the college magazine fall 2004

CollegeThe F a l l 2 0 0 4

S t . J o h n ’ s C o l l e g e • A n n a p o l i s • S a n t a F e

Jonathan SwiftT h e A d v e n t u r e s o f T r av e l

The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by

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Rosemary Harty, editorSus3an Borden, managing editor

Jennifer Behrens, art director

Advisory BoardJohn Christensen

Harvey FlaumenhaftRoberta Gable

Barbara GoyetteKathryn Heines

Pamela KrausJoseph Macfarland

Jo Ann MattsonEric Salem

Brother Robert Smith

Santa Fe505-984-6104

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John Hartnett, Santa Fe editor

Advisory BoardDavid Levine

Andra MaguranMargaret Odell

Roxanne SeagravesMark St. John

Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design

O n S w i f t

What does it mean to be human? is one of the questions oftendiscussed in St. John’s seminars. In a seminar on Gulliver’sTravels, the question could be expressed in this way: Arehuman beings good and rational creatures, or just a step abovewild beasts?

Gulliver’s odyssey begins among the tiny Lilliputians whofight with their neighbors over whether an egg should be

broken on the small end or the big end. Finding himself a tiny being among giants in Brobding-nag, he suffers the indignity of being carried away by a monkey. Among the ridiculous scholars of the Academy in Lagado, he learns of a scientist’s eight-year attempt to draw sunlight fromcucumbers. By his final stop in a land where horses are gentle, rational beings, and men are vile,greedy brutes, he has seen enough to conclude bitterly that man falls far short of the ideal.

Swift was born of English parents in Dublin on November 30, 1667. His father died shortlybefore Swift was born, leaving him dependent on the generosity of uncles. (He feared povertythroughout his life and was quite a penny-pincher.) Swift studied at Kilkenny Grammar Schooland at Trinity College in Dublin, and later received an M.A. from Oxford. At the age of 22, hewent to live at Moor Park in Surrey, where he served as a secretary to Sir William Temple. Therehe began a very close friendship with Esther Johnson, the daughter of Temple’s housekeeper, thatlasted until her death. (Swift had another long relationship with a woman, Esther Vanhomrigh,but he never married.)

In 1695, Swift was ordained in the Church of Ireland in Dublin. During the reign of QueenAnne, Swift was a celebrated figure in the literary and political life of London, becoming editor ofthe Tory journal The Examiner in 1710. He harbored great aspirations for a political career, butwhen Anne died in 1714, and George I came to power, the Tories lost their influence and Swiftfound himself outside the political power structure. He reluctantly returned to Ireland, where hewas dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Though he felt like an exile in Ireland, Swift identified withthe poverty and misery of the Irish people. Few anthologies of satirical literature fail to includeSwift’s “A Modest Proposal,” written in 1729, which sets forth a logical argument for ending Ireland’s poverty by breeding infants for food.

Swift suffered from Ménière’s disease, which left him dizzy—a “giddiness” as he described it—that he feared was madness. He was declared senile in his last years, and died on October 19, 1745.

In many ways, Gulliver is a model traveler. He endeavors to understand the local customs andthe native language of his captors and companions, and he is patient and diplomatic. In describinghis culture to others, he gains insights into his own. Because he recognizes that Yahoo qualitiespersist in supposedly civilized men, Gulliver returns from his last voyage with a profound disgustfor humanity. He can no longer tolerate the sight of his fellow man—even his own wife and children: “[M]y memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas ofthose exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider that by copulating with one of theYahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion,and horror.”

In this issue of The College magazine, intrepid Johnnie travelers share their perceptionsabout living in a new and unfamiliar culture. Their observations of interesting sights andsounds and experiences are made richer by the questions they pursue about themselves inother cultures.—RH

{ C o n t e n t s }

CollegeThe F a l l 2 0 0 4V o l u m e 3 0 , I s s u e 3

T h e M a g a z i n e f o r A l u m n i o f S t . J o h n ’ s C o l l e g e A n n a p o l i s • S a n t a F e

p a g e 8Eastern ClassicsSanta Fe’s once-controversial graduateprogram is going strong after a decade.

p a g e 10Johnnies AbroadFrom China to Colombia, wanderingJohnnies relish new experiences amiddifferent cultures.

p a g e 18The Story-tellersAlumni who work as curators and inother interpretive roles make history tangible.

p a g e 22Commencement Tutor Chester Burke (A74) and Universityof Chicago Professor Danielle Allen gavegraduates more questions to ponder.

p a g e 26Homecoming in Santa FeParties, picnics, and piñons.

d e p a r t m e n t s

2 from the bell towers• The long-lost California campus.• Annapolis dedicates Gilliam Hall.• Our man in Iraq.• New tutors in Annapolis and Santa Fe.• Summer interns are satisfied customers.• An honorary alumnus makes a generous

gift.

7 letters28 bibliofile• Writer Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) on

the great books, Zen, and writing.• Annapolis alumnus pens

children’s poetry.

32 alumni notesP R O F I L E S

30 Finding a pattern in conjunctions toldCarole Chaski (A77) that police had akiller on their hands.

36 Sara Roahen (SF94) carves out a niche as a restaurant critic in the Big Easy.

42 alumni voicesSanta Fe alumni Paul and Laura Cooley on life without a car.

46 alumni association news48 st. john’s forever

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p a g e 1 8

p a g e 2 6

o n t h e c o v e r

Jonathan SwiftIllustration by David Johnson

2

{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 }

{ F r o m t h e B e l l T o w e r s }

Standing on a hill high atopwhat used to be the MarksRanch, it’s hard not to feel atwinge of regret at what mighthave been—a cluster of pictur-esque dormitories here, an academic building there, aplaying field bordering thestate park. The view from thesegolden hills is of a scenic valley,and beyond that the city ofMonterey and the PacificOcean. More than 30 years ago,the Marks family, enamored ofthe St. John’s program, donatedthis spectacular 850-acre prop-erty to the college for possibledevelopment for a Californiacampus. The ensuing decadessaw extensive studies—topo-graphical, geographical, seismographical, political—followed by a decision by thecollege that the property wasless than an ideal site for a campus. Most of the propertywas too steep to build on, andinfrastructure would be tooexpensive.

A report issued in 1990 by theMonterey Campus FeasibilityCommittee of the Board of Visitors and Governors, chairedby Warren Winiarski (class of1952), concluded that a Califor-

nia campus was not in the pic-ture. That led the college toinvestigate selling the propertyto a developer—a decision unfor-tunately timed to a groundswellof opposition to growth in Monterey County. For years,several Annapolis and Santa Fepresidents and other collegeofficers, assisted by members ofthe board, weighed the need tomake the best business decisionfor St. John’s with protectingthe college’s good name in theface of opposition from well-organized conservation and citizens’ groups.

The resolution came lastsummer, when St. John’s soldthe property to the Big SurLand Trust, a nonprofit organization that conserves thelands and waters of California’scentral coast. The agreementalso included California State University, which claimed a 22percent interest in the propertythrough one of the many legalactions and settlements thatevolved over the years. (CSUwas to get the land if St. John’sdidn’t build a college.) The BigSur Land Trust—which is payingoff the $4.5-million purchaseprice of the property in install-

ments over the next threeyears—will draw from neighbor-ing communities to seek avision for the property as well asthe financial means for carryingthe vision out.

Susanna Danner, conserva-tion project manager for the Big Sur Land Trust, took timelast summer to offer a tour of

what used to be one of the mostproductive chicken ranches inthe county—a family businessled by matriarch Nisene Marks,whose children deeded theproperty to St. John’s. The landis still leased for cattle grazing,and a geologist initially hired by St. John’s, and now employed bythe Trust, runs his business outof the Marks Hacienda andhelps keep intruders away. Over the years, the ranch hasattracted illegal campers andlots of debris: an abandonedbus, old appliances, barrels ofsome unidentified fluid.

Up on higher ground, Dannerpoints out the boundaries ofToro County Park and the hiking trails that extend intothe canyon and the back country. Dotted with coastallive oak and chamise chaparraltrees, the area offers a habitatfor wildlife including mountainlions, bobcats, foxes, and manydifferent species of birds,including golden eagles. Part ofthe Marks property may beeventually joined to the park.“On three-day weekends, thepark routinely turns away visi-tors, and there’s no money fornew park development in the

county,” Danner says.On one border of the proper-

ty is a visible sign of why thecollege faced fierce oppositionto selling the land for develop-ment: luxury houses in the LasPalmas subdivision that arewedged into the hillside. St. John’s had a contract withthe subdivision’s developer, theFletcher Company, that gavethe company a 20-year optionto develop the property. A combination of forces emergingat the same time would havemade development difficult,says Robley Levy (class of1956), a former Santa CruzCounty commissioner whoserved on the college’s Board ofVisitors and Governors untilrecently. But the cut-and-filldevelopment near the MarksRanch was probably the biggestreason the issue became anemotional one.

“People were happy with thefirst phase of the (Las Palmas)development,” Levy says. “Butthe cut-and-fill development ofphase two, that’s what drovethe neighbors nuts. It’s classi-cal for Southern California, but for people in this area, it’snot the accepted way to developproperty.”

A conservation group calledLand Watch made the MarksRanch one of its major issues.The group capitalized on idealsof the St. John’s Program—truth, justice, integrity—in itscampaign rhetoric. Levy saysthe board anticipated someresistance, but never such avituperative attack. Alumniwere among those who wroteletters and signed petitions inopposition to development.

“It might have been possiblebefore all of the bad news gotout to have a compromise wherea portion of the lower part ofthe property could have beendeveloped—if St. John’s hadbeen willing to wait,” Levy says.“But I don’t think the college isreally suited to be a developer.”Levy was co-chair of the The rolling hills of the

Marks Ranch were too steepfor a campus.

The California Property:A Happy Ending at Last

“It was an excellent

resolution.”Robley Levy, class of 1956

continued on p. 3

3



On November 11, when the college officially dedicates itsnewest dormitory, some special guests will join the St. John’scampus community in celebrating this milestone. Amongthem will be the family of James H. Gilliam Jr., for whom thebuilding is named. Mr. Gilliam was a member of the Board ofTrustees of The Hodson Trust from 2000 until his suddendeath last summer at the age of 58. Generous funding fromthe Hodson Trust helped the College build the dormitory,which houses 48 students. A second group includes the entireboard of The Hodson Trust, particularly its chairman, FinnCaspersen, who will speak at the dedication.

A third group comes to honor Mr. Gilliam as an African-American businessman and civic leader, a man who wasdevoted to public service and to improving higher educationopportunities for minority students. They are the first sevenAfrican-American graduates of the college: Martin Dyer (classof 1952), Leo L. Simms (class of 1956), Everett Wilson (class of1956), Joan Cole (class of 1957), Carolyn Baker Brown (class of1958), Jerry Hynson (class of 1959), and Charlotte King (class of1959). All seven are expected to attend the dedication ceremony.

Mr. Gilliam’s widow, Dr. Linda G. J. Gilliam, and his father,James H. Gilliam Sr., will be present for the dedication ceremony.James H. Gilliam Jr. graduated from Morgan State University in1967 and earned a law degree in 1970 from Columbia University’s

School of Law. After practicing law in New York, he joined a law firm in Wilm-ington, Del. He joined theBeneficial Corporation in 1979as vice president-legal, rising toexecutive vice president andgeneral counsel. He wasappointed to Beneficial’s Boardof Directors in 1984 and to itsexecutive committee in 1987.

An attorney and private investor, Mr. Gilliam served on a num-ber of nationally recognized boards, namely, Household Interna-tional Inc., T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Howard Hughes MedicalInstitute, and National Geographic Society. A longtime resident ofDelaware, he also served as chairman of the Governor’s JudicialNominating Commission of the State of Delaware, chair of theAdministrative Enhancement Committee of the DelawareSupreme Court, and as a member of the executive committee andboard of the Medical Center of Delaware.

“Jim Gilliam was a particularly good friend to the College, andwe are pleased that in this way he will become a permanent part ofour community,” says Christopher B. Nelson, president. “Havingthe College’s first seven African-American graduates present forthe ceremony honors both Mr. Gilliam’s memory and the College’sdecision to open its doors to them at a time when segregation wasthe rule rather than the exception in Maryland. They haveremained devoted to the college and its ideals,” he adds.

The addition of Gilliam Hall allows the college to house 350 students on campus. In addition, the College reduced the numberof triple dorm rooms from 18 to 13 and created a new commonroom with a kitchen in Humphreys. Construction begins this fallon a second dormitory, which will house 32 students and should beready for students by December 2005. x

Gilliam Hall: A New Dorm Opens in Annapolis

A glass-enclosed common room in Gilliam Hall offers splendid viewsof College Creek.

James Gilliam was a philanthropist, businessman,and friend of the college.

California property committeewith another former boardmember, Stephen Feinberg(HSF96), and their time andexpertise were instrumental ingetting St. John’s out of theFletcher contract and intonegotiations with Big Sur.Board members Thomas Stern(SF68) and Robert Bienenfeld

(SF80) were also involved atone point. “It was an excellentresolution,” says Levy.

Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70),whose many years as a lawyerwere an asset in negotiations,was relieved to see the college’sdays as a California propertyowner coming to a close.

Proceeds from the sale willgo to the Santa Fe Initiative, a

project to address some of thecritical needs—from new science laboratories to fundingfor student internships—of thecollege’s Western campus.

Just days before the agree-ment was announced, Nelsonwas still getting e-mails fromCalifornians urging him to“Save the Marks Ranch.” Hewas clearly pleased to be able towrite back with the news of the

Big Sur agreement. “Some 13years ago, our board deter-mined that the property be putto its highest and best use.That’s just exactly what we seethis to be,” Nelson said. x

— Rosemary Harty

(continued)

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New Tutors CHRISTIAN HOLLAND (A84)joined the faculty in Annapolis.After graduating from St. John’s, Holland went to Rome, where heearned a degree in theologyfrom the Pontifical GregorianInstitute and a degree in biblicalstudies from the Pontifical Biblical Institute. He has taughtat the Monastery of Chevetognein Belgium, at the Greek Collegein Rome, and at Emory University, where he earned hisPh.D. in comparative literature.In his research and teaching, hehas specialized in biblical and patristic studies, postwar Frenchphilosophy, and theology.

In Santa Fe, TRAVIS COOK

joined the faculty. He earnedbachelor’s and master’s degreesin political science from the

University of Maine and BostonCollege. He is currently com-pleting a doctorate in politicalscience at Loyola University inChicago. His dissertation istitled, “Shaftesbury and theAncients: the Enduring Concernfor the Noble and the Just.”Before joining the St. John’scommunity, he was the assistantdirector of the Social Philosophyand Policy Center at BowlingGreen State University.

AALE AccreditationSt. John’s College in June joineda select group of colleges toreceive accreditation by theAmerican Academy for LiberalEducation, a national organiza-tion dedicated to strengtheningand promoting undergraduateliberal education throughaccreditation of liberal arts insti-

tutions and programs.The AALE joined the Middle

States Association in a review ofthe college’s self-study, and thetwo accrediting bodies made avisit to the college together lastfall. At its June meeting, theacademy granted the college inAnnapolis full institutionalaccreditation. The AALE’s standards for accreditation center on “a program’s demon-strated ability to instill anddevelop in its students the char-acteristics of liberally educatedpersons,” characteristics thatinclude “an ability to reasonclearly and effectively aboutimportant questions and issues,the acquisition of a rich fund ofmeaningful knowledge, and aninclination for seeking out andacquiring knowledge andskills.”

Agresto and Iraq“We’ve been bombed twonights in a row, and I expectmore of the same tonight,”JOHN AGRESTO wrote from Iraqlast November. The formerpresident of the Santa Fe campus was just a few monthsinto his post as senior adviser tothe Iraqi Ministry of HigherEducation, and in the e-mail to his colleagues back in thestates, he wrote about how the war affected his daily life.“To go to the Ministry or to auniversity I have to travel in asecure car with at least oneshooter—usually my driver has apistol in his lap. I’m both preceded and followed by two

armored humvees with twogunners in each and a soldierwith a machine gun on theroof.”

Once the most modern in theMiddle East, Iraq’s institutionsof higher learning witheredunder Saddam Hussein, andafter his regime fell, they werefurther weakened by lootingand vandalism. Agresto deter-mined that the universitiesneeded $1.2 billion to becomeviable again, but the recon-struction package approved byCongress last year allocatedonly $8 million for higher education, which Agrestodirected to the construction ofnew science labs. He attemptedto raise the remainder himselffrom the international commu-nity without success.

Nevertheless, when he leftIraq in June, Agresto couldreport that some goals wereachieved. These includedreopening the universities;decentralizing the ministryand empowering the academiccommunity through an aca-demic bill of rights; removingadmissions restrictions onfemale students; reestablishingFulbright and other scholar-ship opportunities; and establishing three “Americanuniversities” in the Kurdishregion of Iraq. x

— Beth Schulman



4

News and Announcements

In MemoriumThe college lost three members of the Annapolis campus community late in the summer. (The College will publish complete obituaries in the Winter 2005 issue.)• On August 17, former assistant dean and tutor emerita

BARBARA LEONARD died. Leonard—an honorary member of theclass of 1955—came to St. John’s in 1951 with the first class offemale students. She had the important role of counseling,guiding, and supporting students throughout the years. Sheretired in 1987 after serving the college for 36 years.

• Tutor emerita BEATE RUHM VON OPPEN (HA01), who was a tutorat the college from 1960 to 2003, died at her home in Annapo-lis on August 10. Born in Switzerland, she was raised in Ger-many and left the country at the age of 16 as the Nazis were ris-ing to power. She earned her degree at the University ofBirmingham and during World War II worked for the BritishForeign Office. She moved to the United States in the late1950s. Her book Letters to Freya, which captures the story ofNazi resister Helmuth James von Moltke, won the Scholl Prize,a prestigious literary award in Germany.

• Former tutor ALFRED MOLLIN died at his home in Philadelphiaon August 22. Mollin taught at St. John’s in the 1970s, butmany more Johnnies know him from the Greek manual he co-wrote with tutor emeritus ROBERT WILLIAMSON (HA02).After leaving the college, Mollin earned a law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law. From 1978 until his retirement in 2001 he was an appellate lawyer with the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. x

John Agresto (right) neededflak jackets and armored bodyguards for his work in Iraq.

ELIHU DIETZ (A06) and CHELSIA WHEELER (SF03) areamong the true believers in thevalue of the Career Servicesoffices on both campuses.

Dietz spent the summer at acastle in Italy after spotting anadvertisement for an intern-ship in the Annapolis CareerServices newsletter. Wheelergained a lead on a graduate fellowship program, includinga Capitol Hill internship,through the Santa Fe office.Here are their reports:

Reading RetreatI found “Reading Retreats inRural Italy,” a utopia for thesocially awkward and artisticallydriven, last March through theCareer Services newsletterPraxis. The notice was a laconicplea for anyone interested inperforming remedial tasks forthe upkeep of a 14th-centurycastle in exchange for cheaproom and board and good con-versation with internationalartists, book lovers, and travelers of all ilk. Believing itwas too good to be true, I wasdetermined to get in touch withthe owner, Clark Lawrence.

Five days later, I received arequest for my resumé fromClark; six weeks later, I was onmy way to Italy, tothe Castle ofGaleazza, where Ilived for the nextthree months.

There were fourguest rooms andup to ten guestsstaying at the castle at a time.The first few days,my chores ofwatering andweeding the gardens, makingup the rooms forthe new arrivals,and feeding the catwere accompaniedby the echoes of

the two pianists practicingtheir program for the upcom-ing concert on the followingSaturday.

About every two weeks, thecastle hosted a classical musicconcert (sometimes followed bytractor rides through thewoods) and an open gallery displaying the works of six orseven painters from Moscow,Berlin, and Athens.

On my two to three days off aweek, I was just as likely to sitwith a book or talk with guestsas I was to take an overnighttrip to Venice or Ravenna.While the daytime was usuallyspent awing over the Alexan-dria Quartet or Cide HameteBenengeli’s masterpiece, dinners were always time for allthe guests to come together andto tell stories or listen to Clark’samusing antics.

People listened to each other,drank with each other, and livedart (in all kinds of mediums)with one another. Every guestwho came, like every studentwho comes to St. John’s, was amember of a community by thesimple fact that they came will-ing to share their own thoughtsand humor. All Johnnies love agreat book but along with thatthey value a community of

people willing to learn fromothers. It was lovely to experi-ence a place where people tooktime out to enjoy life and simply live.

Early this fall, yet anotherJohnnie will be there, AnnaSchall (A07), who will take my place as an intern for three months.

—Elihu Dietz

Serving the People “Well you see,” said the womanon the other end of the line, “I am 64 years old, and I don’thave a lot of money. I fly myplane down to the VirginIslands a few times a year tostay in my house there. But Ihave some business to conductwith the timeshare company,and I can’t afford to call them.Could you please call from youroffice and represent me?”

It was a typical day in theoffice of the Hon. Donna M.Christensen, U.S. VirginIslands delegate to Congress.But, as a St. John’s Collegegraduate, I have excellent skillsin diplomatically avoiding thedirect request. After hearing along, unsolicited medical his-tory of my caller, I agreed thatif she sent information to ouroffice, we would write a letter.She never sent the information.

Margaret Odell of the SantaFe Career Services office

pointed me toward this won-derful opportunity last winter.I was teaching English in Koreaas a break from academia aftergraduation. The Charles B.Rangel International AffairsFellowship Program providesan expenses-paid SummerEnrichment Program for sixweeks at Howard University,then an internship for six weekson Capitol Hill; then tuition,room, and board for two yearsof graduate study; then a summer internship at a U.S.embassy abroad; and finally, afive-year contract as a ForeignService officer in the StateDepartment. It fit perfectly my passion for traveling andlearning. I can never thankMargaret enough for pointingme in the right direction.

The congresswoman’s officecontained a colorful mix of people, mostly from the VirginIslands. One man argued on thephone with his girlfriend forhours on end. Another smokedout of the window of the federalbuilding. And another spokepassionately of his readings ofKant and his search for thegreater Good. (A Johnnie atheart.) I was amazed that Icould find such a wonderful mixof people even in a congres-sional office, not to mentionthe constituents who called andwrote with strange requests

every day.Now I am off on

another adventure. I have just startedgraduate studies atAmerican Universityto earn a master’sdegree in Interna-tional Affairs. Theexperience shouldprove another inter-esting new endeavorfor a Johnnie. x

—Chelsia C. Wheeler



At left, Elihu Dietz’ssummer castle. At right, ChelsiaWheeler meets Colin Powell.

5

Satisfied Customers

Texas businessman StephenFeinberg (HSF96) was spendinga lot of time in Santa Fe andAlbuquerque in 1977, when agood friend told him about asmall liberal arts college inSanta Fe that deserved hisattention. Richard Weigle, president of both campuses atthe time, and vice president J. Burchenal Ault (HSF83) were successful in persuading Feinberg to serve on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors.

Feinberg joined the board ata time when the young campus

was still experiencing growingpains. “I was somewhat con-cerned when I attended my first board meeting, and thepresident said he didn’t know if the college had enough fundsto make the payroll,” recallsFeinberg. “I wondered if I’d got-ten myself into a situation that Ireally didn’t want to be in.”

Feinberg’s concerns aboutthe campus turned out to beshort-lived, and in July heexpressed his unqualified confidence in the managementof St. John’s College byannouncing a $4 million gift to

the endowment. “Ihave seen the collegeevolve into a very well-managed organization, a strong and stable organization,” he says.He hopes that his giftwill spur additionalinvestments in the college.

“We, as communitymembers, have a greatresponsibility to thiscollege,” says Fein-berg, who lives part ofthe year in Santa Feand part in El Paso,Texas.

He finished hisfourth term on theboard earlier this year. It took him severalyears to get “fullyengaged” on the board,says Feinberg. Whenthe board began to taphis expertise in realestate and finance—withtremendous results—hisinvolvement grew. In turn, hebecame more aware of impor-tant issues facing faculty, staff,and students at St. John’s. He became more involved inthe intellectual life of the college as well, attending Executive Seminars, communityseminars in Santa Fe, and rarelymissing a session of SummerClassics. His admiration for the tutors helped inspire hisgift, which he would like to see help support improved faculty salaries.

“The college’s mission ismore important than ever,”Feinberg says. “With a globaleconomy and all the conflictsand the terrorism, the ability to be open, honest, to question,to search, and to think aboutimportant issues—this is especially important tomankind right now. St. John’sstands out in the world of academia because this type of searching is the college’score mission.”

Christopher B. Nelson (SF70),president in Annapolis and

interim president in Santa Fe,said Feinberg’s gift is particu-larly welcome during this timeof rebuilding in Santa Fe. The college is still seeking apresident to replace John Balkcom (SFGI00), with thegoal of bringing a candidatebefore the board at its meetingin November. In the meantime,it’s important that the collegecontinue to draw theconfidence and support of its Santa Fe community.

“Steve’s gift shows that thecommunity understands our workhere, and that the 40-year bondbetween Santa Fe and St. John’sCollege will continue long intothe future,” says Nelson.

Mr. Feinberg is the third boardmember to publicly announce agift to the college in advance ofthe official start of the next capital campaign, expected tobegin in the fall of 2005. Alumni Ronald Fielding (A70)and Sharon Bishop (A67), boardchair, have also announced generous gifts to the college. x

-Rosemary Harty


{ P h i l a n t h r o p i a }6

A $4 Million Vote of Confidence

Stephen Feinberg’s gift to the college expresses his confidence in the Santa Fe campus.

Something to Celebrate

Making the college’s Annual Fund goal is no small feat,but thanks to more alumni participating, and more generous gifts from alumni, the college reached its $2.3 million goal for the 2003-04 fiscal year. This year, 35 percent of the college’s alumni made a gift. Tuition paysonly 70 percent of the cost of a student’s education. Drawfrom endowment, federal and state grants, and the AnnualFund make up the rest. Students in particular have some-thing to celebrate: the largest portions of funds collectedthrough the Annual Fund go to support instruction andfinancial aid.

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7{ L e t t e r s }

Free Thought and ReasonI was left scratching my head over StevenBrower’s letter (Spring 2004) in which herecalls Douglas Allanbrook responding tothe absence of Eastern authors with theclaim, “the only good thing that has comeout of the East was the Sun.” Brower takesAllenbrook’s statement as evidence that freethought thrives at St. John’s. In fact, it showsthe opposite. Not only is Allenbrook’s state-ment laughably false, but it also helpsconfirm the worst stereotypes about St. John’s: namely, that the college is provincial, self-important, and dismissivetoward ideas that do not fall within a particular conception of the Western canon.

I tend not to agree with this stereotypesince I also believe that St. John’s teaches theimportance, above all, of giving reasons forwhat one believes to be true. Evidence offree thought requires more than sayingsomething controversial or unpopular: italso requires the capacity to give reasons.Perhaps Allanbrook had reasons for his view.If so, it is regrettable that he chose torespond with a fatuous quip. Likewise, perhaps Brower has reasons for laudingAllenbrook’s expression of “free thought”—but he, too, has given no reason to supporthis choice of words. Fortunately, Santa Fenow has a program in Eastern Classics.

I always enjoy reading The College, but Iam not sure what you hoped to accomplishby printing Brower’s letter.

John Capps (A91)

Mistaken NotionsI am writing to correct some mistakennotions expressed in the letter from Erin N.H. Furby (A96), in The CollegeWinter 2004). She was commenting on anarticle, “Admissions and Diversity, East andWest,” published in the previous issue. Herresponse suggested that she misunderstandsthe “diversity initiative” under way on bothcampuses and the importance of diversity forthe life of the college community.

I agree that the word “minority” isambiguous, and its meaning often must beclarified. The “diversity initiative,” which werefer to as the Opportunity Initiative,address-es different minority groups on the two cam-puses. In Annapolis, it is directed primarilytoward black students; in Santa Fe, NativeAmericans and Hispanics are the primaryfocus. Why? As easily might be guessed, it isbecause the recruitment problem differs onthe two campuses. That is largely a product ofdifferences in the demographics of the areas

from which the campuses recruit students.Hispanics and Native Americans, althoughthe largest minority groups in the area fromwhich Santa Fe draws most of its students,have applied in small numbers. On the East Coast and in the large urban areas fromwhich the Annapolis campus draws most ofits students, blacks, although the largestminority, have applied in even fewer num-bers. This does not mean, of course, that bothcampuses are not seeking or would not wel-come students from other minority groups.

Why should St. John’s make this determined effort to recruit more minoritystudents? Because seminars and classes

achieve greater profundity and richness whenstudents of different races, ethnicities, andbackgrounds bring their life experiences andindividual perspectives into the conversation.Students benefit. As fellow learners, tutorsbenefit. The entire community benefits.

I agree also that skin color means noth-ing— in itself. Blacks, like whites, are a rainbow of colors. Variations of hue, howev-er, are not the concern of this initiative. The cutting edge is racial difference, however defined, which creates for mostblacks in American society unique life experiences and social and economic statusquite different from other groups. In somesituations, a different culture has evolved.

Ms. Furby acknowledges that “ religion,age, home state, and economic backgroundinfluence the perspective of students.” Whyis she reluctant to acknowledge that race andethnicity are equally important parts of anindividual’s conditioning and development?Being of one race, however, does not makeblacks a monolithic group. Like whites andothers, they are of different religions, fromvarying states, cities, and neighborhoods,

and of diverse economic backgrounds. Thesedifferences, plus the common conditioningtheir race provides, produce the “individualperspectives that [individual blacks bring] tothe class.”

As appalled as Ms. Furby may be that “theAnnapolis campus was mentioned ... only interms of having a small number of black stu-dents each year,” that is the unfortunate fact.Last year, three of the approximately 450 students were black.

Admissions officers are not being “pres-sured” into seeking “students of one raceover another.” They seek black students,Native Americans, and Hispanics not as analternative but an addition to white students.In attempting to diversify the applicant pool,they hope to recruit a student body thatreflects the racial and ethnic diversity of thiscountry. They do this also because theybelieve that it is the “right thing” to do forparts of our society subjugated for more than300 years and which, even now, still sufferfrom it.

Just as the college is richer for having vol-untarily added blacks and women to its stu-dent body many years ago, the reading list isenhanced by the inclusion of black andfemale authors. If the college is derided forthis, it is because some erroneously believethat these authors cannot express ideas thatare “universal and applicable to all thinkingpeople.” As to “the unwise who looked onlyat the race and sex of [these] authors,” Irespectfully defer to the collective wisdomand integrity of the college deans and facultywho serve on the Instruction Committee.

Martin A. Dyer, Class of 1952

Editor’s Note: Mr. Dyer was the firstAfrican-American student admitted to St. John’s.

The College welcomes letters on issues ofinterest to readers. Letters may be editedfor clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of beingprinted in their entirety.

Please address letters to: The Collegemagazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,Annapolis, MD 21404, or The College magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.

Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: [email protected].

“In attempting to diversify the applicant

pool, [admissions officers] hope to recruit

a student body thatreflects the racial and

ethnic diversity of this country.”

Martin Dyer, Class of 1952

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In 1968, Scott Buchanan explained in an interview withauthor Harris Wofford why he and Stringfellow Barrexcluded Eastern works when they selected the greatbooks of the New Program. “I think in ’37 reading Oriental books when then we had so slender a grasp onour own tradition would have led to the kind of phoney

stuff that has happened often when Westerners have becomeintoxicated with Zen Buddhism or something,” Buchanan said.However, in a later interview Buchanan added, “We ought to havegone at the oriental bookssimply and hard and we’dhave cracked them.”

“Cracking” the greattexts of the Eastern tradi-tion—simply and hard—isexactly what students andtutors do together in theEastern Classics program inSanta Fe. It is an intense,full-time program leadingto a master of arts degree.Each student studies San-skrit or Ancient Chinese toread original texts in thoselanguages. Two of the fivepreceptorials taken by eachstudent are mandatory andinvolve two weighty books,books worthy of a lifetimeof study: the Mahabharataand the Tale of Genji.

When a group of SantaFe tutors proposed a pro-gram geared to the study ofEastern works, the idea met with strong disapproval from some inAnnapolis and Santa Fe. Tutor Krishnan Venkatesh, now directorof the Graduate Institute and a long time tutor in the program, wasamong those who weren’t sure the college should take on such aprogram. “I didn’t know if we would be able to teach it, and teachit well,” says Venkatesh. “But my fears were allayed rather quickly.I’ve seen how successful the program is. And I should have hadfaith all along that the books can teach us how to read them.”

The texts may be different, Venkatesh says, but students in Eastern Classics ultimately embrace the same questions as under-graduates do: “What is it possible to know? What is a humanbeing? What is ultimately real? What is the relation of pleasure tohappiness? What is a good person? What does it mean to be free?”

The Eastern Classics program is more similar to the undergrad-uate program than the college’s graduate program in liberal arts,says tutor Frank Pagano, who was GI director in Santa Fe from

2001 to June 2004. “Everybody starts at the beginning and every-body ends at the end. It’s a full-time program and it really has thesense of commitment, the structure, and the continuity of theundergraduate program.”

After a yearlong pilot program funded by the Bradley Founda-tion, the Eastern Classics program began formally in the fall of1994 with an enrollment of 23 full-time students. It struggled tobuild enrollment during its first years, but interest continued togrow over the years. This fall, 33 full-time students, including

15 alumni, enrolled in theprogram—enough for twofull seminars.

Students read and discussthe books of China, Indiaand Japan—the classics ofHinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism—inchronological order. Inchoosing books for the pro-gram, tutors initially con-sulted a comprehensive listassembled by ColumbiaUniversity’s, but ultimately,the same standards forworks selected in theundergraduate programguided the list. “You askyourself what books work inseminar, what books areabsolutely necessary even ifthey don’t work in seminar,and which books talk toeach other,” Pagano says.

Tutors like Pagano gradually migrated to theprogram when the time wasright for them, he explains.He began by leading a preceptorial on the Grand

Historian, Sima Qian. “That was my entryway to China. I starteddoing more Chinese works, then audited the Chinese languagetutorial,” says Pagano, who by now has taught everything but languages in the program. “Jim Carey, who loves language, taught Sanskrit. Other people began teaching because they were interested.”

In marketing the program, the college takes out ads in YogaJournal, some of which have featured testimonials from Tias Little (EC98), one of the country’s leading yoga instructors. “Eachyear we have people interested in yoga who want to know more aboutthe books behind the practice, people interested in Buddhism,

Eastern Classics at Ten

Enrollment Grows in Santa Fe Program

by Rosemary Harty

Santa Fe GI Director KrishnanVenkatesh was initially doubtfulthat a program in Eastern Classicscould succeed.

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and people interested in religion,” Pagano says, adding that moststudents simply seek to broaden their knowledge.

Ronalie Moss (SFGI91, EC95), a recently retired teacher fromLos Alamos, N.M., was among the students in the pilot program.She enrolled right after completing the liberal arts graduate program because she was still eager for intellectual challenges. “I fell in love twice at St. John’s—you know how you read something and you just discover a mind thatyou fall in love with? It happened for me inthe liberal arts program with Aristotle andthe Nichomachean Ethics. And again in Eastern Classics with the Analects ofConfucius,” she says.

Because the program was noncredit whenshe took part in it (those who completed itwere awarded certificates), Moss wrote herpapers and took an oral examination to complete requirements for the degree. Overthe years, she integrated both sides of hergraduate program into thehigh school AdvancedPlacement and World Clas-sics courses she taught. “Of course we should studythe Eastern classics,” Mosssays, “how could we ignorehalf the world?”

One of the program’sstrengths is that it’s theonly program of its kind.Nowhere else can a studentinterested in the Easterntexts find a comprehensive,discussion-based program,Venkatesh says. Many colleges offer programswith majors such as Asianstudies, but these generallyemphasize contemporaryculture. Other programsfocus on traditions andpractices instead of original texts.

Among the biggest objections to overcome were those voiced by tutors who believed the program would weaken the college byoverburdening tutors, or disturb the unity of St. John’s by creatinga “department” within the college. But during the last three years, more than half of the members of Santa Fe’s InstructionCommittee have taught in Eastern Classics, Venkatesh points out.He argues that the program has less of a “department feel” thansophomore music or senior lab.

The fear that tutors would be overwhelmed was a reasonableone, Venkatesh acknowledges—the Program already requires somuch of tutors. “Instead, tutors who have taught in Eastern Classics have been invigorated by the experience,” Venkateshsays. “It’s given them new ways to enter the conversation,” as well as “clearer focus and commitment, and a richer sense of what the questions are.”

Pagano wasn’t surprised that alumni would be among the firstto apply for the program. In the first years of the program, up to

half of the program’s students were Johnnies; more recently, that’sdropped to about a quarter. “During their undergraduate years,many develop a pent-up desire to take on the Eastern Classics program,” he says.

Alexis Brown (SF00, EC03) took a year off after graduatingbefore she enrolled in the program. It’s intense and difficult, butwell worth the hard work, she says. “The whole time I was an

undergraduate, I’d see the reading list forEastern Classics and knew that I wanted todo it,” she says. “I knew I would gain amuch fuller picture of human thought.Some of the best seminars I’ve had at St. John’s were in Eastern Classics.”

Brown didn’t struggle as much withstudying and translating poetry in ancientChinese; plunging into the unfamiliarimagery and new concepts of Hindu texts,particularly the Upanishads, gave her trouble. She saw a few students drop out

because the St. John’sapproach of analyzing anddiscussing texts did not fitwith their personal beliefs.“I met a few students whocouldn’t understand thatthis was not a spiritualendeavor,” she says.

In nurturing the program during his yearsas the GI director, Paganohas come to better under-stand the college’s missionas a whole. “I can imaginepeople arguing that wereally don’t do EasternClassics well—that the program really is a dilet-tantish affair. But if thisprogram is dilettantish, I’d say the [undergraduate]program is. We’re after liberal education at St. John’s, we’re out to discover things.”

Annapolis tutor EvaBrann is an admirer of theEastern Classics programand is satisfied that it has

added to the mission of the college. “This has done us no end ofgood,” she says. “It adds a new dimension to what we do here. And it shows that our way of doing things is universal.”

However, Harvey Flaumenhaft, dean in Annapolis, told a groupof the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors reviewing the program last summer that he would continue to oppose introduc-ing it in Annapolis. “We already spread ourselves too thin,” Flaumenhaft said. “I don’t think that we can do all good things forpractical reasons. And there are a lot of good things we don’t do inour undergraduate program. It’s unthinkable, for example, not tostudy Maimonides. The danger of taking on more is not that wedon’t go broad enough, but that we don’t go deep enough.” x

“I should have had faith all along that the

books can teach us how to read them.”

Krishnan Venkatesh

Students in seminars in Easternworks wrestle the same universalquestions that undergraduatestackle, says Venkatesh.

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Johnnies are the kind of travelers whoapproach a new culture like an unfamiliar text,ready to have their prejudices challenged andtheir horizons broadened. In these shortessays, alumni who have spent an extendedtime in other countries write about the discov-eries, disappointments, surprises, and delightsfound in the manners and dispositions of dif-ferent cultures. Several went abroad to teach

English: Mike Crawford in Colombia, PaulObrecht in the Czech Republic, and Meredith Smith in

Spain. Ryan Rylee spent a year in China and India during abreak from the college to pursue his interest in the East. JohnHartnett traveled to India and Lauren Sherman to Africa,both on volunteer medical missions.

Recent dispatches or distant reminiscences, these aren’ttypical travelogues.

A Woman Who Danced with Fans

by Ryan Rylee (A04)

Beijing is hidden under a cloud, but it’s not the mystical kind.The cloud comes partly from the taxis and buses, of whichthere are more every year. As more Chinese get rich whileauto import tariffs come down, those taxis are joined by private cars. One still sees, in outlying Beijing, modifiedtractors, smoking and jittering along the road. And itbecomes less and less rare to see a coal-laden cart beingpushed alongside a Mercedes Benz.

The cloud over the city also comes partly from the coal-burning stoves some people still use for warmth and cook-ing, and a little from the industrial plants. A lot of sand blowsin from north of the city, where for hundreds of miles farm-ers are causing desertification with unsustainable grazingand farming practices, cultivating every inch of remainingland around the city. It has gotten so bad that some of themare now being paid by the state not to work.

The cloud over the city is, more than anything else, the dustraised by development at what is certainly one of the largestconstruction sites in the world. Stand at the window of a Bei-jing skyscraper and try to make out the number of construc-tion cranes across the city. Nimble giants stand stock straightin flocks that stretch out much farther than the eye can see,vanish into the smog, and seem beyond counting.

The city—and a lot of the country—are trying, fast as theycan, to be as modern and Western and capitalist and techno-

“My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors,ancient and modern, being always provided with a goodnumber of books; and when I was ashore, in observing themanners and dispositions of the people, as well as learningtheir language, wherein I had a great facility by the strengthof my memory.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.

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A DV E N T U R E S

A B ROA D


“The city—and a lot of the country—are trying, fast as they can, to be asmodern and Western and capitalist and technological as possible.”

Ryan Rylee, A04

Modern life is crowding out the traditional in China, with Starbucks, McDonalds, and other American franchises moving in.

12


logical as possible. There is a Starbucks now inside the For-bidden City. McDonald’s and KFC abound in Beijing, alongwith unlicensed imitations of everything American, fromLevi’s to DVDs. And with Hollywood movies come the imi-tations of them, in appearance and behavior, the cars andbravado, the high heels and discotheques. Where is theChinese soul?

The blue suits and caps of the Cultural Revolution arestill worn by a lot of the 60-and-older people. They ambleslowly about the streets and gawk at the thousands of for-eigners who have invaded the capital. A woman told meabout growing up in her family’s Chinese-style, four-sidedgarden home: parents, grandparents, and children all eat-ing together in the central courtyard, in the shade of treesand trellises, grape vines growing overhead. She showedme, with a mix of words and gestures, how her brotherwould reach up, pick the ripening grapes on the sly, and putthem into her mouth. They taught her, in that kind of placeand time, how to dance with a fan held in each hand, andshe still remembers, even performed it for us, rhythmicallyfolding and unfolding the fans, ephemeral butterflies hid-ing her face. That house, like so many old ones, has beendemolished, and different generations packed off to apart-ments high above the city. Some of the old folks speak fond-ly of the days of yore, the lousy plumbing, leaky roofs, coal-burning stoves, and drafty rooms of their charming,crumbling traditional-style slums. Some of them also, in afrustrated moment, will speak fondly of the days of Mao,but no one wants to go back to those days. And anyway, Chi-nese have become used to making way for progress, used tosacrifice.

Mao campaigned to destroy anything ancient or tradi-tional. I even heard one Chinese student reference, in acasual aside, “Mao’s mission to destroy China.” Was themission successful? Tai Chi is still practiced in the publicparks. Peking Opera goes on, now performing a mix ofMao-era and pre-Mao songs. And kung fu soaps, set in thedays of emperors, are the most popular kind of show on tel-evision. The magical ancient China we sometimes see in

movies is only available to most Chinese in just the samekind of medium, usually minus the effort and expense ofmaking flying through the air and breathing fire look real.Chinese mystique, as we know it, is something only perfected in the movie studios and new-age bookstores ofCalifornia. Perhaps the real mystery is how “China”—ifsuch a thing persists—continues to be reflected through theindustrial smoke and mirrored high-rises. As the openinglines of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching read, “Dao ke dao, feichang dao.” The way is a becoming way, not a fixed way.

Death in the Night

by Lauren Sherman (A05)

In the summer of 2003 I went to Africa with OperationCrossroads Africa, a nonprofit organization that sendsyoung people to various countries on the continent to workon different projects. There were six of us, and our assign-ment was medical-related. I was there for two months in arural section of western Kenya.

We lived about a mile and a half from the hospital at thefamily compound of our group leader, Josephine, a Kenyannurse who has been working in the U.S. for the past coupleof years and wanted to bring a group of young people backto her home to help in the community. The houses were nofrills, just concrete floors and walls, and the bathroom wasan outhouse about 20 feet from the house. There was notoilet, just a hole in the floor, and showers were taken witha bucket of water and a cup.

During one week of our stay we traveled to MfanganoIsland on Lake Victoria to operate a free clinic for theislanders. This clinic was much needed because the closesthospital is three hours away by motorboat and very expen-sive.

On the second day I was to be working in the pharmacy,but by chance I stumbled into an empty room where awoman, maybe in her late twenties, was in labor. As shecalled out to me in her native language, Luo, I immediately


The woman was in labor.“I immediately understood herpain and terror without comprehending the words.”

Lauren Sherman, A05

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understood her painand terror withoutcomprehending thewords. I approached tocomfort her, andplaced my hand on herswollen belly as shemoaned in pain. Ilooked into her eyesand felt utterly help-less. How was I, a 20-year-old student of the“great books,” goingto stop her pain?

For over an hour I stood with her, rubbing her belly insilence. The doctor reported that her condition was stableand that she had hours before she would give birth. He thenleft to see other patients. After some time, I followed suitand returned to the pharmacy, but throughout the day I fre-quented her room. More than once I again demanded thedoctor’s attention, but he always reported the same. Herpain may have been steady, but was it normal? Without abetter foundation for concern than my feelings, I trustedthe doctor’s judgment and left for the evening. Soon I wasovertaken by hunger and fatigue, and the woman’s suffer-ing was pushed to the background of my thoughts.

The next morning when we arrived at the clinic, the doc-tor told us that this young woman had experienced compli-cations and was rushed to the mainland during the night.She and the baby both died.

For a time I allowed the suffering and inequality that Iexperienced in Kenya to saturate me with helplessness.Then finally, a few days before our departure, I realized thatthis woman knew that somebody cared about her and want-ed to ease her pain, however inexperienced and unable Imay have been. Even though we didn’t know each other’sname, I felt a searing love for her. I realized that the worldis filled with nameless individuals, and it was my responsi-bility to show them this love. In a way, this nameless woman

helped me far morethan any remedies ormedicines I could havegiven to her. Shehelped me to realizethe power of thehuman heart.

Marching to the River

by Paul Obrecht (SF02)

In the middle of March, having been in the Czech Republicfor nine months, I was invited to participate in a tradition-al springtime procession in a tiny village in southernMoravia. A straw man was to be carried from the villagesquare down to the river, set on fire, and then tossed intothe water; newly green branches would be gathered, deco-rated with ribbons, and returned to the square. All of thiswas in the name of dismissing winter and welcoming thereturn of spring. When we arrived in the middle of the cold,gray afternoon, we joined a small group of parents and chil-dren and began marching to the river, singing Czech folksongs all the while. But I was misled about this being a tra-ditional procession: At some point it was admitted thatCzechs haven’t enacted this ceremony for a hundred yearsor more. I was part of a re-creation, an attempt to resurrectan old tradition that had died out generations ago. I discov-ered later that the people marching down to the river wereWaldorf School moms and dads, and that this was a Waldorfevent. (Waldorf schools were imported from the West in1995 or so.)

I was tremendously disappointed, but I couldn’t quite saywhy. Was it just the tourist in me, disappointed by the lack


The Czech people areslowly rebuilding traditions, such as thiswine festival procession,lost in the communist era.

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of quaint costumes? Irecalled a wine festivalI had stumbled uponthe previous autumn in the village where I live, when the partici-pants had been dressedin the traditional Mora-vian lace-and-embroi-dery-embellished garb.They started perform-ing traditional songsand dances, paradingthrough the streets ofthe village joined by asmall marching bandand a group of men pulling a red wagon that held a bigdecanter of burcak, an enticingly sweet midpoint on thejourney from grape juice to wine. They poured glasses forthe folks watching along the sidewalk or from their lace-curtained windows. I noticed that I was the only foreignerthere, in fact, probably the only person not from the villageitself, and this produced a wonderful feeling of satisfactionat the authenticity of it all.

So why the disappointment at those real Czech folksmarching down to the river, trying to resurrect some bit oftheir heritage, even if many could not remember all thewords to the songs? The urge to resurrect old traditions ishere, as everywhere, a reaction to the ever-acceleratingpace of life and the fear that one’s own way of life is beingconsumed by the global behemoth of instant glitz, pop cul-ture, and convenience. In a country that just 15 years agowas dominated by secret police, closed borders, and bananalines, things are changing quickly and people are in a hurryto make up for lost time.

My disappointment, it turns out, was at being confrontedwith my own naivete. I had moved to the Czech Republic inhopes that I could learn something from a people who hadhad no choice for so long but to define themselves by othermeans than what they could afford to buy. Instead I found

many of them eager toacquire as many as pos-sible of the vices of theWest. The march downto the river was aresponse to that, theunglamorous act ofreal people trying todo something real forthemselves, trying tocreate meaning where

meaning is in danger of slipping away.On my cynical days, the growing Czech hunger for the

consumer lifestyle suggests to me that human nature longsfor little more than cool stuff to buy; real and meaningfultraditions seem only to survive as long as people are pro-hibited, whether by circumstance or design, from havingenough shopping opportunities.

On other days, however, I catch glimpses of an entirenation rallying to redefine itself after centuries of beingripped apart and re-sewn by the hands of various would-beempire builders. They are hard at work rebuilding theirsocial institutions and public infrastructure, trying topurge the last whiff of totalitarianism from their souls. Ineffect, they are redesigning their society from the bottomup, and a necessary part of that is to resurrect old tradi-tions. How else to remember who they have been? Theenthusiasm and success of their effort suggest far moreconvincingly that the fabric of human nature is trulyresilient and durable stuff.

Glitz, pop culture, and conveniencethreaten authenticCzech culture.

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The Guerilla’s Warning

by Michael Crawford (A87)

Graduation called, but South America beckoned. In thespring of 1988, my knowledge of the city of Cartagena con-sisted of exactly two items: it was 80 degrees year-roundand it was full of cool Spanish colonial-era architecturalremnants. My knowledge of Colombia in general was a bitmore extensive, having followed the New York Times sto-ries of Marxist guerilla fighting or drug-related massacresthat took out three or four dozen people at a time. (In onestory, the blood was literally running out the front door ofthe tavern afterwards.) Almost no U.S. citizens wanted tolive there. This fact, plus the thought of the anxiety Iwould cause my parents if I went, appealed to me in a waythat such things can only appeal to a 21-year-old. I went.

The first few weeks did nothing to dampen the sense ofthe exotic. Yes, those are wild monkeys in the trees along-side the river. Yes, that is the beautiful but deadly black-and-yellow viper (no known antidote for the venom) slith-ering across the schoolyard while we are trying to playpick-up basketball. Yes, the discos throb with salsa andmerengue until six in the morning. Yes, she likes youbecause she thinks you have American dollars.

The height of this giddy new-ness came during a retreatthe school organized for my 12th-graders. We were at aranch in the middle of nowhere. The school’s forward-looking rector wanted the students to talk about democra-cy and violence, and I was asked to lead a seminar on theBill of Rights. The talk went well—back then it was not ludi-crous for other countries to look toward America’s gov-ernment as a model with real moral authority. My effortsin rudimentary Spanish were appreciated. But as the sunwent down and the oil lamps were lit, I realized that I hadonly been the warm-up band for the evening’s main act:two hours with a real, live South American ex-guerilla.

As we sat in a circle around the table, he was brought inflanked by two military guards. He told us to call himAlberto. The bandana covering his face only added to the

mystique. For 12 years, he had been a foot soldier in theRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), theoldest and most hard-line of Colombia’s five armed Marxist insurgent groups. He joined because he believedin social justice, but after only one day he realized it wouldnot be found among his guerilla comrades. Daily life consisted of endless making and breaking camp, or sittingthrough Marxism indoctrination classes in the middle ofthe jungle. Stray from the straight and narrow, and theywould shoot you. In 12 years he had walked every sparselyinhabited inch of Colombia, shaking down farmers for the“tax” on coca and skimming profits on drugs that gotshipped north to undermine bourgeois society. Fund-raising, it seems, is a big part of every job, even if you are aSouth American revolutionary.

They made him a bookkeeper, and then wanted to eliminate him because he knew that the leadership waspartying at Bogota’s best hotels while the rank and filewere swatting mosquitoes in the Amazon. When he gotsick they sent him to a sympathetic doctor in the city, andthere he defected to the Colombian army.

We were mesmerized as we listened. The guerillas put aprice on his head and would kill him and his family if theycould find him. Later I recognized him as the night watch-man at our school. As he was picking up his paycheck, oureyes met, but he was unflustered. He knew his secret wouldgo no further.

I would see and do many other fascinating things while in Cartagena, but none left the same impression ashearing Alberto’s story. Hyped by Clash lyrics, I had cometo South America dreaming glitzy, shallow dreams aboutthe glamorous revolutionaries. Now I was getting the realstory. “If you want adventure,” he warned the 12th-graders, “sign up for the merchant marine. Do not join theguerillas.”

“The guerillas put a price on his head and wouldkill him and his family if they could find him.”

Michael Crawford (A87)

The PiercingFestival

by John Hartnett(SF83)

From the momentyou step out of the airport you areconfronted by mass—a writhing, noisy,stinking mass ofcrumbling concretepillars and grittyfloors; tangled elec-trical wires; flailing arms and legs; voices of every conceiv-able pitch, tone, and key—all asking for something. It is atthat moment that most Americans make up their mindabout India. You either see nothing but the grit, nothingbut the three-year-old living on the highway median beg-ging for change, or you see past it. If you’re lucky, some-thing helps you past your prejudices, some glimpse of themajesty of India. It might be the beaming smile of a manthreshing rice by hand or a wrinkled old woman in a brightpurple sari stooping to sweep the streets.

By rights, my moment should have come at the clinic. Ispent three weeks working in a clinic in Andra Pradesh nextto all that mass: the hustle of the street vendors, thecacophony of honking horns, and the belching fumes of thethree-wheeled moto-rickshaws that we called “tripods.”Working in the city, I was nearly blinded by the poverty andthe grinding crush of everyday life.

Toward the end of my trip, I had a chance to visit a distantstate called Keralla. Almost every Indian I told about myplan called it “God’s Own Country.” On my first day in Ker-alla, I hired a driver to take me to Kumarakoum to visit thecanals and waterways where people lived. As we turned acorner of the highway, I noticed a throng of people gatheredby a side road. I stepped out, camera in hand. A festival wasin full force, with young men and boys dancing to a capti-

vating beat. Oldermen waved peacockfeathers and circu-lated amongst thecrowd, prodding theonlookers to noticethe young men. Itwas then I noticedthe piercings. Theseyoung men had

pierced their cheeks with long skewers. The skewers wereheld in place by balls of fruit. As they danced, someonewould approach and slide a rupee onto the skewer. Themore these boys danced, the more hypnotic the effect asthe drums thundered, their skin glistened, and the rupeescollected on their skewer.

For the rest of my time in India, I asked about this festi-val, but no one had ever heard of it. No Hindu or Buddhist,Jain or Muslim, Sikh or Christian I encountered had everheard of anything like it. It was a completely local custom,this painful, intense festival. This devotion would not havefound me had I not found it. Someone else might have seenonly the rupees or the old men sidling for donations. Butthey would have missed the bright peacock feathers, theconcentrated look on the boys’ faces, the intense focus onthe divine in their bodies.

Everyone is Beautiful in Madrid

Meredith Smith (AGI03)

The streets have been washed in daylight for hours whenthe waking sounds of the neighborhood begin to pass overthe balcony and into my room in the heart of the Madridshopping district. Below my window, the cherry vendor

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Young men pierce theircheeks and dance forrupees in Keralla.

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bellows invitations to sample fruits that are so deliciousshe can’t believe it herself. Driving her calls louder arethe building traffic and the accordion player’s renditionof “Besame Mucho.” Each morning this city melody min-gles with the metallic, salty aromas from the seafoodstalls to awaken me to another day in Madrid.

In obedience to the Spanish morning ritual, I mix astrong espresso off the stove with hot milk and sugar. Astaple of café life and social invitations, the café con lechehas become an indispensable part of my mornings. With-out it, I can’t imagine how I would brace myself for a daycomposed of exhausting attempts at communication. Therobust, bittersweet brew seems perfectly fitted to the airof the people who lay their claim to it. If I am to have anyprayer of matching their inexhaustible gift for gab, myfirst cup will not be the last.

Properly caffeinated, I can embark upon the day. Whileit is easy to get lost in the graceful architecture of curlinggarlands and wrought-iron balconies overhead, it must becautioned against. The Spanish pedestrian is consider-ably more focused on a conversation or a shoe in a store-front window than on the other people on the sidewalk.As a result, a certain nimbleness is required on the part ofthose who don’t want to be the victims of collisions andscowling faces. Perhaps the most abundant and treacher-ous obstacle is the ceaseless flow of little old ladiespulling their grocery carts. Prone to sudden stops andnonlinear trajectories, they served as my first introduc-tion to the importance of staying alert. To tangle with oneof these seemingly harmless teetering forms can meanbending under the force of one of the sharpest and quick-est tongues in the country.

In Spain everyone is beautiful. At the neighborhoodmarket, undiscriminating greetings from the men behindthe rows of hanging hams and pyramids of vegetables are bestowed upon their patrons in praise of their beauty.“Hello, beautiful,” is reciprocated with, “How’s it going,handsome?” And perhaps this familiarity is part of the shadowed Spanish tradition. For in the new super-

markets, frequented more by the youth than the tradi-tional markets, the reserved dryness typical of modernbusiness has replaced the intimacy that is prevalent inneighborhood shops and cafés. But it is this intimacy thatallows one to experience a sense of belonging in a culturethat is built upon secrets and mysteries inaccessible toforeigners.

Work takes a back seat in this country, where recoveryfrom and preparations for the next social engagement arethe priorities. Leisure and pleasure are held in the high-est regard, and the evidence is apparent each afternoon.Between two and three o’clock, the shops lower theirmetal gates and they will not raise them again until thelate afternoon, giving everyone an opportunity to eat andnap. I am actually somewhat suspicious if the lunch hourever ends, or if it just blends into the evening. For when Ireturn from teaching a few English classes, it seems as ifnothing has changed. All public spaces remain occupied,from badly lit fluorescent cafeterias displaying widearrays of mayonnaise-drenched salads on stainless-steelcounters, to park benches, and elegant umbrella-toppedtables attended by uniformed waiters.

In the evening, groups of friends that have gathered forafter-work cocktails spill out of the bars, restaurants, andcafés and occupy the table-lined avenues. As the streetsbuzz with chatter and activity, the sunlight that hasblazed throughout the day is replaced by a bluish hazefrom the cigarette smoke in the air. And when dinnerscome to a close right before the morning hours, and thosewho will continue their visits have moved indoors, thecity begins its resistant farewell to the day. Everyone’scheeks are kissed, everyone’s backs are patted, and wereturn to our homes to gather the energy to make it tolunch tomorrow. x

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At the Smithsonian Museum of Ameri-can History in Washington, D.C., apair of shoes with sparkling redsequins and snazzy bows—the “rubyslippers” worn by Judy Garland in TheWizard of Oz—draws visitors from allover the world. Although not “real”items of history, like Mr. Rogers’ cardi-gan or Indiana Jones’ hat these arti-

facts of popular culture mean a great deal to the people who cameto know them through movies and television, says Smithsoniancurator David Allison (A73).

Just a few blocks away, different shoes tell a different story: a heap of 3,000 shoes—dress shoes, tennis shoes, children’s shoes—turned gray by time and tragedy. Left behind by Holocaust victimsat a concentration camp in Majdanek, Poland, the shoes are part ofthe permanent exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Wash-ington, D.C., where Steven Vitto (A85) works as both a researcherand a public referencelibrarian answeringquestions for visitors.

What man creates,museums preserve.Shoes, documents,furniture, tools, art,weapons—all can befound in museumsaround the world. If these artifacts tellthe stories of our past,the curators are theauthors of those sto-ries. What artifacts acurator selects, how heor she arranges them,and the context inwhich they are present-ed all combine to makethe experience mean-

ingful and evoke a sense of connection to history—even when wecan’t understand it or would prefer to look away. Alumni who workin museums, historical societies, and other interpretive venuescome to their work with specialized training, but also with a senseof how to draw disparate things—a Vietnam-era helicopter and aCivil War chair, for example—together to create a whole.

Allison, a curator at the Smithsonian’s American History museum since 1986, is at work on a new permanent exhibit for theSmithsonian titled, “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War,”scheduled to open in November. There’s more to an exhibition thanjust the idea or the narrative, Allison explains. “It’s also about put-ting people in touch with original objects and helping them see his-tory through these objects. How do you get people to feel that theyare in a different place and at a different time?” he asks. The answerrequires a thoughtful balance of design, content, and artifactualconsiderations, he says.

At the Smithsonian, exhibition planning for major exhibits usually begins three years before the opening with a design char-

rette, several intensedays where experts inthe three-dimensionalpresentation of ideasmeet with the peoplewho have a story to tell. During thecharrette, the roughoutline of the exhib-it’s content is mappedto the space allotted.

T H E S T O R Y - T E L L E R SJohnnies in Museums Make History Tangible

by Sus3an Borden (A87)

Amateur genealogistsand professional historians alike canfind rich resourcesabout American lifefrom Lori Williamson(A94) at the Minnesota Historical Society.


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From the charrette, says Allison,all else follows.

Although each exhibit isdesigned with a logical structure(large labels, secondary labels,then object labels), the visitor isnot expected to follow that struc-ture, Allison explains. “Usuallythere is a personal connection thatdraws you into the particular andyou go to the general from there. If you see an object that interestsyou, that evokes nostalgia, curios-ity, anger, love, you go and saywhat is that? Why is it here? Thenyou read the object label and if youwant to know more you go back-wards up the hierarchy. Museumbehavior is much more like beingin a shopping mall than reading ahistory book. In a museum it is thevisceral connection with objectsthat people come to seek out andthat serves as a guide for how they work their way through an exhibition.”

In his upcoming exhibit, for instance, the logical structure isthe chronological presentation of 16 major U.S. conflicts. Thelargest single object in the floor plan is a Huey Helicopter, anicon of the Vietnam War. “Helicopters were used in the KoreanWar,” notes Allison, “but in Vietnam it was the first time theywere used to provide mobility and remove wounded, as well asperform other missions. [Vietnam] was the first helicopter war.”

Another significant group of artifacts is the chairs that RobertE. Lee and U.S. Grant sat on at the surrender at Appomattox andthe table on which Lee signed the surrender document. Thesearticles of furniture have been in the Smithsonian’s collectionfor a long time, and are often exhibited against a painting of thesurender. But for the new exhibit, Allison will place them in acontext of discord rather than harmony.

“This was, in some respects, our country’s most divisive war.But these two men knew each other, they had fought together inMexico. When you show the meeting of the two men sitting in aroom signing the surrender document, you capture their famil-iarity and the simple nature of the surrender. But you have not captured the meaning of the war.” To remedy this, Allisonwill exhibit the furniture against a collage of battle scenes to givevisitors a greater sense of the cost of war.

Allison’s bold departure exem-plifies the power of the curator asstoryteller: no illustration, no cap-tioned photograph, no chapter in abook could convey both the vio-lence of the war and the brother vs.brother intimacy of its contextwith such visceral immediacy.

That powerful connection isn’tas strong in other media, saysEmily Murphy (A95), a longtimestudent of the elegant use of arti-facts. Murphy is a Ph.D. candidatein American studies and a park

ranger at the Salem (Mass.) Maritime National Historic Site, whorecently completed an internship with the Peabody Essex Museumin Salem. Many people are content with surfing the Web to learnabout history or art, says Murphy—a “terrible loss” in her view.

“Seeing something in real life is a very personal interaction that I just don’t think you get with an image on a computerscreen,” she says. “Being able to go to the National Gallery and seethe Leonardo da Vinci portrait there, to see the depth of color, thebrushstrokes, and the slight three-dimensionality of the layers ofthe oil paint—no matter how well-photographed something is, youdon’t really get that.”

In addition to the level of detail a real-life museum visit grants itsvisitors, there is another advantage to beholding the real thing.“The actual piece creates a connection,” Murphy explains. “All ofus in our own lives have artifacts that we consider valuable. To beable to say, ‘this was my great-grandmother’s’ is very important toan individual. Museums are doing that on a larger scale. Instead ofsaying ‘this was my great grandmother’s,’ they’re saying ‘this was apart of history.’”

Original artifacts are most valuable in creating a connection, butMurphy also works as a living history interpreter, and she is quickto acknowledge that reproductions also have their place. “Repro-ductions are valuable because they allow people to handle artifacts.Clothing is a great example of this. You do not want to wear antique

living history: Emily Murphymade an 1840s-style dress towear for the NathanielHawthorne bicentennial celebration in Salem, Mass.

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textiles, they’re simply too fragile. But when you put on a repro-duction dress, it suddenly changes your whole idea of how peoplefunctioned in that period.”

Murphy recently made an 1840s-style dress for the NathanielHawthorne bicentennial in Salem. “This dress has four layers ofpetticoats, it’s got almost 500 feet of clothesline in the petticoatsto give them stiffening. The corset is very long so that you really cannot bend at the waist, and the shoulders are dropped so youcan’t raise your arms very far.

“When you see the actual 1840s dress you can look and thinkit must have taken that woman weeks to sew something like thatby hand. When you put on the reproduction you realize that onceshe spent six weeks making the dress, she couldn’t move verymuch in it.” The reproduction, it can be said, helps bring theartifact to life.

For Lori Williamson (A94), acquisitions coordinator at the Minnesota Historical Society, sometimes “my great-grandmoth-er’s” and “part of history” refer to the very same thing. “Theygreatly inform each other,” says Williamson, who works mainlywith books, manuscripts, and photographs in the Society’slibrary. “When people begin work on a family genealogy, theyoften start out with a list of who bore whom. It sounds kind ofbiblical and it’s not helpful to them or to us; they need to add anarrative and a context.” To help them do so, Williamson directs

them to the Society’s collections, rich in local and national his-tory, to provide the large-scale backdrop against which the fami-ly history was played out. When a researcher is successful inthoughtfully filling out the family genealogy within this largercontext, the resulting narrative can be added to the Society’s col-lections, and will be, in turn, used by other history writers to givedetail and texture to their broader focus.

While Williamson helps amateur and professional historians tointegrate the personal and historical, Murphy says that, for manyAmericans, a museum’s collections in some way stand in for afamily’s personal history. “Unlike people in other parts of theworld, there are comparatively few of us who can say ‘my familyhas lived in this house for 10 generations.’ So we honor generallythe pieces that belonged to our ancestors, real or imagined,” shesays. “My family is Irish and showed up here in the 1860s and 70s,so I personally have very little connection with the aristocraticmerchants of Salem, but the things they surrounded themselveswith are beautiful and it would be a huge loss if we didn’t havethese pieces to give all of us a physical connection with the past.”

To Vitto, the very design of the Holocaust Museum demands areflection on the relationship between artifact and reproduction.

David Allison (A73), standing before a shrouded Huey helicop-ter, recently prepared a Smithsonian exhibit that explores themeaning of war.

“The building itself is an artifact,” he says. “It’s made of the brickand steel of industrialization, with jagged lines of lights. There’s alot of gray and black and an emphasis on poignant photographs.There are false doors, some parts are dark, some are cramped. Itslayout is meant to be confusing, to give you some sense for the expe-rience of the Holocaust: once the knock on the door came, peopledidn’t know what was going to happen to them.”

The Holocaust Museum is an exemplary work of museum craft,says Murphy. “You hate to say it’s your favorite museum, because ofthe subject matter, but in terms of a museum that gets its pointacross, the Holocaust Museum is the finest museum that I’ve everbeen to. It tells the story without devolving into mere voyeurism. Itinvolves you from the minute you walk into the door. The skill of thepeople who put that together is unbelievable.”

Vitto considers himselffortunate to have witnessedthat skill first-hand. Hebegan working at the Holo-caust Museum three yearsbefore there was a HolocaustMuseum, after answering anad at George WashingtonUniversity (where he wasworking on a master’s degreein history) for entry-levellibrary work. At the begin-ning, he did a lot of catalogu-ing and answered referencequestions. Early on, he says,the library staff was uncer-tain of how the collectionswould be used: by histori-ans? scholars? for personalresearch? As library usegrew, they learned that about90 percent of visitors weresurvivors and their families,a group that often formedlines of 20 to 30 people at thereference desk looking forpersonal information.

By the time the libraryopened in April 1993, Vittoand a colleague had devel-oped an expertise in findinghistorical information par-ticular to the needs of sur-vivors. Vitto, for instance,

developed a reading knowledge of Hebrew, Yiddish, German,and all Slavic languages. As the librarians learned to find theirway around ghetto lists, transports, and work details, they beganto focus their work on building a survivors’ registry, using astheir foundation a registry started in 1981 as a project of theAmerican Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

Today, the registry database contains information on approxi-mately 180,000 Holocaust survivors and their family membersworldwide and handles 34,000 requests annually. Vitto’s work at the museum is what he describes as a perfect mix of researchingdocuments for the registry and working with survivors and their families. He talks about the registry’s relationship to one of the museum’s most poignant exhibits, the Tower of Faces. This three-story tall exhibition shows 1,500 photographs taken

over a 50-year period inEjszyszki, a shtetl in Lithua-nia. The photographs cap-ture the everyday lives ofEjszyszki’s 4,000 Jewsbefore the Holocaust, withpictures from weddings andfamily reunions, school andthe beach, graduations andbar mitzvahs. On two days inSeptember 1941, all but 29 ofthe 4,000 Ejszyszki Jewswere killed by German deathsquads.

For Vitto, the photographsrun seamlessly into his workwith the registry and explainwhy he finds his work sofulfilling. “This is completelywhat my work is about,” hesays. “The Nazis tried to wipethem out. The registry bringsthem back.” x



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At the Holocaust Museum,Steven Vitto has a dailyreminder of the importanceof his work: the faces ofJews from a shtetl inLithuania where all but 29 of the 4,000 Jews werekilled by German deathsquads in 1941.

“The Nazis tried to wipe them out. The registry brings them back.”

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Inspired teachers alwaysleave their students withsomething intriguing todwell on. The two com-mencement speakers atSt. John’s last springshared that quality.Annapolis tutor ChesterBurke (A74) spoke of the

value of genuine conversation, andDanielle Allen of the University ofChicago spoke to Santa Fe graduates ofthe lasting gift of wonder that a liberaleducation can impart. Both left stu-dents with an assignment: Burke askedstudents to ponder Pascal, and Allenasked students to think deeply about aGreek poem.

“Men and Women of the World” Annapolis, May 16

As a student, Chester Burke thrived onconversations in the classroom, the Cof-fee Shop, and the gym; as a musicianstudying in Paris, he found how much hemissed those conversations; and as atutor for the past two decades, he hasseen students discover themselves inthose conversations. In life outside thecollege, real listening is rare, and “con-versations too often consist of isolatedoutbursts of speech which rarely meet upwith one another, and even more rarelybuild upon one another,” he told theClass of 2004.

“Such speeches are lonely endeavorswhich end when the participants have run out of words,” Burke said, addingthat what happens at St. John’s is very different.

“Your words, responding first to oursand now your own questions, have grownfrom tentative but honest beginnings,nourished by the active listening of yourclassmates, into vessels through whichthe world may be displayed in its fullness.During the past few months, I have beenwatching not only your faces, but yourentire bodies come alive while youstrained to respond both to texts and to

one another.”Some of the college’s veteran tutors,

Burke said, including himself, may some-times expect a conversation to take a cer-tain shape in seminar, but students attheir best will refuse to conform to it.“Our words rebound from your stubbornsurfaces, and leave no indentations. Youpunish us with your silence and yourglazed looks when we deliver beautifulspeeches, continually reminding us thatspeech is not a rehearsed performance,

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Celebrating in Santa Fe.

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but a way ofresponding to agenuine question.When you are atyour best of bests,you slowly build anaccount with oneanother, whichthough it may havethe fragility of asandcastle, res-onates as an imageof the soul itself—not some abstractsoul, but your particular souls.”

This develop-ment can be wit-nessed in class, andalso in senior orals,said Burke. “All ofus have somethingto say and webecome who we areby attempting toarticulate it,” Burkesaid. “It’s over-whelming to be inthe presence ofsomeone telling thisstory, whether it beOdysseus or astranger on a long bus ride. It’s tremen-dously difficult to say what dwells mostdeeply in us, and we are rarely satisfied by our utterances. Sometimes we areembarrassed by these moments. Dostoevski was painfully aware of this.

His characters expose themselves in the most outrageous situations, expressingthemselves in ways which often appearridiculous and even monstrous. It’s verydifficult to say the things which need tobe said.”

This fall, tutors will greet a new groupof students, and the voicesof students who havemoved on will be somewhatlost. Students will also for-get many details of theirtime at St. John’s, butBurke is certain, he toldthem, that “all of your liveswill be spent rememberingand nourishing the wordsthat you have spoken withus and with one another…

As he closed his address,Burke read a passage fromPascal’s Pensees: “Man of

the world. We mustbe in a position tosay, not: this personis a mathematician,a preacher, or elo-quent, but that he isa man of the world.This universal quality is the onlyone that appeals tome. It’s a bad sign if,on seeing a man, weremember his book;I should prefer notto be aware of anyquality until weactually meet it, andthe moment comesto make use of it(nothing in excess),for fear that onequality might be preponderant andgive a man a label;we do not want to

feel that he is a good speaker except whenit is the right moment for good speech;but let us be sure to recognize it then.”

Burke challenged the graduates to consider the meaning of honnête homme,which he translated as “man of theworld.”

“In Pascal’s century, an honnêtehomme referred to a cultivated man ofthe world, graceful and distinguished byhis comportment, his spirit, and hisknowledge,” he explained. “All of this,though interesting, is not essential to my intention, nor is the fact that Pascalindicates in another Pensée that one cannot learn to be an honnête homme.

“I want you to supply your own translation, as I believe that all of you aremen and women of the world, abundantlyendowed with diverse qualities, but fundamentally human beings, respectfuland in awe of the world, and overflowingwith the desire to engage the world. Youare able to listen, not without judgment,but with passion and fairness, with anopenness that will encourage others toseek you out.”

Real conversationcan be hard to findoutside St. John’s,tutor ChesterBurke said.

“You are able to listen, not without judgment, but with passion and fairness, with an openness

that will encourage others to seek you out.”Tutor Chester Burke, A74

Christopher Nelson con-gratulates Bryson Finklea,who won a prize in mathe-matics. President Nelsonpresided at ceremonies inSanta Fe and Annapolis.d

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“Use and Wonder” Santa Fe, May 22

University of Chicago classicist DanielleAllen told graduates and their families inSanta Fe that her address would nottouch on the usual commencement top-ics: a tally of where graduates are headed,a celebration of future careers, andlaudatory remarks on how well-preparedgraduates are for success. “Such detailsare supposed to answer the twin ques-tions: what has college made of this par-ticular group of students; what does thefuture hold for these particular youngpeople?” Allen said.

Instead, Allen offered to share withgraduates a gift “of real value” in theform of two poems by Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468). The first, Allen said,was a gift with no strings attached,Simonides 567:

Countless birds, all his in a way, fly above his headand from dark waterup fish leap true, sounding the song.

Allen told graduates she would ask forsomething in return for her second gift,Simonides 521:

Since you are mortal,don’t prophesy the quality of tomor-row’s dawn,and when you meet the man of theyear,

don’t try to read his life line,for swifter than a dragonfly,pffta change.

“You have all studied Greek,here, so perhaps you recognizethe argument in the poem,”Allen said. “Simonides repeatswhat the Athenian legislatorSolon, one of the Seven Sages ofantiquity, had already said ‘Callno man happy before his death.’

“Herodotus treated us to thatbit of Solonic wisdom as part of the story of the travels thatSolon undertook after complet-ing the heroic work of resolvingclass struggle in Athens andestablishing institutions thathad in them the seeds of democ-racy. He left Athens in orderthat his personal authoritywould not interfere with theworking of the new legal systemand stopped in his voyages inLydia (modern-day Turkey)where he visited the great kingCroesus, a wealthy and powerful man entirely confident of his life’s suc-cess….Croesus put to Solon the question,‘Who is the happiest man you have everseen?’ Solon answered, ‘Tellus theAthenian.’ Flabbergasted, Croesus askedwho was the second happiest man. Hewas expecting to hear his name at leastthis time. But Solon said, ‘Cleobis andBiton.’ Angry, Croesus demanded an

explanation for why he didn’t rate. Solonanswered:

“‘My lord, I know god is envious ofhuman prosperity and likes to trouble us;and you question me about the lot ofman. Listen then: as the years lengthenout, there is much both to see and to suffer which one would wish otherwise.Take 70 years as the span of a man’s life:those 70 years contain 26,250 days [onthe Greek way of counting], and not asingle one of them is like the next in whatit brings. You can see from that, Croesus,what a chance thing life is. You are veryrich, and you rule a numerous people;but the question you asked me I will notanswer, until I know that you have diedhappily.… Often enough, god gives man a glimpse of happiness and then utterlyruins him.’ And indeed, Croesus eventu-ally lost his empire and his children. He couldn’t in the end be called happy.”

{ C o m m e n c e m e n t }

At its best, liberal education endows agraduate with the ability to wonder,Danielle Allen said.

After the ceremony, a family celebrates.ter

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No college can ensure the future hap-piness or success of its graduates, but itcan endow them with something ofimmeasurable value: the ability to won-der, Allen said. To illustrate her point,she told about inviting a colleague, abiologist, to a meeting of a Chicagoparks and recreation advisory board onwhich she serves—a group often rent bycontentious arguments. The biologist’spresentation on birds and other wildlifein the park gave the group “an opportu-nity to pursue knowledge for its ownsake,” along with a chance to discusssomething that didn’t require a vote or astance.

“The pleasure of knowledge is as realas the pleasures of the body,” sheexplained. “I saw it there in that room,in a group of argumentative peoplejoined in a variety of expressions ofpleasure from wonder satisfied. Thispleasure was much easier to identify in

that meeting than in a college classroom,because of the palpable difference fromwhat we council members were accus-tomed to in our exchanges.”

Practical matters such as food, cloth-ing, and shelter can overwhelm us, butthe “cause of wonder” has a restorative

effect that will see us through crises andlead us to new sources of strength, shesaid. “Wonder sets us back on our heelsand helps us turn in a new direction.”

At the conclusion of her address, Allen returned to Simonides 521 and read the poem to her audience again. It is not a poem of despair, she noted. “In the midst of reflecting on the alarm-ingly unpredictable nature of change, the speaker of the poem marvels at thespeed and beauty of dragonflies,” Allensaid. “The poem is itself an example ofwhat it means to draw on the resources of wonder to sustain oneself even as oneconfronts necessity.” x

{ C o m m e n c e m e n t }

Above, Annapolis graduates JacksonO’Brien, Kelly O’Donnell, John Okrent,and Erin Page.At left, Annapolis graduate Sarah Stickney and her father, Santa Fe tutorCary Stickney (A75), celebrate.

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P L A N T I N G M E M O R I E SAlumni Make Time “For the Trees”

by John Hartnett, SF83

Most college reunionsare for trading snap-shots, bragging aboutchildren’s accom-plishments, and comparing hairlines

and waistlines, but for the nearly 200Johnnies who came to Santa Fe for Homecoming July 1-3, this gathering was for the trees—the fragrant and elegantpiñon trees that help define the Santa Fe landscape.

The weekend theme was “For theTrees.” In addition to the usual lunch-eons, parties, and award ceremonies, the weekend provided alumni with anopportunity to cultivate new memorieswhile re-planting piñon trees. The treesnearest the classroom buildings wereplanted when the campus was built in1964; however, many of the trees on thesurrounding college land are over 150years old. Since 2002, the Santa Fe

campus has lost over a thousandtrees to drought and devastationfrom the pine bark beetle. In theimmediate campus vicinity, thecollege has lost over 150 trees.

Replanting lost trees and tending to healthy ones is anurgent project for reasons otherthan preserving the beauty of thecampus—the college is keenlyaware of the need to head offfuture fire hazards and to work toprevent soil erosion.

About 15 alumni and five currentstudents spent a day tending tohealthy trees that had been reseeded in the spring. MarniHamilton (SF05) was one of thestudents working outdoors with alumni.“Interacting with the alumni made methink about my class and where all of usare going,” she says. “It made me thinkabout life after St. John’s.”

Roxanne Seagraves (SF83), director ofalumni relations and parent activities,said that working together helped thealumni interact in the present as well asthe past. “At a reunion, sitting in seminar

with the same people you sat inseminar with years ago affirmsthe past,” she says. “But thisweekend was also about creatingbeauty in the present. When youreplace a 300-year-old tree, youare replacing a legacy and mak-ing a tangible commitment tothe future of the college.”

Besides planting trees anddigging up memories, reunionclasses also enjoyed a full week-end of fun including a Saturdaywaltz party, alumni dinner andfiesta picnic, awards from theAlumni Association, dance lessons, a President’s brunch,and, of course, reunion semi-nars with retired tutors William Darkey, Don Cook, and Robert Sacks. x

More on Homecoming can befound in the Alumni Associationreport, pages 46-47.

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{ H o m e c o m i n g } 27

Opposite top: Future Johnniesjoin in the festivities. Oppositeleft: Members of the class of 1984 shares memories at the FiestaPicnic Saturday afternoon.

At right, Kevin (SF90) and KhinKhin Guyot-Brock (SF88) find ashady spot between activities.Below, clockwise, members of theclass of 1979 blur the lines oftime and space. Glenda Eoyang(SF76), Steve Thomas (SF74), andJoseph Tooley (SF69)enjoy the picnic. Members of the class of1969 and 1979 join Alumni Association board members at Sunday brunch.

photos by teri thomson randall

Author Natalie Goldberg(SFGI74) found immediatesuccess with her first book,Writing Down the Bones,Freeing the Writer Within(Shambala, 1986). Now in

its 33rd printing, the book has sold morethan a million copies in 10 languages. Goldberg’s other books include Wild Mind,Thunder and Lighting, Long Quiet High-way, Banana Rose, and Living Color. Thisfall, she published her newest book, The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth (Harper San Francisco). A poet, teacher, writer, and painter, Goldberg has studied Zen Buddhism for 24 years. She teaches writingworkshops based on the clear-mind, clear-heart methods presented in WritingDown the Bones.

Goldberg recently made time to sit downand discuss her books, her studies at theGraduate Institute, and the writing life withThe College contributor Andra Maguran.

I’m curious about why you chose toattend St. John’s College.

I had gone to undergraduate school atGeorge Washington University....I majoredin English lit. And I had had wonderful highschool English teachers, but George Wash-ington was very disappointing.…I had heardabout St. John’s in Annapolis, Maryland, andit had always intrigued me. I was very inter-ested in philosophy and literature. So when Iheard about the graduate program in SantaFe, and that it met in the summer, I decidedto come [right after graduating from GWU].That’s how hungry I was and how disappoint-ed. And it was very scary for me to come toSanta Fe—I’d never been farther than AnnArbor, Michigan! I had no idea what theWest was like, and I probably would neverhave come if I hadn’t gone to St. John’s.

But was it the Program itself, the greatbooks program?

Yes, it was definitely the great books Program. I’d heard about it when I was inWashington. And it’s amazing to me, I don’t really know where it came from, butI just took a leap and said that I’m going. It wasn’t very much like me. But I think I had heard about it all during my under-graduate years, and it intrigued me, so

when I heard about the graduateprogram I was ripe.

It strikes me as interesting thatyou, being such a creative person, would come to a graduate program that focusesvery heavily on critical or analytical thinking.

I didn’t know I was a creative per-son then. I was just like a St. John’sperson in that I was very analytical.I was actually an atheist, and I wassort of an intellectual. I lovedbooks, and I think I didn’t know it,but I was terribly intrigued by ideasand thoughts. So it was only after Igraduated from St. John’s that Itook a huge leap into another arenaof my life.

At that time, the college had only beenhere for a few years. Did you have a sort ofpioneering sense?

It felt very fresh…I just loved it. It was reallyexciting to sit and just talk about a bookdirectly, without reading any other sources,to have a conversation. And I loved the teach-ers; the tutors were wonderful. It was sointriguing that you could have a Ph.D. inphysics, but you had to teach Greek. Youcouldn’t just be frozen any place. It was just awonderful concept that you called themtutors and that the classes were so small. Thetutors were so alive. And during that time,Rockefeller had given a grant to St. John’s forhigh school English teachers from the innercity. So there were a lot of African-Ameri-cans. My class was at least half African-Amer-icans, people who had really lived their lives.They didn’t just read Socrates and just mouthit. They kept referring to their own life expe-rience. It was very vital, very exciting.

So you spent time studying Western philosophy—Western culture—and thenyou made this headlong leap into Easternleanings?

Yes. I have a new book coming out called TheGreat Failure, and I write about St. John’s init—the fact that I studied Descartes: “I thinktherefore I am.” Later the man who ended up being my Zen teacher, a Japanese Zenmaster…said, “I’ve been reading your

Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am.’” And Iperked right up. I thought, “He’s readingDescartes?”

And he said, “Descartes probably remem-bered, but forgot to mention: ‘I don’t think,therefore I’m not.’” And in all those hours inthe seminar on Descartes, no one thought ofthat angle. So it was sort of like Western civi-lization dropped off a cliff at that moment.But what I realized in writing this new bookwas that St. John’s prepared me for that.Because the other friends and students whopractice with [Zen Teacher Katagiri] Roshidon’t remember that lecture. But for me, itwas totally a lecture, because I’d been study-ing Descartes at St. John’s so I really paidattention. So, I went into the Eastern world,but I think I got my foundation in the West-ern world that let me lead into the Easternworld.

Do you think that the Programinfluenced your writing life?

Yes, I think it did, because it taught me totrust my own mind and to believe in what Ithink, saw, and felt. You didn’t go to second-ary sources, you met something directly andthat’s what writing is. That’s also what Zenpractice is. And now that I’m living rightnear the St. John’s campus, it’s really fun for


28

The Writer in Natalie Goldberg

{ B i b l i o f i l e }

dissatisfaction with her undergraduatedegree led Natalie Goldberg to St. John’s.

continued on p. 29


{ B i b l i o f i l e } 29

The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Maskby JonArno Lawson (A91)Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2004.

In part, his diverseinterests explainJonArno Lawson’stwo most recentaccomplishmentsin the publishing

world. Not long after hischapters on Chechen litera-ture and proverbs appearedin Chechens: A Handbook,Lawson’s third volume ofpoetry, The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask,was published by a Canadian press.

The other explanation is a relatively newaudience for his work: his son, Asher, anddaughter, Sophie. “We had our first child,Sophie, about three years ago and werereading a lot more children’s poetry,”explains Lawson (A91), who lives in Toronto. Asher joined the family in January 2004.

Lawson and his wife, Amy Freedman,were reading books such as Shel Silver-stein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends to theirdaughter, and Lawson found the musicalstyle of children’s poetry infectious.

Writing for children, Lawson adds, is distinctly different and a little moredifficult than writing poetry for adults. “In adult poetry now in English, most ofthe time you don’t worry about rhyme, and

meter isn’t as important.When you’re writing forchildren, all those thingsbecome very importantagain—word play, timing. I guess it’s the same withan adult poem in that youwant the images to be surprising.”

Children are a toughaudience to write for, headds. “Children are veryhonest when they don’t likesomething. We tried out allthe poems on Sophie first—she was my first editor forthis project.”

Lawson began writing poetry as a teen-ager, and by the time he got to St. John’s,he was taking his craft seriously. He pub-lished his first book of poems and apho-risms, Love is An Observant Traveller,tackling themes such as families and relationships, in 1997. “One of the firstpoems I wrote was when I was at St. John’s,”he says. “It was based on the Odyssey. Ithasn’t made it into a book yet, but it haspromise.”

Since poetry doesn’t pay well, Lawsonalso does freelance editing and teachespoetry workshops in schools as part ofOntario’s Artists in Education program.He continues to explore other types of writing, such as the chapters on Chechenliterature. “It all ties together because it’sall language, and how people use language

as a tool to say things in different ways andas clearly as possible,” he explains,adding, “I probably am a better writerthan a talker.”

Lawson has two volumes—one of children’s poems and one for adults—nearly complete and ready for a publisher.“Children’s poetry is the most fun of any-thing I’ve done,” he says. “It’s the mostfun, I guess, because there’s a betterchance people will read it.” x

Horses in CitiesGood and iniquitous,they were ubiquitous:Horses were everywhere anyone looked. But with cars, numbers dwindled,and sightings diminished,and then one day horses in citieswere finished.

I SpunI spunwhere I was told to spinand while I spun grabbed hold of himwho told me where I had to spin.I could tellit startled him.

me to walk around. The other thing for mewas, when I came here I was blown away bythe architecture of St. John’s. Like, wher-ever you are you know people take it forgranted, there’s all this glass and light.We all know about the doors being painteddifferent colors, but in 1970 that just blewme away. One wall would be blue andanother pink.

Some people think writing can’t betaught. How do you feel about that?

A lot of those people who think that writing can’t be taught are people whocan’t write themselves and have given up.Writing can be taught, just like anythingelse. When Writing Down the Bones cameout, across the culture, people wrote meletters: Quarry workers in Missouri. Blue-

collar workers in Nebraska. Vice-presidentsof insurance agencies in Florida. Every-body has a deep desire to write. And thatdoesn’t mean they’re all going to becomeFaulkner, but people have a need toexpress themselves.

How did you make the transition tobeing a full-time writer?

I just made enough money and I could justmake a living as a writer, so I quit doingother things. Before that I was teaching.My last full-time job was teaching fifth andsixth grade, at Rio Grande. Writing Downthe Bones came out. It still sells, and istaught in colleges and high schools, and soI was able to just leave. After Writing Downthe Bones, I started a novel, Banana Rose,and then I wrote Wild Mind. This book,The Great Failure, is a memoir about my

father, who was a Jewish bartender, and myJapanese Zen Master Katagiri Roshi, thetwo most important men in my life… looking at the wonderful things aboutthem, and also their darkness. I think it’sthe best book I’ve ever written. I’m veryexcited about it.

Do you still have dark periods whereyou hate everything you write or can’twrite? What do you do when that happens?

Yes. And you just keep your hand moving.Writing is a practice, and you do it whetheryou like to or not, whether you feel goodabout it or not. You’re in a good mood, yougo write. You lost all your money, you gowrite. You just won the Nobel Prize, youstart a new book the next day. x

(continued)


30

Carole Chaski had worked longand hard to earn her doctor-ate in computational linguis-tics and by 1992, was nicelysettled in an academic career.She was conducting research

on reading, setting up literacy programs forfactory workers, and teaching at North Car-olina State University in Raleigh.

One day she took a call from a homicidedetective investigating a suspicious suicide,and her life took a completely different turn—for the better. Chaski went on to help solve acrime in which the prime suspect might haveotherwise gotten off scot-free.Today she is a leading expertin forensic linguistics. Itturned out to be a lot moreexciting than teaching the History of English to glassy-eyed engineering majors.

Between her teaching daysand her 15-minutes of fame asthe expert who cracked thecase on a recent episode ofCourt TV’s Forensic Files,there were years of researchand study of the structures oflanguage, beginning with adeep fascination with the puzzles of ancient Greek.

“If I ever wrote the story ofmy life, I could call it, ‘FromHomer to Homicide,’” Chaski quips.

Chaski’s work todayinvolves analyzing language,finding patterns in syntax, anddetermining when a piece ofwriting departs from a pat-tern. Her ability for this workstems from the study of lan-guages, especially ancientGreek, in reading and linguis-tics. Chaski left St. John’s afterher freshman year to pursue abachelor’s degree in Greekand English at Bryn Mawr College. After graduating, shespent a year teaching in animpoverished school districton Virginia’s Eastern Shore.The dismally high illiteracyrate there fed an interest in

how children learn to read, and Chaski wenton to earn a master’s degree in the psycholo-gy of reading at the University of Delaware.While working on her degree, she assistedtwo computational linguists in theirresearch. That subject took hold of her imagi-nation, and she went on to Brown Universityfor master’s and doctoral degrees in linguis-tics, with an emphasis on syntax, computa-tional linguistics, and how languages changeover time. At Brown she returned to ancientGreek grammar for her dissertation topicand settled on the historic changes in thesyntax of Greek.

“The verbal infinitive had been very preva-lent in classical Greek and started to be lessprevalent in Hellenistic Greek until finally byearly modern or medieval Greek, it wasessentially gone,” she says. “My questionwas, what caused Greek to lose theinfinitive?”

Examining long-distance anaphors (a wordor phrase that takes its reference from anoth-er word, most often within the same clause)gave her a lead. “When you look at classicalGreek you see two things: long-distanceanaphors and case mismatches—case agree-ment mismatches in that you expect the case

to be genitive but it comes outaccusative, you expect dativeand it comes out accusative.Both of these phenomenathat were attached to theinfinitive were odd becausethey went back past theboundary of a clause for theirantecedents.”

She cites an example of along-distance anaphor fromThucydides: “Oerestes per-suaded the Athenians torestore himself.” Expected to refers to the Athenians,himself refers instead to Oerestes. Chaski wentthrough hundreds of lines ofGreek works from ancienttimes to modern, assigningthe terms “marked” and“unmarked” to phrases.Unmarked followed the usualpatterns; marked were insome way remarkable. Exam-ining those patterns allowedChaski to study one narrowaspect of how a languagechanges over time. “Whenthe condition that allowedthese phrases to go outsidethe boundary—that is, theinfinitive—disappeared, theseoddities instantly died out,”she said.

{ A l u m n i P r o f i l e }

From criminal cases to civillawsuits, Carole Chaski’sexpertise is in demand.

“From Homer to Homicide”A Love for Language Led Carole Chaski (A77) to Forensic Linguistics

sco

tt s

uch

man

by Rosemary Harty

{ A l u m n i P r o f i l e }


31

This painstaking research was what Chaskiwent back to when a homicide detectivenamed W. Allison Blackman brought her acomputer disk with suicide notes allegedlywritten by Michael Hunter, a young manfound dead of a lethal combination of drugsinjected into his arm. Blackman didn’t havemuch to go on when he came to Chaski andasked if she could examine the note andother writing samples from Hunter to deter-mine if he had really written the suicide note.

“I know how to analyze syntax and I knowhow to find patterns,” she told Blackman.“I’ll try it and we’ll see.”

Chaski looked at writing samples forHunter and his two roommates, including ayoung medical student named Joseph Manni-no, who had easy access to the drugs inHunter’s system. Chaski found that patternsin the suicide note—particularly the use ofconjunctions—were strikingly similar tothose of Mannino, who was involved in athree-way affair with Hunter and a thirdroommate. The suicide notes were marked byconjunctions between sentences. Samples ofHunter’s authentic writing included moreconjunctions between non-sentence phrases.

Police eventually arrested Mannino. Aftera three-week trial, he was convicted of invol-untary manslaughter and sentenced to sevenyears in prison.

After consulting with the local districtattorney’s office on another case (identifyingthe author of an anonymous threatening let-ter), Chaski knew she had found somethingmore satisfying and more challenging thanan academic career. “At St. John’s, we talk alot about the examined life. I just wasn’thappy as an academic. It seemed that the pri-mary role of professors was to get away fromthe students,” she says.

She secured a fellowship at the NationalInstitute of Justice (the research arm of theU.S. Justice Department) and set about fine-tuning a method to distinguish one authorfrom another based on syntactic patterns. “Iwas the only one doing any research inde-pendent of litigation,” Chaski says.

As part of her research, Chaski set aboutexamining every method already employedin language identification. She demonstrat-ed that analyzing language based on thespelling, punctuation, and grammaticalerrors was not good enough to determineindividuality in writing. “I’m really againstthe prescriptive, stylistics method becausewhat pops out to people as odd is not a pat-tern, it’s just what’s popping out,” sheexplains. “It’s like Plato’s cave—you can’tknow the light until you know the shadow,and you have to have them both. In DNA

analysis, if you’re looking for a chromoso-mal anomaly, you have to have the wholepattern. That’s where you start in syntacticanalysis. Every document is analyzed forevery syntactic pattern and nothing is leftout. That way you can find out if somethingthat seems unusual in a piece of writingreally is unusual.”

Similarly, the type of analysis scholarsundertake in trying to determine the author-ship of something like a Shakespeare play ora Biblical text (content analysis, vocabulary

richness, the complexity of sentences) is notsuited to forensic linguistics, where docu-ments conveying death threats or ransomdemands are usually short and to the point.

Chaski has spent the last decade or sorefining and applying a scientific method forsyntactic analysis that is rooted in linguistictheory and validated by statistical testing.Each analysis begins with taking texts apartand labeling each word for its part of speech,then taking phrases within the sentences andparsing those. “Once the phrases are alldetermined, I categorize them into twotypes: marked and unmarked. Unmarked arephases that are so common, they don’t standout—‘it’s in the car.’ Marked are those thatare more infrequent or more remarkable—‘it’s in the car, in the garage, attached to the house.’’’

Next, Chaski determines the frequency ofmarked and unmarked phrases in the writingsamples. Those numbers are fed into com-puter programs that yield three different statistical analyses. The first two methods,discriminate function analysis and logisticregression, seek a clear division between thequestioned document and the other knownwriting samples in her pool. The third test,hierarchical cluster analysis, seeks similari-ties by “clustering” similar samples into thesame pool.

“Everybody starts out in a pool of poten-tial authors. If the statistical proceduresshow there’s a significant difference, people

are excluded. If I can’t find any differencebetween a suspect’s writing sample and theevidence document, that’s what my reportwill say,” Chaski says, adding, “I never claimthat only one person in the world could havewritten something.”

Several years ago, Chaski left Washingtonfor Georgetown, Del., where she founded theInstitute for Linguistic Evidence, of whichshe is executive director. Along with continu-ing research, lecturing, and writing abouther methods, Chaski has served as a consult-ant in a number of intriguing cases where herresearch influenced the outcomes. In oneAnnapolis case, the founder of a firm thatdeveloped environmental technology wassued by a former employee who wanted asignificant share of the profits reaped fromthe company’s product. However, the com-pany’s owner suspected the man had writtendamaging letters to potential customers.

“The lawyers for the defendant came tome and they were already convinced that itwas this engineer. In this case, the pool waslimited to those who worked for the compa-ny—only they had the technical knowledge towrite the letters, ” Chaski explains. Heranalysis proved the defendant correct, andon that basis, the judge overruled the juryverdict to give the fired engineer the smallsum the jury had agreed upon.

In another recent civil case, Chaskidetermined that a woman claiming sexualharassment in her workplace was theauthor of e-mails that indicated the rela-tionship between her and her supervisorwas consensual. Chaski also showed that afederal employee who was fired for writingracist e-mails was very probably the authorof those missives. In other cases, Chaski’swork has taken her into state and federalcourts, where her testimony has passed successfully through the scrutiny of evidence hearings.

Chaski believes it’s possible for someoneto succeed in imitating another’s writing toa degree, but that it’s impossible to sup-press one’s own style completely. “Lan-guage is meant to be meaning-centered, notsyntax-centered. Syntax is fundamental, it’swhat makes language efficient. But it’s veryabstract, very automated. If we thoughtabout it, we’d go nuts—‘how many preposi-tional phrases did I just write?’—and notactually be able to communicate.”

Given her St. John’s education, it’s notreally odd that Chaski was drawn to forensiclinguistics. “That’s because Johnnies learn tothink about, and talk about, language as lan-guage,” says Chaski. x

“It’s like Plato’s cave—you can’t know the light

until you know theshadow, and you have

to have them both.”Carole Chaski, A77


{ A l u m n i N o t e s }32

1937HAROLD L. BROOKS just celebratedhis 90th birthday with a big party inSebastian, Fla.

1941HENRY M. ROBERT III, who lives inAnnapolis and has been a regular atAnnapolis campus homecomings, isco-author of the seventh, eighth, andninth edition of his father’s well-known parliamentary manual, pub-lished in 1970, 1981, 1990, and 2000respectively, all under the title ofRobert’s Rules of Order NewlyRevised. And now in response to wide-spread demand by those who feeldaunted by that book’s complete treat-ment of the subject, he and the sameauthorship team have now produced abrief introductory work published lastMay entitled, Robert’s Rules of OrderNewly Revised in Brief (Da CapoPress). “And,oh yes,” Henry writes,“nowadays you have to make is some-thing called ‘user-friendly.’ We hopewe’ve passed muster on that score.”

1944ARTHUR HYMAN serves as Distin-guished Service Professor of Philoso-phy and Dean of the Bernard RevelGraduate School of Jewish Studies atYeshiva University in New York.

1945LAWRENCE L. LEVIN writes, “Justhad my first grandchild—a boy!”

1950TYLDEN STREETT is still completingsculpture commissions and teachingan advanced figurative class once aweek at the Maryland Institute College of Art. “I am enjoying one of many slack periods and am able toreturn to work on my presentational

busts of Barr and Buchanan that werebegun in ’02,” he writes. “Barr isapproaching a casting date butBuchanan is more difficult. I havereceived some critical help from John Van Doren and may have bothcast by year’s end.”

1951L. DONALD KOONTZ points out thatmembers of the class of 1951 are featured on the cover of this year’s Philanthropia calendar. The studentspeering into their microscopes weremembers of his freshman lab class,working diligently in the spring of 1948.

GEORGE WEND is still active with thebook discussion group of the AlumniAssociation’s Baltimore chapter. Hetook a trip last summer to Peru tovisit Machu Picchu, the Andes, and the Amazon; this summer heembarked on a two-week river cruisefrom Moscow to St. Petersburg.

1954To mark the 50th anniversary of hisgraduation from St. John’s this year,RICHARD BURNETT CARTER sent TheCollege two poems celebrating formerdean Jacob Klein and one of his mostmemorable tutors, Simon Kaplan.Kaplan still influences Carter afterthese many decades. He wrote: “Thatman’s teachings,/Spoken quietly as dawn breezes sighingthrough pine forests;/They sing in myheart after 50 years,/Still forbiddingany meanness to enter there.”

Of Klein, he wrote: “That falconsought eternity in Nimrod’s densethicket,/But once there, he foundpoems bleeding on the thorns ofMind’s mindless veiling./So, hesheathed his dream-rending talons,/And nursed those verses back to theirlong-hidden splendor.”

1959ROBERTO SALINAS-PRICE has beenan avid Homeric scholar for the past30 years. He has published Homer’sBlind Audience (1984) and Atlas of

Homeric Geography (1992). Thereader may visit his Web site atwww.homer.com.mx.

1962JOSEPH J. BRENNIG retired from theForeign Service in 1997, but wascalled back to serve in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1998. Currently, he isworking in the Department of Stateon the Pakistan Desk.

1964JUDI WOOD writes: “No new news—except to say that we are traveling inMay 2004 by car to East Lansing,Mich., to visit grandchildren whiletheir dad, our son John, is working onhis master’s degree in business. Wewill be in Fort Smith, Ark., andNashville, Tenn., on our way.”

1965A busy summer and second-careerplans for CAROL JEFFERS: “I will beparticipating in a build with Habitatfor Humanity in Durban, SouthAfrica, in July and traveling withfriends to Capetown after that. InAugust I return to the U.S. and retirefrom my federal job. In September Ienter Lancaster Theological Semi-nary, pursuing a Master of Divinitydegree. My long-term goal is to be acommunity minister in my UnitarianUniversalist faith.”

1966“After spending 17 years rehabbing ashell in South Philadelphia, we finallyfinished last December, at leastenough to move in,” writes JUDY

(MILLSPAUGH) ANDERSON. “I amsure we will be upgrading andimproving for the next 10 years. I amstill doing house calls exclusively, inthe greater Philadelphia area. Thepractice is thriving. I have two part-time physicians, a full-time nurse

Bluegrass on the Bayou

Some retirement careers are more fun than others.That’s LARRY SCHLUETER (A67) in the back of the boatin this promo picture for his band, New Orleans-basedHazel and the Delta Ramblers. Schlueter recentlyretired from the U.S. Customs Service after “32-plus”years and spends much of his time recording and per-

forming in and around The Big Easy. The band’s latest CD, Pickin’on the Bayou, features 16 cuts of bluegrass tunes and original com-positions. That’s Larry’s wife, HAZEL (A69), standing in the frontof the canoe, holding her mandolin. x


{ A l u m n i N o t e s } 33

practitioner, an office manager, abusiness manager, and two officeworkers to share the work (and themoney). None of us will ever get richdoing this, but it is certainly more funthan punching a time clock with theCommonwealth of PA.

“Step-kids are doing fine; all out ofthe nest for a while now, and I have amultitude of grandchildren, rangingin age from 3 months to 15 years. My dad passed away last year; I don’tknow if there was a notice in theAnnapolis paper. There was one inthe Baltimore Sun, and a few peoplewrote that they had seen it. He wentthe way I want to go when my timecomes: peacefully and painlessly inhis sleep, after a pleasant eveningspent reminiscing with family andfriends.

“My sisters are doing well. Both had surgery last year, one for breastcancer, the other for a thyroid nodule.Both recovered and are currently ingood health, as am I. Well, except forarthritis, but nobody ever died of that.

“My husband Joe is also doing OK.He closed his business a couple ofyears ago and is back among thesalaried masses, and hates it with apassion. His inner entrepreneur isitching to be in business for himselfagain.”

1967THE REV. CLARK LOBENSTINE will bepart of the Assembly of Religious andSpiritual Leaders meeting and thenparticipating in the much larger Par-liament of the World’s Religions inBarcelona. He will be one of just 350leaders selected worldwide to be atthe assembly. He was thrilled andhumbled to be one of just 51 peopleinternationally nominated for the firstPaul Carus Award to be given at theParliament. It is the most prestigiousaward in inter-religious work. Thenomination was based on his 25 yearsas executive director of the InterFaithConference of Metropolitan Washing-ton. MARK LINDLEY (A67) is activewith the InterFaith Conference.

1968A story that ends well fromJONATHAN AURTHUR (A): “I was amember of a group of 70 bicyclists(and one skateboarder) who werearrested at the Democratic NationalConvention in August 2000 for participating in a Critical Mass bikeride that was part of a week of protestsagainst globalization and related matters. (Critical Mass is an informalinternational movement that advo-cates for more bicycles and fewercars.) We were held in county jail for a day and a half, and the female mem-bers of our group were illegally strip-searched. A couple of weeks after ourrelease, all charges against us (mosthaving to do with ‘reckless driving’)were dropped. In late 2000 we suedboth the County and City of LosAngeles for unlawful arrest and strip-searches. Last year we settled theCounty case (strip-searches and relat-ed matters) for $2.75 million, and thispast March we settled the City suit(unlawful arrest) for $875,000.”

MARY HOWARD CALLAWAY (A) writesthat her daughter, Hannah Boone,will be graduating Phi Beta Kappafrom Carleton College and travelingto France on a Fulbright teachingaward next year. “She was gratefulthat when she was growing up, ‘dinner was always a seminar, where Ilearned to hold my own in heated discussions.’ Ah, the St. John’s legacyruns deep!”

Some recognition for BART LEE (A):“Not a Nobel Prize, but an academyaward in History of Technology: Ireceived the Houck Award for Docu-mentation in Radio History from theAntique Wireless Association largelyfor the papers “Radio Spies” 2002;and “Marconi’s Transatlantic Leap”

(1999). The Antique Wireless Associa-tion is an organization of some 4,000members linked by a common interestin the history of electrical and elec-tronic communications.

CHARLES B. WATSON (A) is still atwork as an anesthesiologist and part-time physician administrator of a 50+-person department that provides carefor more than 18,000 people a year:“Rising elderly population andshrinking health care dollars createproblems most alumni have or willexperience, sad to say. Happy toreport Ivan Watson, of NPR, is backfrom Iraq and going elsewhere untilAugust. Masha, my wife of about 30 years, is abroad with a high schoolgroup and recently managed cos-tumes for 125 youngsters at a superbhigh school production of Les Miser-ables. Anya, age 20, is at ConnecticutCollege (no basketball), pursuingMarine Science, while Misha, now 26,builds things on Martha’s Vineyard.Y’all call or stop by: 203-372-9586;[email protected] oroptonline.net.”

1969DAVID E. RIGGS (A) sent his regretsabout missing Homecoming this year,but it’s too far to come from Kyoto,Japan, where he is a research fellow atthe International Research Center forJapanese Studies. Here’s his news: “Ireceived my Ph.D. from UCLA in2002, writing about the reform ofSoto Zen Buddhism in 18th-centuryJapan, and after a teaching stint at theUniversity of Illinois and UC SantaBarbara, I am now halfway through apost-doc at this research institute. Mywife, Diane, is doing her dissertationresearch on a different aspect ofJapanese Buddhism, and we are living in a house on the edge of

Kyoto, where I still can indulge mypassion for cycling. My best wishes to you all.”

“I decided it was time to bring youfolks up to date,” writes RACHEL

HALLFORD TREIMAN (A). “I divorcedin 2001, and after my son entered col-lege, sold the house in New York andreturned to Lewistown, Mont., wheremy brother lives, last December. Mynew address is 19 W. Brassey Street,Lewistown, Montana 59457. I am nowcoordinator for the Retired andSenior Volunteer Program coveringFergus County and Judith BasinCounty. Since that is only 30 hours aweek with no benefits, I also workonline 20 hours for benefits. My old-est, Grace, is now 21 and a senior atthe University of Pennsylvania major-ing in history. My son Andrew is 19, asophomore at the University of NorthDakota majoring in Air Traffic Con-trol and is on an Air Force ROTCscholarship, planning to go career AirForce. I love being back in Montana. Iwas born in Lewistown (left when Iwas six) and therefore, for many of theolder folks I identify myself by mygrandfather, mother, and her siblings.That slots me in the scheme of things.I’m fortunate my family was likedback then—people have long memories out here!”

1971What has THOMAS DAY (A) beenreading? “I recently read Churchill’sThe Story of the Malakand FieldForce. Very topical and readable.I’m currently going through his TheRiver Won. If the situation in theSudan doesn’t stabilize, it may turnout to be equally topical.”

1972“We lost our first-born son, Ari CodySherr, June 7, 2003, in a bicycling-racing event to raise money for theLeukemia & Lymphoma Society,”writes LAURIE SUSCO-SHERR (SF).“He’s now with his dad, Doug Sherr,who died June 7, at the same age.Twins: Jesse Doug Sherr graduatedfrom UNM’s architecture school, andDante Gabriel Sherr is to graduate in

Three Boys in College

SHEILA BOBBS ARMSTRONG (SF70, SFGI95) writes:“My son Ian will be a sophomore at the Annapoliscampus this fall. He loves St. John’s, having spentthree years at the University of New Mexico. Eamon,#2 son, is at Occidental College in Los Angeles.Quinn, #3, is at Idylwild Arts Academy in California.

I am still with Mike and splitting time between Santa Fe andPerth, and traveling. Love to all.” x



religious sciences and computersnext year. Proud Mom and Dad.Much love to all my fellow students,teachers, and compatriots.”

1973DAVID ALLISON (A) is busy as curatorof a new exhibit on military historyat the National Museum of AmericanHistory, which will open on Nov. 11,2004. His wife, YMELDA MARTINEZ-ALLISON (A74), is teaching art tochildren in Alexandria, Va., as wellas serving as teaching director ofcommunity Bible study in Alexan-dria. They have two children: Camilla, 22, and Gabriel, 20.

Many people love collecting, butROBIN CHALEK TZANNES (A) hastaken it to another level: “I amdelighted to announce the onlineappearance of my little Greek museum— now known as the KytheraMuseum of Natural History. Since1977, my husband, George, and I

have lived part-time on the beautifuland remote Greek island of Kythera.There, with the help of my sons,JOHN (SF00) and PETER (SF04), I’ve made an extensive collection ofseashells, rocks, fossils, pressedflowers, feathers, and skulls. Lastsummer, Peter and another photographer documented my collection, which can now be viewedat www.kythera-family.net (scrolldown the left-hand menu and click Kythera Museum of Natural History).”

1974TOM BYRNES (SF) graduated fromthe University of Kentucky School ofLibrary and Information Sciencewith an MLS on May 8. He is nowlibrary manager of the LexmarkInformation Center, a unit of theUniversity of Kentucky Libraries.“Lexmark may be the only corporation that outsources itsLibrary/Information Center to a

university,” he writes. “At least weknow of no others. In June, UKpicked me to run it for a while.”

ROBERTA (RAZAFY) FAULHABER

(SF) has been living in Paris, France,practically since graduation. She ismarried to a man from Madagascarand is the mother of two girls, one a painter and the other anambassadress.

RANDY O. and MARTHA (MACKEY)PENDLETON (both SF) celebratetheir 30th wedding anniversary thisyear, Martha writes: “We have twochildren, one of whom (unlike hisparents) graduated from St. John’sCollege and is also attending hisclass reunion this year. At varioustimes we’ve written short stories (R),drawn portraits (M), folk danced,swing danced, and sung in a choir(both of us). Randy has mostly beenworking in pharmaceutical manufac-turing (Syntex, Genetech). I waslucky enough to have been able tostay home and raise our two chil-dren. Currently we are followingVoltaire and cultivating our garden.”

1975DENNIS J. JOHNSON (A) writes: “Annand I moved back to Newnan, Geor-gia, two years ago, after a 15-monthstretch of employment in Charlotte,N.C. I wear a number of differenthats at work here, including those oftraining coordinator, ‘machinevision’ system guru, and producttrouble-shooter. Our grandchildrenare now five in number, ranging fromseven months old to ten and a half.We had planned to make a trip toVirginia and Maryland to see themthis spring, but Annie cannot travelright now due to health problems.We were hoping to be able to visitwith some of my Johnnie friends inthat area as well, but for now we willhave to make do with e-mail andphone calls. The online alumni regis-ter contains all of my updated info,so please feel free to use it and con-tact me here in the Sunny South!”

“I’m half Jack-of-all-Trades and halfJack-in-the-Box, living in Madison,N.J., and trying to come out of retire-ment as an artist’s model or as a psy-chiatric caseworker,” says SUZY

LARRISON (A). “I have the bestresumé for those jobs, but what Ireally need is a seminar. The openingquestion is G. KAY BISHOP’S (A75)impression of John Wayne ‘Ta be ornot ta be.’

“I was baptized on January 11, fullimmersion, but don’t want to seesports banned on Sunday, so I havetrouble with my latest church. Myfiancé is a trustee of a Baptist Churchin Washington, D.C. We met in thepark in front of the White House (hewas taking a nap). He stopped atFreud—but I’m a Jungian. Figuringthings out—didn’t know until recent-ly that logos translates to tao in Chi-nese. The tao, the truth, and thelight are making ME lightheaded.

“Missing CAROLYN WADE LORING

(A77) and GRETCHEN BERG SAVAGE

(A75) with pains that would frightena midwife. Also TEMPLE WRIGHT

(A75), TINA SADDY BELL (A75), andKAREN BENT SALEM (A76). Tryingto remember my additions to theSeminar Songbag and the SeminarJokebook, as life can be pretty grim,as in the Brothers G. (Bruno Bettle-heim).

“Doing pretty well with my stagefright—but I still probably would be aSILENT student. Fondest regards toall.”

1976MARIE CLARK AVERY (SF) has beennominated to the Wall of Tolerancefor her work as a founding memberin the National Campaign for Tolerance. Marie teaches SpecialEducation in Espanola and is work-ing on her master’s degree. She alsoraises four sons, Justin, David, Josh,and Tyrel.

VICKY HANLEY (SF) published herthird novel, The Light of the Oracle,in the U.K. in August; the book willbe published in May 2005 in the U.S.“You can visit me at www.victoria-hanley.com.”

PHYLLIS HUFFMAN HERMAN (SFGI)writes: “I have been involved in thestudy of the work of two greatthinkers: Moshe Feldenkrais and Virginia Satir. I am a Feldenkraispractitioner (i.e., I work with peopleexploring thinking/sensing/feeling/moving in order to bring

Thirty Years Go Fast

ELLEN (USNER) LEITNER (SF73) left the college tostudy music after being inspired during concertsof the Moscow Trio, Czech Chamber Orchestra,and Natalia Gutman at St. John’s: “I studied violinwith Renata Skoberne, then went to Austria,where I played with several orchestras in Vienna,

The Innsbruck Symphony, and the Graz Philharmonic. After thatI moved back to New Mexico (my native land) with my Austrianhusband, Johann (Hans), and together we raised six children inChimayó. All of the children were home-schooled for the greaterpart of their education, and two girls are now studying guitar andvoice at North Carolina School of the Arts, our son is studyingarchitecture at UNM, one daughter has a degree in psychologyand is married, one daughter is married with two children andone on the way, and the youngest is still at home. Whew! That’s itin a nutshell! Thirty years go by so fast!

“As a stay-at-home mother I started doing art, and since 1988my children and I have participated in the annual Spanish Marketon the Santa Fe Plaza with our retablos. I have also been in theSt. John’s College Spanish Market since its inception. I enjoydonating a piece of my work for the auction, checking out thebook sale, and spending a little time at the college.

“I have always been active performing in northern New Mexi-co and Colorado in symphony orchestras, chamber groups and asa soloist. Recently I have been working with classical guitaristRoberto Capocchi, with whom I have made a CD, DuoGuadalupe, Music for Violin and Guitar. You can hear samplesfrom it at www.cdbaby.com/cd/guadalupe.” x


{ A l u m n i N o t e s } 35

more efficiency, congruence, grace,ease, and satisfaction to their lives). Iam currently training in the HumanValidation Process Model, based onVirginia Satir’s work, which I findcomplementary to the Feldenkraismethod of somatic education. I livein Arlington, Va., with my husband,Michael, and our younger daughter,Amy. Our older two children are incollege. The nest is emptying.”

As a postscript, she offers theselines from Adrienne Rich: “Angerand tenderness: my selves./And nowI can believe they breathe in me/ as angels, not polarities./ Anger andtenderness: the spider’s genius/to spin and weave in the sameaction/from her own body, any-where—/even from a broken web.”

1977BILL MALLOY (SF) retired in Decem-ber 2003 and spends his time writingand working on photography, inaddition to volunteering four morn-ings a week holding babies in the(NICU) at Texas Children’s Hospital.He plans to get ESL training soon inorder to teach English as a SecondLanguage. “Other than that, I amblessed to have both of my parents,ages 88 and 83, who’ve been marriedan amazing 63? years (so far),” he writes.

JUDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF)recently visited classmate ELIZA-BETH (COCHRAN) BOWDEN (SF) ather home in Marblehead, Mass. Thetwo celebrated their birthdays andbeing friends for more than half theirlifetimes at the Kripalu Yoga Centerin the Berkshires. Judy also watchedthe cows changing pastures while visiting LYNNE GATELY (A) in Randolph Center, Vt., where Lynne is a librarian. Lynne and herhusband, David, run a dairy farmand a maple sugar business. Judyalso visited KEITH HARRISON (SF) athis home in New Hampshire. Keithteaches law at Franklin Peirce LawSchool. Judy has been enduringMinnesota weather for more thansix years now and is longing for atemperate climate with mountains.Anyone with job leads in New Mexico, please contact Judy!

1979Poetic entry no. 3 for this issue ofAlumni Notes, from QUINN

CUSHING (SF), an ode from Brook-lyn: “Winter’s cold blues chase/The summer’s heat/through thecity’s sewers./They meet and rise,/ Coiling about my feet—Steam risingfrom the street/after the promisedthunderstorms/have passed.”

1980LISA LASHLEY (SF) writes: “I’m mar-ried to Santa Fe attorney Ron VanAmberg. We have two children, Alex, who will be attending CU Boulder in the fall, and Virginia, whois a sophomore at St. Michael’s HighSchool. I am teaching algebra at St. Mike’s where I am head of theMath Department and advisor to theNational Junior Honors Society. I’mstill involved in Boy Scouts and GirlScouts and plan to accompany myson on a two-week back-packing tripto Philmont this summer!”

BOB NESLUND (SFGI) was named“Latin Teacher of the Year” by theClassical Association of Minnesota inNovember 2003.

1981JIM PRESTON (A) and ELLEN MINER-VA (A80) “are happily raising theirgirls in Silver Spring, Md. Call any-time: 301-585-8554.”

1982MARIAN BETOR BAUMGARTEN (A)writes: “My husband, JONATHAN

BAUMGARTEN (also A82), wasordained a Deacon in the EpiscopalChurch in February 2004. Jon con-tinues to work as a systems analyst inChicago, and I continue to work inhuman resources administration.Martha will be a sophomore in highschool this fall, and Peter will beentering 7th grade.”

1983JOHN HARTNETT (SF) has beennamed communications director onthe Santa Fe campus of St. John’s.

ANN WALTON SIEBER (A) is currentlyliving in her hometown of Houston,where she’s working as a “bohemianfreelance journalist.” She recentlycoordinated all the media for Hous-ton’s Art Car Parade. On a more serious side, she’s involved in starting a halfway house for menreleased from prison.

1984PETER GREEN (A) has finally leftPrague and finished a year at Columbia Business School as aKnight-Bagehot Fellow. He expecteda return to journalism this summer.“I’m in New York now and reachableat [email protected]. See youall at the reunion!” Peter is compil-ing the virtual yearbook for his classreunion. Pictures and updates can bemailed to: [email protected] or to Peter personally.

TRISHA (FIKE) HOWELL (SF) ispleased to announce the publicationof her fifth book, The Adventures ofMelon and Turnip, a children’s picture book. Trisha would love tohear from former classmates and can be reached at [email protected]

NATASHA WALTER-FISK (SF) writes,“I’m going to the Institute ofTranspersonal Psychology, studyingfor a degree in counseling, planningon being licensed in 2008. Gettingdivorced from Peter. Gioia, 8 yearsold, is a joy. When a plant moves to abigger pot, breaking the roots hurts,but then it flourishes. Sending kind-est regards to all.”

JOHN C. WRIGHT (A) sends anupdate on his literary career: “Myfourth novel, Last Guardian ofEverness, came out in August. Thesecond two volumes of the previoustrilogy—a work of science fiction—made the N.Y. Times Recommended

Reading List for 2003. The titles ofthat series are: The Golden Age,Phoenix Exaltant, and The GoldenTranscendence.”

1985MARY WALLACE (SF) and EileenLynx were married in April in Van-couver, B.C., Canada. Their mar-riage “is recognized by the civilizednations of the world,” writes Mary.

1986 ELIZABETH BARNET (SF) writes:“Spring of 2004 finds me 14 yearsmarried to Rufus Blunk, whom I metworking on a building project inNicaragua in 1987. We have lived asland stewards in Marin County onTomales Bay with a big garden, woodsculpture, and sustainable livingprojects. I have taught yoga here for 12 years and home-school mychildren: son Jasper, nearly 11, off toperforming arts camp on a pianoscholarship; son Silas, now 8; anddaughter, Savilia, just 5. I am readingCatherine Clinton’s biography ofHarriet Tubman and collecting signatures for a petition to makeMarin County GMO-free. Hello thereto old friends. E-mail me [email protected], or P.O. Box 636,Inverness, CA 94937.”

STEPHANIE RICO (A) and TODD

PETERSON (A87) welcomed their second daughter, Sasha Gabriele, totheir family this past November.“She joins her sister, Tia Linda RicoPeterson, who is 2 years old and lovesher new baby sister. You can reach usat [email protected] or [email protected].”

1987News from BOB HOWELL (AGI) andhis wife, Lynn: Bob is the head of theEnglish Department at the O’NealSchool, and Lynn is the director ofthe Southern Pines Public Library.Their daughter Emma graduated asthe valedictorian of O’Neal’s class of


{ A l u m n i P r o f i l e }36

When is smoked meatnot just smokedmeat?

When it’s bar-becue, the emblemof Southern food

culture and the subject of a cover story forthe New Orleans Gambit Weekly by SARA

ROAHEN (SF94). Still, despite barbecue’s stronghold on

Southern appetites, the story was not a nat-ural match for the Gambit. New Orleans,although rich in food culture, is not much ofa barbecue town. As Roahen points out inher article, an informal study published inthe spring/summer edition of South at theCenter puts New Orleans dead last amongSouthern towns in barbecue-restaurants-per-person. Nevertheless, Roahen managedto turn this low-priority topic into a vibrantstory, weaving history, statistics, sociology,oral history, regionalism, race, and politicsinto its 4,000 words.

“Writing about food isn’t just about writ-ing about food,” Roahen says. “It’s also tap-ping into something everybody can relateto. There’s a lot of room for social commen-tary. Discussions of race, wage issues, val-ues—those came up a lot while I wasresearching the story.”

Roahen’s articles capture all the flavor—historical and social as well as gustatory—ofNew Orleans’ food culture. She has won anumber of awards for her work, most recent-ly first place in the critical review categoryfor the New Orleans Press Club Awards2004 and first place in the food writing cate-gory for the Association of AlternativeNewsweeklies 2003. In addition to the foodnews, restaurant reviews, and feature storiesshe writes for the Gambit, she is also a con-tributor to Wine and Spirits magazine andTin House (a literary magazine), and hasbeen published in Gourmet. Her essays canbe found in 2003 Best Food Writing and anupcoming anthology, Cornbread Nation II.

Roahen brings a solid background ofrestaurant work to her job. As a Johnnie inSanta Fe, she was a cocktail waitress at LaPosada and worked after graduation atCloud Cliff as a waitress and assistant man-ager. She was a line cook at restaurants inWisconsin, San Francisco, and Wyoming. In1999, she moved to New Orleans where her

then-boyfriend, now husband, MATHIEU DE

SCHUTTER (SF94) began medical school.Burnt out from cooking, she decided toresuscitate an old love, writing.

“I knew I wanted to make the move towriting, but I didn’t know how to do it,” shesays. “I feel like luck was on my side,because the weekly paper ran an ad for arestaurant critic, and Mathieu pushed me to apply.”

The ad asked applicants to submit pub-lished clips but Roahen had none. Unde-terred, she wrote a restaurant review, arecipe feature, and an autobiographicalessay and sent them in. Three months latershe was offered her first in a series of assign-

ments that lasted six months before she wasofficially offered the position.

“I found out that I got the job in partbecause I went to the trouble to make upclips and in part because the editor of thepaper, Michael Tisserand, went to St. John’sfor one semester and wanted to see what aJohnnie looks like,” Roahen says. “I cer-tainly never anticipated that St. John’s wasgoing to help me get a writing job, but itdid.”

Roahen’s work as a food writer gives heran unusual relationship with food. For herweekly column she eats at the restaurantshe’s reviewing at least three times.Research to find new places adds a few morerestaurant meals, and occasionally she eatsout for pleasure.

“I love dining out. Sometimes I get physi-cally tired of it, but there are a lot of greatmoments to be had in dining out even if youdo it for a living. I’ve given up looking forthe end-all-be-all meals, those are alwaysrare. I can count the number of truly mind-bending meals I’ve eaten on two hands. ButI‘ve gained an appreciation for certain piv-

otal moments or dishes or mouthfuls. I canfind something exciting in more than youwould think.”

On her list of mind-bending meals is adinner she ate at a cider house in the Span-ish town of Astigarraga near San Sebastian.Cider houses can be found throughout theSpanish countryside, each serving the sametraditional menu. Meals are eaten standingup around tables and the food is brought incourses: first, a tortilla de bacalao (a sort ofomelet made with salt cod); then, bacalao(salt cod) smothered in roasted peppers;next, rare ox grilled over an open fire; andfor dessert, Idiazabal (a slightly smokysheep’s milk cheese) with quince paste andwalnuts.

“Throughout the meal everyone at yourtable walks up to big casks of cider and fillstheir glasses with just an inch of cider,drinking it quickly before it oxidizes.” Asthe meal continues, Roahen says, the funescalates. “You’re standing up digging intohunks of meat, getting tipsy, and everyonearound you is doing the same thing. Youstart talking to people at other tables. Then,every 15 minutes or so, the owner walks to asecret door in the back and unlocks it.That’s where the really good cider is. Everyone leaves their table and stands inline to get a spot of cider. They toast eachother, slam down the cider and go back totheir tables.”

Roahen, who was eating with her hus-band, his father, and his father’s wife, saysthat the meal had all the elements of a greatrestaurant experience: great food, greatambiance, and people you love.

As for great moments and mouthfuls,Roahen says they often come during mealsin New Orleans’ many neighborhood restaurants. “In New Orleans, neighbor-hood restaurants generally serve the samemenu,” she explains. “There’s always goingto be a gumbo, very likely there will be rawoysters, always red beans, especially onMondays. They serve po boys, smotheredpork chops, spaghetti, fried chicken, andprobably a shrimp remoulade. In theserestaurants they’ll do a couple of dishes real-ly well and the rest will be mediocre. Youend up going to these places just for thosecouple of things they do well.” x

A Taste of New OrleansSara Roahen’s Restaurant Reviews Capture all the Flavor of The Big Easy

by Sus3an Borden, a87

“I can count the number of truly mind-bending

meals I’ve eaten on two hands.”

Sara Roahen, SF94


{ A l u m n i N o t e s } 37

2004 and will be attending Rice University in the fall.

1988ELAINE PINKERTON COLEMAN

(SFGI) sold her World War II suspense novel, Beast of Bengal,to Polocl Press. Publication date isspring 2005. She completed a children’s book, A Hat for Emily,written for her granddaughter Emily Clementine Pinkerton, age 20 months. Visit her Web site:www.booksbyelaine.com

LAURIE COOPER (A) lives in ruralChaplin, Conn., with her husband,Dov Kugelmass, and their two children: Carrie, 4, and Cyrus, 2.She is a clinical social worker in acommunity mental health center.

DIANA SHAW-MCCARTHY (A) hasgraduated from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of PublicService and is working as a datacoordinator for Project Renewal, anonprofit organization in New YorkCity that works with chronicallyaddicted homeless individuals.

1989News from JEANNE BLACKMORE

(DUVOISIN) (A): “We welcomedbaby Samantha on September 12,2003. She was born two years to theday after her brother Benjamin. Benand Sam often get together with(A89 classmates) GARFIELD

GOODRUM’S daughter Cecily, andERIKA GAFFNEY’S daughter Cara.”

EDWARD P. EAGAN (AGI) lives inIpswich, Mass., with his wife, Camilla, and three children: Grace,8; Eloise, 5; and Charlie, 2. He is apracticing clinical psychologist inNewburyport, Mass.

BRAD STUARt (A), SARA LARSON

STUART (A90), and Eleanor welcomePhoebe Sophia Stuart, born November 4, 2003, at 1:42 p.m. EST.“Brown of hair and blue of eye,Phoebe has a crooked smile and aready laugh. What a girl!”

1990 “After spending last year living inSan Francisco attending CircusSchool (I fly on the trapeze), I havefound my home in sunny Los Ange-les and couldn’t be happier,” writesDAVID JOHNSON (SF). “No plans forthe big top—just enjoying the ride.”

“Martin and I are moving toPhoenix,” writes ELAINE (REISS)PEREA (SF). “I am finally going tograd school. I start a Ph.D. programin evolutionary psychology inAugust. I’d love to hear from class-mates and other area alum. My e-mail is [email protected]”

ELIZABETH SPAETH STOLTZ (SFGI)reports that her daughter, MEG

SPAETH (A01), married TIM FREE-MAN (A01) on September 20, 2003.

1991PATRICK CHO (A) writes toannounce the arrival of his son,Nicholas, on New Year’s Eve, 2002.Nicholas gets along well with his bigsister, Samantha, he adds.

MAGGIE FARLEy (SF) reports: “Imarried a Peruvian mathematiciannamed Renzo last December andreceived a master’s in statistics fromUNM in May. I am currently in thedoctorate program in education psychology at UNM, where I aminterested in studying ways to teachabstract reasoning so as to improvemathematical ability. I have beenteaching undergraduate math atUNM for the last three years andbefore that taught high school mathfor two years at Santa Fe High. Ivalue my time at St. John’s for how itencouraged me to believe in my ownability to inquire into the meaning ofthings as well as for all the times Igot to dance thoughout the night.”

LAKE (JAMES) PERRIGUEY (SF)hosted Nancy Buchenauer for analumni seminar in Portland, Ore.,on Jeanette Winterson’s The Pas-sion. Lake is a litigator, civil rightslawyer, and community-based legalcounselor in Portland.

1992From CATHERINE BARRIER (A) andJIM DUGAN (A93): “We’d like toannounce the birth of Lucy EleanorDugan on December 10, 2004, inLos Angeles. We are, of course, convinced she is the most beautifuland smartest baby in the world. We just hope we can keep up. If anyone is rash enough to ask forpictures, they can contact us [email protected]!”

ELYETTE KIRBY-BLOCK (SF) has justmoved near Paris with her husband,Jonathan, and children: Benjamin,3, and Elyse, 18 months. “I’m homewith the kids and expecting again inSeptember,” she writes. “I’ll be visit-ing family this summer in Minnesotaand Nova Scotia but will be back inFrance the rest of the time and, asalways, would welcome visitors! E-mail [email protected].”

LISA HOLLIS-BROWN and DAVID

BROWN (both SF) have moved toColorado Springs. “David is a shinynew math professor at that otherwacky liberal arts college in themountain time zone, Colorado College. Lisa is finishing off her dissertation, and making plans forlots of long weekends in Santa Fe.Drop us a line at [email protected].”

PHIL HOPKINS (SFGI) just receivedthe award for teaching excellence as a philosophy professor at Southwestern University. LISA

(KALLMAN) HOPKINS (SF89) beginsgraduate studies in library science atTexas Women’s University this fall.

PRAXADES RIVERA (SFGI) has livedin Venezuela for the last eight yearsand is now embarking on a year sab-batical, using her summer home inNew York as “headquarters.” Sheintends to study, read, and travel.

A Community in Cotati

What is it like to live in a co-housing community? “Wonderful,” writes ANNE

LEONARD (A89): “Last November, afterseveral years of planning and many meet-ings and work, my family (me, husbandAdam Hill, son Benjamin Leonard-Hill,

2 cats) finally moved into our co-housing community in Cotati(Calif.). We live in an intentional community, legally a condo-minium, with shared common space, community meals severaltimes a week, lots of kid-friendly play areas, private houses thatwere designed with ‘green building’ principles, and of coursefabulous, intelligent, interesting people. All our [Homeowner’sAssociation] decisions are made on a consensus system, ratherthan voting. I can hang out with people and have either a frivo-lous or an intellectual conversation without going farther thannext door. At its best, it’s like post-seminar hanging out in theCoffee Shop, with a short trek to your house when you get tired.

“A couple of weeks ago, a dozen of us were hanging out in the‘gathering node’ by the swale, when the talk turned as it oftendoes with this group to wordplay, language games, and mnemon-ics. A new resident, who had only moved in a few weeks before,said that she still remembered her Greek conjugations and conjugated “luw.” I joined in, and asked her why we both knewthe same thing. It turns out she was SUSAN WELCH (SF89). We’restill trying to figure out who we know in common.

“I’d love to hear from any other Johnnies who live in co-housing, or from anyone who’s interested and wants to knowmore.” x


{ A l u m n i N o t e s }3838

1993“Yes!” writes JAMES DIPROPERZIO

(A), aka James Propis. “My shortstory, ‘After the Fall,’ was publishedin a new anthology called Toddler:Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle,Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People WeLove, edited by Jennifer Margulis,Ph.D. The book just won an awardfor #1 Best Parenting Book of theYear from the Independent Publisher’s Book Association.”

NANCY MARCUS (A) writes, “Afterserving as the National AbortionFederation’s State Public PolicyDirector since 2002 (See pages 139-143 of Molly Ivin’s Bushwhacked for some of my recent work), I amleaving the D.C. activist world torejoin the academic world in trueJohnnie style. For the next two years,I will be in Madison earning myLL.M. at the University of Wisconsin’s Law School.”

PENNY SINONE (SFGI) is currentlyworking on “Leftovers,” part II of a project called “The DumpChronicles,” a collaboration withSonoma artist David Povilaites.

“In August 2003, I left Philly and mywork at Project HOME (the bestexperience of my life!) to move toSanta Fe and begin teaching here,”writes J. WALTER STERLING (A). “So far, so good.”

“Hi! I am living in Dumfries, Va.,with my parents. I hope everyone isgood,” writes ERIKA SUSKI (A). Shecan be reached at P.O. Box 1133,Dumfries, VA 22026.

1994WILLIAM J. KOWALSKI (SF) and his wife, Alexandra, welcomed adaughter, Kasia, into the world onJuly 3, 2003.

SARAH (LIVERSIDGE) and MIKE

AFFLERBACH (both A) are still enjoy-ing life in New Bern, N.C. WritesSarah, “We’ve been doing a lot of

sailboat racing and some cruising tothe Outer Banks. Mike’s radio busi-ness is growing, and I should havemy architecture license this year.”

JULIE MEADOWS (A) writes: “I amfinally ABD in the Ethics and Societyprogram in the Religion Departmentat Emory. My dissertation director,MARK JORDAN (SF73), is also a Johnnie! I row on weekends on theChattahoochee River with theAtlanta Rowing Club, while mysweetie Steve, a veterinarian-turned-epidemiologist, goes kayaking. Best wishes!”

1995GEORGE ERVING (SFGI) is enjoying atenure-track position as assistantprofessor of Humanities, Honors andEnglish Lit at the University of PugetSound in Tacoma, Wash., where hehas been since the fall of 2003. “It’sa great fit for me and my courses aresubstantially influenced by my timeat St. John’s,” he writes.

ZENA HITZ (A) is finishing her dissertation on the critique ofdemocracy in Plato and Aristotle.This fall she will have a temporaryteaching appointment in the philoso-phy department at McGill Universityin Montreal, and in January, she willtake up a tenure-track position atAuburn University in Alabama.

“Greetings from the greater Bostonarea!” EMILY MURPHY (A) writes.“Still in grad school—still workingpart-time for the National Park Service and helping with the 200th anniversary of NathanielHawthorne’s birth here in Salem.”

1996ELIZABETH BUCHEN (SF96), daugh-ter of JERRY (GERALD) BUCHEN

(SF72), just earned her medicaldegree from the University of NewMexico School of Medicine andstarts her residency in Ob/Gyn(“another four years!”) also at UNM:“I live in Albuquerque with my hus-band, Chris Lopez, and our four dogs

and two cats. Anyone wishing to contact me can do so by e-mail [email protected].”

SONIAH KAMAL (A) will have herfirst novel, An Isolated Incident,published by Penguin in the fall of2005. “A short synopsis is ‘East isEast meets Osama Bin Laden,’” shereports. Kamal has had a lot of shortstories published, writes a columnfor a periodical in Pakistan, and isworking on a movie script. She livesin San Francisco.

DANIEL SILVERMINTZ (AGI) hasaccepted a position as assistant pro-fessor of Humanities at the Universi-ty of Houston-Clear Lake. He can bereached at [email protected].

SHANNON STIRMAN (SF) writes:“KELLY (SF97), Henry (who is nowalmost 3), and I have moved toMenlo Park, Calif., where he’s working for a software company, and I’ll be doing an internship inclinical psychology. I defended mydissertation in February, so this isthe last step before I finish school.We’d love to hear from otherJohnnies who are in the area!”

1997DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) recently graduated with an MBAfrom the University of Maryland.

Happy news from LORI FREEMAN

(A): “I’m too excited not to writeThe College and let everyone knowthat I’ve gotten engaged! Wes Smedley and I will be married inPhiladelphia this October. This is thefunny part—he’s an Episcopal priest,which is actual proof that God has asense of humor. Anyway, we’re beingmarried at Christ Church inPhiladelphia on Sunday, October 17,during the regular 11 a.m. churchservice. If you’re around, come andjoin us! My e-mail address is [email protected]; Johnnies and friends are always welcome at the house I share withKEVIN GARDNER (also A97), who, inaddition to being my Maid of Honor,just completed his second year at thePennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

and is working on a huge, beautifulmural project this summer. I’m stillworking for a women’s literacy program in the Kensington area of Philadelphia.”

KIRA HEATER (SF) and her husband,RUSSELL DIBBLE (A92, EC97) areliving in Missoula, Mont. Kira isfinishing a master’s degree in mathematics, and “Russ is on a BLM hotshot wildland fire crewbased out of Salt Lake City. If you’rein Missoula, look us up. Johnnies arealways welcome.”

BRENT HINRICHS (AGI) is now work-ing as the Upper School Head at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, Calif.In addition, he and Evie Schneidergot married last August and pur-chased their first home in San Jose.“We would love to hear from GIsfrom ’94-’98! Where are you, BILL BUYSSE (AGI96) and PATRICK WAGER (AGI96)?”

ANNE KNIGGENDORF (SF) reports:“TONY LAGOURANIS (also SF97) isserving in the Army and is currentlystationed in Iraq. I think he will bethere until early 2005. If you wouldlike to send Tony something, I havehis address and would be glad to give it to anyone interested. Pleasecontact me at [email protected] family is well—still in Georgia.Stephen and I have TWO little boys now!”

INYA LASKOWSKI (SFGI) has been invited to be art educator inresidence at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the LutherBurbank Center in Santa Rosa, Calif.She has shown her monotypes innine exhibitions in the last two years.Her work can be seen at Hand ArtesGallery, Truchas, N.M.

KIT LINTON (A) and SONYA SCHIFF

LINTON (A00) are happy toannounce the birth of their daughter, Viola Mae Linton, on June 3, 2004. Kit heads up the NewYork City office for a small consult-ing firm, and Sonya just finished herfirst year at law school. They wouldlove to hear from friends at [email protected].


{ A l u m n i N o t e s } 3939

After graduating from Yale LawSchool in May, RICHARD

SCHMECHEL (A) plans to move toWashington, D.C., in the fall. He willbe working at the Public DefenderService on a two-year project fundedby the Open Society Institute. DNA,memory reliability, and other foren-sic issues are the subject of the proj-ect. He would love to hear fromJohnnies, “indicted or not,” [email protected].

1998An announcement from DAWN

BORCHELT (A): “Wolfgang GuyBorchelt was born at home Feb. 24,2004.” He was 6 lbs., 11 oz., and 19 inches long.

JESSICA COVITZ and ALAN

PICHANICK (both A) are excited toannounce the births of their secondand third daughters, Katherine andElisheva, this past January. Alongwith their 5-year-old daughter,Sophia, they are living in Philadel-phia. They would love to hear fromold friends and can be reached via e-mail: [email protected] [email protected].

After finishing a master’s degree inDivinity at the University of Chicago,ALEXANDRA MUDD (A) moved toCambridge to work on a Ph.D. inHistory and Philosophy of Science.“Any A98 Johnnies in Englandshould look me up!” she writes.

“I am living in that Johnnie haven,Brooklyn,” writes FELIX S. LESLIE (A), “practicing law acrossthe river in Manhattan and enjoying life. I can be reached at [email protected].”

Santa Fe alumni looking for long-lostalumnus MICHAEL OLSON (A99) can find his classnote among entriesfor 1999.

TIM POMAROLE (A) has graduatedfrom Duke University School of Lawand will be working for the AppellateDivision of the Suffolk County DA’sOffice in Boston. Last summer, Timworked at the International Criminal

Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

1999MICHAEL BAAS (SF) married MeganBello on January 2, 2004, in Galis-teo, NM.

RUTH BUSKO (SF) graduated fromthe Tai Sophia Institute for the Healing Arts in March 2004 with aMaster of Acupuncture degree. She is living in Baltimore, Md., and practicing acupuncture in Ellicott City, Md.

GREG KOEHLERT (SFGI) marriedMerrie Schlein in August 2003; their first child is due at the end ofNovember. “Of course, we’re still inNYC,” Greg writes.

MICHAEL OLSEN (A) checks in aftera long absence: “Almost immediately upon graduating fiveyears ago, I lost my way on the pathto law school and never arrived.Instead, this fall I begin my fourthyear of teaching English and SocialStudies in grades six through eight ata private middle school in Chicago.Although this career began unexpectedly, I’m having a greattime teaching and cannot think ofanything else I’d rather be doingright now. I will probably continuewith it well into the future, althoughit is likely I will leave Chicago againonce I complete the masters degree

I’m starting to work on. Not a daygoes by when I do not miss the college. I occasionally attend Chicago-area alumni events butregret that I have kept in touch withonly a few classmates. I am fortunateto be doing a fair amount of travelingand generally living the life of leisureduring my summer vacations. All are welcome to write, e-mail, ortelephone: 1354 W. Argyle Street,Chicago, IL 60640;[email protected];773.989.8491. I am interested inhearing from anyone I knew,whether in Santa Fe or Annapolis.”

“It’s funny to think that it’s beeneight years since I last saw most ofyou, writes BEN THORNBER (A). “I have just gotten an M. Div. degreefrom Earlham School of Religion, aQuaker seminary located in Rich-mond, Indiana. I am now looking forwork as a pastoral minister at aQuaker church, having become aQuaker two years ago. I’m largelylooking at Quaker churches in theMidwest but I am also talking to aQuaker church in Tennessee. I valuethe time that I spent at St. John’s andthe friendships I developed there. Ihope to hear from you. My snail-mailaddress is: 824 SW A Street, Rich-mond, IN 47374, and my e-mailaddress is [email protected]. I hope things go wellwith each of you.”

2000JOHN HUNTER (AGI) and his wife,Lisa, would like to announce thebirth of a son, James Elias Brinton(“Jeb”) on Oct. 3, 2003.

ANNE MCSHANE (A) expects to beginstudies at New York University’sSchool of Law this fall, and offers tocoach others thinking about a simi-lar path. “I have taught and amteaching Kaplan’s LSAT course andam happy to advise on the law schoolapplication process. I can be reachedat [email protected].”

NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGI) is enjoying her time in Tokyo. “Lastyear I accepted a position as thedirector of the Department of Energy Asia office and also becamethe Energy Attache to the U.S.Ambassador of Japan. I have had afabulous time here. The food is wonderful and the art, historicalsites, and people are even better.”

DEBERNIERE TORREY (AGI) wasawarded a Fulbright Fellowship toKorea. Torrey is pursuing a Ph.D. incomparative literature at Penn StateUniversity. A Korean instructor atPenn State, she’s also active with theuniversity’s International Languagesand Literature Student Organiza-tion, the Conversation Partners Program, and the Ballroom Danceclub. The fellowship will allow Torrey to spend a year in Koreastudying 19th-century Korean literature in preparation for her thesis proposal and further research.The topic of her research is the effect of modern/western thoughtimported from China.

2001LANCE BRISBOIS (A) recently joinedthe editorial staff of Hackett Publishing. He works and lives inCambridge, Mass.

PAIGE POSTLEWAIT (A) andMICHAEL MAGUIRE (A02) were married in 2001, “and have a beautiful son, Daschel Auden,”

New Ventures for John Balkcom

Former Santa Fe President JOHN BALKCOM

(SFGI00) joined the board of directors of IMCORecycling, Inc., in December 2003 and becamethe chairman of the board in April 2004. He par-ticipated in the announcement of a merger withCommonwealth Industries in mid-June. “Carol

and I are pleased to be back in Evanston and looking forward tohosting our second reception for prospective students in June,”he writes. “I’m also excited about co-leading a seminar in Sum-mer Classics with tutor Michael Rawn on Faulkner’s Absalom,Absalom! We send our gratitude to the Santa Fe class of 2004for their warm welcome at commencement.” x



Paige writes. “Michael is currentlyserving our country in the Army, andwe will all be relocating as a family inthe fall to Berlin, Germany. I willteach English and attend schoolwhile we are there. I have recentlystarted a Web site for Johnnies fromthe Annapolis campus to use. It islocated at www.youthriot.co.uk/sjc,and includes photo galleries andmessage boards. We are also lookingfor links to Johnnie homepages. I’dencourage anyone who wants to getin touch with me to help with the siteor suggest links! It is a work inprogress but we’re very excited. Feel free to contact Mike and me [email protected].”

SUZANNAH SIMMONS (SF) expects tobe in law school this fall.

“Hi, everybody!” writes ERIK

STADNIK (A). “I’m one of the growing number of Johnnies whohas settled in the DC area for thetime being. I’ve lived in the Alexandria, Va., area for the past twoyears or so, and I just started a newjob at the Library of Congress LawLibrary. So, if anyone is in the areaand would like a tour, get in [email protected].

2002LUCAS FORD (A) is pining for certainaspects of the Johnnie life: “I missvacations, breaks, and long week-ends and all that sweetness.”

SHELLEY ROSE WALKER (SFGI,EC03) is enjoying life in the East:“Since graduation, Doug Saxon andI have been teaching English at auniversity in South Korea. We liveabout an hour from Seoul, whichallows us a primarily relaxed, quietlifestyle within a short jaunt from thecultural and culinary advantages ofthe capital city. We spent twomonths last winter traveling in Indiaand we can’t wait to go back. Thissummer our adventures will lead usthrough China, into Tibet, and thenboating down the Yangtze Riverbefore we head back to our EastAsian abode come September. Ourtentative plan is to hold down thefort here for two to four more years.One of the great perks of our jobs isthe enormous amount of free timewe’re given, during which you canusually find us gleefully occupied

with reading and continuing ourconversations. We’d love to hearfrom you: [email protected] [email protected].”

RACHEL AVIVA POLLACK (A) spentthe summer studying at the American Academy of Rome.

2003KATHY CHRISTIE and JOHN ANDERS

(both SF) were married in Houston,Texas, in August 2004.

LAURA DABNEY (SF) writes thatJUSTIN “GUS” HURWITZ (SF) hasmade it into the Chicago School ofLaw. “Go him!”

Another new law student: SEAN

MCLAIN (A) will be beginning stud-ies at the Columbus School of Law atThe Catholic University of America,Washington, D.C., this fall.

2004SEAN MADDEN (AGI) will embark onthe Eastern Classics program inSanta Fe in August. x

What’s Up?The College wants to hear fromyou. Call us, write us, e-mail us.Let your classmates know whatyou’re doing. The next issuewill be published in January;deadline for the alumni notessection is November 1.

In Annapolis:The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; [email protected]

In Santa Fe:The College MagazineSt. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; [email protected]

{ O b i t u a r i e s }

EDWIN LEROY LOTZ, CLASS OF 1931Edwin Lotz, whose skill as a lacrosse play-er at St. John’s during the days of intercol-legiate athletics won him a place in theLacrosse Hall of Fame, died May 25, 2004,at the age of 93. Born in Ellicott City, Md.,Lotz earned his degree from St. John’s in1931. He received the college’s AllgernonSidney Sullivan Award for OutstandingLeadership.

In 1934, Lotz earned a master’s degreefrom Johns Hopkins University, where heconducted research on the effects of electri-cal shock to the heart. His basic discoverieslater led to the development of the defibril-lator. He received his doctorate in electricalengineering from Hopkins in 1938, andwent on to a career in research. He retired in1975 as vice president of research and devel-opment for the Glass Fabrics Company, adivision of Burlington Industries. He heldnumerous patents on the treatment of glass

fabrics. He was a member of the NationalAcademy of Sciences and a fellow in theAmerican Institute of Electrical Engineers.

With his brother Phil, a member of theclass of 1932 who also is in the Hall of Fame,Lotz was among the most accomplished ath-letes in the college’s history. He played foot-ball, boxed, and played baseball. When thebaseball team was disbanded, Ed Lotz andhis brother picked up lacrosse sticks. Lotz

played on threenational champi-onship lacrosseteams (1929, 1930,and 1931) that beatmuch biggerschools, includingHarvard, Yale,Johns Hopkins, andMaryland. He was

named to the All-American Lacrosse Teamin 1930 and in 1931. In 1966 he was inductedinto the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, as “one ofLacrosse’s all-time great defensemen.” TheDecember 1999 issue of Sports Illustratednamed Edwin Lotz one of the top 50 greatest sports figures from the state ofMaryland in the 20th century.

In a letter he wrote to The Reporter in1998, Lotz said that he once believed thathis participation on the St. John’s champi-onship teams and being named to the Hallof Fame would stand as his life’s greatestachievements. “However, something hap-pened to me shortly after my 86th birthdaythat changed all that,” he wrote. Lotzdescribed how in the midst of the GreatDepression, unable to find a job, he decidedto attend graduate school at Hopkins:

“During the research work on my thesis…I discovered the basic principle of electriccountershock as a means to stop the fibrilla-Edwin Lotz


{ O b i t u a r i e s } 41

tion of the heart. Using dogs as subjects, Ifound that a very small electrical shock of 1 milliampere would cause the heart to gointo fibrillation and a countershock 100times stronger would stop the fibrillation.

“This basic discovery in 1934 led to thedevelopment of the defibrillator that is nowused worldwide in all hospitals and doctors’offices to stop fibrillation of the heart, saving many lives every day. About the sizeof a portable typewriter, the defibrillatorsits over in the corner of the room awaitingits turn to save another life.”

It was his life, Lotz noted, that was savedby a defibrillator when his heart stoppedduring the implantation of a pacemaker.“This remarkable story illustrates theimportance of basic research, because younever know where the discovery of new factsor information will lead.”

Lotz and his wife, Kay, had four children. After his wife died in 1991, Lotzlived with his daughter and her family inCharlottesville, Va., until his death.

CALVIN BAUMGARTNER, CLASS OF 1944Calvin Baumgartner, a member of the classof 1944 who survived the sinking of the Merchant Marine ship on which he servedduring World War II, died in May at the age of 90.

Baumgartner was born in BaltimoreCounty, Maryland, and received his firsteducation in a two-room schoolhouse. During high school at Baltimore’s City College, he delivered telegrams for WesternUnion. He attended St. John’s before thewar interrupted his studies.

After the U.S. entered World War II, hejoined the Merchant Marine Army Trans-port Service. In April 1945, he was assignedto the S.S. Black Point, which on May 5,1945, was off the coast of Rhode Island, carrying coal to Boston. A lookout at PointJudith heard an explosion and saw the shipcome to a stop: a German U-Boat torpedoedthe Black Point just eight hours after the U-Boat command was ordered to stopattacks on Allied ships.

The torpedo blew off the last 50 feet ofthe nearly 400-foot ship. Minutes after thelast survivor was rescued, the Black Pointrolled over. Twelve men lost their lives inthe attack; 34 men were saved. Baumgartnerwas the last crew member to be rescued.

A program assembled by his family for acelebration of his life spoke to Baumgart-ner’s enduring pride in his military service.“He felt that World War II was America’sfinest hour and the most outstanding eventof his lifetime. He was so proud of how the

country cametogether and thetroops rallied.”

After the war,Baumgartnerwent on to several differententerprises:

managing an apartment complex, convert-ing coal furnaces to natural gas, and operating a grain hauling company on theChesapeake Bay. With a partner, he hauledgrain from Norfolk to Baltimore until hisbarge, the B.S. Ford, sank in 1960. Baum-gartner retired in 1980 from a job as sta-tionary engineer for the Maryland TrainingSchool for Boys. Baumgartner and his firstwife, Dorothea, had four children. After herdeath, he married Violetta S. Bateman, who died in 1996.

His goal, his family said, was to live to be 90. He celebrated that milestone onApril 22, 2004.

RICHARD “WOODY” WEST, CLASS OF 1961Richard W. West, a long-time Washingtonjournalist, died in May at his home inHagerstown, Md. He was 70.

A high school football star, West wasrecruited to play for the University of Missouri, said Annapolis attorney DarrellHenry, also a member of the class of 1961.West served in the Marines in Thailand andJapan for three years before enrolling in St. John’s in 1957. “We used to kiddinglycall him the ‘Old Marine,’” Henry recalls.“He had both feet firmly on the ground, he was very bright, an excellent manager.He was a good athlete, and a very intelli-gent guy.”

John Pekkanen, class of 1961, shared allhis classes with West for two years. “Hewas five years older than me, and he wasvery much a big brother to me,” he says.“He showed me the ropes of life.”

History, espe-cially the great battles and heroesof the Civil War,and literature wereWest’s great inter-est, and he left St.John’s to complete

a bachelor’s degree in history at AmericanUniversity. His first newspaper jobs were inNebraska, at the Lincoln Star and theOmaha World-Herald.

After moving to Washington in the early1960s, West worked first as a reporter and later as an editorial writer for theWashington Star. When the Star folded in1981, he moved on to the newly foundedWashington Times as an editorial writerand quickly climbed the ranks, becomingmanaging editor in 1983 and later executiveeditor, the newspaper’s chief editorial posi-tion, from 1985 to 1986. West decided tostep down from that stressful positionbecause it consumed all of his time. “NowI’m going to sit on the porch and read, goout and scare a few geese in the winter,” he told the Washington Post in 1986.

Since 1986, West worked part time as theassociate editor for the Times. He edited theweekly Civil War page and served on thecommittee overseeing the Sunday bookpages, choosing books for review andmatching them with reviewers. He was alsoa frequent reviewer himself for the Times,Insight, and the Weekly Standard.

“Woody saw life a little off-center, and Imean that as a compliment,” says Pekka-nen, adding that West encouraged andhelped him when he was starting out injournalism. “He was a skilled and percep-tive writer and a great thinker. He was anewspaper man.”

West is survived by his wife of 43 years,JoAnn Wochos West, of Hagerstown. x

ALSO NOTED:

GEORGE BONIFANT, class of 1939, died inMarch.

CHARLES HYSON, class of 1937, died inMarch.

JOHN LOGUE, class of 1950, died in June.

ALEXANDER MORSE, class of 1945 andSFGI73, died in September 2003.

LESTER H. PALMER, class of 1930, died inFebruary 2004.

ROBERT SNIBBE, CLASS OF 1937, died in June 2004.

WILLIAM JOHN RICHARD THOMAS JR., classof 1935, died in June 2004.

Calvin Baumgartner

Richard West


{ C r o q u e t }42

Cruising to Another Croquet Victory Santa Fe Seniors Join the Party

With The College’sveteran croquet cor-respondent Sus3anBorden (A87) tak-ing on new duties inthe Advancement

office this year, this editor planned to cap-ture the action at the 22nd annual croquetmatch against the NavalAcademy, held on the customary date of the lastSaturday of April. But I wasrecruited for champagne-pouring duty in the Alumnitent, where in an attemptto weed out impostors,would-be imbibers werequizzed on senior essaytopics. (“Um, somethingabout…Homer,” was a typical response.) Thesound of cheering reachedthe alumni tent, but we hada hard time following theaction, like most of theestimated 1,200 spectatorswho crowded onto the campus for a great party on a spectacularly sunnyApril day.

Good thing the press wasthere. The match broughtout the local papers, theAssociated Press corre-spondent, and a shamefullybiased correspondent fromThe Trident, the NavalAcademy’s newspaper, whoagain blamed the loss onthe allegedly rigorousNaval Academy schedule.

The most interestingdevelopment this year wasthe participation of 28Santa Fe students whocame to Annapolis on theirown dime to see for them-selves what croquet fever isall about. Most caught ared-eye flight from SantaFe after seminar Thursday

night, but a couple of determined Johnniesof the West drove all the way to Annapolisand back.

“Most of us had never been to Annapolis,so we wanted to see the campus,” explainedChris Coucheron-Ammot (SF04), whoorganized the outing. Being an honest fellow, Coucheron-Aamot readily acknowl-

edged that the contingent came first “for afabulous party” and second for a show ofsolidarity.

“The senior class in Santa Fe reallybelieved in the ‘one college-two campuses’ideal of St. John’s,” he said. “We don’t feel like there’s a big difference betweenJohnnies in Santa Fe and Johnnies in

Annapolis.”The visitors understood

“parts of the game,” andwere particularly taken bythe contrast in traditionsbetween the rivals, he said.“We liked the way the Midshad Plebes in white jacketscarrying around water bot-tles for them, and Johnnieshad their girlfriends carryingaround bottles of Colt 45.”

Johnnies put their Western classmates up oncouches and floors in theirapartments around town.Sarah Stickney (A04) andJohn Okrent (A04) organ-ized barbecues to feed them.The campus community outWest would welcome anAnnapolis contingent outfor one of its best parties,Oktoberfest.

“We usually bring snowdown from the mountainsbecause it hasn’t snowed on the campus yet, and wehave a snowball fight,” he explained.

Why not include a croquet match in Oktober-fest festivities? “Have youseen our soccer field?”Coucheron-Aamot asked in reply. x

Imperial Wicket Sam Spalding lines up a shot.

by Rosemary Harty


{ C r o q u e t } 43

Clockwise: Johnnies adopted an Army look to intimidate Navy this year. A group of Santa Fe Johnnies enjoy the party; Ronald Fielding (A70)strikes the first ball.

photos by david trozzo

Highlights:Score: Johnnies 4, Mids 1.Record: 18-4.Team: Sam Spalding (A04), imperialwicket; Nicholas Whittier (A05), vice wicket; Ian Morochnick (A04); Kabe Erkenbrack (A04); Justin Berrier(A04); Aurora Cassells (A04); JacksonO’Brien (A04); Nick Garklavs (A04);Riley Ossorgin (A05); John Gerard(A05); Shunji Matsuzawa (A06); andMatt Mangold (A06).

Dramatic moment: Dressed incamouflage outfits, faces smeared withgrease paint, Johnnies emerge fromWoodward Hall to the Top Gun theme.

Ceremonial first ball: Struck by Ron Fielding (A70), a member of the col-lege’s Board of Visitors and Governors.

Press highlights:The Capital: “Tim Kile, a St. John’s junior, wore a straw hat, a sleevelessorange T-shirt and suspenders and heldan acoustic guitar—the ‘wandering cowboy minstrel look.’ ‘I don’t know any-thing about croquet, but my roommatemade ice cream—that’s the best part sofar,’ he said.”The Baltimore Sun: “Before the 1 p.m.start of the 22nd Annapolis Cup, Naval

Academy player Brock Zimmerman gotin some last-minute practice shots. Thefirst-year mid hoped to make a dent in St. John’s series advantage of 17 victoriesto the academy’s 4. ‘I think we have thebest chance to bring one back to Navy ina long time,’ he said.”The Associated Press: “Special attire—much of it harkening back to the dayswhen croquet was played on grandma’slawn while everyone sipped lemonade on sultry days—is popular at the annualcroquet game.

“Elizabeth Durham, a St. John’s jun-ior, was a little more inventive, wearingshimmering gossamer wings and a saari-like cloth draped over her long whitedress. ‘Honestly, I just threw it togetherin 10 minutes,’ she said.” x

44


Paul Cooley (SF90, EC98)and Laura Hunt Cooley(SF92) were married in1996 and live in Santa Fe.Paul is a writer and an at-home dad to Sadie, 4, and

Zebediah, 2. Laura is a librarian at theMeem Library on the Santa Fe campus.

The two have been dedicated bicyclistsfor many years, but last spring they reacheda point of no return: On May 5, 2005, theysold their only car and committed them-selves to getting around by bicycle, bus,and other means. Here’s how they copedwith the first few days of the transition.

May 6Paul: The Saab sold yesterday. We priced itat $4,200 based on its book value, butknew a few things were not working well.The prospective buyer took the car to thedealer, and the cash value of the repairscame to over $2,000. We settled on$3,600, which seemed fair.

Getting rid of the car is not all about themoney, but the money is certainly one ofthe things I focus on. Gas is almost $2 agallon and seems to be going up. Therepairs and constant maintenance are irritating. There was a time when Ifelt extra responsible, changing theoil, rebuilding the engine. But nowit doesn’t seem to be that impor-tant to me—the cost and the wasteof oil and time are not repaid byenjoyment of the vehicle. The costof insurance every six monthsthrew our financial balance off kilter. I cancelled the insurancethis morning. The company issending back $140, and we will notget billed again.

The empty driveway stirs up avariety of emotions. There is some-thing strange about it, in spite ofthe fact we haven’t used the car forover a month. I feel as if I am wait-ing for someone to come home.

The fact the driveway was built specificallyfor cars, and now there is no car there,makes it seem like an unneededappendage. I plan to go out there later inthe morning and do some chalk drawingsor something. I fantasize about building adeck out there or putting out some lawnfurniture.

Laura: We are now officially car-free! We’dbeen thinking about it for a while, but onlygot serious whenever the car needed anexpensive repair. Usually this was in thefall or winter, when it’s harder to get moti-vated to use the bike and bus to get around.I’m extremely sensitive to the cold andhave to bundle up in crazy ways to staywarm in the winter on my bike.

Once we had made the decision to sellthe car we had to figure out an asking pricefor it. To us, it was no longer valuable–wewere through with it. In fact, it felt stupidto sell it because we weren’t stopping itfrom contributing to the sick automobileculture in this country. We ended up selling it to a girl who didn’t already haveanother car, which was a relief.

The kids have started using the drivewayfor their chalk art. We all started writingeach other little messages that we could see

when we swung into the driveway on ourbikes. Today, Paul proudly wrote, “OneLess Car!”

May 7Paul: Today there is a complicated situa-tion with Sadie’s nursery: everyone isgoing over to the big Waldorf school fortheir Maypole and carnival. Laura has anacupuncture appointment in the morning,and I am supposed to help with a commut-ing workshop at the Runnels Building atnoon. One of the changes that we havenoticed now that the car is gone is a grow-ing impatience with other people imposing“running around” on us. It is certainlypossible to make it out to the school, butwe are irritated that we are expected to doso. There are several possibilities: I canbike Sadie and Zeb over, and Laura cancome join them after her appointment; wecan keep Sadie out and do something funwith her; or we can take her car seat over tothe nursery and hope someone will giveSadie a ride there and back. The first twooptions are what we are considering.

With the children doing so well with thebicycles, I am not as worried about feelingtrapped anymore. I don’t know if there willcome a time when they are too big for the

trailer and will not want to bicycleas far on the tandems and triples.We will deal with that when wecome to it. Perhaps we will use thebus more often. Of course thereare always rentals, and I suspectthat we will rent a car a couple oftimes a year. We will probablyneed to in order to get to the air-port for our trip to the beach, ormaybe we can use the Park andRide and spend the night in Albu-querque. I hope we can begin touse the train more often. The air-plane is the only transportation

{ A l u m n i V o i c e s }

One Less Car on the BlockSanta Fe Graduates Go Car-Free

Not having a car means keepingthe driveway free for playing.

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method less fuel-efficient than the privateautomobile.

I hope that we never have to resort tobuying another car.

Laura: At first I felt a bit nervous about not having a car. I didn’t really have anygood reasons—it was just unsettling. Wehad heard, and answered, many of thearguments against getting rid of the caraltogether. What if there’s a medical emergency? Call an ambulance. What ifyou’re in a hurry? It can’t be helped, evenwith a car. What if you want to haul some-thing big and heavy? Get a heavy-duty biketrailer or rent a car for a day. What if youwant to go on a trip? Rent a car, or takepublic transportation, trains, or planes.

I think what was behind most of myunsettled feelings was the big step we hadjust taken outside of mainstream culture.We’re already a little outside mainstreamculture. We don’t own a television, dish-washer, clothes dryer, or microwave, andwe went to St. John’s College. But some-thing about the car seemed so essential to the American identity. And we wereabandoning it.

Now we have to think through each tripto see if it is worth the effort. I like havingto be creative about how we’re going to getplaces. I like the freedom of traveling out-side the main stream of traffic. I like pro-viding a respectable role model for my kids.I’ve even stopped impulse-shopping atthrift stores and yard sales. Now I wait untilthere’s something I really need before I goon a shopping trip.

The other day, Paul expressed exactlyhow I felt about the car. He said he changeshis behavior when he catches himself doingsomething that makes him feel like anidiot. Like using the plastic produce bagsat the market, rather than some of the hun-dreds of bags we have stuffed in a drawer athome. Once he reaches the idiot point, hechanges his behavior. I realized that the carenabled me to do idiotic things—things forwhich I could not summon any self-respect.I was adding to pollution, road rage, theeconomy of cheap plastic crap, and I wasgetting no benefit from it.

May 9Paul: Yesterday, I ordered the Bike FridayFamily Triple bike. I think it is going to bea good bike, but it is costing us quite a bitof money, almost $700 over what wereceived for the car. We are getting the

suitcases and trailer kit, so we will be ableto bike to the train station when we get tothat point in our lives. In the afternoon, webicycled out to Eldorado for a baby shower.I wanted to mention that we sold the car,but I was somewhat uncomfortable, almostapologetic about it. Getting rid of the car isa bold move, but if it works out, it is, in away, an indictment of others’ behavior.And people are apologetic about their owncar use when I talk about getting rid ofours. I suppose that’s a good thing, but Iwouldn’t want to lose any friends over ourdecision.

Laura: Yesterday, Paul ordered us a triplebike. We already own a tandem bike. Paulrides on front and Sadie rides on back.Together they haul Zeb in a bike trailerthat we refer to as “the Chariot.”

We now have nine bikes and one onorder. I have a backup in case mine needsrepair. We own three tandem bikes, two ofwhich we ride a lot. The first one webought has sentimental value (we got it foreach other as an anniversary present). Paulhas three bikes. He’s a collector at heart,but he tries to ride all three. And we have akid trailer and a bike trailer for stuff (notpeople).

Everyone seems to think Santa Fe is nota safe town to bike in, mostly because thereisn’t a good trail system. Personally, I feelsafer on the roads. As long as I follow thetraffic rules and act predictably, I get toflow easily with the traffic. I think Santa Feis a very bikeable town, only seven milesacross, and most rides within city limitscan easily be done in less than an hour.

May 18Paul: It’s been almost two weeks since wesold the car. I am working on a book onbeing car-free, focusing more on thedifficult-to-describe social impacts of thereliance on automobiles. Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity contains many of theideas I would like to focus on and which Iam still struggling to understand. Hespeaks of the growth of time and spacescarcity as vehicles begin to pass 15 milesper hour. He also points out that our freedom to travel is restricted by industryonce we begin to rely on motor vehiclesand transportation engineers for ourmeans to get from one place to another. We make a fundamental shift from travel-ers to consumers of transportation. Hasthe ability of our intellect to wander overvast and shifting fields of imagination been influenced by the restriction of ourphysical wandering to well-laid roads andclear destinations?

Behrman’s The Man Who Loved Bicyclescaptures some of the spirit of what I wouldlike to say. How can I express the freedom Ifeel at not being restricted to driving whenso many people would look at the samething as a deprivation? We do have morefriends taking to their bicycles, if only forshort rides.

Laura: We just got back from an overnightcamping trip to Hyde Park. I never thoughtI’d spend three hours riding up, haulingkids and camping gear. It’s amazing to seehow my perspective is changing. It’s veryempowering to know that we can take ourfamily on a self-supported bike tour–evenone that includes mountains.

Lately, we’ve found ourselves drawn tobike activist meetings, trying to get morerights for bicyclists in our city. If we don’tdo it, who will?

Paul’s wondering again what to do withthe driveway. He’s mentioned digging upthe concrete and putting in a garden. He’s talked about putting in a bike shed for storage, or a bike rack to encourage visitors to bike over. But for now, I’menjoying the new open space and the satisfaction of one less car on the block. x

{ A l u m n i V o i c e s }

The Cooleys found a better use for theirgarage.

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{ A l u m n i A s s o c i a t i o n N e w s }

Dear Alumni,

Exciting thingsare happeningwith the AlumniAssociation andfor alumniaround theworld! Here is aquick update onwhat’s happeningin your Association these days.

It was great to spend time with friendsold and new at Homecoming in Santa Fethe beginning of July. It is always intrigu-ing to make connections with others whoshare the passion for books and talk and tosee where their paths have led them sincethey left the college. Consider joining usnext year to enjoy seminar, sun, and

sunsets that grace the campus! Though Iwasn’t able to attend the Summer AlumniPrograms this year, I understand that theywere stimulating and satisfying. Art,music, philosophy, and fun—what more can one ask?

The annual Alumni Art Fair was a ragingsuccess thanks to Santa Fe staff memberMaggie Magalnick and Liz Jenny (SF80).The range and quality of the work wereamazing. As a bonus for alumni, the college hosted a special breakfast for theartists with a presentation by an art con-sultant about how to build and maintaintheir passion for art as a business.

We are planning again this year to host a picnic and reception for incoming fresh-men in Santa Fe in August. We introducedthis event last year. It welcomes new students into the SJC community, giveslocal alumni an opportunity to meet newalumni-to-be, and begins the bond-build-ing process that is part of every Johnnie’sexperience.

Another new event was added to thealumni calendar last year when seniors onthe Santa Fe campus invited alumni to jointhem for Fasching Ball. For you Easterners,

this is a celebration that takes place in Feb-ruary. Istvan Fehevary, long-time friendand director of the Student Activities officein Santa Fe, brought this tradition to thecollege from his native Hungary. The partygave another opportunity for students andalumni to get to know each other, practicetheir dancing prowess, and raise a glass infarewell to the long days of February.

Of course the Alumni Association Boardcontinues to pursue the more serious andbusiness-like aspects of our work. We’reupdating our operating resolutions toreflect changes in technology, policy, andpractice. We recognize members of thecommunity with prizes and awards. Weselect members for work on the Board ofVisitors and Governors, and we explorenew and interesting ways to help alumnistay connected to each other and to the college.

If you have suggestions, questions, orrequests, please feel free to give me a callor drop me an email. Until then . . . see youat seminar!

Glenda Eoyang

46

From the AlumniAssociation President

Association Honors Three atHomecomingA New Mexico educator who brought theSocratic method of teaching to many schoolswas honored with an Award of Merit, and aretired faculty member and staff member inSanta Fe joined the ranks of HonoraryAlumni during Homecoming 2004.

Michael Strong (SF84) received his meritaward during the Homecoming banquet July3. Strong is the author of The Habit ofThought: From Socratic Seminars to SocraticPractice, the definitive account of how toimplement Paedeia, a teaching approachemphasizing Socratic questioning, academiccoaching,and interactive learning.

Strong is the former director of MorenoValley High School in Angel Fire, N.M., a charter school. Over the years, he hasworked as a Paideia/Socratic Seminar consultant for dozens of schools and organi-zations. He has worked with the Alaska

Paideia Project, and served as the directorfor the Center for Socratic Practice at theJudson Montessori School in San Antonio,Texas, as the founding headmaster of TheWinston Academy in Fort Lauderdale, andas the founding director of Middle SchoolPrograms for the Early Learning Institute inPalo Alto, Calif. He attended Harvard Uni-versity in addition to St. John’s College andearned his master’s degree in SocialThought from the University of Chicago.

Glenn Freitas, who retired in 2003,touched the lives of many members of the St. John’s College community in his 34 yearsof service to the college.

Freitas attended St. Mary’s College in California and received his undergraduatedegree in classical languages, a Th.L. in theology from Laval Universite in Quebec,and another licentiate in sacred scripturefrom The French Biblical and Archaeologi-cal School of Jerusalem.

Ginger Roherty, who recently retired asdirector of the Annual Fund in Santa Fe, wasa devoted member of the St. John’s Collegecommunity from 1989-2004, one noted forher warmth, energy, and skill. She shep-herded the Library and Fine Arts Guild intoa healthy membership, with more than 400 participants. She also nurtured thegrowth of the Philos Society and its seminarprogram, “Inviting Conversations.” x

Merit award recipient Michael Strong(SF84) has devoted his career to bringing the Socratic method to education.

{ A l u m n i A s s o c i a t i o n N e w s }

Passion for Proustby Kevin R. Johnson (A93)

At a bookstore, I saw a posting for a readinggroup. This gave me a romantic idea. If I putup a posting to read all of Proust’s In Searchof Lost Time, perhaps I could find a mate. Inever carried out this absurd plan, but itwould sometimes haunt me. And so, whenJason Bielagus (SF98) proposed that ourlocal alumni should create a group to readthe magnum opus, it seemed fate was knock-ing at my door. I was more than eager toanswer. Little did I know that one of Proust’scentral objectives was a comprehensive critique of the romantic imagination.

The pace that Jason set for the readingswas harrowing. He wisely considered theimportance of finishing before we had forgot-ten the beginning, and relentlessly held us toour schedule. We had to find time to read several hundred pages of dense prose everythree weeks. Casualties were heavy for eventhe second and third seminars. By the end ofthe second volume (of six, in my edition), wewere left with a hardy band whose passion forProust alone could have given the stamina towithstand the pace of our schedule.

None of them were single contemporaries,and Proust was delivering devastating blowsto my romantic sensibility. My hopes hadbeen dashed completely. Or had they? Onthe train one morning, I looked across to seean attractive woman who was also readingProust. It turned out that she was leading adiscussion of the first volume at the BostonAthenaeum, a private library of which I am a member. Unfortunately, none of these synchronicities could outweigh her sour personality, which became apparent all tooquickly. Now, even my resurrected hope hadbeen dashed to the ground.

I attended the Athenaeum discussion, butit only served to give me greater gratitude for the company of my fellow alums on myjourney through Proust. These were peoplewho knew how to talk about books. The fel-lowship of these companions proved to bejust as enriching as the book itself. Throughour dialogue about Proust, we came to knoweach other well, and I think dearly. And, ofcourse, we came to know Proust very well andvery dearly.

We emerged from the seminars as differentpeople. We had absorbed to some extent theworld that a great genius had created andlived. New images and themes had woventhemselves into the tapestry of our innerlives. My own romantic life would never be asinnocent as before; I would suffer less as aconsequence. The time had been well spent,but it was lost. Writing this has won backsome of the experience from the shady realmof oblivion. If I ever read Proust again, these10 months of my life will be evoked and liveagain. Proust’s memories had become mine,and a time in my life will forever be linkedwith In Search of Lost Time. x

ALBUQUERQUEBob & Vicki Morgan505-275-9012

ANNAPOLISBeth Martin Gammon410-280-0958

AUSTINJohn Strange210-392-5506Bev Angel512-926-7808

BALTIMOREDeborah Cohen410-472-9158

BOSTONGinger Kenney617-964-4794

CHICAGOAmanda Richards847-705-1143

DALLAS/FORTWORTHSuzanne Lexy Bartlette817-721-9112

DENVER/BOULDERLee Goldstein720-746-1496

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAULCarol Freeman612-822-3216

NEW YORKDaniel Van Doren914-949-6811

NORTHERN CALIF.Suzanne Vito510-527-4309

PHILADELPHIABart Kaplan215-465-0244

PITTSBURGHJoanne Murray724-325-4151

PORTLANDDale Mortimer360-882-9058

SAN DIEGOStephanie Rico619-423-4972

SANTA FERichard Cowles505-986-1814

SEATTLEAmina Brandt206-465-7781

SOUTHERNCALIFORNIAElizabeth Eastman562-426-1934

TRIANGLE CIRCLE(NC)Susan Eversole919-968-4856

WASHINGTON, D.C.Jean Dickason301-699-6207

WESTERN NEW ENGLANDJulia Ward413-648-0064

ISRAELEmi Geiger Leslau15 Aminadav StreetJerusalem [email protected]

ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONAll alumni have automatic membership in theSt. John’s College Alumni Association. TheAlumni Association is an independent organiza-tion, with a Board of Directors elected by andfrom the alumni body. The Board meets fourtimes a year, twice on each campus, to plan pro-grams and coordinate the affairs of the Associa-tion. This newsletter within The College maga-zine is sponsored by the Alumni Associationand communicates Alumni Association newsand events of interest.

President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair –Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76

Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.


47

CHAPTER CONTACTSCall the alumni listed below for informationabout chapter, reading group, or other alumniactivities in each area.

The intrepid members of the Proust Reading Group began their journey onFebruary 17 2003, and, meeting once ortwice a month, completed their discussionsof the work on December 14, 2003. Theymet in January 2004 to view and discussTime Regained, a film based on the finalinstallment of Proust’s masterpiece.

“Johnnies are attracted to Proust notonly because of what he talks about, hischoice of themes and books, but alsobecause of the way he talks,” says JasonBielagus(SF98). “Proust states the Johnnieappetite for articulating ideas. Proust’s language is superlatively articulate and

precise. There is little that is vague andambiguous. A common seminar question issomething along the lines of, ‘Could youclarify that?’ or ‘What do you mean bythat?’ Proust obviates those questions; he anticipates them and addresses themwithout needing to be asked.”

Bielagus had tried to read the work onhis own, but “there was too much to keepup with. In the group, each person natural-ly gravitated to one theme, so when wemet, each could share his observations onthe theme he tended to follow. Our discus-sions were like culling the fruit of severalreads of the text.”


{ S t . J o h n ’ s F o r e v e r }48

An AccidentalArchitect

One of the most importantmen in the modern historyof St. John’s College wasalso one of the preeminentfigure of 20th-centuryarchitecture.

John Gaw Meem was born to missionaryparents in Brazil, earned an engineeringdegree at Virginia Military Institute, thenwent to New York to work for his uncle’sconstruction company. After World War I,during which he served as an army captain,Meem choose a career in internationalbanking. He had just begun a new job whenhe developed tuberculosis, and to regainhis health, went to the Sunmount Sanatori-um in Santa Fe. His interest in architectureand the culture of the Southwest was

kindled during the five years he spent atthe sanatorium, and after he recovered, he took a job with the Denver architecturefirm of Fisher & Fisher. From 1924—whenhe designed a home for a fellow patient atthe sanatorium—until his retirement in1959, Meem was one of the most influen-tial architects of the West. He was creditedwith creating the Territorial Revival style of architecture. In addition to his professional accomplishments, he was acivic leader in Santa Fe and a major figurein the preservation of the city’s historicarchitecture.

The idea for an expansion campus of St. John’s initially came from a citizens’group in Monterey, Calif., but though theinterest was there, the funding was not. In 1960, then-president Richard Weiglewas corresponding with California backerswhen a group of Santa Fe citizens cameforward to make their bid for the college.Meem and his wife, Faith, donated

225 acres northeast of their home for the college. Meem later assisted with hissuccessor firm, Holien & Buckley, on the design of the college.

In Facing Southwest: The Life and Houses of John Gaw Meem, the architect is described as someone that any Johnniewould welcome at the seminar table:“Meem knew how to ask questions andthen be quiet and listen, how to identifycommon interests, and how to allow imaginations and enthusiasms to mingle.”

In 1990, the college named its newlycompleted library in Santa Fe for Faith andJohn Gaw Meem. x

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John Gaw Meem (left), shown with then-president Richard Weigle and shakinghands with former assistant to the president William Hooton, was a found-ing benefactor of the Santa Fe campus.His gift of 225 acres of land made thefounding of the campus possible.


{ A l u m n i E v e n t s C a l e n d a r }

Santa Fe

Whitewater Rafting TripJune (details on date and location pend-ing)

Homecoming 2005Friday July 1-Sunday July 3, 2005Join the classes of: 1970, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95,and 2000, celebrating their reunions, atSanta Fe this summer.

Summer Alumni Program July 4-8A special Eastern Classics Alumni Seminarweek will be offered with two additionalseminars.

Annapolis

Third Annual Alumni/Student Networking ReceptionSunday, November 21, 4-7 pm.

Check the Alumni section of the Web site forupdated calendar information.

Alumni Art Show A Success

This year’s Alumni Art Show featuredpaintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, jewelry, video, textiles, andglasswork from 22 Santa Fe and Annapolisalumni. Opening over Homecoming Weekend July 3, the show was on display inthe college’s Fine Arts Gallery throughAugust 30. In addition this year, the Alumni Association Board’s Events ActionTeam sponsored a breakfast and meetingfor alumni artists seeking some guidance in

turning their art into a business. GeoffreyGorman, from Advisory Services forArtists, offered a presentation on how toput together a professional portfolio andhow to approach commercial galleries.

Interested in including your work in nextyear’s show? Contact Maggie Magalnick inSanta Fe: [email protected]

Clockwise top: PARALLEL UNIVERSE, by Betsy Williams, SF87; REDUCTION, by Donna LoraineContractor, SF82; SILVER BARK BROOCH, by Nancy Kahn DeMulder, SF80.

Back cover: Photo by Peter Howard, 1998

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