The College Magazine Summer 2008

CollegeThe S u m m e r 2 0 0 8

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

GalileoT h e Fo u n d a t i o n s o f S c i e n c e

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

St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD,and Santa Fe, NM

Known office of publication:Communications Office

St. John’s 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

21404-2800.

Rosemary Harty, editor443-716-4011

[email protected]

Patricia Dempsey,managing editorJenny Hannifin, Santa Fe editor

Jennifer Behrens, art director

Annapolis410-626-2539

Santa Fe505-984-6104

Contributors

Christopher Allison (SF97)Ethan Brooks (A10)

Shane Gassaway (SF06)Ruth Johnston (A85)Cathi Dunn MacRae

Tom Nugent Deborah Spiegelman Erica Stratton (A08)

Kea Wilson (A09)Jennifer Wright (A08)

Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design

O n G a l i l e o

“I don’t know”—what a beautiful expression that is—so candid in its honesty.” Galileo Galilei

Observing the natural world raised questions for Galileo, for example:Why did the water on the surface of the earth slosh around once ortwice a day, like water in a swinging container? Galileo rejected theidea that the moon had anything to do with it. Instead, he concludedthat it was because the earth was both rotating and moving around thesun, constantly speeding up and slowing down, generating the tides. Itwas a rare mistake for Galileo, whose thought experiments led him to

such brilliant insights. Of course, he had the big picture right.Born in 1564 in Pisa, Galileo studied at a monastery and considered becoming a monk,

but his father insisted that he study medicine. Galileo was more intrigued with mathe-matics, which he studied independently with a tutor before dropping out of the Universityof Pisa altogether. He later returned to the university to teach, but at a very low salary, andhis appointment to the University of Padua saved him from poverty. Galileo also pursuedpotentially profitable projects; one of these, a telescope, proved quite successful. Heturned his instrument to the heavens with more questions, publishing his observations inStarry Messenger.

Always a prudent scientist, Galileo nevertheless made mistakes, for example, overesti-mating his political connections and friendship with Pope Urban VIII when he publishedhis Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems in 1632. He had finished he work on ChristmasEve, 1629, but the bubonic plague delayed the news of his work, which challenged theCatholic Church’s ban on teaching Copernican theories, getting to Rome.

Galileo never married, but he had three children with his housekeeper, Maria Gamba. In her book Galileo’s Daughter, Dava Sobel documented the especially close relationshiphe had with his daughter, Virginia, whom he settled in a convent as a young girl. When shejoined her order, Virginia took the name Maria Celeste. Although she lived a cloisteredexistence, Maria Celese followed her father’s career and worried about him. After his trialin 1633, in which the Roman Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy, Maria Celeste tookon his penance. Galileo had hoped to persuade the church to consider purely scientificmatters apart from faith. Instead, the Dialogue was banned for 200 years. Galileo wasforced to publicly confess his error and was sentenced to house imprisonment for theremainder of his life. He died in 1642.

We read his works at St. John’s, follow his thinking, and replicate his experiments. Butthe spirit of Galileo is reflected in laboratory in another way; Johnnies are asked to begadflies when they consider science. Like all other classes at St. John’s, “laboratoryproceeds in the mode of radical inquiry,” explains Michael Dink (A75), dean in Annapolis.“We don’t want simply to assimilate the conclusions of science; we want to raise questionsabout not only its conclusions, but also its methods, and indeed the whole enterprise.Thanks to the interplay of seminar and laboratory readings, we are in a position to see theproject of modern science as novel and questionable.”

This issue of The College celebrates inquiry: both in laboratory and in the work of fivealumni engaged in fascinating pursuits in science. —RH

{ C o n t e n t s }

CollegeThe S u m m e r 2 0 0 8V o l u m e 3 4 , I s s u e 2

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 8Commencement 2008In Annapolis, the chairman of theNational Endowment for the Humanitiestells graduates to be grateful. In Santa Fe, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations asks Johnnies to be citizens of the world.

p a g e 10Talking About ScienceNo part of the Program has undergone asmuch revision as the laboratory.

p a g e 14Radical InquiryJohnnie researchers tackle big questionsdealing with the human brain, dangerousdiseases, and basic mysteries of theuniverse.

p a g e 26A Work in ProgressAn aspiring writer ponders whetherartistic expression can co-exist with thedemands of the Program.

p a g e 48In Love with CroquetFor one day a year, Johnnies are bloodthirsty Spartans.

d e p a r t m e n t s

2 from the bell towers• Celebrating capital campaign success• New outreach effort in Annapolis• A dream walking• Cultivating outdoor skills in Santa Fe • Helping high school students get

to college• Deconstructing a greenhouse• Annapolis’ weekend warriors • A new GI director in Annapolis

30 bibliofileSalvatore Scibona (SF97) found inspiration for his first novel, The End, in his heritage.

Eastern Classics helped Lisa Levchuk (SFGI05, EC06) finish her novel, Everything Beautiful in the World.

30 alumniP R O F I L E S

30 Singer-songwriter Buddy Mondlock (A82) finds success in the music business.

31 The Peace Corps introduced Melanie Kirby (SF97) to a life with bees.

40 Adrian Bordone (AGI96) helps nonprofits prove their worth.

45 obituariesRemembering two dedicated Annapolis staff members.

46 alumni voicesChristopher Allison (SF97) find purpose in the foreign service.

50 alumni association news52 st. john’s forever

p a g e 8

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o n t h e c o v e rGalileo Galilei

Illustration by David Johnson

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{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }

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

When the college formally declares itssuccess at campaign celebrations this Julyin Santa Fe, and September in Annapolis,there will be quite a few people to thank—Led Zeppelin among them.

The legendary rock band reunited inDecember 2007 (with Jason Bonhamreplacing his late father on the drums) inLondon for a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun,class of 1944 and founder of AtlanticRecords. Proceeds established the AhmetErtegun Education Fund, which benefitsfour educational institutions, St. John’samong them.

Many individuals—from an anonymousdonor who made a $12 million gift tostrengthen the college endowment to arecent alumnus who made a first-time giftof $20 to the college’s Annual Fund—contributed to the success of “With a Clearand Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. As of June 1, 2008,more than $130 million has been raised in the campaign, an extraordinary achievement for a small college. “We have beenable to address important priorities such as financial aid andfaculty salaries, as well as improving the physical facilities on thecampus,” said Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70).

The Santa Fe campus, which is marking the 40th anniversary ofits first commencement this year, will see some of its most impor-tant long-term goals come to fruition as a result of campaign gifts.Among them are the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a new homefor the Graduate Institute; a new dormitory; and the Ariel Intern-

ship program that provides work experi-ence for students. “The success of thiscampaign will mean a stronger, more vitalcampus community in Santa Fe,” said Peters. “Innovation and vision have always meant a lot to this campus. Financial stability, increased support for student financial aid, and improvedfacilities position us for a bright future.”

The campaign formally opened in 2006with opening celebrations in Annapolisand Santa Fe. On July 25, Santa Fe willhost the first closing celebration, a Fiestafor New Mexico alumni and supporters.

On September 13, Annapolis-area alumni and college friends willcelebrate the successful completion of the campaign.

Strong leadership gifts, most notably from Ronald Fielding,campaign chairman, started the campaign out on a high note.Fielding directed his gift to the endowment, for financial aid. To stimulate giving in the final year of the campaign, he issued a$2.5 million challenge to alumni, matching first-time gifts,increased gifts, and multi-year pledges to the campaign. The challenge worked—alumni met and exceeded the challenge,prompting Fielding to raise the challenge and match qualifyinggifts through June 30. One of the greatest achievements thecollege can celebrate in this campaign, Fielding noted, is thecreation of a strong culture of giving among alumni.

Leadership gifts from donors such as Fielding, a strongresponse to the annual fund from alumni, and the support of foundations all contributed to the campaign’s success, says Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), chair of the Board of Visitors andGovernors. “I think this campaign has reinforced our centralbeliefs about St. John’s,” Bishop says. “First, our alumni believe in our Program and are willing to support it with their dollars,more than they ever have in the history of our college. Secondly, St. John’s stands for something important and valuable in highereducation, gaining the admiration and financial support of foundations and friends.”

When the celebrations end in the fall, the college will embarkon a new strategic plan, one that establishes priorities andidentifies challenges for the college in the coming years, Bishopsays. “Because this campaign has been such a resounding success,we can move on to the next chapter, firmly grounded in ourpurpose and confident about our future.” x

-- Rosemary Harty

The Campaign for St. John’s Exceeds $125 Million Goal

Great things have already been accom-plished through the capital campaign.left: Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made a$5 million gift for a new GI building inSanta Fe. Below: Gilliam Hall inAnnapolis was made possible through agrant from The Hodson Trust.

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In past years, Annapolisstudents have engaged incommunity service in avariety of ways, from tutoringlocal children to working onHabitat for Humanity proj-ects. Early this summer, agroup of students who areconcerned about the socialissues of the wider Annapoliscommunity launched a newproject: Epigenesis, a 10-weekleadership program forAnnapolis youth “who haveexperienced seriousdifficulties in life,” saysJamaal Barnes (A10). Theidea, says Barnes, is for John-nies to support teenagers asthey “work through theAnnapolis community tocreate the change they want to see.”

Four students createdEpigenesis: Barnes, RachelDavison (A08), RaphaelaCassandra (A10), and JoshuaBecker (A08). The groupalready has seed money: a$10,000 grant from TheDavis Projects for Peaceprogram.

The effort arose from agrowing concern amongstudents over social problemsin Annapolis, including drug-related violence, a high drop-out rate for students of color,and a lack of opportunity forarea youth, says Barnes.“Epigenesis was inspired by alove for the Annapoliscommunity,” he says.“Instead of being worried andconcerned and sitting in our

lofty positions on campus, oureducation inspires us to act. If something’s wrong, weshould try to fix it in whateverway we can.”

Epigenesis founders begantheir project by makingcontacts with social serviceand community organizationsin Annapolis, includingAnnapolis High School, WeCare and Friends, AsburyUnited Methodist Church, and the Boys and Girls Club in Annapolis. “We thought it was important to partnerwith other groups and get the support of other community programs,” says Ms. Cassandra.

The program began in mid-June with a leadership work-shop for a dozen areateenagers, selected with thehelp of community partners,at St. John’s. The group willcontinue to meet throughout

the summer to plan and carryout projects in their owncommunities. Students willdevelop programs to addressthe social problems they seeas the most critical in theAnnapolis community today.Barnes says these couldinclude open-mic nights andcommunity fairs. Johnnies

will help facilitate theprogram as advisers, officeassistants, or group leaders,“to help the teens in whateverway possible,” he says. x

The founders of Epigenesishope to empower Annapolisyouth to work for change intheir communities: (l. to r.)Rachel Davison (A08), JamaalBarnes (A10), RaphaelaCassandra (A10), and JoshBecker (A08).

Reaching out in Annapolisby Ethan Brooks (A10)

St. John’s lost one of its biggest fans last February whenwriter, newspaper columnist and conservative punditWilliam F. Buckley, Jr. died. Buckley was the Commence-ment speaker in Annapolis in May 1996. Shortly afterward hepraised the college in his nationally syndicated column,focusing on the titles of the senior essays he read about in theCommencement program. Not easily impressed, Buckleydescribed his column as “a lullaby to the forlorn on thetheme of: Believe it or not, some American students learn.”He described expressing his astonishment at the “academicand intellectual sophistication” of the students to Ray Cave(class of 1948), who sat next to him on the podium. He listedmany of the authors read on the Program, and concludedwith a line that the college has treasured since: “Did you eversee a dream walking? Go to St. John’s.” x

“A Dream Walking”

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Thanks to wider cell phonecoverage, fancy GPS devices,and better wilderness andsafety education, fewer haplesshikers are getting lost in themountains near the Santa Fe

campus. That’s meant a shift infocus for the college’s Searchand Rescue Team.

Brendan O’Neill, Athleticsand Outdoors Program coordi-nator in Santa Fe, has been

involved with the team since1998. Since Search and Rescuewas founded in 1971, the teamwould field 30 or so rescuemissions a year, he says. Withfewer rescues, the team hasfocused more energy onteaching Johnnies leadershipand outdoor skills. O’Neill saysextended training is focused infour main areas: navigation,including map reading,compass skills, and GPS;

wilderness medi-cine; communica-tions, includingusing radios; andfield certification,which the state ofNew Mexicorequires for searchand rescue partici-pants. The team hasabout 30 members,25 of whom are St. John’s students.Team members areencouraged toattend at least twosessions a month.

In the past yearseveral courses

have been held on the Santa Fecampus, including a wildernessfirst-response course taught byWilderness Medical Associates,an amateur radio license classtaught by the Los AlamosRadio Club, and an avalanchecourse. Cultivating leadershipskills is still an important goalof the team, O’Neill says, andto that end students take onimportant roles such as presi-dent, training officer, and logistics officer.

All this training means asafer and more effectivemission when Search andRescue heads off campus to themountains. In January, threesearches in four days involvedmembers of the St. John’steam. In the first, the hikerturned up while rescue teamswere mobilizing—“the bestresult in a mission,” saysO’Neill. The second involved arescue that was completed justbefore a snowstorm. The thirdrescue, in which two peoplewere lost for three nights in theSanta Fe Ski Basin area,required 13 teams working inblizzard-like conditions. x

-- Jenny Hannifin

Ah, Wilderness! Search and Rescue Fosters Outdoor Skills

Nate Murray(SF09) improves hiscommunicationskills.

Is there one book that changed your life? Opened your eyes tosomething you never considered before? The College iscollecting stories about how one or two (three at the most!)books affected alumni. Send your thoughts to the editor by e-mail: [email protected] or mail to: The College Maga-zine, PO Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. The deadline isSeptember 15. We’ll print as many as we can fit.

Here’s a sampling to inspire you:Erin Hanlon (SF03): “War and Peace brought me to a belief

in God. That part where Pierre is searching and meets the oldMason kind of paralleled my own searching, and when Pierregoes through the initiation ceremony it somehow dawned onme that God existed. That said, I did not become a Mason, butinstead an Orthodox Christian. The other book that had a bigeffect on me was The Boxcar Children in third grade. It was thebook that made me realize I loved to read—and I became a bookworm after that.”

Anna Perleberg (SF02): “A lot of books have been influentialin my life—kind of like breathing. But the first was Mystery atLilac Inn, a Nancy Drew that my kindergarten teacher gave mewhen she realized I’d read all the picture books in the class-room. Not only did it have exciting girly adventures, it began toinstill confidence in me that I could educate myself at my ownpace and not have to fit into a mold.”

Rhonda Ortiz (A04): “Pride and Prejudice was the first“grown up, thinking” book that I read and enjoyed. This coincided with taking a class from my most influential teacherin high school, Mr. O’Malley (AP history). Together, they markthe beginning of my adult thinking. Reading Euclid and Apollonius taught me to appreciate and love the beauty ofmathematics. The Bible and the liturgy, however, have been themost formative of my life.” x

A Book That changed your life

In early January, a call went outfrom Mike DiMezza (SF98,EC99), former assistantgardener. He was spreadingthe word to those who helpedhim build it that the adobegreenhouse behind the FineArts Building would soon betaken down. Its decommissionmakes way for a fire safety roadthat will serve the Norman andBetty Levan Hall, the centerfor the Graduate Institute, onwhich construction will beginlater this year.

For many people, the green-house, built in 2003, stood as a legacy and a proud accom-plishment. It was distinctamong buildings on the SantaFe campus in that studentsconceived of, designed, and

built it—with help from alumni,the Buildings and Groundsoffice, and friends of thecollege. A “green” structure, it served as a model for owner-ship, stewardship, andbelonging in the St. John’scommunity. Even though itsdestruction makes way for agreat benefit to the college,many will feel its loss deeplyand for a long time. That’s why,when Mike suggested a recon-vening of some of the old crewto deconstruct the greenhouse,I agreed to join in. We wouldsalvage the materials to bereused elsewhere—perhaps foranother greenhouse built by alater generation of students.

Upon reflection, of course,the idea seems a bit crazy.

After all, Mike wascalling me in NewOrleans from hisplace in Brooklyn,where he lives withhis wife, Amy, andone-year-old son,Lucca. The old crewis scattered to farcorners at this point.But as Mike said laterin Santa Fe, “Somany people helpedbuild that green-house, so muchheart, love, and carewent into the site, tohave just destroyed itwould have been toomuch to bear.” In March, Mike and I flew to Santa Fe.Together with some students,staff, old guard B&G workersand David Perrigo, the campusarchitect, we brought downthe greenhouse in four days.

I delighted in seeing John-nies again with tools in hand.It felt similar to building thegreenhouse as a student along-side other students. The workhad been a diversion for someof us, or an outlet for thestress of the trials of the class-room; for others it was ameans of honing thoughtsengendered therein. For all, itmeant learning a practicalapplication of the St. John’smethod by addressing eachtask, if not as a knower, thenas a thinker. It meant learningto take stock of the tools andresources at one’s disposal,however few they were and

however crude, and usingthem to the utmost withcreativity and deliberation.

For five years the greenhousestood as a monument to thatinvaluable lesson, and as arefuge and place of beauty forthe students, faculty, and staffof Santa Fe. Will it have afuture incarnation? As Santa FePresident Michael Peters toldme, a greenhouse does belongon campus. Materials salvagedfrom the greenhouse weresaved, and the structure will berebuilt as soon as the best loca-tion has been determined.

Until then, it shall live inthe hearts and works of thosewhose hands shaped it andwhose lives it touched. x

Shane Gassaway is enrolled inthe PhD program in philos-ophy at Tulane University. In New Orleans, he’s put hisbuilding skills to use inassisting in the construction of a playground through aprogram called Kaboom,whose mission is to build aplayground within walkingdistance of every child inAmerica.


{ F r o m t h e B e l l T o w e r s } 5

Determinate Negation: Razing the Santa Fe Greenhouseby Shane Gassaway (SF06)

Deconstructing the Santa Fegreenhouse was as much alabor of love as building it forMike DiMezza (SF98,EC99).Materials were preserved torebuild the greenhouse whenthe best spot is chosen.sh

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The Melee Club, which wages a(bloodless) battle on the soccerfield after lunch every Saturdayafternoon, has an importantniche at St. John’s: It remindsarmchair Iliad enthusiasts what hand-to-hand combat wasactually like. Forget that theseweapons are foam instead ofbronze and that the partici-pants fight not for honor, butuntil the last man is standing.That’s not to say that therearen’t moments of stoicism thatwould do any Spartan proud:though no face or groin hits areallowed, everything else is fair game.

“Things like Melee justevolved out of warfare, likemost modern forms of martialarts and weapon practice,”explains Michael Sloan (A11),who has been playing since hecame to St. John’s. “The onlydifference is that while thingslike fencing and Aikido teachthe tactics and procedures of aspecific form of combat, Meleeis simply a brawl.” No specificphysical prowess is needed toplay—though many of the

veteran players will be happy todemonstrate techniques thatwould make any zombie-fighting ninja proud.

The traditional Meleeweapon is a foam sword called a“boffer,” though soft replicas ofaxes, spears, and shields arealso common. They all have acore of PVC, wrapped in pipeinsulation foam in the shapeand size appropriate to the kindof weapon needed. After theglue has set, the entire weaponis wrapped in colorful duct tapeto add durability. ArchonWilliam Kunkel (A11) says,“The name ‘boffer’ is probablybased on the sound one makeswhen hitting someone solidly.With a well padded one, it actu-ally sounds like ‘boff.’ ”

This year’s Melee groupnumbers around 20 students,including several women. Therules of battle are simple and theobjective is clear. Club memberssplit up into two opposing“armies,” chosen by “captains”as if it were a soccer game.Usually the opposing teamsstare at once another for a few

seconds, then suddenly rush ateach other, screaming a battlecry. Combatants get their armsand legs “cut off” with the slap-stick glee of a Monty Pythonmovie. Once a limb is“disabled,” the player must actas if it no longer functions,leading to the classic Melee poseof hopping after someone onone foot. And, though theymight start out as two armies,loyalties are fluid and any gamecan quickly become “every manfor himself.”

With all this treachery andrisk of bruising, why do peopleplay?

Killian Gupton (A11), whojust started playing this year,says, “I play because I reallyneed an opportunity to wailaway at someone and let offsteam without hurtinganybody. It just helps me relax and get something out of my system.”

Kelly Trop (A11), one of the female players, gets straight to the point: “I playmostly because it’s fun toattack people with giant foam weapons.”

The origins of Melee on theSt. John’s campus are lost tothose who play the game now,but Archon Jason Ritzke (A11)believes this particular game isunique to St. John’s. “Manyother padded-weapon fightinggroups exist,” he says.“However, this has the specialnature of allowing us to trulycommunicate (to a classmate)what we really thought aboutthat point made in seminar.” x


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Weekend Warriors Armed with Padded Weapons, Johnnies Pursue Honorby Erica Stratton (A08)

Above, Scott Jones, MichaelSloan, and Bill Kunkel let offsteam in pretend battle.Bottom left, Kunkel, ScottJones, Cameron Thompson,Sloan, Jason Ritzke, RobertMercer, and Daniel Dausmanmount a charge. All aremembers of the class of 2011.ph

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New GI Director inAnnapolisTutor Marilyn Higuera is thenew Graduate Institute directorin Annapolis, taking over forJoan Silver. Higuera has been atutor at St. John’s since 1979.She earned bachelor’s andmaster’s degrees at the Univer-sity of Michigan and spent twoyears as a mathematician at theApplied Physics Laboratory ofJohns Hopkins University.

Having taught graduate

students at St. John’s, Higuera isexcited about spending the nextfour years strengthening theinstitute, recruiting newstudents, and supportingstudents. “They have come toSt. John’s after earning anundergraduate degree some-where else, and they know thatthey’ve really missed some-thing. Many of them have full-time jobs and commute longdistances to come to thecollege,” she says. “I’m touchedby their level of commitment,

the lengths that they go toin order to be here.”

One of Higuera’s mostimportant charges as thenew director, succeedingtutor Joan Silver, is tocontinue to promote theHodson Trust TeacherFellowship. The programpays up to 70 percent of thetotal cost of attending theprogram for kindergartenthrough 12th-gradeteachers.

Honors for Aigla Head Sensei Ferol Arce,9th Dan and one of thehighest-ranked martial

artists in the country in Karate-Do, came to the Santa Fecampus for his first visit inFebruary 2008, with three otherBlack Belts. St. John’s Dojo members,including tutor Jorge Aigla,were pleased to be able to workout with him. But Arce also hada surprise in store: he awardedAigla a 7th Dan, making Aiglathe highest-ranked martial artist in New Mexico, accordingto Arce.

Aigla has been teachingKarate-Do free of charge on theSanta Fe campus for 22 yearsand has been practicing for 39 years. The St. John’s Dojo hasabout 15 committed membersand comprises students, faculty,and staff. Aigla accepted theaward on behalf of the St. John’sDojo, adding that “this distinc-tion really belongs to thestudents and to the college.”

New Look for the Web Site The St. John’s College Web sitewas redesigned this spring byBaltimore firm no/inc, with thecollege’s Web team imple-menting the changes. The newlook prominently features thegreat book authors, and offersimproved navigation throughdrop-down menus and quicklinks. Of course, the college’sfavorite tag line remains: The

following teachers will returnto St. John’s.

Staff News Anna Sochocky is the newdirector of Communications andExternal Relations for St. John’sCollege in Santa Fe. She brings18 years of experience in areas ofmedia cultivation, advertising,promotion, and electronic andprint publication development.During the past 10 years, shehas operated a successfulconsulting business in theseareas as well as government rela-tions and creative writing. Mostrecently she was director ofPublic Relations and Marketingat the College of Santa Fe.Sochocky earned a bachelor’sdegree in history and politicalscience at Macalester Collegeand a master’s in liberal studiesat Hamline University.

Melissa Latham-Stevens, artdirector/senior graphic designerfor the Santa Fe campus, hasbeen recognized for her designtalents by the Council for theAdvancement and Support ofEducation (CASE). Latham-Stevens won a Silver Medal inthe Alumni Relations Publica-tions category for her design ofthe St. John’s Homecoming2007 brochure. x

News & Announcements

Helping High SchoolStudents Get to CollegeThe Ronald Simon Family Foundation, which helps high schoolstudents prepare for and succeed in college, chose St. John’sCollege as the site for its tutoring efforts in Santa Fe, creatingopportunities for St. John’s students interested in education. Thefoundation provides educational support in areas including testpreparation, college admissions counseling, and tutoring.

Steve Simon, coordinator for the foundation’s New Mexicoprogram, chose St. John’s as the Santa Fe tutoring site because ofthe college’s emphasis on classical education. In the fall of 2007the foundation hired St. John’s students and alumni to tutor localhigh school students participating in the program. MartinTimmons (SFLA07, EC05) is the tutoring coordinator, and works

with Kay Duffy (SF04,EC05), Jennifer Fain(SF09), Liam Goodacre(SF08), Julian Gress(SF10), Kathryn Leahey(SF11), Brooke Nutini(SF05), Adam Perry(SF11), Aaron KaneTurner (SF09), andNicholas Weeks (SF05,EC06). Tutors helpstudents completehomework assignmentsand spend time helpingstudents refine theirwriting, critical thinking, and test-taking skills. St. John’s donatesthe use of its classroom space. x

Tutor Marilyn Higuera

Brooke Nutini (SF05), right, tutorshigh school student AdriannaRomero.

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

Minutes afterthe reces-sionalmarking theend of the216th

Commencement in Annapolis,Nancy and Bill Lee of Mililani,Hawaii, hurried to McDowellHall carrying two BananaRepublic shopping bags withtheir gifts: 130 purple orchidleis, one for each new graduateand their tutors. In Hawaii a leiis a gift of affection and celebra-tion. The Lees, whose sonJustin was among the Class of2008, presented the leis in thespirit of community that is atthe heart of St. John’s College.

Bruce Cole, chairman of theNational Endowment for theHumanities, touched on thisspirit when he described hismeeting with the students whovisited him at the NEH to invitehim to speak at Commence-ment: “One thing that struckme when I met with somemembers of this graduatingclass in January was how consis-tently all the students spoke interms of ‘we,’ not ‘I,’ whendiscussing their experiencehere at the college,” he said.

Cole congratulated theparents of the 106 graduatingseniors and 22 Graduate Insti-tute students who obtainedmaster’s degrees by leading around of applause. He praisedthe college’s “democratic”education, which he describedas “the sense of a shared expe-rience—what one St. John’salumnus has described to me asan ‘intense commonality.’ ”

Appointed by PresidentGeorge W. Bush to chair theNEH in 2001, Cole was previ-ously Distinguished Professorof Art History and Professor ofComparative Literature atIndiana University in Bloom-ington. He praised the value ofa liberal arts education, butemphasized the unique natureof St. John’s. “I can say withconfidence that the great bookseducation you have received atSt. John’s is truly one-of-a-kind.At this college, you haven’tacquired knowledge in the formof textbooks and lectures, pre-packaged for easy consumptionlike a frozen TV dinner. Youhaven’t absorbed these greatworks through the filter ofanother person’s mind, howeverbrilliant that person might be.”

Graduates of St. John’s, Cole said,leave the college witha “moral sense”acquired throughbooks and discus-sions. “By their verynature, most of thebooks you haveencountered at St. John’s have forcedyou to constantly askyourselves, ‘Whatshould I do? Whatdoes it mean to live agood life?’ On toomany campusestoday, these funda-mental questions are

left unasked—sometimes, asincredible as this might sound,because other questions aredeemed higher priorities; andoften, simply because it ispresumed that ultimately wecannot find the answers. At St. John’s, these questions haveguided your whole education,and for that, you should beprofoundly grateful.”

By educating studentsthrough careful reading andgenuine conversation, Colesaid, “St. John’s has given youmore than just the means to

make a living—it has also givenyou the tools to make a life, agood and flourishing private lifeas an individual, as a spouse, asa parent, as a friend.” x

—Patricia Dempsey

Visit The College magazineonline at www.stjohnscollege.eduto read the commencementaddresses from both campusesand view a photo gallery of theceremony.

“A Shared Experience”

Above: The Lee family brought leis to help graduates celebrate:(l. to r.): Jessica Lee, Bill Lee, Justin Lee, and Nancy Lee. Bottom,Left: John Travis Pittman (A08) celebrates. Right: Johnnies leavethe college with the tools to live a “good and flourishingprivate life,” NEH Chairman Bruce Cole said.

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

At the 41stCommencementon the Santa Fecampus, 89undergraduatesand 30 Graduate

Institute students received theirdegrees. Rain was in the fore-cast, but Saturday’s sky wasclear, and the weather notunlike a brisk fall day. TheArtemis String Quartetprovided music for the procession and recession, andthe college CommencementChoir sang pieces by Palestrinaand de Cristo before and afterthe address to the graduatingclass given by Richard N. Haass.

Haass is the president of theCouncil on Foreign Relations,an independent, nonpartisanmembership organization,think tank and publisher dedi-cated to helping the publicbetter understand the world andforeign policy. He has authoredor edited 10 books on Americanforeign policy, the most recentof which is The Opportunity:America’s Moment to AlterHistory’s Course. Prior toserving on the Council onForeign Relations, Haass was

director of policy planning forthe Department of State and aprincipal adviser to Secretary ofState Colin Powell. He has beenvice president and director offoreign policy studies at theBrookings Institution, a seniorassociate at the CarnegieEndowment for InternationalPeace, a lecturer in publicpolicy at Harvard University’sJohn F. Kennedy School ofGovernment, and a researchassociate at the InternationalInstitute for Strategic Studies.

“We were so pleased to have

someone of Richard Haass’stature and experience speak toour graduates about greatbooks, great ideas and their linkto global issues and the lives ofour graduates,” said Michael P.Peters, president of the Santa Fecampus, who before joining St. John’s was executive vicepresident of the Council onForeign Relations.

Haass began with an outlineof the nonpolar nature oftoday’s foreign relations,operating within a worldthat has moved from

concentrated power to oneof distributed power. “Allof you—no matter yourcareer path—will beaffected by nonpolarity. The world is not LasVegas: what happens therewill not stay there.”

He referenced Thucy-dides’ The PeloponnesianWar, with its many exam-ples of hard-headedanalysis. “Through hisexploration of the politics,diplomacy, and conflicts ofthe great powers of hisday, Thucydides providedforeign policy insights thatremain relevant in ourtime,” said Haass. He

suggested five books that wouldadd greatly to one’s knowledgeof foreign policy: Hedley Bull’sThe Anarchical Society, HenryKissinger’s A World Restored,Michael Walzer’s Just andUnjust Wars, Carl vonClausewiz’s On War, andGeorge Kennan’s AmericanDiplomacy.

“Understanding of the worldis essential not only for yourrole as competitors, but also foryour duty as citizens,” saidHaass. “This understanding willenable you to meet your obliga-tions to society and to live up tothe credo of this wonderfulinstitution, namely, ‘to makeintelligent, free choicesconcerning the ends and meansof public life.’ ” x

— Jenny Hannifin

“Great Books for a Global World”

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Late April, 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, senior lab: WithReality parties behind them and graduation days away,it’s understandable that the students in tutor AdamSchulman’s laboratory have trouble mustering upenthusiasm for the Hershey-Chase blender experiment.

But as the students move away from the table to the laboratory tobegin agitating E. coli bacteria, even the most serious cases ofsenioritis are chipped away by the beauty and simplicity of the exper-iment, which Schulman enticingly touts as “bacterial sex.” Thisexperiment, demonstrating the sequence of genes in bacteria, is thelast one these students will do at St. John’s, completing an educationin science that began when they read Theophrastus’ InquiryConcerning Plants and went outside to carefully observe themagnolia trees in Mellon Courtyard.

As with every aspect of the Program, laboratory at St. John’s is awork in progress. The classic fruit fly experiments of the 1950s aregone; students today work on Einstein’s photoelectric effect andMillikan’s oil-drop experiment. Manuals have been revised and re-revised. Study groups have introduced new and interesting materialto tutors, who work them into laboratory. Through it all, laboratoryremains grounded in Barr and Buchanan’s basic plan for science atthe college. “These laboratories,” Buchanan wrote in the 1937Bulletin of St. John’s College, “will provide a proper pre-professionalscientific training, will illustrate the liberal arts in the liveliestcontemporary practices, and will focus the past on the present forthe whole course.”

Nevertheless, the college has faced challenges in its laboratoryprogram over the years. In A Search for the Liberal College, J. Winfree Smith recounted how faculty and students in 1948expressed concerns that science was becoming less integrated withthe rest of the curriculum and that faculty were employing conven-tional textbooks. The decision in 1976 to reduce the laboratoryprogram from four to three years, so that students could devote moreattention to the sophomore music tutorial, was controversial. And ina report he gave to the Board of Visitors and Governors in 1985,

George Doskow, then dean in Annapolis, said: “The lab programremains, as it always has been, the most problematic part of theprogram.”

The reasons he listed remain issues today:• How do you cover such a scope of material in three years and still

allow time for thoughtful discussions and meaningful experi-ments?

• How do you present difficult material in a way that makes itaccessible to students and to faculty who lack scientific back-grounds?

• How do you make room for new discoveries without droppingfoundational works?

The first question remains open-ended. Neither campus is activelyconsidering adding more time for laboratory, although some tutorswould like to see it revisited to slow down the pace and allow moretime for biology. The remaining questions can be considered in thecontext of junior and senior laboratories. Though an essential workin junior lab, Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism isdescribed variously as a “hard slog” and a “stretch,” especially forstudents for whom math does not come easily. And in senior labora-tory, a lack of experiments and a need to include some of the newdiscoveries in biology have prompted both campuses to think aboutincluding different works and experiments in laboratory.

“A Continuing Quest” A fundamental question for the college, says Annapolis tutor NickMaistrellis, is “what is the place of science in a liberal arts educa-tion?” That raises other questions, he adds, such as: How should thecollege accommodate modern science in a curriculum based on theclassics? “That’s the great problem St. John’s has always faced in lab,and it’s a continuing quest,” Maistrellis says.

When Maistrellis joined the college in 1967, the lab program wasstill evolving in the direction set for it by Barr and Buchanan. “Thatis, it focused a lot on using scientific equipment and experiments, itfocused a lot on measurement and quantifying things. It did not

T A L K I N G A B O U T

ScienceC O N S I D E R I N G T H E C H A L L E N G E S

O F L A B O R A T O R Y

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follow the normal division of the sciences.” Under Dean Jacob Klein,Maistrellis says, laboratory evolved further, focusing more on the“deeper questions” of science. Maistrellis has been involved in manyof the changes and improvements to laboratory over the years.Thanks to investments made in the laboratories on both campuses—many funded by grants and gifts to the college—the labs are betterequipped and more functional. Without a doubt, the program isstronger, more coherent, and more vital, he says. But in his view,more time is needed for biology.

Back in 1976, Maistrellis supported the move to reduce the labo-ratory to three years. Students were clearly overburdened and soph-omore lab was a weak part of the program. “It involved dissecting alot of animals and tended to be very much like a standard biologycourse,” he says. Now, students have biology in freshman year and inthe last semester of senior year—in all, just 23 weeks for biology. Toaccommodate modern developments and allow for a slower pace,Maistrellis would like to see “the question of getting more time forlaboratory raised.”

What we do in biology at St. John’s, we do better than in past years,Maistrellis says. The program has already improved by shifting awayfrom “dissecting dead things” to more observations on the biologyof living things. More freshmen are spending laboratory classesdown at the restored shoreline of College Creek, a living laboratory.Students in Santa Fe take advantage of a verticle mile of climatezones--including high desert, transitional and sub-apline--whenlearning about classificiation. “New and wondrous things are beingdiscovered all of the time,” he says. “Biology is a living and progres-

sive science and we should always be attentive to what we’re doing.The very best thing about science at St. John’s, Maistrellis says, is thesimple fact that “everybody does it all. The students do it, the tutorsall teach it. The way we do it, there’s an emphasis on hands-on experiments and discussion, making science something to be talkedabout.”

How Hard is Too Hard? ConsideringMaxwell For Bruce Perry, who served as archon for junior lab in Santa Fe lastyear, the second year of laboratory illustrates how well sciencespeaks to and draws from other aspects of the Program. “We startwith Galileo, who’s sort of the father of modern science, and it’sbeautifully sequenced with other readings,” he says. “Students dosome Newton in math, they do Newton in lab. They do Leibniz inmath, and Leibniz in lab. So you’re seeing the same author in twodifferent paths: one as a mathematician, one as a physicist. It’s reallyinteresting.”

After considering Gilbert, Ampere, Coulomb, and Øersted, juniorlab devotes a month to Faraday. “Everyone knows how magnetswork, but people didn’t know that magnets and electric currentscould interact or that you could have magnetic fields. And thenpeople noticed that currents could attract. So you start seeing allthese weird overlaps with these phenomena,” says Perry. “Faraday

Laboratory—in 1941 and today—is not a history of science or“physics for poets,” but an integrated part of the Program.

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sorts out all the phenomena, and a way of accounting for them.”One reason laboratory devotes so much time to Faraday is to set

the stage for Maxwell, who in turn sets the stage for studyingEinstein in senior mathematics. For 10 weeks, students readMaxwell’s Treatise and attempt to translate Maxwell into modernvector calculus. The material can be frustrating for students, some ofwhom find it a “hard slog,” says Perry.

To explore Maxwell, Santa Fe uses a manual originally developedby tutor Peter Pesic and subsequently revised by tutor Jim Forkin.Annapolis uses a book by Tom Simpson that comprises three shortpapers by Maxwell and many notations by Simpson, supplementedby further notes by tutor Chester Burke. At 1,000 pages, the Treatiseis “not very approachable,” so Santa Fe juniors read 20 to 30 pagesof it along with many pages of tutor notes, Perry says. “There’s a division about whether we should do the Maxwell at all,” Perry says.“I think we’re going to say ‘yes’ to that. But there’s a real divisionabout whether we’re going to stay with the Treatise as what we dohere in Santa Fe, or do something like what Annapolis does.” A faculty study group is meeting this summer in Santa Fe to explorethis issue in depth.”

A balance is needed, he suggests, between working out the equa-tions and understanding the process. “The whole idea is to under-stand where the science comes from, why one line of thoughtemerged, why some other path did not. It’s not just theory, it’s notthe history of science; it’s more like seeing what science looks like inthe actual messiness of how it emerges, and the limits of what oneknows or doesn’t,” he says, adding, “that’s one of the things at thecollege that’s wonderful.”

In Annapolis, tutor Dylan Casey agrees that Maxwell is difficultand that students can get frustrated. As a physicist, one of the thingsthat drew him to St. John’s was the college’s inclusive approach toscience and mathematics—everybody does it all, regardless of theirparticular aptitude for math and science. Frustration is only aproblem if students give up, but Casey believes that juniors haveadapted to working through difficult material. “We read theRepublic, we read the Metaphysics, and there are all sorts of thingsthere that we acknowledge that we find confusing. But we say, ‘let’stry to understand it.’ I think that works well here at St. John’s.”

The quest to comprehend Maxwell’s equations while following thedevelopment of his ideas, Casey suggests, is similar to memorizingAncient Greek paradigms to approach the Meno. “You want to learnthe language, but you’re not there to learn it in itself, to master it,”he says. “There’s a similar tension in Maxwell. We’re confronting avery challenging thing, and mathematics that students recognize butthat many are not comfortable with: differential equations and protovector calculus. Maxwell is developing what he calls a physicalanalogy and he’s presenting it through mathematical work, butbecause we are less facile with the mathematics it makes it harder forus to see the work in a physical analogy.”

Underlying the tension is that at St. John’s, we strive not to takeanything for granted. Casey questions whether this is alwayspossible. “When we study Euclid and mathematics, we want tounderstand the geometry, but a lot of the focus is on trying to under-stand why he is trying to say what he does,” he says. “With Maxwell,we may have to take some things for granted and then see how hisargument plays out, to look at it in itself.”

Perhaps some of Maxwell’s derivations can be taken for granted toallow for more time to discuss his conclusions. “It’s a little bit likeunderstanding how to drive a car without understanding how the carwas built. It might be helpful to understand the physics, but really,only part of that really matters,” he says. “I think we overestimatesometimes how much doing the derivation will enlighten us as towhat the final equation means. It’s something we have to work outevery day.”

The college will always grapple with whether there’s too much,whether the pace is too quick and where precious time is bestinvested, but Casey anticipates that “the basic shape of the junior labis going to stay the same.”

Brave New World: Senior Laboratory Senior laboratory, says Marilyn Higuera in Annapolis, has two chal-lenges to address: 1) not enough experiments and 2) a need to getfrom Darwin and Mendel to beyond Watson and Crick. Both of theseissues speak to heightening the excitement of discovery and wonderin students.

“For a while now, tutors have thought maybe that the story of thegene is not as thought-provoking as it once was,” Higuera explains.“Students already come to the college knowing that Mendel’s factorsare in some way connected not only with the chromosome, but withpart of the chromosome. The articles are still quite interesting butstudents already know pretty much what they were looking for.”

Higuera also wants to see more experiments in senior year. Theproblem is “evolution, in general, doesn’t lend itself to experi-ments” that can be done in the time allotted for laboratory in senioryear, one month less because of essay writing. Right now, the labora-tory experiments with fast-growing plants that are similar to theones Mendel used in his genetic experiment. “After that, we’re a bitpuzzled,” Higuera says. “We do some chemical things with bacteria,but you can’t see the bacteria until they colonize. So we’re hoping,eventually, to include more plant work in the lab and maybe inAnnapolis we can take advantage of our wetlands.”

Faculty study groups offer a way for tutors to help shape improve-ments to laboratory. Annapolis faculty members who participated intutor Kathy Blits’ 2004 group on ecology and evolution went awayexcited by the subject matter, and Higuera later chaired a labcommittee that met to review papers that could be studied in seniorlab. “We began to be aware that there are really philosophicallyinteresting questions coming up as scientists try to refine theirknowledge of how the gene works. It’s not clear what you want toidentify as its function. We are entertaining the notion that theremight be papers we want to read and ways of raising these questionsin our own classes.”

Higuera is fascinated by the norm of reaction, a phenomenon ofgenetic development referring to the fact that organisms withexactly the same genes do different things when exposed to differentenvironments. “There are so many interesting questions,” she saysenthusiastically. “How does an ‘organism’ recognize that it’s in adifferent environment? What should one call the environment? Wetend to think of it as ‘outside your body’ but genes have an environ-ment and they interact with their environment. Where do you drawthe boundaries? These are wonderful questions that have scientistswringing their hands.”


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It always comes down to the question: where do you fit it in? “It would be tough to get from Darwin to that level, but I think tutorsand students would be really interested in that.”

While he agrees that more time must somehow be made forbiology, Stephen Houser, senior lab archon in Santa Fe last year, isfairly satisfied with senior lab these days. The first semester of senioryear is particularly exciting he says, because of the questions it raisesthrough the study of quantum physics about the nature of scienceand the human relationship to the world we’re observing. These arequestions that “don’t get asked in other parts of the Program,” hesays. “We just scratch the surface, but certainly the IndeterminacyPrinciple is one of those areas that suggest that, in some way, ourminds and the world may not be fully commensurate. There are anumber of different aspects to that. Particle-wave duality is anotherexample, which is also connected to Heisenberg. That’s just anotherplace where it seems like our minds are not geared toward whatseems to be a paradox in reality.”

The arrangement of having quantum physics in the first semesterand biology in the second is a “historical accident,” says Houser, butthere some connections. In Santa Fe, students read Shrödinger’sWhat is Life? that helps connect physics to biology. Although he explores questions of entropy before the discovery of DNA,Shrödinger suggests “there was some large complex molecule thatdid govern the operation of cells,” Houser says. “That’s an inter-esting problem, because living organisms represent a very high levelof order, and it’s hard to understand how they can maintain thatorder because they don’t have the statistical basis upon which orderis based in the rest of the world.”

Shrödinger’s text underscores the discovery in first semester that“cause and effect turns out not to be a necessary connection, as Kant thought it was, but it’s really a statistical connection.”

As for second semester, Houser sees it as “a pretty coherentwhole” that starts with Darwin and the issue of inheritance, thenmoves to Mendel and the discovery and exploration of the functionof chromosomes, and how those might be related to heredity.

Houser would like to see the college include The Triple Helix, abook by Richard Lewontin: “That’s the perfect way to end thesemester because he talks about the broad-ranged questions thatcome up for us, and lots of new questions as well. But he brings backthe question of the role of reductionism in the question of evolution,to some extent, what an organism is,” Houser says.

If Houser would suggest one improvement for laboratory, it wouldbe finding a way to better unite the biology of freshman year with thatof senior year. “The larger debate in biology is the debate betweenthose who take a more holistic view—environmentalists, ecologists,that sort of thing—and reductionism. Some of the tendency in thefreshman year has been to go in the holistic direction, and yet mostof the work we do in the second semester of the senior year is reduc-tionism. If we’re going to engage in a reductionist enterprise in thesenior year, then maybe we ought to do a little bit more preparationin the freshman year.”

Guiding PrinciplesThe St. John’s way of doing science—no matter how vigorously thecollege fine-tunes it—will always have its detractors. One would haveto experience the Program in its entirety to see the beauty andwisdom of science’s place at St. John’s, says Higuera. “What I love tosee is that all our students awake to all of these fascinating questionsand they develop a certain kind of confidence in their own ability tothink about them. That’s true for everything in our Program.”

As far as science goes, studying a magnolia leaf, carrying out theoil drop experiment, and colonizing bacteria are valuable evenwhen they don’t work exactly as they should. “We try to seethrough the eyes of the scientist, follow his thinking, and see if weagree. That’s a valuable skill to practice—for science, for any disci-pline. Students are engaging in observing the world and thinkingin a way that one doesn’t if one is just memorizing laws andworking problems,” she says.

Because the goal is to cultivate an ability to ask questions andconsider conclusions with a skeptical eye, experiments have adifferent role at St. John’s than they would in an upper-level coursein organic chemistry or developmental biology at another institu-tion. “An experiment is always a work in progress,” says Houser,more like a “brief encounter with the material world.” Last year inSanta Fe, Houser’s students were discouraged because theirMillikan experiments didn’t turn out as expected. “That’s one of thelessons that could be learned in the lab,” he says. “That is thedifficulty and level of frustration you have to live with as a scientist.”

Casey points out that when students discuss Lavoisier and theproblem of naming, the first question they may ask is “why is thisproblem important?” For Casey, that’s what sets the college apart.“We put our hands on things. We ask questions and we try to readbetween the lines,” he says. “That’s what made me really interestedin St. John’s.” x


Tammie Kahnhauser and Daniel Rekshan (both A08) replicatethe classic Hershey-Chase blender experiment.

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R A D I C A L I N Q U I R Y

“By far, the greatest obstacle to the progress ofscience and to the undertaking of new tasksand provinces therein is found in this—thatmen despair and think things impossible.” —Francis Bacon, The New Organon

Among the characteristics thatunite Johnnies, across disci-plines and time, are these: A burning desire to investi-gate theories for themselves.Boundless curiosity. A will-

ingness to doubt even the most entrencheddoctrines and ideas. Perhaps most importantis a willingness to doubt themselves, to holdtheir judgments up to a critical light,abandon what doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,and formulate new ideas.

These are traits shared by the Johnnie scien-tists profiled here, who attribute at least ashare of their success to their experiences atSt. John’s, not just in the laboratory but in allaspects of the college. The “radical inquiry”

at the heart of the Program prepared them toexplore deep questions in their respectivefields. Graham Redgrave (SF90) uses analo-gies to Homer along with MRI scans in hiswork with patients diagnosed with eatingdisorders. Cynthia Keppel (A84) divides hertime between applied and basic science, workrooted in her fascination with nuclear physics.At the National Institutes of Health, StevenHolland (A79) seeks genetic links to infec-tious diseases. Patricia Sollars (A80) hopesher work in a tiny area of the brain mayprovide clues about the biological clock. Andin her laboratory at the University of Chicago,Leslie Kay (SF83) learns more about the brainby studying how rats distinguish one odorfrom another.

In some cases, these determined inquirershave more questions than answers. Butinstead of finding “despair” in their deadends, they draw satisfaction from the contin-uing quest.

{ R a d i c a l I n q u i r y } 15


Why do people get sick?Graham Redgrave: Psychiatrist

by Tom Nugent

When the youthful patient began to describe the alluringtemptation of self-starvation and binge-eating, thepsychiatrist tried a metaphor. “Have you read theOdyssey?” She nodded. “Do you remember the scenewhere his sailors tie him to the mast?” As the two of themcontinued to discuss the ways in which her psychologicaldisorder tempted her to engage in binge-eating, he askedher: “Are you saying you feel like Odysseus, as youstruggle with the impulse to overeat?”

The patient nodded. “That’s right,” she told JohnsHopkins University psychiatrist Graham W. Redgrave,M.D. (SF90), during a recent therapy session at HopkinsHospital. “I can see that when I’m tempted to startgorging on doughnuts or cookies, I’m like Odysseushearing the music of the Sirens.”

Helped along by Homer’s great epic poem, the discus-sion at the eating disorders clinic continued, as thepatient told the doctor that although the “singing of theSirens was beautiful, Odysseus knew he shouldn’t listen,because if he got distracted by the music, his ship wouldcrash on the rocks.” Redgrave listened carefully—thenused the metaphor to reassure that patient that it was allright to “give up” the disorder and then “go home” (likethe wandering Odysseus) to a healthier way of living—a conceptthat the troubled patient had been struggling to accept.

For the 40-year-old Redgrave, who last year won a covetedNARSAD Young Investigator grant for his groundbreakingresearch on the functional neuroanatomy of anorexia nervosa, thatrecent conversation about Odysseus at the hospital’s nationallyrenowned Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore was a “fabulousexample” of how the liberal arts (and especially classical philos-ophy and literature) can often play a helpful role in the practice ofpsychotherapy.

“More than anything else,” says Redgrave, “a psychotherapysession is a conversation in which both participants are trying tocommunicate about problems related to what Freud described as‘broken meaning.’ ” And so, in one way or another, the challengeis always to persuade patients to lay aside these broken meaningsby gradually bringing understanding and insight to them.

“In the case of that particular patient, the discussion aboutOdysseus was an important part of the dialogue, because it helpedher achieve some useful insights about the recurring ‘temptation’to engage in an eating disorder that was wrecking her life.”

During the months that followed that therapy session in the fallof 2007, Redgrave says his patient “continued to make importantstrides in understanding the psychological issues—the areas ofbroken meaning—that had been key factors in causing her episodesof starvation and overeating.

“As a psychiatrist, I feel very fortunate to be able to work in asetting where I can study both the physical brain and the ideas thatemerge from it,” the therapist and researcher explained. “More

Why does a healthy woman starve herself? Graham Redgrave(SF90) counsels patients while conducting research on theneural mechanisms involved in eating disorders.

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and more, it’s becoming clear to me—in my [brain] research andalso in my clinical treatment of patients—that knowing how toorganize the knowledge you gain in a coherent epistemologicalframework is absolutely essential to effective psychiatry.”

Ask Redgrave to account for his passionate interest in “the linksbetween epistemology and psychiatry,” and he’ll tell you that itbegan during his junior year in Santa Fe . . . when he agreed to takeon the “marvelously exciting” challenge of analyzing and thenwriting an essay on Plato’s Theaetetus.

“That was an extraordinary experience,” he recalls with anostalgic smile, “because it forced me to think long and hard aboutwhat knowledge really is. When can you be sure you understand anidea accurately, and what should you do with the knowledge you’veobtained? What’s the best way to think about an idea, if you reallywant to grasp its essence?”

More than a decade after his graduation in Santa Fe, Redgravesays he was “just amazed” to discover—while en route to an even-tual residency in general psychiatry at Hopkins—that the legendaryJHU psychiatrist and co-author of the classic The Perspectives ofPsychiatry, Dr. Paul McHugh, had centered his entire approach topsychotherapy on a carefully thought out epistemological frame-work based in large part on concepts Redgrave had first encoun-tered in the Theaetetus.

“During my first year in medical school at Johns Hopkins, Iwound up ‘shadowing’ a psychiatrist who was treating HIV/AIDS

patients,” Redgrave recalls. “This doctor was achieving some verypositive results among a highly stressed, inner-city population, andI was intrigued by that. When he described his approach to patientsas ‘based on Dr. McHugh’s system,’ and then as I watched himinteract with the patients and saw how effectively he communi-cated with them, I was struck by how clear-headed and sharplyfocused that approach really was.

“After a few months of working with him, I realized that theMcHugh approach was a truly deep way of thinking about psychi-atry, and that it was based on an epistemological system that inmany ways seemed to have come straight out of Plato. That wasvery helpful for me, because it showed how effective psychiatrymust be built on a clearly focused epistemological framework.”

Born in London in 1968, Redgrave moved with his family to theMaryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., as a fourth-grader, thenlanded on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s in the fall of 1986. Adedicated classics student in high school (he took four years ofLatin and loved it), at St. John’s he liked the way “the educationflowed out of the continuing ‘conversation’ between you and yourtutor and your classmates. I remember being blown away by Euclid,and by the elegance of his definitions.

“You got the sense that you were right there at the intellectualroots of Western civilization,” he says, “and the conversation keptgetting richer and richer. And everything we read was part of thatliving conversation. In many ways, I think the reason I’m so excitedabout doing research in psychiatry these days is because I get toparticipate in a similar conversation, but now it’s about the brainand the mind and behavior and meaning.”

After meeting his future spouse, Brooke, in Santa Fe (they’renow raising three young children in the Baltimore area), Redgravespent several years working as a computer programmer in SanFrancisco, then opted for med school in 1994. “I found computerscience very challenging,” he says today, “but psychiatry ulti-mately seemed much richer and more complex. What I really likeabout my current role at Johns Hopkins is that I’m able to conductMRI-based research on brain function in eating disorders, whilealso treating illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.

“As our treatment methods continue to get better, it’s a privilegeto find yourself working in both arenas. Eating disorders affectmillions in this country and cause immense suffering. The stakesare high, and we need every tool—including the Greek and Latinclassics!—that can help us to better understand these illnesses.”

Redgrave spends many of his afternoons (and more than a few ofhis nights) in a specially designed, state-of-the-art “imaging lab” at

“Eating disorders affect millions in this countryand cause immense suffering.”

Graham Redgrave (SF90)



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The Johns Hopkins Hospital. His quest: to pinpoint some of thekey changes in brain function that take place during episodes ofthe eating disorder anorexia nervosa—a potentially lethal behav-ioral syndrome in which young women starve themselves as part ofa pathology that often involves several different psychologicalfactors.

In his role as a clinical psychiatrist, Redgrave treats eating-disorder patients in psychotherapy sessions that explore thepsychological vulnerabilities contributing to anorexia. Duringthese encounters, the psychiatrist employs the standard tech-niques of traditional psychotherapy to help patients overcome adisorder that reportedly affects up to one percent of the U.S. femalepopulation (or about 1.6 million American women).

Once he steps into his lab at the Hopkins Hospital’s PhippsClinic, however, the clinician puts on a different hat. He becomes aresearcher who’s more interested in the activation of brain regionsthan in behavior patterns among struggling patients.

Although the neuroanatomy involved in Redgrave’s studies iscomplex, the strategy behind them can be easily understood. By using (MRI) technology to chart the flow of oxygen-carryinghemoglobin in the brains of patients with severe eating disorders,the researcher can monitor the ways in which the neurons (braincells) respond to anorexia-related “cues” in the behavior of the test subjects. Hopefully, gaining a better understanding of thepatterns of activation involved in such disorders will aidresearchers in developing interventions (such as new drugs orpsychotherapy techniques) that will eventually help to reduce oreven prevent them.

Explains Redgrave: “By studying the change in levels ofoxygenation in areas of the brain such as the dorsolateralprefrontal cortex or the insula, we can measure the activity that’staking place in neurons in women acutely ill with anorexia andcompare it to healthy women.

“Studying neural mechanisms of eating disorders is a relativelynew frontier in psychiatry, and the rapid evolution of imaging tech-nology makes this an especially promising area of research. I don’tthink we’re going to find a magic bullet for eating disordersanytime soon, but we are getting closer to understanding the basicbuilding blocks of the disorder, which may one day help relieve thesuffering of anorexia patients everywhere.” x

What are the fundamentalbuilding blocks of matter?Cynthia Keppel: Experimental Nuclear Physicistand Cancer Researcher

by Rosemary Harty

At some point, every thinking being looks to the stars andwonders about the nature of the universe. Where did all of thiscome from? What is everything made of? What keeps everythingfrom flying apart?

“These are probably questions that we all ask ourselves at onetime or another,” says Cynthia Keppel (A84). “Some of us justbecome a little obsessed with them.”

Keppel spends her days probing questions that could keep aperson busy for a lifetime—several lifetimes, perhaps. Most ofthem deal with the behavior of quarks, elementary particles thatare bound together with gluons that form into larger particlessuch as protons and neutrons. “My approach to physics is verySt. John’s-like. I’ve always been most interested in the big questions,” Keppel says. “There are so many basic, fundamentaland compelling questions to pursue.”

Keppel balances many professional roles: She holds a jointposition as University Endowed Professor of Physics at HamptonUniversity in Virginia and Staff Scientist at the ThomasJefferson National Accelerator Facility. She also directs theHampton University (HU) Center for Advanced Medical Instru-mentation and a joint medical physics program with the EasternVirginia Medical School, where she is leading efforts to developadvanced diagnostic and treatment tools using nuclear technology.

Keppel has a fourth job that takes top priority; she and her husband, Barry Hellman (A84), a pathologist, have threechildren, ages 21, 14, and 7. It’s not unusual for her to be at the university laboratory in the morning, return home to “hang with the kids” in the afternoon, and head back to thelaboratory for late-night research. “I think the greatest advancein my work,” she quips, “has been the development of the home office.”

One of her most exciting endeavors is directing the scientificand technical aspects of Hampton University’s Proton TherapyInstitute, a $200 million project to treat cancer patients more safely and effectively. Five proton therapy centers are

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currently operating in the United States. Hampton’scenter is under construc-tion and scheduled totreat its first patients inAugust 2010. As theScientific and Technicaldirector, Keppel is respon-sible for machine opera-tions, nuclear science, and treatment planning forthe patients.

“It’s not news thatradiation kills tumors,”Keppel explains. “Thetrick is to kill the tumorwhile reducing sideeffects and increasingsafety for those under-going the therapy.”

Traditional radiationtherapy directs a photonbeam to the patient,Keppel says. As forcecarriers, photons “interactall the way through thepatient’s body, even some-times all the way throughthe table.”

In contrast, protonsdeposit all of their energyinto a well-defined (tumor) space and interact only minimallybeforehand with healthy tissue. After careful positioning,patients are exposed to the proton beam for only about a minute,as an intense energy burst is targeted precisely to the tumor.“That translates into exactly what you want for battling cancer,”she says.

Her work has had direct and beneficial medical applications,and that has been immensely rewarding for Keppel. But, at theJefferson Lab, she spends her time exploring abstract andpuzzling questions of experimental physics that first captivatedher while she was a student at St. John’s.

Keppel first gained experience in scientific research by working at the Naval Research Laboratory during summer

and winter breaks at St. John’s. She didcomputer modeling andimaging, gained skills inapplied mathematics,and read extensivelyabout physics. She choseAmerican University forgraduate studies prima-rily to work with RayArnold, who was amongthe prominent scientistsmaking exciting discov-eries in particle physicsat the Stanford LinearAccelerator Center(SLAC) in California. AtSLAC, it costs $100,000a day to run an experi-ment on the particlebeam accelerator, butKeppel managed to

secure time for her experiment on resonance electroproduction,the subject of her dissertation. Resonances are extremely short-lived elementary particles (they exist for about 10-23 seconds)that are produced in proton scattering experiments.

“When you hit a nucleon, like a proton, they might do elasticscattering, like billiard balls striking each other, and stay intact.Or the electron beam can hit the proton and completely break itapart. Another thing that can happen is that the electron hitsthe proton, but the proton absorbs it and goes into an excitedstate and grows. The quarks then have to align themselves intodifferent spin structures. That’s a resonance state.”

What Keppel was exploring then and continues to probetoday is the question: how do quarks align themselves to remain

Cynthia Keppel (A84)enjoys a career thatcombines the best ofboth theoretical andapplied science,allowing her to worktoward better treat-ment for cancer whileprobing mysteries of thesubatomic world.

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bound in a resonance state? What force holds quarks together,and how does it differ from the force that holds nucleonstogether?

“The strong force that holds quarks together must somehowalso be the same force responsible for holding protons andneutrons together,” she explains. “For physicists, these arephenomena on vastly different scales. How do we link thesethings together?”

Scientists understand the force that holds quarks togetherthrough quantum chromodynamic (QCD), a quantum fieldtheory of the strong interactions based on the exchange of force-carrying gluons between quarks and antiquarks. But the forceholding nuclei together is “fraught with mystery,” Keppel says.“It doesn’t fall into any of our fundamental field theories.”

Keppel’s work straddles classical and modern science, prac-tical and theoretical applications, and nuclear and particlephysics. “Nuclear physics is like classical mechanics—it works.We can make MRI machines, smoke detectors, nuclear powerand bombs. On the other hand, we know from a couple decadesof experiment now that quarks and gluons are the fundamentalthings that everything should be made of.”

But there’s no bridge between nuclear and particle physics.“That’s my little niche,” Keppel says, “trying to find thatbridge.”

Physicists at the JLAB probe these questions about subatomicmatter by running experiments in the Continuous ElectronBeam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). The accelerator allowsKeppel and her colleagues to propel electrons at a nucleus andthen study the output: data such as energy, wavelength, andgeometric patterns. Getting time on the particle beam acceler-ator at this national laboratory is extremely competitive, saysKeppel, and takes much more time than the actual experiment:“You describe what the experiment is, who your 50 to 100collaborators are, and you write this whole thing up and presentit to a Program Advisory Committee composed of internation-ally distinguished scientists. The committee approves only afraction of the proposals submitted and invites researchers topresent their experiment.” Her St. John’s education is helpful inthat Keppel knows how to state her case succinctly and effec-tively, as well as stand up to prolonged questioning.

In one way, her analytical skills were sharpened at St. John’s,but Keppel notes “there’s no sugarcoating” the disadvantageJohnnies may encounter in graduate school in the sciences.“Most people who find out they want to do math, science, and

engineering [at other colleges and universities] have beenworking so many problems, not in a global sense, but sittingthere with paper and a computer, and doing lots of appliedmath. That is a skill on its own and thinking on its own, and it’ssomething we don’t do at St. John’s,” she says. “Nevertheless,we make it.”

In her sophomore year—when she first settled on a career inscience—Keppel seriously considered transferring to anotherinstitution; instead she listened to a “strong feeling” that shehad a lot more yet to learn at St. John’s. Getting comfortablewith difficult questions in the liberal arts—posed by Hegel andAristotle as well as Einstein and Bohr—prepared her to be a tena-cious and creative researcher, still filled with wonder at themysteries of the universe.

“In my research, we’re working on questions we may not knowthe answers to for 20 years,” she says. “One of the most valuablethings I learned at St. John’s was to keep at it—to keep ques-tioning.” x

Why do people get infections? Steven Holland, M.D.: Physician and Researcher

After a morning of hospital rounds at the National Institutes ofHealth, Dr. Steven Holland (A79) was up to speed on the cases ofa young boy whose lungs were under attack by a mysteriousfungus, a young woman with an unidentified infection causingpainful skin rashes, and a woman in her 30s with a rare geneticdisease that has killed four members of her family.

As Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases atNIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,Holland devotes much of his time to research. But periodically hetakes his turn as the consulting physician at the Institute’shospital in Bethesda, Md. For a month, he works in close contactwith the medical staff who treat the sometimes stubborn, bafflingand debilitating infections that have brought patients here.

The team began with an update on the condition of the 12-year-old boy. “He has fungi in his lungs, and we’re working very hard tofigure out what his problem is,” Holland explained later. “It mustbe genetic and it must be profound, and we’re desperate to figureit out because he’s got a fatal problem.”

Getting to help patients while researching the causes of theirdisease combines the best of two worlds for Holland. “What I getto do as a physician is to identify the problem, meet the patient,

“In my research, we’re working on questions wemay not know the answers to for 20 years.”

Cynthia Keppel (A84)

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try to understand her illness at a molecular and genetic level, andtry to treat it with specific, directed therapies,” he explains,adding with a grin: “That’s pretty fun.”

The NIH is like a small city, and Holland’s laboratory has abroad charge, studying everything from frightening staph infec-tions and drug-resistant tuberculosis to preparing a defense forpotential bioterrorist attacks. The welfare of each individualpatient is at the heart of their work. “It’s a wonderful thing to behere because patients come who have rare or undiagnosed prob-lems, and we get to take a holistic approach that nobody else canafford to take anymore.”

After graduating from St. John’s, Holland earned a medicaldegree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in1983. He stayed at Hopkins as an intern, resident, and chief resident in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in infec-tious diseases. He joined NIAID in 1989 to study the molecularbiology of HIV, and in 1991 moved to the Laboratory of HostDefenses to study phagocytes and phagocyte immunodeficiencies.He’s been Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseasessince 2004.

In medical school Holland developed an interest in working inthe developing world, perhaps specializing in tropical diseases ornutrition. He eventually focused his interest on infectiousdiseases such as tuberculosis, largely eradicated in the U.S. butstill a major killer in the developing world. “With the advent ofHIV, which came up just as I was starting medical school and resi-dency, the importance of infectious diseases to global healthreally became obvious,” he says.

The research side of Holland’s work is driven by a desire tounderstand why human beings are susceptible to diseases. Themore interesting question to think about, Holland suggests, is:why don’t more of us get sick more often? “It’s been manymillions of years since [humankind] began, and we’ve become thedominant species,” he says. “It isn’t because of antibiotics, it’sbecause we’ve really become damn good at fighting off infections.We have found an accommodation with all the biome in the worldthat has, most of the time, for most of us, kept us pretty happy.”

Holland examines immunodeficiency at the molecular level andat a functional level, seeking to pinpoint the reasons individualsdevelop rare diseases. He has a driving interest in genetic causesof disease because “so much of immunity is genetic.”

At any one time, his laboratory runs dozens of clinical protocolsdealing with infectious disease. One seeks to find the geneticcause of mycobacterial infections, which are similar to TB.

Everyone is exposed to mycobacteria in air, water and dirt. Infec-tion is extremely rare except in severe cases of HIV, in patientswith profound immune defects, and a third group that Holland isinvestigating: North American and Western European womenwho are post-menopausal, Caucasian, and thinner and taller thantheir peers. “This is a new disease we’re studying, and it musthave some genetic basis,” Holland says. “It’s got ethnicity andmorphological restriction, and we’re very interested in trying todefinitively characterize it and identify the genes responsible.”

When he first began studying these patients, Holland wasconvinced he would find a genetic defect in their immune systemthat was responsible for their lung disease. Holland’s new workingthesis is that these patients have normal immune systems, butshare some genetic flaw in the lung surface itself. His researchteam now includes a lung specialist as well as infectious diseaseand immunology specialists. “Part of the fun in doing science isevery now and then being able to say how wrong you were,”Holland says. That’s why studying science the St. John’s way wasvaluable, he adds: following the thinking of scientists throughoutthe ages—even when they were wrong—fosters resilience andcreativity in problem solving.

“Ptolemy is wrong—elegantly, definitively, comprehensivelywrong,” says Holland. “I was like Ptolemy, but not as smart. Thebeauty is once you get to realize that you’re wrong, then you stillhave space to go to find out what’s right.”

Holland and other researchers were successful in makingimportant discoveries about the genetic cause of a devastatingdisease called Job’s Syndrome—so named because the diseaseoften causes painful boils, one of the many trials God inflicted onJob. “It’s a fascinating disorder in which one gene is mutated, butit affects the function of everything, from brain to bone, toimmune system to lung, to heart,” says Holland. He led an NIHresearch team that discovered that Job’s patients had an immunesystem that was doing part of its work too well, with white bloodcells in overdrive, attacking systems of the body, but other partsincompetently.

A decade ago, Holland and his collaborators published the firstcomprehensive paper on Job’s. For the past decade, he and otherresearchers hunted the gene that caused the disease, and just lastyear, they determined that mutations in the STAT3 gene wereresponsible. “We’re still working on how to use those geneticobservations to guide us to therapy,” Holland explains. “Findinga mutation is exciting; understanding exactly what that mutationdoes is more complicated.”

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Not unlike the St. John’s Program, research science calls forasking questions and making connections in unfamiliar territory.For the last four years, Holland has been working with a patient inher 30s, who first sought medical attention for a movementdisorder, but was referred to him because of the infections shealso suffered. Her family history was intriguing: her grandfather,father, sister, and brother all died young of the disease, which alsocaused infections.

Holland had no answers until he delivered a paper at a confer-ence and providentially decided to stay through the meeting,most of which was outside his research area. “Somebodypresented a case that was exactly this woman,” he says. Back inhis laboratory, Holland looked up the gene responsible in thatcase and arranged to have his patient’s DNA sequenced. Hediscovered a deficiency in the Thyroid Transcription Factor-1(TTF-1) gene. “It controls the function of some of the cells in thebrain that control movement, the formation of thyroid factors,some of the lining of the lungs, as well as some of the neurologicalfunction of the intestines. It also controls the production of someof the immunoglobulins, also called antibodies, which fight offinfections in the body.”

This woman’s case allows Holland to explore compelling ques-tions about genetics and infectious diseases. TTF-1 requires twocopies, one each from the mother and the father; only one waspassed along to his patient, and thishaploinsufficiency is what has madeher so ill. What turns this gene on?How could it be stimulated to do itswork?

In early spring, the woman hadalready spent three months at thehospital, undergoing experimentaltreatments to boost proteins in theTTF-1 gene to stimulate it to func-tion better. It’s the first time anyonehas tried any therapy for patients ofthis disease, Holland notes. “Nowwe’re going in to give her a secondset and see if we can’t push her cellsto finally make enough of thisprotein that she has not had all theyears of her life,” he says.

Perhaps he can make significantimprovements in this patient’s

quality of life, and perhaps he can gain knowledge that can helpher relatives. He admires her courage, and he’s grateful for all histeam has learned from her. “I’m a pretty hopeful guy,” he says,“but I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think there’s a chance we canhelp her.”

The day that started at 8 a.m. will extend to well after 6 p.m.,when Holland will conclude an interview with a fellowship candi-date. His wife, Dr. Maryland Pao, is a child psychiatrist who alsohas a demanding job as deputy clinical director for the NationalInstitute of Mental Health. The couple have three daughtersranging from 19 to 9 years old. For fun, “we stay home,” he says,although once a week he makes time to play ice hockey.

Holland draws interesting parallels between the college and hiswork at NIH. “St. John’s is about trying to come up with newinsights about the past in general. It’s wonderful and I loved it. I wouldn’t have gone any place else.”

At NIH his work is about “trying to come up with new insightsabout the future.” “There’s a greater opportunity for failure, butthere are real opportunities for tangible success. When some-body gets better, that’s fun. They get up and they do what they’resupposed to do.”

As for the answers he doesn’t have yet, “I don’t mind notknowing,” says Holland. “I would mind if someone said you don’tknow and you can’t know. That would be irritating. That’s why I

have a laboratory. The beauty ofscience is that there’s a reward forboth saying, I don’t get it, and thensaying, I want to figure it out. Youdon’t get penalized for being igno-rant—you get penalized for stayingignorant.” x

—Rosemary Harty



“Part of the fun in doing science is every now andthen being able to say how wrong you were.”

Steven Holland (A79)

Even modern scientists hit road-blocks and dead-ends, says Dr. Steven Holland, who hopes tofind cures for baffling diseasessuch as Job’s Syndrome.



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What regulatesthe body’s internalclock?Patricia Sollars: Neuroscientist

Located in the hypothalamus, the super-chiasmatic nucleus is the primary regulator of circadian rhythms inmammals. It cues human beings to thesleep-wake cycle, and it tells creatureswith seasonal breeding cycles that it’stime to get going.

As a graduate student in neuroscience,Patricia Sollars (A80) first thought aboutthe concept of an internal clock in a purelyabstract, St. John’s way: “I thought, ah,temporality—what is time?” she says,laughing at the memory. “Of course that’snot even in the same ballpark.”

Sollars was studying at ColumbiaUniversity, rotating through laboratoriesthat were studying various questions inneuroscience, when she first learned about the superchiasmaticnucleus (SCN). Although her initial concepts of the internalclock were “naïve,” she says, the SCN captured her imaginationin the same way in which she once pondered the nature of timealong with Augustine. In one tiny area of the brain, she discov-ered a rich source of inquiry: Does the SCN alone regulate theinternal clock? Is it part of a distributed network in the brain?When sight is taken away, how does the SCN continue to regulatecircadian rhythms?

“Here was this one little nucleus that sits just on top of theoptic chiasm in the brain,” she says. “It was always there, butpeople knew so little about what it was doing. There were somany questions to ask, so many experiments to develop, on amolecular and a behavioral level. All biological creatures havethe ability to regulate their activity to day/night cycles, and inmammals that is thanks to the SCN.”

Sollars met her husband, Gary Pickard, then finishing up apost-doctorate fellowship in neuroanatomy, in the laboratory atColumbia. They have collaborated on research for most of thepast 25 years, though Sollars is more interested in pursuing

questions related to the brain function,and Pickard focuses more on anatomicalresearch.

Sollars eventually completed herdoctorate at the University of Oregon.She completed a fellowship at the Univer-sity of Pennsylvania, where she served onthe faculty, then joined her husband atColorado State University. Until thisyear, she was a research scientist at theDepartment of Biomedical Sciences atColorado State University; this fall sheand her husband will move to the Univer-sity of Nebraska, where they will teachand conduct research as part of theuniversity’s new veterinary program.

In Nebraska, Sollars will continue toresearch the SCN and its role in the circa-dian system. The term “circadian” comes

from the Latin, Sollars notes, for “about a day.” Most humanbeings have a circadian rhythm of about 24 hours—unless some-thing knocks it out of balance, for example, shift work or flyingacross time zones. In her research, Sollars has deliberatelyaltered the circadian rhythm of mice, hamsters, and rats to try todemonstrate that the SCN—relying on cues relayed through theoptic nerves—autonomously regulates an important character-istic of circadian rhythms.

Sollars devised and carried out an experiment she believedwould show definitively if the SCN was the master circadianoscillator. She based her experiment on the knowledge that eachspecies, and even strains within species, have different endoge-nous circadian rhythms. “If you keep a mouse in constant dark-ness with no temporal cues, it will run [on an exercise wheel]with a period of 23.5 hours, and every day it gets up a half an hourearlier,” she says. A golden hamster has an endogenous “free-running” rhythm of 24.06 hours, and a rat, 24.3 hours. Sollars’experiment involved a little Frankenstein-like meddling: whatwould a hamster do with the SCN from a mouse brain? If the

Patricia Sollars (A80) studies thebiological clock that governs circadianrhythms in mammals; her research maybe helpful in remedies for jet lag andSeasonal Affective Disorder.

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clock was in the SCN, Sollars theorized, the hamster shouldhave the mouse’s circadian rhythm.

The first step was for her to test her transplant theory fromhamster to hamster. “That worked like charm,” she said.“When you lesion out a hamster’s SCN and transplant one fromanother hamster, it restores rhythmicity at 24.06 hours.”

Next, she knocked out a hamster SCN and implanted one froma mouse. When the hamster started running in his exercisewheel, Sollars didn’t know what to expect. Amazingly, thehamster established a reliable rhythm of 23.5 hours—exactly thatof a mouse.

“Then,” she says with a sigh, “I made the mistake of taking itone step further.” She implanted the SCN of a rat into thehamster, expecting a 24.3-hour cycle to emerge. “When therhythm was restored, it was 23.5—the mouse again,” she says. “Itransplanted a rat SCN into a hamster, and the rhythm thatcomes back out is that of a mouse.”

Far from being discouraged, Sollars has an entirely new line ofinquiry: “One possibility is that this is species-specific. Perhapsthe mouse and the hamster have autonomous clocks in the SCNand the rat could have a distributed clock network. Perhaps whenyou transplant the SCN from the rat into the hamster, you’releaving part of the clock behind.” She published the findings ofher experiment in the Journal of Neuroscience (March 1995).

Sollars had to put this question aside while she devoted more ofher time to raising her children: Galen, 23, and Emilia, 17. Shehas continued to work with her husband on laboratory experi-ments at Colorado State that are more concerned with theanatomical underpinnings of the SCN, several of which may havebeneficial medical applications.

Among their current projects is an investigation into theSCN’s role in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a debilitatingcondition linked to the shorter days of winter. Evidence suggeststhat a serotonin deficit makes some people more vulnerable to the disorder. “With this particular deficit, you’re not asresponsive to the light input from the outside,” she explains.“You end up having an altered phase relationship, then thataffects hormones, affects mood, and a lot of other secondarycomponents.”

Another clinical application of her work is the link betweencircadian rhythms and jet lag. Is there a way to enhance the waythe internal clock works with other systems in the body to helpindividuals adapt to major shifts in time zones? “Your internalclock, it turns out, will rapidly shift to a new time—but all the

other physiological phenomena in your body are out of phase,”she says. Knowing more about the SCN’s regulatory role maylead to the development of better remedies for jet lag.

It’s in her nature, Sollars says, to demand to be intrigued,invigorated—even entertained—by her work. After two years ofstudying biology and chemistry at the University of Michigan,she started over again at St. John’s. Here she discovered how agood question, paired with a sound method of inquiry, could leadto discoveries—or at least, new and more interesting questions.

“The best thing about St. John’s was the chance to get to playwith ideas,” she says. “We’d have these long discussions, andyou’d never know where they were leading because the processwas most important.”

“That’s what I loved most about the Program and that’s what Icarried into the study of neuroscience. When you take on some-thing as vast as the human brain, one of the most importantthings is the ability to ask questions from a variety of perspec-tives, to be open to all sorts of possibilities—to look for what youdon’t expect.” x

—Rosemary Harty

How do we create our internalcognitive world?Leslie Kay: Neuroscientist

Why do people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease lose theirsense of smell as the disease progresses? How does a whiff ofCoppertone trigger memories of family beach vacations? Andwhat exactly is happening in the network of our brains when westop to smell the roses?

Leslie Kay (SF83) can’t answer these questions yet, but sheknows a lot more about how our olfactory system interacts withother circuits in the brain than when she began conductingresearch 17 years ago at the University of California at Berkeley.

As an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of theInstitute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago, Kayspends her time studying what happens in the brains of ratswhen they are faced with the task of distinguishing between twosimilar but distinct smells. Her research may somedaycontribute to a better understanding of devastating diseasessuch as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Kay came to St. John’s after dropping out of Stanford to takesome time off. She went to Santa Fe with her then-husband, a

“The best thing about St. John’s was thechance to get to play with ideas.”

Patricia Sollars (A80)

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Johnnie, sat in on some classes, and soon enrolledas a January Freshman. The Program, she says,was a good choice for someone interested in toomany disciplines to choose just one to study. “Iwas flipping back and forth between being awriter, a scientist or a mathematician. At Stan-ford, I switched my major four times,” sheexplains. “The freshman year at St. John’s hookedme. I love geometry, and studying Euclid, I was inheaven.”

Between Kay’s junior and senior years, St. John’stutor Gerald Meyers helped her secure an intern-ship at Los Alamos National Laboratories withGenBank, an international repository of knowngenetic sequences from a variety of organisms. At that time, a clerked typed in the sequences, andKay and the other students annotated codingregions and proteins. Still unsettled on her careerpath, she ended up working there for two and a halfyears after graduating from St. John’s.

Kay went to grad school at UC Berkeley,dropped out, and worked as a programmer forseveral years before returning to the GenBank project, whereshe was a scientific reviewer and software designer. Withprogrammers in great demand, Kay worked in the insuranceindustry for a brief time, but the attractive pay wasn’t enoughfor her. In search of something fascinating, she returned toBerkeley, where she studied math, physics, and biology.Convinced that she had found her niche, she walked intoresearcher Walter Freeman’s neuroscience laboratory and askedto do computational modeling of the brain. “He was a gruff guy,and said, ‘we’ll see.’ He gave me data to analyze. I came up withan effect in the data, but not enough to prove it. I had to doexperiments, and the experiments got me excited.” Her “secretlove” of statistics, combined with a desire to test theories forherself, propelled Kay into serious laboratory research.

For her doctoral thesis, Kay studied how different regions in therat’s brain talk to each other when the rats perform an olfactorytask. At CalTech, where she did post-graduate research, shenarrowed her focus to the activity found in single neurons. Shetried to draw conclusions about objective odor responses from herresearch, “but it didn’t work.” She did discover, however, that evenat the level of a single neuron, the activity of the first cells in thecentral olfactory pathway are strongly modulated both by the

meaning of the odor (whether it suggests a sweet or bitter taste tothe rat) and the behavior the rat is trained to carry out in response.

After her post-doc, Kay had her choice between two positions:one in New York at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and one in Chicago. “The University of Chicago was the only place Iinterviewed where they were excited by the fact that I went to St. John’s,” she notes.

While her laboratory focuses on the olfactory system andbrains of rats, her findings may some day help scientists learnmore about neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s andHuntington’s, because the sense of smell is affected early in theprogression of these devastating diseases—sometimes manyyears before other symptoms appear.

“The interesting thing in the olfactory system is that you go directly from the nose to the olfactory bulb in the cortex,”she explains. Then information is transmitted to the limbicsystem, including the hippocampus, amygdala and hypothal-amus, which is important in emotional states and in memory

Rats can tell scientists a great deal about circuits in the braininvolved in the sense of smell. Shown are (l. to r.): DonaldFrederick; Leslie Kay (SF83), with RG07 perched on hershoulder; Cora Ames; and Daniel Rojas-Líbano.

25



formation. The signals are also carried to the basal ganglia,which is involved in disorders such as Parkinson’s.

Kay and her students implant electrodes inside the brains ofrats to record brain waves while they perform various odordiscrimination tasks. When animals inhale, the olfactory bulb isstimulated, and theta waves—slow electrical pulses ranging fromtwo to ten cycles per second—are observed. But when a mammalmust distinguish between one smell and another, faster gammawaves of 40 to 100 cycles are observed in the olfactory bulb.However, in some circumstances when a rat has learned theassociation for a smell, a different pattern of 15- to 30-cycle betawaves emerges.

Gamma and beta waves are both evoked when rats smell theodors—but the results change dependent on the behaviorinvolved in the experiment. This breakthrough came when Kayand her students observed differences in two experiments theywere conducting. One researcher directed her rats to press theleft lever for one odor, the right for another (a two-alternativechoice task). The other student conducted a “go/no go” task, inwhich the rat would press a lever for one odor, and not press thelever for the other. In the latter experiment, the rats learned thetask faster and displayed enhanced beta oscillations. In theformer, they learned slowly and showed large gamma oscilla-tions when the odors were difficult to discriminate.

It appears the go/no go task was much closer to what ananimal does in its natural environment,she explains. “When an animal isforaging around and smells something,it’s either something it eats, runs awayfrom, or approaches,” says Kay.

Disconnect the link from olfactorybulb to the higher brain—for example, byinjecting lidocaine into the pathways—and the system only makes gamma oscil-lations, not beta. “Through manydifferent studies, what we’ve seen is thatbeta waves are not isolated; they involvethe entire olfactory system all the wayinto the hippocampus,” she says. In thistask the brain wave activity in the olfac-tory bulb correlates with what’shappening in the higher brain, indi-cating that “the whole system is workingtogether,” says Kay.

It has been shown that part of the olfactory deficit inParkinson’s disease is due to difficulty in sniffing, and Kayshowed in a paper in 2005 that sniffing behavior couples theolfactory bulb with the hippocampus when rats learn odor asso-ciations. “We lose some of our olfactory sense as we age, butchanges seen in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are morepronounced, and the reason is unclear. We also know that if the olfactory bulb is taken out of rodents, they act depressed,their eating patterns change, they become more afraid of open spaces, and they give up more easily in tasks that are frustrating, and not because they can’t smell, but because theolfactory bulb is missing,” she says. “If they are treated fordepression, they improve.”

“The question I got started on, and the one thing that’s heldmy attention all these years is: how do we create our internalcognitive world? The olfactory system offers a nice way to studythat question because it is connected with all these othersystems. And the circuitry is relatively simple—or it was. It’sturned out we just didn’t know as much as we thought we did.”

A satisfying part of Kay’s work is training graduate studentsto interpret data, to look for effects “that aren’t visible to thenaked eye.” This analysis demands patience and skepticism—something philosophy teaches, too. Kay has never been willingto take anything for granted. “You think you know somethingand you go looking for the thing you know. It’s like the hubris of

the Sophists. We have a lot of prejudiceabout what the sensory systems might betelling the brain. I always go back toHume and Descartes, and those guys—it’s really about constructing ourinternal representation of the world.”

“The thing about biology “ Kay adds,“is that we can make hypotheses, andalmost invariably [the answer] comes outsomewhere in the middle. Then you haveto do 10 more experiments to understandthat result. We never quite proveanything. And I find that fascinating.” x

—Rosemary Harty

Reading List:

Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduc-tion, by Frank Close

The New Cosmic Onion: Quarks and theNature of the Universe, by Frank Close

The Ideas of Particle Physics: An Intro-duction for Scientists, by G. D. Coughlan,J. E. Dodd, and B. M. Gripaios

Don’t Fear the Big Dogs, by Bill Vancil

Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging inthe Twentieth Century, by BettyannKevles


{ S t u d e n t V o i c e s }26

Most St. John’s studentsspend their last nightbefore freshman yeartrying to cram that lastsweater into an over-stuffed suitcase and get

those last 20 pages of the Iliad read. Ispent mine at a $2 million benefit gala inMiami, where Placido Domingo shook myhand and Vanessa Williams gave me a kisson the cheek. A week earlier, I had flown to Florida as a finalist in a youth arts

competition to which I had submitted ashort story on a whim. Twelve masterclasses, eighteen hotel lunches and oneridiculous photo-op in a botanical gardenlater, I found myself at this surreal partywith a medal hung around my neck, star-struck and eating hors d’oeuvres with theplaywright Sam Shepard. Three hours afterthat, I boarded my plane to Albuquerque,still unsure of what had happened to me.

From the moment when I landed to themoment I write this now, I’ve been a little

embarrassed about tellingthis story. But I’ve beenembarrassed, too, ofcalling myself a writer atall, and especially so sinceI first dragged my trunkonto the Santa Fe campusand began to call myself aJohnnie. No 18-year-oldwith an ounce of perspec-tive would ever presume tosay she had gained theexperience, insight, ororiginality necessary tocall herself an artist by thetime she had finished highschool, no matter howmany awards she had won,or how much encourage-ment she had received.

No 18-year-old who’s justfinished reading about theburial of Hector in thelobby of the Sunport wouldeven dare to think that shewas an artist, regardless ofwhere her plane had justarrived from.

After three years at St. John’s, I’ve oftenwondered just how manystudents have had

moments like these. While I’ve managed towrite almost every day since coming to St.John’s—despite my embarrassment andoften my own best efforts to quit—many ofmy friends have either banished theirguitars to the dark recesses of their dormroom closet, or else been too caught upwith Newton to ever take it up in the firstplace. From my original 28-studentJanuary freshman class in Santa Fe, at leastsix left to pursue some form of a career inthe arts. I’ve been the editor of a literarymagazine, a member of a filmmaker’s club,and devotee of a dance class that have alllapsed due to a lack of student interest orenergy. When I first decided to apply to St.John’s, I was especially swayed by a video ofthen-Santa Fe Dean David Levine (class of1967), posed in front of the Meem Library:he said that “there should be no realm ofhuman endeavor that we should feelourselves excluded from” once we havecompleted the St. John’s education. Why,then, is the artistic realm of humanendeavor so cut off from many Johnnies—and could we make art, even if we wanted to?

Making Time for ArtNeedless to say, I didn’t come to St. John’sto be a writer—and I’d venture to say thateven fewer students come to the college toplay the clarinet, or act, or more generally,for any reason other than to read greatbooks and attempt to understand them in acommunity of intelligent people. After all,I had spent the past four years of my lifelearning to be a writer at a fine arts highschool, where I had saddled myself with acreative writing major at age 14. By thetime I graduated, I had taken enoughEnglish and creative writing credits tofulfill St. John’s entrance requirements sixtimes over, not to mention written a port-folio of my own terrible amateur writingthat had a page count roughly equal to thatof War and Peace.

When I applied to college, there was nodoubt in my mind that I knew how to write,

A Work in Progress

by Kea Wilson (A09)

Laurel Price (A09) makestimes for music and dramaalong with her studies atSt. John’s. cl

ark

sayl

or

{ T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Summer 2008 }

{ S t u d e n t V o i c e s } 27

at least insofar as I’d done it, consistentlyand with varying degrees of success, everyday for years. When I walked into my firstseminar, I still hoped to pursue my writingprofessionally—but like most young artists,I’d listened to the advice of my parents, myguidance counselors, and every successfulwriter I’d been lucky to meet while at artsschool: “Have a back-up plan.” “Studysomething you enjoy.” “Don’t put all youreggs in one basket.” I ran across St. John’sand marveled at the Web site, which adver-tised itself boldly and with QuickTimevideo testimonials, as a strong foundationfor any endeavor I might undertake. Ithought I’d found the answer.

I figured out pretty quickly that many ofmy friends had the same idea when comingto the college. After years of classical pianotraining, Sam Richards (SF09) had notonly learned the nuances of his sonatarepertoire, but also the slim odds ofsuccess in the music world. “I actuallychose St. John’s partly because I was sointerested in playing music,” he says.“Knowing that it would be hard to actuallyhave a career as a professional musician, I figured that it might help me to have a‘strong liberal arts education’ as a back-up.” Once immersed in the difficult workof the tutorials, however, Richards foundthat there were simply too many “lab read-ings, Newton to figure out, Racine to trans-late, Nietzsche to read. . . .Part of me feelsreally bad because just about everyone Iknow ends up telling me that I’m a talentedmusician, I should keep playing the piano,I’m good enough to be professional, and soon. . . but I just don’t feel it anymore.”

It’s no secret that all too often, therigorous work of the Program eclipses theoften extraordinary time and energy ittakes to practice and perfect an art form—or, God forbid, produce any new materialyourself. But this argument isn’t enough toexplain why so many Johnnies manage tofind time for week-long rock climbing tripsin Arizona and so few manage to find timeto write a novel. While Eron Wiles (SF10)doesn’t “find St. John’s to be discouragingto art in particular” and has even managedto sustain her own interest in the artsthrough a craft club, time in the potterystudio and small sewing projects, shemisses the sustained community sheenjoyed as an art major at a previouscollege. “A big part of going to art school isa class critique of each other’s work. I

know I was constantly comparing my workwith others.” At St. John’s, students notonly lack the time, but simply the commonvocabulary necessary to critique oneanother’s composition or use of a certainrhyme scheme.

For some, however, St. John’s doesn’tonly lack a common artistic dialect, butactually demands that we speak aboutbooks, the arts, and everything elsethrough the rigidly defined analyticallanguage that we’re taught in seminar—andin the process, neglect our artisticimpulses entirely. Caitlin Cass (SF09), arising senior and prodigious visual artist,says that she is “constantly blown away byhow apathetic our student body is when itcomes to anything that does not involvecritiquing [or] discussing the work ofothers.” While many students are discour-aged by the lack of artistic community atthe college, however, Cass has taken it as aform of encouragement: she says that her“frustration with this is probably the only

reason I’m even considering a career in thearts. The one truly useful thing I’velearned at St. John’s is that I could neverspend my entire life discussing what otherpeople have created. I need to create thingsmyself.”

Like Cass, Simon Tajiri (SF09) came tothe college with a passion for art, butquickly found himself saddened by “howmuch talent people have shelved in orderto do the Program.” A talented poet, bluesguitarist, songwriter, soundtrack composerand general Renaissance man himself,Tajiri quickly found himself feeling stifledby the St. John’s “culture which says thatthere’s a certain way of writing, a certainway of speaking, a certain way of reading,thinking. If you want to be part of theconversation, heard by your tutors and your

Fine arts classes—offered free tostudents—offer an opportunity forstudents including Sara Fry to exploretheir creative sides.

gary

pie

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int


{ S t u d e n t V o i c e s }28

classmates, it’s got to go a certain way. Andthere’s room for individuality in that. Butnot rebellion.”

Finding a Voice Like many of the subjects I interviewed,I’ve neglected my art form for months at atime while I’ve become embroiled in life atthe college. During my sophomore year inSanta Fe, I logged countless hours on thelayout computers in the basement ofPeterson Sudent Center, painstakinglyadjusting page margins on the schoolliterary magazine rather than writinganything new of my own to submit. I’vespent more than a few excruciating semi-nars biting my tongue rather thancommenting on Shakespeare’s use of word-play, if only because I knew that mycomment would be met by a round ofsilence if I spoke. And while I am,absolutely, still dying to understand justhow Shakespeare, as a writer, frames asentence or captures Iago’s specific brandof ego in words, I’ve come to be just ashungry to understand what Shakespeare,as a thinker, has to tell me not just aboutwriting, but about human life.

My freshman language tutor, CaryStickney (A75) has always stood out in mymind as the first person who showed mewhat it truly meant to study at St. John’s.He was the first tutor to tell me, point-blank, in my don rag, that it was notenough for me to simply love books theway I had loved books in high school—assomething I wanted to write and the way Iwanted to spend my time—but that I mustlove books as a testament to the infinity ofhuman perspectives they represent, andthe invaluable mirror they provide formyself and the species I’m a part of. Healso stands out in my mind as the tutor whocould always be seen on the lower Placitaon Wednesday afternoon, mandolin inhand, surrounded by students and othertutors making music.

When I asked him whether or not a St. John’s student could pursue a career inthe arts, Stickney responded that “insofaras the chief thing is to love the beauty anddepth of the work that is possible in anygiven art so as to be inspired to producethat kind of work oneself, I do indeed.Insofar as really getting anywhere withKant or Newton requires that same appli-

cation of the seat of the pants to the seat ofthe chair, that same eager, stubbornpersistence that a career in the artsrequires, yes, there again I think so.”

But he was also careful to questionwhether or not there had “ever been aschool that knew how to turn out greatartists. It is hard enough to get students tospeak their minds and ask their own ques-tions and listen to one another and to thetexts. If the creative arts are about findingone’s own voice, then I think St. John’smay be one of the best places to prepare topractice such arts.”

And Stickney’s question is, after all, nota purely rhetorical one. While it remains tobe seen whether or not any school canguarantee their alumni that specific breedof creativity, inspiration, sensitivity tobeauty, personal richness and yes, successthat any artist craves and requires, itcannot be ignored that St. John’s doesproduce alumni who go on to successfulcareers in all manner of art forms. Onealumnus that I spoke with, David Kidd(A85), came to St. John’s after abandoninghis dream of becoming an architect, andended many years later restoring classicalhomes as part of his larger practice aspainter, muralist and restoration artistwith Kidd Studios.

While the road was not a direct one forKidd (he also spent several years in theNavy and had a successful career as thesenior clinical trial researcher for theneurosurgery department at JohnsHopkins University), he says that it was hisbroad-based education at St. John’s thattaught him the adaptability not only todraw on the skills he learned from everyfork in his career path, but to eventuallygather the courage to apply those lessonsto his new career as an artist. “I can’t tellyou how many times I’ll be painting amural and need to use perspective and I’vefallen back on what Winfree Smith taughtme [in freshman math],” says Kidd. “And

Magdalen Wolfe (A07) portrays Desdemona in the King William Player’sOTHELLO production. Tutor WillWilliamson played the title role.


{ S t u d e n t V o i c e s } 29

doing clinical trials and helping peoplewith chronic pain symptoms, it doesn’t feellike that was a waste of time at all either,not in any way . . . I learned all this stuffabout grant writing and business andmanaging people, and there were all theselife skills that came with it that even if Ididn’t stay in that career—I took to the next thing.”

While Kidd makes no pretensions that itwas this adaptability alone that led to hissuccess as an artist, he cannot help butcredit his education here for providing himwith the foundation not only to pursue anyfield he chose, but also to address thoseessential human questions that artists, inparticular, explore when they assert theirperspective on the world through paint,

stone, or pencil. “[Program authors] wereable to look at the same thing, the samegroup of data and come at it from differentdirections and give it a whole newmeaning,” he says. “I swear that’s what artis. There are artistic scientists, and thereare pedantic artists on both sides of thedivide. I think real art and real creativitycrosses all the disciplines like anythingelse. . . .[The things that Johnnies aretaught] are broadly applicable to every-thing from writing a computer program tosaying ‘I’ll put this element on thispainting here because that’s where it willlook good in the composition. . .’ Every-thing that goes on around us, as we are ableto understand it, is logical. It may bechaotic, and maybe we don’t know what the

process is, but there’s always a process. Ifyou can bring that to your art, I think itonly improves it. That ability to synthesize,to take a bunch of disparate things and pullthem together into a composition, that’swhat an artist does, and the training herejust gives you practice.”

As I stumble through Newton, Kant,Maxwell, and the other challenges of junioryear—and inevitably, editing whatever stub-born metaphor in whatever short story I’mwriting at the moment—I often find itdifficult to follow Kidd’s advice. It’s hardsometimes, as I’m trudging through theelectro-magnetic equations, to understandhow my fiction can even fall under thesame umbrella as the vast and brilliantworks of the minds we encounter here, andhow I’ll ever be able to say something asnew, as daring, or as genius as they havealready said. I’m only comforted to knowthat generations of St. John’s studentsbefore me have struggled with these ideasand emerged in awe, with an expandedfaculty to enjoy and marvel at the worldaround them, and more courage to expresstheir reverence and perplexity and excite-ment for those ideas than when theyentered. I’m comforted when I hear thewords of a current St. John’s student,Simon Tajiri, and to know that they echomy thoughts exactly:

“I’m pretty sure that I’ll spend my lifecreating, whether it be writing, music,whatever. I don’t know if it’ll be any goodat all, or if people will want to hear what Ihave to say. But I want to be responsibleabout it. I want to make sure I’m listeningto the conversation before I jump in. I wantto be honest about what I’m thinking and Iwant to be disciplined enough to be loyal tomy beliefs. . . I don’t want to create moredogma. I just want to be honest and I wantto be able to tell when what I’m saying isreal. Maybe St. John’s can help me do that.Here’s hoping, anyway.” x

St. John’s may provide an ideal educationfor an aspiring writer, says Kea Wilson(A09), but even the most dedicated artistsfind difficulty balancing creativity withthe Program.am

y r

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


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The End Salvatore Scibona (SF97)Graywolf Press, 2008 by Rosemary Harty

Salvatore Scibona’s first novel begins on theFeast of the Assumption, in the fictionalItalian enclave of Elephant Park in Cleveland, with Rocco, the baker:

He was five feet one inch tall in streetshoes, bearlike in his round and jowly face,hulking in his chest and shoulders, nearlyjust as stout around the middle, but hollowin the hips, and lacking a proper can to sit on(though he was hardly ever known to sit),and wee at the ankles, and girlish at his tinyfeet, a man in the shape of a lightbulb.

Having devoted himself to work, Roccocan’t grasp the latest piece of bad news inhis sad life. Confused and heartbroken, hefinds himself at Niagara Falls, confronting adeceiver in the guise of an ice cream manand learning the ultimate truth about his life.

The novel ends with the memories ofCostanza Marini, a widow who runs anillicit, but profitable business in herElephant Park home. Mrs. Marini harbors afierce but oppressive love for those she caresabout, rich memories from her youth andmarriage, and persistent demons.

Four years into her widowhood, Satanvisited her in her garden. She was on herknees, yanking the quack grass out of thespinach. Iridescent flies dappled the carcassof a bass in the furrow. “Egoist,” said thetempter. “Despair!” To despair is a sin. But, true enough, she had no hope. She couldnot remember having hoped. “Die!” said the Devil.

Rocco, Mrs. Marini, and many other char-acters, from a menacing jeweler to a restlessand intelligent young man named Ciccio,had been living with Scibona for a third ofhis life as he worked on his novel, The End.The characters and the world he created forthem became so real that he was bereft atleaving them behind when he completed thenovel, published in May. He came to thinkof them as individuals with their own will,an understanding that ultimately made iteasier for him to write. “In the last fewyears, I went from thinking of myself asbeing the characters’ parent, to being theirpeer, to finally being their child,” Scibonasays. “I respected them as elders.”

Throughout the novel, Scibona changesthe point-of-view and plays with time, some-times retreating to the past of one character

and at other times abruptly shifting back toanother character in the present day, whichin the novel is 1953. To write genuine char-acters and speak genuinely for them means“cultivating a human relationship withsomeone who’s not really there,” Scibonaexplains. Mrs. Marini, for example, can be“severe, judgmental and nasty,” Scibonasays, but she’s also extraordinary, and hegrew to love her for her independent spiritand generosity.

A third-generation Italian American,Scibona grew up in the suburbs, but he

spent a great deal of time with his grandpar-ents and enjoyed hearing about the old daysin their old neighborhoods. Their storiesinspired him to create Elephant Park, andhe dedicated his novel to them. “I ate uptheir pasts,” Scibona says. “I felt as thoughthe suburb I grew up in was such a culturallyvacuous place, and the neighborhoodswhere they grew up in Cleveland seemedfull, vibrant, awake.”

After graduating from St. John’s, Scibonawent to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, wherehe earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.There he learned to develop a writing habitto complement the reading habit he formedat St. John’s. “St. John’s was the perfectplace for me, and I miss it every day. But atthe Writers’ Workshop I finally made up my mind that—out of all the many optionsSt. John’s allowed me to entertain—I wantedto write novels. I didn’t want to do anythingelse with my time, and I had to make all my other work and financial decisionsaccordingly.”

Scibona won a Fulbright Scholarship tostudy in Italy (where he worked on hisItalian and conducted research for hisnovel); held fellowships at the prestigiousartists’ colonies at Yaddo and MacDowell;and taught writing at Iowa, HarvardSummer School, and Boston University. Hewon the Pushcart Prize for his short story“Prairie” in 2000. It was published in ThePushcart Book of Short Stories: The BestStories from a Quarter-Century of the Push-cart Prize. “The Platform,” a short storythat later became a chapter in The End, wasselected for publication in the Best NewAmerican Voices in 2004. Since 2004, he’sbeen the writing coordinator at the FineArts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., a part-time job that allows him time to write.

His body of work is relatively small,Scibona says, because for 10 years, hedevoted himself to the novel, which began toform in his mind while he was a student atSt. John’s. The first half-dozen drafts wentinto the trash, Scibona says, as he struggledto find an authentic voice. “I learned how towrite by writing this book,” he says. “Iwrote longhand, then typed what I had onto

Completing THE END was a 10-year questfor Salvatore Scibona (SF97), who drew onhis experiences at St. John’s for scenes inhis novel.

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


31

a manual typewriter, then marked it up withpencil, and retyped, over and over, trying toget the sentences to sound the way I wantedthem. All of the other changes—to plot, tocharacter, to the book’s ideas—came outthrough revision of the sentences.”

St. John’s was an indispensable experi-ence for Scibona, and he creates a similarexperience for his character Ciccio in theform of a rigorous Jesuit school for boys.Ciccio endures oral examinations that arevery much patterned on orals at St. John’s,fielding questions that are “straight out ofsophomore year.” Scibona includesconcepts from Aristotle, Aquinas, andKierkegaard in Ciccio’s dialogues with histeacher, a dying priest. “The book tries toexpress its ideas as much as possible inaction and in things. But the boys’ schoolresembles St. John’s because I needed a wayto briefly ask certain Johnnie questions inan overt way,” Scibona says.

Scibona’s girlfriend, Emily Shelton, cameup with the title The End. (He had brieflyconsidered somehow using “being-at-work-staying-itself,” from Annapolis tutor JoeSachs’s translation of entelecheia, but even-tually decided it would be “kind of absurdlyand laughably overblown.”)

The title he settled on reflects a mainpremise of his story: that each life is apurpose in itself, each life has an ultimateend. “It’s the telos end,” he says. “Hope-fully, if our lives have meaning, then they’reculminating, not just stopping. When wedie, it’s not like someone just pulled the plug—your end has meaning in the Aristotelian way.” For the stonemason,Enzo, his end is a well-deserved rest. For his son, Ciccio, the end is a departure, a“coming into being of the potential.”

As he wrote about Ciccio, Scibonaremembered his own departure and begin-ning. “I will never forget the first day I gotout of my car and walked up the steps inSanta Fe–I thought, ‘now I’m a real person.’That’s what St. John’s meant to me,” he says. x

Everything Beautiful in theWorldLisa Levchuk, SFGI05, EC06Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008by Deborah Spiegelman

A novel’s journey from inspiration tofruition can find a short cut or meander foryears, and in the case of Lisa Levchuk(SFGI05, EC06), the direct path finally was

revealed in the Bhagavad-Gita. Freed fromfocusing on the result, Levchuck wasinspired through the Eastern Classicsprogram to complete Everything Beautifulin the World, which will be published thisfall by Farrar Straus Giroux.

Fifteen years in the making, Lisa’s debutnovel began as a short story in her MFAprogram at the University of Massachusetts.During her thesis defense, she was told thatit could be something longer. Degree inhand, Levchuck decided to settle in Massa-chusetts and by 1993 was teaching Englishfull time. Meanwhile, the short story stubbornly refused to take on the shape of a novel.

Looking for a break from teaching –Levchuck admits to a penchant for accumu-lating degrees—she decided to apply to theSt. John’s Graduate Institute. Aftercompleting the Liberal Arts program, shewas drawn to Eastern Classics. “I’d beenworking on the book on and off . . . and I wasblocked up with expectations of what wouldhappen if I ever finished,” Levchuckremembers. “Reading Krishna’s words toArjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita helped me tounderstand that anticipating outcomes isreally deadly to the creative process,” shesays. “I wish I could return to that mindsetnow. It’s proven to be quite elusive.”

Studying Sanskrit also played asupportive role. “Doing Sanskrit taught mefocus,” Levchuck recalls. After sitting in thelibrary for hours with her Sanskritdictionary, writing her own book felt like apleasant distraction. By the time she left

St. John’s, Levchuck had the lion’s share ofher novel completed.

Everything Beautiful in the World is set inNew Jersey, where Levchuck grew up in theearly 1980s, a time “closer to what Iremember [about high school],” sheexplains. It is the story of 17-year-old Ednadealing simultaneously with a gravely illmother and with her own relationship with ateacher. According to advance copy from thepublisher, Edna figures that “the only goodthing about having a mother with cancer isthat people are willing to let [her] get awaywith pretty much anything. . . . But there’sone thing Edna’s fairly certain even shecan’t get away with—her burgeoningromance with Mr. Howland, her fourthperiod Ceramics teacher.”

While broaching a sensitive subject, thebook “is more about the relationshipbetween two people who both suffer in theend,” Levchuck summarizes. “And it isfunny, too,” she adds, suggesting that evenserious subjects can be examined throughthe lens of levity. While Levchuck claimsthat the idea for the story “just came toher,” she also acknowledges having beeninterested for a long time in issues facingadolescent girls.

As the novel took shape, Levchuck sharedsections with a few of her creative writingstudents at the Williston NorthamptonSchool, where she has taught for 10 years.“They made really great comments aboutmaking it more realistic to high school.” Inthe classroom, she shares both the pleasuresand the frustrations of writing. Not infre-quently a story resists the telling. “Some-times, you just can’t know at 17 years old[what someone will achieve]. . . It doesn’tmean that someone can’t tell the storylater,” she reasons, keenly aware of her own journey.

Reflecting on her summers in Santa Fe,Levchuck credits the Graduate Institutewith not only making her a better teacher,but also changing her approach to peda-gogy. “My emphasis as a teacher shiftedfrom talking to listening and responding,”she says, admiring the way her St. John’stutors would approach ostensibly familiartexts “always with a sense that each discus-sion might turn up something new.” x

Studying classic works of the East helpedLisa Levchuck (SFGI05, EC06) finish herfirst novel.

{ A l u m n i P r o f i l e }32


If you listen to legendary folksingers—particularly Peter, Paul & Maryand Art Garfunkel—you may havebeen caught in the net of a spell-binding song called “The Kid,” a contemporary classic written

by Buddy Mondlock (A82).

I’m the kid who ran away with the circusNow I’m watering elephants

If you were on the Annapolis campus in1978 or 1979, Mondlock might have beensitting next to you in freshman or sopho-more seminar. You couldn’t have missedthe long-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spokenMondlock playing guitar on the Quad, buteven he couldn’t have imagined then thesuccess he would later find as a musicianand songwriter.

Alumni who made it back to Annapolisfor Homecoming in 2007 were treated to aconcert of original music by Mondlock—poetic, punch-packing songs relieved byhumor as gentle as his voice. Introducing

his fifth album, The Edge of the World—winner of the Indie Acoustic Project’s BestAlbum in 2007 by a male singer-songwriter—Mondlock sang in the Great Hall aboutskin, mud, and the breakup of a marriage,ending with the affirming “I Count You MyFriend.”

Mondlock’s music features dramaticlyrics, entrancing melodies, and intricateguitar. “The Cats of the Colosseum” ishypnotic, with Roman cats “older than theruins.” A sprightly dance down “MagnoliaStreet” transforms “a funk/Going ’roundand ’round with thoughts you alreadythunk.” Mysterious “New Jersey Sunset”evokes uneasy flashes of “The Sopranos.”

He first recorded his signature song,“The Kid,” in 1987 on his debut album, On the Line. David Wilcox gave it furtherexposure on his 1989 album. After Mond-lock recorded it again on his self-titled1994 album, Peter, Paul & Mary included iton their 1995 Lifelines album and theninvited Mondlock to sing it with them intheir 1996 TV special. It won the 1996

Kerrville Music Award for Song of the Year.Seeing it “headed for the canon of folk-songs,” Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplanskyand Dar Williams chose it for their 1998Cry Cry Cry album. Mondlock recorded itagain with Art Garfunkel in 2002.

Mondlock admits that he’s “the kid”whose circus is “this life as afolksinger/songwriter/troubadour. It’s aromantic notion to be traveling around as aprofessional musician, but in real life it hasits ups and downs.” Is it scary without anet? He laughs. “It wasn’t scary when I wasyounger. It’s scarier now! It’s been a mostlyhappy and rewarding life so far. Eventhough ‘The Kid’ has never been a bigradio hit, people in the folk world have runacross it, which means a lot to me.”

Growing up in Park Forest, Illinois,Mondlock heard about St. John’s Collegefrom a neighbor. “The history of Westernthought seemed so fascinating,” he says.“Part of my goal in going to college was to figure out what I wanted to do in my life. St. John’s seemed like a natural

place to start.”Bonding with fellow Febbies,

he was “into everything going on in my freshman year,Aristotle and Homer and allthat really chewy stuff.” As asophomore, he found theRomans and Aquinas “a lotdryer” than the Greeks, so hespent more time with hisguitar. He had been playingsince he was 10 years old, whenhe wrote his first song. Afterlistening to Simon &Garfunkel and the Beatles andharmonizing with his sisters onCrosby, Stills, & Nash songs,songwriting seriously snaggedhim at 16.

The Kid Who Ran Away With The CircusBuddy Mondlock (A82)

by Cathi Dunn MacRae

Writing songs and performingare “inseparable” for BuddyMondlock (A82), who hasrecorded albums with legendsincluding Art Garfunkel.k

aren

wil

l ro

ger

s


{ A l u m n i P r o f i l e } 33

Back home for the summer of 1979,Mondlock was encouraged by his musiciancousin Ray to play open stages at a folkclub, the Earl of Old Town in Chicago.Instead of returning to St. John’s, he“jumped into the music with both feet.”

When he was 21, Mondlock opened aNew Year’s Eve show for folk icon SteveGoodman. “Steve was a big influence onmy style and one of the best performersI’ve ever seen. He had this impish lightdancing in his eyes; he could totally capti-vate an audience. Getting to open for himat such an early stage in my career was areal validation.” Mondlock’s own “NoChoice” appears in the CD of songsinspired by Goodman that accompanies therecent biography, Steve Goodman: Facingthe Music by Clay Eals.

“No Choice” also launched Mondlock’scareer. Influential songwriter Guy Clark,who hosted the open stage at the KerrvilleFolk Festival in Texas, reports: “This kidin a bathing suit walked up and played ‘NoChoice’ to an audience of 30 to 40 people.By the time he got to the second verse, hehad 200 people singing along with him. He blew me away!”

“Guy walked straight over to me after-ward,” says Mondlock, “and asked for atape of the song. I gave him the tape anddidn’t expect anything more. A coupleweeks later, I got this phone message:‘This is Guy Clark and I like the songs.We’ll see if we can get you into the musicbusiness.’ I’m doing back flips in thekitchen!”

Clark’s recommendation “couldn’t havebeen a better calling card,” says Mondlock.“Guy Clark says listen and people listen.”Among those who heard was Bob Doylefrom ASCAP, a performing rights organi-zation. “Bob invited me to stay in his spareroom in Nashville, and I thought, wow, I’m off!”

Mondlock won Kerrville’s 1987 NewFolk Competition for Emerging Song-writers and released his first album. As aNashville staff writer, he received “a draw

every month, just enough to live onwithout having to work at 7-11. It was anadvance against royalties I might make.”Collaborating with other songwriters, “you make appointments and get out yournotebooks and trade ideas back and forth.”One collaborator was “a fellow from Oklahoma named Garth Brooks. We wroteseveral songs together.” When Brooksbecame a country mega-star, he recordedone of those songs, “Every Now andThen,” on his 1992 album, The Chase,which sold about eight million copies.Mondlock’s share of royalties amounted to“what a good dentist would make over acouple years.”

When Mondlock played at Nashville’sBluebird Café, Janis Ian turned up in thefront row; they ended up writing songstogether. “I brought Janis this raw stufffrom sitting up in one of the writer’s roomsat EMI, looking out the window writingdown images: ‘Just the pattern of sunlighton a building, just a flash in a window I was passing.’”

Wondering where this haunted story wastaking place, “we kicked names around:Cincinnati, Schenectady. One of us saidAmsterdam.” His images became the firstverse of “Amsterdam,” which appears onthe Buddy Mondlock album and Ian’salbum, Billie’s Bones. Ian played“Amsterdam” for her friend Joan Baez,who promptly recorded it herself.

Mondlock’s most intensive collaborationbegan in 1999 when producer Billy Manninvited him to make an album with ArtGarfunkel and Maia Sharp. “The chance towork with Art was pretty exciting,” saysMondlock. “We were both a little intimi-dated because the songwriting process wasnew territory for Art.” Mondlock found thegerm of their first song, “PerfectMoment,” in a poem in Garfunkel’s book,Stillwater. The album, Everything Waits toBe Noticed, features Garfunkel, Mondlock,and Sharp performing songs writtentogether and with others. Mondlock’s andGarfunkel’s high tenor voices sing inunison for a double-tracked effect; Sharp’sharmonies weave around them. After thealbum was released in 2002, the triotoured 25 U.S. cities followed by a month inEurope, including a thrilling appearance atthe Royal Albert Hall.

Mondlock drives all over the country—and Europe—performing in folk clubs,house concerts, and festivals. He also presents songwriting workshops. “Writing

a song is like writing a short story or character study. My workshops reflect whatwe were doing in St. John’s seminar: askingquestions and not taking things forgranted; looking deep into the words thatare appearing in front of us; thinkingthings through logically and then emotion-ally; and looking at art in all the ways thatit can impact us.”

In Mondlock’s musical epics, Johnnieswill discover an evolutionary song as wellas cameos by Newton and Einstein.

How does the writer in Mondlockinteract with the performer? “Before I waswriting songs,” he says, “I was playingmusic and loving it. But then the writingbecame such an important part of my art.To me, they’re inseparable. To write a songis to want to sing it, too.”

For more on Buddy Mondlock, visit:www.buddymondlock.com.

Discography:On the Line. 1987. (Due back in print.)

Buddy Mondlock. Doyle/LewisProductions, Inc., 1995 and 2007.

Poetic Justice. Sparking Gap, 1998 and2007.

Everything Waits to Be Noticed.Manhattan Records, 2002.

The Edge of the World. Sparking Gap,2007.

“My [songwriting workshops] reflect

what we were doing at St. John’s.”

Buddy Mondlock (a82)

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


34

1946Along with 200 other “lastsurvivors,” PETER WEISS (class of1946) went to Vienna in May at theinvitation of an organizationsponsored by the Austriangovernment, which has put 40,000high school and university studentsin touch with people who survivedthe camps or had to flee Austriaafter the Anschluss: “I visited boththe high school I attended from1935 to 1938 and the one to which Iwas expelled for reasons of ‘racialpurity.’ Got my grades, could havebeen better. Meeting in Parliamenton the theme ‘I was never a child.’Gave human rights lecture at thefaculty of law. Interesting butunsettling experience.”

1949ALLAN HOFFMAN continues to beinvolved with the college: “I’m anhonorary member of the Board ofVisitors and Governors of theCollege and an emeritus member ofthe Alumni Association Board. At BVG meetings, I see CHUCK

NELSON (class of 1945) and RAY

CAVE (class of 1948). At N.Y. SJCchapter meetings and seminars, Ifrequently see JOHN VAN DOREN

(class of 1947). I still ski and enjoyfishing and swimming. This JuneMargie and I will spend about fourweeks touring Newfoundland by caron our own. We have fourgrandchildren; they keep us on ourtoes. We are looking forward to theClass of ’49s 60th reunion in thefall of 2009 in Annapolis. If any ofyou, dear friends, who read thishave any ideas on how to make thisHomecoming as good as possible,please contact me.”

1959PATIENCE GARRETSON SCHENCK

wants her classmates to startplanning now to attend their 50th reunion in 2009. “Let’s have a

great turnout and opportunity tosee classmates we haven’t seen inmany years.”

1965BRUCE PRESTON writes: “A coupleof years ago I began to take classesat the National Cathedral, andevidently as a consequence, I wasbaptized this past Easter. I have justsigned up for a four-year programgiven by the University of the SouthSchool of Theology. The program iscalled Education for Ministry andmy motives, while not entirely clearto me, may have something to dowith reconsidering questions raisedby Kyle Smith (and others) insophomore seminar: the garden,the serpent and the apple. In anyevent, this may keep me out oftrouble as I begin to wind down myarchitectural practice and moveinto semi-retirement. I am alsowriting when I find the time, and Ihave a little personal essay comingout in the Washington Post inAugust.”

1966CHRISTOPHER HODGKIN has twonew grandchildren to celebrate.“My identical twin daughters,having married identical twins,have within the past year eachgiven us a wonderful grandson toenjoy. With both daughters livingnext door to us, we are able to see(and babysit!) the grandchildrenevery day. I am continuing to slideout of my law practice into full-timeretirement. Should be there withina year or two!”

SYLVIA SHAPIRO is retired andliving in Mexico: “My husband,Paul, and I have a lovely house witha huge yard and swimming poolwith solar heat. We could not evenafford an apartment in Californiafor the rent we pay. I volunteered atthe Animal Shelter for three years,acquiring five dogs. Now I amlooking for more intellectualstimulation, playing Scrabble by

e-mail and applying for jobs thatmight interest me enough to returnto California.”

1967 KAREN SHAVIN is a doctoralstudent in Educational Leadershipfor Changing Populations at theCollege of Notre Dame inMaryland. She passed her compre-hensive exams and is working onher dissertation. In a moment ofinsanity, she was looking foranother challenge, somethingcompletely different from herassessment work in beginningreading at the Maryland StateDepartment of Education, so shejoined the firm of Keller WilliamsRealty in Baltimore. If you arethinking of buying, selling, orinvesting, contact her. If she can’thelp you, she can find an agent inyour area who can!

1968 W. R. ALBURY (A) writes: Afterretiring from full-time employmentat the University of New England inArmidale, NSW, Australia, at theend of 2004, I was able to enjoy afew years devoted entirely toresearch, some consulting workand family responsibilities. At theend of 2007, however, I wasappointed Chief UniversityOmbudsman at UNE, giving me anew range of duties to fit in with myprevious activities; so I have now

moved from an active retirement toan even more active semi-retirement.

1969MIKE ANTHONY (A) writes: On June 1, my daughter, ElspethAnthony, will be graduated fromLinfield College/Good SamaritanHospital in Portland, Oregon, witha BS in Nursing. In July, Beth willstart work in the ICU at SalemHospital.

BYRON WALL (A) writes: “Irecently completed my term asMaster of Norman Bethune Collegeat York University in Toronto andam now enjoying the reward of asabbatical at Cambridge University.When I return in the fall, I will takeup a new position as coordinator ofthe new Science and TechnologyStudies Program at York. Last yearI was also promoted to seniorlecturer in the Department ofMathematics and Statistics. ThisAugust, my son ALEX (A03) willmarry Kristin Ali in Toronto.”

1970RABBI YEHOSHUA (JEFF)FRIEDMAN (A) sends news fromIsrael: “My wife, Janet, and I justcelebrated our sixth wedding out of eight children. We have 15grandchildren, all living here inIsrael. I teach at Yeshivat Ma’aleEfraim in Israel’s Jordan Valley.Anyone planning a visit to Israel or otherwise interested in

Immense Delight

SUSAN A. VOWELS (A73) shares her “immense delight atbeing granted tenure at Washington College, andbeing promoted to associate professor. I teachManagement Information Systems in the Departmentof Business Management, and I love being part of awonderful liberal arts community while being able to

share what I’ve learned in the world of industry. It has been agreat joy to embark on this second career, and I am lookingforward to many, many years of teaching.” x



35

conversation can contact me by e-mail at [email protected], U.S. phone 216-455-0500 or Israel local phone02-994-1965. Discussions of theAthens and Jerusalem question areespecially welcome.”

LES MARGULIS (A) writes: “I amsemi-retired now, which means Iconsult rather than have a full-timejob working for someone. Just as areminder, I am in advertising andfor the last three years lived in Kiev,Ukraine and Moscow, Russia. I amnow back home in Sydney wherethe weather is a bit better. I havebeen lucky as far as assignments go.I spent two months inJohannesburg (scariest place I everlived—everyone lives with violenceevery day of their lives). Then Iworked in Israel for a month. I amgoing to Dubai for a month andAmerica for several months. So Iam keeping busy and trying to stayout of trouble. I hope the rest of theclassmates are all good and Iassume that most are looking atretirement jobs.”

For the last several years, HUDI

PODOLSKY (SF) has been teachingat San Jose State University in amaster’s program for teachers whoare seeking to become adminis-trators and other types ofeducational leaders: “I also workwith high schools that are engagedin restructuring into smallerlearning communities. I volunteerwith a non-profit school forchildren with disabilities, and Itutor in a wonderful middle-schoolreading program. After a longcareer in high tech, I’m back whereI’m happiest—in education. Mybeloved husband, Joe Podolsky,died of lung cancer in July 2007.”

1972BARBARA ROGAN (A72, graduatedfrom Santa Fe in ’73) invites fellowalumni to visit her brand new Websites and say hello. Her home site,www.barbararogan.com, featuresher work as a writer, with lots ofinformation on her eight novels and

other books, a recently revised bio(why should politicians be the onlyones who get to revise their pasts?),and “in the writers’ lounge, lots ofuseful information for published oraspiring writers, based on mycheckered career in publishing asan agent, editor, and writer. I’vealso created a new site that focuseson my teaching and editing work:www.nextlevelworkshop.com.”

1973MICHAEL AARON (SF) has beenpromoted to the role of IBMDirector of Banking and FinancialMarkets, Asia-Pacific. In this role,Michael is responsible for theBanking and Financial MarketsIndustry vertical and joins the IBMexecutive team. Michael continuesto live in Sydney, Australia, with hiswife, Danuta, and his two sons,Daniel and David.

RICHARD COHEN (SF) has been ajournalist for more than 30 yearsand is currently the editor of twopublications in the healthcare field:Healthcare Marketing Report andPhysician Referral & TelephoneTriage Times; and one in highereducation: Admissions MarketingReport. “I am also the founder andchairman of our nation’s principalannual conference for healthcarecall center managers. I have used St. John’s educational principles togreat advantage both in journalismand in conference planning. I livein Decatur, Georgia, am married toa Unitarian-Universalist minister,and have a son, Ben, graduatingcollege this year with majors in filmand history.”

JON FERRIER (A) retired from theFamily Court a little over a yearago. “Sadly, I only lasted a couplemonths as a gentleman of leisurebefore I flunked my retirement andwent back to work, part time,practicing domestic relations lawwith a firm here. It’s been a goodmove for all, and my long-sufferingspouse is particularly pleased withthe resumption of my productivelife, given that she has a few years to

go before she takes a crack at‘retiring.’ I was starting to fear I’dhave to push her out the door tocontinue working, had this newposition not come along. It’s beenan adjustment, the sometimesamusing spectacle of an old dogtrying to learn new tricks, but I’mdeeply grateful for the opportunityto continue being of use. For thoseof my fellow alums burdened withthe disturbing memory of my firstnovel, “My Long, Hard Journey toEnlightenment,” the encouragingnews is that you must wait a bitlonger for the sequel! One of thesedays, I’ll get around to it, however,so take appropriate precautions.For now, my only writing willremain the oxymoronic ‘legalwriting.’ Can it be only 35 yearssince we met Walter Cronkite’smother at graduation? Reminds me of sophomore seminar with St. Augustine on time: when afterabout five minutes of preliminarysilence, the seminar leader(forgotten who) finally remarked,‘Time passes.’ The ever-sublimeFRED MATTIS (A73) replied: ‘Does it?’ That turned out to be theopening question that evening, anda good one to ask ourselves. Frommy perspective, the answer is yes!And the only real question is, ‘howdid it pass so quickly?’ ”

1974KAREN COOK (SF) writes: “I graduated May 10 from theUniversity of Alabama with my PhD in Communication andInformation Sciences. My researchwas a history of the MississippiFreedom Libraries, established bycivil rights activists during the1960s. Currently I am employed asthe government documentslibrarian at the University ofLouisiana at Monroe. My firstgrandchild, Moushumi StellaHuffman, will be one year old onAugust 15. (I could go on and onabout my six children anddaughters-in-law, so I won’t start.)”

“How does anyone ever getanything done before retirement?”wonders MARGARET SANSOM

(SFGI). “I have been so busy sinceretiring in June 2004 that I canscarcely believe I ever had time towork.” She has been traveling,taking courses, and starting afoundation, the Friends of CentralHigh School, to award scholarshipsto students who have been out ofschool for a few years and havediscovered the desire and/ornecessity for furthereducation/training to realize theirdreams. “Central High is analternative high school (where Itaught for 34 of the 38 years of myteaching career) for those studentswho either do not want or are notallowed to remain in the regularhigh school program; therefore,many either do not graduate or donot continue their educationbeyond high school. Many finallyfind out that they do not want toremain in a dead-end job, but theyoften have no clue how to obtainassistance to become a barber,welder, chef, nurse, or whatever.This foundation will not onlyprovide scholarship money but alsoaid in obtaining additional funding.It’s been exciting to finally realize adream that I held for a number ofyears. We are in the beginningstages of fundraising and will kickinto high gear this summer.”

1975MARY and PETER KNIAZ (both A)continue to live in Hopkinton,right outside of Boston. “Three ofour children are at, or havegraduated from Thomas MoreCollege in Merrimack, N.H.,”Peter writes. “Thomas MoreCollege has a traditional liberal artsprogram somewhat similar to theSt. John’s program.” Afterspending many years as a directorof information technology, Peter isnow working as a businessdevelopment manager for a distri-bution company in New England.“Mary continues to homeschoolour younger two children.”


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

Sting Operation Melanie Kirby (SF97) Raises Gentle Bees

by Deborah Spiegelman

Being persistent, inquisitive, andopen to various perspectives isa lesson from St. John’s thatapplies to many things in life,says Melanie Kirby (SF97). It’sespecially important in her

work breeding productive and hardy queenbees, a vocation she discovered through herwork as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Kirby joined the Corps after graduatingfrom St. John’s, pursuing her grade-schooldream and the path inspired by her mother’sown journey in the late 1960s. “I recall hersharing her stories fondly and I thought Iwould like to serve my country (withoutcarrying a weapon) and immerse myself in adifferent culture,” Kirby says. Her assign-ment: agricultural sector beekeeping exten-sion volunteer, in Calle Mil, Guaira,Paraguay.

“I was probably one of a few who penciledin [on the Peace Corps application] that theywouldn’t mind working with stinginginsects,” she guesses. After her Peace Corpsstint ended, Kirby learned more aboutcommercial beekeeping and breedingthrough subsequent jobs with companies onthe Big Island of Hawaii and in Florida. The“bees found me,” she says. “I also found thatthe experience of keeping bees is profound.”

Zia Queenbee Co.—the name honoring herpueblo (Tortugas) and southern NewMexican heritage—is based in Dixon, N.M.Partner Mark Spitzig established sistercompany Superior Honey Farms onMichigan’s Upper Peninsula. They sell theirhardy and productive bees (Rocky MountainReinas and Great Lakes Sooper Yooper

queen bees) to other beekeepers andare happy to share their expertise.Concentrating less on honey produc-tion and more on the propagation ofquality genetics, Kirby and Spitzig areinvolved in a niche within a niche:sustainable queen-bee rearing andbeekeeping management techniques.

Sustainability in the beekeepingindustry means, among other things,avoiding use of commercial chemicalpharmaceuticals, making sure thathoneybees are placed in safe (organi-cally certified) zones, and achievinghealthy bees through nature’s“survival of the fittest” dictum.“Queen bees are the heart of theirhives,” Kirby says. “Without them,there is no colony.”

Assisted by a grant from WesternSustainable Agriculture ResearchEducation for the Southwest SurvivorQueen Bee Project, Spitzig and Kirbyparticipate in a rigorous breedingprogram to produce queen bees thatthrive in the diverse, challengingmicroclimates of the Rocky Mountainregions. Their business caters to clients of alltypes—from amateur to professional—whohave in common “the strange capacity towork with stinging insects” and who benefitfrom the bees’ exceptional pollinatingability, whether the result is a gloriousgarden or robust crops.

Beekeepers require freshly mated queenson a regular basis. Kirby and her partnershare stock with other experiencedbeekeepers, hoping to perpetuate “a quality

genetic pool of honeybeeschosen by beekeepers forbeekeepers.” They also collabo-rate with local research institu-tions, community organiza-tions, and others to develop

sustainable, environmentally responsibleprojects and to inform people about the needto promote habitats for these beneficial polli-nators.

Honeybees originated in Europe, andtoday present as orange, black, eggplant, ora mix of browns, reds, and grays—not, Kirbysays, the black-and-yellow cartoon imagewhich more accurately depicts yellow jacketsor hornets. Worker bees are all female. Andthe worst enemies to honeybees, she says,are human beings.

“Honeybees are quite polite creatures,”she explains. Kirby prides herself on raisinggentle queens, which involves painstakingattention to behavior and other traits.Because keeping aggressive honeybees canbe a liability and requires specializedmanagement, gentle bees “who respond toMother Nature’s dynamic interface are inhigh demand,” she says.

For Kirby, beekeeping is a humblingprofession. “It keeps me constantly yearningto learn more,” she says. “My mind repeat-edly succumbs to the addictive Johnny-esqueinquiries of ‘why and what does that mean?’The mystery is the allure.” x

Top: Melanie Kirby breedshardy queen bees at a timewhen honeybees are endan-gered. Bottom: Honeybees arepolite and gentle, says Kirby,who learned her profession asa Peace Corps volunteer inParaguay.



37

K.C. VICTOR (A), an executiverecruiter for lawyers in Los Angeles(www.victorls.com), is delighted toreport that her good friend ED

BRONFIN (SF78) has beenappointed District Court Judge forthe Second Judicial District ofColorado (the City and County ofDenver), effective July 1, 2008.

1976RICK LIGHTBURN (SF) hasbecome a docent for the ChicagoArchitecture Foundation, givingtours on the “historic” and“modern” skyscrapers indowntown Chicago.

ADAM WASSERMAN (A) beganworking last March on the NationalSecurity Council’s staff in Iraq.

DINAH WELLS (A) has a solo artshow running from June 29-July 23in Stony Creek, Conn. The 33paintings in the show are allwatercolor insects.

1979MARIE TOLER RANEY (A) andJON RANEY (A74) “are gettingclose to our first offshore voyage inour intrepid steel sloop, Phoenix.Our plan is to hoist the sails June 16in Washington state and arrive inHilo, Big Island, Hawaii, in earlyJuly. We would spend a monthsailing amongst the islands andthen return to Washington inAugust. We are being joined on theoutbound voyage by two goodfriends and able sailors: CHUCK

HURT (A79), who has quite a bit ofoffshore experience single-handinghis sailboat based in Florida, andWarren Buck, who has done manyvoyages in the Atlantic tropicalwaters. More information can befound at our Web site,www.svphoenix.net.”

1980This year the New York PublicLibrary is commemorating thequadricentennial of the birth of thepoet John Milton with a small butartful exhibition. WILLIAM

MOECK (A) was responsible forputting together a series of freelectures on various Milton-relatedtopics—blindness, heresy, Goethe,and Norman Mailer, to name just afew. More information is availableat www.nypl.org/research/calendar/class/hssl/talks.cfm.

1981BUFFY BOWSER (A), now the Rev. Elizabeth Affsprung, isserving as pastor of the FirstPresbyterian Church in Sunbury,Penn., an hour up the SusquehannaRiver from Harrisburg. HusbandEric is a psychologist in thecounseling center at BloomsburgUniversity. Their boys, Joe andDaniel, are into football andblacksmithing respectively, withacoustic and bass guitar thrown in.She writes: “Class of 81: pleasemark your calendars for Thanks-giving weekend, come to ourhometown of Lewisburg, and joinus for a big 50th birthday party!”

JOSHUA BERLOW (SF) is now arealtor in Baltimore! “If you wantto buy a house in Baltimore, pleasee-mail [email protected] orcall 443-858-5527. I’m with CityLife Realty on The Avenue inHampden. My real estate Web pageis at www.joshuaberlow.com/real.htm. I’m also getting back intoacting and recently appeared in aHeinz Ketchup commercial. My acting resume, headshot, andsome clips (including the Heinzcommercial) can be seen online atwww.joshuaberlow.com/actor.htm.If there are Johnnies skilled in Webdesign who can suggestimprovements to my Web site, I’d like to hear from them. Mydaughter Meira is three and a half.Her favorite philosophers include

Dora the Explorer, SpongebobSquarepants, and HannahMontana.”

MARILYNN SMITH (SFGI) retiredfrom public school teaching in2002, but taught English part timeat the community college in PalmDesert, Calif., for three more years.“In July 2005, I sold my house inCalifornia and moved to Spring,Texas, about a mile from where mydaughter and her family live. It’smuch more interesting and fun tobe here to watch three of mygrandchildren grow up. They werein kindergarten, 4th grade and 7th grade when I moved here, andit’s wonderful to attend their fielddays, hoedowns, concerts, baseballgames, gymnastics practices, etc.I’m still teaching—mygrandchildren, tutoring at mychurch, and two online tutoringsites.”

1982PHILLIP E. BOVENDER (A) writes:“Despite the divine retribution Ideserve for my own studentmischief (perhaps as a result of it), Ihave become a clinical instructor inAdult Health at the University ofMaryland School of Nursing inBaltimore. A perpetual student, I am following the education trackfor an MS in Health ServicesLeadership and Management. I justconcluded 18 years at bedside in themulti-trauma ICU at Shock Traumain Baltimore and look forward tobeing a teaching assistant inaddition to being a student/instructor this fall. My nephew,born my freshman year, justfinished his MBA at Duke.”

1983 JOHN (SF) and ELIZABETH (SF84)BUSH of Blacksburg, Va., havingnothing major to report to fellowJohnnies and friends. Summergardening and fly fishing are thetwo biggest things going on, as wellas some camping and hiking in the

Blue Ridge Mountains. John isplanning an addition to the houseon 203 Wharton Street and also istrying to use his grill as often aspossible.

Elizabeth is hoping to be ableattend the reunion this fall in SantaFe and also visit with son Salem,who lives in Vail. “Warm wishesand summer light.”

JONATHAN EDELMAN (A) hasreason to celebrate: “I recentlypassed my PhD Qualification Examin Mechanical Engineering atStanford! Now I can go on toresearch and write my dissertation.My work goes under the title: The Agency of Representation inEngineering Design. My wife,Annie, has found work in the Bayarea as both a consultant and anactress. Our son Liam is nearlythree years old and is a meanpirate! I would love to hear fromyou guys! You can e-mail me at:[email protected].”

PETER MCCLARD (SF) writes:“I’m currently running threebusinesses: Gluon.com,CaptureWorks.com, andTechnéMedia.com, and raising mydarling children: Solian, 8, andKarina, 6, with my lovely Russianwife, Valeriya, in New Jersey. I stilllove my guitar(s) and I have an artpersona which is viewable atwww.tracymac.biz. So thanks, St. John’s, for fostering my innerRenaissance man! Now let’s hopeour nation can rebirth itself to agreener, nicer, smarter, and morehopeful future. Love to all myactual and potential [email protected].”

1984PETER GREEN (A) is in New Yorkwhere he’s a real estate editor forBloomberg News, watching theU.S. housing market crash andburn, living la vida local, andlearning Spanish.

MARK NIEDERMIER (A) recentlycompleted his second year as headof school at Pacific Northern

38



Academy in Anchorage, Alaska.After serving 15 years as head ofschool for Friends School ofMinnesota in St. Paul, he decided achange was in order and made themove north. His daughter Sophiejust completed third grade at theschool, and his son Caleb will enterthe school’s early kindergarten thisfall. His wife Karen is a provider ata pediatric clinic, and together theyenjoy the unique mix of urbanliving and wilderness access ofAlaska’s largest city.

1985JUDY HOUCK (SF) recently earnedtenure in the departments ofMedical History and Bioethics,History of Science, and Gender andWomen’s Studies at the Universityof Wisconsin, Madison. In 2006,Harvard University Press publishedher book Hot and Bothered:Women, Medicine, and Menopausein Modern America.

News from DEMI (A) and ERIC

(SF) RASMUSSEN: Eric finished hisundergraduate work at Stanfordwhile getting his MD. He was aNavy physician until 2007, retiringwith 25 years of service as Chair ofthe Department of Medicine atNaval Hospital Bremerton. Whilein the Navy, he focused on refugees,weapons of mass destruction, andhumanitarian assistance, carryingout the Strong Angel series ofexercises and demonstrations(www.strongangel.org). He workedin Iraq in 2003, in New Orleansafter Katrina, and in Indonesiaafter the tsunami. Eric is now CEOof InSTEDD (www.instedd.org), anonprofit sponsored by Google andthe Rockefeller Foundation thatfocuses on global informationsharing for urgent public healthresponse. Demi received her MBAin Sustainable Business in 2007from the Bainbridge GraduateInstitute (www.bgiedu.org). BGI isa triple-bottom line start-upbusiness school near Seattle, intenton changing business for good. Shefocuses her writing and editing on

integrating profit with social justiceand environmental care. “Ourdaughters, Melissa and Faith, arenow teenagers considering theirown right livelihoods,” writesDemi. “We’re using our propertyfor permaculture, developingresilience in our localcommunities, and striving to dogood well.”

1986RENÉE BERGLAND, (A), anEnglish professor at SimmonsCollege, published a book thisspring: Maria Mitchell and theSexing of Science: An AstronomerAmong the American Romantics(Beacon Press) tells the story of aforgotten scientific heroine. “Icouldn’t have written it without thesolid background in history ofastronomy that St. John’s gave me,”she writes.

MICHAEL SILITCH (SF) writes:“After five years in Switzerland, weare back in Chamonix, France,where I run my small mountainguiding company. I guide peopleskiing and climbing around theAlps and have been developingspring and fall rock-climbing tripson Mediterranean Islands likeKalymnos, Sardinia, and Mallorca.My wife (Dartmouth ’94) and I havetwo boys now: Anders, 2, andBirken, 4. They are both dabblingin skiing—the younger one to try tokeep up with his brother.Chamonix is a nice small town anda great place for the boys and for mybusiness. I take the tram up intothe high mountains in themornings and am usually home fordinner.”

1987From MICHAEL SMITH (A): “InMay 2007 I graduated summa cumlaude from Wesley Theological

Seminary, receiving my Master ofDivinity degree with a concen-tration on Biblical Interpretation. I was appointed to serve theArkport United Methodist Churchin Arkport, N.Y. My wife, Kristen,and I took up residence lastsummer. We love Arkport, a ruralvillage in the Finger Lakes regionof western New York. InSeptember, we added a newmember to our family: a dog namedBaby. We love to stay in touch withold friends, electronically or inperson. I can be reached on the SJCalumni site or on Facebook. My e-mail address is [email protected]. Blessings to all!”

By day, BRETT SURPRENANT (SF)teaches algebra to D.C. publicschool students. At night, he is thefather of three energetic boys, and ahusband, and is pursuing a master’sdegree from George WashingtonUniversity in secondarymathematics.

1988RACHEL ANKENY (SF) movedfrom Sydney to Adelaide, Australia,at the end of 2006, to take up aposition in the history departmentat the University of Adelaide,teaching in a gastronomy (foodstudies) program and continuingher research in the history/philosophy of biomedicine andbioethics. She was promoted toassociate professor of history in2008 and also gave birth to agorgeous baby boy, Luca De GraziaAnkeny, in March. She and Lucaunfortunately will be in Londonduring the class reunion, but shesends her best and would be pleasedto hear from classmates, especiallyanyone traveling to Australia. Hercontact details are available on theUniversity of Adelaide Web page.

SHIRLEY M. BANKS (SF) writes:“I recently earned the credential ofCertified Sexuality Counselor bythe American Association of SexEducators, Counselors, andTherapists. I was also named to the

Rowing Champ

MIKE VAN BEUREN (A75) captured the worldindoor title for his age group at the WorldIndoor Rowing Championships (also knownas the CRASH-B Sprints) held at BostonUniversity in February. (CRASH-B standsfor “Charles River All Star Has-Beens.”)

A lifelong rower and former crew team member and assistantcrew coach, van Beuren covered 2,000 meters in 6 minutes,45.1 seconds, on the ergometer. He won the title for themen’s 55-59 lightweight division, coming out on top in a fieldof 11, and listing St. John’s College as his affiliation.

A denizen of Hartland, Vt., van Beuren was inspired to givethe competition a try as he faced the milestone of his 55thbirthday. He began training in May 2007 and put in some-where between two to three million meters on the erg. Hewas awarded a golden hammer for his achievement, and helisted St. John’s College as his affiliation.

For two months every year, van Beuren returns toAnnapolis to work with his old friend, Athletic Director LEO

PICKENS (A77), on coaching the St. John’s crew team. Pickenswas mightily impressed with his friend’s dedication to thechallenge. “In doing it by example, he’s helping me give ourrowers a workout,” Pickens told the Valley News, vanBeuren’s local newspaper.

For those who want to view van Beuren’s victory, the videois available on www.youtube.com. x

39



executive board of the EmoryUniversity President’s Commissionon LGBT Concerns and will serveas Co-Chair in the 2009-2010academic year. Other thrills comefrom maintaining hiking trails forthe Benton MacKaye Trail andAmerican Hiking Society. It hasbeen a pleasure to re-connect witha few Johnnies lately via Facebook.”

TED (A) and KATE (IRVINE)DEDDENS (A87) are living inOwensboro, Ky. They classicallyhomeschool their four children:Maris (15), Abby (10), Ted (7), andSamuel (whom they welcomed intotheir family on November 11, 2007)and just opened Tedtoy’s first retailstore, Tedtoy: Miniatures, Books,and Toys. The store is a fusion ofTed’s military miniatures(www.tedtoy.com) and their smallbook business, Boarding HouseBooks. This summer they arecelebrating 18 years of TedtoyMiniatures, almost a decade ofhomeschooling, and their 20thwedding anniversary. They’d loveto hear from you, so call (270-689-4060), e-mail ([email protected])or visit them on the banks of theOhio River.

BERNARD H. MASTERS (A)writes: “I can report that I left mylaw firm in Dallas after 17 years anddecided to take an in-houseposition as associate generalcounsel with a company that movedits international headquarters toSalt Lake City, Utah. I have beenhere for one year and the familyloves the change. I live inCottonwood Heights and the reallyimportant news is that I caught abrown trout in the stream 15minutes from my front door. I would love to hear from myclassmates of 1988, particularly ifthey are going to be in town. I canbe reached through the SJC Web site.”

1989BURKE GURNEY (SFGI) and hiswife, Deborah, have two children.He completed his PhD inphysiology/biochemistry from theUniversity of New Mexico in 2000,and is currently an associateprofessor in the Physical TherapyProgram in the UNM School ofMedicine.

1990DAVID LONG (A) writes: “We havehad a busy year. After turningaround a financially troubledChicago-based college, I have leftmy career as a corporate executiveto launch Trapped BeeProductions, an independent filmcompany. Back in February, Liz gave birth to our first child,Benjamin. When not filming orchanging diapers, I consult foruniversities and companies seekingto launch new [email protected].”

DAVID MARQUEZ (SF) hasreturned to Santa Fe after nearly adecade away. “I am currentlystudying film editing at the NewMexico Filmmakers Intensive.Where life leads at the conclusionof this five-month program is amystery at this point, but no matterwhere I end up—New York, LosAngeles, San Francisco, Vancouver,or good old Albuquerque—I’ll behappy to be in contact with any ofmy classmates (most of whom seemto be alive and well on Facebook, by the way).”

CHRISTOPHER NEWMAN (A) ismoving to Arlington, Va., thissummer. “I will be starting my newjob as assistant professor of law atGeorge Mason University School ofLaw. I will be teaching IntellectualProperty and Civil Procedure, andam looking forward to being backwithin day-trip distance of theAnnapolis campus.”

JOSHUA KERIEVSKY (SF) andTRACY REPPERT KERIEVSKY

(SF91) welcomed their thirddaughter, Eva Katherine, on March 30, 2008, in Berkeley.

MICHELLE (BAKER) VEST (SF) ishappy to say that she and her familyare doing very well: “My husband,Matt, started a video editingcompany two years ago. Along withworking, he is participating in afive-month editing intensivethrough the NM Film Institute,along with fellow classmate andcore-group buddy for three of myfour years at St. John’s, DAVID

MARQUEZ (SF90). Our son, Wil,turns 3 this summer. He keeps usbeyond busy. Thankfully, his energyis contagious.”

1991KEMMER ANDERSON (AGI)published an essay, “ThoseTenured Tyrants: How Milton’sTenure of Kings and MagistratesInfluenced Jefferson’s Declarationof Independence” in the book,Milton in France. Last fall at the Milton Conference inMurfreesboro, Tenn., he presenteda paper on “How Jefferson MightHave Read Milton’s Lycidas.” He will present a paper on“Gardening by the Book” at the 9th International MiltonConference in London, celebratingMilton’s 400th birthday.

JONARNO LAWSON (A) publishedtwo books this spring. For InsideOut: Children’s Poets Discuss TheirWork (Walker Books, London), he selected 24 different children’spoets from around the English-speaking world and asked them towrite about the origins of one oftheir poems. A Voweller’s Bestiary(Porcupine’s Quill, Erin), is a bookof lipograms for children. JonArnoand his wife are also expecting theirthird baby in June.

1993JANE MCMANUS (A) writes: “I was just named the New YorkJets beat writer at The JournalNews, meaning I’ll be covering theNFL this season, and I am stillworking as an adjunct professor atthe Columbia University GraduateSchool of Journalism. I have alsojoined a roller derby league, and myalter ego, Leslie E. Visserate, willbe competing all summer long.Johnnies in New York/Westchestercan e-mail me at [email protected] to check it out or join.”

JAMES LANK (A) is now GeneralCounsel of Tesco Corporation, aninternational oilfield servicescompany based in Houston, Texas.He and his wife, Theresa, havethree children.

JOHN C. WRIGHT (A) has a newnovel, Null-A Continuum, inbookstores now. “This book is asequel to another author’s work:the Golden Age great A.E. vanVogt. His most famous book, nowsadly neglected, was World Of Null-A, first published in 1943. Thisbook was a seminal attempt to usescience fiction as a vehicle forexploring the concepts of the ‘Non-Aristotelean’ Philosophy (or ‘Null-A’) of Alfred Korzybski, a pioneerin multi-valued logic systems. Thisbook had a profound effect on myyouth and the development of myphilosophy. It is the book on whichI wrote my entrance exam to getinto St. John’s. Desiring, as anadult, to write in the background ofthe most cherished storybook of mychildhood, I contacted the literaryagent representing the estate of vanVogt. He expressed reluctance: hesaid no publisher in the field couldhandle a new van Vogt book, exceptfor one David Hartwell. It was withinfinite pleasure that I told himDavid Hartwell was my editor. Withthat happy coincidence, the dealwas made. It took over five years ofnegotiations to hammer out the

continued

40



Baltimore native AdrianBordone (AGI96) waseager to leave his home-town behind when heenrolled in the GraduateInstitute in Santa Fe.

Popular television shows such as Homi-cide and The Wire have dramatized thecity’s problems for a national audience,but Bordone could see for himself howsocial problems such as drug use andunemployment were hurting the city.

It was a little ironic, then, that theclassic texts Bordone read at St. John’sultimately led him back to Baltimore,where he would work for seven years inhuman services before helping to launcha company devoted to helpingnonprofits operate more efficiently.

Bordone attended the Naval Academyfor two years before deciding a militarycareer wasn’t for him. He studied historyat the University of Baltimore, where hediscovered a desire to read and learnmore. “The first seminar I did at St.John’s was on Lucretius, and it was every-thing I hoped it would be,” he says. Bookssuch as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’sNichomachean Ethics inspired him to thinkabout justice, citizenship and social engage-ment, he says. “I wanted to be a more activecitizen.”

He transferred to the GI in Annapolis andfinished his last semester while working as ateacher for disadvantaged youth. Later, hejoined an organization called the LearningBank, where he developed and implementedcoursework and activities designed to fosterpersonal accountability and other employ-ment-related skills in his students. “It’sunfortunate that in Baltimore, individualsand families can be beaten down by the chal-lenges they face,” he says. “We were able toshow folks a path through which they couldmove with our assistance to a more sustain-able and long-term employment opportu-nity.”

Bordone left the Learning Bank to helpstart the Maryland Center for Arts and Tech-nology (MCAT), dedicated to improvingtraining and education for Baltimore’sunderemployed residents. Along the way, hereconnected with Steve Butz, a former

colleague from the Learning Bank, who toldBordone about his efforts to develop soft-ware to help nonprofit agencies better tracktheir efforts and outcomes.

Bordone had been trying to do the samething at MCAT, where he became chief oper-ating officer. He supervised six teachers, fivecase managers, a job developer andfundraisers, and spent much of his timetracking outcomes and crunching numbersfor reports and grant applications.

Butz and Bordone started out by adaptingoff-the-shelf software and from there devel-oped their “Efforts to Outcome” program, aWeb-based application that enables organi-zations to measure the effectiveness of theirprograms. They released their first version inApril 2002 and today have 25,000 users in5,500 nonprofit and human service agen-cies. Their clients include the Girl Scouts,United Way, the New York City Department

of Education, and Casey Family Services.As vice president, Bordone works with

new clients, customizes the software totheir needs, conducts training work-shops, writes proposals, manages legalaffairs including contracts, responds torequests for proposals, hires andmanages staff, and does anything else asmall business requires.

Starting a new business just when thetech bubble was bursting meant Bordoneand his business partner had to workharder to attract funding and prove theirbusiness model was viable. Theylaunched Social Solutions in a warehousethat was leaky, windy, had no air-condi-tioning, and very little heat. “I spent thefirst year working in a coat—and lovingit,” he says. “As a small business that wasentirely self-funded, we’ve remained

lean, and that’s helped us remain close toour client base. We’ve always been veryrespectful of the few dollars we have.”

Human service agencies typically havesmall budgets for administration, so thecompany has to demonstrate that their soft-ware will help them serve their clients better.“We’re a tech firm by default, but moreimportantly, we are a firm that has a socialventure,” he says. “Everyone who workswith our clients is a former practitioner ofhuman services, and we understand the workthat they do.”

Social Solutions now operates in betterquarters in an emerging technology center inBaltimore’s Canton neighborhood. In 2006,the company was named Maryland IncubatorCompany of the Year, and in 2007, one of 50incubator companies nationwide.

The tough part of Bordone’s job thesedays is frequent travel, long hours away fromhis family (his wife, Catina, and three youngchildren) and building a business with a verylean budget.

“I’d love to say that I spend my spare timere-reading my copies of Moby-Dick and theBrothers Karamazov,” he says. “Right now,I work a lot.” x

From Human Services to Social Solutions Adrian Bordone (AGI96)

by Rosemary Harty

Adrian Bordone (AGI96) neverexpected to be a software entrepre-neur, but his work in human servicesled him to a new career.

“I spent the first yearworking in a coat—and

loving it.”Adrian Bordone (AGI96)

gary

pie

rpo

int

41


legal details before all parties weresatisfied, and, at times, the projectseemed dead. I persevered andeventually prevailed. The book waswritten, sold, and is now publishedand distributed. Preliminaryreviews have been positive. Towrite in your favorite author’sbackground and decide the fate ofyour favorite characters fromchildhood is a privilege few othershave been granted.

I also converted from atheism andjoined the Roman Catholic Churchthis year. My new name is JohnCharles Justin Wright, named afterJustin Martyr, patron saint ofphilosophers.”

1994JEAN HOLMAN (A) is pleased toannounce her engagement toYoungstown, Ohio, native, ClintonPavelko: “We will marry nextsummer in Erie, Penn. We live inWashington, D.C., and plan tosettle there after the wedding.Clinton never went to St. John’sand never heard of it. Otherwise, he is handsome, young, anddevoted. Besides a husband, I’ll begetting a stepson as well, ChrisPavelko, aged two and half.”

MATHIEU DE SCHUTTER, (SF)MD, MPH, writes: “SARA

(ROAHEN, SF94) and I have movedback to New Orleans from our post-Katrina exile. Her book GumboTales, about assimilating into theNew Orleans culture while workingas a restaurant critic, should bereleased as a paperback by now.”

(ROSS) MOSHEH VINEBERG (SF)writes: “I have been living inJerusalem, Israel, for the last eightyears. My wife, Tamar, is Israeli, wehave a little girl, Naomi, who is 2 years old, and we are expectinganother baby this June. I amlearning Torah in the mornings in akollel, while my wife is finishing amedical degree in another twoyears. I’d love to visit Santa Feagain with my family. Maybe in afew years we’ll do it.”

1995GEOFF GIFFIN (AGI) writes: “Life is good in White Rock, B.C.,just a few kilometers fromVancouver (the best city in theworld in which to live, according tomany surveys). In my second yearas a beekeeper here, I amstruggling along with all otherbeekeepers to understand what ishappening to this most importantof animals. We are not helped thisyear by having had a very long,cold, wet spring in the Northwest,but there are larger problems.Honeybees are responsible forabout 30 percent of all human foodand if they disappear, as they areincreasingly doing, we will add yetanother problem to the global foodcrisis. On the positive side, bees areendlessly fascinating and amazingstress reducers. I can watch minefor hours, seeing the foragers comehome with different varieties ofpollen, the guards inspectingeveryone who approaches(Homeland Security should be soefficient!) and the signalingbetween individuals to pass oninformation about nectar sources, etc.

“When I’m not working with mybees (which is most of the time), Iam mentoring engineering/physicsstudents at UBC, getting my 38'Ericson sailboat ready for summercruising, reupholstering furnitureand gardening. I also have a newjob: I am the unpaid assistant to mywife, Senga, who after a long careeras a teacher and school adminis-trator has taken up a career in realestate. Anyone who wants to moveto this most incredibly lovely part ofCanada should contact me so thatwe can give you insight into whatliving here is really like.”

VERONICA GVENTSADZE (AGI)writes: “This spring I graduatedwith a veterinarian degree from theUniversity of Guelph and two weeksago launched a brand new career.My little Yaris made it all the wayacross Canada to the mountainsnorth of Vancouver. As I write, I hear a cat in the background

complaining about the service inthis hospital. I disagree: I think thishospital is a great place to work,though at times it feelsoverwhelming. The days go by fast,the learning curve is about as steepas the surrounding mountains, andmy propensity for mulling thingsover is effectively curbed by theneed to make prompt decisions. At the end of each day I take a mini-holiday as I walk or bike themountain trails. The mountains aremajestic, the coastal rainforestmust not have changed much sinceprehistoric times, and the realestate prices are obscenely high. (A popular excuse is that the 2010Winter Olympics will be just up theroad in Whistler.) There is even anew university up in themountains, Quest University. Iwould love to hear from anyonewho remembers me, and to catchup on our lives since St. John’s. You can reach me [email protected].”

CLARA MURRAY (A) writes:Wesley and I were married in 2003in a small but beautiful ceremonyon the Hudson River. SeveralJohnnies were in attendance. EzraAlexander Beato was born inDecember ’04. He’s a total joy—intense, inquisitive, and veryactive. Talks nonstop from the timehe wakes up to the time he goes tosleep. (Future Johnnie?) We areenjoying family life in Brooklyn,though occasionally dream ofleaving the city in favor of avegetable garden and preschoolsthat cost less than St. John’s. Weare both working, Wesley as abusiness research manager (I’m notsure what he does either, butsuspect all these years of‘civilization’ help). I continue towork with Early Intervention,doing verbal behavior—a form ofapplied behavior analysis, withchildren diagnosed with autism.I’m also enjoying classes at the ArtStudent’s League. Would love tohear from former classmates andfriends. You can e-mail us [email protected].”

HEATHER NORDLOH (AGI)writes: “CHRIS (AGI96) continuesto serve as CFO for a Chicago-based non profit. Nick is 3 1/2 andvery into Spiderman. Chris andNick Nordloh spent most of thespring in Hong Kong withHeather’s job.”

BETHANY O’CONNELL (SF)writes: “I find myself teaching andworking on the alumnae magazineat Stoneleigh-Burnham School, an all-girls’ boarding and day schoolin Greenfield, Mass. Whileteaching French, I am oftenlooking out for those young,inquiring minds who I canencourage to apply to St. John’s. Ican still smell the piñon burning ona clear winter night! I hope to bringmy family back for a visit soon.”

KIRA ZIELINSKI (SF) is taking abreak from flying helicopters andhas turned her attention to learningthe ropes of being a small businessowner. “I bought a coffee shop herein Mobile, Ala., in March—theexperience has been amazing!Little by little my fiancé, Nathan,and I are turning it into thecommunity crossroad that we’vebeen craving in our life. Not tomention I’m enjoying the stress ofsyrup and whipped cream‘emergencies’ to enginemalfunctions over the Gulf ofMexico any day! Our first additionto the coffee shop was, of course, alibrary. You can catch a glimpse ofour shop at drjava.com.”

1996JENNY BATES GLAUBRECHT (A) isa second grade elementary schoolteacher in Palm Beach County. Sheearned her master’s degree ineducation, has acquired ESOLEndorsement, Gifted Endorsementand a real estate license.

J. STEPHEN PEARSON (EC) passedhis dissertation defense and will begraduating in August from theUniversity of Georgia with hisdoctorate in ComparativeLiterature.


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TERESA TAYLOR (AGI) and herhusband Steve Bromley gave birthto Brock Remington TaylorBromley on May 1, 2008, at nearly10 pounds. Teresa has beenpracticing law as an associate at theBritish law firm, Clifford ChanceUS LLP, in international whitecollar/litigation defense forfinancial corporate clients. She willbe leaving the firm this summerfollowing maternity leave in searchof a law position that does notrequire extensive internationaltravel and extreme hours so she canenjoy being a new mom. Prior toClifford Chance, Teresa was afederal law clerk in Virginia, andpreviously spearheaded a non-profit organization focusing oninternational humanitarian lawviolations and justice. Steve is alsodoing well, having started arenovation company in Annapolis.Teresa would love to hear fromformer classmates. The Bromleysreside at 700 Caleb Lane,Annapolis, Md 21401.

1997AMY RYCE KNOWLES (A) writes:“I teach mathematics at DurhamAcademy, and recently visited Indiato tour schools there. My husbandis wrapping up a PhD at DukeUniversity in Medieval EnglishLiterature. I have a 4-year-old sonnamed James. I attribute myappreciation of math to the St. John’s curriculum. Myencounters with Descartes,Apollonius, Newton, and Ptolemycontinue to inform my teaching aswell as my perspective. Workingwith teenagers is inspiring andbecause of them, there is never adull day at work.”

1998JANA GILES (A) is back in the U.S.“After four years of living in theUnited Kingdom, and wishing I’dtaken even more EasyJet and RyanAir flights to Italy, I’ve completed

my PhD in English Literature fromthe University of Cambridge.Living abroad was fantastic.Cambridge is an international andvibrant place filled with beautifularchitecture, too many distractingactivities (like rowing and MayBalls), and fascinating and brilliantpeople. All the same, it’s good to beback in the U.S. to catch up withfamily and friends and enjoy theNew Mexico culture and scenery.”

LEAH FISCH (SF) writes: “I amworking as a reorganizer ofbusinesses and homes here in NYC,Massachusetts and the tri-statearea. Beginning in July, I will beoffering workshops in the EastVillage to foster communitybetween those with difficulty withclutter/efficiency, as well as offereasy-to-implement tips toreorganize on their own. If anyJohnnies are interested in attendingthe workshops, please e-mail me [email protected], or feel free tocall me at 917-678-9634.”

WILL GORHAM (A) writes:“SIOBHAN BOYER (SF99) and Isaid our first “Hey, baby!” toLarkin Rose Kate Gorham on April23 in our new hometown of St. Petersburg, Fla., after 25 hoursof . . . let’s call it “gentle coaxing.”Larkin took in the scene, howled atthe heavens, and began the longprocess of learning to love us forwho we are. Other than that little 7-pound 8-ounce bit of everything,not too much is new here inParadise. Siobhan is bringing homethe big slabs of veggie bacon as anenvironmental biologist. I’mfinishing a novel and also workingfor pay as a researcher at the St. Petersburg Times (whereclassmate WILL VAN SANT [A98]also makes news/a living). Our dogHektor has giardia and our catsMason and Dixon hate him for itsince it means they can’t come outto play. Florida and parenthood aregreat. Both are tiring and excitingat the same time. Full of great ideasand weird, often stinky, results.We’d be happy to get coffee orworse with any Johnnies who cometo the Tampa Bay area. We’ll driveyou past all the fancy mansions for

foreclosure and introduce you tothe Most Recklessly SunburnedHomeless Dude Ever. If you’re hereon a weekend, we’ll do even more.”

AMY MARCETTI TOPPER (A) isworking as a consultant doingeducation research, and hasenrolled in Arizona StateUniversity’s PhD program inEducational Leadership and PolicyStudies. “Claire, my daughter, isabout to turn 3 and doing all thosewonderful and frustrating thingstoddlers do at this age,” she writes.“Love to hear from SJCA friends:[email protected].”

1999Since graduation, GARY TEMPLE

(A) has been splitting time betweenChina and Easthampton, Mass.,working variously as a freelancewriter, English teacher, musicproducer, mental health counselorand clothing designer. “These daysI’m narrowing my focus to musicproduction with a bit of newspaperwriting and clothing design thrownin. This fall I’ll be starting ayearlong intensive Chineselanguage program in Beijing.Please let me know if you’re goingto be in town, or if you need somemusic produced, or an articlewritten, or some clothingdesigned.”

2000DEBERNIERE TORREY (AGI) ismarrying Nathan Devir on June 27at Penn. State University. Thecouple will move to Vermont inJuly, where Nathan will teachHebrew at Middlebury College.

VALERIE G. WHITING (A) ofWashington, D.C., recentlyreturned from Antigua, where shewas working to prevent HIV/AIDSthrough education as a Peace CorpsResponse Volunteer.

The country of Antigua andBarbuda is located in the EasternCaribbean in the middle of the

Leeward Islands. Whiting wasworking with the AIDS Secretariatto provide assistance in behaviorchange communication efforts. In doing so, she was to assist in theplanning, designing, implemen-tation, and evaluation of nationalHIV/AIDS public education andawareness activities. Whitinghelped produce HIV education andawareness activities at nationalevents and developededucational/promotional materialsfor local target groups.

Whiting previously served as acommunity organization PeaceCorps volunteer in Panama from2001 to 2003. Among heraccomplishments, she led a youthgroup that took part in nationalHIV/AIDS programs and alsoorganized and succeeded in aneffort to pave the five-kilometerentrance to her site.

Whiting has begun a master’sprogram in international trainingand education at AmericanUniversity in Washington, D.C.

LOGAN WINK (SF) writes: “Ifinally finished medical school and Iam now busy working through myfirst year as a psychiatry resident atIndiana University School ofMedicine. I married Chuck Patelast June, and we are living andworking in Indianapolis, Ind. Nobabies yet—I spend way too manynights at the hospital for that.Chuck finished his MFA inceramics in December and isworking on establishing his career(currently he is teaching kids tothrow pots at the local communityart center). Please look us up if yourpath leads you through theheartland!”

2001RIANA KETTLE (SF) is back inColorado and getting married thissummer. She also recently finisheda master’s degree in secondaryeducation in mathematics and hasbeen teaching math for the past


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several years. “I’m still singingopera. Hope everyone is doingwell!”

ERIC MADDOX (SF) writes: “I justreturned to the States in Marchafter five months spent conductingresearch for my MA in ConflictResolution. While based out ofRamallah and Dheisheh RefugeeCamp in Bethlehem, I traveledaround Israel and the West Bankfilming interviews with elderIsraelis and Palestinians whoexperienced the 1948 war thatcreated the modern State of Israeland the first Palestinian refugeecrisis, also known as Al Nakba or‘The Catastrophe.’ The filmfootage will be used to produce ashort documentary film project forDefense for Children International-Palestine. Concurrently working onmy master’s thesis, which focuseson the role that these events haveplayed in shaping the individualand collective identities of the Jewsand Arabs who experienced theevents of 1948. Hoping to do futureconflict-documentary work (whereI actually get paid) in the nearfuture. Looking for opportunitiesin Africa, Southeast Asia, or theMiddle East.”

2002JESSICA GODDEN (SF) and PETER SPEER (A) were married onFeb. 29, 2008.

JUSTIN (A) and DILLON (A05)NAYLOR will be serving as dormparents at Wyoming SeminaryPreparatory School next year,where Justin teaches Latin andmath. “We continue to growvegetables, teach cooking classes,and cater private events at ourfarmhouse in northeasternPennsylvania.Our son, Peter, willbe a year old in July! We have aguest room and welcome visitors tothe farm.”

SEAN NELSON (AGI) is currentlyliving in Cairo, Egypt, and studyingArabic.

DAVE PROSPER (SF) writes: “As ofnow I’m still living in Oakland,Calif., and working in IT at Bio-RadLaboratories. I’m currently pullingdouble-duty and trying not to burnout doing both as a support systemsadministrator and PC support formy company’s Hercules, Calif.,location. I’m also gradually turningmy apartment into a bizarre versionof that garden ship from SilentRunning (much to my roommate’schagrin) with plants, especiallysucculents, everywhere I can placethem. I’m also still fiddling withWeb comics, Web pages, anddashing out strange stories when Iget the chance. So I guess I am stillfiguring out what I am supposed tobe doing, but I’m doing wellregardless!”

JOHN RANKIN (SF) writes: “Thisfall I will leave my position as aspokesman at the U.S. TreasuryDepartment to enroll in the MBAprogram at the University ofCalifornia Los Angeles. This meansthe end to nearly five years inWashington, D.C., at variouscommunications jobs in the Senate,on political campaigns, and in theBush administration. Afterbusiness school, I will probablyshift my focus to the private sector.Johnnies in the Los Angeles area(or SF for that matter) should drop me a note [email protected].”

MARK STRATIL (SF) is living andteaching high school physics inBrooklyn. He and his band, JudgeRoy Bean (www.myspace.com/judgeroybeanband), are celebratingthe release of their first album,Shovelhead, available on iTunes.“If any of you are going to be inNew York this summer, come outand see a show!” he writes.

2003AARON MACLEAN (A) wascommissioned as a SecondLieutenant in the U.S. MarineCorps on November 30, 2007.“I’ve just learned that I’ve beenselected to attend the InfantryOfficer’s Course at Quantico, Va.,this summer, which will put me outin the fleet as an infantry officer bythis fall. Anyone who wants to ismore than welcome to contact meat [email protected].”

JEFFREY ZWILLENBERG (AGI) wasmarried last August to JenniferGoulston: “We now live in our newhouse in Baltimore, Md. Mostrecently, I accepted a new job indevelopment for a nonprofit organization (New Leaders for NewSchools) in Baltimore. On anothernote, while snowboarding at Stowein Vermont with COREY HAYDEN

(AGI06), we encountered anotherJohnnie, owing to my St. John’slicense plate. We are everywhere!”

2004TATIANA HAMBOYAN HARRISON

(A) has been busy doing a lot ofwriting (trying to get a picture bookpublished!) and reading (mostlybooks about writing): “I’m alsohaving surgery on June 30 to getmy left wrist replaced. I’ve beendoing quite a bit of belly dancingand have been very involved in myQuaker meeting. Anyone whowants to contact me can do so by e-mail, or by visiting my Web site atwww.thefunnel.org.”

CONOR J. HEATON (AGI), in hisfirst year of lawyering, is a litigatorin a small civil litigation firm inChicago. “I graduated from LoyolaUniversity Chicago School of Lawand had the pleasure of studyingunder JUDGE THOMAS MORE

DONNELLY (SF81). My wife,Ashley, is four months pregnantand we just bought our first condoin the Lakeview neighborhood ofChicago. I was delighted to hearthat we defeated the Academy inthis year’s non-sanctioned croquetbattle.”

KIMBERLY (BRYAN) GAUDINSKI

(A) and MARTIN GAUDINSKI (A)were married on December 29,2007, at the Shrine of the SacredHeart in Baltimore, Md. “Now localto D.C., we went on a phenomeno-logical honeymoon to a plane ofexisting in the District that we willrarely inhabit until many yearshence,” writes Martin. “We dinedat some of the finest restaurants thecity has to offer. While celebratingour marriage at Citronelle,Kimberly met the eidos of blackbeans. Martin finally understoodPlotinus after his first sample of thechateaubriand. Now firmly back inour normal lives, Kimberly isteaching kindergarten at PotomacCrescent Waldorf School inArlington, while Martin is in hisfirst year of professional training atGeorgetown University School ofMedicine.”

KRISTI MEADOR (A) writes: “I’ve been sojourning these pasttwo years in the former Soviet bloc


A Johnnie Haven

LOUISA GRIFFIN PARKINSON (SF93) is married andhas two children, Mariana (4), and James (6).They are “living luckily on the Eastern Shore ofMaryland in Easton, which strangely enoughseems to be a Johnnie haven. Johnnies pop upeverywhere: one instructs my children and me in

tennis at the Y, another teaches knitting at the local holisticarts center, while others still make local news by impedingairport growth via kick-ass estate planning. And without fail, Imeet people at dinner parties and fundraisers who ‘wishedthey’d gone to St. John’s’ but nonetheless satisfy their thirst forknowledge by attending some seminars ingeniously offeredthrough the college. Their enthusiasm really can make you feellike a rock star! Anyway, greetings to all my fellow Johnnies inSanta Fe and Annapolis.” x

44



country of Belarus. I’ve also beenblessed with visits to the Ukraine,Lithuania, Russia, Denmark,Hungary, Egypt, and South Korea.My time has been focused onstudying Russian, helpinguniversity students wrestle withimportant questions in their searchfor God and truth, and lovingorphans and foster children.I’ve been reading a wide range of

Russian literature and after fouryears have found myself immersedin The Brothers K once again. Mynext destination is Kentucky, whereI will be eagerly awaiting the arrivalof my future niece from Ethiopia!I’d be glad to hear from Johnnies. I can be reached [email protected].”

2005SAMANTHA BUKER (A) writesfrom Baltimore, Md: “I’ve recentlytaken the mantle of associate editorand managing editor of fivefinancial publications for a fabulousoutfit called Agora Financial. In myspare hours, I’m writing a newnovel—delightfully absent ofmurderers, devils, and afterlifesequences. Think the morallyimmoral French novels of Balzacand Zola meeting the vivid lyricismof Gatsby in the form of a hard-boiled hero of contemporary WallStreet. Yes, as with Zola, there’s acourtesan. But unlike Nana, she’s

no fool. Nor are the father whosemistress she is or his son (who is inlove with her). At bottom, it’s acritique of the modern Americanfinancial system. And, unlike mostwho post to these pages. . .I’ll nottell you of nuptials or newborns. I subscribe to Gustave Flaubert’sstyle of living: Stay out of the thickof Paris, and when your loverbarges into your study uninvited:throw him out! But true, closefriends should plan to visit often:[email protected].”

HEATHER COOK (SF) earned herprivate pilot license in September2007, and is enjoying flying aroundnorthern New Mexico in herCessna 182. She also wrote andpublished her first book, theAviation Scholarship Directory2008, in October 2007, which ishelping flight students, pilots, andother aviation professionals to findand win aviation scholarships.Heather is still living in Santa Fe.

PAUL AND ANITA FAIRBANKS

(SF) are delighted to announce thebirth of their daughter, CharlotteEden, on May 20, 2008: “She hasbrought us so much happiness,”Anita writes. “We are living inColumbus, Ohio, where Paul isstudying business in preparationfor dental school. I am simplyenjoying motherhood; my currentambitions are to sing lullabyes andread great books aloud.”

GWEN GURLEY (A) writes: “I thought I would send an updateletting the school know that I amreceiving my master’s degree inItalian Studies with a focus ontranslation and linguistics fromMiddlebury College this August. I have been in Florence, Italy, forthe past year working on my degreeand will be home in July. Fromthere I’m moving out to the WestCoast, hopefully to Portland, Ore.”

DWIGHT KNOLL (A) has become apartner at Music WorksPublications (musicworkspubli-cations.com.) “Also the podcast Iam working on at FAQautism.comis really starting to take off,” hewrites. “Finally, I’m going to Delft,Holland, this July to participate in aservant evangelism event.”

MIRANDA MERKLEIN (Foster)(SFGI) is a PhD candidate inEnglish / Creative Writing at theUniversity of Southern Mississippi.Her poetry and fiction haveappeared in many literary journalsand magazines, including TheColumbia Review, South CarolinaReview, Permafrost, and others.She is currently completing herfirst book of poetry.

JOSHUA SUICH (A) was a youthpastor in Florida for a year, thenspent a little over a year teachingEnglish in the public school systemof Daigo, Ibaraki, Japan. “Daigo isthe city, Ibaraki is the prefecture,which is a few hours north ofTokyo. I climbed Mt. Fuji and sawthe sites and had a great time. I kept a travel blog of it:www.jsuich.blogspot.com. Rightnow I am back in my home town ofAugusta, Ga., working as the headswim coach of the Augusta CountryClub and will be going to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary inCharlotte, N.C., in the fall.”

2006ERIN CALLAHAN (A) and MARK

INGHAM (A05) married on April27, 2008. This August the Inghamsmove to Santa Fe to do the EasternClassics program. Erin writes:

“I am a certified yoga instructorregistered with Yoga Alliance andhave my own yoga business, YogaEdge, teaching privately at studiosand at universities. My Web site iswww.yoga-edge.com.”

JONATHAN COPPADGE (A) isfinishing up his year as a St. John’sadmissions counselor. He will bereturning to Phillips AcademyAndover this summer to teachphilosophy and French beforecoming back to Annapolis inAugust and beginning at IndianCreek Upper School inCrownsville, where he will teachEnglish. He is happily settled intolife as an Eastporter, and remindshis classmates that they always havean open door and furnished tablewhen they come back to town.

“I am currently an AmeriCorpsmember building houses forHabitat for Humanity in Raleigh,N.C.,” writes DEBORAH MANGUM

(A). “Anyone interested intraveling, experimenting withdifferent fields, gathering differentexperiences after/during/beforecollege should look them up atamericorps.org.” x

What’s Up?The College wants to hear fromyou. Call us, write us, e-mail us.Let your classmates know whatyou’re doing. The next issuewill be published in October;deadline for the alumni notessection is September 10.

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

In Santa Fe:The College MagazineSt. John’s College1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; [email protected]

Happy in Alaska

MELISSA

(FECHT)HOUGLAND

(SFGI06)moved toFairbanks,

Alaska, in 2007 with herhusband, Jarrett, to take theassociate director position withthe Fairbanks Arts Association.“Seven months later, onNovember 15, 2007, we wereblessed with a beautiful babyboy, Blaise Anthony Hougland.We are all happy here in Alaska, loving both the 24-hoursummer sun and the -40 degree winters!” x


{ O b i t u a r i e s } 45

Chris Colby, a 30-year memberof the St. John’s Collegecommunity, died of cancer onThursday, March 27, 2008, at the age of 58. He joined thecollege in 1977 as assistantmanager of the Print Shop andwas promoted to manager in1979. Earlier this year, heguided the purchase and instal-lation of a new press thatgreatly expands the college’sprinting capabilities. He wasknown by those who workedwith him as a gentle and kindman, a hard-working andhelpful colleague, and atalented artist and craftsman.He enjoyed—among manythings—weaving, cooking forfriends, writing short fiction,and sharing stories of hisadventures in life.

At a memorial service held atthe college in April, friends,co-workers and studentsremembered Colby’s gifts tothe community. John Chris-tensen, the college’s director ofadmissions, said Colby missedvacations and weekends tofinish Print Shop projects ondeadline, but also “gave ofhimself” in many ways outsideof work.

“For some, he built book-shelves in our apartments orhouses; for others he repairedharpsichords and other musicalinstruments; for still others hebuilt kitchen cabinets andhelped construct decks,” Chris-tensen said. “He loved theseprojects for the lasting friend-ships that often resulted, butalso because he simply enjoyedputting his skills to use forothers in the community. . . .

“I think he was at hishappiest in these activities, buthe was also happy in anotherrole—that of mentor and surro-gate father for any number ofstudents, some of whomworked for him and some ofwhom he met in the writingworkshops he attended orthrough working with them onthe Gadfly and Energia.”

Howard Morsberger workedalongside Colby since 1981.“He was so much more thanjust a ‘boss,’” he said. “He wasabove all a mentor, a friend,and a companion. Chris was apassionate, but calm and soft-spoken man who gave me roomto make mistakes and growfrom them.”

Jack Brown (A08) describedhis initial dismay at beingassigned to work at the PrintShop; as he grew to know Colbyhe realized how fortunate hewas. “I had requested a job atthe library, or IT, and did notrelish spending a year standingin the dark making photocopieswhile a vaguely sinister-lookingman looked on from theshadows,” Brown said. “As youcan probably guess, that atti-tude changed; the Print Shopquickly became my home awayfrom dorm-room, and Chris mySt. John’s mentor. It was in thePrint Shop that I learnedunofficially about the college. Iheard the latest news, absorbedthe 30 years of lore Chris hadstored up in him and lovedsharing. . . When I look back onfour years here, Chris will beone of a few people who reallystand out. He was one of thepeople I was most looking

forward to keeping informedabout what I was doing with mylife, and visiting when I cameback.”

Colby became his unofficialmentor and career adviser,Brown added. “I will go betterplaces for having known him,my experience at this schoolwas enriched for having knownhim, and I cannot express myprofound sadness for theknowledge that when I leavehere. . . I will be leaving behinda school, a Print Shop, and acommunity that is a lesserplace for having lost ChrisColby.”

Colby’s wife, Mary—whoworked for 15 years in thecollege’s Admissions office—preceded him in death. Theyare survived by their daughter,Yve. Associate AdmissionsDirector Roberta Gable (A77)described how St. John’s waslike another home for Colby.“He loved the college, and heloved the Print Shop, and heloved us,” she said. “And Iwould say that the Print Shopwas the great love of his life if itweren’t utterly eclipsed by thegreat and steadfast and abidinglove he had for Mary and Yve, alove which was, I think, thedefining purpose of his life.” x

ALSO NOTED

LAURIE FINK COLBERG, class of1966, June 21, 2007ISAIAS GRANDES DEL MAZO,class of 1955, February 22,2008COMMANDER WILLIAM W.GRANT, class of 1941, January 4, 2008 MARIGENE BOYD HEDGES, classof 1958, November 19, 2007LAWRENCE MYERS, class of1951, February 2, 2008 ANJALI PAI (SFGI07), March 30, 2008RICHARD H. PEMBROKE, Jr.,class of 1932, January 4, 2008

Chris Colby Print Shop Manager, Annapolis

In his 30 years at St. John’s,Chris Colby mentoredstudents, shared his storiesand talents, and earned thefriendship and admiration ofthe greater college commu-nity.


{ O b i t u a r i e s }46

AL TOFT

by Mark Daly, Director of Laboratory

Albert Ritchie Toft, who was alab technician at St. John’sCollege in Annapolis from 1960to 2005, died of complicationsfrom Parkinson’s disease April20 in Annapolis. He was bornAugust 1, 1933, in Pasadena,Maryland, attended GeorgeWashington University, andwas a scientist at GoddardSpace and Flight Center inGreenbelt for 35 years.

I heard about Al when I washired as director of Laborato-ries at St. John’s in July 1985.He worked as a machinist alongwith a carpenter named JohnCooke in the laboratory’sphysics workshop. The physicsworkshop was, and still is,located in the basement ofMellon Hall. As Director ofLaboratories, one of myresponsibilities was super-vising the workshop. I wouldcollect broken equipment,equipment that needed to bemodified to suit the college’sneeds, and pencil drawings ofideas from me, students andtutors, and place them on aworkbench in the emptyphysics laboratory during theday. Al worked evenings andweekends, so I communicatedwith him through notes andpencil drawings. The next day Iwould return to find my equip-ment repaired or modified, andmy pencil drawing coming tolife with a note, “Is this whatyou wanted?” Most of the time,Al would take our ideas andimprove on them. I would pushhis creative talents further witha revised drawing, place it onthe empty workbench, and thenext day the new creationwould take shape. I coulddream, scribble down an idea,and put it on that empty work-bench, and he, with his gifts ofknowledge and creativity,would make it happen.

When I finally got to meet Al,he lived up to the picture I hadpainted of him in my mind. Iwalked into the dusty old base-ment workshop to be greetedby a cheerful, “Hello, youngman.” Here was the man whocould make those drawingscome to life. He looked like ascientist: clean cut, dark-rimmed glasses, and a lab coat.He was friendly and had anintelligence that commandedrespect.

Some time later, I visited Al atthe Goddard Space and FlightCenter, and he gave me a tourof the facilities. I came torealize the prize St. John’s waskeeping in that dusty physicsworkshop. Al was hired atGoddard as an entry-level tech-nician and worked his way up.He was now a leading scientistin the optics laboratory. Hismajor contributions to thespace program were inventinga new coating for the mirrors inspace and inventing a way tocoat them uniformly. He was adistinguished scientist withpublished works and his accom-plishments were noted in theSmithsonian Air and SpaceMuseum.

Al was aproblem solverwho loved a chal-lenge. His posi-tive outlook andproblem solvingabilities perme-ated his entirebeing. As hisParkinson’sdiseaseadvanced, heremained upbeatand always talkedabout the future.I remember oncehe pointed to adollar bill on the

bench, and told me, “I couldn’treach to pick up that dollar andput it in my pocket. I took mypill, sat down for five minutes,and now I can do it.” He wasfascinated by his affliction; helooked at it as a scientist.

Al was a caring and compas-sionate man. When his goodfriend John Cooke wasapproaching 90, he was stillworking in the workshop. Hisvision was going, and his worksuffered. Al wouldn’t hurt hisfriend and tell him to retire, sohe came up with a way to do itgently. I learned from Al’sexample, and when Al’sParkinson’s began affecting hiswork, I offered him the samerespect and compassion.

Today as I walk through thelaboratory classrooms inMellon Hall, I see Al’s legacyaround me. The equipmentthat was repaired, modified, orcreated by his hands speaks tome. Some speak to me of thebrilliant scientist, the problemsolver. Others remind me of hiscompassionate, friendly nature.They just say, “hello, youngman.”

ROZANNE KRAMER (SFGI68) Rozanne Edwards Kramer, a St.John’s Santa Fe Graduate Insti-tute alumnus and formermanager of the St. John’sAnnapolis bookstore, diedMarch 21, 2008. Ms. Kramerwas born in Leavenworth,Kansas, and as a child of anarmy colonel, she traveledextensively throughout herchildhood. She earned a bach-elor’s degree at OberlinCollege and worked on TheEvening Star in Washington,D.C., and The Evening Capitalin Annapolis.

She joined the St. John’s staffas manager of the Annapolisbookstore. When St. John’sopened its Santa Fe campus,she moved West with her then-husband, Clarence Kramer.After earning her graduatedegree at St. John’s, Ms.Kramer earned a secondmaster’s degree in SpecialEducation and enjoyed a 15-year career as a teacher anddrill team coach. She issurvived by three children, fivegrandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

JOHN DROEGE (A85)John Patrick Droege, ofPlymouth, Mass., died onJanuary 28, 2008. He was 46and was employed as a tech-nical salesman.

After graduating from St. John’s, Droege earned amaster’s in American Historyfrom the University of NotreDame. An avid outdoorsman,Droege was a member of the Manomet Center forConservation Science.

His parents, John and AileenDroege, would love to hearfrom classmates and tutors whoknew John; contact them at:[email protected].

He worked quietly at night in a basement work-shop in Mellon Hall, and laboratory inAnnapolis relied on Al Toft.

47


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

During my years at St. John’s, I neversuspected that Thucydides,Plutarch, and Machiavelliwere secretly preparing mefor a career in diplomacy,

but in hindsight it seems so obvious.I am a Foreign Service Officer (FSO)

of the U.S. Department of State. FSOscompose the U.S. government’s diplomaticcorps, staffing embassies and consulates inmore than 250 cities around the world. Assuch, we represent the United States to thegovernments of other countries and lookout for the welfare of American citizensabroad. As my employer frequently remindsme, I am the face of America overseas. Iknow this may seem strange to some of myclassmates who haven’t seen me in a fewyears, but it couldn’t be a more natural fit.

After joining the State Department inthe spring of 2004, I was first dispatched tointerview visa applicants at the U.S.Consulate in Chennai, India. One of thecore functions of American consulates isreviewing visa applications of foreignnationals who wish to travel to the UnitedStates. Though I joined the State Depart-ment as an Economic Officer, adjudicatingvisas is a sort of rite of passage for FSOs.Every newly hired officer is required to doat least one year of consular work uponjoining the department, and this usuallymeans working the visa line in a place like Chennai.

During my two years in India,I stood at a window much likeone might encounter at theDepartment of Motor Vehiclesand listened patiently as peopleexplained why they needed totravel to the states. In order toapprove most types of visa, anofficer must be convinced thatthe applicant plans to departfrom the states after a shortperiod of time, regardless ofwhy they wish to visit. Ofcourse, there is also a responsibility to try to keep out criminals, terrorists,human traffickers, drug lords,and other undesirables. My job

was to discern those who planned to followthe rules from those who did not in thespace of a two- to three-minute interview.In places like India, where wages are lowerand poverty more widespread than in theU.S., this is no simple task. I typically did 75-100 interviews every day. It wasinteresting work, though often draining.

At the conclusion of my assignment toIndia, I transferred to Japan to work atEmbassy Tokyo. Japan and India could notbe more different, and the abruptness ofthis transition left me reeling. Where Indiais colorful, noisy, and a trifle chaotic, somepeople find Japan to be grey, rigid, andsubdued. Despite its recent economicprogress, India is still very much a devel-oping country, where the morningcommute is regularly impeded by ox cartsor free-range cows blocking major thor-oughfares. Japan, by contrast, is one of themost highly developed economies and mostorderly societies in the world. While I amnormally the type of person to enjoy thesensory stimulation of the developingworld, after two years of it, Tokyo’s moremuted tones were a welcome change of pace.

The work could not be more different aswell. I currently work on the staff of U.S.Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Schieffer,helping to keep him informed about a widearray of issues requiring his attention.(Incidentally, Ambassador Schieffer has aSt. John’s connection: his son Paul gradu-

ated from the Annapolis campus in 2007.)In some ways, I am little more than a stan-dard-issue bureaucrat: I read reports, I goto meetings, I brief people, I compilereports, and I push papers—some virtual,some made of actual paper—from one placeto another.

But that’s only one part of the job. I havea ringside seat for what former Ambassadorto Japan Mike Mansfield famously called“the most important bilateral relationshipin the world, bar none.” My boss is on thenightly news on a regular basis. In the nextcouple of months, Japan will host the G-8Summit, and I’ll be in the middle of it. I have met cabinet secretaries, members ofCongress, one former and one current Vice President, and the home run king ofJapan. Not bad for a humble bureaucrat, if you ask me.

This may seem like a strange careerchoice for someone who not that long agospent his days playing Frisbee in front ofMeem Library and his nights ponderingKant, but I can’t imagine doing anythingelse. The Foreign Service is, in some ways,like St. John’s: a small and somewhatobscure organization with a lot of traditionand a culture all its own. The variety ofdifferent skills—and different parts of mybrain—that the work requires on a dailybasis is also familiar. I have to speakpersuasively, write clearly, struggle withforeign languages, and work throughcountless situations that lie outside of my

core competencies. If St. John’sprovides the ultimate generalisteducation, then the ForeignService is the ultimate generalistcareer. The longer I do this andthe more I come to understandthe values of the Service, themore I feel like this is what St.John’s was preparing me for allalong. x

The Face of Americaby Christopher Allison (SF97)

Chris Allison (SF97) shownhere with his wife, BethRollins, at the statue of theGreat Buddha of Kamakura,Japan, revels in Japaneseculture and traditions.


{ C r o q u e t }48

Jennifer Wright (A08), a wry observer of lifeat St. John’s, offered this tribute to croquet,“her favorite time of the year,” after her lastmatch as a student.

I’ve secretly smuggled a book to everyfootball game my family has evertaken me to, raising my head onlysporadically to say things like, “whenthey jump on each other—is thatgood?” Usually around that point,

the man sitting next to me spills a plate ofnachos on me, possibly out of rage. I fare nobetter when it comes to understanding therules of croquet.

This is not for lack of trying on the part ofthe members of the croquet team, who havegallantly attempted to explain it to me. Butthey start rambling about wickets anddriving the ball into the ground, and I getdistracted, and end up asking them whattheir costumes are going to be for the matchthis year. My total lack of understanding ofthe rules of the game has proved advanta-geous, at least during freshman year. I heardwild cheers from the audience and assumedwe’d won. We hadn’t. I went aroundcongratulating everyone. No one had theheart to correct me until the next day.

That does not in any way change the factthat croquet day is the best day of the year.In fact, croquet is the perfect sporting event

for a group of people who don’t particularlycare for sports. Much of our bookishness atSt. John’s may stem at least in part from ourinability to compete with our peers on thesoccer field. While students at other schoolsremember their winning touchdown, John-nies remember striking out at T-ball.

Which makes it even more amazing thatwe’re good at croquet. In fact, we’re the topranked team in the country. My assumingwe’d won was a fair assumption, consideringthe fact that we usually do. As a result, we’veoccasionally taken to having the victoryparty the night before croquet. And theparty is almost as amazing as croquet dayitself. The big band music plays hard andfast. And everyone is united in a single,bloodthirsty, Machiavellian desire to beatthe Navy—though the bloodthirstiness, to befair, is tempered by Cole Porter and straw-berries and champagne.

For one week in the spring, we have abitter school rival. We chant things abouthow we will “sweep” by winning everyround of croquet. I learned after freshman

year that when members of the croquet teamcome up to you and scream “how are we likea broom?” the correct answer is to screamback “we sweep!” and not to meekly reply“we remove debris?” We enact in essence,the rituals seen on most Big Ten campusesthat rarely make their way to quaint little St. John’s.

Because in a way, beating the tough guysat Navy at any sport seems to make up forthe fact that were always picked last fordodgeball. Watching the Johnnies sweep onthe croquet field, we feel, as we rarely do,like wild Spartan warriors. Just for a littlewhile though, before we go back to readingour T. S. Eliot for language class.

So, if you haven’t yet made it, venture toAnnapolis for croquet. You’ll be glad youdid. And nobody will judge you for bringinga book. x

I N L O V E W I T H

C R O Q U E Tga

ry p

ier

poin

t

{ C r o q u e t }


49

Heavy rain threatened cancellation of thecroquet match, but the competitors played onand the weather improved. The result: 3-2 St. John’s in a hard-fought andhonorable match. Opposite: Imperial Wicket Ian Hanover (A08), sporting a navy “uniform”bought online; Jennifer Wright and JessicaPerry (A09). Clockwise: John Ertle (A84) andhis son, David, 10, and President ChristopherNelson (A70); MaryIrene Ruffin Corrigan (A04)with daughter Mackenzie; fashionably attiredJohnnies: (l. to r.): Elsabe Dixon (A10), Elizabeth Fleming (A10), Sam Yelton (09),Ellen Barnhart (A10), Alexandra Munters(A09); Todd Grier (Class of 1938) opened thematch by striking the ceremonial first ball;Mary Gillmarten, mother of Charles (A08),offered custom-made croquet cookies.


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

Last night I saw MartinScorcese’s Shine a Light, aconcert film of the RollingStones at New York City’sBeacon Theatre. The finalimage of the film is a photo-

graph of Ahmet Ertegun, class of 1944; the film is dedicated to his memory. Mr. Ertegun, co-founder of AtlanticRecords, was backstage at the Beacon onthe first night of this concert, October 29,2006, when he suffered the fall that led tohis death later that year.

Seeing that tribute from a remarkablefilmmaker to a legend in the recordingindustry made me think about the ways inwhich we honor people. St. John’s, unlikemost other colleges and universities,doesn’t grant honorary degrees to thedistinguished individuals who speak atCommencement each spring. However, theAlumni Association, since 1949, hashonored people in two ways: granting theAward of Merit to our alumni “for distin-guished and meritorious service to theUnited States, or to his/her native state, or to St. John’s College; or for outstandingachievement within his/her chosen field,”and granting Honorary Alumnus/a statusto people who have had such close involve-ment in the St. John’s community that wewant them to join us as “permanentmembers of the college.”

Ahmet Ertegun, who shaped the careersof so many amazing musicians and co-founded Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame, wasproud to come to Homecoming in 1994 to

accept his Award of Merit. (Mr. Erteguncontinues to contribute to our communitythrough the Ahmet Ertegun EducationFund; Led Zeppelin reunited to raisemoney for scholarships on the Annapoliscampus as well as several Europeanschools.)

Our Award of Merit winners represent abroad spectrum of alumni in manydifferent fields. Also in the music industry,there’s Jac Holzman (A52), who startedElektra Records in 1950 when he was astudent. In journalism, Ray Cave (A48),editor of Time magazine; in filmmaking,screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64) and cinematographer Tom Stern (SF69), whosemany films include Unforgiven, AmericanBeauty, and Mystic River; Annapolis tutorHoward Zeiderman (A67), was honored in2002 for his work with the TouchstonesDiscussion Project. He shared the podiumthat year with classmates includingCandace Brightman, who created the lightshows for the Grateful Dead. Our alumnihave also made tremendous contributionsin government, industry, and in not-for-profits and non-governmental organiza-tions as well as significant contributions to the future of St. John’s. We recognizethese at the Homecoming Dinner onSaturday night.

Our Honorary Alumni are welcomedinto our community each year during theAll-alumni Gatherings held during the day on Saturday of Homecoming. Theseare individuals who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to our educational program and the community.Last year, we gave the award to twomembers of the Annapolis community,Robert Hunt and Alton Waldron, each ofwhom has participated in the college’scommunity seminars for 50 years. Often,we honor retiring tutors and long-timestaff members, recognizing their

impact—people like Barbara Leonard(HA55) and Brother Robert Smith (HA90).Last year, we again honored Jeffrey Bishop(HA87), the long-time vice president of thecollege, who died last July. Jeff was one ofthe very few Honorary Alumni to also berecognized with an Award of Merit,presented posthumously, for his greatcontributions to the college.

This year at Santa Fe Homecoming, theAlumni Association will also single out aspecial group for recognition: the Class of1968, the first students to graduate fromthe campus. These men and women were bold enough to be the pioneers of an emerging campus and they deserverecognition.

Complete lists of our Award of Meritrecipients and Honorary Alumni are on the Alumni Association Web site. Go to the St. John’s Web site at: www.stjohnscol-lege.edu, and click on Alumni. If you wouldlike to nominate individuals for the Awardof Merit or as Honorary Alumni, contactthe Alumni office on either campus: Jo AnnMattson in Annapolis,[email protected]; or Michael Bales inSanta Fe, [email protected]. TheNominations Committee of the AlumniAssociation will be pleased to consideryour suggestions.

Jason Walsh (A85)Alumni Association President

From the AlumniAssociation President

50

ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONAll alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independentorganization, with a Board of Directorselected by and from the alumni body. Theboard meets four times a year, twice on eachcampus, to plan programs and coordinate theaffairs of the association. This newsletterwithin The College magazine is sponsored bythe Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest.

President – Jason Walsh (A85)Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74)Secretary – Joanne Murray (A70)Treasurer – Richard Cowles (SFGI95)

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

These are individualswho have demonstrated

an outstanding commitment to our

educational programand the community.

Jason Walsh (a85)

{ A l u m n i A s s o c i a t i o n N e w s } 51


Aweek after St. John’s putaway Navy during theannual croquet match inAnnapolis, a group of Johnnies were carrying onthe tradition 3,000 miles

away by taking on some recent graduatesfrom the University of California, Berkeley.

Fortunately, the Northern Californiachapter of the Alumni Association alsocarried on the tradition of winning. Co-Imperial Wickets Jessica Finefrock(SF05) and Nathan Stalnaker (A04) led theJohnnies to a dramatic, down-to-the wirevictory in the first-ever Westside CroquetMatch. Stalnaker hit the winning stroke:“It went through two wickets—all from oneswing,” he says. About 25 chaptermembers and friends attended the matchand a picnic afterward at Lake Merritt inOakland. The event could become anothertradition for this lively chapter thatcombines social events and seminars thatappeal to younger and older alumni alike.

“The spirit of the chapter is fun,” sayschapter president Reynaldo Miranda (A99).

Despite the challenges of traveldistances and hectic schedules, chapterevents are popular draws for alumni of allages. “I think what inspires people to comeand join in is seeing other Johnnies they

know, the quality of the readings for seminars, and whether a tutor is leadingthe discussion,” says Miranda. YoungerJohnnies, especially those new to the area,tend to look for networking opportunities.“This is one of our great challenges, howto better meet that need,” he adds.Informal happy hours for recent alumni—coordinated by Laura Manion (A04) everytwo weeks—have been popular amongyounger members of the chapter.

The 2008 season of seminars anddinners was launched by a January visitfrom Santa Fe tutor Phil LeCuyer, who leda seminar on Hans Jonas’ essay, “Is God aMathematician? The Meaning of Metabo-lism.” Fifteen chapter members attendedthe seminar, hosted by Neal Allen (SF78)at McKesson Corp. headquarters in SanFrancisco. Then attendees drove an hourto savor more conversation over dinner atCafé Zoetrope, a restaurant at filmmakerFrancis Ford Coppola’s winery in Napa

Valley. Andrea S. Hines (SF05) hosted thedinner.

In February, Santa Fe President MichaelPeters led a well-attended seminar onShakespeare’s Henry V; about 65 alumniturned up for a reception afterward. Tutor Peter Pesic led two seminars onHeidegger in San Francisco, and manyalumni traveled to nearby Moraga to attendPesic’s piano recital at St. Mary’s College.

The chapter also invites local tutoremeriti and former St. John’s tutors. For example, Jim Forkin, a former Santa Fetutor, delivered a lecture on Shakespeare’sTempest and Machiavelli. Former tutor andAnnapolis dean Tom Slakey (HA94) ofSacramento usually leads one of the semi-nars at the chapter’s annual summer Stag’sLeap Wine Cellars reunion in Napa, hostedby Warren and Barbara Winiarkski of theclasses of 1952 and 1955 respectively.

Last year, Howard Zeiderman (A67)drew a crowd of 49 for a seminar on JorgeLuis Borges’ stories “The Library ofBabel” and “Pierre Menard, Author of theQuihote.” Participants filled a long confer-ence-room table and some sat along thewalls, but as big as the group was, theseminar worked, he says. “I think all thepeople participated. Also there was awonderful blend of text, experience, andreflection on the college, so it was nevermerely academic.” x

ALBUQUERQUERobert Morgan, [email protected]

ANNAPOLISBeth Martin Gammon,

[email protected]

AUSTIN/SANANTONIO

Toni Wilkinson,SFGI87

512-278-1697wilkinson_toni

@hotmail.com

BOSTONDianne Cowan, [email protected]

CHICAGORick Lightburn, [email protected]

DALLAS/FORTWORTH

Paula Fulks, [email protected]

DENVER/BOULDERElizabeth Jenny [email protected]

HOUSTONNorman Ewart A85713-303-3025norman.ewart@rosetta

resources.com

MADISONConsuelo Sañudo,

SGI00 [email protected]

MINN./ST. PAULCarol Freeman, [email protected]

NEW YORK CITYDaniel Van Doren, A81914-949-6811dvandoren@

optonline.net

NORTH CAROLINARick Ross A82919-319-1881

[email protected] Ross A92Elizabeth@

activated.com

NORTHERN CALIF.Reynaldo Miranda, A99415-333-4452reynaldo.miranda@

gmail.com

PHILADELPHIAHelen Zartarian, AGI86215-482-5697helenstevezartarian@

mac.com

PHOENIXDonna Kurgan, [email protected]

PITTSBURGHJoanne Murray, A70724-325-4151Joanne.Murray@

basicisp.net

PORTLANDJennifer Rychlik, [email protected]

SAN DIEGOStephanie Rico, [email protected]

SALT LAKE CITYErin Hanlon, SF03916-967-2194e.i.mhanlon@

gmail.com

SANTA FERichard Cowles,

[email protected]

SEATTLEJames Doherty, [email protected]

SOUTH FLORIDAPeter Lamar, [email protected]

SOUTHERN CALIF.Jan Conlin, SF85 [email protected]

WASHINGTON, D.C.Ed Grandi, A77301-351-8411

[email protected]

WESTERN NEWENGLAND

Peter Weis, SF84413-367-2174peter_weis@

nmhschool.org

St. John’s College

Alumni Association

Providingopportunities

for more alumnito connect

more often andmore richly

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

Seminars, Croquet and FunCalifornia Johnnies Enjoy a Lively Chapter

“The spirit of the chapter is fun.”

Reynaldo Miranda (A99)


{ S t . J o h n ’ s F o r e v e r }

Arider stops to gaze up at theemerging St. John’s campusin the early 1960s. A fewyears before, St. John’sPresident Richard Weigledescribed the property—the

bulk of which was a gift from architect JohnGaw Meem and his wife, Faith, as “240acres of piñon- and juniper-studded landon the lower slope of Monte Sol.”

This was the campus that greeted themembers of the class of 1968 when theyfirst arrived in Santa Fe. As Weigle raisedfunds to build the new campus, Meem

worked with the architecture firm Holienand Buckley on the master plan.

In a piece he wrote for a college promo-tional brochure, Meem described theTerritorial style and why it was right for St. John’s. “The buildings of St. John’sCollege in Santa Fe will reflect practicallyall the historical phases. . . . Theirterraced, flat-roofed masses recall theirancient aboriginal American origin; thebalconies, portales and patios recall theSpain they came from, and the stuccoedwalls with their brick cornices will remindus of our Territorial past.”

The campus’ design would be“completely contemporary and yetreflecting the rich inheritance of the past,”Meem wrote. “Perhaps in a small way, thismay be a worthy symbol of the way St. John’s College looks at its task in theworld.”

Many more buildings have been added tothe campus since, and more will be addedin the next few years: a new residentialcenter and the Dr. Norman and BettyLevan Hall, which will house the GraduateInstitute.x

52

An Emerging Campus

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


Alumni Calendar Make plans for Homecoming!Annapolis, September 26-28, andSanta Fe, on October 10-12.See you there.

Santa Fe Alumni Art Show: “The Lunatic, The Lover, The Poet”September 19 – October 11, 2008A highlight of the fall semester in Santa Feeach year is the opening of the Annual All-Alumni Art Show, marking its eighth yearin 2008. This year’s theme is inspired by apassage from Shakespeare’s A MidsummerNight’s Dream:

“Lovers and madmen have suchseething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever

comprehends.The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,Are of imagination all compact. . .”

Opening Reception:Friday, September 19, 5-8 p.m.Closing Reception for Homecoming attendees:Saturday, October 11, 6-7 p.m.

In Paca Garden

In Paca Garden, walled and drythey built the Old World in the New,and there walked girl and woman, Iwith man and boy (remember?), you.

As if to keep all life at bayand shut our eyes to hear a storywe dressed the truth in solemn play:my quiet house of ancient glory,

linen and tea; your Russian home,the dying count, a summons back.Were those bricked streets our sunny

Rome,or Paris? You spotted in a crack

a flash of gold; I wore it roundmy neck for days. You wondered whyI prized the broken chain you found;you feared and could not meet my eye.

We played pretend, but much came true:our Old World gave us the refrain,with words dictated by the New.I have, but never wear, the chain.

Like faery queen and knight of oldwe lingered in determined bliss:a string of nonsense, trampled gold,a small thing, but too bright to miss.

—Ruth Johnston (Staver, A85)

Eagerly awaiting the next Homecoming in Annapolis

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The College Magazine Summer 2008

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