rationality, spirituality, and emotions

From: Vida
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 22:50
my feelings about the reunion are deeply entangled with my feelings about Ken... As I recall, my Freshman year at St. John's included a few suicide attempts. There was something about the era, the isolation and other vulnerabilities involved.

Hi Vida and All,

What a pleasure to have something other than the reunion to talk about -- like suicide and death. (Sorry, just a joke -- on myself -- for calling it a pleasure.)

My first year (in Annapolis) was very hard -- my second year was worse. (Things got better when I got to Santa Fe, thanks.)

With a brief break in Alaska after St. John's (teaching school in a remote Indian village, a disastrous experience for which I was totally unprepared), I soon ended up in Berkeley, exploring pop-psychology and spirituality (officially in Unitarian theological school, partly to avoid the draft). That led to a year of serious work with autistic children at Napa State Mental Hospital (kids who had been virtually abandoned until a psychologist had gotten funding to start a program for them), then to a fairly serious zen practice for awhile, and identification as a Buddhist. Back in Alaska after 1975 I continued exploring various kinds of therapy and self-help groups, even taking all the courses in the graduate counseling and community psychology program at UAA, and working for a couple of years with street alcoholics for the Salvation Army. (Intermittently I also had a series of progressively more responsible bookkeeping jobs that eventually led to my being -- or at least calling myself -- a self-taught accountant, while manager of an international economic development consulting firm in D.C., which led to my studying economics, which is where I'm at now.)

But the point I want to make is that, at least for me, St. John's was very one-sided. It was what I wanted, don't get me wrong -- even though I wasn't very good at dealing with it. But I often thought later that concurrent meditation practice would have helped me. Or maybe some kind of concurrent encounter group. Maurie reminded me recently that she and some others were in a Christian prayer group, and I can imagine that that was very helpful for them.

That's not to say that, if mediation and/or encounter had been available, I would have participated, or been able to benefit. Possibly I had to find those things in my own time, in my own way. And in that, I'm sure that St. John's helped.

I'm convinced that we're living in a very difficult transitional period -- possibly getting worse before it gets better. Surely it will get better?

An historian I like (J.H. Plumb) referred to "the end of an epoch", by which he meant that the basic social institutions which have supported us since the beginning of the neolithic age (the beginning of agriculture) about 10,000 years ago, and the beginning of civilization (cities) about 5,000 years ago -- the family, state, religion, school, and cities themselves -- are breaking down under the stress of the scientific/technological/industrial revolution. Lots of other writers also identify a similar structural break occurring now.

So we had that too. And of course we were young.

But what I'm wondering about is whether the St. John's program (and St. John's students) would benefit from some form of "elective" (dare I say the word?) meditation, or group-encounter, or both?

Welcome Debbie!

Debbie Rodman (nee Lawther) and I have known each other since our days together in the the Unitarian LRY (Liberal Religious Youth, a misnomer if ever there was one except that we were young and we were liberal in more ways than our parents would condone!). I last saw Debbie in Kent back in '96 for the first time since I'd graduated and stayed in touch with her via e-mail for a few years. So I was thrilled to see that she'd surfaced again and is back in the States. By remarkable coincidence we're both in Kentucky right now so we'll have a chance to meet and catch up.

Once again, welcome back classmate!

Carl Bostek
SF '68

how about getting the Alumni Association to conduct the survey?

From: Allison Lemons Date: May 15, 2007 9:51:48 AM CDT
How about getting the Alumni Association to conduct the survey? ... You can put me on as a sponsor of the survey...


Thanks Allison, Carl, David, Don W., Ellin, Phil, and Tom for being willing to cosponsor the survey!

Are there any others who are willing to put your name "on the line"? (I believe you are, Gus, but I'll await your confirmation when you get a chance to read your email.) I’ll explain a bit more below why this might be important.

First I want to mention that Debbie Rodman Lawther – back in Kentucky after many years in the UK – has joined us (making 33 who have “checked in” about reunion-planning!) and is looking forward to a Homecoming/Class Reunion in Santa Fe in 2008. I’ve attached an updated spreadsheet including her email address and what is known about all others. I get so happy when a new person checks in, or even when I find contact info for someone for whom I didn’t have it before – please help!

I'm blind-copying those who would rather avoid lots of emails (so they'll be spared continuing discussion), but I’ll also post this message to the blog (http://sjcsfalums.blogspot.com/) so perhaps some of the discussion can shift there. (Whether there’s a way to attach a spreadsheet to the blog – and replace it periodically with updated versions – I don’t know. David, do you know? Or perhaps that wouldn’t be desirable, since it would make it public?)

Now about lobbying the Alumni Association board to conduct a survey of all Santa Fe alums about scheduling Homecoming:

I've been told that the College has problems with technology and with data -- so an online survey has two hurdles to jump right there. In addition, I'm told that the Alumni Relations Office -- which we might think of as the "secretariat" for the Alumni Association -- is under-funded and understaffed. And the association itself is a volunteer organization, paying expenses out of our annual dues. So there’s a natural tendency to avoid things having to do with technology, data, money, and time/effort. And – perhaps because of ignorance about the ease of online technology – there may be a fear that a survey of all Santa Fe alums would be quite expensive and time-consuming.

Then there’s the fact that they’ve already changed their Homecoming-scheduling policy – possibly for lots of complicated reasons beyond the announced one, that they believe it will make for more vibrant and rewarding Homecoming-experiences for us. When I tried to ask about those other possible reasons (since the reason given seemed a bit thin to me), I hit a stone wall of defensiveness (which is why we're now in the position of organizing a survey ourselves). But those other possible reasons are actually beside the point, I believe (unless the College simply doesn't want Homecomings in the summer regardless of how many -- or few -- can attend in the fall; in which case they should say so).

We’re pursuing a two-prong strategy:

We’re preparing as professional a survey as we can (more on that in a moment; you've seen the draft before).

And we’re lobbying the alumni board to get the association to sign-on as official sponsor of the survey, giving them some prior oversight of it’s contents before it goes out, and thus hopefully getting them more willing to act based on its results.

If they’re unwilling to cooperate, we might decide to send out the survey anyway, and/or to schedule and organize our own Reunion.

But I’m hopeful that we’ll get them to cooperate. In that respect, if there’s anyone you know on the association board (http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/?AlumniAssociation2), please discuss the matter with them, and let us know what you find out. We have a multi-pronged lobbying effort going on, the details of which I won’t go into now. But if you make sympathetic contact with someone on the board, we can get them in touch with others so they can strategize together.

Don Whitfield, who is in Chicago, has just given us the results of a survey done there (on local issues) by the Chicago chapter president, Rick Lightburn (SF’76), whom I plan to contact. He apparently does surveys professionally, and might be willing to look over our draft and suggest improvements.

I’d like as many people as possible to sign on as cosponsors of our survey – and I plan to ask the 34 people from later classes who responded to my little poll as well – because that will give added credibility, I believe, when we formally present what we propose to the Alumni Association. (If we're going to go ahead anyway with something quite professional and broadly-sponsored, and thus quite credible, wouldn't they be wise to sign on to get a little control?)

Beyond that, there are two (or perhaps three) big chores:

One is setting up the survey on www.SurveyMonkey.com or some other online site – and Carl has volunteered to work on that (and might welcome help?).

Then there is emailing an invitation to participate in the survey to all the Santa Fe alums, and I have volunteered (as long as I’m not in Alaska at the time -- so either before June 17, or after August 1) to go through the college’s online alumni site and extract all the email addresses of Santa Fe alums (I will welcome help, of course, as it will probably take a day or two of fulltime work).

And then – assuming that the online site tabulates the results automatically -- someone will have to interpret and report them. If the association signs on as official sponsor, I would think that someone on the board (Lightburn?) might want to do that (though we would certainly want access to the data too).

Anyway, it all seems doable to me. What do you think?

Regards,
Rick

Pink Adobe

The Pink Adobe has been sold. Part of the Albuquerque Journal's May 9, 2007, story follows.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Longtime Owners Sell Pink Adobe

By Kiera Hay
Journal Staff Writer
After 63 years, the Pink Adobe has passed from the hands of the Murphy-Hoback family.
Long a favorite for its tasty food and cozy ambiance, the Pink was purchased Tuesday by David and Christie Garrett, founders of Burlington, Vt.-based the Garrett Hotel Group, whose holdings include the Inn of the Five Graces, just down the street from the Pink Adobe.
Priscilla Hoback, whose mother Rosalea Murphy founded the restaurant, said the decision to sell was "agonizing."
"It was a very long, thought-out, carefully weighed decision. It's been in my family since 1944," she said.
Negotiations for the Old Santa Fe Trail property have been ongoing for about a year, she said. Ultimately, selling the restaurant to David Garrett was a logical choice, it seems.
The Garrett Hotel Group leased the buildings that house the Inn of the Five Graces five years ago. According to a press release issued Tuesday, "The Inn of the Five Graces lacked one major component to transform it into a world-class hotel like the others in the (Garrett) group— a great restaurant."
Since its inception in 1944, the Pink has grown to include the popular Dragon Room bar and Café Pink.
Murphy passed away in 2000, leaving ownership to Hoback and her son, Joseph Hoback, Priscilla Hoback said. Joseph's wife, Jennifer Wilson Hoback, who also ran the restaurant, will join the Garrett Hotel Group.

Whatever became of Frank Hoback?

What We Do Now and How We Got Here From There, 40+ Years Ago

Having scared myself to death by seeing the size of this type face, I'm not sure I can go on. Nonetheless, Tom, I wanted to respond to your nice invitation to tell you about my job conducting freight trains in the NYC area, mostly at Port Newark. Whew; this makes me nervous as a cat! Give me large noisy moving equipment any day over having to look at my own typing in huge letters. Would welcome advice on how to shrink this stuff to a size less similar to gravestone lettering.

Pensieve

A repository for memories we wish to share from those years at the College. Just add your story, anecdote or memory as a comment to this post.

Santa Fe 1968 Gallery

These photos were all provided by Tom Keens.
(Click on any photo to see it full size.)