. 1. Colossal Fries - $4.99 (They offer a non-colossal version for $2.99) 2. Mac & Cheese - $3.29 (Found in the Side category) 3. Deli Potatoes w/ Chili & Cheese - 4.99 (Found on the All Day Breakfast menu) 4. Eggel Deluxe - $4.79 (bagel with egg and your choice of meat) 5. One Egg Platter - $4.79 Looking for something a little less eggy? Look no further than Vida Taco Bar. The following tacos are available for $5 or under. 1. Chorizo - $3.50 2. Pacifica - $4.25 3. Buffalo Cauliflower - $4.50 4. Jerk Tempeh - $5 5. Sweet Potato and Black Beans $3.5 6. The Gringo - $3.75 7. Tinga Chicken - $4.75 Maybe you want a restaurant Kyla Murphy A’22_ with more of an aggressive “chain” feel. Allow me to point you to Chipotle. Useful Hack: This restaurant does not ID for the kid’s menu! 1. Cheese Quesadilla - $3.95 (Found on the Kid’s Menu) 2. Build Your Own - $4.95 (Found on the Kid’s Menu) Another restaurant that does not ID for the Kid’s Menu (and it’s Maine themed! Dirigo!): Mason’s Famous Lobster rolls! 1. Kid’s Meal Hot Dog - $3.95 2. Kid’s Meal Grilled Cheese $3.95 3. New England Clam Chowder $4.50 4. Lobster Bisque - $4.50 Finally, take advantage of the many sushi restaurants around town. Sakura, Joss, and Nano all offer rolls for $5! Best of luck to you, hungry, beloaned students. t �07 The new Joker movie is terrible. It is not endearingly terrible. It is regular terrible. It is terrible because it tries so desperately hard to be great, to be a Serious Issue Drama About Mental Illness and Class Warfare and the Decline of Polite Society, but it fails because it is utterly hollow in every way. It aspires to be something without trying to say anything. It is the kind of film that people say will win Oscars. It is, indeed, a terrible film that might win an Oscar, transcending the honors normally afforded to comic book movies. As much of a film snob as I am, I do not find that possibility inherently objectionable; one of the last big-budget films I loved was Black Panther, which wholly deserved its Best Picture nomination. Moreover, I no longer have any faith in or respect for the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences after Green Book-gate, so now that I think about it, it really makes no difference to me whether Joker wins an Oscar. I loathe Joker so much, though, because to me, it is a shallow amalgamation of every Oscar-bait movie that has been made in recent years. Directed by Todd Phillips of The Hangover (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver), the film is a portrait of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, that man being Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, whose performance affords the character the humanity and dignity that the writing deprives him of). In the Batman comics and in the previous films in the franchise, the Joker is a criminal mastermind. He is an agent of chaos, but an undeniably witty one; his defining feature is his intelligence. Phillips, however, seems intent on making this A Serious Issue Drama About Mental Illness. That is all well and good, except for the fact that Phillips and Silver sacrifice the character’s signature intelligence to reinforce the Joker Review idea that he is mentally ill. To them, a mentally ill person is simply incapable of being intelligent. And so they make Arthur a man-child of sorts; he is an aspiring standup comedian with no sense of humor whatsoever, who carries around a notebook filled with bad puns and who does research by taking notes at standup shows (these notes include “SEX JOKES FUNNY”). He lives at home with his mother and almost robotically repeats her assertion that he was “put on this Earth to spread laughter and joy.” His eventual transformation into the Joker therefore seems inauthentic. The character does not seem developed enough to undergo an organic transformation in the first place; he is written to be a Stock Crazy Person In a Movie, the kind of Stock Crazy Person actors love playing because it will win them an Oscar. (Or an Emmy; Claire Danes’s bipolar character on Homeland twitches, for some reason. Bipolar people do not twitch). Arthur is the only mentally ill character in the movie besides his mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), who is eventually revealed to have been diagnosed with delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder. During Arthur’s childhood, Penny also enabled her boyfriend’s abuse of him; furthermore, she may or may not be lying as to the precise nature of her relationship with her former employer, billionaire Thomas Wayne. As Joker fancies itself a Serious Issue Drama About Mental Illness, it is therefore obligated to portray mental illness responsibly. The fact that the only two mentally ill characters in the movie are destructive to others exemplifies the persistence of fear-mongering stereotypes about the mentally ill. In the Department of Psychiatry and National Drug Dependence Treatment Center’s 2015 essay “Violence and Mental Illness: What is the True Story?” for the All India Institute of Medical The Gadfly Hope Taglich A’21 Sciences, the authors state, “In public perception, mental illness and violence remain inextricably interwined, and much of the stigma associated with mental illness may be due to a tendency to conflate mental illness with the concept of dangerousness. This perception is further augmented by the media which sensationalises violent crimes committed by persons with mental illness….and focuses on mental illness in such reports, ignoring the fact that most of the violence in society is caused by people without mental illness. This societal bias contributes to the stigma faced by those with a psychiatric diagnosis, which in turn contributes to non-disclosure of the mental illness and decreased treatment-seeking, and also leads to discrimination against them.” Through focusing on Arthur’s mental illness and the mistreatment he receives from society because of it (his undisclosed mental illness causes him to laugh at inopportune times, which often leads to him being beaten up), the film effectively justifies his eventual murderous rampage. After all, he was a Nice Guy, but then he snapped, because We Live in a Society that turns mass murderers out of nice mentally ill people. If only we were nicer to mentally ill people, we would have fewer mass murderers. This is an implicitly problematic assumption, because: 1. It reinforces a tired deflection tactic beloved of NRA apologists. (“We need to talk about mental health!”) 2. In the aforementioned study, authors Mohit Varshney, Ananya Mahapatra, Vijay Krishnan, Rishab Gupta and Koushnik Sinha Deb noted that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of �The Gadfly 07 violent crime than perpetrators. 3. Moreover, according to a 2018 study by the University of New South Wales, mentally ill men are 76 percent more likely to be victims of violent crime than men without mental illness, while mentally ill women were nearly three times more likely to be victimized than women without mental illness. The egregiousness of Joker stems from the fact that the film tries to position itself as sympathetic to the mentally ill. It is not sympathetic. It is, at best, patronizing. It is just as ignorant of mental illness as the society it condemns. Its attempts at tackling class conflict are similarly shallow. After Arthur, in clown makeup (he has recently been fired from his job as a party clown for attempting to bring a gun to the children’s hospital, because that’s just something mentally ill people do, apparently), kills three bankers harrassing him on a subway at night, the clown becomes a symbol of the disenfranchised, disgruntled working-class. There are mass demonstrations in the street where protestors wear clown makeup. Arthur is a proletariat hero. This $55-64 million film attempts to be sympathetic to the working-class, but insults them by painting them as celebratory of a violent crime. The working-class in the film seem even more irrational because of the lack of dimension the class struggle is given; the audience is never told what the crux of the conflict between the rich and the poor is, we are only told that it exists. In the opening scene, Arthur—while working as a party clown—is randomly assaulted by a group of teenagers of color after they steal a sign he is carrying. The working-class are portrayed as impulsive and thoughtlessly destructive; Phillips and Silver feed into classist stereotypes as much as they feed into ableist ones. Most of the black characters Arthur encounters are either cruel or dismissive; aside from the teenagers who assaulted him, his social worker doesn’t listen to him, a clerk at Arkham Asylum isn’t even aware Social Services have been cut in Gotham City, his pretty neighbor doesn’t notice him, and a woman on the train snaps at him after he playfully makes faces at her baby. It is The Fault Of Society that he is this way, we are told; the film particularly frames its black characters’ lack of empathy as almost blasphemous. Not only are they unsympathetic—they have the audacity to be unsympathetic! Aside from its deeply flawed messaging, Joker is also highly derivative. It attempts to pay homage to better movies, like Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, with some flashes of The Machinist. King of Comedy in particular is continuously referenced; Robert de Niro plays a talk show host whom Arthur idolizes, and the host ultimately meets his deranged fan, to disastrous consequences. Too much of its plot, however, hinges on that interaction, making Joker more of a remake of King of Comedy than an homage to it. And if it is a remake, it is a spectacularly disappointing one. Much has been made of the danger the film may cause. Across the country, there have been reports of armed guards at screenings. Incels have called it “our movie.” As socially irresponsible as its message is, however, I do not feel as though the film is actively provocative because I feel it is too stupid to be provocative. It is provocative because a disgruntled group of predominantly white men online have anointed it as their crowning glory, and because this same disgruntled group of predominantly white men have emerged as a growingly fearsome presence, willing to hurt themselves and others. Independent of that context, it is a film that tries desperately to be provocative, but fails because of that very desperation. It wants to be provocative because it wants to be a film that is called provocative. It wants to be provocative because it wants to be Not Another Superhero Movie. The story is told with no particular care or affection; it seems curiously formulaic. It is a film that is made to be provocative for the sake of provocation, for the sake of winning awards. It is a failure, yes, but it does not even have the decency to be an interesting failure. t Initial Reflections Dimple Kaul From science and management She’s steered me to savour On the literary firmament The brilliance of Chaucer Her scintillating discussions Invoke Metaphysics and God My tutor for Literature Erudite Ms. Axelrod Widening my horizon Is what they’ve been at That’s how this Homer virgin Birthed an Odyssey Sonnet With a summery smile Beaming like a bright omen Our seminars in style Conducts Ms. Paalman Honour, grief and rage Served with a dash of fun Keeping us all engaged Is the Socratic Mr. Tipton As I study, not just read And further explore I am, with ease, freed To, my evolution, soar t � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 8 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 03 Description An account of the resource Volume XLI, Issue 03 of The Gadfly. Published October 16, 2019. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief) Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-10-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 03 Gadfly Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/14eb90ad8057957338d697e687128470.pdf 3bff2a96ec38ce85ac22b8a0d3682c13 PDF Text Text THE GADFLY St. John’s College Vol. XLII, Issue 01 Annapolis, Maryland March 18th, 2021 �In Memory of Those Lives Lost and Impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic CONTENTS Logos Celebrating Differences................................3 A Tutor’s Perspective....................................4 Administrators Speak...................................5 Invasion of the Mids.......................................6 Drunk Poet’s Society ....................................8 Keeping the Conversation Alive..................9 Summer Petitions.........................................10 D&I Task Force...............................................11 Classics and Liberation...............................12 Silver Linings..................................................15 Symposium The Art of the Zoom Screen....................16 COVID’s Parallel Lives..............................18 Ctrl + Alt.....................................................20 Writing on the Soul.................................22 Polis Smoke Without Mirrors............................24 A Look at the Fox..........................................25 Passing Time in a Time of Waiting...........26 Sports with Bryce Jacobsen......................28 How to Name a Boat....................................29 Malcolm and Marie Review........................30 Poetry and Art by Daryl Locke...................31 A Guide to Perfect Communication...........32 Pandemic Ponderings..................................34 COVID-19 TIMELINE: In the following pages, we chronicle the timeline of events related to the Coronavirus Pandemic as they occurred around the world (above) and at St. John’s (below). 2 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 From the Editor’s Desk: The past year has touched us all. It is difficult to grasp the scale of what we lost — livelihoods, long-term plans and chance encounters, time with loved ones. As a school, we were scattered across the globe. Already, we are beginning to ask ourselves questions which will press future generations: How do we make sense of such tumult? How do we heal as a community? How did 2020 change us? Accordingly, this publication has found a new purpose and resolve. For posterity’s sake, we have collected narratives from the past year. For our own sake, we seek the solace of sharing stories. Through this edition of the Gadfly, as well as subsequent ones, we aim to build a beacon of conversation. But no two discussions at the College are alike. The love of learning that pulses through our ranks is manifest in the myriad subjects of our chatter — cones, sonnets, time, God — you get the idea. Any effort to distill Johnnie life must celebrate our dissimilitude. This publication is thus split into the following three sections: Logos holds news reports and narratives of immediate relevance to the Polity. We wish to develop a shared reservoir of information pertinent to our community. Symposium offers the opportunity for our readers to thoughtfully consider contrasting, nuanced opinions regarding a question or prompt. Like friends who chat through the night at a drinking party, our object here is joyful shared inquiry. Polis serves as a platform for elevating voices. This section is the freewheelin’ home of columns, cartoons, satire, and submissions. If you want something published, send it to us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com. In our devotion to the gathering and sharing of words, we welcome any comments, questions, or respectful dissent. If you’re struck by something you read in these pages, I invite you to pen a letter. Let us wander in thought together. Sincerely, Lysithia Page Jan 9 WHO announces mysterious new coronavirus in Wuhan �{community} Celebrating Differences The mission of Johnnies of Color by Alayna Raymond, ‘23 J ohnnies of Color is a student club located in both Santa Fe and Annapolis. I talked with Annapolis archon Misgana Sharew (AN22) about the events of the past year, including panels she organized: ‘What to Me Are Your Great Books?’ and ‘A Panel on White Supremacy.’ Johnnies of Color was in development prior to June 2020, but the club solidified after Sharew organized the panel discussion ‘What to Me Are Your Great Books?’ She described how she was motivated by people’s responses to the political moment. “I was looking at how, over the summer, there was an influx of people learning about what it means to be a person of color in America, and trying to educate other people, but also at the same time trying to be like white saviors. It felt like, finally, people were starting to recognize our problems, but they wouldn’t let us talk about it. Or listen to us.” Sharew was frustrated with the way people were reiterating statements she and other students had been saying from the get-go. She saw the necessity for a space in which students of color may speak for themselves and share their experiences. “Our goal is to empower, educate and celebrate our differences. Because you can’t only care for people when you feel sorry for them. And I personally didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. And the people that I founded the club with also felt the same. We had the conversation that being Black isn’t just about, you know, all these horrible things we can talk about,” Sharew said. “We have experiences, and we bring something to the table.” D conversations about race are important considerations for everyone. She emphasized that all students, not just students of color, ought to introduce these topics in discussions. “I think if there’s anything we should have learned by now it’s that racism is a two way street. It’s not just me, it also concerns you. And this goes for anything that we talk about–we have the opportunity, because of the way we read and the way we’re told to read books here, to look at bigotry not as an abstract thing, but just to explore it because it needs to be explored,” Sharew said. “And to not do it is wasteful.” uring the panel, students discussed the conversations that arise around particular books on the Program. When themes of racism come up, like in Shakespeare’s Othello, Sharew said she feels as though the burden of addressing them falls to her. Furthermore, she expressed dissatisfaction with the conversations themselves. “For Iago in Othello, no one wanted to say Iago was racist–and there’s more to that [than] he’s racist. harew recounted how, during the Okay, why? What does that mean? ‘Panel on White Supremacy,’ a What is that kind of prejudice like? tutor said they have been instructed to What is it rooted in? And where does give impartial treatment to students in it come from? The conversation need the classroom. She pointed out flaws not end there.” Sharew added that continued on page 14 S Jan 21 CDC confirms first COVID-19 case in US Jan 23 Three men kill 25yo Ahmaud Arbery while he is on a neighborhood jog the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 3 �{tutor interview} A Tutor’s Perspective on Virtual Learning An interview with George Russell by Liz Dowdy, ‘23 How did you feel when you found out we were going plenty of distractions... and so as we just experienced, online last March? some toddler can decide they’re just going to walk in I think I felt disoriented. At first I was pleasantly on your conversation and it can be very hard for you to surprised, I thought, “Oh, this is not so bad and withstand those distractions. unsuitable as I thought it would be.” But then that first impression faded, and after time, I thought that some of my fears about the unsuitable character about doing this *At this point in our Zoom call, the door behind Mr. Russell online were realized. opens to a child standing in the doorway. What fears are those? Well, all of these technological conversations–and in my Do you personally feel more distracted? mind ‘conversations’ is in scare quotes–there’s something I may make a great effort not to let myself be distracted, lacking when you compare them to just ordinary but are distractions there for me? Yes. I mean I’m sitting encounters with human beings, face to face encounters in a room full of books and every time I look over there with human beings. I mean, you can have an intimate I see a book. And yeah, sometimes there are thoughts relationship with someone, and I’m just using this as triggered by associations that are made and so on, so sure. an example, and be with that person, then you can have an intimate relationship with that person and be with Is it more difficult being a tutor right now than in them on the telephone. And ask yourself, is being on previous years? the telephone the same as being with that person? And I think there’s definitely a greater degree of difficulty, as I suppose these online classes are closer to being on the far as the learning enterprise is concerned; yes, because telephone than [they are] to being with someone. And I think I know less about what’s going on with students I think it has to do with a number of issues that people than I think I did when I was in the class. And I’m not have talked about; in the fact that here on the computer completely sanguine about what I know about what’s I can’t really look at you. I mean, I can ‘see’ this image going with students when I am in the classroom; but on my screen and look at it and you can be looking at now I’m not, so I know even less. I mean it’s very difficult the image on the screen and ‘see’ me–once again in scare to know what students are learning. I can’t see inside quotes–but the fact is that our eyes are not meeting, and their souls, but when I’m with them I have a better sense there’s a way in which they just can’t in this venue… of their engagement, and so on, than I do in the online thing. But along with that, and probably more important, is what happens in the [online] learning attempt… Because, Do you expect or hope that some of the problems with after a while, it can be hard for people to attend to a online classes will be alleviated by having hybrid classes? conversation going on on their computer, even if they Well, I really don’t know what to expect… I mean I think begin by being involved in the conversation.* After a that because we all agree that being in a room together time they may find themselves distracted; and you know is better than being online, we’re making this attempt to as well as I do that when you are in your home there are get people into a room. And I’m sure that the hope is Feb 3 US declares public health emergency 4 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 Feb 9 Parasite wins Best Picture �that if it goes well enough, and of course, if the plague begins to die out, more students will be encouraged to come to classrooms. My closing question is about books, and I was wondering if there has been a specific book, I guess probably a program book, that you have found to be helpful or relatable over the past year? Well, I have sort of thought a lot about the Thebans and the plagues that visited them and their reactions to the plagues that visited them. Of course, they thought that the gods were angry with them and that was why they were being visited with plagues; because they were doing things they shouldn’t be doing, like not burying the dead or something, or not being able to answer the riddle of the Sphinx, or whatever it was that they were doing. Then of course, you can’t help thinking about Athens and the plague that struck Athens, that Thucydides writes about and that Lucretius writes about, but I don’t know just in terms of those things being helpful. We don’t care about gods; we just want an effective vaccine. Maybe ‘insightful’ is the better word? I just live with books all the time; we all do, I mean the tutors do, all the time, all their lives; and the students, at least for the time that they’re here just living with books. There’s a way in which a very great part of the significance to my life has to do with books and whatever I get out of them. It’s always to me a hard question to answer: Were somebody to ask, “Russell, why do you insist on reading these books? What are you getting there?” Or somebody comes upon me reading some book, “You’re pouring over this book, what do you want to get out of it? What do you think that book is going to do for you?” And I suppose, particularly, I might be able to say something, but on the whole that’s a very real question, and very complex, and the answer to it is going to be somewhat complex, I think. I know it’s not a great answer, Ms. Dowdy, but, in any case as far as the plague is concerned, I just want it to be over. I want to be able to just be in a building where people are walking back and forth to classes, and in between classes, and being with one another talking about the books that we read in peace. May it happen. Administrators Speak Quotes collected by Lysithia Page, ‘23 In the Beginning [At the beginning of spring break] I was at the board meeting in Santa Fe, and a board member refused to shake my hand, and I thought, ‘That’s odd. Is that what we’re doing now? -Macfarland I think one of the problems we had was that it took a while to learn how to respond. So, in those first weeks, I remember having conversations with Ms. Lico, like, ‘What will the health protocols be, will you have to wear a mask, washing hands,’ and a lot of the things we do now were not really imaginable at that time. -Macfarland I was really concerned because so much of the life of the college involves being together — singing, playing croquet, having Rachelle Munsey take people to the museums, that sort of thing. And I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, how there’s a whole sort of piece of student life that they’re not going to get.’ -Waters On Technology We told IT, we want to do senior orals online in five days. And they did it. They got video conferencing equipment. They set up all the technology, they set up all the meetings, they trained up all the tutors. And it happened. I didn’t think the college could pivot that quickly, and do something it had never done before - senior orals online, that fast, and, I think, with relatively few problems. I give a lot of credit to IT and to the tutors and students that made that adjustment. -Macfarland continued on page 14 Mar 11 WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic Mar 5 Governor Hogan issues statewide Declaration of Emergency Mar 6 SJC presidents send email to both campuses suspending classes until Mar 30 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 5 �{behind enemy lines} Invasion of the Mids Naval students occupy campus over fall by Linda Bellamy, ‘24 Brennig noted, however, that the themselves with removing dorm naval’s presence was nonetheless furniture, including doors, and placing palpable. They chalked it up to their them on the quad. (Middies) distinct way-of-life. However, our Naval Academy “You’re listening to [the Middies] guests weren’t the only ones getting do their drills as you’re trying to read into mischief. In early September, or study, and that was very distracting. graffiti consisting of phrases such Now I think it’s more quiet, and people as “Beware Waldo” and “Waldo has are more willing to make room because Covid” could be found in and around they understand [that students are Mellon. The joke referenced how trying to do their readings.]” Middies dress the same and are easily As the Middies’ stay progressed, spotted for that reason. Clare Collins Johnnies witnessed phenomena which expressed that she found it humorous: Joseph Cunningham rarely occur on campus. “They have “I mean, it looks like Waldo is going Navy forces take the bell tower a tradition of dropping a printer in to come for you. Like there is this nlike many other institutions Bancroft Hall, which is one of their monster waiting for you under your of higher education, St. John’s buildings. They did the exact same bed...that’s what it looks like to me.” As housed students on campus during thing in Mcdowell,” Sam Detwiler someone who has friends in the Naval the fall semester; they just weren’t our (A23) said. Middies also busied Academy, Collins felt that there are own. The Midshipmen arrived during the last weekend of August. Johnnies who lived near campus throughout the fall were able to frequent most facilities besides Mcdowell Hall, the coffee shop, and dormitories. Some students expressed dismay at the loss of Mcdowell, a place where Johnnies have traditionally gathered for freshman chorus, and met to study. “[Mcdowell] is kind of the heart of campus,” Joe Cunningham (A23) said. “It was a hard trade to make.” Fall freshman Maya Brennig (A24) stated that because they had never experienced “normal Johnnie life,” they were less sensitive to the abnormality Midshipman posing next to a dor- Midshipmen laying on a dormitory of the Middies’ newfound residence. bunk bed on the quad mitory door on the quad Mar 13 Police shoot and kill 26yo Breonna Taylor in Mar 19 her apartment California first state to issue stay-at-home order U Mar 18 President Pano Kanelos announces St. John’s will be moving online for the rest of the semester 6 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 �no hard feelings regarding the graffiti. “Honestly, I feel like the Mids didn’t notice or didn’t care. I don’t think that it was out of any genuine ‘Get off our campus,’ ” she said. Still, there were some instances in which Johnnies felt intimidated by the Middies’ presence. Sarah Fairchild (A23) recounted how she and her partner were strolling through campus one night when a Middie accosted them, and told them to leave. “I didn’t want to start an altercation with him, but I thought that that was the strangest thing,” Fairchild said. “The one interaction I had with a Middie was him telling me, a Johnnie, that I couldn’t be on my campus because they were there.” “Beware Waldo” graffiti on a stone bench Isa Kiedrowski Apr 2 COVID-19 cases worldwide surpass 1 million Apr 1 Pano and Mr. Haflidson perform Plato’s Glaucon for the polity via Teams Apr 30 Armed protesters enter Michigan state capitol the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 7 �{club chatter} Drunk Poet’s Society How a poetry instagram account inspired a booming business by Alayna Raymond, ‘23 R ecently I Zoom’d with Sophomore Daryl Locke (A’23) to learn the story of his business Drunk Poete and his recently chartered club Drunk Poet’s Society. Here are some insights: You can view Daryl’s work @drunkpoete on Instagram and drunkpoete.com art. And I was just like, ‘I wonder if there’s other people at school like me and her’. Because like no one ever talked to me about art before, so, in my head, I’m thinking that only me and her are the art people here, and it’s weird. So, I talked to Ms. Waters about it, and she said, “Maybe you should start a club.” And I was lonely at the time. I just wanted more people to talk to. So, I made a club for anyone who was artful on our campus so that they could have a place to come express themselves, and be around people like them. So how did the drunk poete business come to be? [Drunk poete] all started ninth grade of high school. I’ve always followed little poetry Instagrams, and in ninth grade we did poetry with Shakespeare. It inspired me to actually start writing poetry. By junior year I had a couple of years of just posting poetry on Instagram. But it wasn’t until the summer that I was just like, ‘drunk poete Has your perspective changed since starting the club? In is going nowhere’. I saw all these other poetry accounts terms of feeling like you didn’t belong? where all they do is post poetry and go to sleep after, but Ironically, I feel like I did not fulfill my mission with I did not want that for drunk poete. I wanted to make opening the club. I remember the first big gathering that money off of my poetry. So, over the summer I started I had for the Drunk Poet’s Society last year and I realized working on a website. And so I got the website done and they were just not my people. I thought that was actually the next thing you know, drunk poete as a business was very good, because it’s the first time where I stepped out in full action. of the world, the little bubble of DC, and I got to meet different types of people. And it was so beautiful to see What do you love about poetry? Why do you gravitate people of different art genres, and get to know them, toward it? and see what their experiences in the art world are like. I hate to be cliché about this, but it just makes me feel I remember I used to look at these pictures of Frank better after I write something. I always say that my mind O’Hara when I was younger, and how he would have is like a war, and to get some of that war out of my mind social gatherings of poets, novelists, painters, singers. feels so good. And I like to capture it through words. And I was like, “This is what Drunk Poets society should It’s just a good feeling honestly. I don’t always feel 100% be.” It should not be just about trying to bond with better, but I always feel at least 1.5% better. people because you’re alone, but instead should be about different types of people coming together to learn about How did the club begin? What inspired you to start the different things. club? Around the time I first got here as a freshman, I honestly What’s your reflection on the art world in the past year thought there’s no one here like me. I thought that it was and how it has changed? very odd because back at home in DC, there’s Daryls, not I feel like a lot of people have added rules to their art. everywhere, but they’re not hard to find. But at St John’s, I’ve noticed this whenever it comes to people publishing I just did not fit in, really. And then I met someone who things. I feel like decades ago, art was like, ‘anything could was the first person at the school I related to in terms of be an art.’ But now it’s more like ‘everything has to be a May 25 Police kill 46yo George Floyd May 10 Commencement is held virtually 8 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 Jun 6 Half a million people protest in 550 cities across the US �certain way,’ or the standard of what people think art is. People have placed a boundary on their art. For example, there’s one poetry account that I used to follow. And they put something on their story about how people should stop posting poems about things like racial justice, and sex, and queer love — that’s the reason I unfollowed them, because saying that is adding a rule to art, like saying you can’t paint this, or you can’t use the color red, or you can’t express. Self Portrait, 2021 What is your ideal art space/ mindset? I would say, timing, carelessness, and selfishness. Every artist should take those three things and run with them. Timing because you need the time to yourself, to get to know yourself to express yourself. With carelessness, just don’t give a fuck what people say about what art should be, what it should not be. Just do with your heart and brain and fingers, whatever the hell they desire to do. Only accept your own criticism. And your selfishness, literally just make yourself number one. You can take on the world honestly. And I don’t take my own advice 24/7, but I think every artist should try to. {club chatter} Keeping the conversation alive How Johnnies were still able to converse through Zoom by Linda Bellamy, ‘24 O ver the past year, members of the Polity worked to preserve the Johnnie community in spite of the obstacles posed by virtual learning. Santa Fe junior Misgana Sharew collaborated with Annapolis tutor Anna Sitzmann to hold a cross-campus study group on Black literature. “I’m not sure that I would say that the virtual environment particularly aided any other aspect of our conversions then the mere fact of our being able to be together, which is huge, because without that the cross-campus seminar that wouldn’t be able to take place,” Sitzmann said. Although the community was dispersed, Johnnies continued to seek conversation. The virtual environment allowed for Annapolis and Santa Fe students to casually engage with one another, which is historic for the College. Rarely do members of both campuses come together in a shared space. Additionally, Zoom enabled students in Annapolis to replicate the usual post-seminar chatter. Sophomore Ella Barron established Symposium club (a “Covid original,” as she called it.), a bi-weekly Zoom room where Johnnies can socialize outside class. Barron fondly recalled the quirky croquet emails from last year, and wanted incoming students to experience the same. “They were absolutely maddening, and I loved reading them,” Barron said. In the absence of the quad, Symposium has served as a platform for interaction between upperclassmen and underclassmen. The topics of conversation tend to be wide ranging — “anything under the sun,” as Barron put it. Her motivation for starting the club: connecting Johnnies. “Really no one who is outside the Program understands what we’re talking about. I need someone to tell me I’m not crazy when reading Ptolemy,” Barron said. Barron felt that an external social outlet was necessary. So, she made a deal with her mom to buy a Zoom account, and the rest is history. “No one else asked me to do this, I just did it. And I feel like even if it’s only been particularly useful for 30 people, that much is better than it not existing at all in my opinion,” Barron said. “It’s sort of like in class, if you ask a question, nine times out of ten people were thinking of that same question.” Job Conversing with His Friends 1547, Sebald Beham Jul 9 WHO announces COVID-19 may linger in the air indoors Jul 1 Pano announces plans to return to campus in August the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 9 �{student politics} Summer petitions sought policy changes Students and alumni teamed up to promote reform by Lysithia Page, ‘23 Isa Kiedrowski I n early June of 2020, students and alumni wrote petitions calling for a variety of changes — efforts to recruit and retain more students of color, higher wages for employees, and a more diverse reading list. After having attended several Black Lives Matter protests, Keaton Jahn (A22) was wondering how he could support activism in the St. John’s community. He finally penned a letter urging the inclusion of more texts by authors of color and women. “I don’t perceive what I did as speaking for POC students,” Jahn said. “I wouldn’t want to do that. I was speaking from my own perspective, you know, which was like, ‘Hey, look, I think we need to add these works to the Program.’ ” Initially, Jahn meant to create and submit the letter by himself. But he decided early on to collaborate with other Johnnies, an effort which brought him into contact with the Santa Fe Black Student Union. By Jahn’s estimate, 95% of the letter in its current form consists of suggestions from alumni and other students. A member of the Polity shared Jahn’s letter in the “All Work No Play Makes Johnnies Dull” Facebook group. Zachary Gold (A17) saw the post and decided to draft a similar document, albeit with the intention to galvanize more alumni. In addition, Gold wanted to pursue what he described as “more actionable items” relating to campus culture. He joined forces with Lauren Bouchereau (SF), and with the help of students and alumni, the petition became a group effort. Their requests included the establishment of a panel on Diversity and Inclusion, a committee to investigate complaints of discrimination, and a paid student advocacy position to assist in talks between individual students and administration or faculty members. With information from the 2017 Senior Prank archons, Gold conducted an analysis of graduation rates for students from different racial backgrounds. In his year, the retention rate for white students was 71.17%, which exceeded the total retention rate — 65.69%. By contrast, for American non-white students, that number was 41.67%. Though the particulars fluctuate from year to year, the rate of attrition for students of color remains disproportionate. The disparity in matriculation between white and non-white students is not lost on the administration. “If you do look at the graduation rates, then it seems to me not wrong to surmise that some students don’t feel comfortable,” Dean Joseph Macfarland said. “And so I think it’s worth trying to figure out what those reasons are, and worth trying to do something about it.” On Aug. 8, Presidents Mark Roosevelt and Panayiotis Kanelos announced new initiatives which, in the language of their email, are “... aimed at increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion on both campuses and in our academic life and readings.” The initiatives listed in the email include the following: a program that matches Pell grants offered to low-income students, training for implicit bias and cultural literacy, and the formation of Aug 9 Mass protests against new authoritarian leaderhsip occur in Belarus Jul 31 Plans to return to campus are cancelled 10 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 Aug 24 St. John’s announces that the USNA will be using our dorms for Middies �two task forces to address inclusion and historical awareness. Since its inception in 1937, the Program has undergone substantial change. About fifty works have been discarded from the reading list; no longer do students read Bonaventure or the Volsunga Saga. Likewise, about thirty books have been added since that time. According to Macfarland, the Instruction Committee has given much thought in recent years to the contents of senior seminar. “One of the observations that is made — and I wouldn’t say this is universally held — is, at the time that the New Program was founded, the Program came up to the present, and it doesn’t do so now,” Macfarland said. The most recent substitution was the replacement of a text by Henry James with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. But Macfarland emphasized that such decisions result from a thoughtful, years-long process. Faculty members form study groups, and present suggestions to the Instruction Committee. Students, meanwhile, take preceptorials, and hold forums in the Student Committee on Instruction. The two committees meet 1-2 times per year to share their perspectives. Change comes to the Program gradually, as each text has its advocates. “In some respects, the reading list works on the lifeboat principle,” Macfarland said. “If you pull someone out of the water and put them in the boat, and there are only so many seats in the boat, somebody’s got to go back in the water.” {investigation} Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Improving an institution through inclusion by Alayna Raymond, ‘23 T he Diversity and Inclusion Task Force (D&I) is a group founded by the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors. The Task Force, according to the St. John’s website, aims to examine “whether there is more we can do as an institution to ensure that the college is a welcoming place for all, while preserving the uniqueness of a St. John’s education.” The Task Force is split into multiple subcommittees. First, the survey committee developed the survey that was sent out to students, faculty, and alumni earlier this year. An executive summary of the survey results is expected to be released in the first week of April. “[The Task Force] put together a survey that we hoped would not only allow us to address race, but address all the other things that intersect with race, and that have come up as comments over the years,” said Dr. Leslie Kay, leader of the Task Force. Once the survey committee dissolved, members moved into other subcommittees. O ne of the subcommittees concerns policies and procedures. Director of Student Services Taylor Waters, a member of this group, is researching other schools’ methods for strengthening a culture of inclusion, and promoting access to resources for students. Kay expanded on the committee’s duties: “See, if somebody has an issue, what happens? Who do they talk to about what happened? How are departments in the administration run? And how do they intersect with students? So really getting a bird’s eye view through lots and lots of interviews with people on both campuses.” There is also the recruitment subcommittee, which is crafting recommendations regarding the development of a more diverse Polity. Dr. Anika Prather (AGI ‘09) says she is analyzing “how we can make the student body, the tutor body, look more colorful, or have more people that at least believe in being more colorful.” “I’m not a person trying to deny that there is systemic racism. Okay, I am just as militant as you want to be. My role is to say to you, ‘You’ve got to try this place. It’s not what you think.’ And to also share thoughts on how I can help St. John’s communicate that to the public.” Once all of the subcommittees have finished their work, the Task continued on page 14 CONTACT Contact the D&I Task Force at taskforces@sjc.edu If you want to be anonymous in your feedback, fill out a form on sjc.edu under the ‘Task Forces’ tab of the Board of Visitors and Governors page. Oct 2 President, First Lady test positive for COVID-19 Aug 28 The formation of a “Diversity and Inclusion Task Force” is announced the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 11 �{Questions & Answers} Classics and Liberation Q&A with Dr. Anika Prather (AGI ’09) by Alayna Raymond, ‘23 I n September, Dr. Anika Prather gave a lecture titled ‘A Discussion on Black Lives Matter and the Role Classics Played in the Fight for Equality.’ A few months later, I met with Dr. Prather to further discuss her academic journey, what liberation means to her, and how her work has culminated in The Living Water School, which she founded in 2015. Dr. Prather earned her B.A. from Howard University in elementary education. She also has an M.A in education from New York University and Howard University. She has a Masters in liberal arts from St. John’s College and a PhD in English, Theater and Literacy Education from the University of Maryland. She founded the Living Water School, which uses Classical Education and the Sudbury Model, which allows children to experience an independent and thoughtful education through autonomous learning. story connected to it just as much as anybody else’s. And so I found that my students were able to see the same thing without me telling them. They’re shocked and say, “Oh, this is like about me. I can really relate to this for my own self.” They didn’t see in the books — especially those from the ancient times — they didn’t see the racial problems that we have. It didn’t feel like white supremacy or racism, it felt like he’s just talking about the human life experience. So this experience made me say, “I wish I could sit under someone who has done this longer than I have.” And I literally just put in a search for teacher training and great books. The whole field was completely foreign to me. I had no idea what I was looking for. And then the Great Books Foundation popped up. And from the Great Books Foundation, I found St. John’s. I was working on my doctorate, focusing on researching great books in the Black community of classics, and in the summers, I would do St John’s. And then I would design my curriculum for the high school, around whatever I read at St. John’s, so I could keep practicing what I was learning. And then I would write notes, make observations, and do research, and I just did that for four years. So every essay [for my doctorate], every paper, every class, I was writing about St. John’s, or great books and Black people, and the history of Black classics. How did you get involved in the classics? I just finished my Master’s in theater education, and was really looking towards how to use the arts to educate — that’s where I thought my destiny was. I’m really passionate about performing arts, performance and visual, but my degrees are in theater and music, education. But what happened was, I had to go into one of the great books classes to help a high school teacher How did you use your experience in academia to found make it more engaging for the students. I used music and the Living Waters School? drama to help them connect to it. And that’s what got Howard was the first and only HBCU with a classics me into reading classics, because I had to read them to department when it was founded just after the Civil War. plan the lessons and it was a totally organic process. Well, It was founded by a man who fought for the union. And after one year of doing that, I became really addicted to he was head of something called the Freedmen’s Bureau. classics, and great books, and all of that whole body of His name was General Howard, and it’s named after him– knowledge. And I know it’s controversial. But when I Howard University. He had a real heart for the African read them, I didn’t read them as if they were white books, American people. He started Howard University. And or books that were just about white people. I really he started with a classics department. Howard, and the found the human narrative in it. And I found that my Freedmen’s Bureau, was an organization mainly of white Dec 11-17 Multiple COVID-19 vaccines receive emergency FDA approval Nov 19 Pano announces plans to reopen for spring 12 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 �people who felt like they wanted to help Black people who had been set free be educated. And the philosophy they used for the schools they set up throughout the United States was classical, every single school — so Howard University, St. Augustine’s college, a lot of our HBCUs that were founded under that. A lot of people look at the story of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the story of classical education in the Black community, as an effort to make us assimilate and/or to deny our Black heritage. And in some cases, that is true. There are a number of Black people that did use classical education as a way to escape their heritage — to deny themselves. I mean, you hear stories of [people getting] this classical education, and then [they] call their own people derogatory names—look down at them. I don’t want to act like that did not happen. Sadly, that happening has made people fail to see something else happened as a result of classical education, which is very important. So these people also got a classical education, like Thurgood Marshall. Our classics department is kind of like a monument to that. It’s just very global, it believes in studying classics of belief, but you learn how it connects to your history as a Black person, not just ‘that’s their stuff,’ and not in a way to deny your heritage. And so, when we think about those who came out of our university, who had that classically inspired education, you find people that gain some logic skills, rhetoric skills, and humanistic understanding to make change in our society. And so I take that, and that’s interwoven in my school, that mentality of St. John’s, and Howard University, kind of stirred in a pot together to create the Living Water School. What do you think makes Classics liberating for African Americans? I think the best example is Frederick Douglass because he teaches himself to read. The book he mainly read as a child was The Columbian Orator, which was the main textbook used back then. When he got the book, he was still a slave. So there were no schools for Black people. But it was a main textbook for white students. So like, Jan 6 Trump supporters storm US Capitol Dec 15 Spring semester health restrictions, including restricted smoking areas, are announced it’s the same, like Harriet Beecher Stowe read it as a child. Somehow he got his hands on it. He had already taught himself how to read. He was about 12-13 years old. In it, he read this dialogue between a master and a slave. And he studied the logic of the slave convincing his master to set him free. And when he read it, a couple of things happened. One of them was that he was like, ‘This slave is a human being. This slave is a slave like me. This slave was able to convince his own master to set him free.’ So what Douglas became encouraged about was, ‘I’m human, even though the world and society says I’m not, even though I am a slave in my mind, I have set myself free, I am a human being. And somehow I’m going to get free. And I’m going to do what that slave did, I’m going to convince white people to let enslaved people go.’ Then you have Huey P. Newton, who was inspired to start the Black Panther [Party] as a result of reading Plato’s Republic. So, you know, anything can be misused, people misuse the Bible, and people have misused classics to say we’re not smart, we’re inferior, that this body of knowledge, you know, reflects how much smarter they are than anybody else. But then you got people who were steeped in the classical tradition. They read those texts, and the texts had a very different effect on them. Those are the ones we want to focus on. Because if we don’t focus on them, we’ll allow this negative side to make us discount what the books can do, what the body of knowledge can do. And there are just too many Black people and white people, all types of people who have read these texts, and have done amazing, powerful, meaningful things for our country. And that’s where we need to place the focus. W hile our conversation delved into many facets of her career, I was not able to cover them all in this article. I encourage readers to re-watch Dr. Prather’s lecture and her other work on Youtube to learn more about her journey with the classics. Jan 13 Donald Trump is impeached for the second time the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 13 �continued from page 11 Force will come together to formulate recommendations based on their findings. Kay expressed the possibility of some rapid changes, while others may take place over a long-term timeline. “For instance, if we were to say, okay, we want to have a more diverse faculty, well, we can’t just hire a bunch of new people, right? Because we don’t have that many positions to hire, there aren’t that many positions,” Kay said. The necessity for patience seems to be a shared sentiment among members of the task force. Prather believes that among the five institutions of higher education she has attended, St. John’s is conducting the most concerted effort to address concerns and make change. “It’s going to take time, and my prayer and my hope is that everyone will be patient with that process, and be willing to work through that process, and that people won’t take the journey personally, or that people won’t take the fact that there even has to be a journey personally,” Prather said. continued from page 5 On Virtual Classes I’m immensely proud of the students who stuck with it. I did teach a preceptorial in the fall, and got at least a small taste of what it was like to do the classes. It didn’t have the natural feeling that it did when we were around a table, but I felt like we were taking the work seriously, and I meet with the Instruction we were doing the work of the Committee - you know, tutors - college in this less than ideal every week during the year. But medium. And the persistence and we don’t meet over the summer. the dedication, I think it made And we met almost every single not just me, but all the tutors week over the summer discussing who observed it, feel good about how classes would be conducted, the college. So long as it’s only for a time only. what the conditions would be, -Macfarland and learning about the proposed health protocols, thinking about On Health how we could conduct classes safely. There’s never been a “Health-wise, smoking might go away,” Dugan said. group of tutors that has worked that hard in that way, over that “Well, diminish,” Macfarland interjected. period. -Macfarland On Figuring It out A lot of what I’m doing is reading the most up-to-date information, and making decisions based on that information. Knowing that, by the time we communicate that decision, the information will have likely changed. -Lico 14 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 in this statement: “Yeah, it works. But you also have to acknowledge when we step out of that room, you and me don’t have the same privileges or the same opportunities or the same experiences. And I think it’s unrealistic to sit there and pretend like we do. Yes, in an ideal world, that would be nice. But not acknowledging the difference is not going to get us anywhere.” In the final leg of the interview, I always ask my interviewees what they want students to know. Sharew went on to discuss a misconception related to Johnnies of Color: “I wanted people to understand, especially during the summer, like with all these petitions and everything. When people were talking for us, it felt like all we wanted was like anarchy, like we wanted to tear the school down. And none of us personally wanted to do that. At least everyone that I know. And everyone that was on that panel was involved in writing, not a petition, but just a letter to the administration, and signed it from all of us. Everyone that worked on that didn’t want to tear the school down. Sharew referenced a line from an essay by James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” “I like the school. I think all of us do. That’s why we’re here,” Sharew said. “It’s not that we hate the school, but asking me to sit there and just say how great it is isn’t going to solve anything and isn’t going to help me or you.” Feb 15 Winter storms cause widespread power outage across Texas Jan 20 Joe Biden takes the Oath of Office Jan 31 Virtual Convocation is held continued from page 3 Feb 4 Spring semester begins Feb 10-11 Students begin moving in on campus �{Community Check-in} Silver Linings Benefits of online learning by Dagny Kulkarni, ‘24 Z oom, Microsoft Teams, isolation, endless boredom, masks, nasal swabs, the end of the world as we know it: all things we associate with online learning. But, just as behind every pandemic is a vaccine, behind every cloud is a silver lining. Our community has been brought together through a distanced, but shared experience. We have learned how to navigate the online world, created new ideas and solutions for remote learning, and been able to experience the advantages of learning from home. The freshman class, having started Johnnie life online, has been able to transition more easily into a unique curriculum. W e share the memory of being thrown into the new, alarming territory of online learning, not realizing that our last day of spring break was, in actuality, our last day in-person of the school year. For some, this collective experience has apparently eased the transition to oncampus life. Freshman Allyson Brink reflected on her experience of her first inperson classes at a college with such a close-knit community: “I’m really glad I’m going to St. John’s online, and not another college online, because I think our classes have been able to transition much more easily than any other school probably has,” Brink said, further explaining how the camaraderie between Johnnies has eased the transition from online to inperson. However, there is one factor that, at least for some students, made the transition from home to campus somewhat difficult: the comfort we became accustomed to when taking classes from home. Rolling out of bed ten minutes before the start of class and logging into Zoom while rocking a pair of pajamas is a luxury one can only relish in with online classes. Freshman James Dormer reveled in said luxury: “It was a special kind of fantastic to be able to just toss on a hoodie and go to class.” Tutor Robert Druecker commented further on the convenience of remote learning: “I found it easier to schedule paper conferences and seminar orals… it’s very easy and the students have been much more available and willing to meet on almost any day,” Druecker said. Furthermore, for many freshmen, beginning college in an online format has proved useful in allowing them to better understand the curriculum without feeling the pressure of inperson classes. Dormer provided further insight into this, stating that “It did provide a nice ramp-up period. Not knowing what I was missing, never having had an in-person St. John’s class, it meant that I was able to Mar 1 Pano announces he will not seek an extension of his contract as president figure out what the workload was and how classes worked from the comfort of my own home, which took a lot of the pressure off,” Dormer said. The students who transitioned from in-person to online halfway through the year experienced the initial process of navigating the online world. According to Junior Kyla Murphy, who offered an insight into this, maneuvering through the uncharted territory of Zoom and Teams “leveled the playing field” and left the tutors just as confused as the students. “For some tutors, this confusion inspired childlike wonder, and we were able to dive into the class with no resistance to any creative accommodations we might need to put in place, because, at least in one sense, we were all coming from the same place,” Murphy said, describing how the class dynamic allowed for really engaging discussions. Druecker commented on how being online can reduce the levels of stress and anxiety that students tend to experience in person, explaining that his students seem more relaxed during orals or don rags over Zoom because of the impersonal aspect that being online provides. “I think that’s a positive thing because the less anxiety and nervousness you feel, the more freely your mind works and new, fresh ideas pop up,” Druecker said. the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 15 �The Art of the Zoom Screen Sophia Webster, ‘24 Who we are in the classroom has changed over the past year. It is difficult to hold steady when one’s personality and temperament are at stake the moment the unmute button is hit. You may ask, “What’s new?” Insecurity runs rampant in the young adult mind, even more so in academic circles. Some texts we read, like the Phaedo, can lead to existential anxiety. Particularly at schools with an intense academic setting, such as St. John’s, it is difficult to avoid comparing oneself to others. Students hyper-fixate on aspects of their appearance and speech that go unnoticed to anyone other than ourselves. Social media is a known toxic place that only makes this cycle worse. These qualities are consistent with the Gen-Z stereotype. We are a collective of anxious adolescents — the products of recessions, new technological dependency, and national terror. It is surprising to come across a young person who holds a healthy relationship with themselves. With the advent of virtual learning, adolescent insecurity has evolved into an artful monster. It is all the more difficult to cultivate confidence. Some people become obsessed with their literal self-image. For example, the touch up my appearance option introduces a new standard for clear skin. Mild blemishes enlarged in the Zoom screen become eye sores. “Johnnies are always vain… it’s just giving us more of an excuse,” Noah Gorman (A23) said. We now know exactly what we look like when we’re thinking, speaking, and breathing. We make gestures to elucidate points, and make pointed attempts to curate ourselves. I find myself meticulously composing my thinking face to make it seem like I have a thought more valuable than the one actually in mind. I must make my thought process be a Pollock painting of eye-movements, nods, and sighs. My lighting must lend me a radiant glow, my background must make me seem likeable and cool, my clothing and hair must fulfill my expectations. Zoom transforms candid expressions into meticulous portraits. As a result, students miss valuable points by focusing on the fatigue under their eyes, over-exposed lighting from the afternoon sun, stray hairs, and disturbances in the background. Sharing ideas becomes laborious, even if you were passionate about the reading beforehand. “Zoom has made me overtly aware of my appearance and how others perceive me … I feel less like my organic self,” Ranna Kiswanni (A24) said. Though Zoom can impede good conversation, at least it’s a known evil. I’m immensely scared and excited for the necessary adjustments of in-person classes — no longer will I control my thinking face. We’ve all become so accustomed to online classes, even the psychological toll of seeing ourselves for several hours per day. In the absence of our portraits, how will our conversations change? When you enter those sterile hazmat tents for in-person class, will you mourn the loss of your reflection? 16 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 �Art by Erin Allen the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 17 �I could not help but ask. I wanted to know what he really thought. The five-minute interview for a substitute teaching job, with the imposingly tall and warm assistant principal of the high school, was running its course, and I was curious—I’m always curious, and I like striking a personal note if I can: “How do you feel about where this is all going?” “Honestly?” he said, “I’m scared.” The twenty-five-year veteran of education had just led me through three floors of hallways so sanitized they sparkled like teeth in a toothpaste commercial. He greeted every student we happened to pass (there weren’t many) with warmth. He knew all their names. We came to a vacant classroom and sat down six feet apart. COVID’s The January snow fell quietly outside. “You know, we’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve never had to do anything like this. Things had already changed, what with the implementing of Google Classroom and such, but now? School is not the same. And I don’t know if it will ever be.” He told me he fears for his students’ development. He did admit that, in fact, some students seemed to be doing just as well as they were before, and some maybe were even getting ahead, and that even further, with Google Classroom and the digitization of learning, the kids almost run the show themselves now, they’re so savvy. But he was afraid still, for all of the kids, for schools as we’ve known them. He felt that their social development—like hallways, hands, and everything else—has been sanitized too, and that this was not 18 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 “How do you feel about where this is all going?” good, even for the kids who seemed to maintain themselves academically, let alone the kids who have actually taken a turn for the worst. And I felt for him. We seemed to share something in common. I could see myself in him, in his position. I could imagine, for someone so extroverted as himself, who has managed to carve a noble, honest life out of the raw blocks of his character—an enthusiasm, and that peculiar warmth productive of growth known as charisma—that this whole situation would be the proverbial rug from under the feet. Enforced space. Obscured faces. Mazes of taped arrows. Hallways emptied. Once full Parallel of energy, now not. Feeling follows personality. It made sense that he should feel that way, considering the way he was. Meet people where they’re at. I lost my job when the pandemic first hit in March— furloughed—but I felt relieved. I was working in coffee, at a great company, but I wanted something else. I wasn’t in the right place. I had been lost in food service jobs in the years after my undergraduate. They were easy to get. But what was easy to get then became hard to get out of. Time grinded. I always felt myself to be somewhere else. The lockdown freed me up, halting the rolling stone. I felt a chance. That’s how I found myself dressed business casual, interviewing to sub. “Honestly?” he said, “I’m scared.” Though we shared some element—because I genuinely sensed him, understood him—I was unlike him in that he had already carved himself out when this whole thing hit, while I was still being carved out. And I didn’t like that I was, but that’s how I was. That’s where I was at. Maybe this isn’t just personality, maybe it’s disposition, or rather position, but the personality is where we read the event, how we interpret it. For what it’s worth, if you want to get paid to do your St. John’s reading, start subbing. I had zero students the other day. Someone maybe caught COVID (the secretary wasn’t even sure), so everyone in contact with this English class was quarantining. Every hour with the bell I lifted my eyes from Plato’s Republic to the empty classroom so I could mark everyone absent. Meanwhile, Socrates was asking Glaucon if he realized Lives Alexander Andreosatos, GI’22 that the four or five types of political constitutions were just the crystallized personalities of the people themselves. Whichever personality predominates “tips the scales,” and the others are dragged kicking and screaming. It’s a shame when the personality becomes the event, when the personality is the event. No one understands each other. The introverts think the extroverts are dangerous because they aren’t kissing the floor of their apartment like they are, like someone lost at sea, sticky with salt, who finally and unexpectedly makes land. And the extroverts think the introverts are crazy for finding solace somewhere more private than the grind of nine-to-five. Everyone just wants their life. �Don’t you give someone their parallel life when you understand them? The snow kept falling outside the classroom. So slow, so constant, so quiet. A giant wet blanket. One thing covering everything. Winter is only fair because we have summer. But I love the winter. I love the snow. I love the deep air that follows it. And above all, the intense winter blue. Lycurgus blanketed his city with new laws. What happens to people when something so new, so singular, happens to them, and it changes them? New laws make new people. Who will be the new people made from these new things that have befallen us, from these new things that we’ve had to do? Will we understand each other? Will we feel each other? Will we give each other our parallel lives? Digital Art by Elizabeth Dowdy, ’23 “Lex” is a noun in Latin, taking on the nominative singular form. When translated to English, it means “law.” the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 19 �T he Republic warns us to take care, for we often do not 250150 possible moves. Like the Breakout code, AlphaGo know where our laughter leads. Nearly one year ago, was programmed with a singular objective, win. However, the threat of death became all the more present in our minds in Game Two on the 37th turn, AlphaGo far exceeded the and in the air and, in response, we rushed into our homes simple objective of winning and instead played a highly and away from a world where a distinct lack of control stylized move, one calculated to have a 1:10,000 chance of asked from us was a price too high to pay. There, we found being played by a human. At first, the move was thought ourselves opposite screens, ranging from person sized to to be a mistake. Only over time, was the move understood quarter sized, each offering refuge in a digital world where to be a part of a complex strategy. Sedol, when reflecting our need to interact could be sated without us relinquishing on the game, remarked, “surely AlphaGo is creative. (2)” control of our immediate environments. Zoom satisfied the Once again, the “innovative” move displayed the emerging need for space to meet our neighbor, Netflix became the creative capacity of AI algorithms (3). local theater, and Amazon reopened the corner market. But To continue this conversation, it is incumbent upon me why stop there? When we come to the agora in code, why to offer a definition of creativity. I believe creativity occurs not reap the benefits? in the making of something that is innovative, in that it is To its hundreds of millions of customers, Zoom offers new, and meaningful, in that it is either important or useful. the mute and stop video buttons, which allow us to choose According to this definition, a child’s drawing may not be the parts of ourselves we desire to transmit. Meanwhile, creative to a stranger who finds it along a road. However, on Netflix, we continue to form to a parent who pours meaning relationships with characters who into the work, the “newness” of the DIANA VILLEGAS GI‘22 will never leave the stage to reenter drawing, in that it has never before our world and where they might existed, coupled with the meaning even invite us to utter our own lines. imbued upon it, in that it is deemed In Amazon’s online market, we to be of sentimental importance run no risks of unwanted personal or of decorative use, satisfies the encounters. In this world where conditions that make the drawing an pixels are proxies, each new feature artifact of creativity. commodifies control by bringing new Arguments critical of a computer’s comforts to the market. But what ability to be creative commonly take occurs when the desire for control AI and Our Impulse to Control one of two forms. On one hand, it is extends into the human relationship said that a computer executing code Creativity with creativity? is not creative: by merely executing In the spring of 2015, research predetermined instructions it fails scientists from Google’s DeepMind project unveiled an AI to be responsible for the output. Instead, the coder is said algorithm capable of besting professional human play in to be creative in the literal act of writing new code and in Atari’s beloved 1970s game, Breakout. The algorithm was embarking on the project, thereby implicitly deeming it to given the objective of increasing its point total to win the be of use or import. On the other hand, it is commonly said game, but not relayed any instructions relating to the game’s that if an algorithm were to generate outputs at random, mechanics. After 240 minutes of gameplay, the algorithm making it more closely involved with the formation of not only was able to play and beat the game, but it created a something new, the mass of outputs would lack meaning in winning strategy that was unknown to the very developers the absence of a human or computer’s ability to label them who crafted the code (1). useful or important. One year and one month later in South Korea, owever, according to this definition that bases DeepMind chose to test its AI algorithm, AlphaGo, in a creativity on newness and meaning, both the Atari live match against eighteen time world champion Lee Sedol Breakout and AlphaGo algorithms are indeed creative. in a best-of-five round match of Go. Often heralded as the In the former case, the algorithm, through reinforced hardest board game, the game of Go is played on a grid learning, taught itself the rules of the game and developed where stones of two opposing colors, each representing an a new strategy that was unknown to the developers and opponent, are laid in a battle for territory. The game has the game itself at the time of the code’s initial execution. Ctrl + Alt: H 20 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 �The algorithm then, without the intervention of humans, ascribed meaning to the code by identifying its usefulness, denoted by its decision to employ the strategy it deemed valuable in each successive game. In the latter case, AlphaGo played a novel move that befuddled expert commentators who were ready to label it an outright error. The algorithm ascribed meaning to this move in choosing the single play out of a constellation of options, deeming it useful in achieving its objective. Even if my argument that AI is already indeed creative fails to persuade, technology companies are nonetheless pursuing AI algorithms capable of authoring their own creative acts. Thus, we are left with a situation akin to Pascal’s wager, which creates a betting matrix between positive or negative human action and a not yet knowable outcome that may lead to infinite rewards or endless drawbacks. In the case of AI and creativity, if AI algorithms prove capable of creative acts we can either expect to see innumerable benefits or unthinkable losses both stemming from this desire to remove creativity from the human realm to the digital where it can be controlled. If technology is never able to achieve such a decoupling, then we will have engaged in a futile thought problem at no cost or benefit to ourselves. Thus, we must consider the possibility of AI delinking creativity from humans, if only to be a bit over prepared. The looming creativity of AI offers humans control of a relationship never before subject to our wills. For all of history, mankind was held captive to the caprice of creativity. With no promised timeline and no set formula, inventions were the result of happenstance and the state of men’s souls. Just as aristocracies were more likely to produce great thinkers who took advantage of the leisure afforded to them by their stations, societies capable of meeting the existential needs of their citizenry were able to allow those citizens to turn their excess energies towards creation. However, AI offers a divergent path to creativity, one that makes no demands on a society’s standards of living, and a path that need no longer linger in uncertainty and hope for the next creation. The divorce between creativity and the environment in which it is born stems from a desire for control. Civilizations may not have to wait for the next great invention to arrive with societal shifts, the labors of men, or the careful cultivation of their minds. Rather, AI offers ownership over code that is ignorant of the regime it serves and does not require that physical or mental needs be met. In a potential devaluation of societal conditions, ever-fewer needs of an AI can more easily be catered to by a disordered system that values output over process. In the worst case, a society may no longer see freedom of thought as a necessary condition for creative outputs, as AI algorithms meet the economic demand for creativity without making such demands of their own. As we entertain ourselves on Zoom, Netflix and Amazon, and reap the benefits of creative AIs, let Plato’s words serve as a reminder to heed where our laughter leads. footnotes (1) www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y. 2:45 (2) Ibid., 52:27 (3) “The Google DeepMind Challenge Match” Deepmind, deepmind.com/alphago-korea. Isa Kiedrowski the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 21 �Writing on the Soul By Joseph Padgett, ‘23 T he soul, in addition to being the highest part of the human, is the most eternal; for it is not our bodies that Jesus will judge, but souls. Since this is the case, the activities of the body should be understood as coming from the soul, and as essential to the soul, as fruit is essential to a tree. Now Paul says that works will not save us; our natural human activity occurs during time, and is therefore finite, but finite things come from the infinite (as a segment comes from a line, or creation from its Creator). So, when praising or disparaging some human action, we implicitly recognise the source of that action. Even when we see no connection between the source (the person) and their activity, the question we ask about that person is “how could they do such a thing?” In this way we recognise something infinite from which we act, which I am calling the soul. Over the course of our lives, we act, and the source of these actions is an overflowing of the soul. My soul, for example, overflowing with the source of music, drives me to sing, to play, to listen, and to compose. We might call this property “musicality,” since the result of this overflowing, this abundance in me, is music. The soul is not however of one type of activity, so accounting for all the abundances which manifest our activity is difficult. What abundances, what overflowings, result in me reading my seminar book? An abundance of time, maybe, and abundance of love for the college, for 22 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 my fellow seminarians, for my tutors, for Dante, when we were reading his Comedy, and so forth. The soul is therefore both manifold and unified; the soul always acts at once, and mixes whatever is in it into one course of action. This is nice and well when people act decently and kindly, but when they act horribly, out of character as one might say, what is the account? How can someone who, at all other times seems good, act badly? The soul is like a vessel, since it is acted on from the outside through the body, and the soul modifies its constitution around the external acts it undergoes. Thus there is evil in all of us, since we all have undergone or been affected by evil. Now it is a bit of a leap to claim that by mere exposure to evil, we ourselves are evil; yet it can not be ignored that however autonomous we might wish to see ourselves, we can not alter anything that is past. We may only act because of the time that came before us, since every object we interact with and every thought we think has its precursor in the past. I could not live my childhood in poverty, because my parents were moderately wealthy, and likewise I grew up in the singular set of conditions that I grew up in; I cannot escape the fact of these conditions, and if any evil was among them, then I was raised upon this evil, and my soul has received it. It is not within my power to think as if I were poor, or Norwegian, or grew up on a farm, and likewise I must pursue God blind to all those things which I am cut off from. Likewise my life involves my acting proudly, and my responses to my pride; I cannot live as if I were never proud, since the current state of my soul has its source in my response to my pride, and in my pride. How can the soul become faithful then, if pride and its ilk are still within the soul? I would first clarify what I said earlier, that the soul will be judged for faith. Judgement is over what is good, but since human activity is an over-pouring of what is within, and evil is within the soul, it is impossible for the soul to become good without changing what is within the soul. Furthermore, since the evil within the soul is a source of human activity, it is essential, so it cannot be removed by internal means. Rather, it often is the case that people who start doing evil end up even more evil, as if they somehow increase the evil within themselves by pouring it out. In this case then, the soul must seek something external to itself, if it is to pour forth good things; the source of good in human activity must come from somewhere else, so that the source has its own source. What is good in the soul comes not from the soul then, but from something greater, which is God, and the process by which it comes is faith. The faithful soul therefore is one that recognises itself, as containing evil and unable to remove it, but also one seeks goodness, through the death of Jesus, who took upon his soul all the evils in our own soul, that our souls might instead be filled with good, which we might pour out abundantly in all of our activity. “How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew, 12:34-37) �“How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew, 12:34-37 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 23 �{johnnie life} Smoke Without Mirrors Burning one down when everything is already burning down around us by Daniel Nathan, ‘24 Frantic, psych-ward white, snowjets flurry to the ground, burying beneath them the once grassy patch of mud behind the Campbell parking lot. It’s not quite blizzarding outside —to be honest, it’s not even close—but the sheer volume and intensity of the snow squall is impressive to one such as myself, accustomed to the mild winters in Georgia. Gazing out a third floor window, I count five people smoking—semi-circled up together, shivering and chatting— all braving the onslaught. The cigarette smoke floats, softly drifting and sinking, carried along by biting, billowing winds, as the clouds of smoke bloom and then eventually disperse. I recoil at the thought of stepping outside, headlong into the cold-shouldered embrace, to join in for a cig. I imagine with a wince, having to get all bundled up, beyond any reasonable conclusion, just for the momentary, ephemeral pleasure of puffing on poison. . . . . . . I then immediately go and join them. What else was one to do? P rior to arriving in Annapolis, I’d heard chatter about the recent removal of the ashtrays that were once scattered around campus. For some, the ashtrays were a St. John’s staple, and their absence was felt, but for those working at the school the process seemed to be a cumbersome and laborintensive undertaking, not to mention being just one more precautionary expense, in a long line of others. The implications tangled up in the policy change-up sent a signal, lighting the proverbial smokestack and blowing the horn. This confirmed, for many, a 24 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 shifting tide of opinion and attitude within the administration’s outlook toward tobacco use on campus, conjuring up images of a drab, smokedeprived campus, tinted grey in our post-pandemic future. “We had to get rid of those ashtrays this summer. I couldn’t lift them myself and nearly broke my back, heavy as hell,” one maintenance worker recounted to me, with a wry half-smile. “They turned out to be too much for just two or three guys to get out, so eventually we had to bring in a crane and rip them up out of there,” he said, somewhat sympathetically, his voice tinged with an air of mourning, as I lit a fresh cig, standing under a bevy of ghoulish storm clouds, dusted by sleet. At first, I didn’t think much of smokers being confined to just one relatively open, if not inviting, area to go. I reasoned that it could be worse, at least it’s not one of those shoddy and crudely put together sections that are usually just tucked away somewhere, shamefully. As far as smoking sections go, they fairly reasonably tend to be designated in some grime-infested back alley, often with broken glass and unidentifiable, if not scientifically intriguing, smells. The Campbell lot’s grass/ice/mud patch would surely do. But the longer I’ve been here, the more reliably often I would hear gripes and groans about the new restrictions, mostly from returning students not expecting the change in smoking policy. This new cordoned off smoking zone seemed, by many accounts, to reflect a sea-change: sure, a minorly inconsequential shift that would probably prove to be, at most, a mere inconvenience. Still though, there felt Joseph Cunningham a shift in the school’s thinking all the same. Now to head down a different vein, shouldn’t the school’s current social distancing measures already be enough to allow all pedestrians on campus, at a given time, plenty of space to keep 6 feet apart from any potentially unmasked smoker? And plainly, yes, burning one down, a stoge or bogey or a dart: this smoking of a cigarette inherently requires one to remove their face covering and had the school retained its laissez-faire attitude on the issue, others would’ve been put at an unacceptable and unnecessarily high risk. In my own verbiage, I see the campus Health and Safety measures as put in place and enforced, not as a balancing act between the scales of convenience and safety with a dash of donor appeasement, but rather as to provide--for both students and staff-the greatest extent of safety, security, and well-being, as well as the lowest risk of COVID infection, and most consequentially, to make appropriate use of every tool available to prevent unmitigated spread. Yet still, the specific timing of this policy change-up does, however, spark up some level of curiosity and might �even raise valid notes of skepticism. For instance, during these hellscapeplague times, wouldn’t constricting the area where people are allowed to smoke, in effect only serve to corral people and promote concentrated gatherings? One possible approach that might help smooth the sometimes rocky transition back to campus life would be to simply designate multiple areas as smoking sections, spread out across our own 36 acres. This prospect also found near unanimous support among those student-smokers that I spoke to on this topic. Implementing this strategy would not only deter unnecessary, unsafe gatherings and congestion, but could also work to cut down on the more social type of smoking, as well as, saving time for those who live or may be coming from far-flung corners of campus. Within the polity though, some opinions differ, spanning the entire spectrum—but mostly from ambivalent to unaware. On the new smoking section, January Freshman Avery Lehr told me, handling an American Spirit, “It’s pretty annoying but I guess it makes sense . . . wait a second, no it doesn’t—whatever.” This sentiment seems to sum up much of what I’ve heard amongst the smoking population at St. John’s: an unholy concoction of wishywashy feelings and general confusion about what anything so subject to upheaval is supposed to mean. The mainlined disruption of this past year has relegated smokers-rights issues to the bottom of the laundry-list of concerns—a sentiment I agree with. The questioning, the poking and prodding, should still carry on, but the widespread upheaval of 2020 (and now 2021) rerouted priorities; a good, safe education still places high on the leaderboard; the whereabouts of cigarette consumption just might not. {close encounters} A Look at the Fox Noah Hale A round midnight, walking down a snow-shoveled Gloucester Avenue on my way back from campus, I see a four-legged spot trot across the road. Cat—dog—neither—but a red fox, glowing orange in the dark. And only moments after it slips away, another one runs across the road. If you’re skeptical, be up and about around dusk or dawn—chances are you’ll encounter one either on or off campus. Foxes usually live in packs (called “skulks” or “leashes”), and if you see one, you can try to look for more. You can also leave your window open late at night and try to listen out for their sharp gekkering. A native species to Maryland, they aren’t a new company. However, more recently, red foxes have adapted to living in urban areas. The garbage-piles lined along the streets of Annapolis have been a boon to the scavengers, and because of the lockdown they probably moved in closer to the downtown where there was once more foot-traffic. They’ve become minor symbols to the area— the namesake of Old Fox Books, a bibliophile’s sanctuary, and Fox’s Den, a delicious addition to Main Street. But they’ve also now become an urban myth. There have been numerous sightings of foxes on our campus, especially on the back lot by our side of College Creek—unsurprisingly, since foxes burrow their dens—and there’s plenty of wide-open, unused ground back there now—but they’re always unexpected, always disguised among a thousand squirrels and birds and tourists and Johnnies. They’re characteristically pointy triangularears and bushy tails would stand out among the rest of the wildlife if they weren’t nocturnal. Stereotypically, the fox we know is sly, villainous—a trickster-god-infurs—and maybe it’s true. Perhaps soon they will outright outnumber our tiny polity—perhaps they already do. Perhaps it’s inevitable that they will soon run across campus as bold as they do across the empty traffic lanes now, biting their way through our cliques, swallowing the freshmen whole. For now though, try and look for them— or maybe let them look for you. Sofe Cote the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 25 �{album anniversaries} Passing Time in a Time of Waiting Britt Lamson I n times of uncertainty, we find reprieve in things we find beautiful. Music is one such source of beauty, and so I present to you a few pieces that have significant anniversaries this year: Perry & Kingsley The In Sound from Way Out! Released 1966 55th Anniversary Esperanza Spalding Emily’s D+Evolution Released 2016 5th Anniversary Esperanza Spalding Emily’s D+Evolution The 5th album of acclaimed modern musician Esperanza Spalding, Emily’s D+Evolution is a funk-fusion jazz concept album about the thoughts and ideas of Spalding’s alter-ego character, Emily (taken from her middle name). Heavily inspired by the psychedelic funk rock of groups like Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s, the album brings the style forward into the present with soulful, impassioned vocals, soft harmonies, and emphasis on piano and the upright bass, all with current studio production techniques. Highly recommended for anyone who wants a thoughtful album that also grooves. 26 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 Perry & Kingsley The In Sound from Way Out! An early piece in the development of electronic music, The In Sound from Way Out! was a project made during the fruitful but short-lived partnership of Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley, both of whom were each influential to electronic instrumentation and studio techniques. This early piece showcases a lively inventiveness and playfulness with original compositions and reinterpretations of older classical pieces. This collection follows early electronic music’s space-age inclinations as from Delia Derbyshire’s creation of the Doctor Who theme’s electronic arrangement, and hints at the style and success to come with later albums such as Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach. It is highly recommended for anyone who wants a fun, poppy listen. I hope that you have found or recognized something that you love here and that joy, comfort and beauty come to your heart in listening to these pieces of music. �Andrew Lloyd Webber The Phantom of the Opera A performance that remains popular to this day, Andrew Lloyed Webber’s musical adaptation of the classic The Phantom of the Opera hit the stage in 1986. Utilizing many of Webber’s signature stylistic choices, the soundtrack is a bombast of clear pop sensibility: big orchestral backing and synthesizer organs, the clear, soaring voices of the cast , in addition to elements of opera as the source material alludes. A fantastic listen for anyone who wants to hear a great story, and to be swept away in rock opera grandeur. Frank Sinatra The Voice of Frank Sinatra The very first album released in the long and storied career of Frank Sinatra, The Voice of Frank Sinatra is an early showcase of Sinatra’s vocal chops before he would hit his career’s stride a few years later. This album was released before the adoption of the standard 12” format by record companies for LPs, and thus contains only eight songs in its original release, though other recordings have been added on subsequent re-releases. Highly recommended for anyone who fancies a crooning voice over a good swinging tune, this album is a showcase of standards sung by a youthful singer maturing into an identifiable icon. Andrew Lloyd Webber The Phantom of the Opera Debuted 1986 35th Anniversary The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East (Live) Capturing the vibrancy and spontaneity of a live recording, At Fillmore East captures a tight-knit band at the peak of their youth in a live outing wherein they let the reigns of improvisation take over—jamming with soaring, swinging solos and rearrangements of pieces. Tragically, later that year, Duane Allman—group leader of the band—passed away in a motorcycle accident. The band became popular and continued to record and play, but this release is the only live recording from that period. Available in multiple editions, this album’s original release was a double LP with seven extended songs selected from the two nights that they played full concerts at the Fillmore. Re-releases and expanded editions include more of the full concerts. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a soulful experience with a variety of musical moods, from rollicking to relaxing. Frank Sinatra The Voice of Frank Sinatra Released 1946 75th Anniversary The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East Recorded 1971 50th Anniversary the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 27 �{sports by bryce jacobsen} Freshman Bodies and Freshman Souls Submitted by Chris Krueger {the following list is reprinted from a 1982 issue of the Gadfly} The reasons, both physical and metaphysical, why everyone ought to become involved in our sports program are many. I list a few: 1. We have the best athletic program of any college in the country. 2. Exercise is good for the body... unless you sprain an ankle, or something like that. 3. Most of us feel better, are more alert, and can get more work done if our bodies are healthy and our souls relaxed. 4. Friendly competition is one of the really fun things in life. It is good for your soul. 5. Your circle of acquaintances will be greatly enlarged. This is good for the soul, provided you can separate the wheat from the chaff. 6. You will learn to accept, and bear with, thousands of split-second decisions from the officials, a few of which are wrong. This is very good for the soul. 7. Do you like to strive for, and achieve, specific goals? If so, consider our College Blazers. They are much sought after, and the pathway is clearly laid out. Striving for goals is good for your soul. 8. It is probably true that more pure fun occurs in the athletic program than in any other area of the college. Fun is good for your soul. 9. If you get involved in team sports, and become a “good team player”, you have realized that there are things in the Universe that are more important than your ego. That is good for your soul. 10. The benefits of exercise and friendly competition, learned while one is young, should be maintained for the rest of your life... i.e., they should become habitual. For virtue, as the Philosopher said, is a habit. 11. You will get to know numerous Alumni, Tutors, and Staff members who participate in the program. This is good for your soul, or ought to be... provided that they are the proper sort of role models. 12. Our showers are the best at the college; always plenty of hot water. 13. Are you bothered by, or worried by, tobacco fumes in the air? Come to the gym. The whole building is a nicotine-free zone. 14. If you perform some sort of heroic deed on the athletic field, your name will be mentioned in our weekly column. Heroes are always acclaimed. But do not be carried away by this. Remember that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave”. 15. A high percentage of our best students are active participants in our program. 16. Those who play, stay. 17. The gym is not particularly well-equipped, as gyms go. But it has washers and dryers, and a coke-machine... and I will explain to you, if you ask me, how you can get yourself in tip-top physical shape, without any equipment at all. 18. You can sit in an old-time barber’s chair in my office... you can pump yourself up or down, and adjust the slope high or low. Where else can you do that? 19. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. 20. It is better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness. So there you have it... twenty good reasons why you should participate in our athletic program. If you are not convinced by all this, come and talk with me... I can probably think of some more good reasons. Or better yet, talk with the upperclassmen. They will tell you all sorts of strange, interesting and wondrous things. Bryce Jacobsen Director of Athletics The Gadfly - September 9, 1982 28 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 �{dialogue} How to Name a Boat Joseph Padgett Kudanonaus: My friend, I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a predicament; I bought myself a beautiful ship, but I don’t know what to name it! Diokaisthetes: And a worthy ship ought to have a worthy name? Kudanonaus: I do, but I don’t see how a ship could ever be worthy enough to Diokaisthetes: You finally got one bear a virtuous name, something like now? Hmm…didn’t you make a list of Illustrious. How could it be known noble names to choose from, that you to be illustrious, before it was named sent to me? that? Diokaisthetes: So you want a name which that Elean stranger might say describes the ship “in its very being?” Kudanonaus: That would be perfect, if it were possible! Diokaisthetes: Shall we commence the categorising? Kudanonaus: Diokaisthetes, friend, I Diokaisthetes: Are you saying that did, but now I’m not so sure whether such a name is deceptive? they’re any good. Kudanonaus: Most likely; it would Diokaisthetes: Shall we go through be better to give such a name after the them one by one then, just to be ship was illustrious, rather than before sure? Adventurous, Alacritous, Auda- when it was unproven. cious…? Diokaisthetes: So you can call your Kudanonaus: Stop! You’ll take forever, ship illustrious later, when she has and besides, I don’t like any of them shown you something, but for now, anymore, as I said. what will you call her? Kudanonaus: But that would take forever! And also it would be difficult, and long. Where would you even start? Diokaisthetes: So what’s wrong with Kudanonaus: Something would be fitthem, that you liked them before, but ting? don’t now? Diokaisthetes: How about Unproven? Kudanonaus: They aren’t fitting, Diokaisthetes. Kudanonaus: Very funny. But surely you won’t deny that I ought to give it Diokaisthetes: They’re not? They one name for convenience’s sake? I call would all be fitting qualities in a per- my cloak “cloak,” regardless of whether son. it keeps me dry or not. I’m not going to start calling it Unfaithful after that Kudanonaus: It’s not a person I drenching I got on Sunday. bought, but a boat! Diokaisthetes: True, true. Say, doesn’t Diokaisthetes: But didn’t you say earli- your ship have a name already, after a er it was a ship? fashion? Kudanonaus: Imagine if someone suggests a silly name? Kudanonaus: Well I guess I misspoke, Kudanonaus: Does it? calling it a boat, but all the same; a ship and a person are not the same, and Diokaisthetes: Surely it has a builder, naming a ship after a virtue seems like and with that a number? lying, or asking for trouble at least. Kudanonaus: Are you suggesting I call Diokaisthetes: But you do think your it Naucrates Five? ship (or any ship) is still worth naming. Diokaisthetes: Was it not Naucrates’ fifth ship? Kudanonaus: Yes. Kudanonaus: But it’s my ship too. Kudanonaus: I’ll think about it a bit more Diokaisthetes, there must be something I can call it, but I’m not sure right now. Diokaisthetes: Well if you don’t like that, we could just ask around. Kudanonaus: That seems like the worst idea yet! Diokaisthetes: Why? Pray tell. Diokaisthetes: Well, what does it matter if someone suggests a ridiculous name? Kudanonaus: I don’t like the idea of a ship having a ridiculous name, Diokaisthetes. Ships are dignified objects. Diokaisthetes: Well unless you’re going to name it Earl, or some person’s name, which you won’t even do, since your ship is less than a person; I don’t see what you can do. Isa Kiedrowski the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 29 �{movie review} Malcolm and Marie Review Hope Taglich Title Malcolm and Marie MPAA Rating R Director Sam Levinson Starring John David Washington, Zendaya Runtime 1 hr 46 mins ASHLEY: What’d she say? SAM: Well, she says John David and Zendaya are great. come across as pretentious and poorly written. Pretentious and poorly written, my ass. I know you know who Ida Lupino is. You know who probably doesn’t? The fucking white girl from The Gadfly, man. ASHLEY: That’s true. ASHLEY: She’s never liked your work, though. SAM: What’s next….she says she likes the soundtrack…..oh! That’s it. She says that it’s emotionally hollow. She says that it’s “Dollar Tree John Cassavetes.” Now, why is it that she has to compare me to John Cassavetes? Is it because I’m white? Tell me, why not the next Kathleen Collins? I doubt she even knows who Kathleen Collins is. SAM: I don’t give a fuck. Netflix paid me 30 million dollars for this shit. What It Is: Sam Levinson’s black-and-white drama stars John David Washington and Zendaya in the title roles. He’s a filmmaker who relentlessly spars with his failed actress-turned-model girlfriend after forgetting to thank her in a speech at the premiere of his seminal film (which is partially based on her life). Meditations on race, artistry, authenticity, love, and abuse ASHLEY: ensue. I don’t know who Haile Gerima is. What We Think: (The scene is in black-and-white. SAM LEVINSON is aggressively eating Kraft mac and cheese, reading some of the reviews for his latest film on his phone. Suddenly, he sees something that displeases him. He calls out to his wife. According to Google, her name is Ashley). SAM: Ashley! SAM: Now, she’s saying that the arguments feel contrived after a while. But isn’t all of cinema contrived? Cinema doesn’t have to be real. It’s about what you do with reality. ASHLEY: Right. SAM: And she’s saying that Malcolm’s (ASHLEY slinks into the room in a monologues went on for too long? Yves Saint Laurent dress). Isn’t that the point of cinema, too? To stretch the meaning of time? Time is ASHLEY: essentially fluid in film, baby. I hate What is it, Sam? these dumb-ass critics trying to flex their college degrees by saying that SAM: they know who Ida Lupino is, and The white girl from The Gadfly wrote therefore Malcolm’s monologues this dumb-ass review of my movie. name-dropping different filmmakers 30 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 (ASHLEY smiles and sighs with affectionate exasperation. Slow fadeout as Sam Cooke’s “Soothe Me” plays). My Grade: C-, I really wanted to like this movie. I counted the days down until its release on Netflix. I am an ardent fan of the “couple yelling at each other” genre, and I had heard that Sam Levinson’s newest piece begged comparison to John Cassavetes. Cassavetes, sweetie, I’m so sorry. It is well-acted and handsome but has the emotional depth of an “Am I the Asshole” shitpost on Reddit. Both characters are markedly unsympathetic, despite the actors’ best efforts. Despite their lack of likability, they are not human enough to be antiheroes. This is a fake movie about fake people with fake emotions. It is an effective showcase for Zendaya–as well as for Washington, my future husband, for whom I will make a decidedly less dry plate of mac and cheese someday. However, it is not an Oscar-caliber auteur piece; it just plays one on TV. �{art} Poetry and Art by Daryl Locke Daryl Locke Patron Devil in my head Please take a seat in the garden of slumbers I need to leave you like deadbeats And go to the next hole in the satin I must not grow how tulips do in pipes And hear sad jazz only when one is being martyred --- I must think in silence Shoo devil, shoo Symposium Seminar, 2020 --FAITH What am I without you? A name without its first letter? I can not possibly see myself as godlessness. The word itself is an illustrious conviction. The meaning itself - trust, loyalty, and belief - Is reliable. I am one of piety. The letters themselves - faith - stick together Please be with me forever. You are what makes me temperate. You are the cause of my dreams. --continued on page 33 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 31 �{satire} A Guide to Perfect Distant Communication During Covid-19 Rose Zhang C ommunication is essential. As the etymology suggests, communication comes from the word “communicare”–the Latin root which means “to share.” We share our lives, knowledge, and feelings to build up relationships and communities. Especially in our current state of physical distancing due to the pandemic, we are reminded of the significance of communication since it limits our socializing life to distant communications such as texting, emailing, or video calls. However, with the growing use of distant communication, people disregard the fundamentals of communication, some have even taken horrible approaches towards it, nullifying its purpose and causing unamendable detriments to significant relationships. So we shall briefly cover a few but very important guidelines in distant communications for maintaining and strengthening relationships. One. Take your time. Although the growing industrialization praises accelerated lifestyle, “the faster the better” is a misconception. In the well-known Aesop’s fable — the tortoise and the rabbit — slow and steady wins the race. Replying hastily can result in typos, miscommunication from empty words, and incoherent thoughts. To avoid these, we must take enough time to read and analyze the message 32 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 and deliberate the response cautiously and meticulously. Consider ignoring the messages completely to enhance the outcome. While this may come off as rude, it is nevertheless the apt action to take when we aren’t sure how to respond or there isn’t any time on hand because we’re baking bread or preoccupied with contemplations. And with the time we have been granted, we should learn how to utilize it to the best extent. Therefore, take your time when responding. Two. Decline calls. Since texting is extremely time consuming, people often resort to calling instead. However, this is the most common mistake we make. Calls are obscure, we never know the recipient’s body language nor their facial expression. With the absence of these significant indicators in communication, miscommunications and misunderstandings result, things we want to avoid greatly during this time of the pandemic. Calling reduces the quality of communication, as the idiom says: quality over quantity. We must remember frequent calling does not equate to firm relationships. So decline calls, or more specifically, either forget or bail out on meetings when it’s possible to maintain quality communication with people. Three. Patience. In both waiting for a response, whether that may be a text or a call, and reaching out, we need patience. We must have patience in waiting for a response, understanding the responder is merely trying to optimize the communication experience by waiting for the perfect timing to respond. For example, when your “What’s up text” is left unreplied. Fret not. They are waiting for an exciting event to happen that they could respond entertainingly. Also, we need to have patience in reaching out, only reach out when there’s a need. Initiating conversations over the internet can easily incite an endless cycle of overthinking and anxiety. Additionally, we reach out for frivolous talks, which should be saved �for future face to face conversations. While it could make the recipient less lonely by reaching out, we must remember that most are enjoying this rare isolation and we should all minimize interruptions of their enjoyment. By having patience the recipient will know surely we are getting in touch because they are useful. And people enjoy being helpful and useful to others, as it bestows upon them a sense of purpose. It also helps us; as we reduce the frequency of reaching out, it mitigates our anxiety. Most importantly, having patience ensures us to give enough personal space for our loved ones. Thus, have patience. Last but not least, Confidence is the key. Confidence is the key to success, no exception in communication. One fatal mistake people often make is excessive apologizing. While the main objective for apologies is to remedy mistakes, sometimes people apologize beforehand to indicate their uncertainty of their action. Uncertainty is the enemy of confidence, and all indication of uncertainty must be avoided at all cost. So do not apologize, but rather act like it never happened when confronted with the accusation of declining calls or ignoring text messages. There’s no need to mention all the late replies and missed calls. For mentioning them distracts people from the actual conversation and reduces our confidence in choosing the healthy decision for communication. We do not need to start the conversation apologizing or asking for a convenient communication time. Simply hang up the call at your own convenience, or leave your recipient on read at any time. People are drawn to confidence, and therefore despite most of the socializing being virtual, this confidence will strengthen the relationships and draw people closer to us over the screens. Other than these rules, one last important thing to remember during COVID-19, no to socializing, yes to distancing. I hope we all stay safe and best wishes as you apply these tips to your distant communication. continued from page 31 Self Portrait, 2021 --Picture of Griffin Picture me Dandyish I am sweet Poems In the afternoon Under a setting sun Interrupting Chaos silences when I’m near War If not blooms I make the Lilies cry Love And I make the sadness Die. the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 33 �Isa Kiedrowski {music} Pandemic Ponderings: Music Listeners, Artists and the Industry Britt Lamson T he pandemic has affected everything, and the arts are no exception. This era will continue to influence multiple facets of the recording industry for years to come: how artists create music, how it is shared through avenues of performance and within the music industry, and how the listeners interact with pieces. Like many aspects of life right now, it is hard to determine what exactly has happened and describe it in speech; nevertheless, we can attempt to pinpoint some aspects with observation and reflection. Although recordings are a relatively recent innovation, they are ingrained in the ways we understand and interact with music. Being able to capture and listen back to music has changed dramatically over the years, from the humble beginnings of the wax cylinders to their adoption for recording music; through the development of shellac records to vinyl; magnetic tapes to cassettes; and 34 compact discs into modern, digital audio compression on computers. And that’s just considering all of the ways to obtain and own pieces of music, and most of them are physical! Nowadays, we deal in the aether of streaming. No longer need one hope that a song comes on the radio or overhead speaker at a grocery mart, or arduously search for a copy to buy, or hang around with a friend who has it just to give it a listen. There are exceptions, of course, as some pieces have yet to enter the digital realm. But oh, do I digress! It’s so easy to get caught up in the fascinating historical details that one forgets our broader inquiry — to examine past and present trends in recorded music. Now, to listeners’ great luck, streaming services have become popular and convenient over the past decade. For the most part, our ability to access new and old pieces alike remains unchanged. The availability of pieces in particular formats, however, varies by medium. For example, because CD sales are declining in the United States, it is difficult to find pandemic-era albums in that format. On the other hand, vinyl records remain steady and albums have continued to be issued, though most sales have been through websites directly from the artists and their labels. The process by which artists collaborate to create, record and produce music is changing. Most live performances have ceased since the onset of the pandemic. Some, however, Isa Kiedrowski the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 �are resuming as safety restrictions ease up. In this drought of live shows, many artists have released recordings of old concerts as albums and videos online, and streamed performances from home. Many recent symphonies have been presented via live-stream, for example. For many artists, production has transferred from the industry studio’s designed sound-space to the basement office’s natural acoustics. Collaborators and bandmates continue to brainstorm ideas, create, record, produce and share music by e-mailing, messaging, and calling one another to piece everything together. These new communication methods preserve the creative process. Album sales, both physical and digital, have decreased, while streaming has skyrocketed. The greatest current challenge for the industry is the waiting — no one likes to sit on their laurels, but the least commotion breeds the least trouble. For the most part, the industry has been quietly shifting its efforts to online promotion of new releases. Albums continue to drop, albeit more slowly, with fewer new releases per week. But I am only an amateur listener — I am no music industry veteran and I am not a professional recording artist or performer with a home studio. If anyone here at St. John’s has more experience with these matters, I would love to interview you to hear more about your personal experiences and thoughts going forward on music, or thoughts on recent pieces (you might even appear in a future article!) For now, while people are cooped up during this crazy pandemic, the music plays on. It sustains us—listeners and musicians, all music lovers alike— through all times. While popular practices of music production and listening change, our passion remains. To close, I leave you with a quote from a song: “Everything changes, it all stays the same” – Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, from “Love Me Forever” off of the album 1916 Cory Henry performs an NPR Tiny Desk Concert from home with drummer TaRon Lockett for the winter holidays, 2020. the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 35 �THE STAFF MANAGING EDITOR Alayna Raymond EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lysithia Page LAYOUT BOARD Cooper Ussery Nathan Martin Diana Villegas STAFF REPORTERS Alexander Andreosatos Britt Lamson Linda Bellamy Daniel Nathan Elizabeth Dowdy  Joseph Padgett Isabella Kiedrowski Sophia Webster Dagny Kulkarny CONTRIBUTORS Erin Allen Daryl Locke Sofe Cote Hope Taglich Noah Hale Rose Zhang THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student news-magazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, staff, and alumna of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thoughtprovoking newsmagazine. Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Microsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication. For more information, contact us via email at spca.gadfly@gmail.com 6 0 COLLEGE AVENUE ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401 Isa Kiedrowski 36 the Gadfly / Mar 18, 2021 � 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 Gadfly</em> Description An account of the resource Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thegadfly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 36 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Gadfly, Vol. XLII, Issue 1 Description An account of the resource Volume XLII, Issue 1 of The Gadfly. Published March 18, 2021. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Page, Lysithia (Editor-in-Chief) 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-03-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource College students--United States--Conduct of life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Gadfly Vol XLII Issue 1 03-18-2021 Gadfly Student publication