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Inauguration speech 9.16.16
Thank you to all who have spoken, to my friend Greg Avis, Ms
Morf, Pam Saunders Albin, Matt Davis and Chris Nelson for your
kind words. And also to former presidents Mike Peters, and John
Agresto for being with us tonight. And all those who made this
event happen, led by Sarah Palacios.
And thank you to all those who make this college happen - the
BVG, who hired me, the tutors, who inspire us every day with
their dedication and insight, the staff who provide the scaffolding
which allows the whole show to go on, to the alumni who make
the college a permanent and important part of their lives –
including those here for Homecoming and their leaders, the
Alumni Association board -- and to our amazing students…who
are why we are all here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------When we were beginning to plan this ceremony last February I
had been at the college for only a month. I had been thinking a
great deal about what makes the college unique. I had been
thinking, too, about how I would fit here and what I could do to
advance the life-changing work that is done at St. John’s.
Those of you who with a longer and deeper association with the
college may not remember as acutely as I do the combination of
excitement and bewilderment a person can feel when
encountering this place for the first time. St. John’s looks and
behaves, on the surface, like any other college: students and
faculty meet in classrooms, there are dormitories, a dining hall, a
bookstore, a gym…and even a bell tower.
1
�But St. John’s is not like other colleges. Faculty aren’t called
“professors,” because it is not their job to “profess.” No, at St.
John’s, faculty are called tutors, and their mission is NOT to help
students come to preordained conclusions but to provoke
learning by asking questions to which, in many cases, they
themselves are still searching for the answers…to actually learn
alongside students. The books and ideas in the academic program
are not means to an end – a good grade, the fulfillment of a
major, a light and shallow dip into one topic or another. They are,
simultaneously, the means and the end.
There is a purity to this, and a radicalism, that I have not seen
before. It can be difficult to take in. And as I began to take it in, I
realized that to succeed for the college in the way I wish, I would
somehow have to move these concepts from my head into my
heart, blood, and bones.
At that same time that I was thinking about these issues and
about how to make this ceremony meaningful, my wife, Dorothy,
and I watched the film Seymour: An Introduction.
The film, along with Seymour himself and his student, American
populist intellectual Michael Kimmelman, says so much about
what we seek to do here and about how we search for meaning in
our lives.
I am so grateful that Michael and Seymour agreed to be with us
this weekend. And I encourage any of you who have not seen the
film to do so and to join them and our own Sarah Davis for a panel
discussion about work and life’s meaning tomorrow, followed by
Seymour’s master class.
It will be worth your while.
2
�Seymour Bernstein is an extraordinarily gifted man who could
have spent his life perfecting his own craft. He certainly did not
have to take the path he chose – to be a teacher and mentor
above all else. But he made his choice knowing not only what he
was gaining, but also what he was giving up. His choice was to
follow his joy and pass that joy along to students like Michael
Kimmelman, with a brand of devotion that you heard earlier,
when they played Schubert.
This evening, and in other inauguration events, we are
highlighting teachers and students. Our processional music was
played by Evan Quarles, a Santa Fe student who is part of a senior
seminar in which I am a participant. Mr. Quarles will also
participate in Seymour’s master class tomorrow afternoon. Hoop
dancer Josiah Enriquez and drummer Duh-love-eye Denipaw
represent the long tradition of cultural mentorship in Native
American communities.
Tomorrow’s panel discussion and the piano master class will
amplify the idea that there is inherent joy in teaching and learning
and that the value of learning in community is irreplaceable –
even if the “community” is as small as just one teacher and one
student or two students together.
We say, correctly, that our academic program sets St. John’s apart
from all other colleges. What we don’t always underscore is how
much the success of the program depends on the way it is
executed – in community. But I would argue that the execution is
as well designed and intentional as the content and that it
deserves an equal share of credit when our students and alumni
reflect on what St. John’s means for their lives.
3
�For Exhibit A - observe that beautiful Steinway. There it sits, the
Schubert score in the rack, and anyone who reads music could
come to the bench and at least understand the sounds the
Steinway should make if played correctly. In the same way – and
many Johnnies will have heard this – anyone can get a list of the
books we study here and go off and sit under a tree and read
them.
But sheet music alone is not Schubert. Schubert “happens” when
Michael Kimmelman and Seymour Bernstein practice and
perform, and when we listen. Books alone are not Plato, Tolstoy,
Woolf or Shakespeare. St. John’s comprehends that, and the
Program we revere works because we understand that we are
enriched not only by the ideas of geniuses but by the
interpretations and insights we achieve together – in our
classrooms, in discussions at the koi pond or at the dorm, when
students and tutors, students and students, tutors and tutors
engage with the material and with each other.
This is the part of St. John’s that I have seen in the classroom and
in the faculty and student discussions and that makes me so
grateful to be standing here, about to be invested as president.
My challenge to all assembled here this evening is that we must
cherish this Program. We must do everything we can to ensure
that this radical form of learning doesn’t simply survive as some
kind of curiosity, but thrives as a viable alternative in the
increasingly homogeneous landscape that is mainstream higher
education.
But it is fair to ask exactly why does it matter that St. John’s
survive and prosper?
4
�This question is especially important right now, for, as many of
you know, St John’s has some significant organizational and
financial challenges that we must address.
And that makes it even more critical that we explore what
difference it would make if this small college disappeared, aside
from the – not insignificant – fact that students, tutors, and staff
who love it here would lose their home and would find no other
place like it.
Organizations come into being, and organizations fade away.
Why does St John’s matter so much?
While I was working on this speech I asked that question in
various forums, of tutors, staff and students, and, this being St.
John’s, answers came in large numbers, and many were very
beautiful.
One tutor views a St. John’s education as a curative for “the echo
chamber that passes as contemporary thinking.” Meaning, he
said, that by reading great books, students can learn to find their
own intellectual path in a society where many institutions that
past generations relied on for moral and intellectual direction
have faltered or lost influence.
Many pointed out that Americans find it difficult to talk
respectfully across difference. They noted that those kinds of
conversations occur at St. John’s every day, in and outside the
classroom.
A staff member and St. John’s graduate told me: “We leave this
place with confidence in our own identity, seeking authenticity in
5
�our interactions with the world we encounter.” She underscored
the view that many tutors shared, that “we are the only college
wholly devoted to the project of studying the great books with a
view to freeing ourselves from mere prejudice so that we can
think for ourselves.”
One tutor reminded me of how often we describe St. John’s by
saying what it is not rather than what it is. Offering what he called
a “positive account,” he said: “We are trying to show by actions,
the actions of thinking, speaking, reading, and writing, and of
living together in this residential college, that it is our deepest
nature to learn; that learning is a shared enterprise; and that it
fulfills us as human beings, makes us happy and assures us that
we belong with one another in the world as doers. The books we
read are like love letters. They invite us to happy marriages.”
I often use the word “radical” to describe the way learning occurs
on our two campuses – I have done so more than once in this
speech. That word may sound discordant if you think of St. John’s
as a place that teaches Great Books by “dead white men.” Isn’t
that kind of curriculum conservative to the core? How can we
reconcile the words “radical” and “conservative?”
We can do so by playing with the idea that in many ways what St.
John’s conserves is that which is radical in Western thought.
Arguably, everything a student encounters in the Program
demonstrates not incremental thought but radical disruption.
Thinkers like Socrates, who students get to know in their first
year, shake up everything in the known world. They express ideas
that can get a person killed. They unmoor us by insisting that all is
open to question, and they jar us from our complacency. A tutor I
spoke with earlier this fall told me that it is a rare student who
6
�reads and discusses Socrates and Plato in the Program and
doesn’t come away changed forever.
That is the “why” and the “so what” of St. John’s. It changes
people who can go on to change the world. Many St. John’s
alumni choose to teach, and many take a version of the Program
into their classrooms, where they give students the daylight in
which to examine ideas. Others take these habits of mind into
every profession you can imagine and into personal lives that are
of enormous consequence in the communities where they live.
We find ourselves on a planet beset by challenges. If we are to be
successful in facing down those challenges, we will need minds
tempered in a forge like St. John’s, at home with intellectual
disruption and subversion and able to embrace the quantum over
the incremental.
My commitment to preserving this education and celebrating its
impact is unwavering. I know that to succeed, we will do the work
before us in community, just the way we learn. We will question
everything. And we will attend to all voices.
And, I hope, when we think back on this weekend we will
remember not just the challenges in front of us but the joy and
beauty of the enterprise in which we are engaged. Schubert
becoming Schubert because we are here together. A hoop that
symbolizes eternity and interdependence and a young dancer
expressing the import. A ceremony as old as academia that
celebrates bold new thought. And above all else, this small,
wonderful, one-of-a-kind college that is unafraid to sail against
prevailing winds and that brings us all together, in community.
Thank you.
7
�
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Presidential Inauguration Speech, 2016
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Typescript of the inauguration speech given by Mark Roosevelt on September 16, 2016 in Santa Fe, NM.
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Santa Fe, NM
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Roosevelt Inauguration Speech - 2016-09-16
Inauguration
Presidents
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Inauguration Lecture
St. John’s College, Annapolis
October 28, 2017
Panayiotis Kanelos
St. John’s College is indeed a college. But it is very much more than that. It is both an idea and
an ideal. It is a place designed from the inside out, according to principles that are both unique
and universal. It is its own theorem and its own proof. It is the most vital institution in higher
education. It is a place that inspires love not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly
itself.
I am the luckiest person in higher education. How many people can claim that they have
passionately admired an institution from afar for a very long time, and then have been invited to
join that community? I’m simply pleased as punch to be here. This is a community, however,
that exacts a price. From the moment one becomes a Johnnie, one finds oneself drawn into that
most characteristic Johnnie behavior, talking endlessly about rather important things.
I have been here just over four months. During that time, I have had the great pleasure of getting
to know my colleagues through conversation. They have pressed me to think carefully about the
project we are engaged in. I have participated in seminars, attended lectures, and read with a
rollicking group through a Shakespearean play. And just this week, I had the honor of leading
my first preceptorial on one of my favorite authors, Jorge Luis Borges. Most importantly, I have
spent many hours in conversation with our students. My admiration for their courage, having
�selected to follow the most rigorous path towards a college degree that anyone might pursue, is
profound. They are much more courageous than I was at their age, or am even now.
My short time as part of the St. John’s community, already rich in conversation, has led me to
think quite a lot about this thing we call liberal education. What I would like to offer this
afternoon is a series of reflections on what we do and why we do it. These reflections are much
too short, too rough and too raw to be dignified with the title of essays. They also lack the
virtues of concision and precision found in a well-wrought aphorism. They’re really just
paragraphs, and not very finely crafted at that. But to make me feel better, let’s call them
something elevated, like folia, leaves. Like the Sybil’s leaves, they are interchangeable and will
fall where they may. Since their subject is the liberal arts, seven folia seems like an appropriate
number.
1. The Liberal Arts are the Arts of Memory
Contemporary culture appears to be averse to the pursuit of liberal education. This should not
surprise us. To call the era we live in "modernity" is to fetishize the present. We live in a
perpetual "now"—this “modern” age—and that “now” is held to be qualitatively superior to the
“not-now,” otherwise known as the past. The newest, the flashiest, the most up-to-date is the
thing most desirable. The state of modernity is thus the state of perpetual forgetting. To valorize
the present is to slough off the past. Liberal education, however, is predicated upon
memory. The heart of liberal education is conversation in shared space, but the soul of liberal
education is conversation across time. To take seriously the thoughts of those who have come
before us is to add dimensionality to the otherwise flattened experience of living in a perpetual
now. This is radically unfashionable, but it is essential nonetheless.
�2. Liberal Education and Liberty
It is commonplace to claim that the purpose of liberal education is to free the individual,
“liberal” coming from the Latin, liber, to be free. Of course, what is not commonly agreed upon
is what the individual is meant to be freed from. In the ancient world, liberal education was the
education of the free man -- that is, one who was not bound to labor and could therefore spend
time cultivating one's mind. Leisure was the precondition of such an education. This was also
the Oxford of Cardinal Newman or Evelyn Waugh, and still lingers in the notion of the
undergraduate years at college as a sort of Arcadia (one populated at most colleges, I might add,
by groups of libertines suspiciously calling themselves Greeks). Another claim made upon
liberal education is that it frees one from prejudice. Human beings are encased within a cocoon
of pre-spun ideas, opinions and preferences. Liberal education splices open that cocoon. We
emerge into the world in an altered state, transformed, capable of flight. Others hold that to be
liberally educated is to be freed from illusions. Our movement is from the cave of shadows into
the searing day. This is the model that promises enlightenment.
I would argue that the telos of
liberal education is to free us from ourselves. Our work is primarily internal, an activity of the
soul. We are bound tightly by our pride. It constrains us. It isolates us. It distorts our
relationships with others, with the world, and with Truth. The first order of business in a liberal
education is to chasten.
3. Virtue or Virtuosity
Modern education has become increasingly oriented towards virtuosity. It promotes the honing
of skills, generally towards useful ends. It is technical and narrow in focus. We have witnessed
�over the past decades the ascendancy of the STEM disciplines, Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math, and the dominance of Business as the single largest major in the nation.
Anyone pursuing a degree in the liberal arts has been cornered at one time or another by a
fretting uncle or a dismissive neighbor: “What are you going to do with that?” Yet the goal of
liberal education is not virtuosity, but virtue. The Greeks used the term, arête, for excellence. It
refers to the single-minded pursuit of an admirable goal. We might seek to become an excellent
X, where X might be a violinist, a computer programmer, or a pole vaulter. Liberal education,
however, challenges the notion that we should be defined by what we do. It suggests, rather, that
we should be concerned first and foremost with who we are. In a liberal education, the primary
object of study is the human being. Turning inquiry back upon ourselves, we find that what
defines us is that we are “thinking things.” We are above all else rational creatures. Our pursuit
of arête ought therefore to be the pursuit of logos. This, then, defines the proper focus of a
liberal arts college. Were we a conservatory we would seek excellence in the arts. Were we a
seminary, we would seek excellence of the spirit. Yet we are something like a conservatory of
the mind, dedicated to the proposition that the most characteristic trait of the human being is that
we are thinking things, and that the virtue we strive for is the excellence of the intellect. This
conviction does not deny nor diminish other forms of excellence in the world -- but it argues that
self-reflective inquiry lays the foundation for the art of being human.
4. Liberal Education Leads to Civil Discourse
A commitment to the arête of being human, leads to a capacity for civil discourse. If the pursuit
of excellence of the mind is predicated upon conversation and discussion, that is, if the arena of
the intellect is the exchange of ideas, one must treat other minds as infinitely valuable. This
�involves a significant degree of humility, accepting that we each superimpose upon the world a
kaleidoscopic set of opinions, which shift and change shape chaotically. It also involves a
degree of confidence, allowing that while we may often be wrong, we are not always so. A
seminar is civil discourse in action -- it is a conclave of those willing to revise and amend
opinion; it is a polis, where the currency is persuasion and the treasury a reliquary of truth.
5. There is no such thing as a "liberal art"
The term “liberal art” is in and of itself an absurdity. There is no singular art that liberates.
Liberal education runs across a network of ways of knowing the world. It understands that as
human beings, we can know the world only imperfectly. Let me offer an illustration. Each of
our five senses communicates something distinct, yet vital, to us. We can smell the freshly
baked apple pie, see the nicely browned apple pie, feel the toothsome pie crust in our mouth,
taste the gelatinous sweetness of the pie on our tongue, hear praise of the pie. In isolation, each
of our senses offers a fragmented perspective on phenomena. Taken together, we experience the
whole. Similarly, the liberal arts have historically offered seven “senses,” seven organs for
knowing the world. In the Middle Ages, these fields of knowledge were categorized as the
trivium – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – and the quadrivium – mathematics, astronomy,
geometry and music. Today, our notion of the liberal arts, as with most things, is more fluid.
Yet what must not be lost is the commitment of liberal education to aspire towards a multivalent
approach to knowledge. A true education must traverse a broad landscape of subjects, from
literature and philosophy to mathematics, the sciences and the languages, and put those subjects
in conversation with one another. Where truth is to be found, it is found only fleetingly, as one
synapse fires to the next, leaping across the arts of knowing.
�6. One Cannot Receive an Education
Words matter. We commonly, and casually, say that we received our education at School X or
College Y. This is a category error of the first order. To receive something is to accept it. It
puts the receiver in a passive posture. To “receive” an education, one would have to be a
receptacle of some sort, a container waiting to be filled. Yet the word itself, education, expresses
the opposite. The term originates from the Latin, “ex ducere”, which means “to lead out.” What
does this tell us about the process of education? It involves movement. It is active. It is
participatory. It entails collaboration between one who is led and one who leads. These leaders
we call “teachers”. A teacher may be another person, present to the learner, perhaps around a
seminar table. A teacher may also be one who has lived long before the student, who has left
traces of profound insight or resplendent beauty, that draw, like a lodestone, one out of oneself.
Teachers do not push, they do not drag, they do not compel. They invite the student on a
pilgrimage, one in which they are fellow travelers. Taking up the call, the student is led out of
complacency, out of docility, out of ignorance.
Some may think that to be led, to follow, is not in accord with the freedom inherent in a liberal
education: Why these 120 books? Why this tradition? This skepticism assumes a rather
desiccated notion of liberty, a rather modern notion, which takes autonomy, self-governance, as
its starting point. Self-governance, however, is the end point of education. To be liberally
educated is to have been led out of bondage. There are many forms of slavery, all pernicious,
and overcoming the first, ignorance, is only the beginning of the journey.
�7. We see through a glass, darkly…
There are, broadly speaking, two ways of knowing the world, both of which are necessary, yet
ultimately irreconcilable. What we know can be divided into two categories – that which we can
measure, and that which we cannot. On the one hand, human life is finite, bounded, defined by
ridges and borders. On the other, we touch the infinite. Because we are more than mechanical,
because we each have a mysterious sort of agency, our lives are imbued with the qualities of
better and worse. We make choices, and try to do so with the best information possible. This is
reflected in the liberal arts, divided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The first set of
disciplines encompasses the qualitative aspects of human experience: speech, expression,
discernment. The latter, the aspects of the world that we can measure – time, distance, breadth,
number. Our work as seekers of truth is to hold all these forms of knowing in our minds
simultaneously and to craft a synthesis that reconciles the whole. None of us is capable such a
project– we see through the glass, darkly – but were we able to achieve this synthesis, we would
approach that ever-elusive quality called wisdom.
I hope you will forgive me for these underdeveloped ideas, forgive me if I have been tedious, or
if I have been simply wrong. That quality called wisdom certainly eludes me. Yet let me
conclude be restating what I do know is true:
St. John’s College is indeed a college. But it is very much more than that. It is both an idea and
an ideal. It is a place designed from the inside out, according to principles that are both unique
and universal. It is its own theorem and its own proof. It is the most vital institution in higher
education. It is a place that inspires love not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly
�itself. It is an institution that I have come to love rather quickly, and will cherish always. Thank
you for allowing me to join this community.
�
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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Presidential Inauguration Speech, 2017
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Typescript of the inauguration speech given by Panayiotis Kanels on October 28, 2017 in Annapolis, MD.
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Kanelos, Panayiotis
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-10-28
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text
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pdf
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<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3445">Audio Recording</a>
<a title="Inauguration Program" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3444">Inauguration Program</a>
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Kanelos Inauguration Lecture 2017
Inauguration
Presidents
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Photographic Archive—Annapolis
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<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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25.5 x 20.5 cm.
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Procession for the Inaugurarion of Edwin J. Delattre Extending Down College Avenue from Front Campus, Annapolis, Maryland, Fall 1980
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1980-09
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Unknown
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Annapolis, MD
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Inauguration
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Photographic Archive—Annapolis
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<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Procession for the Inaugurarion of Edwin J. Delattre Moving across Campus with Mrs. Crockett, wife of Steven Crockett, and Children, Annapolis, Maryland, Fall 1980
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1 photographic print : b&w
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1980-09
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Annapolis, MD
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jpeg
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Inauguration
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1350caf0b2387d2bb8d285f501eecd60
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Title
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Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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Annapolis, MD
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photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
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25.5 x 20.5 cm.
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Photograph
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SJC-P-1636
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Procession for the Inaugurarion of Edwin J. Delattre on the Central Walkway on Front Campus, Annapolis, Maryland, Fall 1980
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
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1980-09
Creator
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Unknown
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Type
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Still Image
Format
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jpeg
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St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Inauguration
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6f4d08f7ce54c59217defad0bb95c00b
PDF Text
Text
Remarks on the Inauguration of President Nora Demleitner
Citizenship, Undergraduate Education, and Great Books
It is a distinct honor to be speaking at St. John’s on the occasion of the
inauguration of President Demleitner, the 25th president of St. John’s
Annapolis campus, the ninth since the inception of the current program of
study in 1937, and its first female president. She carries forward an
extraordinary tradition of exceptional educational distinction that dates back
to 1696. Her selection to lead the Annapolis campus is an illustration of how
academic excellence can adapt to new circumstances and yet simultaneously
maintain fidelity to a worthy tradition.
The theme I have chosen for my talk is the relationship between the
unique educational mission of St. John’s and the preservation of democracy
here in the United States. I acknowledge at the outset that it is not
immediately obvious how a very special curriculum that focuses with
intense concentration on the great works of the past can speak to the
contemporary dilemmas of self-government in 21st century America.
But I choose this theme because it is so pressing. Many of us, myself
included, have been taken aback by how fragile and endangered our
�democracy has become. We are apprehensive about its precarious state, and
we believe that it is of the utmost importance to take steps to protect it.
So the question I am putting on the table is how the essentially
political project of preserving our democracy might be connected to the
distinguished educational curriculum of St. John’s, which focuses on
understanding masterpieces of the past. How can a conversation with bygone
figures help us with today’s pressing problems?
I ask this with some urgency. Outside the serene and peaceful world
of St. John’s, the world is burning. There are of course literal flames in the
Amazon rainforest. But there is also a brutal war in Eastern Europe, and a
serious threat of war in the Pacific. Wanton violence sweeps the globe, from
Teheran to Mali to Lima. Democracies from Hungary to India teeter on the
verge of totalitarian excess. We suffer constantly from the fierce storms,
droughts and displacements of an overheating planet.
Each year, our world seems to grow more dangerous and more
threatening. And the United States is not exempt from these challenges.
When I grew up in the 1950s, America felt, somehow, beyond the rough and
2
�rapid whitewaters of history that seemed forever to engulf other countries.
But no longer. In my lifetime, I do not think I have ever witnessed a political
atmosphere more angry, more poisonous, or more baleful. There are no
doubt many causes of our political distemper, including two years of covid,
growing inequality, the loss of blue color manufacturing work, gaping
cultural divides between rural and urban communities, and an explosive
resurgence of bigotry and prejudice.
But this afternoon I want to focus on one particular dimension of our
political crisis, which is the rise of extreme partisanship. American political
life is now divided into camps so mutually antagonistic that ordinary
political life has become all but impossible. We no longer seem to be able to
wheel and deal, to compromise and construct.
We tear down, we troll, we attack, we bluster, we become outraged.
But we do not reach across the aisle. The storming of the Capitol seems
merely the physical symbol of the underlying disorder. Our politics has
become a scene of war, reminiscent of Carl Schmitt’s corrosive definition of
politics as an existential confrontation between friends and enemies.
3
�A 2014 study by two political scientists found that “hostile feelings
for the opposing party are ingrained or automatic in voters’ minds, and that
affective polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based
on race.” In a frightening conclusion, the study notes that elites now have a
greater incentive “to engage in confrontation . . . than [in] cooperation.”
Just to give you some sense of how profoundly divisive our political
life has become, consider that in 1960 only about 5 percent of Americans
expressed a negative reaction to the prospect of their child marrying
someone from the opposite party. By 2010 this figure had risen eightfold to
40 percent, including both Republicans and Democrats.
It is plain, I think, that our politics has become personal; it has
become a matter of identity. It is experienced as a matter of survival. During
the 2016 presidential election Michael Anton of the Claremont Institute,
wrote a famous essay entitled The Flight 93 Election. The first sentence of
that essay read: “2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you
die.”
4
�What worries me is that such extreme identitarian division is
potentially fatal in a nation like ours. A heterogenous country like America
can be held together only by successful politics. But such politics is
impossible if we remain balkanized by narrow, tribal attitudes. The reason is
explained in a very old story told to us by Thucydides, the great Athenian
general and historian from the fifth century BC, whom you study here at St.
John’s.
Thucydides recounts the tale of the disastrous Peloponnesian War
between Athens and Sparta. All of Greece at the time was broken into two
political parties. One party advocated for an aristocratic oligarchy; the other
favored democracy. The struggle between these two parties was violent and
fanatic, and the result, Thucydides recounts, was that “society became
divided into two ideologically hostile camps, and each side viewed the other
with suspicion.”
This partisanship could not be ended, says Thucydides, because “no
guarantee could be given that would be trusted, no oath sworn that people
would fear to break; everyone had come to the conclusion that it was
hopeless to expect a permanent settlement and so, instead of being able to
5
�feel confident in others, they devoted their energies to providing against
being injured themselves.”
The upshot of this breakdown of trust among the Greeks was that
atrocity followed atrocity. Men became beasts. In words that should be
remembered forever, Thucydides lamented the loss of what he called “the
ordinary conventions of civilized life.” This was because Greeks had begun
“the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which are there to
give a hope of salvation to all who are in distress, instead of . . .
remembering that there may come a time when they, too, will be in danger
and will need their protection.”
Putting to one side the ever-present possibility of mass slaughter by a
deranged killer armed with an AR-47, we are not, I hope, in danger of actual
atrocities. But we are certainly in danger of losing trust in those general laws
of humanity that allow us to work together despite our disagreements,
however passionate those disagreements might become.
The loss of trust in our society is corrosive and every day it becomes
more and more widespread. Nearly fifty years ago, almost half of all
6
�Americans agreed that “most people can be trusted”; but today that number
has fallen to less than one in three. In 1964, 77 percent of Americans said
that they trusted the federal government to do what is right at least most of
the time; 1 but in 2019 that number had tumbled precipitously down to 17
percent. In 1974, 71 percent of Americans had a great deal or a fair amount
of trust in our Supreme Court. In 2022 that number has shrunk to 47 per
cent. When asked, Americans report a lower opinion of Congress than of
root canals, colonoscopies, Brussel sprouts or traffic jams. It is small
comfort that Congress did manage a higher approval rating than
telemarketers, North Korea, or the Ebola virus.2
This is tragic. Consider: we live in a representative democracy. Our
government represents us. The House of Representatives is the People’s
House. If we detest our own government, what does that say about us? Do
we loathe ourselves, or do we despise our neighbors? If we disavow our
own institutions of governance, we confess our own inadequacy and
vulnerability.
1
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/23/457063796/poll-only-1-in-5-americans-say-they-trustthe-government
2
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/congress-somewhere-belowcockroaches-traffic-jams-and-nickleback-in-americans-esteem.html
7
�Without institutions of governance, we become vulnerable because we
cannot act together. We cannot build a common future or ensure our
common security. Institutions of governance, and the laws that establish and
guide them, are necessary if we are to enjoy the immense goods of
cooperation. Excessive partisanship undercuts the social trust required for
the political processes that underwrite both governance and law. Whatever
kind of society you wish to build, whether it is conservative or liberal, it
must be accomplished through political processes that depend upon trust.
Thucydides described the hell created by the erosion of that trust.
Thucydides said: “Human nature, always ready to offend even where laws
exist, show[s] itself proudly in its true colours, as something incapable of
controlling passion, insubordinate to the idea of justice, [and as] the enemy
to anything superior to itself.” Without trust, observed Thucydides, there
can be no law, no justice, no security. There is only self-preservation.
There is only a dreadful war of all against all.
The question is not whether we should trust the particular decisions of
government, which can be right or can be wrong. The question is rather
8
�whether we have any option but to trust the political processes by which we
engage, each to the other, to determine how we shall act together and how
we shall make our laws. I know that these very political processes can often
be perversely slow and slanted and unresponsive. They may even at times
be corrupt. But these political processes are all we have, and therefore we
must, paradoxically, use them to make these very processes better and fairer.
Politics in a democracy are necessarily open to all. This means that
one cannot enter politics without encountering those who disagree with us,
and who perhaps disagree radically. It is therefore essential that we find a
way to structure such encounters in a manner that does not involve excessive
partisanship. Thucydides gave us a clue about how this delicate balance
might be maintained. He put his thoughts into the mouth of Pericles, the
great Athenian leader.
In his famous funeral oration for the Athenian war dead, Thucydides
has Pericles praise Athens as “a democracy because power is in the hands
not of a minority but of the whole people.” In Athens, says Pericles, “we are
free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law.
This is because it commands our deep respect.”
9
�Athenians respected the law because they were all involved in
fashioning the law. So Pericles pointedly observes:
Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but
in the affairs of the state as well: even those who are mostly occupied
with their own business are extremely well informed on general
politics—this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who
takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we
say that he has no business here at all.
Politics in fifth century Athens was a deadly serious business, far
more so than in the United States today. Failed politicians could be exiled or
ostracized or worse. But Pericles nevertheless summoned Athenians to full
participation in the political process, arguing “that happiness depends on
being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”
Being free means being self-governing; it means having the capacity
to fashion our own future according to our own ideals. It is a miraculous and
wonderful thing to enter democratic politics in order to realize our
10
�convictions. But to the extent that we loathe our political adversaries and
seek to exclude them from the common political space that the Greeks called
the agora, we abandon the possibility of a shared future. It is not possible to
sustain a democracy that includes “the whole people” if we refuse to deal
with our adversaries. Democracy fails if we seek advantage only for
ourselves, or only for our own tribe or only for our own party.
Of course it is possible that our adversaries may be so awful that we
come to believe that we cannot share a future with them. This happened
during the American Civil War. But such times must necessarily be very
rare, which is why Carl Schmitt was wrong to analogize politics to war.
Politics is the art of living together despite differences. In war we seek to
exterminate the other. But in politics we abjure violence, which is to say we
seek to win while remaining bound to the rules, to the law, that define
appropriate political engagement.
In war, our opponents are our enemies, whom we seek to destroy. In
politics, our opponents are our agonists, over whom we seek to triumph but
with whom we are bound to live and with whom we are bound obey a
common set of rules. Enemies become agonists only when both sides of a
11
�controversy acknowledge mutual allegiance to a shared polity. That means
that both sides acknowledge that they are bound to a common destiny, a
shared fate that defines the identity of a country. That is what holds together
a polis or a nation. Civil war looms when we rupture that shared fate and
decide to go our separate ways.
Pericles emphasizes that democracy requires courage. Democracy
requires the courage to persist in pursuing our ideals while at the same time
resisting the temptation to an excessive partisanship that excludes our
agonists from the agora, which is to say from the possibility of a shared
democratic politics. This is a rare kind of courage. It requires patience and
endurance. It must be maintained even as democratic politics seems
repeatedly to fail, and even as it seems to fall under the control of those who
oppose our deepest ideals.
The poet in the 20th century who most tellingly articulated what it
might mean to lose faith in a common political future was the Nobel
Laureate Czeslaw [Tchesluff] Milosz [Meewosh]. Milosz was a Lithuanian
who wrote in Polish. He tried to understand the havoc caused by World War
II. He believed that Eastern Europeans had lost trust in one another and
12
�hence that they had abandoned the possibility of shared political
engagement.
In his monumental poem Child of Europe, Milosz [Meewosh]
describes the cynical world created by the War in Eastern Europe:
We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge. . . .
Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.
We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before. . .
Europeans, Milosz [Meewosh] writes, learned all the wrong lessons from
calamity of the war:
13
�Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble. . . .
Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help. . . .
In these chilling lines, Milosz [Meewosh] evokes what it is like to
inhabit the bleak and cruel world long ago described by Thucydides. It is a
world in which persons are out for themselves alone. It is a world in which
cunning and calculation reign. It is a world without trust and therefore
without hope for a future. It is a world without politics, because no bargains
can be struck. It is a world in which all are at war with all. No one would
freely choose to live in such a world.
As he grew older, Milosz [Meewosh] began slowly to heal from the
mighty blows of the War. In his poem What I Learned from Jeanne Hersch,
he enumerated some of the lessons that he had painfully gleaned from his
formidable historical experience. The poem consists of 12 numbered
propositions, but I will read you only three:
14
�2.
That they have been wrong who undermined our confidence in
reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle,
libido, will to power. . . .
5.
That the proper attitude toward being is respect . . . .
12.
That in our lives we should not succumb to despair . . . for the
past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our
subsequent acts.
I pick these three propositions because they contain profound insights
that are worth pausing for a moment to consider. They are insights that offer
us a way out of the hell created by mistrust and polarization. And they are
insights that allow us to understand the importance of St. John’s College.
First, Milosz [Meewosh] tells us that that we must have confidence in
our reason. Think now, about St. John’s and your curriculum. Here at St.
John’s College you read great texts. Why do you do that? It is because these
texts reach out to us from the past. But how exactly do they do that?
15
�Without question an important connection between us and these texts
is our reason. You study texts from the finest thinkers that humanity has ever
produced. And, lo and behold, the ideas of these long-dead thinkers
challenge you. They speak to you in ways that inspire conversation and
dialogue. No one could be more distant from you in customs, traditions,
language, or life than Aristotle. And yet in your classrooms, through the
medium of your reason, you reach across the millennia and converse with an
ancient Greek. It is your reason that enables this miracle. The curriculum of
St. John’s is filled with texts that reward this kind of rational engagement.
Rational engagement is essential not merely for the truths that it
reveals, but also for the forms of connection that it requires. At St. John’s
you learn from texts not merely the lessons that they have to teach, but also,
more fundamentally, what it means to converse with a stranger, whose ideas
are radically different than yours. Reason is a remarkable thing, because it
can thrive only under conditions of respect. To reason with another is to take
in their ideas, and to counter in a way that evinces trust that reason will
matter to them as well as to you.
16
�This means that when we reason with one another, we model the trust
that is necessary for democracy. To reason with another is not to lose track
of your own commitments. It is instead to maintain these commitments
despite another’s disagreement, and yet, miraculously, to perform these
commitments within a relationship that acknowledges and trusts that reason
should matter to all involved, to both yourself and to the other.
Second, Milosz [Meewosh] reminds us that it is necessary to use our
reason to fashion ideals worth pursuing. Milosz [Meewosh] tells us that one
of the most important of these ideals is that we respect being, which means
that we respect the facticity of the world.
The world is as it is, regardless of what we might wish it to be. We
must have humility before the facts of the world. One of the most important
functions of our reason is to protect us from that most tempting of fantasies,
which is to believe that the world is merely what we wish it to be. A world at
the mercy of fantasies is a world at the mercy of power. Reason, respect for
the gritty, irreducible facticity of the world, is the antidote to our own
incessant will to power.
17
�Milosz [Meewosh] lived in Eastern Europe, which suffered
unspeakable horrors because, in the ideology of both the Nazis and the
Soviet Union, facts counted for nothing. The world could be reshaped at
will. In a poem called Faith, Milosz [Meewosh] rejects this perspective:
The word Faith means when someone sees
A dew-drop or a floating leaf, and knows
That they are, because they have to be.
And even if you dreamed, or closed your eyes
And wished, the world would still be what it was,
And the leaf would still be carried down the river.
Respect for being requires faith that there is a world outside of us and that
that world matters. The world is what it is and cannot be remade merely to
accord to our desires. No matter what your wishes, the leaf will still be
carried down the river.
This is a particularly important insight when it comes to other people.
Other people are also facts in the world, and they must be respected just as
all other facts are respected. One expression of this respect is to engage other
18
�people through politics, as distinct from simply obliterating them through
war, or simply excluding them from the agora in the hope that they will
vanish.
Other people will not disappear even if we close our eyes and wish
them away. This is true even when other people have opinions that we
regard as obnoxious or wrong-headed or violently incorrect. Respect for
being means accepting the fundamental alterity of others, which is the
foundation of all politics. Politics, says the political theorist Hannah Arendt
presupposes men, not Man. Politics requires plurality.
Without politics, none of us can be free. We are thrown willy-nilly
into a common lifeboat. We flourish together or we do not flourish at all.
That is why political ideology counts for much, but not for everything.
Excessive partisanship denies this basic truth. And, I remind you, this is also
why race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and
all such categories, count for a great deal, but they do not count for
everything. If they did, our common lifeboat would break into fragments and
be swamped.
19
�You know this at St. John’s. Your curriculum is fabulously diverse.
You study figures as different as Lucretius and Dante; Kepler and
Maimonides; Machiavelli and Proust; Mozart and the Bhagavad Gita; Ralph
Ellison and Richard Feynman. If here at St. John’s, with a curriculum as
various and far-ranging as this, you cannot learn to honor the plurality of the
world, to respect its fabulous facticity, you cannot learn it anywhere.
The third and last proposition in What I Learned from Jeanne Hersch
to which I want to call your attention is that we should not despair of the
present. I know that the present may, at times—and especially in these
times—appear bleak. But we must nevertheless maintain hope for the future.
And hope, St. Augustine instructs us, “has two beautiful daughters. Their
names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to
see that they do not remain the way they are.”
Where there is hope, the present is never fixed. Paradoxically, we can
refashion the present by changing the future. Consider this beautiful poem
by the German poet Rilke, which is called “A Walk”. Rilke writes:
20
�My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance--
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on,
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
To change our idea of the future--to hope, to aim, to aspire—is to
change the present. That is why respect for being is not a recipe for
passivity. It does not demand that injustices be endured. Milosz [Meewosh]
ends his own poem Faith with these remarkable lines:
Look, see the long shadow cast by the tree;
And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:
What has no shadow has no strength to live.
21
�Our strength to live is a fact of our being. It must be respected. We
must cast our shadows upon the earth. We must love our country; love our
city; love one another. We must engage in politics to make our country and
our city, respectable and whole.
Whatever future we may hope to create, however, we have no choice
but to inhabit it together. We must live with those whom we might otherwise
oppose. And this means that we must stand firmly balanced in the tension
between our own ideals and our respect for the alterity of others. It is an
equilibrium as fragile, and as delicate, and yet as inevitable, as a shadow
falling on a leaf floating down a river.
How can we maintain this remarkable equilibrium? How can we stand
rooted in ourselves and yet retain a posture of respect for others whom we
believe to be quite wrong and fraught with danger for the country? What
model do we have for such a paradoxical form of connection?
Think of the educational miracle that is St. John’s. You study the great
texts of the past, and yet you prepare students to live in the present. How is it
22
�possible to stand in the shadows of the gigantic thinkers that you study, the
finest in the history of mankind, and yet to have your own thoughts?
Notice that across the ages, the thinkers that you study engage each
other. As they do so, they display both respect for the views of their
interlocutors and at the same time the determination to assert their own
ideas. Every day, in your study, you see exemplified exactly the miraculous
and difficult equilibrium that democracy demands of its citizens.
At St. John’s you model—you enact—at the very highest level, the
difficulties and contradictions of inhabiting a democratic polis. You study
great books of the past, but you know full well that the authors of these
books differ among themselves, and that, as you explain in your Statement
of the St. John’s College Program, these “great books” in the end serve as
prompts for students to struggle “together with fundamental questions,” so
that “students and their teachers” can “learn from their differences and
discover more deeply their shared humanity.” At St. John’s students learn to
assert their own ideas in the very teeth of the most challenging and
magnificent figures of the past. But they learn to do so using their reason,
23
�which means with respect and the acknowledgment of the possibility of
difference.
What are you trying to achieve here in this precious community of St.
John’s, if not that fragile, inexpressibly vulnerable but necessary
equilibrium, that balances using reason to achieve a self-respecting view of
one’s own, but that nevertheless maintains a genuine other-directed respect
for the views of interlocutors, however mistaken?
That is the paradoxical equilibrium of which Milosz [Meewosh]
writes. That is the equilibrium necessary for democracy. That is the
equilibrium that will restore our trust in our fellow citizens, so that together
we can walk forward in confidence, filled with an inner light that will
illuminate the possibility in the present of a common future that, in grasping
us, will transform our dismal present into a scene of hope for us and for our
nation.
In his recent wonderful book entitled College, Columbia literature
professor Andrew DelBanco asks “What is College for”? In answer, he
quotes from a manuscript diary composed in 1850 by a student at a small
24
�Methodist college, Emory and Henry, in southwest Virginia. The student
writes: “Oh that the Lord would show me how to think and how to choose.”
In learning how to think, you will put your trust in reason. In learning
how to choose, you will cast shadow on the world. And, most important of
all, at a college like St. John’s, you will learn these things together, in a
common conversation. That is to say, you will learn how to think and to
choose in the context of respect for those who think and choose differently.
You will learn, that is, how to be citizens of a great democracy. You
will become inoculated against the violent forms of polarization that threaten
now to tear us apart and to foreclose our future.
It is in this way that St. John’s, by maintaining faith in its past, also
maintains faith with our democratic destiny. As St. John’s adapts the great
ideas of the past to the terrible contingencies of the present, it creates hope
for the future. This is an occasion to celebrate the educational ideals of St.
John’s, and to express our own hope that they will extend long into the
future.
25
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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 for 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="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">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://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google 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
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.
25 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
Remarks on the Inauguration of President Nora Demleitner: Citizenship, Undergraduate Education, and Great Books
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on March 24, 2023, by Robert Post as part of the Formal Lecture Series. <br /><br />The lecture was the first President's Law and Society lecture and was part of the events celebrating the inauguration of Nora Demleitner.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Post, Robert, 1947-
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
2023-03-24
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 a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a recording of my lecture available online; make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a copy of my typescript 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
Education, Humanistic--United States
Books and reading--United States
Citizenship--United States
Demleitner, Nora V., 1966-
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Post_Robert_2023-03-24
Friday night lecture
Inauguration
President's Law and Society lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f268903c1b7c293bfa39aeb5d8872798.jpg
7835325f5955b07b0dd11419c44400de
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
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
25.5 x 20.5 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-1649
Title
A name given to the resource
Reverend Richard Landis, Charles A. Nelson, and Edwin J. Delattre in Academic Robes outside of Mellon Hall after the Inauguration Ceremony for Edwin J. Delattre, Annapolis, Maryland, Fall 1980
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1980-09
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Unknown
Subject
The topic of the resource
Landis, Richard
Nelson, Charles A.
Delattre, Edwin J.
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Still Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Inauguration
Presidents
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e95a14a9d48996105a37402e58b6b540.jpg
0257c064db03b3e6233e9126bdcdaf68
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
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
25.5 x 20.5 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-1647
Title
A name given to the resource
Senator Paul Sarbanes, in Academic Robe, Talks with Edwin J. Delattre and Mrs. Delattre, outside of Mellon Hall after the Inauguration Ceremony for Edwin J. Delattre, Annapolis, Maryland, Fall 1980
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1980-09
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Unknown
Subject
The topic of the resource
Delattre, Edwin J.
Sarbanes, Paul
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Still Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Inauguration
Presidents
-
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 History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<strong>Abstract</strong><br />The scope of the materials in this collection is focused on St. John’s College, Annapolis, particularly related to its functions, activities, and perceptions of St. John’s College in the news media. Records include items such as correspondence with public figures, planning notes for public activities, newspaper clippings about the College, essays and published materials, along with some assorted ephemera. While the bulk of the materials are from the 20th century, some items date back into the 18th and 19th century. Because of the breadth of time covered by the collection, many important cultural and educational milestones are represented in the materials. It is also worth noting that the St. John’s College Santa Fe campus is occasionally mentioned in these records, though it is not the focus of the collection.<br /><p><strong>Arrangement<br /></strong>Items are arranged in series by type of record (such as Correspondence) or subject matter (such as 275<sup>th</sup> Anniversary).</p>
<p><strong>Related Material<br /></strong>Almost all of the materials pertaining to the history of St. John’s College prior to 1900 are housed at the Maryland State Archives. For permission to access to these collections see the Director of the St. John’s College Greenfield Library. The St. John’s College archives collections also include materials related to: commencement; admissions; Dr. Richard Weigle; Hector Humphrey; other college officials, etc. These materials are housed in separate collections but may also be useful to consult. </p>
<strong><a title="History Collection Finding Aid" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/files/original/FindingAidforHistoryCollection.docx">Original Finding Aid</a></strong> (created by Megan Craynon)<br /><br />Click on <a title="History Collection Finding Aid" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=27">Items in the St. John's College History Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Craynon, Megan
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
1795-2008
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
paper
Language
A language of the resource
English
French
Russian
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Finding Aid
Descriptive document containing detailed information about a specific collection of papers or records within an archive.
Inventory
<table><thead><tr><td>
<p><em>Folder #</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><em>Author</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><em>Title/Description</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><em>Date(s)</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><em>Medium</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><em>Notes</em></p>
</td>
</tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>
<p>13-1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Holiday party for children</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1979</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation and planning paperwork</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-2</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Holiday party for children</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1980</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation and planning paperwork</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-3</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Parents weekend</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4/1980</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation and agenda</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-4</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Weigle retirement dinner</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/3/1980</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation and planning materials</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-5</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Holiday party for children</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1981</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation and planning paperwork</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-6</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Student charter of King William Players</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1981-1982</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-7</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Inauguration of Edwin Jules Delattre</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1980</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitations, programs, and newspaper articles related to inauguration ceremonies of Delattre as 19<sup>th</sup> president of St. John’s</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-8</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Inauguration of Edwin Jules Delattre</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1980</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Programs for Inaugural Proceedings and Lectures</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-9</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Parents Weekend</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4/1981</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to parents weekend</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to Reality weekend</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/1981</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation for faculty and staff to join ‘Reality Weekend’</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-11</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to Richard Ford’s retirement party</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/27/1981</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-12</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Homecoming Schedule</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9/1981</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Schedule of events for Homecoming</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-13</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to retirement party for Isabelle Simpson</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1/1/1986</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-14</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Friday night events</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1986</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Schedule of Friday night events for Summer 1986</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-15</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Plans for Inauguration of William Dyal</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1986-1987</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Plans for agenda, and correspondence related to planning of inauguration</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-16</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Dyal Inauguration Program</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10/23/1987</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-17</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>College Seal</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/8/1987</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to college seal ceremony</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-18</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Rededication of McDowell Hall</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11/11/1989</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to rededication ceremony</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-19</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>William Dyal retirement</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4/21/1990</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to retirement dinner</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-20</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Junior/Senior cocktail party</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/15/1990</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to cocktail party</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-21</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Santa Fe Homecoming</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>7/15/1994</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Two pamphlets</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-22</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Annapolis Homecoming</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9/30/1994</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Three pamphlets</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-23</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Junior Oratorical Contest</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6/12/????</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Program</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-24</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to all-college party for Don MacIver</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/3/1991</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-25</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1997-1998 social event announcements</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1997-1998</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitations to two events</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-26</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Celebration in honor of Bryce Jacobsen</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/19/1997</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to celebration in honor of Bryce Jacobsen’s 25 years at the college</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-27</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>King William’s Players</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1997</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Flier for performances</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-28</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>A Little Campus Nostalgia Night</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12/13/1997</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Flier for event to celebrate A Little Campus</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-29</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Bar Buchannan Center Open House</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3/25/1998</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Bryce Jacobsen memorial service</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>7/18/1998</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Memo invitation to memorial service for Bryce Jacobsen</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-31</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to the Lafayette Ball</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12/13/1996</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Celebration of 300<sup>th</sup> anniversary of founding of St. John’s College</p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-32</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitation to event honoring Eva Brann</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/7/1997</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original, photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-33</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Invitations to dedication of Francis Scott Key and Mellon Halls</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>5/22/1959</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-34</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Playbill of events marking completion of FSK and Mellon Halls</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1959</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Original</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-35</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Program of students honors</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>n.d.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr><tr><td>
<p>13-36</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Program from commencement activities</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>n.d.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Photocopy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr></tbody></table>
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 History Collection Events & Activities (Box 2 of 2)
Description
An account of the resource
This record series contains materials related to the extracurricular events and activities of St. John’s College. Invitations and programs are included for events such as holiday and retirement parties, as well as other activities of the College community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1897-1998
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
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paper
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Box 13
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kerr, David
Kerr, John Leeds
McDowell, John
Maynadeir, Henry
Meiklejohn, Alexander
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945
Fell, Thomas
Barr, Stringfellow, 1897-1982
Weigle, Richard Daniel, 1912-
Alexander, John D.
Brann, Eva T. H.
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
Finding aid
Homecoming
Inauguration
King William Players
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/05de8c26cd0a229d868fdac1838c59e9.pdf
e297c8a9fe15073f87c8b7a536ddfb0e
PDF Text
Text
S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E
FA L L 2016
VOLUME 41, ISSUE 2
Penelope
The Odyssey’s
Creative Thinker
�ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016
�OPENING NOTE
Everybody needs time for themselves. Time to breathe, to recharge,
to contemplate. Time is a gift. But it
is also necessary in order to develop
big ideas and ponder creative solutions to life’s innumerable problems.
Where would we be today if Plato
or Einstein were slaves to the daily
grind, never making time and space
to think? For many of us, the challenge is to allow ourselves this time,
not as a mere indulgence but rather
a vital ingredient for a life well lived.
At St. John’s, we take time to think
but also to connect with one another,
to address questions and figure
out new systems together. With
another academic year underway,
the college’s two campuses are
alive with new and returning faces.
Upperclassmen welcome the influx
of freshmen, lending guidance and
support—from crash courses in waltz
to assistance with ancient Greek—to
their fellow Johnnies. By now I have
witnessed such scenes countless
times. Once in a while it makes me
recall my own undergraduate years,
now decades behind in the rear
view, and causes me to smile. After
all, St. John’s is a place where we
look back in order to move forward.
Gregory Shook, editor
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 1
�FALL 2016
VOLUME 41, ISSUE 2
“� ime is a weaving and unweaving;
T
it makes and unmakes beings and relations.”
—Michael Grenke, tutor
FEATUR E S
P A G E 1 8��
P A G E 2 2��
PA G E 2 8
PENELOPE’S
CHOICE
WONDROUS
BREAD MAKERS
WEAVING A
SOCIAL FABRIC
Placed on the clock by her
suitors, the Odyssey’s creative
problem-solver manipulates time
in order to defend her marriage,
but what is she defending?
With a neighborhood business of
their own—making baked goods
from scratch—this enterprising
Johnnie couple are part of the
mom-and-pop revival.
To create a self-sustaining
community of independent,
progressive workers requires a
skill set rooted in interaction,
innovation, and collaboration.
ON THE COVER:
Penelope illustration
by Thomas Ehretsmann
2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016
�D E PAR T ME N T S
��FROM THE BELL TOWERS
BIBLIOFILE
FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI
4 �
Bienvenue en France
Study Abroad
32 �athryn Kramer looks back on her
K
upbringing steeped in the great
books in Missing History.
34 �JCAA News
S
6 Lasting Legacies
7 �
A Spruce for McDowell
8 � Than a Game
More
Croquet 2016
9 Tutors Mark the Occasion
10 Whimsical Worlds
11 �abor of Love
L
12 Johnnie Origins
14 Mark Roosevelt Inauguration
33 �ea Wilson (SF08) blurs the lines
K
between life and art in We Eat
Our Own.
36 �lumni Notes
A
40 � rofile: Anika Prather (AGI09)
P
breaks education traditions.
42 �In Memoriam
�
Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) shares
her essays on life’s vivid moments
in The Great Spring.
44 �hilanthropy: Class of 2016
P
sets a new record.
�
Charles Melson (AGI88) provides
new analysis of the Western
experience in coping with “small
wars” in Kleinkrieg.
46 �
Johnnie Voices: Alumni weigh
in on an icon.
45 � irst Person: Sawyer Neale (A18)
F
JOHNNIE TRADITIONS
48 �t. John’s Forever
S
EIDOS
49 Jennifer Chenoweth (SF95)
ABOVE: Spiffy socks at the 34th annual
Annapolis Cup
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 3
�From the
BELL TOWERS
AIX-EN-PROVENCE
Bienvenue en France
New Study Abroad Enriches Our Learning
SUSAN STICKNEY
This January, as 20 second-semester juniors unpack, they will arrange Moliere and
Racine upon shelves in Aix-en-Provence family homes. For 16 weeks, like lodgers,
10 Johnnies from each campus will enjoy breakfasts and dinners prepared by their
respective French hosts. The classrooms of their program—The Institute for American
Universities, or IAU College—lie along the cobblestone streets of historic downtown
Aix, less than an hour north of Marseille, near Avignon and Arles. Lab equipment
necessary for duplicating experiments by Faraday and Maxwell is provided.
“We’ll do the program in full, the same
program the juniors do on both campuses,”
says Santa Fe tutor Judith Adam. Since February, she has called herself the Tutor for Study
Abroad. As one of four faculty members going
to Aix, Adam hoped to be practicing her French
this summer. Yet after Santa Fe Dean Matt
Davis assigned the task of writing the study
abroad proposal, and the board agreed to go
ahead in 2017, she found herself in charge
with “less than one year to get the program
off the ground.” In Aix, Adam looks forward
to Annapolis and Santa Fe students “coming
together in one place,” mixed in one seminar
and two sets of tutorials.
According to its website (IAUFrance.org),
IAU College, founded in 1957, hosts an array of
students from more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States. Throughout
the year, thousands of young scholars live with
families and study in classrooms in the medieval center of town. A half-hour stroll along
a country road leads to the Marchutz School
of Fine Arts, part of the IAU program since
1976. Here towers Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a
limestone ridge more than 3,000 feet high that
sprawls across 11 miles. It inspired 60-plus
paintings by Cézanne.
Last April, Adam and Annapolis tutor
Brendan Boyle introduced the study abroad
program. Approximately 50 students attended
teleconference information sessions, and then
filled out applications that included essays. Due
to limited space during this pilot year, students
were selected through a lottery. “Judith has the
most difficult task,” says Boyle, who was asked
by former dean Pamela Kraus to administer
from Annapolis. “Creating a community of
learning no different from the ones we have
thousands of miles away involves logistical,
practical challenges that Judith is spending a
lot of time negotiating. Her efforts have been
Herculean.”
Directed by the deans and the Instruction
Committee, Adam hammers out the minutiae
of program-related issues such as adequate
study space, setting up a lab from scratch, and
making sure blackboards are in classrooms.
“It would be chaos,” Adam says, without the
assistance of Amy Weber from Santa Fe’s
4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016
admissions office, an international education
professional who has guided students from
various institutions since 2005. After Weber
was named assistant director for off-campus
studies, she organized non-academic details
including visa applications, insurance, plane
tickets, and other items to ensure that students
and faculty will be adequately prepared.
Although maintaining the integrity of the
academic program and ensuring the safety
and well-being of participants are top priorities, another focus is financial accessibility.
Johnnies in Aix will have the same financial
aid they normally receive, although workstudy opportunities will be limited, at best. A
freshman who usually supplements income via
work-study “could anticipate needing to save
a little money for second semester junior year,”
suggests Adam. Study abroad is a whole-college program, and Adam is disappointed that
faculty recruitment this first year—a casualty
of time and scheduling pressures—exclusively
represents Santa Fe.
St. John’s has always encouraged individual
students, often at their own expense, to go
abroad for summer or gap-year programs. “We
will only do a program that is financially possible for all or most of our students,” Annapolis
tutor Patricia Locke explains. Locke stresses
that it will be “our exact program, only in
France.” She spent nine months in Aix last year,
and now, on sabbatical, plans to live there this
fall as a Resident Fellow, sponsored by IAU.
Although she will help set up the program,
she declined the offer to join the first faculty
group because she has been in Europe all
year. Accompanying Adam will be tutors John
Cornell, Patricia Greer, and Jay Smith, none of
whom will be teaching full-time. In partnership with IAU student services, they will act
together as assistant deans.
Both Adam and Locke tell how the longstanding friendship between St. John’s and
Marchutz makes IAU a natural fit for this
program. Individual St. John’s students and
faculty have studied fine arts at Marchutz for
many years. Two summers ago, Santa Fe tutor
Susan Stickney brought six Santa Fe and two
�Annapolis Johnnies to Marchutz’s six-week program; this past summer Annapolis tutor Sarah
Stickney did the same with a smaller crew.
Decades ago, the late Santa Fe tutor Dean
Haggard led a seminar at Marchutz on the
Meno. Adam brags that “IAU has been interested in St. John’s because they see how good
our students are. They’re stars in Marchutz.”
Depending on how the Aix experiment goes,
Locke foresees the possibility of a second
program in Greece. The original idea, she says,
was that Annapolis faculty and staff would
organize a program in Greece, while Santa Fe
focused in France. “I, with Nick Maistrellis, was
investigating the possibility of a sophomore
semester in Greece.” Dean Davis, in Aix for
several days last January and February, was
able to work out many details quickly, and they
proceeded in that direction, “starting small,
to get the kinks out,” says Locke. If a Greece
program was initiated, ideally, “the students
could choose between France and Greece,”
Locke says.
“IAU is very knowledgeable about St.
John’s,” Davis explains. “In fact, the Marchutz
school is modeled around us. Their biggest
class of the week is a five-hour, or longer,
seminar on Fridays in which they are looking at
paintings and talking about them.” He is confident that at IAU, “They know us. They know
what we need. They’re not going to interfere.
They’re not going to try to make us take their
classes.” Johnnies in Aix will have classes in
spoken French available, but not mandatory.
“They know our program is very rigorous and
OPPOSITE PAGE: Place
d’Albertas in Aix.
TOP: Students view
Delacroix’s painting,
Entry of the Crusaders
in Constantinople,
at the Musée du
Louvre on a Marchutz
museum field study.
BOTTOM: Johnnies
enjoy one of the many
open-air cafés in Aix.
SUSAN STICKNEY
—Annapolis Dean Joseph Macfarland
CHARLEY UMBARGER
“� ur learning is not entirely
O
nested within words,
written and spoken; we are
thinking about how we
are placed in the world and
how we act in it.”
takes a lot of time.” Davis praises the homestay aspect because “it will give the students
a deeper sense of what it’s like to live abroad.”
His decision to put Adam in charge was easy.
“Judith seemed like a very good choice. Not
only had she been to Aix, but she’s well versed
in French, speaking and reading it well.”
When it comes to security, both the IAU
website and Davis do not mince words. Davis
says he will monitor the situation in Europe.
Speaking for both deans, he insists, “Our job is
the welfare of our students. We would never put
students in danger.”
Before launching this project, faculty
engaged in considerable discussion and
debate. One concern, writes Annapolis Dean
Joe Macfarland, is that “Many study abroad
programs are deeply unserious; they are quasieducational vacations.” He adds, “I have come
to think that study abroad is not essential to
liberal education, but still a beneficial addition
to it.” Macfarland describes how, “In the laboratories, we spend a good deal of time looking
at phenomena, trying to see the world before
us with fresh eyes, letting what appears shake
our preconceptions, and then giving a fresh
account to ourselves in words. Our learning
is not entirely nested within words, written
and spoken; we are thinking about how we
are placed in the world and how we act in it.”
He concludes, “I think study abroad provides
opportunities to supplement and enrich our
discursive learning.”
—Robin Weiss (SFGI90)
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 5
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
SERVICE TO SJC
Lasting Legacies
With nearly 50 combined years of service, Barbara Goyette (A73) and Victoria Mora, both of
whom retired from the college in summer, left
legacies marked by affection for St. John’s.
Mora, who served
more than two
decades as a tutor,
dean, vice president
for Advancement, and
senior vice president
for Development
and Alumni Relations in Santa Fe,
joined United World
College-USA as the
fifth president of
Victoria Mora
the school’s U.S.
campus, located in Montezuma, New Mexico.
At St. John’s, Mora’s talents and passion for
academic and institutional leadership, as well
as her admiration for the Program, informed all
aspects of her work. With vision and skill, she
cultivated deep philanthropic relationships and
managed a wide range of fundraising efforts,
TA L K O F T H E T O W E R S
In Annapolis, two new tutors have joined
the faculty. Rahul Chaudhri comes to the
college from Stanford University, where he
received his PhD in philosophy and taught in
the university’s Thinking Matters program.
Andrew Joseph Romiti (A07) returns to the
college from the Catholic University of America
where he is expected to receive his PhD in
philosophy.
In Santa Fe, two new tutors have joined the
faculty. Ian Moore comes to the college from
DePaul University, where he is working on
completing his PhD in philosophy. Nicholas
Starr (SF02) returns to St. John’s from
Boston College, where he received his PhD
in political science.
On each campus, there is a new dean, associate dean, and four additions/changes to the
including a successful campaign in honor of the
50th anniversary of the Santa Fe campus. “The
reason I fell in love with this place was the
dynamic nature of the classroom,” Mora noted.
“Ideas matter here and learning isn’t just a
buzzword. People weren’t just taking classes—
they were exploring ideas that mattered to
them in a spirit of intellectual friendship.”
Goyette, like
Mora, may be best
described as a dyedin-the-wool Johnnie.
After graduating
from St. John’s, the
Ohio native studied at
Catholic University’s
School of Philosophy.
She returned to her
alma mater in 1994 to
serve as the college’s
Barbara Goyette (A73)
new director of Public
Relations and Publications in Annapolis. To
this position she brought expertise as a writer
and editor with various publications; in 2001
“she took a modest little newspaper called The
Reporter, founded and edited by this writer,
and transformed it into a beautifully edited
magazine, The College, a publication worthy of
college’s director-level leadership. In Annapolis, Joe MacFarland is the new dean. Emily
Langston is the associate dean for Graduate
Programs. John Kane is the new director of
Major and Planned Gifts. Robert Mueck is
the new director of Public Safety. Leo Pickens
(A78) now serves as director of Leadership
Annual Gifts. James Reische is the collegewide chief communications officer. He comes
to St. John’s from Grinnell College, where he
served as vice president for Communications.
In Santa Fe, Matthew Davis is the new dean.
David McDonald the associate dean for Graduate Programs. Sarah Palacios now serves
as college-wide director of Alumni Relations.
Maureen Small is the new director of Student
Health and Wellness. Edward “Ned” Walpin
now serves as college-wide executive director
of Enrollment Management. Michael Wismer
is the new director of Public Safety.
6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016
the college’s name,” writes Rebecca M. Wilson
(H83) in a letter to The College. For the past
15 years, Goyette served as vice president for
Advancement in Annapolis.
Goyette’s and Mora’s efforts reflect their
shared dedication to the values of St. John’s
and their deep-rooted desire to enrich the
life of the college.
READER SHARES
Golly! It’s remarkable how different people
are (and thank God they are!), even among
St. John’s fund raisers. Consider Jeff Bishop:
outgoing, charismatic, beloved—whose death
saddened all of us—and then think about Barbara Goyette. I’m stunned when I do. A quiet,
behind-the-scenes, wonkish type, never pushing
herself forward, with a Type A personality
highly capable of handling the wealth of information at her fingertips, Barbara has worked
in unsung ways since 1994 for the better good of
the college. During her last 15 years, when she
was serving as vice-president of the Annapolis
campus, she raised no less than $127 million for
St. John’s. It’s an extraordinary record.
Not only that, among other things, when
Barbara headed the publicity office in Annapolis, she took a small, modest little newspaper
called The Reporter, founded and edited by this
writer for parents, alumni, and friends, and
converted it into a beautifully edited magazine,
The College, worthy of St. John’s name. Not
incidentally, she has accomplished all this by
showing the quality most important to any
member of the St. John’s family: complete,
personal integrity.
As Barbara retires on July 1, I’m tired of
quietude. The angels in heaven may flap their
wings in applause, but I want earthly sounds:
for the bells of McDowell Hall to ring out for her,
for the Freshman Chorus to compose an anthem
in her honor, for the waves of College Creek to
lap more noisily in her praise. I imagine Jeff
Bishop hiking himself up in his grave to give an
admiring shout-out for this 1973 alumna who,
in her retiring way, has played a tremendous
role in keeping the college going. All hail,
Barbara Goyette! Let the word go out: You’ve
shone, Barbara! You’ve left a brilliant record!
—� ebecca Wilson (H83), St. John’s director
R
of News and Information, 1973-88
�IN ANNAPOLIS
A Spruce for
McDowell
It’s where waltz parties swing into the night.
Where seniors ring the bell upon completing their essays. Where faculty and students
convene for a cup of coffee and good conversation. And where alumni and the community
meet for lectures, concerts, and Croquet.
McDowell Hall is an architectural jewel
and the historic heart of St. John’s College.
Built in the 1740s and praised by Thomas
Jefferson, the building and the surrounding
four acres were gifted to St. John’s by the
state of Maryland in 1784. The elegant facility,
named for the college’s first president, John
McDowell, stands as one of the nation’s oldest
academic buildings in continuous use. Formerly a dorm, dining hall, classroom building,
and faculty building all in one, McDowell Hall
still serves as the academic and social hub of
the Annapolis campus. In particular, the Great
Hall, with its elegant wrapped balcony, is a
popular gathering spot for Johnnies to enjoy
music, singing, and dancing.
McDowell Hall is poised for major repairs.
Last renovated in 1989, the building requires
structural work as well as other physical
upgrades to ensure that it meets proper
standards and accommodates the educational
needs of today’s and tomorrow’s Johnnies.
The Maryland Independent College and
University Association (MICUA) has endorsed
a $2.9 million grant—nearly half the $6 million
the project requires—which the State of Maryland will decide on next spring. An anonymous
donor has issued a 2:1 challenge, with an
invitation to alumni and the broader St. John’s
community to help complete the project.
“Alumni and friends can now leverage their
gifts as they support this historic preservation project,” notes Annapolis President Chris
Nelson. “It’s important to preserve this living
landmark for future generations of Johnnies
and the entire Annapolis community.”
To make a gift and learn more about
opportunities to support the McDowell Hall
renovation project, please contact Laurie
Reinhardt, vice president of Development
and Alumni Relations, at 443-482-6575 or
laurie.reinhardt@sjc.edu.
The College
is published by St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM.
thecollegemagazine@
sjc.edu
Known office of
publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
Periodicals postage
paid at Annapolis, MD.
Postmaster: Send
address changes to
The College Magazine,
Communications Office,
St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue,
Annapolis, MD 21401.
Editor
Gregory Shook
gregory.shook@sjc.edu
Contributors
Anna Perleberg Andersen
(SF02)
Rodjinaé Brown (SF16)
Michael Grenke
Bob Keyes
Leslie Linthicum
Jonathan Llovet (A17)
Sawyer Neale (A18)
Bonnie Scott (A17)
Robin Weiss (SFGI90)
Babak Zarin (A11)
Design
Skelton Design
Contributing Designer
Jennifer Behrens
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 7
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
JOHNNIE TRADITIONS
More Than a Game
For Johnnies, Croquet is a
Tie That Binds
“Dreams come true!” Stephanie Hurn (A17)
proclaimed amid a cheering crowd of Johnnies
and other spectators gathered on the front
lawn of the Annapolis campus for the 34th
annual Annapolis Cup. Hers was the winning
shot that clinched a 3-2 victory for St. John’s—
its 27th in the historic croquet rivalry with
Navy. Throughout the afternoon on April 16,
the Johnnies, sporting denim overalls and
straw hats, battled nobly against the Midshipmen in what was one of the tighter matches in
recent years. “It was a nerve-wracking game,”
says team member Joe Gillespie-Hill (A17) of
his own battle for victory. “Close until about
three-quarters of the way through.”
ABOVE: Surrounded by her
teammates, Stephanie
Hurn (A17) hugs the
Annapolis Cup in near
disbelief after making
the winning shot.
LEFT:
No contest:
Patrick (A01) and Citlali
McDowell, and their son,
are the best dressed
family at Croquet.
ABOVE: Jennifer Shumpert (A15)
celebrates with her friend and former
teammate Stephanie Hurn (A17).
RIGHT: William Knight (A08) dons
authentic vintage attire.
With a dazzling run of consecutive shots
on the court, Hurn was a picture of focused
determination. At one point during the match
she silenced a group of boisterous fans with
just a look and a wave of the hand. “I’ve seen
8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FA L L 2 016
her run the break before,” says St. John’s
Imperial Wicket Noe Jimenez (A16), impressed
by Hurn’s prowess with a croquet mallet. “She
knocked it out of the park. I’m so proud of my
teammates. It was an incredible team effort.”
Suffice to say, a special bond exists among
Johnnie croquet team members. At this year’s
match, Imperial Wickets and team members
from previous decades returned to campus
to support their alma mater and check out
the new crop of players—and to take mallet in
hand once again for a bit of friendly competition. Long after the picnics were packed up
and the spectators cleared the lawn, croquet
titans past and present gathered for a round
of “SJC 9-wicket,” played not for glory but for
love of the game.
—Gregory Shook
�COMMENCEMENT 2016
Tutors Mark
the Occasion
Per St. John’s tradition, seniors selected
members of the SJC community to provide
addresses at this year’s commencement
ceremonies. In Santa Fe, tutor Eva Brann (H89)
took the opportunity to offer a last-minute
language tutorial. Addressing the 78 seniors
and 19 Graduate Institute students assembled
on the Weigle Placita, she thoughtfully yet
playfully took to task a well-meaning sentiment:
“I want to make a difference. I want to change
the world.” Brann looks to Kant—arguably one
of the more challenging Program authors—to
analyze these words and get to the heart of
their true meaning. “He thinks that doing right
is not doing what you want but what you ought,
and that, in fact, the only proof of your doing as
you ought is that it hurts some, that your mere
wanting is thwarted.”
A mentor as well as a tutor, Brann is a
model for the “examined life” that a St. John’s
education encourages. During her address,
she reflected on the tutor-student dynamic at
the college. “You may often have thought that
our, the tutors’, intention was to throw you
into a permanent muddle,” said Brann. “But, of
course, the opposite was our hope: It was that
you would find in your reading the elements of
your own firm view of what is good universally
and therefore what is better in particular.”
Seniors in Annapolis also selected a beloved
member of the faculty, Thomas May, to offer
words to mark the momentous event. “Mr. May
has many of the qualities that I look for in a
tutor: generosity, thoughtfulness, knowledge,
experience, and a sense of humor,” says Max
Dakin (A16). In addition to leading seminars
and language tutorials, May has served as
director of the Freshman Chorus, skillfully
introducing the college’s love of music to its
newest members. Addressing the 85 seniors
and 15 Graduate Institute graduates gathered
on the campus front lawn, May requested a
moment of reflection: “Think back to when
you first came here. The convocation, then the
gathering afterwards, meeting the president,
dean, tutors, and community; then off to your
first class, assigned book in hand dutifully read,
you picked your seat and waited for the opening
“� ou may often have thought that our,
Y
the tutors’, intention was to throw
you into a permanent muddle. But, of
course, the opposite was our hope: It
was that you would find in your reading
the elements of your own firm view of
what is good universally and therefore
what is better in particular.”
—Eva Brann (H89)
question. Do you still remember what it was?
How much can you recall of the discussion that
followed?”
Befitting the occasion, May concluded with
words from a poem by Wendell Berry: “May
you always have the hindsight to know where
you’ve been, the foresight to know where you’re
going, and the insight to realize what you don’t
know and when you’ve gone too far! May you
never forget the friends you’ve made here and
all that has been good in this adventurous
endeavor.”
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�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
H I D D E N TA L E N T
Whimsical Worlds
Sarah Benson Brings
Paper to Life
Annapolis tutor Sarah Benson made what she
describes as her “first paper automaton” at age
8. While attending the Strawberry Hill day
camp on Nittany Mountain near Centre Hall,
Pennsylvania, she created a figure on paper—a
strongman with stripy socks—meant to come
to life when cut out and played with. Known as
Hampelmann in German-speaking countries,
or jumping-jack, at the tug of a string his
arms and legs begin to move. “He was an
automaton to me, though he didn’t move by
himself, because he nevertheless seemed to,”
says Benson. “The delight comes from our
participating in the illusion.”
Benson’s creative and whimsical bent only
grew with time, taking many different forms.
While in her teens, Benson wished to become
a clockmaker. Her parents gave her a kit
called “Make Your Own Working Paper Clock,”
and she again gave life to paper, which now
ticked and tocked. When Benson later began
to explore philosophy she discovered that “the
two paths seemed nearly interchangeable at
the time. Either seemed an occasion to explore
“� dilemma of the tourist
A
who knew Rome so well
already was to find the topographic city as interesting
as the paper one.”
Sarah Benson’s first paper automaton
moves with the help of a string.
10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
Benson’s “MIDDLEMARCH PAPER THEATER” is
modeled on the 18th-century paper theaters
of Martin Engelbrecht. In the background is a
peep-show birthday card for her husband, with
a silhouette of their baby girl inside.
questions of what makes a thing alive, what
constitutes the mind.” She found the historical
narrative of paper worlds just as enchanting as
her own experience with them.
As an art historian, Benson has had the
opportunity to gaze back through time, making whole cities—now only knowable through
the trails of artifacts and documents they
left behind—folded into the three-dimensional
world of her mind, breathe once more. Pop-up
paper theaters became common entertainment
in the 1700s, a century before George Eliot
wrote her novel Middlemarch. There is a
scene in the book in which Dorothea, the main
character, travels to Rome with her husband.
Benson explains that before Dorothea laid
foot in Rome, she had probably known it as a
paper city—the streets, piazzas, monuments,
and ruins all laid out in printed views, which
onlookers who had never set foot in the city
itself could explore, both with their eyes as
well as their imaginations. “A dilemma of the
tourist who knew Rome so well already was to
find the topographic city as interesting as the
paper one,” says Benson, who created her own
paper theater with Dorothea in the center of
the stage, her second husband-to-be off to the
�side, his gaze askew. Benson’s theater allows
readers to put Dorothea back into paper Rome
and imagine how the character is affected by
sites she never visits in the novel.
Benson’s interest extends into old optical
devices made to enhance the experience of
paper worlds by exaggerating them to the
eye. One such device is the zograscope, which
belongs to the lineage of optical entertainments that seek to immerse the viewer in the
scene, along with cinema, 3D photography, and
virtual reality. Printed views with exaggerated
perspectives called vues d’optiques were sold
to be seen through the zograscope. “I knew
about zograscopes from my research into
printed views of Rome,” says Benson. “But I’d
never seen one in person before noticing one
among the collections of historical scientific
instruments in Mellon Hall. I don’t think
anyone knew what it was. Thanks to the Paca
House Museum in Annapolis, which lent us two
of their vues d’optiques, I got to try it out with
the students. It was a lot of fun.”
great books. On Saturday mornings, one of
them brings a translation of one Stephanus
page, which they discuss after they “schmooze,
chew the fat and gossip.” (“Stephanus page”
refers to the pagination of a 16th-century
edition of Plato’s works, used for standard reference.) Moving one page per week maintains
a manageable pace, and it also has a greater
benefit. Each of them preserves anonymity and
the unity of the translation, since no one gets
special rights to a section or speech. When I
asked about it, Mr. Salem said they have no
idea who originally prepared each section. They
work as amateurs—lovers—of Plato’s dialogues
and of our own. In this spirit, they work as
readers, for readers, in dialectic cooperation
to produce a translation to engage with. Ms.
Brann said, “Some classicists may find it outrageous, but if they spend some time with it, they
might even learn something.”
That said, the translators had hot feet putting Plato’s dialogue into English. As Mr. Kalkavage explained, when we discuss a play, such
as Hamlet, we can juggle various readings of
—Bonnie Scott (A17)
So, how’s the fruit? Edifying, delicious. Their
work fits the dialogue’s theme: the translation
fills the reader with Eros, inspiring her to press
further in inquiry. Ms. Brann, Mr. Kalkavage,
and Mr. Salem showcase the dialogue’s saucy
seriousness, tracing shifts in register and style.
One hears the poetic eloquence of Agathon, the
unwittingly funny formality of Eryximachus,
Socrates’s ironical wit. There are benefits to
making English more like Greek when writing
a translation, but this trio offers a wealth
of clever, dynamic English working on its
own terms. Sometimes the language is clear
and simple; at other times it follows twisting maneuvers of intentionally complex and
convoluted speech. Using their translation, Mr.
Kalkavage led a GI Preceptorial on Symposium and Phaedrus this summer in Annapolis.
One student captured a quality of their translation by asking, “Who is the better guide, the
grammarian who produces a reference book, or
Shakespeare?” The trio of tutors has found the
medium between being informed by the Greek
language and by Plato. Where they step away
a line at once. An actor on stage, however, has
no such luxury. In front of an audience, actors
have their feet to the fire and must give a
reading to each line they deliver. Like actors,
the translators decided in each case on a single
delivery.1 What English expression will carry
over the colorful threads of flirtation woven
into this interaction? How should particles—
little words that put theatric gestures on the
Greek’s tongue—come across? Their introduction to Symposium says, “Our goal was to
devise a translation that was as faithful as
possible to the Greek original in vocabulary
and syntax, and that captured the playfulness
of the interchanges and the varying tone of the
formal speeches.”
Eva Brann and “the Boys” translate Plato.
T U T O R T R A N S L AT I O N S
After the students left last spring, Annapolis
tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Eric Salem (A77)
gathered at fellow tutor Peter Kalkavage’s
office, where the trio put finishing touches on
their most recent collaboration, a translation
of Plato’s dialogue on Love, Symposium or
Drinking Party. About 20 years ago, when
Ms. Brann was asked by the editor of Focus
Press to translate the Sophist, she asked Mr.
Kalkavage and Mr. Salem to join her in the
project. Since then, these tutors have translated several of Plato’s dialogues: Sophist,
Phaedo, Statesman, and now Symposium.
With the new translation done, they still had to
polish their essays and send drafts to the publisher before summer sessions began. In this
in-between time, I spoke with them about the
fruit of their labors and the labors themselves.
Each member of the trio works on translation projects individually—Italian short stories,
French poetry, Greek fragments, works on
mathematics, other Plato. But how do they
practice, as Mr. Kalkavage called it, the “unart” of translation together? In the same way
that everything is practiced at the college: as
friends in dialogue with each other and the
JENNIFER BEHRENS
Labor of Love
from a so-called “literal” translation, they step
up and are more accurate for it.
Symposium or Drinking Party will
be published in spring 2017 by Hackett
Publishing. The trio of Eva Brann and “the
Boys” will begin work shortly on their next
translation: Plato’s Philebus.
—Jonathan Llovet (A17)
1
To the relief of their feet, they include a glossary
that discusses the meanings of important Greek
words in Symposium.
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�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
JOHNNIE ORIGINS
Facebook was abuzz this summer when Kevin Thomas
(A93) posted his story about why he came to St. John’s,
inspiring other Johnnies to share their own “origin stories.”
Here are just a few excerpts, which have been edited for
length and clarity, from the many that were shared:
“After my junior year I had an opportunity to
go to a summer program [at St. John’s]…I
spent one morning in a two-hour seminar
with [tutors] John Verdi and Debbie (Renaut)
Axelrod, and it felt like the most natural thing
in the world. After a few weeks, I couldn’t
bear the thought of leaving. I lay awake one
night trying to piece it all together. All at once
I saw: I could apply early, and not go back to
high school! I went to see Eva Brann, who
was dean at the time. She looked at me and
said, ‘Are you serious?’ Once she saw I was,
she sent me to Admissions. I applied in July
to come in August. Somehow the financial aid
I needed materialized, even so late. Then my
parents realized I was serious and made a last
ditch attempt to prevent it. But I refused to
give in. My dad visited my seminar when I was
a freshman and said, ‘You should stay here.
I’ve never seen a discussion like that.’ At St.
John’s I flourished under the care and attention
of my tutors. Among many life-saving things,
I learned something crucial for life in general
and for intellectual life in particular: how to
cope when you don’t understand something.”
that I could study exactly the same things at
Harvard that I could study at St. John’s, taking
Plato, Greek, French, etc., plus I would have
the Harvard degree. So I applied and got into
Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, and attended
Harvard. I was in a freshman ‘seminar’ class
there where the graduate student teaching the
class basically read his dissertation to us. I
knew that was not my experience of seminar at
St. John’s…
I began to realize that my high school counselors had been wrong, and that I could not
replicate a SJC experience at Harvard. I found
a dorm proctor who had gone to St. John’s
College as an undergraduate and asked her
what she thought about SJC versus Harvard. I
remember her being extremely professional and
balanced, explaining, ‘On the one hand Harvard
…and on the other hand St. John’s…’ But I
could see that every time she spoke about
St. John’s her eyes lit up with life and love for
the institution. I arranged to visit SJC as a
prospective student again just to make sure.
After that visit, I knew I had to go to St. John’s
[which] I describe as one of the great loves of
my life to this day.”
MICHAEL STRONG (SF84):
JEROME DAUSMAN (AGI11):
“I first encountered St. John’s in a pile of college brochures that came in the mail after I
took my PSATs. I had scored well and seemed
to be getting huge numbers of brochures that
all looked the same—smiling students on bright
green lawns looking like they were having fun.
Then came the St. John’s brochure, with the list
of Homer, Plato, etc. It is the only brochure that
I read all the way through. I made arrangements to visit at the beginning of my senior year
[and] loved it immediately…
My high school counselors then began to talk
me into applying for the Ivy Leagues, saying
“My origin story starts with MIT. I learned
how to use the formulas, how to write a
paper on the facts, and how to take exams.
I also learned how much others had read and
was somewhat jealous. I wound up with two
degrees and a desire to read anything and
everything. Years later when my son was
in his first year at St. John’s in Annapolis I
decided to do his readings also. Because
Herodotus and later Thucydides were so
interesting I read them cover to cover, though
the freshmen only read half of each. My son
finished freshman year in May and I was still
ZENA HITZ (A95):
12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
“�..when my son was in his
.
first year at St. John’s I
decided to do his readings
also. Because Herodotus
and Thucydides were so
interesting I read them
cover to cover. . .So I followed
him to St. John’s, enrolling
in the graduate program.
Being able to discuss the
books with others makes all
the difference. My son and I
graduated together in 2011.”
—Jerome Dausman (AGI11)
�“� know that wherever I go
I
in life and whatever happens
to me, I will still have the
books in my heart and a
cadre of friends pointing the
way to the examined life.”
—Lauren Cooper (A10)
be forever grateful for the college for providing
me with such a transformational education. I
know that wherever I go in life and whatever
happens to me, I will still have the books in my
heart and a cadre of friends pointing the way to
the examined life.”
ELI CASTRO (SF94):
reading January assignments! So I followed
him to St. John’s, enrolling in the graduate
program. Being able to discuss the books
with others makes all the difference. My son
and I graduated together in 2011.”
LAUREN COOPER (A10):
“After a bumpy couple of years involving a number of ‘teachable moments,’ I found myself in
my dorm at a different school, miserable, bored,
and extremely lonely. I was frustrated by the
lack of engagement by other students, the lack
of support by my professors, and the constraints
of having to only take classes in my major (when
all I wanted was to learn all kinds of things, not
just one thing). I resolved to leave college completely and pursue my life dream of being a goat
herder. A few weeks later, I came to my senses,
remembered a high school teacher’s recommendations, and started looking at the websites of
various small colleges. At that point, SJC struck
me as the only place I could go and experience
freedom from the constraints of majors…I will
“I visited St. John’s in October of my junior
year in high school. I’d like to claim more
noble motivations, but I was as excited for the
chance to skip out on a few days of school,
meet college girls, and see Santa Fe as I was to
investigate the curriculum. Within a few days,
I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else. The
conversations I was part of there—particularly
one in the coffee shop, after seminar—changed
my entire perspective on what a conversation
could be. When I got home, I sat down with my
dad over ice cream and explained that there
was no way I was waiting through another year
of high school to do this. I contacted the Grand
Rapids School Board, arranged to take my GED,
completed my application, and headed off that
fall to Santa Fe. There are very few decisions
I’ve made in my life that I’ve been more certain were the right one.”
CHRISTOPHER HADLEY (A92):
“I went to St. John’s because of close friends of
my family who were alumni. They were creative,
thoughtful, and integrated in the way I wanted
to be. It was a great decision, to go to St.
John’s—Santa Fe first, then Annapolis. I’m still
relishing ongoing conversations with books
and authors from the Program. I have never
stopped reading the Great Books. And I still
love my living and breathing friends that I met
there, too!”
Do you have an “origin story” that you
would like to share with The College? If so,
please send it to thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu.
AHHH, REFRESHING!
Have you heard the news? St. John’s
recently launched a refreshed version
of its website, www.sjc.edu. Incorporating extensive input from alumni, faculty,
staff, and students, the newly enhanced
design is meant to better feature the
Program and show the world the St.
John’s we know and love. If you haven’t
done so already, take a moment to peruse the website—and be sure to follow
St. John’s on Facebook and Twitter.
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�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
I N A U G U R AT I O N
St. John’s Welcomes
Santa Fe’s Seventh
President
“There’s a fear of pomposity,” Mark Roosevelt
said in the week leading up to his inauguration
as the seventh president of St. John’s College
in Santa Fe.
Those fears were put to rest September 16
and 17, in an inauguration weekend that included
barbecue and beer from the Cowgirl Hall of
Fame, a Dixieland jazz band, film showings,
and an American Indian hoop dancer who had
the crowd on its feet. Roosevelt did his part to
reduce pomposity by pairing his academic robes
with blue-soled sneakers for the ceremony.
As the event was timed to coincide with Santa
Fe’s homecoming weekend, these spirited aspects
of the program were meshed with more familiar
traditions, including the procession of faculty in
academic regalia, and attendance by numerous
board members, Alumni Association leaders, and
alumni. The inauguration also included warm
welcomes to Roosevelt from Annapolis President
Chris Nelson (SF70) on behalf of the Annapolis
campus, Santa Fe Dean Matthew Davis (A82)
on behalf of the Santa Fe staff, and from Audrey
Morf (SF17) on behalf of students.
Greg Avis, Roosevelt’s friend and a former
board member at Antioch College, where Roosevelt was previously president, introduced St.
[The St. John’s education]
“changes people who can go
on and change the world.
Please know this . . . my
commitment to preserving
this education and celebrating
its impact is unwavering.”
—Mark Roosevelt
John’s new college-wide leader, praising him for
his razor-sharp intelligence. “This is not a ‘job’
for Mark,” Avis said. “It is a calling.”
In his own inauguration address, Roosevelt
spoke of the importance of the St. John’s
education: “It changes people who can go on
and change the world,” he said. And he spoke
to the challenges faced by our unique small
college. “Please know this,” Roosevelt said. “My
commitment to preserving this education and
CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: Live jazz fills
the air. A hoop dancer delights the crowd.
President Roosevelt stresses the value of
St. John’s. Bernstein mentors students.
Kimmelman and Bernstein tickle the
ivories. FOLLOWING PAGE: Dixieland sounds
ring in the festivities.
celebrating its impact is unwavering.” Nelson
affirmed this statement, saying that Roosevelt
“treasures the St. John’s Program, the quality
of community life on both campuses, and the
dedication of the faculty and staff to the preservation and sustenance of the college and its
program of study.”
Briana Saussy (A03, EC05), a member of
the college’s Alumni Association, says she has
already seen Roosevelt’s devotion to the St.
John’s mission and his ability to work through
the tensions and concerns about the consolidation of two campuses under one president. “My
personal impression,” she says, “is that Mark is
very much the right person to steer the college
at this point in time.”
—Leslie Linthicum
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�WORLD-CLASS MUSICAL
ACCOMPANIMENT
Pianist, composer and teacher Seymour Bernstein, at 89, is having something of a moment.
After retiring from an international performing
career at age 50, Bernstein turned to teaching
and writing, laboring in partial obscurity until
2014, when actor and director Ethan Hawke
met him at a dinner party and made him the
subject of his documentary film, Seymour: An
Introduction. Since then, Bernstein has found
a new audience among piano students, music
lovers, and a general audience who recognize
him as a mensch and a mentor: a sage, as
much as a musician.
St. John’s President Mark Roosevelt and his
wife, Dorothy, had never heard of Bernstein
when they watched Seymour: An Introduction
on Netflix earlier this year. It was just as the
planning had begun for Roosevelt’s September
2016 inauguration.
“We just loved it,” Roosevelt said. “I realized
that much of what is represented in the film
is central to what St. John’s is about: The
willingness to cast aside societal and cultural
expectations, the value placed on teaching, and
the passing on of things.”
Roosevelt invited Bernstein, along with one of
his piano students, New York Times art and architecture critic Michael Kimmelman (who has
studied with Bernstein since the age of 5) to
be featured guests at the inauguration. On the
Thursday night before Roosevelt’s installation,
the college hosted a free showing of the film at
Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center, followed by a conversation and Q&A with the star
of the film himself. And “star” turns out to be
an apt descriptor: Bernstein related to the assembly of alumni, board members, and friends
of the college how, on a trip to Korea after the
film debuted, he was mobbed and followed by
camera crews. “Now,” he said in an interview,
“I know what a rock star feels like.”
At Friday’s inauguration, held in the Winiarski
Student Center on the Santa Fe campus, Bernstein and Kimmelman charmed the audience
with a shoulder-to-shoulder performance of Franz
Schubert’s Fantasie in F Minor (Bernstein calls it
“a symphony for four hands”). After the ceremony
they were joined by tutor Sarah Davis for a wideranging and very personal panel discussion about
success, ego, and the connection between work
and meaning, with Bernstein suggesting that
everyone look in the mirror and say, “I love you.”
Bernstein also devoted several hours to mentoring student musicians in one of his legendary
public master classes before a live audience:
St. John’s student Evan A. Quarles (SF17) and
two New Mexico high school students, Presley
Gao of Los Alamos and Leah Epstein of Taos,
selected via a statewide video audition sponsored by St. John’s.
Bernstein has compared the profound effects of
music to profound aspects of life. Life, he says,
has harmonies and dissonances and resolutions, just as music does. “Musicians become
philosophers,” he says. “I believe you won’t enjoy
that resolution if you don’t have that dissonance.
We’re searching for the truth of that B Flat.”
—Leslie Linthicum
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�16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
�THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 17
�PENELOPE’S
CHOICE
�TUTOR VIEW
T
by Michael Grenke
HE ODYSSEY’S PENELOPE IS A THINKER ,
a person who is effective in facing her world and its problems
by thinking her way out of them. She is, perhaps, even more
of a thinker than her much-devising husband, as he is still,
occasionally, given to “solving” his problems with brute
force. It is in Penelope that Homer more purely explores the
possibilities and limitations of Odyssean cleverness. The
emblem of Penelope’s cleverness is the device by which she
tricks her suitors for three years, her weaving. She uses
the weaving to buy herself time, but the weaving is itself
an image of time. Time is a weaving and unweaving; it
makes and unmakes beings and relations. In her deception,
Penelope gives the impression time has no consequence. She
knits and knits (and unknits), but nothing seems to change.
But it is the changes that accompany or constitute time that
make time a matter of consequence for human beings. And
understood thus, time poses a great difficulty that attends
and deforms the kind of thinking in which Penelope engages.
Bourdelle, Emile-Antoine
(1861-1929). Penelope,
1909. Cast bronze, dark
green patina. 47 ¹ 8 × 17
/
× 14 ¾ in. (119.7 × 43.8
× 37.5 cm). AP 1969.03.
Kimbell Art Museum,
Fort Worth, Texas/Art
Resource, NY
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 19
�TUTOR VIEW
I
n the so-called digression of the Theaetetus (172d),
Socrates sketches an extreme image of the upbringing of a philosophic human being. There the philosophic human being is brought up in isolated
innocence. They are not exposed to or involved in any
of the daily concerns of the political or legal system.
These human beings, alone, says Socrates, are free.
Every other human being, says Socrates, is a slave.
More literally they are slaves to time. And expressed
in more Greek fashion, they are slaves to the water
clock. All of their actions and their thinking, all of
their problem solving, is on a timer.
To be free one must be able to do what one wants.
But in order to be able to do what one wants in the
fullest sense, one must know what one is doing. Only
those who are not concerned with the matters of
the day, the week, the year are free to think about
a problem for as long as the problem deserves. Only
a thinker who is at leisure thinks about a problem
with no limitations other than those that define sound
thinking itself. Only such a thinker can delay their con-
Although Penelope is not wholly opposed
to coming to some kind of arrangement
with the suitors, she tries to delay them.
She tries to put herself in a situation
where there is more time to think more
fully and on more sufficient grounds.
clusion until the thinking itself merits a conclusion.1
All others are under the pressure of some deadline,
the pressing down of the flowing water of time. This
pressure distorts their thinking in one way or another.
It makes them proclaim a finish to the thinking when
more thinking is needed. It makes them proclaim a
matter finished when more argument or more evidence is needed. This pressure leads to bad thinking,
and according to Socrates it makes human beings
“become small and not upright in their souls.”
Human beings become slaves to the clock mostly
because other human beings put them on the clock.
In one of his notebooks from 1882, Nietzsche writes
“Madness is rare with individuals – but with groups,
parties, peoples, times it is the rule.” The word for
madness here is Irrsinn,2 literally erroneous think-
20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
ing, or more loosely bad thinking. What Nietzsche
seems to have in mind is that our intercourse with
other human beings pressures us to adopt illegitimate modes of thinking. We must agree or, more
accurately, pretend to agree about many matters
regardless of whether we have the resources and have
utilized those resources to come to a well-founded
conclusion. Human beings do not feel secure in the
proximity of other human beings who do not agree
with them. Such agreements are demanded by social
life, and they are demanded on a time table determined by the feelings of the human beings, not by
the epistemological requirements of the matter under
consideration. Who is comfortable with a neighbor
who does not respect property rights, or does not
endorse the prohibition against cannibalism, or who
openly admits that they do not know what justice is?
In general, who is comfortable living near human
beings who do not hold a massive host of opinions
shared in rough outline by the whole group?
It is bad thinking to declare a matter resolved
before it is resolved. It is a mental defect to think
one knows what one does not know. Yet it seems that
social life pushes our thinking into this premature
and self-deceiving form. Not only that, the matters
that society demands we resolve are matters that
move our passions deeply. Thus we see exhibitions
of great anger and agitation in our efforts to govern
ourselves. Governing demands results. Results are
not answers. The clearest thing is that strength of
the passions is out of proportion with the fullness
and soundness of the thinking that backs our claims.
We very often do not know, but when another human
being disagrees with us, we act as if we do know and
as if they ought to know. We would never demand
that a human being give a solution to an equation
before they had actually worked it out, but in many
matters of much greater concern to us we demand
something like that from our fellow human beings.
We put them on the clock. We impress upon them
habits of bad thinking. And we invest the situation
with great passion and grave consequences.
Her suitors have put Penelope on the clock. They
are aggressive and avaricious. They are perhaps
reversions to the piratical character of the early
Greeks. They are perhaps the result of a generation
of young Greek men who have come up, thanks to
the war, without the benefit of the guidance of the
previous generation. They are perhaps just a flaring up of unfiltered human nature, opportunistic
predators that see something desirable (authority
in Ithaka, wealth, a beautiful woman) undefended
�and are not sufficiently inhibited by conventions that
have no force to back them up. It is unsafe not to
come to some kind of agreement with such suitors.
Although Penelope is not wholly opposed to coming to some kind of arrangement with the suitors,
she tries to delay them. She tries to put herself in a
situation where there is more time to think more fully
and on more sufficient grounds. She tries to defend
her marriage, but what is she defending? The fate of
her husband is unknown. No contact for nearly 20
years. What have they shared? What have they done
together? Nothing. Each has been married to the
other separately. Because of their separation their
marriage is devoid of change, it is time defying and
thus is allied to the leisurely realm of purer thinking. But it is not just their special circumstances that
makes this so. Their marriage is meant to be once
and for all. Perhaps most marriages are meant to be
time defying. Odysseus embraced this thought when
he built his immovable bed. However such a marriage is not aiming at the kind of unchanging character that belongs to undying beings. When Odysseus
defends his marriage, he does so against the offer of
marriage to a goddess. Immortality comes with this
offer. But when Homer gives us a glimpse of Odysseus reasoning about Calypso’s offer it is clear he
is measuring marriage to the goddess against his
existing marriage to the mortal Penelope.
This attempt to have something lasting and stable, but still transient and mortal may offer some
form of compromise with the pressure that time
exerts on our thinking. For it is not just the suitors
that put Penelope on the clock. It is her mortality
also. Loyalty to a person can lose its substance if
that person no longer exists. And her Odysseus may
be dead or so changed as to no longer be hers. Even
if this is not the case, there is a cost to loyalty. Even
when her Odysseus has returned, Penelope laments
that the gods did not allow them to enjoy their youth
together (XXIII, 211). One sees this cost even more
clearly in the touching scene with Odysseus’s dog
Argos. The dog was bred by Odysseus, and he is its
master; it has clung to life loyally, it has waited 20
years to die only when its master returns. But they
have not shared life with one another. How much
better off Penelope is may just be a fortunate accident of her span of life.
Penelope’s marriage is a thought, and not a
thought fully founded upon adequate thinking and
evidence. She has chosen to remain loyal to this
thought even though aware of its inadequate founding. We can see this in the way that she comes to
recognize that her Odysseus has returned. It is
unlike the other recognition scenes. A distinctive
scar may be enough to mark an individual as singular, or performance of a feat that only he can do may
be enough. But this is not how Penelope recognizes
that her Odysseus has come back. When she pretends to order that their immovable marriage bed
be moved, Odysseus responds with strong anger. It
is his emotional response, not his knowledge of the
details of a material secret, that convinces Penelope
that her Odysseus is back. The marriage of these
two, impressive and inspiring as it is, exists primarily in the realm of thought and feeling. And thus it
is fragile; if Odysseus had not returned when he did,
waiting for his return would not have been the best
choice.3 But the fragility of such a marriage does not
mean the marriage is not a real thing. We can and
do live substantially within our thoughts. Since this
is our situation, we should take as much care as we
can regarding the quality of our thinking.
This is why sabbaticals are so
important to those who wish
to live the life of a learner.
They are not vacations. They
are times designed to approximate as much as possible the
leisure that allows a thinking
being to think according to the
criteria of thinking alone.
1�
Compare Beyond Good and
Evil 156 where Nietzsche
makes a similar claim. There
he uses the word Wahnsinn.
2�
Among other things, it would
likely have cost Telemachus
his life.
3�
ABOVE: Penelope at her loom,
miniature, circa 1505,
From the manuscipt Lives of
Famous Women by Antoine Dufour.
Musee Dobree. © DeA Picture
Library/Art Resource, NY
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 21
�22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
�INDUSTRIOUS ALUMS
Young entrepreneurs
create an old-school
business from scratch
BY GREGORY SHOOK
With the rise in
popularity of glutenfree diets and increased
public interest in
lowering carbohydrate
consumption, bread has
taken it on the chin
lately. Flying in the face
of these culinary trends,
Chris Simmons (A97)
and Lucy Montgomery
(A98) opened a small
business making freshbaked bread, cookies,
pastries, and other
delectable treats from
scratch. The shop was a
hit from the start.
PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH CULVER (AGI11)
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 23
�Previous page: Chris
Simmons (A97) and Lucy
Montgomery (A98) share
a family moment with
their two daughters in
their shop’s kitchen.
Above: Bakers & Co.
serves authentic treats
with a neighborhood feel.
Right: Chris Simmons
(A97) starts his day of
baking at 3 a.m.
T
he married couple runs Bakers &
Co., a European-style café perched
on a bustling corner in the heart of
Eastport—Annapolis’ quirky neighbor across Spa Creek. Simmons
says the secret to great bread boils
down to three simple ingredients:
water, flour, salt. What about yeast? “For some
crazy reason, I insist on making most of my sourdough bread naturally, so not adding commercial
or instant yeast, which adds a whole other layer
of planning,” says Simmons. “I have to make decisions two days in advance to have my starter
ready to go when I need it.”
Simmons and Montgomery are both selftaught, so they’ve had to figure out the art of baking largely on their own. “Sometimes you take the
longer way to learn something and, at times, be a
little too rigorous. But in the long run you learn
it far more profoundly,” says Montgomery. “I’m
24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
constantly on a learning curve,” adds Simmons.
“It takes several days to figure out a mistake.”
The couple insists on high standards, even if it
requires more time and effort. “Taking shortcuts
in baking is reflected in the quality of the food,”
says Montgomery. “You taste it.” “We’re tough
critics,” adds Simmons. “When we try to learn
something, we’re not happy with it until we’re
really happy with it.”
A few years into baking, the couple took a busman’s holiday to Norwich, Vermont, for an intensive
week-long class at the King Arthur Flour Company,
a veritable mecca for bakers and bread lovers. It
wasn’t until later, though, that Simmons realized
his classic French breads instructor was “one of
the most serious bread makers in the country.”
While Simmons and Montgomery are celebrating
the shop’s four-year anniversary this Thanksgiving,
their story actually begins nearly a decade ago, when
Montgomery decided on a whim to try her hand at
�“� ometimes you take the longer way to
S
learn something and, at times, be a little
too rigorous. But in the long run you
learn it far more profoundly.”
—Lucy Montgomery (A98)
making bread at home. She found her calling.
A few weeks later, Montgomery traveled to
England to visit a sick relative. While there, her
aunt took her out to dinner at a London restaurant
known for its bread. At the time Montgomery and
Simmons were at a crossroads: she was exploring business school, and Simmons, who learned
about running a small business through his years
working at the old Smoke Shop in Annapolis, was
considering a shift to architecture. During dinner with her aunt, Montgomery, eager to sample
the restaurant’s much-lauded bread, discovered
that she actually preferred her own homemade
creations. Sensing her niece’s newfound enthusiasm for baking, Montgomery’s aunt urged her to
forget about business school and start a business.
Her advice paid off.
With just their hands and a few basic tools,
Simmons and Montgomery began baking bread
free-form at their Eastport home, usually two
loaves at a time, experimenting with different
types and sharing it with friends. The couple
then lucked into a spot at a local farmer’s market. “The timing was perfect,” says Simmons. “I
don’t know how that happened. There’s a threeyear waiting list.”
On their first day at the market, they arrived
with a card table, a tablecloth, 17 loaves of
bread, and a small basket, not quite sure what
to expect. “[The bread] was gone in forty-five
minutes,” recalls Simmons, with wide-eyed astonishment. “Then we thought, ‘what have we just
done? They’re all going to come back next week.’”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 25
�Fueled by their initial success, the young bakers—
who put in many hours of baking and prep time
per week on top of their full-time jobs—returned
the following week stocked with 22 loaves. Again,
they sold it all.
With Bakers & Co., Simmons and Montgomery
are proud to be part of what she calls “the momand-pop store revival.” Unlike corporate chain
stores, Bakers & Co. keeps limited hours and is
closed two days a week. However, the work never
stops. “I’m busy those two days to get things
going, to prepare for the other five days in the
week,” says Simmons. “There’s not a day that I’m
not there.” The couple is also busy raising their
two young daughters. “I’ve got to get home to
make supper,” says Montgomery, who also manages the shop’s administrative duties. “That’s
what a mom-and-pop is.”
Word of mouth helped the business grow and
bring in new customers. “Our location is very specifically a neighborhood bake shop, but we get
customers from many miles away, from huge distances,” says Montgomery. “It’s kind of a Cheers
thing, where you know everyone’s names, and
people can talk with one another. People desperately want to belong to a community, and they
like the idea of a family bakery. It’s nice to connect with people and have a community. Our shop
fits that.”
Learn more about the couple’s bakery at
www.bakersandco.com.
26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
�The work never stops. “I’m busy those two
days to get things going, to prepare for the
other five days in the week. There’s not a
day that I’m not there.”
—Chris Simmons (A97)
Lucy Montgomery (A98)
sets out an array of
freshly baked goods.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 27
�C R E AT I V E T H I N K E R
BUILDING
COMMUNITY
AMONG
“BIG-IDEA”
THINKERS
28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
BY BOB KEYES
�Liz Trice (SF98) says her job
involves being a good host. It
starts with making sure the
coffee is fresh, the bathrooms
are clean and the chairs are
comfortable. Her greatest skill,
she says, is her friendliness.
Trice owns and operates PelotonLabs in
Portland, Maine, a co-working office space for
independent professionals and entrepreneurs.
She creates connections among busy people,
as well as a comfortable and effective work
environment for people whose careers and
lifestyles demand independence and flexibility.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 29
�t’s complicated work, highly
specialized and intuitive, and
involves more than making
good coffee and keeping the
office clean and comfortable.
Trice uses her human relations
expertise, strategic planning
experience, and problem-solving
skills—all rooted in interaction,
innovation, and collaboration—to
create a self-sustaining community of independent, progressive
workers. Her goal is to bring
people together to share what
they know, help each other grow
and “weave a social fabric” that
extends beyond the workplace.
Her work at PelotonLabs is
not unlike the work she does at the nearby
community garden that she helps maintain
in her neighborhood: she nurtures, nourishes, and encourages. “At Peloton, mostly
I just chat with people in the kitchen,
introduce people to each other, and connect
people with overlapping interests,” says
Trice. “My role is community organizer and
group facilitator.”
Co-working is a relatively new concept,
where entrepreneurs, freelancers, consultants, and others who work remotely share
work space. There are about a half-million
co-workers and more than 7,000 co-working
spaces globally, and those numbers are
growing. Employment trends suggest that
by 2020, up to 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will consist of freelancers, temporary
employees, independent contractors, and
solo entrepreneurs.
At PelotonLabs, members own companies, edit books, and make movies. They are
accountants and consultants, marketers and
IT experts. Many are telecommuters who
want a structured office environment, and
about half are self-employed. They’re mostly
a young group, mobile and tech-savvy. The
average age is 39, and the typical member
spends 23 hours in the office each week.
Trice opened PelotonLabs six years ago
GLENN PICHER – DIRIGO MULTIMEDIA
SUCCESS STORY
Sofas provide a relaxed atmosphere to share ideas.
� E WANT A PLACE
W
“�
WHERE
PEOPLE WHO ARE ON THEIR OWN CAN
WORK WITH OTHERS, TO GET THE BENEFITS
OF BEING IN AN ORGANIZATION WHILE
STILL BEING INDEPENDENT.”
with a business partner, and has owned the
business outright for three years. The name
is a cycling term. In races, bicyclists from
different teams work together in groups,
or pelotons, to move faster. Trice builds
community among “big-idea thinkers” so
they can progress faster together than alone.
“We want a place where people who are on
their own can work with others, to get the
benefits of being in an organization while
still being independent,” she says.
PelotonLabs currently has about 80
members, who pay between $100 and $300
30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
a month. The price reflects different levels
of membership and service. Trice calls
PelotonLabs a clubhouse, where the value
of membership involves more than having
a comfortable place to work. She arranges
professional development gatherings, weekly
lunches, happy hours, and “coaching hours,”
where members share knowledge of their
specialty with others.
In other ways, it’s a little like kindergarten. There are daily snack times, where
everyone is encouraged to take a break,
come together, and share words and food.
�ARCHETYPE ARCHITECTS
PelotonLabs is the city’s first purpose-built office space.
� EXCITING TO BE HAVING
IT’S
“
THOSE CONVERSATIONS AMONG OTHER
PEOPLE HAVING SIMILAR CONVERSATIONS.
WE ALL DO INTERESTING THINGS, AND WE
CAN ALL HELP EACH OTHER.”
There are rooms for napping, and exercise
rings hanging from the ceiling, for when
people need to stretch their bodies.
PelotonLabs consists of two floors in a
modern office building, which opens onto
Portland’s busiest downtown thoroughfare.
The bottom floor is mostly open, with work
stations and tables spread across a colorful
and airy room. There are conference rooms
for meetings and quiet spaces for private
phone calls.
It’s a bustling place, with multiple conversations happening at once. Some people sit
at workstations that face away from the center of the room. Others share tables and sit
across from each other on sofas. The space
is buzzing with white noise, so recognizable
voices are masked. The second floor offers
more privacy and quiet spaces—and private
rooms for naps. It’s a comfortable space,
because it has to be. “I’m competing with
people’s homes,” says Trice.
Trice doesn’t have an office. She
flows throughout the building, and likes
conducting meetings on a sofa near the
front door, where she can see across the
room, into the kitchen and also keep an eye
on the conference room. She works with her
feet propped on a coffee table, her laptop
within reach.
Betsy Smith, an independent consultant,
works at Peloton one or two days a week,
mostly when her kids are home. She likes to
spread out her work and encamp for eight or
10 hours with little interruption. But lately,
Smith has sought interruptions. She likes
to mingle among her co-workers “because
I have found it’s a great place to be talking
about what we are all doing,” she said. “It’s
exciting to be having those conversations
among other people having similar conversations. We all do interesting things, and we
can all help each other.”
She has hired subcontractors through
those conversations, and directed co-workers to leads and ideas for new work.
Another private consultant, Cristos
Lianides-Chin, has been involved with
PelotonLabs since fall 2015 when he
moved to Maine. He was drawn “because
of the community. I really like the mix of
people,” he says. “I needed a desk and office
space short term, but I was looking for a
community and a long-term relationship.”
He’s become an integral member, serving as
technologist-in-residence.
Trice sees her work at PelotonLabs as a
logical trajectory of her life and career. At
age 6, she created a filing system with an
index card for each classmate. That was the
first evidence of what she calls her “thoughtful social inclinations.” Those continued at
St. John’s, where the college’s communal
approach to education suited her mindset.
She did her graduate work at the Muskie
School of Public Service at the University
of Southern Maine in Portland, where she
wrote her master’s thesis about the residential needs of single people. Now in business,
she serves the needs of remote workers, the
self-employed, and emerging entrepreneurs.
The thread, she says, is connecting
people, providing companionship, and sharing resources to improve their lives.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 31
�BIBLIOFILE
KATHRYN
KRAMER
Missing History
K
“� t’s hard to say what
I
the signs are, exactly.
A certain diffidence. A
shared acknowledgement
that the truth is always
a little more complicated
than what anyone is
articulating, including
ourselves.”
athryn Kramer’s new book, Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of
the Great Books (Threshold Way Publishing, 2015), combines heartfelt memoir
with candid family history, as well as an
examination of the American educational
system. Daughter of Clarence “Corky”
Kramer, a 1949 graduate of St. John’s who
was a tutor at the Annapolis campus and
the first dean at the Santa Fe campus,
Kathryn Kramer was an “academic child”
at the college during the 1950s. In that
era, sweetly scented pipe smoke wafted
from inside and outside classrooms, and
female students first joined their male
counterparts to study the Program. “I recognize other academic children. Children
of literature and humanities faculties,
especially,” Kramer writes in the book’s
prologue. “It’s hard to say what the signs
are, exactly. A certain diffidence. A shared
acknowledgement that the truth is always
a little more complicated than what anyone is articulating, including ourselves.”
Kramer’s loving yet complicated relationship with her father, his career, and
his relationship with the works of Plato,
Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Socrates, is
an underlying theme of the book. “My
father always spoke of them as if he knew
them personally.” When she was a young
girl, her father’s study on the top floor of
their brick row house represented a world
of intrigue and mystery that followed her
throughout her life. “In the study I never
consciously looked at the books, but it
seemed to me that I’d always known them
and their titles, so it came as a surprise to
me one day to realize that I’d never actually read them—these arbiters of Western
thought, these bearers of my philosophical
and literary heritage.”
32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
As her father grew on in years, he also grew disillusioned by academia. This inspired teacher and scholar
of Western thought became isolated and sought alcohol for solace—a point that Kramer delves into deeply
and openly. “He was tired of having to watch people
‘reinventing the wheel,’ when the Greeks, just to start
with, had already catalogued all the follies of which
human nature was capable.”
Kramer, who now lives in Vermont and teaches
at Middlebury College, looks back unflinchingly at
her own academic experiences—the Key School that
her father helped to found, high school at the newly
established Santa Fe Preparatory School, and then
Marlboro College and Johns Hopkins University
where she studied writing—seeking clues to find what
was missing from those experiences and to better
understand the great books and their bearing on her
life. “The impetus to look back over my own school
years first arose when I began to participate in the
long march of the educational system a second time,
as a parent,” she writes. During a visit to a school,
“I suddenly found myself near tears, remembering all
at once, entirely, as if I’d been transported back to
them at that very moment, the classrooms with desks
arranged in their neat lines, in which you had to sit no
matter what, the teacher in front at the blackboard,
dispensing knowledge, revealing from on high.”
In a letter to Annapolis tutor Eva Brann (H89)
following her “reader response” to Missing History,
Kramer recalls her childhood, in the ether of St. John’s,
as “a privileged upbringing—in a time and atmosphere
that won’t come again.” Since then, Kramer became
interested in tracing back certain habits of thought
and ways of looking at the world. “And I’ve been gratified to find that what I’ve written has struck a nerve
not only for children of academics (though maybe
especially for them) but other people.”
—Gregory Shook
�We Eat Our Own
By Kea Wilson (SF08)
Scribner, 2016
Kea Wilson’s (SF08) debut novel is packed with
enough fright to entice the appetites of most horror
fans: murder, mayhem, mutilation—and, as the
book’s title suggests, cannibals. It’s also compelling
storytelling that weaves clear prose with well-thought
commentary on violence and its repercussions.
Inspired by the gruesome 1980 Italian film, Cannibal
Holocaust by director Ruggero Deodato, We Eat Our
Own is a thrilling adventure set in South America
in the 1970s. The story begins when an unknown,
The Great Spring: Writing, Zen,
and This Zigzag Life
By Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74)
Shambhala, 2016
Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) has dedicated her life to
the practice of writing and Zen, both of which have
kept her grounded through myriad inner and outer
journeys. A beloved writing teacher and author of the
best-selling Writing Down the Bones, her new book,
The Great Spring, is a collection of 22 short essays
on food, family, writing, painting, meditation, travel,
love, loss, death, and enlightenment—vivid moments
Kleinkrieg
By Charles D. Melson (AGI88)
Casemate, 2016
In his latest publication, Kleinkrieg: The German
Experience with Guerilla Wars, from Clausewitz to
Hitler, Charles D. Melson (AGI88) examines German
analysis of the nation’s difficult process, from fighting
great confrontational battles for which they once
prepared to “small wars,” including insurgencies from
French-occupied Spain to recurrent problems in the
Balkans. Built around the historical analysis titled
Kleinkrieg, originally provided to the German High
struggling New York actor receives an irresistible
offer to star in an art film set deep in the heart of
the Amazon rain forest. However, soon after his
arrival to the jungle outpost he discovers that all is
not right with the production. Worlds collide as the
novel intertwines a cast of characters that includes
American entrepreneurs, guerilla rebels, effects
artists, and the film’s eccentric director, who leads
his crew into a disastrous experiment. The actor who
hoped for his big break now only hopes for survival.
from the past three decades that have awakened her
to new ways of being. From her meanderings through
the New Mexico desert to a meditative retreat at a
monastery in Japan, Goldberg’s stories are deeply
personal and imbued with humor, insight, and honesty.
Organized by theme—Searching, Wandering, Zigzaging,
Losing, Leaping—the book reveals how Goldberg finds
fertile ground by embracing her life and being fully
attentive to it.
Command by Arthur Earhardt in 1935, Melson, former
chief historian for the U.S. Marine Corps, provides new
analysis and expands our knowledge of the Western
experience—primarily that of the United States and
the United Kingdom—in coping with insurgencies in
recent years. Without partaking in ideological biases,
this edited and annotated work examines the purely
military complexities as viewed by professionals.
Rediscovered and presented in English, these German
thoughts on the issue are now made available to a new
generation of military and other readers.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 33
�For & About
ALUMNI
And the Award Goes to…
and volunteerism in the alumni
community, is among the many
highlights of this three-day
event. Last year’s ALFie recipients earned awards for bringing
together past and present
croquet team members for a
friendly on-campus match and
for the Reunion Class Chairs’
excellent outreach efforts.
Charles and Chris Nelson
In recognition of his longstanding engagement with the
college, Charles Nelson (Class
of 1945) received the Lifetime
Service Award at the seventh
annual Alumni Leadership
Forum (ALF) held at the
Annapolis campus in June.
The “ALFies” award ceremony,
which also included Volunteer
Service Awards to alumni in
recognition of their leadership
Organized by the St. John’s
College Alumni Association
(SJCAA) and college staff,
ALF brings together St. John’s
alumni and other members
of the college community
for a weekend of working
groups, special workshops,
meals, and other activities
designed to support and foster
deeper alumni engagement
with the college. Recent
initiatives include the Adopta-School program, workshops
on addressing the role and
means of alumni philanthropy
in the college community,
conversations on empowering
alumni chapter leaders to
offer a wider range of events
for chapter members, and
discussions to explore ways to
develop mentorship relations
with current students and
fellow alumni. Inspired by
Graduate Institute traditions,
ALF also offered opportunities
for alumni to reconnect during
such events as tutorials drawn
from the Master of Liberal
Arts program readings, a posttutorial gathering, and an open
mic-styled event titled “Komos.”
The 2017 Alumni Leadership
Forum will be held from June
2-4 at the Santa Fe campus,
with workshops centered on
St. John’s sophomore year
studies. For more information,
visit sjc.edu/alumni.
—Babak Zarin (A11)
ADRIAN TREVISAN (A84)
Alumni Association Board
President
“� ’m happy to welcome new
I
and returning directors to
the Board as we continue
our efforts to increase
alumni engagement. Our
alumni survey showed that
while most Johnnies want
to have a seminar at their
chapter, many also want
other types of activities, so
we’re working to develop
a broad range of activities
that chapters can offer their
members. We’re always
looking for volunteers to
participate in our work!”
We Have the Votes!
In the last issue of The College, the
St. John’s College Alumni Association
asked alumni to cast their votes to elect
the treasurer, secretary, and six at-large
members of the Alumni Association
Board of Directors, as well as one alumnielected member of the college’s Board of
Visitors and Governors. On June 5, the
St. John’s College Alumni Association
elected the following alumni to serve in
these positions:
Treasurer: Babak Zarin (A11)
Secretary: Susann Bradford (SF89)
At-Large Directors:
Claiborne Booker (A84)
Elihu Dietz (SF06)
Briana Henderson Saussy (A03, EC05)
Mark Parenti (AGI92)
Brenna Strauss (SF04)
Heather Upshaw (SF04)
Representative to Board of Visitors and
Governors: Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76)
Alumni Association Mission
To strive for the continued excellence of our college and fellow alumni by celebrating our distinctive
educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared support and benefit, and
fostering a culture of intellect, generosity, and service.
34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Officers and at-large directors of the
association are elected to two-year terms,
while representatives to the Board of
Visitors and Governors serve three-year
terms. Each of the newly elected alumni
began their terms on July 1.
If you would like to connect or engage
with the St. John’s community, or take
advantage of the college’s resources for
alumni, please visit sjc.edu/alumni to
learn more.
�Books for All
SJCAA kick-starts
a new initiative
In recent years, the St. John’s
College Alumni Association (SJCAA) has sought to
increase awareness of itself
among current students; many
of whom are unaware that
the SJCAA even exists—that
“you’re a Johnnie when you
walk across the stage and
sign the book, and you’re a
Johnnie for the rest of your
life,” as SJCAA Board President Adrian Trevisan (A84)
puts it. The Student Engagement Working Group, led by
alumnae Briana Saussy (A03)
and Martha Acosta (A92),
is trying to make sure more
students know the SJCAA is
there for them. Beginning in
fall 2017, they will be doing
so in a concrete way, with the
presentation of a gift book to
all incoming students.
The gift-book initiative was
inspired by a previous program
by the Annapolis Instruction
Committee that presented a
Greek lexicon to new freshmen.
Saussy first came up with a
proposal that would purchase
lexicons for Santa Fe freshmen
as well. But when the board
asked their student representatives for thoughts, Trevisan says, “After a moment’s
uncomfortable hesitation, they
said that most students now
use an online lexicon, so they
didn’t think it was a good idea.
After we stopped laughing we
declared the project dead.”
Saussy, however, was
undaunted. She spoke
with the SJCAA student
representatives, both deans,
and the two GI directors to
come up with alternate titles
that would still serve as a
“beautiful, meaningful gift”
to students. “Our GI reps felt
that Plato’s Meno was the clear
winner since it is the only
text that all GI students…
will have to read.” For the
Eastern Classics program, they
settled on the Therigatha, “a
collection of poems from the
first Buddhist women.” The
undergraduate selection is the
Green Lion edition of Euclid’s
Elements, a text students will
refer to all four years.
Once the books had been
decided upon, the next task
was economics. Again, Saussy
pushed through to craft an
agreement wherein each Dean
will cover 25 percent of the initiative’s cost, while a development campaign will tap recent
grads to raise the other half.
“Alumni are willing to donate
to have a meaningful impact
on student life,” says SJCAA
Board Secretary Sue Bradford (SF89)—and what better
impact than a Program book?
Both Trevisan and Bradford
laud Saussy for her dedication
to the project, even when it
looked impossible. “I think
there is a sense that this was
a really difficult thing to push
through,” she says, “and I
would say it a bit differently.
This is an ambitious project…I
never took the setbacks
personally and that is probably
what allowed me to just keep
working along. I think that is
one of the best things we walk
away with from St. John’s, the
ability to be truly disinterested
in something—to be able to
consider a situation from
many angles and not to get
upset when we hit a snag but
continue onward while altering
course when needed.”
“�Alumni are willing
to donate to have a
meaningful impact
on student life.”
-Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 35
�ALUMNI NOTES
1955
Carolyn Banks-Leeuwenburgh (A)
reports that there is a new Alumni
Chapter in Princeton, N.J. Starting this fall, the group will meet
monthly in the Princeton Public
Library.
1960
After teaching full time for the
last 44 years, Katherine Hsu Haas
(A) is semiretired. She will continue to teach a couple mornings
a week at Annapolis’ Key School,
where she has the new title,
“scientist in residence.” Embracing
more free time in her life, Haas
has ventured into the realm of
Facebook as well as t’ai chi and
bridge. She plans to travel with
her husband and attend theater
performances more often. “Ahhh,
the joy of reading and having
the leisure to do it! I wonder if I
should’ve chosen this life of luxury
sooner!”
1969
Beth Kuper (SF) writes, “I have an
entirely new career working exclusively for transformational life
coaches all over the U.S., helping
them build their support teams
through recruiting virtual and
on-site employees. All my business
comes through personal referrals
of my clients, and I work virtually
from home. Everything I’ve ever
learned professionally, as well as
the life-long classes I’ve taken on
understanding myself and others,
has prepared me for this work. I
am grateful every day for being
able to do what I love: connecting
good people with good people.”
1970
1982
You Scream,
I Scream…
Don Dennis (SF) and his wife
have launched an ice cream
business, Wee Isle Dairy Ice
Cream, on the small island of
Gigha, where they live in Scotland. They currently feature
six flavors, including a rather
intriguing Bramble and Whisky.
Learn more about their new
venture on Facebook.
Ed Macierowski (A), professor
of philosophy at Benedictine
College, is preparing two upperlevel courses and hosting an
extra-curricular reading group to
celebrate the 2,400th anniversary
of Aristotle’s birth in 2016. “We are
reading through Peter Simpson’s
translation of Aristotle’s Politics.
The philosophy seminar is on the
doctrine of being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, and the Greek
reading course will focus on linguistic problems in the Metaphysics.”
1975
G. Kay Bishop’s (A) story “Coyote
Year” was published in the first
issue of the new online science
fiction magazine, Into the Ruins
(https://intotheruins.com/issues/
issue-i-spring-2016). Bishop notes
that the editor is seeking new
works, “so if you have tried your
hand at post-industrial age sci-fi,
do send it along to him.” More
of Bishop’s work is available at
http://gkaybishop.weebly.com.
36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
1988
BOOKS FOR THE BLUES
Edward Komara’s (A) 2014 book, 100
Books Every Blues Fan Should Own (with
Greg Johnson), was conferred the Vincent
H. Duckles Award for best book-length
music bibliography by the Music Library
Association last March. It also received
the 2015 award for best history in the category of blues, hip
hop, gospel, or rhythm and blues from the Association of
Recorded Sound Collections. “I never complained about having
to read the 100 blues books, because
everyone around me was showing envy, not pity, for the
project. Even so, reading the books was a serious endeavor.
One large group consisted of histories and biographies, and
another was of cultural anthropology and folklore. But running
in between was a vein of recent commentary, especially
Houston Baker’s Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature
(1984), that affirmed the blues as a distinct African American
means of renewing one’s sense of personal identity.” Since
2001, Komara has been Crane librarian of music at the State
University of New York at Potsdam.
1978
After nearly a dozen years in the
Big Apple, Victor Austin (SF) is
now theologian-in-residence in the
Episcopal Diocese of Dallas and
at Church of the Incarnation in
Dallas, Texas. His memoir, Losing
Susan: Brain Disease, the Priest’s
Wife, and the God Who Gives and
Takes Away, was recently published by Brazos.
1981
Joshua Berlow (SF) is the official
movie critic for Perihelion, an
online science fiction magazine,
available at www.perihelionsf.com.
1983
Peter McClard (SF) is working as
a full-time medical app maker
in New Jersey, and still making
music and art. Among his apps
are DrawnIn, Biographer, and
Different Drummer. He notes that
“with DrawnIn, we can create a
communal SJC artsy forum and
later produce an eBook or a light
show from the results.”
1987
Clare (Fisher) McGrath-Merkle
(AGI) writes, “After a long road of
working full time as a fundraiser
and burning the midnight oil, I
just successfully defended a doctoral dissertation in May on the
speculative mysticism and applied
metaphysics found in the theology
of Pierre de Berulle (Descartes’s
spiritual director) at the Faculty
of Philosophy and Social Sciences
of the University of Augsburg,
Germany. (It’s complicated.)
Hoping to find a teaching position
in the U.S. (Apparently, the EU
gives preference to EUers). Since
I didn’t watch television for about
ten years, my favorite post-dissertation recovery therapy is watching Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives
�1988
HISTORY RECORDED
Charles D. “Chuck” Melson
(AGI) recently retired after
more than 40 years of government service. He spent 23
years with the History and
Museums Division at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps
in Washington, D.C. and the
Marine Corps University at
Quantico, Va. He held a variety
of positions ranging from historical writer to acting division
director, serving for most of
his career as chief historian. This was a period of major transition and change for his organization, which saw the completion
of the National Museum of the Marine Corps and the Brigadier
General Edwin H. Simmons Center for Marine Corps History.
Melson wrote, edited, and published official histories in the
Vietnam, Gulf War, and Global War on Terrorism series as well
as World War II, Korea, and Vietnam commemorative publications. He recorded service operations and intelligence actions
and represented the Marine Corps at national and international
historical meetings, conferences, and committees. He was also
a joint historian with the U.S. Central Command and Special
Operations Command during the Gulf War and the Global War
on Terrorism. He remains active with the Secretary of the
Navy’s subcommittee on naval history, the Vietnam War commemoration, and volunteer work.
and the (rented) film, Footnote.
(Hint: I identify with the father.)”
1991
Lake Perriguey (SF), a Portland,
Ore. civil rights lawyer, obtained
for his client the first U.S. courtordered recognition of a person
as nonbinary—neither male nor
female. Heralded as the first legal
order recognizing a third gender in
the United States, this binarybusting ruling follows a history of
gender and sexuality civil rights
work beginning at St. John’s
College when Perriguey founded
the first LGBT student group in
1989 and petitioned the college’s
Board of Visitors and Governors to
include “sexual orientation” in its
non-discrimination mandate.
1992
Alec Berlin (SF) is performing on
guitar in a production of a new
musical, Come From Away, at
Ford’s Theater in Washington,
D.C. Ben Power (A93) is also in
the band; they have been part of
the show since May 2015 when
it premiered in La Jolla, Calif.
Following the run at Ford’s, they
will travel with the production to
Toronto in November and December 2016 and then to Broadway
in early 2017. Come From Away is
the story of the town of Gander,
Newfoundland, location of the
northeastern-most airport in
North America. On September 11,
2001, when American airspace
was closed, all trans-Atlantic
flights were diverted to Gander.
Come From Away is the story of
how the Canadian town selflessly
dealt with these events against
the backdrop of chaos and tragedy.
After completing a PhD in theology at Marquette University
in Milwaukee and a post-doc
fellowship at Regis College of the
University of Toronto, Chris Hadley
(A) joined the faculty of the Jesuit
School of Theology (JST) of Santa
Clara University as assistant professor of systematic theology and
began teaching in September.
1994
Ben Feldman (A) finished a PhD
in experimental psychology a year
ago, specializing in autism spectrum disorder and developmental
disabilities research, at Case
Western Reserve University. After
spending the last year doing school
psychology work, he recently
started at the National Institute of
Mental Health/ National Institutes
of Health in the Office of Autism
Research Coordination as a health
science policy analyst.
1995
Justin Maddox (A) recently published “How to Start a War: Eight
Cases of Strategic Provocation”
in the George Mason University
journal, Narrative and Conflict. The
article focuses on the frequent use
of false provocation in preparation
for warfare and its usefulness as an
indicator of impending warfare.
1996
Jonathan Rowan (SF) was awarded
his PhD in comparative literature
from University of California,
Berkley, where he also lectured.
1997
Kevin Neal Gardner (A) was recently
granted tenure as an associate professor at Berea College in Berea,
Ky. “I teach studio art, which for
me includes teaching all levels of
painting, beginning and advanced
drawing, a seminar for graduating
seniors, and international travel
courses, including Italy, Ireland,
and Spain. Additionally, I teach a
general studies course for freshmen
on critical thinking in the liberal
arts, which in method I borrow
heavily from my time at St. John’s.
For a number of reasons, Berea is
a unique college, not the least of
which is its status as tuition-free.
Founded by abolitionists prior to
the Civil War, Berea maintains its
historic commitments to teaching
a diverse group of promising students of limited financial means.
And there is some connection to the
St. John’s curriculum. Robert
Maynard Hutchins’s father and
brother were consecutive presidents at Berea.” View recent examples of his paintings and drawings
at www.kevinnealgardner.com.
1998
Richard Field (SFGI) was erroneously listed in the spring 2016
issue of The College as an alumnus
of the undergraduate program.
2000
After three years of teaching studio
art at the New Mexico School for
the Arts, Karina Noel Hean (A) is
excited to begin the new school
year as the visual arts chair. This
is a unique charter/nonprofit arts
high school, free to N.M. residents,
with a dorm in Santa Fe. She
invites Johnnies in the area who
are interested in a tour to contact
her at karinahean@gmail.com or
khean@nmschoolforthearts.org.
2001
Lance Brisbois (A) is working at
Harvard University. He would love
to hear from Johnnies at Harvard
or in the Cambridge area, and can
be reached at lbrisbois@gmail.com.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 37
�ALUMNI NOTES
The Geometric Life
Since graduating from St. John’s, Lee Howard Madden-Krall (SFGI)
reports that he has architected a geometric life of many skills,
talents, and abilities in multiple disciplines—morphing, evolving,
and training to meet today’s technological demands. Among his
many hats, he became a trained chef, working and teaching at the
Culinary Institute of America, and also learning his craft working as
a chef in the Napa and Sonoma wine region. After 10 years away,
he moved back to his home in New Mexico, where he has enjoyed
reconnecting with the Southwest. He also started his own production business (leehowardproductions.org), which helps clients, including artists and writers, maximize their resources for marketing
solutions and building out their organization, business, or project.
He invites Johnnies who need a personal chef or are interested in
learning to cook to contact him at chefleehoward@gmail.com.
2002
Luke Mitcheson (SF01) married
Daphne Berwind-Dart on
September 5, 2015, in their
backyard in Cambridge, Mass. Luke
and Daphne went to elementary
school together and reconnected
20 years later at a fundraiser.
James Marshall Crotty (SFGI) is
the politics, culture, and travel
columnist for the Huffington
Post. A documentary filmmaker
(Crotty’s Kids), he is also at work
on a Western set in his native
Nebraska. To learn more about his
columns, books, and films, visit
www.jamescrotty.com.
John Rogove (A) earned his PhD in
philosophy from the Sorbonne and
teaches philosophy in Paris.
2004
Kristi (Meador) Durbin (A) welcomed the arrival of her son, Levin
Elias, on February 27. He joins
his sister, Vesper (2). “I have tutor
William Braithwaite to thank for
38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
2005
Abram Trosky (SFGI) is traveling
through Italy, Greece, and the
Balkans after delivering successful
presentations and panels on peace
building, public opinion, and international law at this year’s annual
joint meeting of the Central and
Eastern European and International Studies Associations.
2008
Tammie Kahnhauser (A) has been
accepted to the Hackbright Software Engineering Fellowship in
San Francisco, Calif. The intensive
12-week fellowship is designed to
transition female candidates from
non-technical backgrounds into
the Silicon Valley community as
web and software designers.
2009
After working as a copywriter
at two of D.C.’s top ad agencies,
Nathan Betz (AGI) has relocated
to Oxford, U.K., with wife Crystal
and daughter Jaël. He is studying
1995
KALEIDOSCOPE OF SOUNDS
Dan Nelson’s (A) band The Pleasure Class released its debut fulllength recording “Sensual Passport.” Featuring three members
of the all-women toy instrument group Toychestra, and a member
of the analog synth/sound art project Boron, The Pleasure Class
uses synthesizers, percussion, toy instruments, and samples to
make music in the tradition of The Residents and CAN. His 2008
book, All Known Metal Bands, which contains the names of more
than 50,000 metal bands, was called “the best bathroom book
ever” by Rolling Stone.
CASSIA LEET
1994
including me in an Anna Karenina
study group several years ago, the
source of inspiration for Levin’s
name,” she writes. “Incidentally,
I find myself farming now. This
spring I became the manager of a
two hundred-plus member Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) program at the University of
Kentucky’s organic farm. I’d enjoy
reconnecting with any Johnnies
who might travel out this way!”
�2013
patristic theology at St Stephen’s
House, University of Oxford. When
not overwhelmed with research,
he’s seeking to buffer his family
from abject poverty by contracting
as a freelance copywriter and
creative lead.
Elizabeth Harball (SF) is leaving
her post as a reporter for Environment & Energy Publishing in
Washington, D.C. and heading up
to Anchorage, Alaska to join the
Alaska Energy Desk, a collaboration between Alaska Public Media,
KTOO and KUCB, where she will
cover the state’s rapidly changing
oil and gas industry. Her partner
in crime, Richard Brian Woodbury
(SF11), will join her in Anchorage
this December after he completes
his current project at the National
Academy of Medicine.
Sara Luell (A) was appointed
director of communications at
the Maryland Department of
Housing and Community Development in April. In this role, she
oversees communications and
media relations for the agency.
She also serves as a member of
the department’s continuity of
operations planning team and as a
state emergency operations center
representative. In addition, she
serves on the Maryland Responds
Medical Reserve Corps Advisory Council as a member of the
engagement committee.
2010
Linden Anne Duffee (A) reports
that she has successfully defended
her dissertation, “On the harmonic and geometric maximal
operators,” and received her
doctorate in mathematics from
the University of Alabama in May.
In August she began a visiting
assistant professor position at
the University of the South in
Sewanee, Tenn.
2012
Christine (Ivory) Leggett (AGI12)
started swing dancing in college
and continued as a GI Johnnie.
She recently started teaching
Lindy hop for Gottaswing in
Severna Park, Md. and just won
her first swing dance contest in
Virginia. She competes all over
the East Coast and attended her
first international dance event in
Iceland this summer.
Patrick Redmon (AGI)
graduated with highest honors
from the University of North
Carolina School of Law. He
and his wife, Tianlu Jia Redmon
(AGI), have moved to Oklahoma
City, where he will clerk for Judge
Jerome Holmes of the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Tianlu will continue to work as a
freelance Mandarin translator and
interpreter. She recently began
working with the Golf Channel to
translate and provide voice-over
for Mandarin coverage of major
PGA Tour events.
about sex, sexual assault, and
consent. I’m dedicated to being
an advocate for sexual assault,
sex education, and consent. I’m
available to speak at schools and
groups and to read from my book.”
Learn more on her blog: www.
yesnomaybesex.com
2015
Rose (Loofbourrow) Bruce (A)
married Charlie Bruce on
June 25, 2016.
2014
Olivia N. Broustra (SF) writes,
“After a sexual assault interrupted my first year at Vermont
Law School, the many differing
and confusing responses to my
experience inspired me to write
Yes No Maybe. This book explores
the definition of consent as well
as the education or lack thereof
Cynthia Grady’s (AGI05) second book, Like a Bird: The Art of the American
Slave Song, illustrated by award-winning artist Michele Wood, was recently
published by Lerner Books. Grady left her position at Sidwell Friends School
and has relocated to Albuquerque where she is writing full time.
Do you have news to share
with The College? Send your
note, along with your name,
class year, and photo(s), to
thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 39
�PROFILE
KIDS RULE!
By Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
Anika Prather (AGI09) Starts a School
That Breaks Tradition
W
hen Anika Prather’s (AGI09) son,
Dillon, started kindergarten, she
soon realized the traditional school
environment was a poor fit for him.
“He’s a very nice boy,” she says with
a mother’s pride—the kind of kid who watches CNN
for fun—but he’s also “very inquisitive, very busy.”
These traits got him into trouble in the classroom.
His otherwise wonderful teacher
responded by giving him time out.
“Okay, you’re being too busy,” she
said. “Just sit down over here until
you learn to control yourself.”
“The teacher thought that was
a positive way to handle it,” says
Prather, who doesn’t blame Dillon’s teacher for using this method.
But she also doesn’t believe it was
helpful, and searched for a different school for his first-grade year,
a place “where his curiosity and
his need to move could be appreciated. I thought it would be easy.”
No such luck, she discovered:
“I could not find a school where
[he] could thrive. Nothing, in all
of Maryland” within a reasonable
distance and price range. At this
point, most parents would go for
second best, perhaps homeschooling or supplementing academics with after-school activities.
Prather, however, approached the
problem not only as a parent, but
as an educator. In addition to her
St. John’s graduate degree, she
has a BA from Howard University in elementary education, a
master’s in theater education from
New York University, another
master’s in music education from
Howard, and is finishing her PhD
in curriculum and instruction at
the University of Maryland this
fall. After a fruitless search, she
told her husband: “Honey, I literally have to start a school.” That’s
how the Living Water School, now
in its second year, was born.
There is no “typical day” for
a Living Water School student.
Learning is entirely studentdirected, with no formal classes,
no grade levels, no letter grades,
no standardized tests, and no
homework. According to the
school’s website (thelivingwaterschool.blogspot.com), “Our goal
is to completely take away those
elements of traditional school that
conjure up feelings of competition, fear, anxiety, insecurity,
and inadequacy.” The day begins
with an hour of independent work
that gives kids a chance to eat a
leisurely breakfast or snack and
go back to sleep if they need to do
so before morning devotions at 10
a.m. (Although Living Water is a
Christian school, it does not teach
40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
Anika Prather (AGI09) takes a selfie with her students.
Our goal is to completely take away those
elements of traditional school that conjure
up feelings of competition, fear, anxiety,
insecurity, and inadequacy.
�Teenage students have an active hand in
designing their future academic and career
paths, with the staff “committed to getting
kids what they need.”
theology formally: “We will not
force our beliefs on a child or treat
any student or family member with
unkindness or disrespect.”) Students split into small groups with
staff to pursue an academic task.
All students study reading, writing, and math, with a wide variety
of other subjects to pursue as they
wish: from history, science, and
Latin to sewing, music, and martial arts. Teenage students have
an active hand in designing their
future academic and career paths,
with the staff “committed to getting kids what they need.” Prather
mentions one girl who wants to
study business in college and also
learn to style hair. Parents sign a
general permission slip, allowing
field trips to happen spontaneously. A child interested in art,
for example, can spend a morning
painting and an afternoon at an
art museum. A student pursuing
a research project could visit a
nearby historic site instead of just
reading about it in a textbook.
With all this freedom, it may
seem surprising that Living Water
is also a great books school. It
makes perfect sense, since the Socratic method gently guides learners to reach their own conclusions,
rather than memorize facts and
figures. When her teaching career
began, Prather was more concerned with how music and drama
could be used in the classroom.
Her interest in the classics was
sparked at the Washington Classical Christian School, where she
taught for 10 years. Learning the
great books while teaching them,
she became passionate about their
power. Initially, she looked into
St. John’s to take a workshop or
two rather than earn a full degree,
having just started her doctorate.
“But I just could not get it out of
my mind,” she says. “It wouldn’t let
me go.” She eventually completed
her master’s degree at St. John’s
over four summers, graduating in
2009.
Living Water’s staff and students are almost entirely African
American, partially the result
of its location in Temple Hills,
Maryland, which is 85 percent
black. Prather suspects that white
students might be uneasy about
being a minority, an attitude
she laments, since “life is not
segregated.” Living Water’s fluid
educational approach might be of
particular benefit to African American students, however; studies of
American public schools show that
black children, especially boys, are
more likely to be disciplined than
their white counterparts, punished
for “disruptiveness” that Prather
characterizes as a simple need
to move. “It’s a part of African
culture; it’s why we dance. It’s just
who they are.”
To 21st-century mainstream educators striving to increase diversity, the great books reading list
of “dead white men” elicits horror.
Prather, however, sees no conflict
between her student body’s racial
makeup and that of the traditional
Western canon: “I think Americans
have been so scarred by history
that they get nervous. They don’t
realize that the authors of the
great books were not from this
time. They had a different way of
looking at race.” For her, the great
books speak to “the human experience, not the racial experience.”
While she admits that some kids
“give [her] a lot of drama” at first,
after they begin reading, their
outlook changes drastically. They
acknowledge that “everything that
goes on in these books relates to
other human beings.”
Prather brought her love of the
classics back to St. John’s in February 2016, when she and five students performed an “impromptu
play” called The Table. Described
as “a dramatic exploration and
representation of the power of
dialogue about literary texts,”
the performance centered on a
Socratic, seminar-style discussion
of Voltaire’s essay “Character” and
Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem
“We Wear the Mask.” While each
student had scripted monologues,
“presented as if they [were] reading from a private journal,” they
created the conversation onstage
together, as they engaged in
dialogue with the texts and each
other. Not until the play was over
did the participants reveal that
their ages ranged from 13 to 24.
She and her troupe also performed
at the University of Maryland in
April, earning kudos from professors, students, and teachers.
The response to Living Water
has exceeded Prather’s wildest
dreams. She expected to be principal and teacher all in one, but 30
families showed up for the school’s
first planning meeting, and it has
expanded from there. This fall,
a second campus will open in
Rockville, Maryland, giving more
students the chance to find their
own personal educational path—
whatever that may be.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 41
�IN MEMORIAM
Priscilla Bender-Shore
Class of 1955
May 20, 2016
One of the first women to attend St. John’s College, Priscilla Bender-Shore (1926-2016) passed away at the age of 90.
Born in the Bronx on May 2, 1926, she attended New York
City’s Washington Irving High School and explored her gift
for art. After graduation, she attended the Cooper Union
School of Art and then Yale School of Art on scholarship.
She left Yale in 1951 to marry Merle Shore (Class of 1954),
a graphic designer and illustrator, and the couple moved to
Annapolis. The Program became the couple’s educational
cornerstone, reflecting their passion for learning, dialogue,
inquiry, and discussion.
In 1957, they moved to Santa Barbara, California,
and Bender-Shore earned her MFA at UCSB, graduating in
1969. Two years later, she took a position at Santa Barbara
City College where she taught art for 25 years. She influenced
and mentored hundreds of students, many of whom work and
exhibit in the Santa Barbara area today. Throughout her life,
she continued to thrive as an artist as well as an art educator,
lecturer, juror, and curator. In 1988, she won the Lila Acheson
Wallace National Painting Competition, earning her a six-month
residency in Giverny, France. Her work has been exhibited in
Glenn Yarbrough
Class of 1953
August 11, 2016
Glenn Yarbrough (1930-2016),
renowned folk singer and a
founder of the 1960s folk trio the
Limeliters, died in Nashville.
Yarbrough spent his early years
in Milwaukee, before moving
with his parents to New York.
At St. John’s he befriended Jac
Holzman (Class of 1952), who
later founded Elektra Records
and early on recorded much of
Yarbrough’s music. A Woody
Guthrie performance at the college in 1951 proved transformative for the young Yarbrough. “I
was just a shy kid, but I walked
up to him afterward with tears
in my eyes and told him how
much I loved what he had done,”
he told the Los Angeles Times in
1996. “The very next day I went
out and bought a guitar, and
that was that.”
After serving in the U.S.
Army during the Korean War,
Yarbrough returned to the U.S.
and began performing in clubs
and coffeehouses and on local
television shows. He eventually
became an owner of the Limelite
nightclub in Aspen, Colorado,
and in 1959, established the
Limeliters with Alex Hassilev
and Lou Gottlieb. Known for
their tight harmonies—particularly Yarbrough’s mellifluous
tenor—non-traditional arrange-
42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
Priscilla Bender-Shore’s (Class of 1955) painting, Gridlock #2: The Muses
Dancing at the Edge of the World, brightens that hall above the Pendulum Pit,
a popular rehearsal space for choirs on the Annapolis campus.
Europe and the United States and is represented in many collections, including St. John’s College’s art collection in Annapolis.
A strong, patient, and loyal soul, she was a foundation of love
and support for her family. She was preceded in death by her husband and is survived by her children, Evan, and Ann Shore Jactel;
and her grandchildren, Samuel, Sarah, and Sophia Jactel.
ments, and witty onstage banter,
the Limeliters were immensely
popular; their second album,
Tonight: In Person, spent 74
weeks at No. 5 on the Billboard
charts. After leaving the band
in 1963, Yarbrough forged a successful solo career, scoring his
biggest hit with “Baby the Rain
Must Fall.”
In the late 1960s, Yarbrough
sold his most expensive possessions and opened a school
for disadvantaged youth in Los
Angeles. When the school closed
in the 1970s, he traveled the
world by sea for the better part
of the next three decades. But
Yarbrough often returned to
music, performing solo and on
reunion tours with the Limeliters. In 1997, he released an
album with his daughter, Holly,
and he continued to record into
the early 2000s, before losing
his ability to sing in 2010 due to
throat surgery.
He is survived by his children,
Stephany, Sean, and Holly; stepdaughters, Brooke and Heather; a
grandson, and a great-grandson.
Alexander Scott Kelso
(SFGI79)
March 29, 2016
Alexander Scott Kelso (19242016), former chair of the Board
of Visitors and Governors of St.
John’s College, passed away
�peacefully at age 91. Born to
Clyde Douglas Kelso and Dorothy Geraldine (Scott) Kelso, he
and his two brothers were raised
in Laurel, Mississippi. After he
graduated from high school in
1941, Kelso attended Georgia
Tech until 1943, when he was
commissioned an Ensign and
later rose to Lieutenant J.G. in
the U.S. Navy, serving in the
European and Pacific theaters
during World War II, including
the D-Day Normandy Landings.
Returning home in 1946, he
married Mary Gene Hoffman,
with whom he enjoyed 56 beautiful years until her death in 2002.
Kelso graduated from Georgia
Tech in 1947 and began work
with Gulf Oil Corp. in Knoxville,
Tennessee. He later worked for
IBM and founded two companies, Computer Labs, Inc. and
Seismic Computing Corporation.
He is survived by his children,
Alexander, Jr., Gene K. Caselli,
Harry H., and Adelia; and his
grandchildren, Caroline, Anthony, and John Caselli, Kathleen,
Harry, and Victoria Kelso, and
Scott Kelso, III. He was preceded
in death by his wife; his parents;
and his brothers, C. D. Kelso, Jr.
and R. P. Kelso.
Also Deceased:
John R. Garland,
Class of 1950
October 23, 2015
Christopher Michael Abbasse,
AGI98
April 25, 2016
Ronald Albert Adinolfi, SFGI94
February 14, 2016
Joan R. Buckmaster, SFGI76
June 18, 2015
Justine Shaver
June 26, 2016
Caritas President,
Board Member
Justine “Joy” Shaver’s (19292016) introduction to St. John’s
College came in 1988 when a
friend invited her to attend a
Caritas Society meeting. She
served for a year as historian
for the group, whose mission, in
part, includes raising financial
aid funds for St. John’s students
in need, and later served as
Caritas president from 1991 to
1994. She was appointed to the
Stanley Guild IV, A11
March 16, 2016
Friar John Hilary Hayden,
Class of 1949
February 24, 2016
college’s Board of Visitors and
Governors in 2004 and served
until 2010.
Originally from Caldwell,
New Jersey, she married Bennett H. Shaver in 1952; the
couple made Annapolis their
home for more than 30 years.
Through her involvement with
numerous civic organizations in
the Annapolis area, including
the St. John’s Friends Board,
she will be remembered for her
kindness and devotion to St.
John’s College. Shaver was preceded in death by her husband,
who passed away in 2011.
David Wald (SF79)
May 27, 2016
Long-time television journalist and producer David Wald’s
(1955-2016) impressive resume
includes work for CBS News,
NBC, ABC, Fox, Court TV, HBO,
David Harding Humphreys, A69
May 22, 2016
Charles F. Jones, A79
April 5, 2016
Lewis Steven Kreger,
Class of 1961
May 5, 2016
National Geographic, A&E, PBS,
and Education Week Video. As
supervising producer for the
New York Bureau of Education Week Video, he developed
television segments for PBS
NewsHour. With the nonprofit
Learning Matters, Wald spent
a decade producing dozens of
NewsHour stories on a range of
education topics, including the
impact of Hurricane Katrina
on New Orleans’ schools, the
common-core standards, and internet access in rural communities. Earlier in his career, he was
a senior producer on Michael
Moore’s Emmy Award-winning
magazine show TV Nation, and
he produced a documentary
series about Doctors Without
Borders. Remembered for his
thoughtful, caring nature—and a
mentor to many—he enlightened
and engaged viewers on important issues through complex and
visually stunning stories.
William H. Rullman,
Class of 1940
May 15, 2016
Terence Sellers, SF74
January 25, 2016
Kathryn Slade, SF77
February 2, 2016
Mildred V. Smotherman, SF71
September 6, 2011
Donald Heider, AGI87
October 22, 2008
Arthur Kungle, Jr.,
Class of 1967
January 20, 2016
Marshall Henderson, SF07
July 1, 2016
John Paul LeBec, A93
March 7, 2016
Mary Paige Hensley, SF02
February 18, 2016
Eugene Limanovich, SF01
March 21, 2016
O.H. Thompson,
Class of 1943
July 13, 2016
William Douglass, SFGI70
March 19, 2016
Gary Allen Hetrick,
Class of 1963
May 16, 2016
Arnold Markoxitz,
Class of 1954
July 7, 2016
Joyce Kittel Wilson,
Class of 1955
July 28, 2016
Matson G. Ewell,
Class of 1950
March 8, 2016
Judith Jones Holden,
Class of 1961
May 22, 2016
Daniel Mark Roddy, SF75
January 16, 2016
Steven Wren, SF75
May 25, 2016
Paul Ringgold Comegys, Sr.,
Class of 1941
January 13, 2016
Harry West “Skip” Danner,
Class of 1954
March 9, 2016
Kevin Mathew St. John, SF76
July 7, 2016
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 43
�PHILANTHROPY
Class of 2016 Hits a
Double Home Run
100 Percent Senior
Legacy Participation
on Both Campuses
On the evening of April 29, the Great Hall
of the Santa Fe campus was illuminated
with colorful strobe lights that bounced
off the walls in reds and blues. Above the
podium, where a lecturer stood less than
an hour before, letters spelled out the
word “prom.” An hour later, members of
every class filled the room with laughter,
dancing, and conversation. This event was
not so much a student party, but rather a
vehicle to promote interest in the Class of
2016’s Senior Legacy. On both campuses,
seniors come together to decide what
they will “gift” the college. The gift varies every year from the tangible to the
intangible, be it new benches for the quad
or a special donation to increase financial
aid. In Santa Fe, this year’s legacy finds
its home in Meem Library as the Islamic
Classics collection.
“The Senior Legacy Program is important because it empowers seniors to
define their lasting impact and identity
as permanent members of the college
community,” explains Sarah Palacios, the
director of Alumni Relations. To facilitate
this tradition, each campus forms a Senior
Legacy Committee (SLC), whose senior
class members are committed to lead the
fundraising effort. The SLC’s work is not
limited to simply collecting. Its students
are the most knowledgeable regarding
what the gifts are; they are expected to motivate their classmates to give. Motivation
often manifests itself in gatherings, such as
the post-seminar events in Annapolis or the
“Senior Prom” in Santa Fe. Beyond these
efforts, the most effective motivational
method employed by the students is face-toface conversation. Some seniors aren’t willing to give. Others aren’t fully aware of the
to participate. The funds they
raised aided projects that create
greater opportunities for students. In total, the Annapolis gift
made a threefold impact: donating to the Pathways Fellowship
program, expanding the Music
Assistance program to provide
piano lessons for students, and
installing OneCard readers on
the back doors of Pinkney Hall.
On the Santa Fe campus,
seniors William Palm (SF16),
Colleen Mahoney (SF16), Meg
Covington (SF16), and Rodjinaé
Brown (SF16) led their class to a
record of 99 percent participation
with $4,821 raised by students,
before finishing off with 100
Class of 2016’s gift enhances Meem Library’s collection.
percent participation and a total
of $5,817.45, including matching
gifts. Although Meem Library
is still in the process of adding
to the collection, the library will
complete it, according to Santa Fe
tutor Michael Wolfe.
“Being asked to work on the
committee was an honor,” says
Palm. “It was a really beautiful
and concrete way to close the
chapter of my time at St. John’s.
merit of giving. It helps to have discussions
And for both campuses to make it to 100
with classmates who have the patience, enpercent was the icing on the cake.” Althusiasm, and insight to inspire their peers
though it is not the first time that a senior
to contribute to the class’s legacy.
class has reached full participation, it is
“We’re proud that we can give back to
remarkable that both campuses achieved
the college in a tangible way and improve
100 percent participation. When student
the quality of life for future Johnnies,”
participation reaches such a high percentsays Max Dakin (A16), a member of the
age, it typically inspires matching gifts
committee on the Annapolis campus. Along
from faculty, staff, and other alumni. This
with classmates David Conway (A16),
year’s 100 percent participation garnered
Emily Grazier (A16), Sueanna Keim (A16),
much enthusiasm from non-student memand Brian Liu (A16), he led their class to
bers of the community.
100 percent participation, raising $6,924.
Many hope that the remarkable accomAnnapolis committee members set up a
plishment of the Class of 2016 will set a
donation table outside the Dining Hall at
precedent for future graduating classes of
least once a week, where they engaged
the college.
with classmates and other students about
the class gift. Occasionally, committee
—Rodjinaé Brown (SF16)
members must take initiative to seek out
members of their class to encourage them
“� e’re proud that we can give
W
back to the college in a tangible
way and improve the quality of
life for future Johnnies.”
44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
�FIRST PERSON
MAKING A DREAM COME TRUE
By Sawyer Neale (A18)
T
his summer was unlike any
I have ever had before. For
several days in July I had the
honor of serving as a delegate to
the 2016 Democratic National
Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, representing more than 30,000 Bernie Sanders supporters in Pennsylvania’s 15th
Congressional District.
I struggle to remember when I first
became aware of politics. I don’t come
from a political family. In fact, apart from
NPR serving as the soundtrack to my
childhood, and the occasional rants from
family members, my exposure to politics
had always been fairly removed. However, in 2008, that all changed with Sen.
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
I was a 12-year-old obsessed. I read as
many books about American politics as
I could, and after his election victory I
was hooked. In 2012, my obsession came
to a head when I signed on for an internship with my state’s Democratic Party. In
the subsequent years, I have worked on
campaigns in nearly every election cycle
at every level, from municipal to state
legislative to senatorial.
For me, politics is a way to make an actual substantive difference in this world.
We live in a nation that is founded on the
principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness but also allows people to lose
their homes because they got sick and
couldn’t afford to pay costly medical bills,
incarcerates more people than any other
developed nation, and enables students
to take on more than $100,000 in debt
to pursue an education. These problems
need to be solved; in politics, I find an
opportunity to play a role in solving them.
As a delegate, I took part in reforming
our political process, adopting the most
progressive platform in the history of
American major parties, and creating
a commission which will work to make
superdelegates more democratic.
Attending the Democratic National
Convention was an experience like no
other. The energy that filled the Wells
Fargo Center, from Sanders and Clinton
delegates, was energizing and humbling.
I had the opportunity to meet politicos,
young and old, from all corners of the
country, from Alabama to Alaska. Pennsylvania was seated at the front of the
venue, so I was less than 100 feet away
from presidents past, current, and, possibly, future.
At age 19, I was the youngest delegate
from Pennsylvania, which allowed me to
fulfil a dream of being a Z-list political
celebrity for a week. I had the opportunity
to speak on television and radio, which
was mind-boggling. At St. John’s, I serve
as editor-in-chief of The Epoch Journal,
a student-led political science magazine.
Over the past year, I’ve written about
government reform—detailing policies
such as gerrymandering—and joining and
profiling a Pennsylvania-based, citizenled government reform movement. I’ve
solicited articles from my fellow Johnnies
Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe and
Sawyer Neale (A18) share a moment in Philly.
Adrian Shanker, executive director of Pennsylvania’s Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center,
and Sawyer Neale (A18) are all smiles at the DNC.
“� t age 19, I was the
A
youngest delegate from
Pennsylvania, which
allowed me to fulfil a dream
of being a Z-list political
celebrity for a week.”
and built magazines from the ground up.
In addition, I serve as archon of the SJC
Film Society as well as secretary of the
Delegate Council. All of these experiences
have allowed me to explore my love of
politics and try to make a positive difference in the life of the Polity.
While at the DNC, I attempted to do
some Epoch-related work by using that
aforementioned Z-list status to interview
as many reporters and elected officials
as possible. I had the opportunity to joke
with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf—a
PhD graduate from MIT and secret Greek
philosophy buff, particularly Apollonius
and Heraclitus. I also spoke with Andrea
Mitchell—a journalist, anchor, and commentator for NBC News—about the role
of the press in a democratic state. During
my week in Philadelphia, I got to meet
my heroes. That is an experience I will
never forget.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 45
�JOHNNIE VOICES
END OF AN ICON?
When E. A. Clore Sons, Inc. announced
on Facebook in May that it was closing
its doors after nearly two centuries
in the furniture business, it marked
the end of one of the country’s
oldest family-owned businesses. It
also signaled a dubious fate for the
college’s beloved Johnnie Chair. Alumni
everywhere came out of the woodwork
to lament the news but also to take
the opportunity to share their favorite
stories and memories, thoughts and
recollections, and even a poem.
Since the 1950s, the small factory in
Madison, Virginia, has churned out the
Plain Master Chair, a.k.a the Johnnie
Chair, for St. John’s College—one of
the company’s best customers—where
it, along with the Plain Side Chair and
the Ladder Back Dining Side Chair, fills
classrooms, dorms, dining halls, and
other spots on the two campuses. Today
the chair represents far more than the
sum of its wooden and fiber-rush parts—
it’s a St. John’s icon. And whether or
not the torch is carried after Clore is
shuttered and gone, our affection for
the Johnnie Chair, and gratitude to the
family that brought it to us, will remain
strong for years to come.
46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
Nareg Seferian (SF11), inspired
by the news, offers the following ode
to the Johnnie Chair:
Based on a True Johnnie Chair
Johnnie Chair, O Johnnie Chair –
how I loved your presence there,
a wickerwork suspension
for my Johnnie end:
a true support network –
bottom’s up, my friend!
It only irked me once or twice
when the front rung for my feet
was absent – not nice.
But who could resist trying a round
of “Balance the Johnnie Chair(s)”
on the coffee shop ground?
Perhaps your tone is lighter in
Santa Fe than Annapolis
but this
this shall serve as your legacy,
something I miss –
fingers intertwined, one elbow over
your back, Johnnie Chair
as I roll my eyes at some seminar
hack, O Johnnie Chair.
Not to say no-one ever rolled
their eyes at me.
But one thing I can guarantee:
whenever a brilliant observation or –
more probably – a pun I let loose
those eyes rolling
those heads shaking
were gently supported by a caboose
feeling confident, firm, well-founded
because you, O Johnnie Chair, made
sure their basis was well-grounded.
�Grace (Logerfo) Bateman (Class of 1965)
shares the following account of “a true story
in every detail that thus far may have eluded
the annals of St. John’s”:
The Disappearing Johnnie Chair
The Johnnie Chair has special meaning for
the Class of 1965. Some classes endow the
college with a class gift; our legacy was a
class prank involving the disappearance of
all the Johnnie Chairs on campus. How did
we do it? Early one spring morning, a group
of seniors carrying long wooden poles gathered in the McDowell quadrangle. Applying
Newtonian principles, we reasoned that the
most efficient way to transport a large number of chairs was to string them up on poles.
Breaking and entering to gather the chairs
wasn’t necessary because in those days the
buildings on campus were never locked. Using the pole technique, by dawn we removed
the chairs from every classroom and stored
them in the basement of Mellon undetected.
The seminar table is the locus for learning
at St. John’s, but when students and tutors
arrived for classes that day, the importance of
the Johnnie Chair became clear. Classes were
canceled for want of chairs, and the entire
student body was pressed into service carrying
the chairs back from Mellon to the classrooms.
“We were studying the sequence Ptolemy/
Kepler/Copernicus and Galileo, the shift
from a geocentric to a heliocentric system,
with Jacob Klein. Doing the math was one
thing, but from the look on our faces the
class was struggling with imagining what
it all meant. Now, Mr. Klein was a kind and
gentle man, with a whimsical smile, but usually somewhat reserved. He paused, looked
around the room, pulled out a chair, and
said, ‘Mr. Sherman, please come here and sit
in the chair.’ The illustrious Jacob Klein then
proceeded to push me around the classroom
and asked, ‘Mr. Sherman, what do you see
moving? And, class, what do you see moving?’ Of course! We all laughed…”
all under six years old, we also could not
resist the children’s arm chairs. Today the
children’s chairs and our adult chairs hold
every shape and size bottom comfortably
while reading stories, playing games, and
dining. However, I don’t seem to be as good
at leaning back and balancing on the back
two legs as I used to. Perhaps that is because
I am no longer smoking and drinking coffee,
though I am still pontificating on subjects
about which I know little!”
—Edward (Ted) Nelson (A77)
“I have two Clore Plain Master’s chairs in
cherry at my kitchen table. (For the record,
I purchased these directly from Clore. They
were not pilfered from the college. They
match my Barrett Woodworking cherry table
very nicely.) It pains me to imagine a world
without a source for more such chairs.”
—Bob DiSilverio (SF78)
“I had the chance to sit in a Johnnie Chair
again a few years after graduating, and it
felt like coming home. Since then, I have
always wished I had one (or a couple) of my
own. Recently, while looking for some chairs
in a thrift store for my husband’s, Matt
Griffis (SF08), and my new apartment in the
Denver area, I found this (pictured above).
It’s not big enough to sit in, but it is a nice
reminder. And it wobbles a little and is missing the front foot bar just like the real ones!
Now we only need to find a chalkboard…”
—Trystan Popish (SF08)
“For graduation my parents got me two
Johnnie Chairs. Over the years, my wife
and I have purchased well over a dozen
more Clore pieces. E. A. Clore is one of those
companies that are the backbone of America.
As every Johnnie knows, the chairs are quite
comfortable and amazingly sturdy.”
—Harold Morgan (SF68)
[Editor’s note: Not every Johnnie, as
evidenced below.]
—Daniel Sherman, Annapolis, Class of 1963
“A few years ago, we replaced our old dining
chairs with eight low-back walnut chairs and
two other matching chairs with arms. Now
our home has great chairs and a pleasant
history of the college to remember as our
home ages with us. As grandparents of four,
“If you sit in the center, which sinks, it kills
your back. If you sit on the edge, the bar
across the front kills your hamstrings. Never
was a chair so devised to cause so much pain
to the human body. Now it so happens that
I have a Johnnie Chair that I got years ago,
and I wouldn’t give it up for the world; for
Though not the real thing, Trystan Popish’s
(SF08) thrift store find—a miniature wooden
chair—is a reminder of the many good
conversations she had with friends at the
seminar table.
there I have sat and studied, there have I
sat and learned, and there I have sat and
suffered. Suffering seems a mild punishment
when I think of what I have gained.”
—Christiana Mollin (AGI10)
“I have so many memories of [the Johnnie
Chair]—of great discussions, thoughtful
moments of silence, and good conversations
with friends. I loved that they had arms to
lean on. Somehow, they framed the edges
between the physical ‘me’ and the broader
‘not me,’ and I could venture forth from them
into the heart of discussions, or not, at my
own volition. They are the most comfortable
chairs I have known.
Subsequently, all of my adult life, I have
had a problem with dining room furniture.
My husband and I had left our dining room
set in Annapolis when we moved to San
Francisco, and once again, I was confronted
with my chair problem. We ate on moving
boxes for a while, until my husband couldn’t
take it anymore. I remembered that wonderful feeling I had always had in the St. John’s
chairs. We called [Clore] the next day and
ordered six chairs, and before I could change
my mind again, we bought a table in the
same wood color.
Eighteen years have passed, and the chairs
are still looking out over San Francisco Bay
from our dining room windows. And, as they
did at St. John’s, they still ‘sit’ through good
discussions, thoughtful moments of silence,
and good conversations with friends!”
—Juliet Rothman (AGI88)
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 47
�ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GREENFIELD LIBRARY
S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R
PRESERVING
OUR LEGACY
The college has taken another giant step
toward preserving St. John’s history with
the creation of the new SJC Digital Archives.
Thanks to dedicated efforts of the St. John’s
College Libraries staff in Annapolis and
Santa Fe, a virtual trove of hidden gems—
catalogs and commencement programs from
the 1800s, rare photographs of the college’s
first class of women, a vast collection of
lectures, speeches, and addresses in audio
recording and typescript formats, old issues
of The College, and more—are now available
online at digitalarchives.sjc.edu.
Ever wonder what the basement of McDowell
Hall looked like in the 1940s? Or an aerial
48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | FAL L 2 016
view of the Santa Fe campus soon after its
founding? The newly launched site contains
more than 800 items of historical significance
to the college. “Paper deteriorates and photographs fade, but digitization offers a solution
that ensures these artifacts are preserved at
the height of their quality,” says Liz Kupke,
Greenfield Library’s technical services librarian. “Digitization of these special items, and
their inclusion on the SJC Digital Archives,
ensures that the rich history and legacy of
the college are preserved for generations to
come.” The SJC Digital Archives is continually
updated, so check back from time to time and
discover what new treasures await.
�EIDOS
Situated on the eastern edge of Texas Hill
Country, Austin has long been a beacon
to artists, musicians, and other creative
individuals. Jennifer Chenoweth (SF95) is
among those lured to this changing and
growing city. A visual artist and entrepreneur, she is intrigued by what connects
people to place—a subject she explores
in her recent exhibition XYZ Atlas: The
Hedonic Map of Austin. For the past three
years, as part of her XYZ Atlas project, she
documented and visualized the hyperlocal
experiences of people living in and visiting
Austin. The result is a large-scale exhibition of a multi-media art experience that
features a series of immersive and interactive pieces ranging from original maps to
sculptures to photography.
“XYZ Atlas began as an investigation about
why people love and feel so attached to the
city of Austin and how emotional experiences affect our experience of belonging in
particular places,” says Chenoweth. “Since
humans everywhere have emotional experiences that make a place become ‘home,’ I
want to take XYZ Atlas to other cities to
see how and where people engage uniquely
in their towns.”
Learn more about XYZ Atlas at xyzatlas.org and
Jennifer Chenoweth at fisterrastudio.com.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | FALL 2016 iii
�Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Annapolis, MD
Permit N0. 120
Communications Office
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
Address Service Requested
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
An account of the resource
The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
thecollege2001
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
pdf
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
52 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The College, Fall 2016
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 41, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2016.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
The_College_Fall_2016
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Shook, Gregory (editor)
Ehretsmann, Thomas
Weiss, Robin
Wilson, Rebecca
Andersen, Anna Perleberg
Brown, Rodjinae
Grenke, Michael
Keyes, Bob
Lenthicum, Leslie
Llovet, Jonathan
Neale, Sawyer
Scott, Bonnie
Zarin, Babak
Behrens, Jennifer
Inauguration
The College
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