the college magazine winter 2003

The

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

w i n t e r 2 0 0 3College

TheWifeof Bath

R e f l e c t i o n s o nC h a u c e r’ s P i l g r i m a n dM o d e r n M a r r i a g e

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

St. John’s College, Annapolis, MDand Santa Fe, NM.

Known office of publication:Communications Office

St. John’s CollegeBox 2800

Annapolis, md 21404-2800

Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, md

postmaster: Send addresschanges to The College

Magazine, CommunicationsOffice, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md

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Annapolis410-626-2539

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Rosemary Harty, editorSus3an Borden, managing editor

Susanne Ducker, 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

[email protected]

Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor

Advisory BoardDavid Levine

Ginger RohertyTahmina Shalizi

Mark St. John

Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design

O n t h e W i f e o f B a t h

It’s easy to imagine the Wife of Bath among the guests on the Jerry SpringerShow. The screen caption: “I was a lusty oon!” Unapologetic about herappetites and seductive wiles, the oft-wed Wife would acknowledge that shemarried older men for their money and was on the prowl for a man half herage while burying her fourth husband. And—would Dr. Phil buy this?—sheblames her nature on astrology: “I followed my inclinacion/by vertu of myconstellacion.”

Several of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales share their observa-tions on the matrimonial state, but none with the candor and outrageous goodhumor of the Wife of Bath. Her lengthy, spirited prologue suggests the poet himselfhad great fun with this pilgrim. Using her voice, he delivers wisdom he had acquiredfrom Ptolemy, Seneca, and Ovid, among others. In this edition of The College, man-aging editor Sus3an Borden revisited the Wife of Bath’s commentary on marriagewith five Johnnie couples, covering everything from fighting fair to what becomes oftwo sets of Program books.

From a host of official documents, much is known about Chaucer’s public life, butdetails on his personal life are sketchy. He was born in London around 1340, the son ofa successful wine merchant. He was lucky to survive the bubonic plague as it ragedthrough the city during his youth. He gained a post as a page in the household of theCountess of Ulster. Here Chaucer gained knowledge of Latin, French, and literature,though it’s unclear what formal education he received. He traveled to Spain and Franceon diplomatic missions and served in the war with France.

Chaucer’s wife, Philippa, also served in the royal court. Biographers differ onwhether this marriage was a happy one, but there’s nothing to suggest Chaucer suf-fered at the hands of a shrewish wife. The couple had at least two children. Pensions,various annuities including free wine, and plum positions as a customs official, andlater, the king’s clerk of works provided Chaucer with social standing and a comfort-able lifestyle—along with the freedom to pursue poetry.

Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales the year Phillipa died, 1387, and ofcourse, never completed it. He died on October 25, 1400. Because of his service tothe crown, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and later was moved to the east aisleof the south transept, becoming the first tenant of Poet’s Corner.

A brief aside: The introduction of a great books character, instead of an author, toour magazine’s cover startled our designer, Claude Skelton, who put Aristotle on thefirst cover of The College. The selection delighted artist David Johnson, who said hehad great fun drawing the Wife of Bath.

Alert readers will also notice another change: The College has a new editor. Restassured that founding editor Barbara Goyette (A73), now vice president for advance-ment in Annapolis, will continue to offer a guiding hand and good advice in our questto offer a lively and thoughtful publication.–RH

{ C o n t e n t s }

CollegeThe w i n t e r 2 0 0 3V o l u m e 2 9 , i s s u e 1

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 14Fruitful PursuitsAlumni involved in various aspects of thewine industry explain why they’re sotaken with wine.

p a g e 20Johnnies on MarriageThe Wife of Bath had strong opinions onmarriage; alumni who married fellowJohnnies reflect on her wit and wisdom.

p a g e 24Engaged in DiscoveryCurtis Wilson is still on a quest to learnall he can about early astronomers.

p a g e 44Dance of the MusesExploring the poetry of Homer andAeschylus through dance.

d e p a r t m e n t s

2 from the bell towers• Modernist Architecture and Mellon Hall• American Orpheus• Graduate Institute Student Gets Johnnies

on Board• Science at St. John’s Makes the Top Ten• Animal Tales from Santa Fe• Studying Conifers in the Mountains• Santa Fe’s New Advancement Chief• Announcements• Philanthropia• Letters

12 alumni voices27 homecoming30 bibliofile• Peter Pesic’s New Book on Physics• Alumni Books

32 alumni notesA L U M N I P R O F I L E S

33 Peter Ellison (A73) finds new challengesas a Harvard dean.

34 Environmental lawyer and tutor MarthaFranks (SF78) brings idealism and a prac-tical approach to the water rights issue.

38 Jonathan Aurthur (A68) searches foranswers to his son’s suicide in The Angeland the Dragon.

42 Ben Frey (A02) finds art in bookbinding

40 obituaries46 alumni association news48 st. john’s forever

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o n t h e c o v e r

Wife of Bath Illustration by David Johnson

{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }

The NeutraChroniclesThe story behindMellon Hall in AnnapolisAustrian-born architectRichard Neutra made his markin modernist architecture insunny California with simplestructures featuring flat roofs,expansive glass walls, and inte-riors open to verdant hillsidesor colorful desert views. Neutrawas particularly known forblurring the lines between theexterior and interior, believingthat architects should “placeman in Nature…where hedeveloped and where he feelsmost at home.”

How did St. John’s College,its landmark building a 200-year-old Georgian mansion,decide on Richard Neutra asarchitect for its new campusbuilding in the mid-1950’s? Acampus plan already called fora quasi-colonial building. Cor-respondence between thefamed architect and then-presi-dent Richard Weigle yieldedevidence for part of the story ofMellon Hall. Along with hun-dreds of documents on minuti-ae such as carpet color and thefabric for the stage curtains inFrancis Scott Key Auditorium,the letters show Weigle admiredNeutra, and suggest that hehoped to gain distinction forthe college by selecting acelebrity architect.

Neutra made the cover of the August 15, 1949, Timemagazine, the headline asking,“What will the neighborsthink?” The story, includedwith a set of press clippingskept in the files, detailed Neu-tra’s success and described himas second “only to the lordlyFrank Lloyd Wright.” (Wrightby this time had distanced him-self from Neutra, refusing toallow his designs to be included

in an exhibit alongside those ofhis former protégé.) It’s likelythat something in Neutra’srhetoric resonated with theideals of the Program, not yettwo decades old. A yellowedclipping in one file includes aNeutra quote that must haveseemed particularly cogent: “Aschool,” says Neutra, “is essen-tially a container out of whichorganic life can bloom.”

Philosophy aside, Neutra’sprominence must have appealedto a college still struggling toboost enrollment from 220 to300 and still managing limitedresources. The architect was atthe peak of his popularity whenhe came to St. John’s to give alecture at the same time thecollege was forging ahead withits building plans. Paul Mel-lon’s Old Dominion Founda-tion came through with $1.5million of the estimated $2.1million project cost. (The phi-

lanthropist Mellon was briefly amember of the class of 1944.)Neutra’s fame could only helpto shine the light on this smallcollege.

The files reflect Neutra’spersonal commitments to a relatively small and obscureproject; he didn’t just loan hisfamous name to the design.While Neutra’s partner,Robert Alexander, handledmany of the project’s details,Neutra made several trips toAnnapolis to oversee construc-tion and corresponded closelywith Weigle. His letters—somein his bold, slanting script—reflect that he considered him-self as much a philosopher asan architect, and that the NewProgram at St. John’s intriguedhim. Neutra accepted the jobfor considerably less than hisregular fee (though not as lowas Weigle had tried to bargainfor, one letter shows). The

contract was signed on April15, 1955.

The familiarity between thetwo Richards, and betweenWeigle’s wife, Mary, and Neu-tra’s wife, Dionne, grew overthe years, as reflected in hand-written notes from Pakistanand postcards from Rio. Theletters and notes are all writtenin the graciously charmingrhetoric of a time gone by. Neu-tra once loaned Weigle his carwhen the president made abusiness trip to California in1959: “I quite fell in love withthat little Nash,” he wrote toNeutra. In 1957, Neutra—whoat one time offered to raisemoney for the college’splanned California campus—thanked the Weigles for aChristmas gift: “Smoked tunais one of my great favorites!”

Apparently, Weigle’s publicrelations goals for the buildingwere successful. President

{ F r o m t h e B e l l T o w e r s }2

Last September, the College unveiled a greatly improved Mellon Hall. the $12.9 million renova-tion undertaken in April 2001 added new space, upgraded and improved mechanical systems andgenerally produced a more pleasant and functional building. A new wing of the building houses a pottery studio, a darkroom, and the Hodson Trust Conference Room (shown above). A solariumcafé honors Neutra’s vision of uniting interior spaces with nature. A red tile floor installedthroughout the building brightens long, unbroken corridors. A new environmentally friendlycooling system—geared to operate at off-peak hours—circulates cool air during the day. FrancisScott Key Auditorium has new heating and air-conditioning systems, enhanced theater lightingand sound, refurbished seating, new fire suppression systems, and improved lobby space. Sciencelabs were renovated and upgraded.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower attend-ed dedication ceremonies forthe building in 1959, attractinga great deal of media attention.The building was also includedin a Newsweek feature on dis-tinctive new campus buildings,along with a project at Yale.

Before and after the buildingwas occupied, flaws came tolight: The roof leaked. Adhe-sive oozed from between floortiles. The reflecting pool—sucha successful element in so manyNeutra projects—couldn’t holdwater. The solar louversdesigned to save energytrapped pigeons and neverworked properly.

Walking an architecture crit-ic through the building lastSeptember, Ziger/Snead archi-tect Joseph Celucci, who head-ed up the recent renovation,

explained that a tight construc-tion budget in the 1950s wasone factor in the building’sshortcomings; later renova-tions, including the $12.9 mil-lion expansion and renovationcompleted this fall, corrected

flaws that might have beenavoided had the project beenadequately funded from theoutset.

Nevertheless, St. John’s stillpossesses an architectural jewel:one of the last remaining Neutrabuildings on the East Coast, anambitious design that tried tostrike a balance between theupper and lower campuses,between old and new, simpleand ornate. And Mellon Hall,Celucci added, really is a goodNeutra building. It exemplifiedwhat the architect did best, andfor the most part, remained trueto his ideals. Stand in the lobbyof the Francis Scott Key audito-rium, and it’s easy to imaginewhat Neutra had in mind.

In a letter to the editor ofArchitectural Record, datedJuly 1959, Neutra wrote of his

goals for the building andcompared St. John’s to thegreat universities of Europe.St. John’s, he said, wouldendure as they have: “There isa great stimulation—I almostsaid a thrill—to meet [the]most advanced thinkers of ourage in old, long-lived universi-ties and see them teach mod-ern science way beyond thehorizon of former centuries,right in halls and buildingswhich have been built in thosenow long bygone days. Thefaculty of St. John’s inAnnapolis has this fascinatingcapacity of Time-binding, andfrom the start we have amongourselves discussed and triedto grasp and express this faithin values that last beyond his-toric and modish realities.” x

—by Rosemary Harty

Richard Neutra

American OrpheusMonteverdi’s Orfeo was performed on January 31 and February 1, 1959, in celebration of the opening of Francis Scott KeyAuditorium and Mellon Hall. As we celebrate the building’s recent-ly completed renovation, ADAM PINSKER (class of 1952) tells thestory behind the college’s decision to stage the opera.

I was studying at the Stuttgart Conservatory on the G.I. bill whenMellon Hall first opened in 1958. [Musician and tutor] VictorZuckerkandl wrote me to say he had been approached by [then-president] Dick Weigle, who had told him that Paul Mellon wasplanning to give the school $30,000 to do something “reallygrand” for the opening.

Weigle asked Vicki if he had any ideas and Vicki said yes, he hada wonderful idea. He had just learned that the first great operaever written, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, had never had a stage produc-tion in the U.S.

“How would that be appropriate, Dr. Zukerkandl?” askedWeigle.

“Well,” Vicki said, “Wasn’t Francis Scott Key the AmericanOrpheus?”

Vicki told me that Weigle looked dubious and said he wouldthink about it. He asked if I had any other ideas for the openingbecause he feared that Weigle wouldn’t buy the “AmericanOrpheus” connection. I wrote back to say that I did. I had justlearned about the following astonishing chain of circumstances:

Lorenzo da Ponte was born just outside of Venice in the middleof the 18th century to a Jewish family. His mother died when hewas young and his father remarried a Christian woman. The wholefamily was converted to Catholicism. Da Ponte went to seminary,became a priest, and went on to have a very colorful life.

He moved to Vienna where he was the official composer to oneof the imperial theaters, writing a number of libretti for operas

including Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosifan Tutte.

Da Ponte fell in love with an English contralto and married her.They fled the Holy Roman Empire to England where he producedopera for about 20 years, then moved to the U.S. in the early 19thcentury. Da Ponte first had a grocery store in Philadelphia, then inElizabeth, N.J., where one of his customers was William Livingston,the son of a prominent American family.

William Livingston became fascinated by Da Ponte and had himappointed the first professor of Italian literature in the U.S., atColumbia College. Da Ponte took a house in Manhattan andNathaniel Sickles, the son of a well-known New York family,moved in with the Da Pontes and was tutored by Lorenzo’s son, aprofessor at the school that was to become N.Y.U.

Sickles became very friendly with Lorenzo and fell in love withhis step-granddaughter (who was generally believed to be his realgranddaughter). Around 1840, they married. Sickles became aNew York state assemblyman and was eventually elected to Con-gress.

Sickles and his wife moved to Washington and his wife began avery public affair with St. John’s alumnus Philip Barton Key (classof 1822), who was the district attorney of the District of Columbia,as his father, Francis Scott Key (SJC class of 1796), had been. Sick-les became enraged by the affair, followed Key to Lafayette Square,and shot him dead.

“So Vicki,” I said, “any one of the Da Ponte libretti, particularlyCosi fan Tutte, would be appropriate for the opening.”

Vicki was delighted by the story, but as it turned out, an alter-nate plan for a suitable opening production was not necessary.The previous Sunday he and some old friends from Austria hadvisited Fort McHenry. They spent the day walking all around thebattlements. As they were leaving, they passed a large bronze stat-ue of Francis Scott Key. Engraved on the marble plinth were thewords: “Francis Scott Key, the American Orpheus.” x

4



Johnnies On board

“Sail like Odysseus, withouthaving to be tied to themast!” So went the siren callfor recruits to the newlyformed Johnnie Sailing Club,the inspiration of JohnBergquist, a Graduate Insti-tute student with an Alberg30-foot sailboat and a job as anaval architect in Annapolis.Bergquist placed posters forthe new club all over campus,offering students sailing les-sons, a chance to join the rac-ing team, or simply the oppor-tunity to get out on the waterfor those disinclined to jointhe crew club. So far, about 40undergraduate and graduatestudents have signed on.

Bergquist is a naval archi-tect with a bachelor’s in navalarchitecture and master’s inmarine technology, and hiswork has included program-ming for tanker performancetesting, industrial fabrication,and service on commercialvessels. He arrived at theGraduate Institute last fall insearch of personal enrich-ment.

“I graduated with a glori-fied trade school education,”he says. “It was very practical,but I had maybe two classes inthe liberal arts.”

Bergquist found a way tomerge liberal arts and sailingin the Johnnie Sailing Club,begun last spring when heacquired a boat named Cal-liope (the muse invoked in theOdyssey and the Aeneid). LastJuly, Bergquist and some fel-low students started to takepart in Annapolis’ famed

Wednesday night boat raceson his boat, and Bergquisthopes to have some studentshardy enough to participate inthe Annapolis Yacht Club’swinter frostbite series.

In the Johnnie way, it was-n’t enough just to take stu-dents racing and cruising;Bergquist also offered a seriesof Wednesday evening classeson sailing and seamanship,covering topics such as thephysics of sailing, racing tac-tics, and navigation. “He hasa wonderful understanding offluid dynamics, both aero andhydro,” says sophomoreChristopher Muscarella. “Itadds a component more thanmere boat handling and adds a

depth of understanding thatmany sailors lack.”

Bergquist’s yacht is a greataddition to the water sportsprogram, says athletic direc-tor Leo Pickens. “Our boatsaren’t really rigged out withall the bells and whistles forracing,” Pickens says.

Ultimately, the new cluboffers a way to leave Hegel orHeidegger behind for a fewhours on the Chesapeake.

“Sailing is a form ofescapism,” says Muscarella.“In Santa Fe, they have moun-tains. In Annapolis, we havethe water.” x

–Beth Schulman

We Do ThatMany at St. John’s clipped afull-page article from the Sep-tember 24 New York Times science section and crowedabout it in that self-satisfiedtone of people who love to beproven right.

That’s because the articleon the “10 Most Beautiful Sci-ence Experiments of AllTime” featured seven that areperformed regularly in thecollege’s laboratory program.State University of New York-Stony Brook Professor RobertP. Crease, also the historian atBrookhaven National Labora-tory, asked physicists to nomi-nate the most beautiful exper-iments of all time and wroteabout the results for PhysicsWorld.

The simple experimentswere chosen, according to the Times, on “beauty in theclassical sense: the logicalsimplicity of the apparatus,like the logical simplicity ofthe analysis, seems asinevitable and pure as thelines of a Greek monument.Confusion and ambiguity aremomentarily swept aside, andsomething new about naturebecomes clear.”

The experiments on the listthat students on both campus-es regularly perform are:Galileo’s experiment onfalling objects; Young’s lightinterference experiment; Millikan’s oil-drop experi-ment; Newton’s decomposi-tion of sunlight with a prism;Galileo’s experiments withrolling balls down inclinedplanes; Rutherford’s discov-ery of the nucleus; andYoung’s double-slit experi-ment applied (by Planck andEinstein) to the interferenceof single neutrons. x

Heeding the siren’s call onCollege Creek.

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A Graduate Institute student brings serious sailing to St. John’s.

5



A Duck’sTaleCourage and perseverance inthe face of hardship andtragedy pay off. A recentblessed event on the Santa Fecampus proves it. But firstsome background: In thespring of 1999 some fecklessfolk gave their kids two babyducks for Easter and were sur-prised to see them grow. Notwishing to deal with thesemessy but harmless critters,they traumatized their childrenby handing the ducks over tothe Santa Fe animal shelter—which does its best to save any-thing but is not well equippedto deal with waterfowl. Most ofthe offers to give them“homes” were motivated byvisions of duck à l’orange.What were the animal protec-tors to do?

Betsy Starr (née Hamilton,SF88), protector of God’s moreinnocent creatures, was work-ing for the shelter at the timeand brought them home. Mr.

Starr, tutor and clandestinefriend of animals, built them afenced yard behind the casitaon the south corner of lowercampus. The ducks proved tobe a male and a female(Ambrose—later renamed Utkafor theological reasons—andBlossom).

That fall, tragedy struck.Their prefab igloo was notsecure against predators, andBlossom fell prey to a raccoonout for a midnight snack. Res-cued by Mrs. Starr from hiswife’s fate, Utka was given aplywood fortress and savedfrom loneliness by the arrivalof the beautiful orange Peach.

Thus these ducks began twoyears of persistent procreativeendeavor. The broody Ms. Peachproduced nearly an egg a dayfrom April to October in 2000.Realizing that Peach was long-ing for a full nest, Mr. Starrrearranged the fowl apartmentto accommodate egg-sitting,and for the next year and a halfPeach produced what is called a“clutch” of eight to twelve eggsevery couple of months and saton them until they started tosmell bad. The two nestingducks had a fertility problem,and the Starrs, partly relievedand partly sorry, resigned

themselves to using the unfer-tile eggs for pisyanki,omelettes, and the like. Therelief was short-lived. Afteranother barren summer, whilethe Starrs were on vacation,Peach valiantly producedanother clutch with her atten-tive partner’s more efficacioushelp. Upon return the Starrsnoted that brooding was againin process. Expecting morereproductive disappointmentfor the poor ducks, they decid-ed to leave them to their brave-ly fruitless work.

Sunday morning, September1, 2002, Mrs. Starr went out tofeed Utka and Peach, and heardunfamiliar peeping sounds.Investigating the mystery, shefound a new-hatched ducklingemerging from an egg, andsome tiny siblings already mov-ing about the nest. From thefirst week, during which thefour baby ducks could (and did)all swim together in a littlewater dish, they have in sixshort weeks grown into veryfine, stalwart adolescence.Apricot, Posey, Gwyneth, andLance (as they are tentativelycalled) are doing fine, and theirproud parents seem verypleased. x

—David Starr, tutor, Santa Fe

AllanbrookHonored

The Cultural Arts Foundationof Anne Arundel Countyselected Tutor Emeritus Douglas Allanbrook as one of the recipients of an“Annie” award for lifetimeachievement. The honor rec-ognizes individuals who havemade significant contribu-tions to the cultural life ofAnnapolis and Anne ArundelCounty.

A renowned composer and harpsichordist, Allan-brook joined St. John’s in1952. In November, the col-lege celebrated his 50 years at St. John’s with a recital ofhis works and a reception.Allanbrook continues toteach French at the college.He is an active member of theboard at Yaddo, an artists’residential community inSaratoga Springs, N.Y., and amember of the advisory boardfor the Great Books of West-ern Civilization program ofthe Encyclopedia Britannica.Allanbrook is at work on anovel and his sixth stringquartet. x

The unexpected ducklings and their parents.

6



Not long after graduating fromlaw school at Duke University,Brett Heavner (A89) noticedthat something was missing inhis life. That something, hesays, was a mailbox full of fund-raising letters from St. John’sCollege.

“My law school contacted meall the time, so I was surprisedthat I was not pressured in thesame way by St. John’s to give. Istarted to feel that it would be agood idea to help educatealumni about the needs of thecollege.”

Today, Heavner is in a posi-tion to do just that as chair ofPhilanthropia, the alumniorganization dedicated toalumni fund raising. A majorpart of the group’s efforts isdevoted to educating alumniabout the needs and financialworkings of St. John’s.

Heavner’s first involvementwith Philanthropia was in 1998,when he was asked to attend abrainstorming session for therelatively new group. (Philan-thropia started in 1997.) Hequickly signed on as reunionclass leader for the class of ’89,then chair of the reunion classleader committee, and now heleads the entire organization.

A great deal has changedsince that initial brainstormingsession, says Heavner. “WhenPhilanthropia was first beingdeveloped, the collegeAdvancement Office was notfully staffed. We did much ofour own legwork, we had astrategy committee, we hadcommittees that planned differ-ent aspects of fund raising.”

Now that Philanthropia is upand running and the collegehas hired more staff to supportthe group, Heavner says thatthe volunteers’ role has shifted.“Volunteers can focus more onrecruiting fellow alumni andcontacting classmates,” hesays. “We are also getting morecomfortable in our relationshipwith the Alumni Association.”

Early on, he explains, therewere questions about possiblecompetition with the Associa-tion. “That doesn’t makesense,” he says. “We don’twant to compete. We’re reallyjust a group of volunteers whowant to educate fellow alumniabout the needs of the collegeand to foster the habit of regu-lar giving.”

As Heavner became involvedwith Philanthropia, he foundone of its educational mes-

sages—alumni participation—particularly interesting. “Oneof the things that struck me isthat the percentage of partici-pation by alumni is as impor-tant as the dollar amounts theygive. When St. John’s goes forcorporate or governmentgrants or nonprofit funding,they’re competing with othercolleges, and one of the thingsthese organizations look for isthe amount of support the col-lege has from its alumni.”

When Philanthropia started,St. John’s was toward the bot-tom: about 22 percent of alum-ni gave to the college. Otherliberal arts colleges, such asWilliams, Bowdoin, andAmherst, ranged from 57 to 66percent. Five years into Philan-thropia, St. John’s alumni par-ticipation has climbed to 29percent.

“I certainly didn’t under-stand this as a recently gradu-ated alumnus,” says Heavner.“I think I, like many others,thought, ‘if I’m reallystrapped for cash in graduateschool, I don’t want to sendsomething stupid like fivebucks so I’ll just wait until Ihave more money.’ But now Iunderstand that those five dollars would have gone fur-ther, they would have made St. John’s more competitive.”

Under Heavner’s leader-ship, Philanthropia is workingon developing special class

gifts during reunion years,communicating regularly withall alumni and encouragingthem to give to the AnnualFund. They also sponsor socialevents each year throughoutthe country.

“We’re heading in a newdirection now that we’ve hadfairly successful reunion classprograms,” says Heavner.“We’re trying to keep themomentum going by havingclass archons who will takeresponsibility for maintainingaddresses, sending out end-of-year holiday postcards, main-taining and updating class websites, and keeping in contactbetween reunion class years.”

Heavner’s relationship to thecollege is not, of course, allabout fund raising. He says thathis class has always been fairlyclose and, living in Washing-ton, D.C., he sees a number ofalumni regularly. His brother,Bryce (A93), is also an alumnus.

In addition, the Annapoliscampus holds a special place inhis heart. Although he and hishigh school sweetheart, Chris-tine, had split up during col-lege, the two reunited in 1996to attend the Lafayette Ball forSt. John’s 300th anniversary.The couple married a yearlater in the Great Hall. Lookfor them and their two tod-dlers, Graham and Tess, on thesidelines of this year’s croquetmatch. x

Brett Heavner

“I started to feel that it

would be agood idea tohelp educatealumni aboutthe needs of the college.”

Philanthropia’s New Direction

St. John’s College welcomed 263 freshmen to the college last September: 124 in Annapolis and 139 in Santa Fe. Counter to the trend many liberal arts colleges are seeing, men still outnum-ber women: (72 to 52 in Annapolis; 80 to 59 in Santa Fe). Morethan 50 percent of the students at each campus were 18 at the timeof enrollment. Santa Fe draws the highest number of studentsfrom California (27), Colorado (15), and Texas (12). In Annapolis,Marylanders dominate (17) with Virginians close behind (14). New York and Pennsylvania yielded 10 freshmen apiece.

Santa Fe enrolled 34 students who had received National Merithonors, Annapolis, 47. Most students at both campuses attendedpublic secondary schools. x

The Freshmen: A Few Facts

7



Here’s a fact about Michael Franco that clearlydefines the mettle he is made of: He had thenerve, growing up outside of Boston, to be adiehard Yankees fanatic—“not fan, fanatic,” hesays. That takes courage in Red Sox country.

Learning from and later working with Jesuitsat Boston College, Franco adapted the Jesuitphilosophy of “don’t ask for permission, ask forforgiveness” as he climbed the ranks of collegeadvancement. “I’ve always interpreted that say-ing as a call to act and to follow through onwhat you believe,” he says.

Franco, who joined St. John’s last summer asthe vice president for college advancement inSanta Fe, brings many years of experience incollege advancement with institutions includ-ing Boston College, Roger Williams University,The Rhode Island School of Design, and theUniversity of Rochester.

In a recent Board of Visitors and Governorsmeeting in Annapolis, Santa Fe President JohnBalkcom praised Franco for prompting thecampus to re-examine entrenched ways ofdoing things and for bringing new energy andideas to the advancement efforts and manage-ment of the college.

A short six months spent on the job, andFranco has discovered the key facts that willshape his approach to the work before him.While other institutions he has worked for have much larger alum-ni bases from which they can draw financial support (Boston Col-lege counts 135,000 alumni, for example), St. John’s has some-thing else—what Franco calls “the power and centrality of theProgram.”

“Everything we do here begins and ends with the Program,”Franco says. “The real key to our message is the receptivity of ouraudience. In a short time, I’ve seen what strong emotional ties ouralumni have to the college. I’ve seen that in the letters peoplesend, the passion and intensity of their loyalty.”

Franco says his most recent position, asadvancement vice president at the Rhode IslandSchool of Design, best prepared him for the chal-lenges of St. John’s. “Some of the strategies andprograms we were able to start in Rhode Island aregood lessons for me as I begin to help define whatthe advancement role for the Santa Fe campusneeds to be,” he says.

Although very different institutions, the twoschools share in common a loyal alumni base, andfund raising at both share the same dynamics,says Franco. “If you stay true to your mission,your alumni will support you.”

Franco grew up in Fall River, Mass., a grittyblue-collar town (home of Lizzie Borden), theyoungest of three children of a Portuguese fatherand Irish mother. His father worked as a galvaniz-er, which Franco says, “basically involved pour-ing molten lead into molds.” The economic boomthat benefited other towns in the Boston areanever reached Fall River. In a town where many ofthe young people didn’t go beyond high school,Franco went on to earn a bachelor’s at BostonCollege, a master’s at Boston University and aPh.D. at the University of Rochester—a source ofgreat pride for his family.

“I’m a survivor—I think people who come outof Fall River share that in common,” he says. “Idon’t look back; I keep going.”

Franco and his wife, Susan, were grateful to trade Rochesterwinters and muggy Boston summers for sunny Santa Fe. But thetransition from a brick house in downtown Providence to an adobehouse on a dirt road has taken some getting used to for the citydwellers.

“I refer to our house as the wild kingdom,” Franco says. “Atany given moment there are raccoons in the chimney, coyotesrunning through the yard, mice aplenty. My wife even saw a bearthe other night.” x

Michael Franco

Michael Franco: Energizing Advancement in Santa Fe

“Everything wedo here beginsand ends withthe Program.”

The Santa Fe and Annapoliscampuses each welcomed fournew tutors this fall.

New Tutors at Santa Fe

MICHAEL ANDREWS received abachelor’s degree in historyfrom Montana State Universityin 1992. He received an M.A. in1997 from Tulane University,and is expecting to receive aPh.D. this coming year. His dis-sertation, “The Endless

Republic: Liberty, Tradition,and the Flight from the Past,”is a study of the origins and thesubsequent development of theidea of liberty and related con-cepts such as individualism andpersonal autonomy.

MONIKA CASSEL received anA.B. in comparative literature,magna cum laude, from Prince-ton University in 1992. She pur-sued graduate studies in com-parative literature at theUniversity of Michigan, where

she received her Ph.D. in 2002.The title of her dissertation is“Poetesses at the Grave:Transnational Circulation ofWomen’s Memorial Verse inNineteenth-Century England,Germany, and America.”

INGO FARIN was born in EastGermany and raised in WestGermany. He received an M.A.from the Free University ofBerlin in 1985, and expects tocomplete a Ph.D. in philosophyfrom Indiana University this

August. Farin’s dissertation is“Before Being and Time: Hei-degger’s Life Philosophy.” Hisareas of interest have recentlyincluded phenomenology,hermeneutics, existentialism,and critical theory, as well asthe history of philosophy.

A 1994 graduate of St. John’sSanta Fe campus, KENNETH

WOLFE received a Ph.D. in classics from the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, in 2002,with a dissertation on “The

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Relation of the Form to theIntellect in Plotinus.” His spe-cial interests include ancientphilosophy, intellectual histo-ry, social history, and Greekand Latin literature.

New Tutors in Annapolis

SRIRAM NAMBIAR received abachelor’s degree in chemicalengineering from the IndianInstitute of Technology inMadras, and a Ph.D. in philoso-phy from the State Universityof New York, Buffalo. He spe-cialized in the history and phi-losophy of logic, mathematics,and natural science. He wrote adissertation on George Booleand he taught in the depart-ments of chemistry, education,and philosophy. He has alsobeen a research assistant inexperimental and computa-tional studies of the thermo-physical properties of chemicalmixtures, and in experimentaland theoretical studies of fluidmechanics of soil erosion.

LOUIS PETRICH received abachelor’s degree in English

from Northwestern University,where he began his studies inan integrated science programbut shifted majors when hisinterest turned to poetry. Hereceived a master’s degreefrom the Committee on SocialThought at the University ofChicago, where his workemphasized philosophy and lit-erature, especially the plays ofShakespeare. He spent manyyears in theater activities. As amember of the Peace Corps inCzechoslovakia, he taught Eng-lish language and Americanculture and literature.

JASON TIPTON received abachelor’s degree in neurobiol-ogy, with a minor in philoso-phy, from the University of Cal-ifornia at San Diego. He thenreceived a master’s degree inphilosophy and another one inecology and evolutionary biolo-gy from Tulane University,from which he also received aPh.D. in philosophy, with a dis-sertation on Aristotle’s Parts ofAnimals. He has published arti-cles on Plato’s dialogues and on

Aristotle’s biological writings,and a number of scientific arti-cles on fish, his research spe-cialty. He has worked in theAegean studying the life histo-ries of marine life that Aristotlediscusses.

A graduate of St. John’sGraduate Institute in Annapo-lis, JOANNA TOBIN received abachelor’s degree in medievaland Renaissance studies fromWellesley College, after whichshe worked at a classical reper-tory theater in New York. Shethen worked at fund raising andproducing large events for aWashington foundation. Her

political experience includesworking in the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign and working forVice President Al Gore and Tip-per Gore. She will soon com-plete a doctorate in governmentfrom Georgetown Universitywith a dissertation on Emer-son’s view of democracy.

Diversity in Santa Fe

The Santa Fe campus has a newinitiative to increase diversityon campus and has begun toreflect on ways to better sup-port minority students.

JOAQUIN BACA (SF95) joinedthe staff in August as assistantdirector of Admissions. In addi-tion to regular admissionsfunctions, Baca is working withtutor Victoria Mora to attractand support a more diversepopulation at the Santa Fecampus. Admissions DirectorLawrence Clendenin (SF77)explains that hiring a full-timestaff member dedicated tolooking “wider and harder”within the region for potentialJohnnies should yield anincrease in minority appli-cants.

Baca’s role will be to increasean awareness of the college forstudents who might not other-wise consider St. John’s, partic-ularly among Hispanics, whomake up 42 percent of NewMexico’s population, andNative Americans, who makeup 9.2 percent of the state’spopulation.

“There has always been aneffort to find students from theregion, but this initiativeallows for a more concentratedeffort, with some added strate-gies,” Baca says. “It may alsohelp that I am from the area,am bilingual, and am veryfamiliar with issues minoritystudents face.”

Prior to joining the Santa Feadmissions staff, Baca assistedin the start-up of a charter highschool, where he served as ateacher, service-learning coor-dinator, and technology coordi-nator. x

From Concept to StructureAt Santa Fe last fall,freshmen studyingEuclid’s ELEMENTS

were assigned a projectto create a visual rep-resentation of inter-propositional connec-tions. Given free rein,students pursued avariety of media, frompaintings to flowcharts. Shown here isNichole Miller, whodrew from her experi-ence constructingthree-dimensionalinstallation art to cre-ate this elaborate rep-resentation of therelationships betweenpropositions in Book 1.Her installation wason exhibit in the lobbyof Weigle Hall.

“This [diversity]initiative

allows for a more

concentratedeffort.”

–Lawrence Clendenin

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Carl Linnaeus advised “atten-tive and diligent observation”to all who take on the task ofclassifying plants and animals.Each year, students in fresh-man laboratory on the SantaFe campus take that advice toheart as they follow in thefootsteps of the “Father ofTaxonomy,” trekking 10,000feet above the high desertfloor to a marvelous outdoorclassroom: the Sangre deCristo mountains.

Fresh in their minds on thisexpedition are Linnaeus’ Sys-tema Naturae and GeneraPlantarum, Goethe’s Meta-morphosis of Plants, andThoreau’s Faith in a Seed: TheDispersion of Seeds and OtherLate Natural History Writ-ings. At three different eleva-tions, the Santa Fe freshmenstudy the conifers, record asmuch detail as they can, andbring specimens back to thelaboratory, where they will

devise their own systems ofclassification.

First stop for the class is

7,400 feet, the same elevationas the campus. Working underthe guidance of tutors Hansvon Briesen, David Pierotti,and Ewen Harrison, the stu-dents pair up to examine thepiñon pines and junipers thatalso dot the hillside aroundcampus.

“The students should beforewarned to take copiousnotes because once the speci-mens are brought back to theclass, it is hard to put themon the tree again,” the writ-

ten assignment reads, echo-ing Linnaeus’ advice. “Usual-ly, too few questions areasked, not too many!”

Chris Lintecum, fromKansas City, Missouri, holdsa branch between his fingersand studies it carefully.

“See how the needles arecontracting into the pinecone? Strange, I’ve looked atthese all my life,” he says tohis partner. “It looks like it’scontracting, but on the insideit’s expanding, forming newparts. Each tip has the poten-tial to form new pine cones.”

Each successive stop pro-vides greater variety of f lora.At the third stop, a lofty10,000 feet, different speciesthrive: corkbark fir, Engel-mann spruce, aspen. Theweather is different here,too—cold and damp, more like

winter than mid-September.An early morning storm hasleft white patches of hail onthe steep mountain slope.The students work quicklyand are eager to return to the vans.

On the ride back to campusthe conversation shifts toanother metamorphosis—their own. They’re aware ofthe power of asking questionsin a new way.

“A large part of this lab isto see things as they reallyare—to get rid of your precon-ceived notions,” notes KarenPowell, from Fort Pierce,Florida.

“I can’t imagine going toschool anywhere else,” Linte-cum says. “I could be sittingin a lecture right now.” x

—By Teri Thomson Randall

Metamorphosis in the MountainsStudents in Santa Fe study classificationby taking a careful look at conifers.

Jonathan Katzman among the conifers.

A mountain laboratory.

“A large part of this lab is to

see things asthey really are.”

–Karen Powell

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A Gift of GreekGrammarWhile other colleges ply fresh-men with snack packets andCD cases—often from vendorsand credit card companieseager for access to college stu-dents—St. John’s in Annapolisthis year gave students a trulymeaningful and advertising-free welcome gift: a copy of theLiddell-Scott lexicon ofancient Greek.

In his convocation speech tothe freshman class, PresidentChristopher Nelson talkedabout translating ancientGreek in tutorials, and how thispart of the St. John’s Programhelps lead students to a newway of seeing: “Spend timewith your lexicon and considerthe many different ways a sen-tence can be translated andunderstood,” he told the fresh-man class. “Your lexicon willbe more than an aid to vocabu-lary and translation. It will alsobe an aid to philosophy. It will

help you ask and try to answerthat big, big question: what isthis thing in front of me?”

Although the fall convoca-tion marked the first year forthe gift, Harvey Flaumenhaft,dean, said the gift so perfectlysymbolizes initiation into theworld of St. John’s, that italready smacks of tradition.

“Within a couple of years,people will think we’ve beendoing it for centuries,” Flau-menhaft said. x

Crime and PunishmentThere is little I can disagree with in yourarticle “Crime and Punishment” in theSummer 2002 issue of The College. Howev-er, I would like to add an additional per-spective derived from my experience as anassistant public defender in the rural Flori-da county where I live. Everything I haveread or heard about the criminal justicesystem elsewhere in the country suggeststhat my perspective is in no way unique,and my observations can be extrapolated,although obviously with modifications, tothe country as a whole.

In rural Florida, a significant percentageof criminal activity is a direct consequenceof the extremely unequal distribution ofwealth in our society. What I am getting atis not solely the unequal access to parental

care, mental health treatment, educationaland job opportunities which is, in any case,perhaps more characteristic of poverty inrural areas of this country than elsewhere.Instead, what I wish to suggest is that manycrimes (or, more accurately, much of whatis prosecuted as crime, since prosecutorialdiscretion is fundamental to the system)are directly connected to poverty, plain andsimple. These are crimes that apply to allstrata of the population but which dispro-portionately affect the poor. More thanthat, they are crimes of poverty, sincethose who are not poor are effectivelyimmunized against them.

Where I practice law, the crime mostemblematic of this situation is known as“DWLSR”: driving with license suspendedor revoked (with knowledge), a first-degreemisdemeanor in Florida and punishable by

up to one year in the county jail. There arenumerous reasons why the Department ofMotor Vehicles can suspend your driver’slicense in this state. Most common is fail-ure to pay traffic fines, fines for previouscriminal acts, or child support.

During the past year, I have representedseveral dozen individuals whose onlycrimes, at the time they were incarceratedand for which they were sentenced to up to11 months in jail, were one or more countsof driving with a suspended license. In atleast one of these cases, the driver wasoperating a moped; in many of them, thedrivers used their vehicles to get back andforth to minimum-wage jobs; for all ofthem, there is no available public trans-portation. While it is true that my clientshad their licenses suspended originally—and thereupon suffered their draconian

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A Delicate Balance

At the Santa Fe campus, students in freshman laboratory bringtheir experiments on gravity to the Coffee Shop. Students havegrown adept at balancing the venerated St. John’s chairs overthe center of gravity. “It creates quite an interesting tableau,”says lab director David Pierotti.

“ Spend timewith your

lexicon and consider the

many differentways a sentencecan be translatedand understood.”

–President Christopher Nelson

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punishments—because of a history of pre-vious brushes with the law, their criminalhistory more often than not consisted ofoffenses intrinsically no more dangerousto the community than driving without adriver’s license. These offenses includedpossession of illegal drugs, trespass, andearlier charges of driving with a suspendedlicense.

Most crimes in this county (and mostcrimes in this country) are minor ones.Sentences are imposed that serve to keepthese minor criminals—economically,socially, and culturally marginal—increas-ingly more marginal, in a downhill spiralthat can last for years or generations. Thesolutions to this problem are obviouslyhighly complex, and what I have sketchedabove is necessarily somewhat oversimpli-fied. However, I have tried to make at leastthis point: that, at bottom, drasticallyunequal distribution of wealth in thiscountry leads to crime, among other socialills, and efforts toward redistribution willhelp solve those problems.

—Peter Coen (A68)

Statistics vs. PtolemyIn response to the article “Statistics vs.Ptolemy” of the Summer 2002 issue of TheCollege, I have a few comments. The mainissue of the article seems to be the degreeof preparation that the Program at St. John’s is able to provide for the vastarray of careers awaiting the interests ofliberal artists. The specific qualm raised inthe article is that Johnnies are not ade-quately prepared in the areas of mathemat-ics necessary for continuing studies in thesocial sciences. I would like to add, frommy present experiences, that the mathe-matics and science studied at St. John’s inno way substitute for the preparation thatcollege undergraduates in the areas ofphysics and astronomy receive. I complete-ly disagree, however, with the sentimentthat this reveals any lack, gap or limit inthe scope of the Mathematics Tutorial.

I agree with Mr. Eric Rosenblatt whenhe comments, “students are not all findingcareers appropriate to their abilities.” ButI disagree quite strongly that any existing“math gap” is the reason that studentsavoid particular career paths. There aremany topics in the fields of social sciences,particularly in economics, which requirehigher mathematics than the topics thatare studied in the Mathematics Tutorial atSt. John’s, and of careers in hard sciences

there are more required levels of mathe-matics than I could name when I startedmy graduate studies. However, from theMathematics Tutorial, I received a broadand detailed exposure to the evolution ofmathematics and the role of mathematicsin intellectual and scientific development.This foundation, obtained with consider-able effort, gave me the confidence thatany traditional study of mathematics wasaccessible with similar diligence, effort,and practice.

In reference to his experience in gradu-ate level classes, Mr. John Lawless com-ments, “the advantage [of the people ingraduate school] is that they’ve seen a lotof this stuff before. They have a broadexposure to basic math.” Thus far, it hasbeen my experience, with physics andmathematics classes, that while most of thestudents have seen and solved more prob-lems and are more familiar with the toolsof mathematics than I am, one rarely findsthe student with skills that resemble a mas-tery (or even a capacity for recollection) ofthe mathematics he has studied previously.The physics and mathematics textbooksthat I now use all provide approximationsof the works we read in the Program and inthe space saved, the books include exam-ples, problems, and solutions. Yes, I am“behind” in my abilities to solve theseproblems when compared to the studentswho have four years of experience studyingphysics and mathematics to the exclusionof other topics. Rather than bemoan thesituation, I consider my disadvantage onthis level to be a credit to the traditionalsystem of education…

Perhaps it is useful to consider the ideathat the Mathematics Tutorial enables us tostudy mathematics as a language (herein liesthe “beauty” to which we frequently refer)while traditional studies treat mathematicsas a tool for simplifying analysis. While Ishare Mr. Lawless’ frustration that certainthings should come easily, and do comemore easily for students trained to use thistool, I do not look for fault within a programthat has provided me with the unflinchinginterest to master topics of mathematics andscience…I chose to take a nontraditionalpath with the expectation that no doorswould be closed when I reached its end,rather I merely supposed that some doorsmay become heavier with time.

…Mr. Rosenblatt is doing a great serviceto the St. John’s community in his hiringpolicies…In the effort of making

physics/astrophysics more accessible tostudents at St. John’s, I have organized sim-ilar meetings at St. John’s College, bring-ing professors from George Mason Univer-sity who offer summer research fellowshipsto interested students. (The professorsthere prefer students from St. John’s Col-lege to undergraduates of their own schoolfor their untiring efforts and interest infully comprehending the motivation andgoals of their research.) At these meetings Ishared my experiences studying physicsand astronomy and information about thecourses one needs in addition to the Pro-gram to have a background that is compa-rable to a student with a traditional under-graduate physics degree. At the firstmeeting, three people attended; for thesecond meeting, more than 20 studentswere willing to wait while the professorswere unavoidably delayed in traffic (Godbless cellular phones). From the secondmeeting, seven students worked as con-tracted research assistants for the summer(2002), and two of those students arepresently enrolled at GMU, pursuingdegrees in astrophysics. From this it isclear that an awareness of the availableopportunities is far more important thanpreparedness in the career decisions of St.John’s students. And further, with interestand effort, all skills are acquirable, while alove of knowledge is not.

—Jessica K. (Reitz) Gambill (A01)

CorrectionA story in the summer 2002 issue of TheCollege on Andrea D’Amato, manager of thecollege bookstore on the Santa Fe campus,misspelled her name. We regret the error.

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

Please address letters to: The CollegeMagazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,Annapolis MD 21404 or The College Maga-zine, Public Relations Office, St. John’sCollege, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, SantaFe, NM 87505-4599.

Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: [email protected], or via the form for letters on the web site at www.sjca.edu.Click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact TheCollege Magazine.”

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...the odds is goneAnd there is nothing left remarkableBeneath the visiting moon.

–Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

David Grene died Septem-ber 10 in Chicago. He wasa living legend, and hislife was legendary. He wasalready a professor of clas-sics at the University of

Chicago when the New Program was firstinstituted at St. John’s. Over the years hetook an interest in the development of thisprogram, which was entirely a creature ofhis adult life; from his perch in the Com-mittee on Social Thought he taught a num-ber of our tutors and an even more signifi-cant number of prominent teachers of ourtutors. Among the faculty in Annapoliswho studied directly with him are LaurenceBerns, Joe Macfarland, Robert Williamson,Paul Ludwig, Louis Petrich and I.

In the normal course of things, a teacherlike David is only to be met with in books.He was a peerless philologist, from a gen-eration that genuinely knew philology, andit was indeed an important part of theexperience of studying with him toencounter his compendious acumen. ButDavid’s philological knowledge was merelyone of several paths into the mystery ofauthor, word, and sentence that made atext a living presence in his classroom. Hehad a queerness to his mind and imagina-tion that made Euclid, for example, incom-prehensible to him, and the memorizing oftraffic symbols an arduous task. He was asmall-built man, but he was athletic—he

was a horseman—and in his intellect, move-ment, and voice he was a commandingpresence. Mr. Berns relates how singularan honor it seemed to earn David’s recog-nition, by saying or writing somethinginsightful. His colleague Wendy Donigerremembers that “he lived on meat—partic-ularly bacon and steak—cheese, butter,eggs and Tanqueray gin... He was a realperson. He was bigger than life.”

For half the year every year David was afarmer, and a number of us students,including the late Allan Bloom, were atsome time initiated by him into the reali-ties of cow and pig, horse and donkey. Thestock of his memoirs, from Wicklow toTrinity, from farming in Illinois to Bel-turbet, County Cavan, from studying inVienna under Radermacher duringHitler’s rise in the ’30s (Hutchins senthim) to Hutchins’ Chicago and the Com-mittee on Social Thought, is a thing ofwonder in itself. Yet David was able todramatize these realities in the classroomso that somehow they formed an entrypoint for the dramatization of literature,philosophy, history—the distinctionbecomes moot—and one began to feel thepresence of an author as a protagonist:mortal, historical, and yet ever-present.Even the philology seemed to come alive ina new way. One became self-conscious,about one’s accent as much as one’s ideas;one felt intimidated, and yet challenged tospeak. It was a rare critical formulationthat could survive this experience.

Translation was a private matter withDavid; in class almost all the translatingwas done by students. His gift as a transla-tor did not lead to his conducting masterclasses. Many of us can testify to a commonexperience, of preparing a text of Aeschy-

lus or Pindar or Sophocles painstakinglyfor hour after hour, coming up with formu-lations that seemed (at the time, and to us)very clever or even brilliant, but thenshowing up at his class and having ourminds go blank when he called on us totranslate. Suddenly the Greek appearedbefore us as an obstacle course that we hadnever seen before, and which we wereasked to run on a full stomach. He wascompletely galvanizing that way. Perhapshis power had to do with our own feelingthat he was on the “other side” of the linethat Greek drew before us, a Poseidonfeasting among the Ethiopians; he alsoseemed somehow on the other side of theauthor’s mask, a fellow worker with him inthe art of turning thought, and the move-ment of thought, into Greek. There wasalso a curious knack to his timing, a way hewould call on you that simply left younaked. At the heart of the obstacle coursewas always a tightrope over an abyss. Noother teacher I have known was so able toinitiate one into the “going across” oftranslation. If you missed your step, youremained scarred and subdued until thenext attempt. But there were also timeswhen it felt like one was dancing on thattightrope, and on those happy occasions inDavid’s company I have had no more exhil-arating an experience as a student or ateacher.

David grew very fond of St. John’s gradu-ates. His companion of the last 17 years wasStephanie Nelson (A83), now of Classics inBoston University. She was our pioneer inChicago. There were also Allen Speight(A84), now in philosophy at BU, David Nei-dorf (SF80), Cindy Rutz (SF82), MarkShiffman (A89), Eric Lavoie (A88), BrianSatterfield (A94), and Zena Hitz (A95).

T H E L E G A C Y O FD AV I D G R E N E

A Tutor Remembers a Teacher and Mentor

by Amirthanayagam David (A86)

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I am particularlygrateful for his earlystudy, Man in HisPride: A Study in thePolitical Philosophy ofThucydides and Plato,later reprinted asGreek Political Theory.David’s treatment is ahealthy antivenom tothe kind of pseudo-analytic reductionismand juvenile unliterari-ness that dogs the useand abuse of Plato’swritings in depart-ments of “philosophy”and also to the pro-grammatic approachto Thucydides in “departments” of history.But David’s greatest legacy is his transla-tions, which should continue to bring himstudents. He was bold enough, hubristicenough, brilliant enough—and, to be sure,there was also his extraordinary feeling forstagecraft—to think that one could trans-late the Greek tragedians into Englishverse. His achievements here represent agenuine conduit for the ancient play-wrights into a modern world and idiom.The rhythms of Greek are not translatable,not even the iambs, but David, in my view,was particularly good at capturing therhythmic movement, together with themovement of thought, of whole speechesin Greek drama. His aim was unique in histime: to give “access” to the tragedies tostudents who were not intending to studyGreek.

Ms. Nelson writes in an e-mail that “theidea of a great books course is so usual nowthat we tend to forget that it was David’s

completely new idea that a translation didn’t need to serve only as a pony forbeginning Greek students that made thecourse possible. He really did issue in awhole new era that way.” David’s passingunderscores the nearly complete depend-ence of our program on translations, andthe traditions of scholarship and teaching(that we sometimes misleadingly call “sec-ondary”) that underlie works of transla-tion. But David’s renderings do represent abody of invaluable commentary for stu-dents of Greek as well. David knew enoughnot to translate Homer into English(though I, knowing less, was always pester-ing him). The long line he found for Hes-iod (a translation of Works and Days isincluded in Ms. Nelson’s God and theLand, Oxford 1998) will always leave me

wondering what hisHomer might havebeen.

The most remark-able achievement,however, was hisHerodotus. There hefound an uncannymatch in the neverlandof a quasi-Hibernianstoryteller for the dic-tion and character ofHerodotus’ own never-land of antique Ionic.The experience ofbeing “behind themask” is simplyextraordinary; only theachievement of

Hobbes with Thucydides is a fit compari-son in English prose (although David him-self would never have allowed the compari-son). Herodotus’ thought in form andrhythm, gesture and posture, lives andbreathes in those pages of David’s. AndDavid lives on in them too.

He was a man of wonders who faced thechallenges of his aging body and the relent-less mortality of his friends with a vivid,fiercely loyal and capacious heart. He was abodhisattva of the Tanqueray vine with anApolline absolutism of conviction. But hisabsolutism was always grounded in humanfeeling, never in abstract principle. Theone thing that could not survive in hisclassroom was pretension or dishonesty.The ingenuity of the genuine was David’svirtue, and academia everywhere is a drea-rier, less principled place without his ani-mating and enduring spirit. x

“ Suddenly the Greek appearedbefore us as an obstacle course that we had never seen before.”

David Grene’s greatest legacy: his translations.

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The Winemaker

tag’s Leap Wine Cellars is situated in avalley formed by the uplift of two moun-tain ridges. If you want to know beauty,says the winery’s founder, WarrenWiniarski (A52), stand here until thelight begins to fade in the evening.

“To the east of us is a spectacular out-cropping of volcanic rock that forms a pal-isade—that’s the Stag’s Leap ridge,” hesays. “Particularly at sunset, the palisade

is illuminated with a very special, very warm, magical glow.“That’s our fire.”In another form, beauty is in the product of these vines

before him, of years of planting and harvesting, of choosingand rejecting, of waiting. Not all wine drinkers are pre-pared to think of a fine wine as beautiful, but a winemakerdoes, Winiarski says. True, it’s a very subjective beauty—one assigned scores by magazines like the Wine Spectatorand awarded prizes by judges in international competi-tions. If Warren Winiarski needed any proof that he knowshow to make a beautiful wine, it came in 1976 when Frenchexperts in a blind tasting in Paris gave his 1973 CabernetSauvignon top marks over the very best French wines. Thecompetition made headlines across the world and Winiars-ki’s cabernet put California wines on the map.

But how do you make wine beautiful? For Winiarski, itgoes back to something he learned from the Greeks. To illus-trate, he sketches out a Golden Rectangle on a legal pad.

The golden proportion within the framework of the rec-tangle makes it pleasing to the eye, he explains. In wine,that perfect, pleasing proportion is also sought. Take theextreme and the means in a geometric structure and youhave balance and structure. In viticulture, contrast theproducts of coarse volcanic soils and gentler alluvial soilsin just the right proportion and you have the start of some-thing beautiful.

“You have soft elements like the smooth, supple, fruitycharacteristics, and then you have hard elements like tan-nin. The challenge is to get astringency and softness relat-ed to each other in a certain way.”

Balance, understatement, subtlety—these were not theguiding principles of winemaking in California in 1970.That’s when Winiarski left the University of Chicago,where he was a lecturer, and began making wines in theNapa Valley. Californians were then making wines thatwere “very powerful expressions of the varietal character,”he says. Winiarski left Chicago with an objective: “I could-n’t believe from what I knew about California wine andFrench wine that we could not do better with the fruit thatwe had in California and make more expressive, more beau-tiful wines,” he says.

In 1970, Winiarski bought a plot of land on the SilveradoTrail. He later acquired land adjoining the vineyards ofNathan Fay, a winemaker whose wine possessed that elu-sive unity Winiarski had sought. That land became theStag’s Leap vineyard, and the grapes that grew here gaveWiniarski the starting point he was looking for.

“At St. John’s, we talked about the four classical virtues”

A B E A U T I F U L

W I N E

{ P u r s u i t s }

Four Johnnies Pursue Perfection from the Vine.

SBy Rosemary Harty

15


{ P u r s u i t s }

of truth, beauty, goodness and unity, he explains. “Inwine, they’re expressed as understatement. To extend thepleasure of wine, the appreciation of its beauty, overstate-ment is an enemy.”

A great deal goes into the science of winemaking, but thesoil Winiarski knew had promise was the beginning of it all:

Volcanic soils are coarseparticles; alluvium, veryfine. “One produceswines that are like fire:concentrated, spirited,intense,” he says. “Theother, alluvium soils, aresoft, yielding, supple.

“Somewhere in themiddle of the vineyard,you have these soils thatare mixed. So puttingthis together, you canrelate those means andextremes in a way whereyou have an iron fist sur-rounded by a velvetglove.”

In the quarter-centurysince Winiarski helpedput California wines onthe map, his winery hasbecome immensely suc-cessful, his wines sought

after. The Cellars Cask 23 that won in Paris goes for wellover $125 a bottle. These days his role in the wineryinvolves “setting the stylistic goals and objectives for thevintage.” How that’s accomplished is carried out by oth-ers. His family, including Kasia (A84) and Julia (SF92), isinvolved in the business. Recently, Winiarski shared his

“To extend the pleasure

of wine...overstatementis an enemy.”

Warren Winiarski

16


expertise with Sante Fe alumniand friends in a winetasting.

Beating the French in 1976 wassatisfying in a way that tran-scends business, he adds—thechance to make history.

“There’s a bottle of that wineentered in the Paris tasting in theSmithsonian. In your own life-time when you have somethingin the national museum, some-thing that you made, that’s prettysatisfying.”

The Quest

A little over a decade ago, AbeSchoener (A82) tried to explainhis love for wine to beer-drink-ing friends. This led to a winestudy group comprising otherSt. John’s tutors, a few students,college administrators andfriends. But the more Schoenerlearned about wine, the more hewanted to know. And prettysoon, Schoener went from care-fully choosing the best wine toaccompany special dinners to aNapa Valley wine cellar, up tohis elbows in grapes and immersed in an experiment tosee if he could make a pure and beautiful wine.

All this from the simple question, “what’s so greatabout wine?”

This devotion to the science of winemaking goes backto Schoener’s work as a scholar and a tutor. Tracking hissteps from Annapolis to Napa Valley shows how interre-lated are the worlds of Johnnies and California wine.

Schoener arrived at St. John’s from Toronto with aPh.D. in Ancient Greek philosophy. He had studied thephilosophy of science from Anglo-American and Frenchperspectives, put that together with his study of Homer,and started thinking about “how the body was thinkableand how the mind was embodied.”

Body and mind come together very logically in winestudy, Schoener says, because to really appreciate a par-ticular wine one has to “think in an embodied way.”

Schoener wanted to get his students in sophomoremusic to try this kind of thinking when approaching apiece of music. He couldn’t bring wine, so he laid outgorgonzola cheese and pear slices and asked students to

think carefully about what hap-pened when the sweet pear fol-lowed the sharp cheese.

“Any time that you’re think-ing carefully and preciselyabout a sensation, you have anopportunity to learn how themind is truly embodied,” heexplains.

Schoener’s wine study groupbecame more serious aboutstudying viticulture, compar-ing domestic and Europeanwines, and learning how totaste wine. One of the first stu-dents to join the group wasZach Rasmuson (A95). Origi-nally a reluctant participant,Rasumuson ended up headingto Napa Valley and asking War-ren Winiarski for a job atStag’s Leap after graduation.He started out as a cellar andlab assistant and within threeyears was assistant winemakerat Robert Sinskey Vineyards.He’s now making wines atHusch Vineyard in MendocinoCounty.

To learn more about wine, Schoener was also willingto start at the bottom. He took a sabbatical from St.John’s and headed West. His job as a field sampler atStag’s Leap involved monitoring about 100 acres, walk-ing the vineyards daily to monitor the ripening of thefruit and bringing samples back to the winemaker.Through Rasmuson, Schoener later became acquaintedwith John Kongsgaard, vice president and foundingwinemaker at Luna Vineyards and his wife, Maggy, par-ents of two St. John’s students: Alex, a sophomore inSanta Fe, and Helen, a junior in Annapolis. When hisjob at Stag’s Leap ended, Schoener went to Luna towork a few days over the Christmas break and eventual-ly extended his leave to take a paying job and learneverything he could about winemaking.

Schoener bought a half-ton of grapes and made wineunder Kongsgaard’s direction. The next year, theybought grapes together and Schoener was the winemak-er for three tons of Chardonnay. “It went really well, sothe next year, I organized myself to become a small pro-ducer, made some more contacts and bought some moregrapes”—this time for the Scholium Project, his own

{ P u r s u i t s }

“I couldn’t believe that wecould not do better.”

Warren Winiarski

17


{ P u r s u i t s }

venture in winemaking. He chose the word that refers toexplanatory notes or commentary in ancient texts, or anote amplifying a course of reasoning, to ref lect the factthat he is expanding on others’ work.

“Scholium is a word that connotes the opposite of pre-tension and that was a good name for what I was doing,”he explains. “It was always a question of [my] followingother people, studying them, creating something thatwas going to be good.”

A year ago, Schoener invested about $4,000 in a tonand a half of high-quality grapes. He fermented mostof the crushed grapes in white plastic containers aboutthree feet high. His approach is to give the microbesenough oxygen to ferment the grapes, but not enoughto spoil them. Most winemakers add yeast to thecrushed g rapes, but Schoenerdoes not. He also minimizes theuse of antibacterial and antifungalchemicals, in particular sulfurdioxide. The sulfur dioxide pro-duces a “f latter, simpler wine,”and what Schoener seeks is com-plexity.

“The tradition at Napa is to really control the microbiology, toturn [the wine] into a sterile f luid.My approach is really just the oppo-site: don’t start with sterile, startwith something infected with allkinds of things.”

Two years ago, his experiment failed and three-quar-ters of a ton of grapes emerged tasting like vinegar. ButSchoener learned something from that experiment.

His white wine made with Chardonnay grapes iscalled Les Tenebres, translated as “the shadows” or “theghosts.” His goal was to produce a white wine that did-n’t evoke any fruit but the grape. The principle behindhis approach is to “start with really good fruit but forthe wine to be not about the fruit, but the fermenta-tion.” The red wine, called Babylon, took its name fromthe ancient Jewish world and is meant to connote some-thing “strange and exotic.”

Next year, Schoener will have a license to sell his firstbatch of The Scholium Project. Last fall, he moved fromamateur to professional when he became the winemakerat Luna. He incorporates some of his risky techniques inhis official work for the winery, but not all of them,because “there’s too much at stake” for a commercialventure.

The Family Business

At one time, Daniel Speck (A96) had planned to studyarchitecture. After spending most of his formative yearstoiling in his family’s winery, Henry of Pelham, he initiallyplanned another path for his life.

“I was adamant that I wasn’t working in the winery,” herecalls. “But after graduating from St. John’s, I neededsome cash, so back I went. Now I can’t imagine doing any-thing else.”

Neither, apparently, can Speck’s brothers: Paul (A89),president; and Matthew (A92), vice president and viticul-turist. All three had worked almost every job at the winerytheir father, Paul, started in 1982. Concord and Niagaragrapes were growing on the farm, but the old vines were

ripped out and one-year-old vinesimported from Europe were plantedin 1984. Four years later, the firstcrop was harvested and a year later,the first batch of wine—2,500cases—was ready for sale. The win-ery, located in St. Catherine’s,Ontario, focuses on vinifera grapevarieties: Chardonnay, Riesling,and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Daniel Speck, director of salesand marketing, remembers thebackbreaking, often tedious workon the 150-acre estate. Summer

vacations were spent as indentured servants. But the workwas ultimately satisfying. And when Paul Sr. passed away in1993, it was natural for his sons to take over a business inwhich they had already invested so much work and passion.

Henry of Pelham wines, he explains, are more “OldWorld” than California—whites are crisp and zesty, reds alittle more “austere and structured.”

“California is kind of like the Mediterranean, and ourwines are more like those from the Burgundy region, Bor-deaux and Champagne,” Speck says. “Our reds are notapproachable for five years—they’re meant for aging, andthat’s usually due to the tannin structure.”

From an agricultural viewpoint, soil, weather, andcanopy management are critically important for the busi-ness. Canopy management means developing the vineyardin a way to “balance the vigor of the vine with the crops youleave—choosing where we leave grapes and where we don’t.”

“When you strip it all away, it all comes down to farm-ing,” he says. “Wine is 50 percent packaged goods and 50percent produce. It’s got more in common with lettuce thanCoca-Cola. And if anything is a constant, you have to be

“Don’t start with sterile,start with something

infected with all kinds of things.”

Abe Schoener

18


growing grape varieties that you can produce great winesfrom. You’ve got to always have good grapes.”

In addition to toiling on the land, Speck has also enjoyedmaking wine. The Pinot Noir, for example, is made entire-ly by hand: hand-harvested, crushed and fermented inopen-top fermenting tanks. “Instead of getting in therewith the feet and trodding it, we use a stick with a flat sur-face on the end. In the past we’ve used canoe paddles.That’s ‘punching down’ the ‘cap,’ the skins that float to thetop in fermentation, back into the fermenting wine to keepextracting flavor. The more common method is the ‘pump-over,’ pumping wine from the bottom of the tank up andover to wash the cap down. It’s less desirable because itintroduces more oxygen.”

Henry of Pelham’s big sellers are Rieslings and Chardon-

nays. The winery’s Baco NoirCabernet (“a weirdo variety likea Shiraz,”explains Speck), andice wine are also popular. Tomake ice wine, grapes are left onthe vine until they freeze. “Whenyou crush it you only get a fewdrops, and it’s incredibly intense.It makes a great dessert wine.”

Most of the wine is sold inCanada, but the winery is begin-ning to make inroads in the U.S.market. Speck has new con-tracts with Red Lobster, a Cana-dian Italian food chain, AirCanada and British Airways.

Speck isn’t sure he’d enjoy thewine business as much if heweren’t in a family business.“There’s a guy nearby who hasstarted up a really nice winery,but just looking at it you can tellthere’s some problems. I wouldthink it would be hard trying tofigure it out, because it’s onlyhim and he’s surrounded bypeople new to the business. Ourfamily had more people to pool

from, and we know how to talk to each other. That kind ofconversation is really critical.”

The wine business can be “really brutal,” says Speck.“There’s no easier way to take a large fortune and make it asmall one.

“But there’s nothing more satisfying than getting togeth-er with the family to open a bottle of wine that’s 10 yearsold. I remember putting those vines in. It’s a personalwine.”

The Devotee

A beautiful wine “perfectly expresses where it is from,”says Mark Middlebrook (A83). It tells the story of where thegrapes were grown and who made it. It opens a window to

{ P u r s u i t s }

“You’ve got tohave good

grapes.”Daniel Speck

19


{ P u r s u i t s }

history and creates a bridge between different cultures. ToMiddlebrook, the wine he tasted in a tiny village in Bur-gundy still bears the imprint of the Cistercian monks whoonce made wine in that valley centuries ago.

“There is a sense of longevity and of connecting withthese monks in some way over all these centuries,” hesays. After earning a master’s degree in structural engi-neering at UC-Berkeley, Middlebrook started his owncompany, Daedalus Consulting, to provide CAD (com-puter-assisted drafting) consulting to engineering andsoftware companies, developingcustom software applications andwriting articles and books.

However, he’s become so enam-ored of wine that, like Abe Schoen-er, he’s made major changes andsacrifices in his life to pursue thisinterest. He recently chose to scaleback his work as a computer consult-ant in order to sell wine in a smalland selective shop in California.

His romance with wine, and hisparticular interest in the “specifici-ty” of a vintage, began when he firstdrank a glass of wine in Rioja duringa trip to Spain in 1997. After return-ing to California, Middlebrook start-ed reading and tasting. He took threemore trips to Spain for research, andon one venture, encountered BillRandolph (A75), a wine aficionadoliving in Paris. Randolph later guidedMiddlebrook and his wife, CherylKoehler, through the Burgundyregion. He also joined Middlebrookfor Northern California alumni chap-ter wine tastings at Stag’s Leap WineCellars. Eventually Middlebrookcame to believe he needed to devotemore time to exploring wine, so hewent to the Paul Marcus wine shop,where he had been a customer, andasked for a job.

“It’s been even more rewardingthan I’d imagined it would be. Besidestasting lots of wine, I get to talk withlots of people who have a great varietyof insight and experience. There isthe occasional snooty collector, butmost people who work in the tradeand shop in our store simply love wine

and appreciate something that tastes good and adds anincrement of pleasure to their lives.”

In past months, Middlebrook has put his computerskills to work in the shop by launching an e-mail newslet-ter and web site for the shop and establishing a databaseto track inventory.

Initially devoted to Spanish wines, Middlebrook hascome to appreciate Italian wines, especially those of thePiemonte (Piedmont) region in the northwestern cornerof Italy. Late last fall, Middlebrook spent a week in Italy,

learning about the vineyards, meet-ing the people, drinking greatwine, and eating truffles.

“The Piemontese wines madefrom the Nebbiolo grape, mostnotably the wines from around thetowns of Barolo and Barbaresco,are arguably the best in Italy. Neb-biolo, like Pinot Noir in Burgundyand Riesling in Germany, makeswines that ‘speak’ in highly specificways about the particular place theycome from—the soil, the slope, theexposure to sun and wind, the vineconfiguration, the vintage.

“Some of this specificity is due tothe grape varietals themselves.Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir, and Rieslingare said to be “transparent” vari-etals, because the elements of ter-roir come through the vine, intothe grapes, and ultimately into theglass particularly clearly.”

Middlebrook draws a parallelbetween exploring great books inseminar and exploring wine. “Wespend time at St. John’s con-fronting and discussing objectivequestions about ethics and truth.At one level, wine is simply a mat-ter of taste. It’s also part of thesocial ritual of a meal.”

But on another level, our aesthet-ic experience—how we come toknow something, how we come tolearn—is involved in studying andthinking about wine.

“It’s a really rewarding world tobe a part of.” x

READING LIST

American Vintage: From Isolation to Inter-national Renown—The Rise of AmericanWine, by Paul Lukacs.

The World Atlas of Wine (5th Edition), byHugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson.

Pocket Wine Book, by Hugh Johnson.

The Oxford Companion to Wine, by JancisRobinson.

The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil.

Touring in Wine Country, a series, MitchellBeazley publisher.

Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy,by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch.

— suggested by Mark Middlebrook and WarrenWiniarski

“ Good wine tastes like it comes from

somewhere specific.”Mark Middlebrook

haucer’s much-wed pilgrim,the Wife of Bath, is often con-sidered an authority on mar-riage. Perhaps she was—in the14th century. But here in 2002,we have other ideas. The Col-lege magazine consulted five

happily-married Johnnie couples for their take onthe advice and analyses of the Wife of Bath. Wepublish here a sample of their wit and wisdom.

Wiles of Courtship

Wife of Bath SaysI made him think he had enchanted me;My mother taught me all that subtlety.And then I said I’d dreamed of him all night,He would have slain me as I lay upright,And all my bed was full of very blood; But yet I hoped that he would do me good,For blood betokens gold, as I was taught.And all was false, I dreamed of him just—naught.

Johnnies SayCould Andrea Williams Ham (SF77) have pulled off such aboldly provocative flirtation when she was dating her now-husband Jim Ham (SF77)? Absolutely not. “I’m not flirta-tious, not a game player,” she says. “What I’m thinking is

all over my face—I would be horrible at poker. I’m not thetype of person to lie about anything.”

Jim confirms her story with a sarcastic snort. “The veryfact she thinks flirting is a lie is so sad,” he says. “I see it asdramatic license, an entry to a conversation, a story told toarouse interest. It’s a joy, a pleasure, a type of play.”

However, when it comes to the particulars of the Wife ofBath’s flirting techniques, Jim is determined to set therecord straight: “As for ‘oh, I was dreaming about you lastnight,’ that happened both ways and we both enjoyed it.She just forgot.”

The Newlywed Game

Wife of Bath SaysYou say that all we wives our vices hideTill we are married, then we show them well;

Johnnies Say“Hon, do I have any vices?” Kathy Ertle (A84) asks herhusband, John Ertle (A84).

“Well, you did drink back in college and you didn’t hidethat very well and some people consider that a vice,” hecautiously suggests.

As for his own vices, John says he was upfront about themfrom the start: “Marry the man today and change his waystomorrow—right?”

Kathy agrees: “I already knew he wasn’t perfect.”“Really?” John asks, somewhat surprised. Apparently,

this is news to him.“Before I married you, absolutely,” Kathy says, sans

20


{ J o h n n i e s o n M a r r i a g e }

T H E W I F E O F B A T H ’ S

G U I D E T O M A R R I A G E

by Sus3an Borden, A87

Johnnie Couples Compare Life to Literature

C

21



backpedaling.Jacques Cartier (A58),

husband of Diana BarryCartier (A56), introduces amore philosophical spin tothe matter: “Both parties,not just the woman, try toput their best case forwardand conceal things theydon’t want known. They’reusually trying to concealthese things from them-selves as well, since mostof us possess relatively lit-tle self-knowledge, espe-cially when we’re young.We don’t know what we’rehiding. Time reveals it toboth of us. It can come as a pleasant or a disagreeable sur-prise.”

Lovers’ Quarrel

Wife of Bath SaysI could complain though mine was all the guilt…Or else, full many a time, I’d lost the tilt.Whoso comes first to mill first gets meal ground;I whimpered first and so did them confound.They were right glad to hasten to excuseThings they had never done, save in my ruse.

Johnnies SayKathy Ertle does not hesi-tate to acknowledge herfamiliarity with the Wife ofBath’s fighting strategy:“Oh yeah, going on theattack, isn’t that what you’resupposed to do? The bestdefense is a good offense,that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Fighting is unavoidable,but never fight in front ofyour children,” advisesJacques Cartier. He’s also ofthe “never go to bed angry”school. “Whatever eruptsduring the day, get it sortedout before bedtime. You

don’t want to start the next day with the residue of yester-day’s fight. And don’t be too stiff-necked to apologize whenyou’re wrong—and even when you’re right.”

Jenna Palmer (SF93), married to Jim Michel (SF92),describes the world of fighting Johnnie couples: “Youalways hear about how in normal relationships, usually thewoman is much more verbal and the man gets angry oreven violent when he can’t keep up with his wife’s words.But a Johnnie guy is very verbal. He can really argue well.And Jim is an attorney—we were together when he went tolaw school. In his first year in particular, he was quite adebater. I found myself at a loss for words. I was the one

“Sitting across the seminar table for two years taught us to disagree.”

Jim Ham

Kathy and John Ertle

22



who resorted to slamming thedoor.” With law school behindthem, the couple fights less fre-quently. “Now he gets most of hisarguing out with opposing coun-sel,” Jenna says.

Jim and Andrea Ham rarely fight,and Jim gives St. John’s partialcredit for this. “Sitting across theseminar table for two years taughtus to disagree,” Jim says. “So manypeople I know are incapable of hav-ing a conversation or discussion ordisagreement without it becomingpersonal. Or without having some-one be right. We learned at St.John’s that there may not be a right answer.When we went through the Program, we readthe Bible and Darwin simultaneously. In ourseminar we had people who later became nunsand a number who ended up at Los Alamos doingDNA research. Both in the books and in ourclasses, we had the full spectrum of ideas.”

What Women Most Desire

Wife of Bath SaysSome said that women all loved best riches,Some said, fair fame, and some said, prettiness;Some, rich array, some said ‘twas lust abedAnd often to be widowed and re-wed.Some said that our poor hearts are aye most easedWhen we have been most flattered and thus pleasedAnd he went near the truth, I will not lie;A man may win us best with flattery;And with attentions and with busynessWe’re often limed, the greater and the less.And some say, too, that we do love the bestTo be quite free to do our own behest,And that no man reprove us for our vice,But saying we are wise, take our advice.

Johnnies SayDavid Kelsey (A61) marriedMarta Hoekstra Kelsey (A62) in1962. Their four decades togeth-er have seen one adventure afteranother. Looking back, Davidsays it hasn’t been riches, fame,or flattery that Marta wanted intheir marriage. “I think it’s asense of being a team that’simportant,” he says. “There’salso a trust, an ability to dependon the other person withoutquestions.

“It’s always been that way forus. We’ve done lots of weird things, andwe’ve always done them together. In 1964 agroup of people paid us to take them to Alas-ka. We packed up two four-wheel vehicleswith trailers and drove all the way to Alaska—Fairbanks, Anchorage, Denali—with our 16-month-old son and an Irish setter.

“We once found an old boat half-sunk in ariver, dredged it out of the muck, and decid-ed to live on it. We already had a sailboat andwe eventually decided we would take bothboats down to St. Croix.” This trip (whichincluded a shipwreck on Ambrose Island)turned out to have been remarkably ill-advised (“totally stupid” are David’s words).But in spite of it, or because of it, their mar-

riage has flourished.“Our marriage has been very satisfying for 40 years, with

love and respect, consideration, communication. We have asense of taking life as an adventure, doing interestingthings and not settling for what everybody thinks you mightoughta do.”

David and Marta Kelsey, then and now.

23



A Life of Love

Wife of Bath Says Praise be to God that I have wedded five!Of whom I did pick out and choose the bestBoth for their nether purse and for their chestDifferent schools make divers perfect clerks, Different methods learned in sundry worksMake the good workman perfect, certainly.Of full five husbands tutoring am I.

Johnnies Say“Our marriage has lasted a long time,”says Jacques Cartier of his 44-year (andcounting) marriage. “It hasn’t all beeneasy, we’ve had a number of difficulttimes. But we’ve learned to accept each other, our strengths and our weak-nesses. We live and let live for the most part.

“There are those people who reallywant to be married, who want to betogether with someone and because of that they manage to get through thedifficult times. I think of the Sympo-sium, of the two halves that want tocomplete each other. There are othersfor whom I don’t believe that desire is there, who don’t have a funda-mental sense that this is the best way to live life.”

Partners in Books

Wife of Bath Says By God, he smote me on the ear, one day,Because I tore out of his book a leaf…

Johnnies SayIt’s a question directed at the heart ofJohnnie marriages: What do you dowith your two sets of program books?Andrea Ham lets us all in on this littlecorner of the life of married Johnnies:“Some of our duplicates are in boxes inthe garage, some are in the livingroom, some we had to give back to mysister [India Williams (SF73)], some wepassed on to our kids for high school,”reports Andrea. “I’m standing here inthe living room looking at the bookcasewhere most of our great books are.Some are Jim’s, some are mine. It’s atotal mishmash.” With graduation aquarter-century behind them, Andreasays that the books still play a role intheir marriage. “We’ll periodicallyhave conversations where we run to thebookshelf to pull out the book that sup-ports our point.”

Jenna Palmer and Jim Michel havefinally narrowed down their collectionto a single set. “Jim always sprung forthe hard cover and took meticulouscare of his books. I had mostly the dog-eared paperbacks,” reports Jenna. “Ifinally sold most of mine, so we cannever split up. Giving up your set ofprogram books—I think that showscommitment.” x

“Giving up your set of program books—I think that shows

commitment.”Jenna Palmer

Top: Jim Michel and Jenna Palmer Bottom: Andrea and Jim Ham

24


{ T h e P r o g r a m }

They continue to intrigue him a dozenyears after his “retirement” from St.John’s. At least once a week he spends thebetter part of a day conducting research inthe rotunda library of the U.S. NavalObservatory in Washington, D.C., whereoversized portraits of historic figures suchas George William Hill, a 19th centuryastronomer who studied the moon’s orbit,bear witness to his labor.

“One feels,” Wilson says, “that one issurrounded by these people.”

Indeed, when Wilson describes thesehistoric figures, he talks about them as ifthey are living, breathing people stillengaged in discovery. He becomes ascaught up in their biographies as theirscientific methods, relaying stories ofLaplace’s political savvy with Hill’s reclu-siveness. Some of these men he views withgreat admiration, and he’s grown to dis-like some of them intensely. However,each one has played a role in advancingmodern astronomy, and Wilson has givennone of them short shrift in his study.

In graduate school at Columbia, Wil-

son studied medieval science, the precur-sors of Galileo, and, he notes wryly, “I did what I was told.” When he came to St. John’s in 1948, he was, by nature of theProgram, required to learn astronomy—“of which I knew a little, but not enough,”he says. He soon fixed on Kepler’s laws ofplanetary motion as an object of interest.

“I kept hearing about the three empiri-cal laws of Kepler, but everything I readnever explained in detail how he got tothose laws,” Wilson says. He wasintrigued by the reasoning that led the17th century scientist to conclude thatplanetary motion must be elliptical. So hebegan researching Kepler, through hisfirst tenure as dean of St. John’s (1958-62)and the two years he spent as one of thefirst tutors at St. John’s College in SantaFe (1962-64).

Kepler followed him to the departmentof history at the University of California,San Diego, where Wilson moved with hiswife, Rebecca, and two sons. After hisfather’s death, he made the decision tomove to California in order to be near his

mother, who lived near San Diego.The dean who hired him at UC-San

Diego in 1966 emphasized that Wilsonneeded to publish scholarly work quickly.At 46, Wilson found himself encounter-ing for the first time the pressure of “pub-lish or perish” if he chose to seek tenureas a member of the university’s historydepartment.

“I worked fiercely, to the point of ill-ness,” Wilson says. The result was apaper: “Kepler’s Path to the Ellipse,”published in Isis. “It was,” he says, with asmile, “a very good article.”

In the paper, Wilson demonstrated thatKepler was aware that conjecture—ratherthan empirical data—was involved in hiscoming to the conclusion that the moon’spath was elliptical.

“Kepler’s ellipse was not satisfactorilyverifiable as what we would call an empiri-cal law,” Wilson explains. “What Kepleradopted did have some empirical supportbut it was theory laden; his dynamics waswrong.” Only Kepler’s third law—that theperiod for a planet to orbit the Sunincreases rapidly with the radius of itsorbit—is empirical, says Wilson.

Wilson became a full professor at UC-San Diego. But when asked to return toSt. John’s as dean in 1973, he was ready togo. While he had enjoyed the physicalenvironment in California, he found “aca-demic politics at the university was notpleasing. I just wanted to do my scholar-ship. And in the classroom, I had studentswho were very competent, but I couldn’tget them to say a word in class.”

Back in Annapolis, Wilson—by now aninternationally recognized expert on thehistory of astronomy—continued pursuinghis scholarship around his duties as deanand his return to the St. John’s classroom,publishing papers on Copernicus, New-ton, Kepler, and Horrocks among others.

Wilson’s initial inquiries into the Kep-lerian Revolution brought him to Jeremi-ah Horrocks, whose improvements on

S T A R S I N H I S E Y E SCurtis Wilson Remains Engaged in Discovery

Is Newton’s theory of planetary motion exactlyright, and is it sufficient to account for every-thing in the moon’s movement around theearth?” Like a dedicated student in seminar,tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson (HA83) has beendoggedly pursuing that question for more than

40 years. Since becoming fascinated with pre-Newtoniantheory, Wilson has carefully explored the brilliant theo-rizing and errant conclusions of scientists drawn to studythe stars. He has pondered their ideas and examinedtheir proofs, read their life stories and taken note of their enemies and personal demons.

“By Rosemary Harty


Kepler’s theories led him to correctly pre-dict the transit of Venus across the face ofthe sun. Although he died at 22, Horrockswas, in Wilson’s view, “the greatestastronomer in the 17th century afterKepler as far as lunar and planetary theo-ries are concerned.” Understanding Hor-rocks prepared the way for Wilson tobegin to answer the questions he had fos-tered about Newton’s theories. Newtonled to Euler, and Euler to Laplace. Whilemany topics were covered in the St. John’slaboratories and math tutorials, Wilson’sinterest took him ever more deeply intothe history of astronomy.

Wilson’s deep knowledge of these indi-vidual scientists has led him to form somesharp opinions of their approach to sci-ence and the times in which they lived.Laplace, for example, made great contri-

butions to astronomy in the late 18th cen-tury, including his work on the inclinationof planetary orbits and the motions of theplanets. While admiring his science, Wil-son is not terribly fond of Laplace, whotended to adapt his scientific postulationsfor the sake of political expediency whennecessary. (Laplace should be given creditfor managing to escape the guillotine inthe Reign of Terror.)

Lagrange made clear what he thought

of Laplace’s style in a letter written inSeptember 1777: “I have always envisaged[mathematics] as an object of amusementrather than of ambition, and I can assureyou that I enjoy the works of others muchmore than my own, with which I amalways dissatisfied. Thus, you see that ifyou are free of jealousy because of yoursuccess, I am not less so because of mycharacter.”

“There is nothing charming aboutLaplace,” explains Wilson. “He may havehad charisma but he was a very oppor-tunistic politician who got along well withthe nobility. Although his mathematicswere opportunistic, he discovered a lot ofimportant things.”

Wilson’s modern heroes includeGeorge William Hill, who worked for theU.S. Nautical Almanac Office, later

“I keep discoveringthings I don’t know.”

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Curtis Wilson in the college observatory.

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absorbed into the U.S Naval Observatory.Hill, who discovered a way to accuratelydetermine the motion of the lunarperigee, won the gold medal of the RoyalAstronomical Society of London in 1887.

“That’s the beginning of modern-daylunar theory,” Wilson says. “It took 10years for him to gain recognition for hisdiscoveries, and when he went to receivethe honor at Cambridge, they didn’tknow who he was and put him up in a janitor’s closet.”

Wilson recently completed a paper onDutch astronomer Peter Andreas Hansenthat is pending publication in the Archivefor History of Exact Sciences, to which hehas been a faithful contributor.

Today, Wilson is up to Ernest WilliamBrown, whose professor at Cambridge—George Howard Darwin—told him

“somebody ought to develop Hill’s theo-ry on the orbit of the moon.” “Brownwent to work,” says Wilson. “He cameto the U.S., taught at Harvard and thenat Yale, and worked out the details ofthe theory Hill had outlined.”

When he’s not researching and writ-

ing, Wilson practices Beethoven’s pianosonatas and t’ai chi, and visits familywith his wife, Rebecca, who served formany years as public relations directorfor the college.

Fascinated by his subject matter, Wil-son works on. He comes to the St. John’scampus almost every day. His enthusi-asm and energy seem boundless.Although he is pleased to continue topublish papers, something more funda-mental drives his scholarship these days.

“I keep discovering things that I don’tknow,” Wilson says.

He talks about Kepler—who started itall—with great admiration.

“His theory is so wrong,” Wilsonsays. “But I admire his stick-to-itive-ness, his imagination, his courage. Hewas an utterly charming person.” x

n academe, a Festchrift is akin tothe ultimate birthday party, withtributes serving as the gifts.

Last April, the St. John’scommunity was honored to hostsuch an event for Curtis Wilson,

tutor emeritus. The event was organ-ized by George Smith, professor of phi-losophy at Tufts University and actingdirector of the Dibner Institute, andJed Buchwald, editor of the Archive forHistory of Exact Sciences. And thoughthe event was timed very near to Wil-son’s 81st birthday, enduring admira-tion for a scholar and a colleague,rather than a chronological marker,prompted the event.

“[Wilson] has done far more thananyone else to provide all of us with adeep understanding of the three cen-turies of orbital astronomy from Keplerthrough Simon Newcomb,” said Smith,later adding, “Curtis, you are universal-ly recognized to be a paragon of yourfield.”

Speakers noted Wilson’s two decadesof service on the editorial board of theArchive, his contributions on planetaryastronomy to the General History ofAstronomy, and his books, mono-graphs, and many papers.

The papers contributed in Wilson’shonor will be published by the Dibner

Institute in 2003. Among the contribu-tions is this story from I. BernardCohen, professor emeritus at HarvardUniversity:

“My path first crossed Curtis Wil-son’s when I was writing a small bookabout planetary theory before Newton.My concern was to understand the sig-nificance of Newton’s Principia. I had infact written a number of chapters, andhad even arranged that this small bookwould be published in a new seriesbeing edited by Michael Hoskin.

One of the features of the book wasan analysis of the various approxima-tions that were used by astronomers inplace of Kepler’s area law. Theseapproximations made use of the emptyfocus of the ellipse and postulated a uni-form motion with regard to this emptyfocus. Various forms of correction werethen introduced to make this approxi-mation agree more closely with the dataof observation. One of the features ofthis book was to find out how goodthese approximations were.

I had difficulty in comparing theseapproximations with published tablesand so… a student of mine and I testedthe accuracy of these approximations bycomparing the positions determined bythem with the results of solvingKepler’s equation.

We did this work on one of the newgiant mainframe computers, where we were fortunate to be awarded a half-hour of computer time at 1:30 in themorning…While we were studying the results of our computer research, I received my copy of Truesdell’sArchive for History of Exact Sciencescontaining a long monograph by Cur-tis Wilson, his study ‘From Kepler’sLaws (So-Called) to Universal Gravita-tion: Some Empirical Factors.’ Thismonograph was a detailed study andanalysis of the approximations toKepler’s area law that was used in thedecades before Newton.

“My first reaction was one of extremefrustration…even though my book dealtwith the subject somewhat differently, Iwas aware that Curtis’ beautiful analysishad taken the subject so far that therewas no need of my book on a similarsubject. Accordingly, I consigned mybook to the graveyard of unpublishedworks. In discarding my partly finishedbook, there was one great source of sat-isfaction in that Curtis had done somasterful a study that it was a real joy towelcome it. In this work Curtis showedhimself to be a master of older astrono-my, someone who would make a realcontribution to our knowledge duringthe decades.” x

{ T h e P r o g r a m }

Honoring a Scholar, Thanking a Colleague

I

Wilson is not terriblyfond of Laplace,

who tended to adapthis scientific postula-tions for the sake ofpolitical expediency.

27


Overheard atHomecoming:“And you! Youlook exactly thesame!” “No,you look exactly

the same!” Whether theseobservations made by 30-some-things at a wine and cheese partyin Annapolis were truthful ornot, Homecoming in Santa Feand Annapolis this year was allabout the gleeful rediscovery ofold friends.

There was much sharing ofmemories (foodfights, FreshmanChorus, and spectacular senior pranks)and much catching up (new jobs, babies,and adventures abroad). And provingthemselves still pursuing the examinedlife, Homecoming attendees packed lec-tures and took part in seminars, even afterlong nights of waltzing, talking, and NapaValley wine.

In July at Santa Fe, the campus enjoyedits largest event ever, with 130 partici-pants. Homecoming opened on Fridaynight with a barbecue dinner on thePlacita, followed by a rock ‘n’ roll party atthe coffee shop. On Saturday, alumni couldchoose from seminars on Chekhov, Borges,Plato, Shakespeare, and Dinesen. Theywere released from the classroom to analumni fiesta picnic on the soccer field—where the food was great and a mini-babyboom was in evidence—then lured backinside for a Saturday afternoon lecture on“The China-Burma-India Theater: Untold

Stories from 1945,” by ElainePinkerton Coleman (SFGI88).

A uniquely Santa Fe Home-coming offering, the All-Alum-ni Art Show drew a large andenthusiastic crowd to the artgallery. And during the annualHomecoming dinner in thePeterson Student Center dininghall, Awards of Merit went toPeggy Jones (SFGI94) and

Stephanie Forrest (SF77). A President’sBrunch for alumni at the Hunt Housecapped the weekend.

In Annapolis, Friday afternoon eventsincluded an alumni career panel. AaronLewis (A96), press secretary for Congress-man Dana Rohrabacher, described a jobinterview with another politician. Pre-pared to discuss current political issues,Lewis instead was asked who he thoughthad invented calculus: Leibniz or Newton.

After a very enthusiastic welcome fromher audience, Eva Brann delivered her lec-ture, “The Empires of the Sun and West,”to a packed house, with alumni and stu-dents spilling out into the corridors of theFSK Auditorium. Her observations abouthuman sacrifices in the Aztec empire pre-pared lecture-goers for a wine and cheesereception.

In spite of reports of very late hours keptat waltz and rock parties Friday night,

H O M E C O M I N G , E A S T A N D W E S T,

In July in Santa Fe, and October in Annapolis, Homecoming celebrations were lively, well attended, and of course, overwhelmingly sentimental.

Top: Chris Labonte (SF92)with Anna Zinanti in SantaFe; Bottom: Taking a breakat the picnic in Annapolis.

“And you! You lookexactly the same!”

“No, you look exactlythe same!”

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

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attendance was good at Saturday seminars;Sam Kutler had 14 alumni ready to plungeinto The Demons, a 600-page tome.

The class of 1952 had an afternoon pic-nic enlivened by class member WarrenWiniarski’s Stag’s Leap wine. The winealso was served at the evening banquet,perhaps inspiring the enthusiastic partici-pation in class toasts.

A member of the class of 1932, HenryShryock, who had the honor of being theoldest alumnus present, drew a standingovation with his heartfelt toast that closedthe evening: “On behalf of the old pro-gram, I’d like to toast the New Program—St. John’s forever!” x

Clockwise from top: Taking a moment toread in Annapolis; Jules and LeRoy Pagano(A48); Santa Fe President John Balkcom(SFGI00), flanked by Lee Goldstein(SFGI90)and Alice Mangum Perry (SFGI92).

In spite of reports of very late hours kept at waltz and rock parties Friday night,

attendance was healthy at Saturday seminars.

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

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At a Glance: Homecoming 2002

Santa Fe

67, 72, 77, 82, 87, 92, 97

Paper cubes with four-seasonviews of the campus

President John Balkcom’s jauntystraw boater at the Fiesta Picnic

“Sorrow-Acre” by Isak Dinesen,led by Don Cook, tutor emeritus

Daniel T. Kelly Jr., Gregory D. Curtis

Peggy Jones (Graduate Institute1994), founding board memberof the St. John’s College Libraryand Fine Arts Guild; StephanieForrest (1988), professor of com-puter science and researcher atthe University of New Mexico inAlbuquerque

Alumni Speaking Volumes lecture

Annapolis

37, 42, 47, 52, 57, 62, 67, 72, 77,82, 87, 92, 97

Travel mugs with McDowellHall picture

The St. John’s Story on continu-ous replay in the Coffee Shop

Plato’s Phaedo, led by PeterKalkavage

John Sarkissian, Al Toft, Robert Williamson

Candace Brightman (1967),lighting designer for the Grate-ful Dead; Howard Zeiderman(1967), tutor and founder of theTouchstones Discussion Project

Great books story hour for kids

Reunion years

Freebie gifts

Touch of nostalgia

Hot seminars

Honorary alumni

Awards of Merit

Uniquely JohnnieHomecoming Feature

Top: Susan Zinanti (SF93), Heather Watts(SF00), Taeko Onishi (SF92) at the Santa Febanquet; Below: Picnickers in Annapolis.

Top: Pauline Shryock enjoysthe Annapolis Homecomingbanquet; Bottom: Annapolisstudents Hayden Brockett andJenny Lowe at the waltz party.

Lawrence Black, Jenn Coonce, Lori Free-man, and Tafetta Elliott spell out theirgraduation year.

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

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

The Clash Between Quantum Theory and Human Individuality

Seeing Double: Shared Identities inPhysics, Philosophy, and LiteraturePeter PesicMIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002

Peter Pesic explores fundamen-tal and paradoxical questionsabout connectedness and sepa-rateness, identity andanonymity, in his new book,Seeing Double: Shared Identi-

ties in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature.Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence inSanta Fe, draws from the disciplines of phi-losophy and literature in shaping his dis-cussion; however, it is physics that ulti-mately shapes his intriguing point of view.Specifically, modern quantum theory ispresented as a tool for formulating andcontemplating nontraditional definitionsof individuality. Although he has expertknowledge of the subject, the author pres-ents contemporary theoretical physics in amanner accessible to lay readers.

The usual interpretation of quantumtheory calls for an essential sameness inthe elementary building blocks of matter,yet the prevailing cultural understandingof individuality demands that certainaspects of any object be unique untothemselves. A central component of beinghuman, for example, is that each of usfeels we are one of a kind, unduplicatedacross the arc of history. Although thisclashing of basic assumptions would seemto pose an inherent contradiction, Pesicsuggests that by refining our definitionsof individuality and identity, we can makequantum theory more intelligible and lessconflictive, while maintaining nonscien-tific claims of singularity.

In the last section of Seeing Double, theauthor considers the defining property ofidenticality described by quantum physics,whereby subatomic particles have no indi-vidual identity. This notion begs challeng-ing questions about how we are able toobserve the movement of (identical) elec-trons or to define them (accurately) as either waves or particles.

In exploring through classic literature arevised perspective on the queries he rais-es, Pesic recounts illustrative elements thatbegin with the Greek mythology ofHomer’s Odyssey and continue throughJanet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerreand Franz Kafka’s The Trial, among oth-ers. Philosophical theories also are consid-ered, including those of Gottfried Leibniz,Socrates, Benedict Spinoza, and ImmanuelKant. The author gives concise discussionsof their ideas, but also aims to open a con-versation with his readers. “We cannotrefer our human questions about identityto a physicist, the way we refer our legalproblems to a lawyer,” writes Pesic. “Thisrealization is truly a philosophical matter.”

Pesic moves next into the implications ofthe thinking upon which modern sciencerests, including Newtonian physics, Ein-stein’s theory of relativity, and the electro-magnetic studies of Michael Faraday. Theauthor further expands the question ofidentity by acknowledging the powerfulinfluences that personality, nature, andGod may play in our interpretations of sci-entific theory.

Although Seeing Double does notaddress such domains directly, it touchesultimately on identity-related aspects ofbiotechnology and cloning that also areworthy of analysis. Mr. Pesic wonders, forinstance, what would happen if a human iscloned into two identical beings: “Whichof these, then, is you? Both? Neither? Onlyone (but which)?” A satisfactory answerremains elusive.

In addition to being a concert pianist,Pesic has published a number of papers onscience-related topics over the years. Hisprevious book, Labyrinth: A Search for theHidden Meaning of Science, was publishedby MIT Press in 2000 and has appeared inJapanese and German trans-lations as wellas paperback. x

–by Richard Mahler

“What would happenif a human is

cloned into two identical beings?”

Santa Fe Tutor PeterPesic tackles physicsin his latest book.

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

Homeric Moments: Clues toDelight in Reading THE ODYSSEY and THE ILIAD

Eva BrannPaul Dry Books

“Reading Homer’s poems is one of thepurest, most inexhaustible pleasures lifehas to offer—a secret sometimes too wellkept in our time.” So begins Eva Brann’s“Homeric Moments,” a work inspired by50 years of reading Homer and 40 years ofguiding St. John’s students on their ownjourneys through the poems. In 48 conciseand beautifully written chapters, Brannfocuses on the crucial scenes—themoments—that mark the high points ofthe narrative. Much of her book is struc-tured on the questions that students haveposed in seminar over the years. (Editor’snote: The Spring 2003 issue of The Collegemagazine will include a more thoroughreview of Homeric Moments.)

Psychology and the Critical RevolutionAnton G. Hardy (A51)James Publications

Anton Hardy presents an odyssey of anoth-er kind in this work: the question of howknowledge of the human being may beattained. The book criticizes trends inpresent-day psychology—psychology thatHardy says is suffering in the grip of thephilosophy of realism.

How the Friday Night Dance Came to Glen Echo ParkOwen Kelley (A93)Self-published ([email protected])

Kelley’s book discusses the history of theGlen Echo Park dances, which grew from asmall gathering of friends to weekly eventsattracting several hundred people. Kelleyhas interviewed dozens of dancers, musi-cians, and callers for his book on thisfamous dance hall right outside Washing-ton, D.C. Several essays about the dancesare also included.

Japanese Cabinetry: The Art and Craft of TansuDavid Jackson and Dane Owen (SF98)Gibbs Smith

Originating from Japan’s Edo period (1615-1867), tansu refers mostly to wooden cabi-nets, boxes, and chests. This book providesa broad representation of cabinetry designsand chronicles the physical characteristicsand details of tansu as well as the historicaleras and societal factors that influencedthe craft.

12 Japanese MastersMaggie Kinser Saiki (A85)Graphis

Maggie Kinser Saiki spent 10 years profil-ing some of the greatest designers in post-war Japan for Graphis magazine. Theseprofiles are collected here in a book thatoutlines the cultural and historical contextin which the designers grew up andmatured.

Periodically, The College will list or featurealumni books. Please send notice of bookspublished or review copies (which will bedonated to the library’s alumni author col-lection) for consideration to: The CollegeMagazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,Annapolis, MD 21404.

Love, War and CircusesEric Scigliano (SF75)Houghton Mifflin

Most children grow up loving elephants—either from the circus and the zoo or fromfavorite books featuring characters such asBabar, the wise elephant king. Seattle-based writer Eric Scigliano, whose articleshave appeared in publications includingOutside and The New York Times, first

became fascinated with elephants as achild living in Vietnam. The fascinationhas lingered into adulthood, promptingthis volume examining man’s millennia-long relationship with the pachyderm.Scigliano explains how elephants haveshaped history, art, religion, and popularculture, how they have been revered,exploited for both labor and entertain-ment, and hunted to the point of becomingendangered.

1944JOHN DAVIS HILL and Dorothy Mur-dock Hill celebrated their 56th wed-ding anniversary on June 15, 2002, inOmaha, Nebraska, with local friends.

1946“Sued President Bush on June 12 onbehalf of 31 members of Congressfor terminating the ABOL Treatywithout the approval of two-thirdsof the Senate or a majority of bothhouses,” reports PETER WEISS fromthe Bronx.

1952DAVID NAPPER writes that he enjoysthe mild winters of Ponte Vedra,Fla., but summers are “steamy.”“I’m active in tennis, and we’vefound the Jacksonville Symphonyworthwhile.”

1960The New York Tri-State Speaker’sAssociation Inc. honored MARY

CAMPBELL GALLAGHER with its AlanCimberg Award for her years of dedi-cated service to NSA/New York. Shehas served on the board of directorsand in various leadership roles.

1962“Am busily writing a new papercalled ‘Behaving with Shu [caretoward one’s subordinates, usually

translated as reciprocity] and

Zhong’ [care toward one’s superi-ors, usually translated as loyalty]for, I hope, presentation next yearin Sweden,” says DAVID SCHILLER.

1965CAROL BENJAMIN JEFFERS is “happi-ly single after a long marriage. I livesquarely on the line between Mary-land and Delaware and work at a jobI love. I plan to retire and move backto the Pacific Northwest in abouttwo years.” She would love to hearfrom classmates.

ALLENNA DUNGAN LEONARD wasrecently elected to a three-year termas president of the American Societyfor Cybernetics.

1967LOVEJOY DURYEA is chairman of theNew York State Board of InteriorDesign Office of the Professions. InMarch, she will receive the GoldMedal at the National Arts Club inNew York.

1968ALEX HIMWICH (A) and LynnMaguire were married on May 26,2002.

1969JOSEPH PRESTON BARATTA (A) writesthat his history, The Politics ofWorld Federation, will be publishednext year by Praeger Press. The

book includes a chapter about

Stringfellow Barr and ScottBuchanan after they left St. John’s.

MARK A. MANDEL (A) writes thathis daughter Susannah interned lastsummer at a Paris publishing housemidway through MIT’s M.A. pro-gram in comparative media studies.“As I write this (hopefully no longerthe case as you read it!), I am search-ing for work as a linguist (the lan-guage-scientist kind, not the kind allsecurity agencies want to hire,alas!)” [email protected]

In New York, N.Y., BENJAMIN

TREUHAFT (A) is involved with agroup called Send a Piano toHavana that does just that. “Justdelivered our 210th piano to Havanalast month.” The group’s web site:www.sendapiana.com

1970Last summer, STEVE HANCOFF (A)saw a newspaper article reportingthat musicians, especially Americanartists, were turning down concertdates in Israel, mostly because of afear of violence, but in some cases,because of disagreement withIsraeli policy.

His response was to bring a con-cert tour to Israel. “The two princi-ples I wanted to demonstrate were:There are indeed respected Ameri-can artists who will not be intimidat-ed by terror. And we wish to standwith the Israeli people.”

Hancoff’s trio planned to tour thecountry during the fall—not just themajor cities, he said. At each con-cert the group expected to be joinedan Israeli artist. They also plannedto offer master classes. Check hisweb site for updates: www.stevehan-coff.com.

1972Parental pride: “HANK (A70) andCHRISTINE (A72) CONSTANTINE’S

extremely personable, intelligentand handsome son, Alex, is now asophomore at Annapolis.”

Last fall, CHRISTEL STEVENS (A)finally got to Greece. She presentedher paper, “Images of Women inIndian Dance Sacred and Profane,”with colleague Lori Clark, at theannual conference of the Interna-tional Council for Dance. The con-

ference was held Oct. 30 to Nov. 4.

Last September SARA ABERCROMBIE

(SF02) was a houseguest of IRVING

WILLIAMS (A72) at Happy House onCliff Island, Maine. “We comparedsenior pranks of the ’70s and ’90s,and the true identify of the infamous‘clapper napper,’ who exchangedthe Annapolis Bell Tower clapper fora dog fish, was revealed,” reportsWilliams.

1974SAM GOLDBERG (A) has written TheTransference in Psychotherapy withWilliam Goldstein, to be publishedthis year by Jason Aronson Inc.

1975Vancouver-Portland alumni: It’stime for another event, says DALE

MORTIMER (A). “The last areaalumni event was a reception forPresident John Balkcom on May 8,2001.” For those with a suggestion,plus the willingness to organize theproposed event, feel free to contactDale: 360-882-9058.

1976ED KAITZ (A) is a musician currentlyperforming interactively with chil-dren, elders and people with disabili-ties. Interested parties may contacthim at [email protected].

1977WILLIAM MALLOY (SF) has plans.“Because I was nine years olderthan you when we began, I get toretire in 2006! I plan on doingsome sort of paralegal work forsome left-wing public interestgroup (but not one as staid as theACLU).”

From PATRICIA MCCULLOUGH

(SFGI) in Lanham, Md.: “I havejust completed my 30th year as ateacher of English at Alice Deal Jr.High School in Washington, D.C.,and I still love it.”

Two years ago, MICHAEL (LEVINE)ST. JAMES (A) chose to leave lawfirm life after two decades to begina solo practice. Good timing, he says: “I specialize in businessbankruptcy!”

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

A Gift of Books

Several books from the library of the late PETER

RINGLAND (class of 1944) have found their way intothe college library. Peter’s widow, Valentina, broughtan 18th-century volume of Ovid and two languagemanuals from his Greek tutorials. The Ovid, she said,came from a market in Rome where Peter was sta-

tioned when he worked for the government in the 1980s. The lan-guage manuals were for a class taught by John Kieffer, one of onlytwo tutors who remained at the college after the New Programwas instituted in 1937. A classics scholar, Kieffer taught Greekand developed early materials for the freshman tutorials. TheOvid will be kept with the library’s rare book collection; the man-uals will join other source books, papers, and instructional mate-rials from the early days of the New Program. x

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

When he becamedean of Harvard’sGraduate School ofArts and Sciencestwo years ago,Peter Ellison (A73)

knew he was sacrificing time: precioustime that might otherwise be devoted tostudying lactation and fertility among theToba of northern Argentina, or time toproduce another book in his field of humanreproductive ecology.

But in the bargain, Ellison gains achance to make a long-lasting contributionto science in another way. Concerned thathigher education could lose talented stu-dents to more lucrative fields, Ellisonbecame increasingly active at Harvard inissues concerning graduate education. Hebelieved that the crisis in secondary educa-tion—an inability to attract and retain tal-ented and motivated individuals to theteaching profession—could be replicated inhigher education.

“As a society, we have so devalued sec-ondary school education as a career thatwe have made it one that only saints andextremely motivated people of talentwould pursue,” says Ellison. “I’m worriedthat we could do the same thing to the pro-fessoriate. The very best and brightestyoung minds are also capable of manyother activities and there are many otherprofessions that beckon to them.”

Harvard’s call to action was prompted byalarming statistics. At Harvard in the ’60sand early ’70s, well over half of the summacum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduateswent on to graduate school and careers inhigher education; now that number isbelow 20 percent, says Ellison. Medicine,law, and business school beckon to manytalented graduates who might otherwisebecome college professors.

“Pursuing a Ph.D. and going into acade-mia is a very long course with unpredictablerewards,” Ellison says. “Either we’re goingto make higher education a career for sec-ond-class minds or go to work on that careerso that some of these wonderfully intelligentpeople can still pursue that calling.”

Before accepting the dean’s post, Ellisonheaded a faculty committee examiningfinancial aid. The committee’s work even-

tually led to Harvard’s adoption of a policyto provide full funding for nearly all of itsgraduate students. That alone is a goodstart, but Harvard is also looking at ways toshorten the path to the Ph.D., improve thequality of life for graduate students, andmake sure that doctoral candidates learnteaching skills along the way.

“We’re providing much more self–con-scious preparation of our students. In thepast they’ve been trained to be wonderfulresearchers, and they figure out how toteach on their own,” he explains. “Now weintegrate teaching into the curriculum,rather than making it just a job on the side,and we’re addressing pedagogy and profes-sional development in general.”

Ellison’s own path to research and teach-ing came—indirectly—through St. John’s.He studied Greek and Latin at an EastCoast prep school and believed that St. John’s would prepare him to pursue acareer in literature, languages, or philoso-phy. Science he dismissed as “dry anduninteresting.”

That plan continued unaltered until Elli-son read Darwin’s Origin of Species insophomore laboratory.

“That stopped me dead in my tracks. Ihad never encountered an argument that wasso powerful and undeniably true,” he says.

That led to his decision to leave St. John’safter the fall term of his junior year; hetransferred to the University of Vermont,where he plunged into remedial scienceand biology, “loving every minute of thisarea of knowledge which I had previouslyspurned.”

After earning a degree in anthropology,Ellison chose to study human biology. Hewent to Harvard, where he earned a doc-torate in biological anthropology andjoined the faculty in 1983. His research hascentered on the biology of human popula-tions, including issues such as fertility,stages of development, and reproduction.

Ellison’s research has taken him to someof the most remote spots on Earth, fromthe Congo to villages in Argentina. He hashopped single-engine mission planes to getto research sites and suffered a bout ofmalaria. He has studied topics including anx-iety and ovarian function, reproductiveecology and reproductive cancers, and age-related decline in male salivary testosterone.

There are sometimes constraints in hisresearch, and not just those that hinder aman investigating female reproductiveissues.

“Even more than being a male studyingreproductive biology, [it is difficult to be] ahuman biologist and to study human beingswhere your subjects are people who havelives and identities and struggles of theirown, ethically, personally, and socially.”

He may have less time to spend in thefield, but Ellison’s research is continuingthrough his Reproductive Ecology Labora-tory at Harvard. Ellison and colleaguesdeveloped techniques for measuring repro-ductive hormones in saliva instead ofblood, allowing them to take research outof the clinic and into the field.

Right now, that field is in Argentina,where Ellison and his co-investigators arestudying issues of lactation, energy, andreproduction among the Toba women ofFormosa, Argentina.

Although he doesn’t plan to stay inadministration for the long term, Ellisonappreciates the broader perspective hispost has afforded him.

“I have a chance to get out of my own lit-tle niche and see a larger landscape.” x

Peter Ellison

Preserving the Ph.D.Anthropologist Peter Ellison Leads Harvard Graduate School

mar

tha

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art

by Rosemary Harty

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Somewhere between passion andpragmatism, real change hap-pens. Martha Franks (SF78)cites as an example the diver-gent paths of two historic fig-ures. Abraham Lincoln was

diplomatic and realistic. Abolitionist JohnBrown was radical and passionate. In com-mon, they shared the desire to end slavery.

Franks, a lawyer, environmentalist, stu-dent of theology, and St. John’s tutor, hasbeen working in New Mexico water lawsince the mid-’80s. Her approach to thecritical issues surrounding water allocationin the West take her somewhere betweenLincoln and Brown.

“Brown stands as an icon of personalprinciple, such principle that he was inef-fective in what he wanted to do,” Frankssays. “And then there’s Lincoln, who is farmore equivocal in terms of principledobjections to slavery, but he can get thingsto happen. He can see what needs to bedone in order to be effective in the world.Yet you have to be careful, because youdon’t want to be so seduced by realpolitikthat you lose track of what you do. It is avery difficult line to walk.”

Franks balances her environmental con-cerns with practical realities. “The themein all my work has been trying to integratean intellectual and a practical life,” shesays, “and trying to understand when it’sappropriate to make deals, and when it’simportant to pursue principle.”

Water law goes beyond public policy andthe law; philosophical and theologicalissues are also involved. Traditionally,water rights have been allocated amongfederal, state, city, Indian, and privateinterests. But how about allocating waterto the environment?

“There are two sides to the questionabout how much water is appropriate toallocate to the environment,” Franksexplains. “There are people who arguethat the answer is none, that species havebecome extinct since the beginning oftime; our species is now ascendant andwe’ll take what we want. Others say thatthe preservation of earth is the primarytask of human stewardship and that watershould be available first for the naturalecology. Only when that’s satisfied can

human beings build a sustainable lifestyleon what remains.

“Both positions can be defended on ide-alistic grounds, depending on your ideolo-gy, but the practical matter is that peopletry to work out compromises. Huge ideolo-gies stand there and people sort them-selves in relation to the one they’re closestto, but in the end, people struggle to findcompromises.”

Returning to the St. John’s program as atutor last September offered Franks anoth-er opportunity to integrate practicality andintellect. “The more learning you do inreal life, the more you can hear the truth,”Franks says. “I loved these books as anundergrad, yet I have to look at them andsay, ‘I never could have heard this then.’ Iwould have missed these truths if I hadn’tbeen through what I have been through.And of course that makes it obvious thatthere’s tons of stuff in there that I can’t see

now, and maybe won’t see ever.”After working for five years for the feder-

al government and about 10 years for thestate of New Mexico, Franks started a newchapter in her legal career in January 2002when she opened a private firm. But forg-ing ahead in the practical world has notkept her from philosophical contempla-tion. Drawing on her seminary back-ground (she has a master’s degree in theo-logical studies from the VirginiaTheological Seminary), she’s been explor-ing the connections between Christianityand environmentalism.

Franks mentions one environmentalist’sclaim that the Judeo-Christian traditionled to human kind’s dominion over—anddestruction of—the planet. “I would like todo work addressing the truth or falsity ofthat and seeing whether there is a groundfor an environmental ethic within Chris-tianity,” she says.

“It is astonishing that the Hebrew scrip-tures talk in terms of subduing the earth,”she says. “Instead of thinking of the earthas a giant nature god of mystery and power,it makes more sense in our century, in thewake of so much environmental destruc-tion, to perceive the earth as weak andhelpless, like a baby that can’t take care ofitself.” x

Striking a BalanceLawyer Martha Franks Integrates Idealism with Reality

Santa Fe tutorMartha Franksmaintains a pri-vate practicein environmen-tal law and isinvolved in thecontroversyover waterrights in NewMexico.

by Marissa Morrison, SFGI02

“The more learningyou do in real life, the more you canhear the truth.”

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1978Update on the Blumes, fromMICHAEL DAVID BLUME (A): “In thepast year my son has graduated highschool, my wife, BETSY BLUME (A75)has become a certified fund-raisingexecutive, certification earnedthrough the American Society ofAssociation Executives. As well asorganizing other educational activi-ties, she has now joined the board ofdirectors of the Washington chapterof the AFP; and she and I wrote a‘how to’ book on an aspect of fundraising, published and promoted bythe American Society of AssociationExecutives. She continues to workfor the Special Libraries Associa-tion, and continues to expand rev-enues for its projects, working withsuch companies as Lexis-Nexis, Fac-tive, Standard & Poors, and manyothers.

We have finally moved fromAnnapolis to Bethesda, Maryland,contiguous with Northwest Wash-ington and intermingled with ChevyChase. It is a beautiful area.”

SUZAN M. PORTER (SF) will beteaching sixth-grade science andseventh-grade pre-algebra at theNOVA School in Olympia, Wash.“NOVA is a middle school whichserves academically talented young-sters, and I’m very much lookingforward to the challenges.”

1980ANDREW KLIPPER (A) became agrandfather for the second time onOct. 24, 2001, when Makayla MarieAnderson was born. “JUSTIN BURKE

(A87) and I continue to coordinatean annual fund-raising effort for theJimmy Fund and the Dana FarberCancer Institute. Anyone wishing toparticipate can e-mail me [email protected]. See you all cro-quet weekend. I will be running theBay Bridge 10K.”

1981From Nashville, Tenn., ROBERT J.MONDLOCK (A) writes of his musicalcareer: “For about the last sevenyears I’ve been touring with my wifeand partner, Carol Elliott, who isalso a singer/songwriter (we gotmarried at the Kerrville Folk Festi-val in Texas in June of 2000). I’ve

got three CDs of my own out andI’ve had the good fortune of havingsome of my songs recorded by otherartists as well (Nanci Griffith, DavidWilcox, Joan Baez, Janis Ian, GarthBrooks, Peter Paul and Mary). Mylatest project is a trio record withArt Garfunkel and Maia Sharpscheduled for release on October 8.The three of us will be touring tosupport the record this fall on intonext spring. I’ve got a website likejust about everybody these days. It’sBuddyMondlock.com. Please c’monby and sign the guestbook and sayhi. I’d love to hear from any of myold pals at St. John’s.”

1982STEVE MULHOLLAND (A) is teachingLatin to middle and high school stu-dents at Chatham Public School. Hebegan building a new house lastSeptember.

“As if going to the 20th reunionwasn’t enough to make me feel old!”says LESLIE SMITH-ROSEN (A)“Eldest child, Marielle, is a collegefreshman now; Alyssa’s in highschool and Sam’s in middle school.I’m still teaching and developingcurriculum at a Baltimore Jewishday school and religious highschool. My quest for a Ph.D., nowspanning two millennia, is on itsnext leg: working on my languagecomps, nursing a dissertation topic.Too much stress, too much debt, toolittle time to read—but somehowvery happy.”

According to DAVID WEINSTEIN (A),“There is nothing like being thedirector of research for a nationalbrokerage firm in these interestingtimes.”

1983DEANA GLICKSTEIN (AGI) recentlyrelocated to Tarpon Springs, Fla.,after electing early retirement as aneducational administrator with theschool district of Philadelphia andas a graduate school professor.“Though there are many realGreeks here in Tarpon Springs,have not found any St. Johnniealumni chapters here in Florida.Interested in creating one? please e-mail: [email protected].”

1984EDWARD ABSE (A) is completing adoctorate in anthropology this yearat the University of Virginia, basedon three years of field research withthe Mazatec Indians of the SierraMadre Oriental in Oaxaca, Mexico.

1985Remarried and with a brand newbook, MAGGIE KINSER [SAIKI]HOHLE (A) writes: “As I wrote inThe Reporter in 2000, I graduatedin ’85 from Annapolis as MaggieKinser. I spent 15 years in Japan. Ireturned to the U.S. in 2000. Thenew news is that I have a book com-ing out: The book is 12 JapaneseMasters, and is being published byGraphis. (You can find it at ama-zon.com.) 12 Japanese Masters is theculmination of 10 years of writingabout Japanese design. Because myparents are both designers, becauseI studied at St. John’s, and because Ispeak Japanese, I ended up writingfor Graphis magazine while inJapan. I was fortunate enough tointerview some of the greatestdesigners in postwar Japan, andthrough their work and the experi-ences they related to me, to learnabout both Japanese design and thepostwar period in Japan. I publishedmore than 20 pieces for Graphis,and then, while home for myfather’s funeral in 1999, pitched thepublisher with the idea of bringingall these profiles together in a book

that would outline the cultural andhistorical context in which thesedesigners grew up and matured.”

ANTHONY N. SIEGEL (SF) marriedLinda Naclerrio in October 2001; hewas promoted to vice president ofCitiCorps last February. They live inChappaqua, N.Y.

1986MARGARET PARISH (A) received aPh.D. in clinical psychology fromDelphi University in 2000. She is apostdoctoral fellow at the AustenRiggs Center, an open, psychoana-lytic, psychiatric hospital dedicatedto examined living in Stockbridge,Mass.

LUCY E. DUNCAN (SF) gave birth to adaughter this spring.

1987BETH MORRIS (A) has just returnedfrom a year in London (spent withA87 classmate MICHAEL SMITH andhis wife, Kristen). She’s working as aproject manager for a software com-pany. In September she wrote of herplans to be married—“INS will-ing!”—in November to Steve Tan-ner of Basingstoke, U.K.

1988ERIN M. MILNES (A) has recentlytaken up whitewater raft guiding.“It’s great fun in a beautiful loca-

A Year in Congress

STEVE HANF (A70) has been spending the past yearworking in Congress, thanks to a fellowship from theAmerican Political Science Association. “I’m servingthe fellowship on the personal staff of Rep. Brad Sher-man (D-Calif.) My issues are health and the elderly—totally new subjects for me. (For the past 15 years, I’ve

been working on financial regulatory issues.) The congressionalstaff is young, smart, hard-working—exploding the myth that peo-ple who work for Congress don’t know what they’re doing. This isa wonderfully invigorating and educational experience for me.

“On the personal side, my wife (Ruth Sievers) and I celebratedour 18th anniversary last March. She has become devoted to thecultivation and arrangement of flowers and wants to retire soonfrom her writing job at the Library of Congress so she can spendfull time on those floral pursuits. Our 14-year-old son just gradu-ated from middle school with a straight-A record for the entirethree years. He enters high school next fall.” x

tion: the south fork of the AmericanRiver. Just last week I was joined ona rafting trip by JEFF FALERO (A88),who’s now living in the Bay Area.We had a fantastic time catching upand paddling in the sun. Anyoneinterested in some Californiawhitewater can reach me [email protected]”

Last fall, GRETCHEN JACOBS (A)wrote and directed a play calledBrightness Falls: The Tragical History of Christopher Marlowe,at the Greenbelt Arts Center inGreenbelt, Md.

1990New baby news from CLINTON

PITTMAN (SF): “Samuel ShenPittman born 02/22/02—GeorgeWashington’s real birthday and anumerical palindrome of sorts. Pic-tures available upon request.”

1991SAPNA GANDHI (A) writes from Jersey City: “I am finally certified toteach yoga to children through agreat program (www.yogakids.com).If anyone is interested in learningmore, contact me: [email protected]. I don’t know whereI’ll go from here but will look intoteaching at children’s hospitalsand community centers.” She alsoplans a trip to India to get reac-quainted with family and her culture.

CYNTHIA GLINES (SFGI) completedher doctorate in psychology lastspring. “Currently I work at a max-imum security prison as a unit psy-chologist in the lovely state ofIdaho.”

1992LORIE BENNING (A) has been in Bal-timore with her daughter, Sarah,for four years. “Sarah is 11 and isgoing into sixth grade. She’s a jock(swimming and soccer), but she’salso artistic and she loves to read. Iwork at Johns Hopkins as a statisti-cal analyst for a women’s HIVstudy. I’ve published three paperson the impact of HIV on cervicaldisease, quality control of HIV viralload measurements, and theincreasing importance of non-

AIDS mortality in the era of potentanti-retroviral therapy.”

NONNIE (SCHMITT) CULLIPHER (A)lives in the mountains of NorthCarolina with her husband, Sid.They have been blessed over thepast year with the birth of daughterGreta and the adoption of Brittany,11. Nonnie and Sid run a nonprofit.

AARON GARZA (SF) is moving toOgden, Utah, in August. He had agreat time at the reunion: “Later, Ilaughingly discovered that I’d bust-ed my shoes from much spiriteddancing.”

LAURA C. KNIGHT (A) writes fromCorinth, Texas: “I recently gradu-ated from DePaul University with a master’s in math education, andI’ve accepted a job with North Central Texas Community College,teaching developmental math. It’s good to be back in Texas. Iwould love to hear from fellow Johnnies. E-mail is: [email protected].”

HANNAH STIRES (A) and JOEL ARD

(A95) married at St. Matthew’sCathedral in Washington, D.C., onApril 13, 2002. Johnnies in atten-dance included the best man,DAVID TRIMMER (A92), NONNIE

(SCHMITT) CULLIPHER (A92), AMY

ELIZABETH PARTON (A92), SARAH

SCHOEDINGER (A92), KURT HECK-EL (A93), LORIE BENNING (A93),AMY THURSTON (A95), ALEX LOM-VARDIAS (A95), and EMILY MURPHY

(A95). Hannah is an attorney at theDepartment of Justice, and Joel isan attorney at Latham & Watkins,both in Washington, D.C. Theyrecently bought a home in Eastportand would be happy to hear fromold friends and acquaintances at [email protected].

ANNE SCHUCHMAN (started with the Annapolis class of ’91, graduat-ed with class of ’92) and JAMES

BERRETTINI (AGI93) are thrilled toannounce the birth of their daugh-ter, Stella Rose, on October 7.(Their excuse for missing the classof 1992 reunion.) “Stella joins bigbrother Samuel, now 3. We’re stillliving in Manhattan, but searchingfor larger quarters. We can bereached by e-mail [email protected] (Anne) [email protected] (Jim).”

1993AMY FLACK (A) is in her fifth yearof ministry (Presbyterian Churchof the USA) in South Dakota. InJuly, she wrote, her area was in themidst of a terrible drought. “Thecattle don’t have enough grass toeat and people are forced to sell offtheir whole livelihoods. Keep thesmall farmer and our Westernstates in your prayers.”

THORNTON LOCKWOOD (AGI) andhis wife, Karen, announce the birth of Nicholas Charles, bornAugust 15.

JONATHAN PEARL (A) and his wife,Cheryl welcomed the birth of theirson, Rembrandt, on April 15, 2002,at 10:46 p.m.

1994DAVID BROOKS (SF) expects this isthe year he’ll graduate with hisPh.D. in clinical psychology: “Ihave just completed a predoctoralresidency at the University ofMiami/Jackson Memorial MedicalCenter and will be building up a pri-vate practice as I complete my dis-sertation on contemporary KleinianPsychoanalytic technique.”

ALEX GAMMON (A) and BETH

MARTIN (A) were married in theGreat Hall on July 20.

1995WILLIAM BOLAN (A) and JANICE

THOMPSON (A) live in South Bend,Ind., where they recently celebrat-ed their fifth wedding anniversary.Son Mathew James ThompsonBolon is now “a very active two-and-a-half-year-old. We are bothnearing completion of our Ph.D.sin theology and hope that at leastone of us will have a job soon!”

KATE FELD (A) is enrolled inColumbia University’s GraduateSchool of Journalism.

CARTER SNEAD (A) was recentlynamed General Counsel for Presi-dent Bush’s Council on Bioethics(www.bioethics.gov). LEIGH FITZ-PATRICK SNEAD (A98) is in her lastyear of doctoral coursework at theCatholic University of America

School of Philosophy. Leigh andCarter are living in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washing-ton, D.C., and would love to hearfrom old friends.

The REV. JANET SUNDERLAND

(SFGI) has a church in Kansas Cityand is having a wonderful time.Her web site is www.churchofanti-och.org/coakc.html and e-mail [email protected]. She wouldlove to hear from old friends.

1996CASEY PATRICK MCFADEN (AGI)graduated from Georgetown Uni-versity Law Center last May andentered private practice in Wash-ington, D.C.

1997DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A)moved to the D.C. area with AMAN-DA DULIN (A) to attend the MBAprogram at the University of Mary-land in the fall. His plan is to starta board game company when hegraduates. “I am extremely excitedabout the whole prospect ofreturning to school and working ona business plan. Plato must beturning over in his grave!”

Samuel Davis Trares was born toRACHEL TRARES, nee Davis, (A) andLUKE TRARES (A) on Wednesday,October 16, 2002, at 4:09 p.m in FortWorth, Texas. He weighed 8 poundsand 9 ounces at birth and was 20inches long. Both Rachel and Sammyare doing fine. Adds Luke: “We areboth very excited to be given theopportunity to raise such a cute littleperson.”

JUAN GONZALO VILLASEÑOR (A) hasmoved to New York, where heworks for the American Civil Lib-erties Union as the William J.Brennan First Amendment Fellow.

1998RUTH BUSKO (A) is completing amaster’s degree in acupuncture.She’s an acupuncture intern at thefaculty-student clinic of the TAISophia Institute for the HealingArts in Laurel, Md. “Feel free tocontact me at 410-312-0991 or [email protected].”

´

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DANE OWEN (SF) has publishedJapanese Cabinetry: The Art andCraft of Tansu.

1999JESSICA MORGENSTERN (A) is teach-ing full time for Arthur Murray Studio in Santa Barbara, Calif.“Sometimes miss the good conver-sations, would welcome e-mail!”[email protected].

TRACY NECTOUX (AGI) is currentlyteaching English at Parkland Com-munity College in Champaign, Illi-nois. “It’s only now that I miss the‘calm safety’ of being a student!”

2000PAUL BRITTON SPRADLEY (A) recent-ly earned his master’s degree fromOle Miss. “I am still teaching geom-etry in the Mississippi Delta and Irecently bought a house.”

ADRIEN STOLOFF (A) will be headingto Japan to participate in the JETprogram. Classmates can reach himat [email protected]

ANNE VELA (A) says, “Hi y’all. I havemoved to New York to start studiesin the Columbia University post-baccalaureate premedical program.Chris is staying in Savannah untilMay to finish his master’s degree inarchitecture. I would love to get intouch with other NYC Johnnies who

are doing premed or med, or if youare in New York. Please contact meat [email protected].”

2001BASIL BRYAN CLEVELAND (A) ishappy to talk about the UniversityProfessors graduate program atBoston University, which he says is“BU’s version of the Committee on Social Thought.” Contact him [email protected].

KAREN COSTA (SF) sends reports forherself and other Santa Fe class-mates: “HEATHER DAVIS is going toHaiti with the Peace Corps. EBEN

LASKER, JOE BUCKLEY, BRIAN BAL-LENTINE, JEROME MOROUX, andKARINA GILL are living in New YorkCity. Karina and Joe are both teach-ing. BEN JUDSON and IAN MULLET

are in San Antonio, Texas. I am alsoliving in New York City doingresearch and editing. But maybe thisis all just gossip?”

JUSTIN KRAY (SF) spent this pastyear teaching English in Epinal,France; he toured Eastern Europebefore returning to the UnitedStates in June.

NANCY R. LEWIS (HA) says it was “apleasure” to pay her 2002 alumnidues—and she really means it.“When I was appointed registrar ofthe college in 1979, I never imag-ined that I would become the recipi-ent of two such wonderful gifts. Myyears spent as registrar and now asan honorary alumna are extraordi-nary gifts and I am very grateful forboth of them. Thank you for theopportunity to continue to share inthe life of the college in such ameaningful way.”

ANNE NEEDHAM (A) has left her jobas a bookseller in Washington,D.C., to enroll in the NorthwestSchool of Wooden Boat Building inPort Townsend, Wash. She hopesone day to work in a boatyard andteach others the traditional artsand crafts of the sea.

“Having discovered that, con-trary to Socrates’ august opinionthat ‘souls are not unalloyed,’ I amgetting in touch with my ‘iron soul’and hope to learn a trade as well,”she says.

Needham is scheduled to gradu-ate with an associate’s degree in

occupational studies in traditionalwooden boat building in June 2003.

KEE ZUBLIN (SF) reports fromEugene: “Have begun performingon the Winnamucca-Tonopeh circuit as a prestidigitator/familycounselor.”

2002“Life is good,” says CLAIRE

DARLING (SF), in Beaverton, Ore.“I’m growing quite fond of ourthree chickens. Would love to hearfrom anyone local regarding readinggroups, hiking, litter pick-up, what-ever.” [email protected].

JULIA (GRAHAM) MESNIKOFF (SF)was married June 1 to Nathan Mes-nikoff. They were married at theUnitarian-Universalist Church towhich they belong, on the lawn and“under a huppah which I batikedwith symbols of Nathan’s and myseveral religious traditions andother things dear to us. BILL AND

NATALIE BLAIS (SF04) and CLAIRE

DARLING (SF03) and her daughter,Regan, helped hold the huppah,and KRISTIE KESLER (SF03) read aBuddhist benediction. I finishedmy nurse practitioner training atBoston College; Nathan continueswork on his Ph.D. in philosophy ofreligion at Boston University.” x

Lighting up the Lawns

STEPHANIE PADUANO (A94) graces the cover of the fall2002 edition of USCA Croquet News, the publicationof the United States Croquet Association. Paduano isalso featured in “New Faces Light Up the Lawns,” anarticle about her introduction to the game and herfirst-place singles and third-place doubles victories in

the USCA Mid-Atlantic/New England Regional tournament lastsummer. Paduano, who works for U.S. Trust in New York, playscroquet in Central Park as a member of the New York CroquetClub. Although her championship qualities emerged after gradua-tion, Paduano credits St. John’s with sparking her initial interest.

“Everyone pretty much knew everyone at St. John’s,” Paduanosays in the article. “One day a friend of mine was playing croquetand I asked him to show me a few shots. I wasn’t really hookedthen, but I thought it was fun.” x

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What’s Up?The College wants to hear fromyou. Call us, write us, e-mailus. Let your classmates knowwhat you’re doing. The nextissue will be published in April; deadline for the alumni notessection is Feb. 15.

In Annapolis:The College Magazine St. John’s College, 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 87501-4599; [email protected]

Alumni notes on the Web:Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web atwww.sjca.edu — click on Alumni.

onathan Aurthur’s son Charley—an intelligent, well-liked, hand-some young man with a philo-sophical bent and a love for thepiano—was 18 years old when heexperienced his first psychoticepisode and suicide attempt dur-

ing a camping trip to Yosemite. Five yearslater, Charley jumped to his death ontothe Santa Monica Freeway. The Angel andthe Dragon is Aurthur’s account ofCharley’s life and death—with most of thebook dedicated to describing his son’s ill-ness and the attempts made to treat it.

Some of the most interesting—and trou-bling—parts of the book explore the natureof mental illness. Is the problem medical?social? psychological? spiritual? Thesepassages are interesting because theyshow the real-life need to unravel philo-sophical questions about the relationbetween the mind and the body. They aretroubling because they speak to a centralfailure in medical treatment for mentaldisorders.

Medical ModelWhen his son returned, fearful and agitat-ed, from Yosemite after his first psychoticbreak, Aurthur sought help for him fromthe medical establishment. “Charley’sfirst psychotic breakdown and suicideattempt appeared to happen so suddenly,literally from one day to the next, that itseemed like it had to be something physi-cal. As a result, I eagerly tried to convincehim that he had a simple disease like dia-betes, and that just as diabetics need totake insulin, he had to take his antipsy-chotic medication or his lithium and theneverything would be okay,” says Aurthur.“It was very comforting to think thatCharley’s problem was relatively straight-forward and understandable. Comfortingto me, at least.”

But as Charley struggled with numeroushospitalizations, doctors, diagnoses, andmedications, Aurthur saw that mental ill-ness was far more complicated than dia-betes. Not only did the inability of medi-cine to treat his son lead him to see theshortcomings of the medical model, but

Aurthur’s son, like many with mental dis-orders, also had quite a different under-standing of his problem.

“There were times when he tried tobelieve that he had some simple, treatablephysical illness, because I think part ofhim wanted to live a simple, uncomplicat-ed life,” says Aurthur. “But another partof him knew that he and his life were notsimple and uncomplicated no matter whatanyone told him. His illness, or as hetermed it, his ‘affliction,’ permeated toomany parts of his psyche; it was too psy-chological and spiritual, too much a partof who he was and how he saw himself, tobe isolated into some simple physicalpigeon hole.”

A patient’s complex vision of his illness,coupled with the often serious side effectsof medication, can lead to resisting orrefusing treatment. The standard medicalviewpoint is that this resistance is a symp-tom of the illness and hinders treatment.

But Aurthur is able to show readers of TheAngel and the Dragon a patient’s view ofresistance.

When a patient is under medication, hisnegative symptoms are relieved to somedegree, but his life is greatly diminished.No, he won’t kill himself. But to whatdegree is he living, facing side effectsranging from blackout spells and seizuresto headaches, anxiety, and fatigue?

The problem is magnified if the patientand doctor disagree about a fundamentalissue: Where do symptoms of an illnessend and a patient’s individual humanitybegin? Is he suffering from delusions ofgrandeur, or is he particularly gifted? Ishe suffering from paranoia, or is theworld—locking him in a hospital, monitor-ing his behavior, forcing medication onhim—really out to get him?

As Aurthur pieces together the patient’svantage point, the reader sees resistancefor the complicated phenomenon that it is.Aurthur then introduces a more radicalview (not one he shares, but one he findsinteresting) that attributes resistance notto illness but to a freedom from illness: Ifyou’re treated for behavior that those withmore power see as illness, but that youbelieve simply reflects your differingvision of the world, then it is unwise tocomply with treatment, especially when itis harsh or painful. Extreme examples ofthis situation include regimes that placedissidents in mental wards and societiesthat condemn left-handed people as toolsof the devil.

“It makes me think about scapegoating,in the old days in Eastern Europe,” saysAurthur. “There was the village idiot, thevillage beauty, the village whore, the vil-lage drunk. These designated social rolesallowed the society to function in anorganized way.” Although his family triedto avoid it, they often ended up scapegoat-ing Charley. “Charley became the desig-nated problem and family therapy turnedinto ‘how can we help Charley,’ not ‘whatis going on in our family that has con-tributed to the problem.’ Of course hebecame terribly resistant, totally on the

38



The Search for a Bearable SorrowJonathan Aurthur (A68) lost his son to suicide. His new book retraces his son’s journey

through the world of mental illness and asks: Was there a better way to help him?

In THE ANGEL AND THE DRAGON, JonathanAurthur tries to explain why convention-al treatment couldn’t save his sonCharley’s life.


J

39



defensive. As loving as we tried to be,we were dumping on him.”

As Aurthur explores the psycholog-ical reasons for resistance, he alsoinvestigates the physical reasons.While an intolerance for the sideeffects of antipsychotic drugs is a fair-ly well known cause of resistance,Aurthur points to one simple reason apatient might stop taking medication:It doesn’t work.

For Aurthur, a key insight into the prob-lem with antipsychotics came whenCharley was in the hospital for a self-inflicted stabbing wound. Although he wason morphine for the pain, Aurthur wasdisturbed that no one was inclined toreturn Charley to his antipsychotic medi-cine. A doctor finally tried to put him atease about the situation by explaining thatmorphine would work—it was the firstantipsychotic.

“That’s when the lightbulb clicked,”writes Aurthur. “So that was it. I’d beendimly aware before that antipsychotics didn’t ‘cure’ mental illness, they ‘treated’it. Now for the first time I was finally see-ing what that meant. Navane and all the rest—‘tranquilizers,’ the dictionary says—were clubs more than straitjackets. Basi-cally they were just heavy, brain-deaden-ing drugs, like morphine. They dopedpeople up to the point where they were toozonked out to be crazy—or in the case ofpeople who were suicidal, too indifferentto life to have the energy to end it.”

In addition to their bludgeon-like mech-anisms, there’s the possibility that theproblems antipsychotics address aren’t theright problems—that hearing voices andself-aggrandizing are not what need to befixed. All antipsychotics are basically tran-quilizers, explains Aurthur. “That may begood for certain times, to calm the persondown, to make the voices go away. But itdoes not address the fundamental prob-lem: What is the person going to do withhis life after the voices go away? What isgoing to take the place of being sick?

“There were times when Charley wouldbe in recovery, he’d be compliant, thenhe’d ask, ‘What am I going to do with mylife?’ He was 21 years old, he saw hisschoolmates graduating and going on withtheir lives while he was still a sophomore.The life choices that young people likeCharley have must be addressed. Theycan’t be satisfied with coping therapy,therapy that teaches how to take your

medication better. This involves some-thing much more profound.”

Psychosocial RehabAurthur discovered something more pro-found in the world of psychosocial rehabil-itation, often described as treating theperson, not the disease. “Whereas the psy-chopharmacological model gives the men-tally ill person medications to get rid ofthe so-called “primary symptoms” of theillness—the voices, the visions, the delu-sions—psychosocial rehab relates first andforemost to the person as a person, not alist of symptoms, and tries to deal first andforemost with the psychological pain oruncertainty or social isolation the personis experiencing,” he says. “The rehabmodel works from the premise that evenvery sick people have healthy parts,strengths that can be built on and support-ed. Psychosocial rehab focuses on thehealthy to help deal with the unhealthy.”

In his research for The Angel and theDragon, Aurthur found two promisingalternative recovery facilities: The VillageIntegrated Service Agency in Long Beach,California, and Windhorse Associates inNorthampton, Massachusetts.

The Village’s approach is to create acommunity within its treatment centerthat supports patients as they work toestablish a life in the Village, and thenbuild that life beyond the center. They calltheir approach “a high risk/high supportenvironment that promotes hope and therecovery process.” Patients are supportedin social activities in and out of the Vil-

lage, through substance abuse and recov-ery work, through employment andemployment training, with money man-agement systems and guidance, andthrough participation in the managementand governance of the Village.

Windhorse, featuring something of aBuddhist orientation, describes its pro-gram as working toward integration andbalance for the patient and the communi-ty. The program calls for “basic atten-dance” to focus awareness on the immedi-ate needs of the moment; “integrativemedicine” to establish habits of goodhealth through exercise, proper nutrition,adequate rest, and stress management;and a “working team” that can include ateam leader, psychotherapist, team coun-selor, housemate, wellness nurse, and psy-chiatrist.

As Arthur learned about psychosocialrehab, he began to develop a picture ofwhat might have been a better course oftreatment for his son.

“If only we could see mental illness as aproblem with many different aspects—social, personal, familial, historical. Ifonly mental illness were less demonizedand seen more as a spiritual condition thatis much more prevalent than we have beenled to believe.”

Had that been the case, Aurthur says,he would have found someone “with realinsight and understanding to makeCharley feel he could communicate andunburden himself and discuss what waswrong. Someone to open up a dialoguewhere Charley could feel safe, could feelthat nobody was leaning on him andtelling him what was wrong and what hehad to do.”

Charley’s journal entries reflect that hewas open to compassionate treatment.

“Charley hated the condescension,”Aurthur says. “He needed somebody whocould spend time with him and try to fig-ure out what had happened at Yosemite.He needed somebody to just be there forhim, as a sort of buoy in stormy water.”

Aurthur looks back at his own attemptsto guide Charley toward the medical hier-archy with some regret. In some ways, byaccepting the medical model to a largedegree, he was missing out on much ofCharley’s experience of his illness.

“It’s like we both had our hands on theknob of a radio and were struggling overthe dial,” he says. “I thought I was tryingto help him tune in to the music, but it wasreally the static he wanted to listen to.” x

“If only mental illnesswere less demonizedand seen more as a

spiritual condition...”

JonathanAurthur

40


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

One of St. John’s mostloyal alumni, ThomasBourne Turner, class of1921, died at his home inBaltimore on September22. Dr. Turner enjoyed an

extraordinary career as a physician,researcher, and dean of the Johns Hop-kins School of Medicine. His generoussupport and enduring affection for thecollege never wavered, even as he saw thestrict regimen and braided uniforms ofthe military school he attended give wayto the great books with Buchanan andBarr’s New Program.

Turner grew up in rural Calvert Coun-ty, the son of a farmer and engineer whobuilt steamboat wharves along the Chesa-peake Bay. He was only 14 when he cameto St. John’s—secondary education oppor-tunities near his home being limited—as ascholarship student. He kept as a treas-ured memento the saber he won as com-mander of the best-drilled company inthe battalion.

He enjoyed other fond memories of hisdays at St. John’s. In 1999, in a letteraccompanying a gift to the college inhonor of the Liberty Tree after its loss,Turner wrote of his “vivid recollection”of a graduation ceremony in whichFranklin D. Roosevelt was the speaker:

“Not yet paralyzed, he was an unusuallytall and handsome man who spoke withfervor. Recently Assistant Secretary of theNavy, he made us all proud of the U.S.A.and St. John’s as a small part of it.”

Turner’s service to the Board of Visi-tors and Governors was unprecedented.It spanned four decades, from 1951 to1985, and he twice served as board chair-man, in 1956 and 1973. In 1957, hereceived the Alumni Association’s Awardof Merit for his contributions to the fieldof medicine.

As a young man, Turner leaned towarda career in the law, but his father—notingthat two of his great-grandfathers hadbeen physicians—asked him to considerthe good he might do as a country doctor.Thus, Turner went to the University ofMaryland to study medicine. Although

his medical career took a path divergentfrom his father’s vision, he gained theopportunity to make major contributionsin medicine.

After being trained as an internist,Turner joined Johns Hopkins in 1927,first as a postdoctorate fellow, then as anassistant professor and associate physi-cian. He conducted research in infectiousdiseases as a member of the RockefellerFoundation.

In 1939, he became professor and headof the department of microbiology atJohns Hopkins, where he continued his

work in devastating diseases such aspolio and syphilis.

During World War II, he served as acolonel in the Medical Corps in Washing-ton, North Africa, and Europe. He stud-ied Nazi Germany’s biological warfarecapabilities and developed the Army’svenereal disease control program.

As the dean of the Johns Hopkins Uni-versity School of Medicine from 1957 to1968, Turner guided the school through aperiod of tremendous expansion as thesize of its full-time faculty tripled, newresearch facilities were built, and newspecialties such as biomedical engineer-ing were developed. After stepping downas dean, Turner became the medicalschool’s first archivist and completed adetailed history of the institution. In theearly ’80s, he became the first director ofthe Alcoholic Beverage Medical ResearchFoundation, based at Hopkins.

A 1995 Baltimore Sun article describedTurner as “engagingly unaffected, unpre-tentious and egalitarian, qualities per-haps nurtured by his deep roots inCalvert County…He is a courtly man,

Tommy TurnerFrom a Calvert County Farm to Teaching Generations of Doctors

“Affection supportslife’s infrastructure,compassion under-

pins the world.”

Thomas Bourne Turner

41


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

easily erect in crisply tailored suits, agenial patrician.”

In 1993, Turner composed a list of someof the wisdom he had attained, calling it,“A few things learned during a long life.”

They included culinary tips: “Almostall soups can be improved by a dash ofsherry” and cautionary advice: “Hold onto banisters going down stairs.”

Finally, he shared the guidelines thatruled his own life so well: “Love, affec-tion and compassion are all allied but notthe same. Reciprocated love is rare; cher-ish and guard it well. Affection supportslife’s infrastructure; compassion under-pins the world.”

His favorite toast, a newspaper articlereported: “Let’s live it up.”

St. John’s extends sympathy to his fam-ily: daughters Anne Pope and PattieWalker, class of 1966; five grandchildren;and seven great-grandchildren. x

DAVID B. REA

David Rea, class of 1949, died in Septem-ber, just short of his 76th birthday.

Dave, as he was called by his fellow class-mates and friends, came to St. John’s inJanuary 1946 as a January freshman. At theend of the 1945-1946 academic year he wasthe only student to pass the Greek readingknowledge examination. In the ensuingyears he exhibited a mind that rememberedeverything that he read and understood itall as well. Dave excelled in all the facets ofthe New Program. He never dominated aseminar. Rather he clarified the text, keptthe discussion from floundering, and keptthe seminar on track whenever appropri-ate. While a student Dave would read someof the seminal works in Greek, Latin,French, or German without a dictionary.“The Saga of Burnt Njal” would have alasting influence on his life. He developeda love of classical music, especially opera.At the Commencement exercises in 1949Dave was awarded the St. John’s CollegeBoard of Visitors and Governors GoldMedal for the student with the higheststanding. He also received “HonorableMention” for his senior thesis.

After graduation Dave went to the YaleSchool of Law. He was selected amongothers by Stringfellow Barr and ScottBuchanan to spend the summer of 1950 inIsrael to observe the formation of a newstate and to work on a kibbutz. En routeto and from Israel via Paris, Dave met

Jacqueline, whom he subsequently mar-ried. It was love at first sight.

Upon graduation from law school in1952, Dave joined the firm of Wilkie, Farr& Gallagher. There he practiced corpo-rate law for almost 40 years until hisretirement in 1991. During that time Davewas an active alumnus. Many times collegemeetings in New York used a Wilkie, Farrconference room. Dave was an active fund-raiser for the college and a good contribu-tor himself. He attended the Alumni Asso-ciation New York Chapter meetings.TheReas hosted the New York St. John’s Col-lege prospective student reception in theirNew York residence many times. In 1974 heand Jacqueline accompanied StringfellowBarr to Annapolis to celebrate Barr’s beingmade an honorary alumnus of the class of1949 on the occasion of the 25th reunion ofDave’s class.

After many requests Dave agreed tobecome a member of the St. John’s CollegeBoard of Visitors and Governors. Heserved two consecutive three-year terms.Dave’s abilities were quickly recognizedand he soon became an influential memberof the Board serving on the ExecutiveCommittee and the Governance Commit-tee. At various times Dave and Wilkie, Farrdid pro bono work for the college.

Dave and Jacqueline grew fond of theeastern end of Long Island.They spentsummer weekends on Shelter Islandwhere Dave sailed, fished, and clammed.Eventually they bought a house in SagHarbor. Dave was one of the founders ofthe St. John’s College Alumni SummerMontauk Striped Bass and Bluefish Char-ter. On the evening of the fishing tripJacqueline and Dave would host a dinnerfor the participants and provide rooms foras many as possible. This was done formany years. To be invited on board wasconsidered an honor.

In 1991 when Dave’s kidneys failed, heused the time he was on dialysis to readand listen to classical music. He nevercomplained. Over the next 10 years, he suf-fered a series of health setbacks.

Dave Rea will always be among the bestof whom St. John’s is capable and an exam-ple for all of how to live one’s life.

He is survived by his wife JacquelineRea, a son David, a daughter Ann, and hisbrother Dr. Thomas Rea, class of 1951.—submitted by Allan P. Hoffman class of 1949.

CHARLES PEACE IIIA retired banker and long-time activist inthe Republican Party, Charles F. PeaceIII, class of 1936, died October 8 at hishome in Towson, Md. He was 89.

Born in Baltimore and raised in AnneArundel County, Peace served in the ArmyAir Forces in World War II. He worked insales before joining Maryland NationalBank as an assistant vice president. He wasdescribed in a Baltimore Sun article as a“stalwart” of the Republican Party inMaryland, having served as a member ofthe Republican State Central Committee.

ALSO NOTED ARE:

WARREN K. BROWN, class of 1938, died inJanuary.

LT. COL. JOHN JOSEPH BYRNES, Annapolisclass of 1980, died in 2002.

HENRY A. CZLUSNIAK, class of 1937, died in March.

EDWARD S. DIGGES, class of 1939, died inSeptember.

FRANK. R. GENNER JR., class of 1936, diedin May.

EDWARD W. GORRELL, class of 1955, died inJanuary.

MICHAEL C. KEANE, class of 1945, died inJuly.

ERNEST A. OTTO JR., class of 1941, died inMay.

MARK P. ROGERS, Santa Fe class of 1972, died in April.

JULIUS B. SHERR, class of 1942, died inApril.

Ben Frey (A02) received twocopies of A Degree of Mas-tery: A Journey ThroughBook Arts Apprenticeship forChristmas his sophomoreyear. The book seemed so

perfect for Frey, whose campus job was inthe library bookbindery, that his motherand his father—unbeknownst to oneanother—each sent him a copy. In ADegree of Mastery, author Annie TremmelWilcox, now an expert bookmaker andconservator, discusses her apprenticeshipand the book arts in general, describingthe details of working on, making, andpreserving beautiful books.

While the book became a favorite readfor those in the trade, Frey found it dis-couraging. “I don’t want to do that,” heremembers thinking. “I don’t want towork deep down in the basement of somearchive trying to make old books holdtogether.”

Fortunately for Frey, other forces wereat work to make his life more interesting.Claire and Pierre Wagner, French expatri-ates from the Alsace region and longtimefriends of St. John’s, had hosted him ontheir boat during the annual Sail Picnicthe previous fall. Frey noticed the Wagn-ers speaking French and spent the rest ofthe outing talking with them.

“I said I was interested in learningFrench, and Claire said she knew a num-ber of people in France who might be ableto help me out. We exchanged a few let-ters, and in the middle of the summer Igot a phone call. She’d found a family inFrance I could work for as an au pair.”

Frey spent the next year living just out-side of Paris and devoted a fair amount oftime to thinking about what to do with hislife. Having spent many years painting, heplaced art high on his priority list, but alsofelt a sense of obligation to finish college.

“My French professor in Paris one dayasked why I wouldn’t just leave school anddo what I wanted to do,” recalls Frey. “Isaid that I thought my family would beconcerned: I have two grandparents whoare teachers. He said, ‘yes, but you have tolive your life. They’re not always going to

be around. You have to make this decisionfor yourself.’”

The professor’s advice resonated withFrey, who was at the time reading Sartre’sThe Age of Reason while continuing tocontemplate life as a painter. “I realizedthat I sounded a lot like Matthew, themain character, except he was 35 andunhappy. At the end of the book he real-izes he has to take his life into his ownhands and drop all the things he doesn’twant and try to start with what he wants. Ithought about that and realized that if Ididn’t try making it as a painter I wasgoing to regret it.”

After returning from France, Freymoved to New York with a cache of paint-ings and managed to sell quite a few. Still,he found himself just shy of his goal ofsupporting himself through art. With amove to high-rent Manhattan planned, hebegan to look for a day job. Given the twoyears of bookbindery experience on hisresume, bookbinders seemed an obviousstarting point. Among those he wrote towas Richard Minsky, a bookbinder whosename had come up numerous times dur-ing Frey’s Internet search for employ-ment.

Minsky contacted Frey immediatelyafter receiving his letter, but saw that Freylacked the skills necessary for workingwith a master bookbinder. “Minsky’s workis very exacting. He needs things to bedone to a 32nd or even a 64th of an inch.In a library bindery, most allowances canbe an 8th of an inch or even larger,”explains Frey. In addition, Minsky’s workinvolves fine carpentry and expertleatherwork. A beginner with a fine pieceof leather and a sharp knife can easilymake expensive mistakes.

Minsky gave Frey the chance to sharpenhis skills by working with him part time asa volunteer. To pay his bills, Frey worked

42



When is a book more than a book? Ben Freylearns the art of conceptual bookbinding.

The Bookbinder’s ApprenticeAn Aspiring Painter Finds Art in an Unlikely Place

“...If I didn’t try making it as apainter, I was

going to regret it.”

chr

isto

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In a quiet room in the basement ofthe Greenfield Library, sophomoreDillon Wright-FitzGerald takes ascalpel to Ptolemy’s Almagest. AliceKurs (SFGI71), working nearby,barely looks up; she’s seen this kind

of thing before.Kurs has watched dozens of students cut

hundreds of books in the 15 years she’s runthe bookbindery on the Annapolis campus.Wright-FitzGerald has only been on the jobsince August, but she feels perfectly at homeamong the musty pages, marbled endpa-pers, and gold-leaf lettering she works withduring her 10-hour a week campus job.

“I’ve always been interested in history,preservation, and bookmaking. I’ve alwaysloved books as objects,” says Wright-FitzGerald. “My grandparents had a largelibrary and they would tell me to pokearound, to take any books I wanted. Iremember I had a late 19th-century editionof Les Miserables. It was the greatest thing.It looked old, felt old, smelled old.”

Kurs has been binding books for nearlyhalf a century. She can give you the run-down on old glue and new (the newpolyvinyl acetate is more flexible; the oldhide glue was, with heat and moisture,reversible). She’ll point out the brittlepages of books printed during World War Iand II and compare their rapid deteriora-tion with the relatively good condition ofbooks published one and two hundred yearsearlier. She has a hands-on appreciation forthe bindery’s old wooden presses as well asfor the trade’s modern materials, such asthe plastic-impregnated book cloth that iseasily wiped free of errors. And herapproach to the history of bookbinding isnot academic, but personal.

“In my grandfather’s time, you’d buy abook with no cover and take it to your book-binder and he’d put a cover on it,” saysKurs, reminding you that this now-quaintart was once a corner-store business.“When I started in bookbinding around1953, it was still possible to get books fromthe publisher without a cover.”

Bookbinding is again changing; today, aprimary goal of restoration is to retain asmuch of the original book as possible. “Weview the book in its original form as some-thing having integrity. When you stripaway the binding, you strip away a sense ofhistory,” explains Lisa Richmond, librarydirector. “To throw away the original coverand make a new cover for a book, that’s alast-ditch treatment. What we prefer to do

is catch books when the repair is still smallso we can keep the original binding. Dillonspends as much time doing things like reat-taching loose leaves as she does cutting intobooks and making new covers.”

In the library’s efforts to keep books ingood condition, Richmond says she relieson library patrons as much as the binderyworkers. “We’d like it so that books don’teven have to go to the bookbindery becausethey’re being handled more carefully,” shesays.

“We’re not a public library that buys whatpeople want to read today, knowing that fiveyears later we’ll throw them out. The impor-tance of the books we buy doesn’t changefrom one century to the next. When you usea library book you want to think, ‘isn’t itwonderful that students for hundreds ofyears have touched this book and benefitedfrom it and students two hundred years fromnow will do the same?’ We buy books for theSt. John’s community today, but we alsohave a community that persists throughtime.”

Down in the bindery, Kurs also casts herthoughts toward future readers. “This poly-acetate vinyl glue we’re using is notreversible. It will only come off with bruteforce. I don’t know what they’ll do with thenext generation of books that needs to berepaired, but I’ll let the people who comeafter us worry about that,” she says. “Ifthere are books after us.”

—Sus3an Borden, A87

43



Helping Enduring Works Endure

as a security guard. This past August,Minsky offered Frey full-time work in hisstudio.

Minsky, it turns out, is no ordinarybookbinder. Frey says that he’s excellentat restoration, as one would expect, buthe also works in conceptual art. Minsky’scurrent conceptual binding project is theBill of Rights—a set of 10 books, one oneach amendment.

“He has picked books that deal directlywith the topic of the amendment andbinds them in a way relevant to the sub-ject, showing the struggle between therights that are guaranteed and how theyare taken away,” explains Frey.

“For the First Amendment he has takena copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Vers-es, burnt the cover and the edges of thepages, and built a reliquary for it. For theTenth Amendment, he chose the rulingon the Bush v. Gore case as the text. Heprinted it on nice paper and bound it in abinding that looks like any binding you’dfind in a legal library, but all of the boardsare a little crooked and the labels on thespine are slightly off-center. He used fakeleather for the cover. It looks like goatleather, but it’s actually pigskin.”

Frey is now working on his own concep-tual binding project. The book he’s work-ing with is Life: A User’s Manual byGeorges Perec.

“It’s a 400-page work about everythingthat’s happening in one apartment build-ing in Paris for the duration of one second.It revolves around the theme of a puzzle,”says Frey. “One of the more influentialcharacters in the book has decided that hehas so much money he needs a project inlife. He learns to paint watercolors, thenturns the paintings into puzzles, puts thepuzzles together, then separates the water-color paper from the backing and washesthe watercolor off so he has a blank sheetof paper at the end. In my project, thebook will slide into a case with a box on itand the puzzle will be in the box. I’m goingto make that puzzle.” x

Dillon Wright-Fitzgerald (A05) workswith a volume in the Greenfield Library.

dav

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rozz

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44


{ C a m p u s L i f e }

In November 1999, I introduced my mother, Miriam Rother, to tutorAmirthanayagam David (A86). My motheris a choreographer interested and experi-enced in dance and theater. And I hadheard a talk Mr. David gave on AncientGreek mousike, in which he emphasizedthe connection of poetry to dance inAncient Greece. In his talk there wererecitations that were musical (at the sametime melodic and intensely rhythmic).

I learned further that he was an innovatorin the theory of Greek accentuation.

Mr. David had uncovered the single miss-ing component of the pronunciation ofclassical Greek. What had been knownthoroughly were the values of all the vow-els, diphthongs, and consonants in the lan-guage, as well as the meaning of the melod-ic, or pitch, accentuation markings. All thatremained in the way of an authentic repro-duction of the pronunciation was word-level stress—which syllables in each wordwere stressed and which were not—some-thing found in every spoken language.

In Greek the union of these three ele-ments makes a kind of music, because thevowel sounds are long and short—the longvowels being twice the duration of theshort ones—and so produce a meter. Theinterplay of the lengths of vowels with therising and falling of the voice (melodicaccentuation) produces stresses. Thesestresses coupled with the meter form arhythm. It was on account of this musicali-ty of speech that rhetoric, the art of publicspeaking or stylized speech, was subsumedunder music.

Certain ancient writers describe choreia,the art and practice of the chorus, as dancethat is dictated by the rhythm and harmonyinherent in the spoken word. From theirstatements, certain principles underlyingthe art may be inferred: one step for eachsyllable, and strict correspondence ofstressed syllables with the setting down ofthe foot. This means that the very wordsand their musical texture prescribe themotion of the body. In this way the textbecomes a musical score for the dance, themeter resolves into feet, and all thatremains to be uncovered is how the dancelooked from the ankles up. Of this, Mr.David dreamed for 13 years.

At that first meeting, Mr. David and Mrs.Rother began to consider the possibilitiesfor the renewal of Ancient Greek theater aslive performance, with its union of the spo-ken word, dance, and gesture. Over thenext year-and-a-half, Mrs. Rother familiar-ized herself with Mr. David’s work, itssources, and the Classical Greek language.She also studied the array of extant Greekvases and statuary, because many of thedepictions seemed to be of figures in mid-

The Dance of the Musesby Noam Gedalof, A03

Present-day readers of Ancient Greek playshave surely felt the strangeness of what seemto be interruptions or interludes in the midstof the drama, all attributed to a “chorus.” Wehave been told—and rightly so—that this cho-rus sang and danced these words, but that the

music and dance is now lost, even irrecoverable. But whatif we could see what that original and extraordinary formof the poetry was—alive before our eyes—complete in songand dance? Or, better yet, what if we could ourselvesbreathe life into this poetry, experience it first-hand,renew it, and perform it? We have tried to do this verything at St. John’s, and we believe that we have succeeded.

Concentration and choreography : Mr. David recites from AGAMMEMNON

as students practice for a November performance.

-

45{ C a m p u s L i f e }


motion. As she explains it, the posturesand gestures bespoke dance. They suggest-ed a particular energy and expression ofthe desired aesthetic of the time, so thatshe could imagine the steps that wouldconnect the individual figures.

Choreia was ubiquitous in the AncientGreek world. In religion, it was central.Everyone participated in it; it was a citi-zen’s rather than an expert’s art—and onthis ground we can claim a kind of right tothe dance, and to our renewal of it as non-professionals. Through participation in thismedium, through embodiment—what Platotermed mimesis (imitation)—Greeksencountered the great men of old and theirstories, as well as the stories of the gods andof the gods’ interaction with men. Thismeant that an army general would bedepicted on a vase in a manner so stylizedand so full of motion that the figure mani-fests the gesture associated with a general;that is, it suggests movement itself. It wasin the context of the dance—in the contextof embodied gesture—that a Greek wouldhave had his first, and surely most pointed,encounter with a personage such asAgamemnon. His notion of the personagewould be inseparable from a danced ges-ture. And so it would have come naturallyto the vase painter or sculptor to depict himin his characteristic “dance pose,” down tothe precise placement of the hands andfeet, the twist in his back, and the turn ofhis head. Mr. David suggests that the noun-and-epithet phrases in Homer—phrasesgenerated by a dance rhythm—are verbalcorrelates for these characteristic posesfound throughout ancient visual depictions.

So central was the presence of choreia,and its influence so profound in the Greekworld, that it may very well have promptedPlato’s notion (in the Laws) that an entirecity could be choreographed—that is, gov-

erned through choreia.In February 2001, Mrs. Rother visited

St. John’s to coordinate the first of threeworkshops based on her choreography andMr. David’s theory. About a dozen studentsparticipated in each of the workshops,which culminated in performances for thecommunity in a packed Great Hall.

I participated and performed in all ofthese workshops. My experience of choreiahas been of the extraordinary union of thelife of the body and the life of the soul.Meaning, accent, and gesture—already uni-fied in everyday speech—are embodied inthe union of the musical word and dance.The dancer becomes the very content of thespeech, becomes the personage being imi-tated, and lives through the story being told.

I now understand what Plato had in mindwhen he spoke about imitation, and howdeeply what is imitated resounds in thesoul; or how the embodiment of a person,emotion, or idea can take hold of a man,and somehow remove him from himself. Inthe dance, one feels the body carried by thewords, as though it were being moved, andno longer moving itself. This is the powerof choreia—the dance of the Muses. x

The dancer becomes the very content

of the speech.

It is mine to declare the omens of victoryGiven to princely men (1) on the journey.

I tell how the princes of the Achaeans,Twin-throned, single-heartedLords of the youth of Greece,Were sent against the land of TroyWith spear in hand to exact vengeance. (2)The furious omen-birds sent them,One black eagle, one white-tail, The king of birds to the king of the ships. (3)So a lord greater than the kings,

Zeus god of guest-friends,Sends the sons of Atreus on Alexander;In this quarrel over a woman of many men,(4)He would lay upon Greeks and Trojans alikeMany wrestlings(5) where the limbs

grow heavyAnd the knee is pressed into the dustAnd the spear is shattered in the first

rites of engagement.

–translation by David Grene

Dancers perform the opening chorus ofAeschylus’ AGAMMEMNON (excerpt below,with numbers indicating correspondingphoto). Picture 1 shows the characteris-tic “dance pose” of an army general.

3 4

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From the AlumniAssociation President

Dear Johnnies,Johnnies are a remarkable lot. You probablyknow members of your class who are makinga difference in their communities and theirprofessions. It is an honor to be a member ofa group of such gifted and dedicated individu-als. Twice a year, at Homecoming on eachcampus, the Alumni Association honorsmembers of our community for their extraor-dinary achievements. Two types of awards aregiven: Honorary Alumni and Awards ofMerit. On the SJC web site, you can view a listof persons who have received these honors inthe past, but I would like to briefly describethis year’s awardees.

Honorary Alumni status is awarded tomembers of the St. John’s College communitywho have contributed to the lives of studentsor alumni or to the well-being of the collegeand its program. Honorary Alumni receive allof the benefits of regular membership in theassociation, so they become permanent mem-bers of the college community. This year, fiveindividuals were made honorary alumni. Twowere recognized for their loyal support andwork with the Board of Visitors and Gover-nors. Bud Kelly supported the Santa Fe cam-pus in its early days and helped set the founda-tion for the college in New Mexico. GregCurtis, immediate past chair of the Board ofVisitors and Governors, led the collegethrough deliberations resulting in a unifiedgovernance structure that will provide a solidfoundation for the college as a whole in thefuture. Two revered tutors were welcomedinto the Alumni Association. Mr. John Sarkiss-ian and Mr. Robert Williamson have servedthe college well and supported generations ofalumni in their academic and personal pur-suits. The fifth honorary alumnus designationwent to Mr. Al Toft. Though most alumni donot know Mr. Toft personally, we all dependedon the fruits of his labors. For decades, Mr.

Toft has designed and constructed the equip-ment we use in the St. John’s laboratory pro-gram. We are happy to welcome these dearand generous people into the circle of St.John’s alumni.

Awards of Merit are bestowed upon alumniwho have made significant contributions tothe college, to their professions, or to thenation. This year, four Awards of Merit weregiven to recognize a wide variety of work.Peggy Jones (SFGI77) has helped to build andmaintain a bridge between the college andthe community in Santa Fe. She has servedmany roles in support of the college, includ-ing a term on the Alumni Association Board.She continues to support the college withenthusiasm and energy. Stephanie Forrest(SF77) is a world-renowned researcher andscholar in applications of computer simula-tion modeling and nonlinear dynamics. Sheattributes her love of science and mathemat-ics and her ability to work at the frontiers ofscience to her St. John’s education. HowardZeiderman (A67) is a tutor in Annapolis. Hereceived his Award of Merit for his work withTouchstones, a project that brings greatbooks and great conversations to communi-ties outside the college campus. Touchstoneshas been implemented internationally amongdisadvantaged groups including prisoninmates and inner city youth. CandaceBrightman (A67) was recognized for her cre-ative and ingenious work as lighting directorfor The Grateful Dead and other performers.Soon after she left the college, Ms. Bright-man joined the band to develop the visualextravaganzas that shaped the concert-goingculture for the last three decades. Congratu-lations to these four remarkable alumni fortheir courage and commitment!

Every year, as the Nominating Committeeconsiders candidates for these awards, I amstruck again by the diversity and excellenceof our community. I am proud and honoredto be among a collection of individuals whocontinually redefine what it means to live alife grounded in the liberal arts.

I am sure that you know Johnnies, eitheralumni or beloved members of the non-alum-ni community, who are doing extraordinarythings for their professions, the college, orthe nation. Would you like to nominate some-one for these awards? If so, please send a briefdescription and contact information to BillTilles, chair of the Nominating Committee, orto Tahmina Shalizi or Jo Ann Mattson, theAlumni Activities directors on the campuses.

For the past, present, and future,

Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76)PresidentSt. John’s College Alumni Association

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ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONWhether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, under-graduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program orNew, graduated or not, all alumni have automat-ic membership in the St. John’s College AlumniAssociation. The Alumni Association is an inde-pendent organization, with a Board of Directorselected by and from the alumni body. The Boardmeets four times a year, twice on each campus,to plan programs and coordinate the affairs ofthe Association. This newsletter within The Col-lege magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Asso-ciation and communicates Alumni Associationnews and 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)

Web site – www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtmlMailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe,NM 87505-4599.

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

ALBUQUERQUEBob & Vicki Morgan505-275-9012

ANNAPOLISBeth Martin410-280-0958

AUSTINBev Angel512-926-7808

BALTIMOREDeborah Cohen410-472-9158

BOSTONGinger Kenney617-964-4794

CHICAGOLorna Johnson773-338-8651

DENVERLee Goldstein720-283-4659

LOS ANGELESElizabeth Eastman562-426-1934

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAULCarol Freeman612-822-3216

NEW YORKJoe Boucher718-222-1957

NORTH CAROLINASusan Eversole919-968-4856

PHILADELPHIABart Kaplan215-465-0244

PITTSBURGHRobert Hazo412-648-2653

PORTLANDDale Mortimer360-882-9058

SACRAMENTOHelen Hobart916-452-1082

SAN DIEGOStephanie Rico619-423-4972

SAN FRANCISCO,NORTHERNCALIFORNIAJon Hodapp831-393-9496

SANTA FEJohn Pollak505-983-2144

SEATTLEAmina Stickford206-269-0182

WASHINGTON DCJean Dickason301-699-6207

ISRAELEmi Geiger Leslau15 Aminadav StreetJerusalem [email protected]

Johnnies OnlineWhether you’re missing seminar discussionsor want to find Johnnies living in Chicago,virtual communities of St. John’s alumni andfriends beckon.

Recent topics on the Johnny Digest haveincluded “Capitalism vs. Whatever,” “UpNext: Proponents of Flat-Earth TheoryDemand Equal Time,” and “Martha Stew-art’s Continuing Woes.” To join, [email protected] with the message “sub-scribe johnny-digest” for the digest or “sub-scribe johnny” if you prefer the list format.This lively group is for alumni only.

JohnnyXpress is an unmoderated bulletinboard for alumni, friends, faculty and staff:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ johnnyX-press/join or e-mail [email protected].

Johnny2 promises that “no topic is off-topic, no word is forbidden,” but requiresmembers to treat one another with the“respect suitable for senior seminar.” E-mail [email protected] with the command “subscribejohnny2 your name.”

Alumni interested in homeschooling cannetwork with like minds: Visit the group’sweb site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JohnnyEducation-Homeschooling.

Note: Neither St. John’s College nor theAlumni Association is involved with or moni-tors these web communities. x

Big Apple Chapter BoomingFrom swing parties to seminars, alumni inthe greater New York chapter have no short-age of events to choose from, thanks to cre-ative leadership and a core group of Johnniesever ready to meet compatriots, sometimesfor intellectual pursuits, sometimes just for anight out.

When chapter president Joe Boucher (A89)first moved to New York, he was quicklydrawn into the chapter.

“When I moved here Justin Burke (A87)was president. Justin helped me get one of myfirst jobs, and I was working with him and sawhim all the time. If a seminar was going onand he was worried no one was going to showup, I’d get recruited.

“That’s how I ended up being part of thechapter leadership,” he says.

Boucher served for three years as chaptersecretary and now heads up the chapter, sec-

ond only to Washington, D.C., in size with amailing list of about 800 alumni. Some of thechapter’s most popular events draw up to 250participants.

“The good thing about our chapter is thatwe can have a lot of events that smaller chap-ters can’t, so we can be more active and takechances,” Boucher says. “Even if we draw 20people that’s a good-sized event.”

Like most alumni chapters, the New Yorkalumni strike a balance between intellectualofferings and purely social events. A swingparty in August at the Brooklyn home ofMichael Barth (AGI96) drew 60 people.Attendance was also high at a seminar last fallon Job, led by Santa Fe tutor Michael Wolfe.Likely topics for future seminars includeBeaudelaire and Pascal, and Santa Fe Presi-dent John Balkcom is scheduled for a Marchseminar and reception.

The chapter tries to offer a seminar-styleevent every month or so, because even in acity with so many cultural offerings, “there’sa real hunger” for these opportunities, saysBoucher. In addition to seminars orientedtoward Program authors, reading groupsperiodically form around a particular John-nie’s interest.

Even social events often include some foodfor thought, as was the case with a summerpicnic on Long Island at the home of chaptersecretary Edith Updike (A86). Seeking a read-

ing to celebrate New York, group membersincluded a discussion of selections from HartCrane’s The Bridge.

Building on the success of seminars andparties, the chapter recently launched a men-toring initiative. Poets are meeting poets,those in the legal field share news of jobopenings, and Johnnies eager to break intothe theater are connecting through the chap-ter, Boucher notes.

Networking is also a goal of the chapter’sannual new alumni reception. Fifty Johnniesattended the November event this year. Andwith new alumni moving to New York all thetime, there’s no shortage of new blood.

For Boucher, the opportunity to connectwith alumni from different generations andhearing about their adventures and inter-ests are the best perks of his chapterinvolvement.

“One of the nicest things about theseevents is the opportunity to meet people fromother eras at St. John’s,” Boucher notes. “I might find it difficult to talk to a lot of 80-year-olds, but since we all more or lessstudied the same thing, we have that com-mon ground to start with, and then we moveon and find other things to talk about.”

The chapter has a sharp new web site, fre-quently updated with chapter events and con-tacts. Visit www.sjcalums.com/nyc. x

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Are these Johnnies in Boston: A) volunteering to pick up the dinner check? or B) offering to lead seminars, programs, and other chapter events in a revitalizedAlumni Association chapter in the Boston Area? The dinner gathering November 17 atElephant Walk in downtown Boston drew close to 50 alumni to an event designed togather steam for a more active chapter. Chapter president Ginger Kenney (A67)helped plan the event, which featured fine Thai food, networking, and brainstormingfor seminars and other events in the coming year.

an enthusiastic response

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The St. John’s Story hasachieved something of acult classic status formany of the students andalumni who have seen it.Its stiffly choreographed

scenes and somber narration promptamusement from modern audiences, butwhen it was produced in 1954 The St.John’s Story was a creative answer to aslump in enrollment: In 1953, enroll-ment was only 125. Funded by the OldDominion Foundation, the 28-minutefilm by Fordel Films of the Bronx, N.Y.,was sent to secondary schools across thecountry, depicting seminars, waltz par-ties, coffee shop banter, and traditionssuch as senior orals.

The college administration had highexpectations for the film. In his 1954 Presi-dent’s Report, Richard Weigle said, “Theentire student procurement program willbe built around its use during the comingyear.” The film was shown in 435 publicschools and 95 prep schools to about75,000 people; it even had a showing atthe Edinburgh Film Festival in 1955. Com-bined with other recruitment efforts, thefilm was credited with bringing in a fresh-man class of 90 students in 1955.

In this scene replicating senior orals,William H. Barrett, class of 1956, playedthe role of the defending senior, bakingunder the hot klieg lights used in theproduction. Barrett served as the star of the film.


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Santa Fe Art ShowMore than 50 pieces were entered in theAlumni Art Show at the Santa Fe Campuslast July. Artistic alumni are again invitedto enter their work in the Third AnnualSt. John’s College Fine Arts GalleryAlumni Art Show. Timed to coincide withthe Summer Alumni Program and Home-coming, the show will run from Saturday,July 5, through Sunday, July 27. All typesof media are welcome; artists can alsoplace their work for sale during the show.An opening reception will be held con-current with the Homecoming reception.For details call Maggie Magalnick at 505-984-6199, or contact her by e-mail:[email protected]

Top: Inya Laskowski (SFGI97) enteredthis print, “Equus”; Above right: BetsyWilliam (SF87) crafts clay pots thatcombine Karatsu training from Japanwith New Mexican material and land-scape. “Diamond” is shown.

A return to traditional form is seen in JoBasiste’s (SFGI91) Greek gods and heroes.This tempera painting is called “Polyphe-mus and Galatea.”

DATEBOOK

April 26, 2003Croquet Weekend, Annapolis

June 29, 2003—July 4, 2003Week One, Summer Alumni Program,Santa Fe

July 4-6, 2003Homecoming Weekend, Santa Fe

July 6-11, 2003Week Two, Summer Alumni Program,Santa Fe

September 12-14, 2003Homecoming Weekend, Annapolis

For information on events, contact theOffices of Alumni Activities:

Tahmina ShaliziDirector of Alumni and Parent ActivitiesSanta Fe: [email protected]

Jo Ann MattsonDirector of Alumni ActivitiesAnnapolis: [email protected]

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