Hi, Charlie!

It's an interesting document, with lots of articles directly on-topic, an excerpt from Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried, and some articles less directly about the memorial.

One of the articles is by Lynda Van Devanter, who was a nurse at the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku; these photographs, both of which were taken at the 71st, are among the illustrations. (This article, too, is a book excerpt, from Home Before Morning.)

My office phone rang. Since it was an external call, and I didn't recognize the number, odds were it was either a vendor or a wrong number. Nope; Lauren Morgan introduced herself as an editor with Boston Publishing, and she was working with Vietnam Veterans of America on a magazine issue. They'd found a couple of my pictures on Flickr, and wanted to use them to illustrate an article. I asked which photos they were planning to use, which she described, and I said sure. We talked about some details for a few minutes, and the conversation ended.

She called again last week, asking where to mail the complimentary copies. Those showed up yesterday. They're really quite beautiful; much higher quality than I anticipated. I do find it odd that she contacted me at work; while I've always known it was possible (I've had the same work phone number for 20 years, and it's available on the web), I'm reasonably certain it's easier to find my home number, which is where I usually field out-of-the-blue calls.

I bought my copy of The Things They Carried shortly after the book was first published, and heard Tim talk about the book this summer at Macalester's reunion. Delighted to share a magazine with him; certainly never expected it to happen. Haven't read Home Before Morning, but I've just added it to my Amazon wishlist.

I attended the Class of 1982's twenty-fifth anniversary reunion at Macalester College in June, and have been digesting the experience ever since. Some thoughts....

Many people find value in a reunion's networking: Reconnecting with old friends, retelling old tales, and spinning new tales about the shared trip to middle age. I'm not one of those folks. My reunion was more about memory, about exploring a familiar neighborhood, about revisiting a place that still gives my life a foundation.

My networking efforts failed, anyway. Of eighty or so classmates who attended the reunion, only two clearly remembered me. My odd academic history made for some discomfort, as many conversations necessarily began with a discussion of why I didn't seem familiar. My response involved enrolling at Mac in 1967, dropping out as a sophomore, a Vietnam year, classes at another institution, a decade spent mostly working in politics, and returning to complete my degree. My January graduation further confounds things.

Our Class Reunion theme was "Get Over It." This theme implies an unasked question: Was (is) the Macalester experience worth the price? The question came up by implication in those conversations with imperfectly-remembered classmates, by reference in a presentation exploring our responses to a reunion survey, and quite explicitly twice at the Class Dinner: Our hostess (Mary Morse Marti, I think) wandered around the topic for several minutes before explicitly raising the question as something she still found difficult to answer, and Macalester's President Brian Rosenberg told us he considers all the early-eighties classes to be problems because their members have largely detached themselves from the community. These concerns have causes.

My classmates experienced the tail-end of the school's budget crisis, and it's quite possible to portray their college years harshly. They (we) remember the classrooms and dorms at their worst--old buildings, in many cases, whose maintenance had been deferred, then deferred again, as the college stumbled through the seventies. They attended a school whose glory years--the sixties--seemed impossible to recover in a very different political and economic climate, and whose present was dominated by fiscal concerns. Entire departments were, in the memories of my classmates, academically inadequate; students who concentrated in those disciplines feel particularly aggrieved about their Macalester experience. And, of course, my class directly remembers the football losing streak, which ended during "our" junior year (quotes because I wasn't actually there).

For many of my classmates, then, their college career is a bitter-sweet memory. It strained the family budget, and left them personally in heavy debt, without delivering the satisfactions they'd thought--and still think--they should get from a liberal arts education. Their dissatisfaction is grounded in reality, and their questions about value are reasonable. Perhaps it really was an exercise in futility.

A final annoyance: After we graduated, the school's finances recovered. While no one begrudges our successors their good fortune, it gives us yet another unsatisfactory comparison. It's really quite sane to believe the early-80s classes at Mac drew a bad hand.

While I think this is a fair summary of the sentiments I heard at the reunion, it's certainly as distorted a portrait of Macalester as the Oversimplified History I sketched a few days ago. I'll talk about why in the next installment.

Context: Macalester is a small liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was a Mac freshman in 1967, and graduated with the class of 1982.

Anyone from the Mac community who stumbles upon this essay is encouraged correct or enhance it in the comments. Thanks.

A Vastly Oversimplified History of Macalester College

Every campus has a narrative, and that narrative shapes the college culture. These stories may emphasize unimportant details; they ignore entire decades. Macalester's, like most, begins with a founder, has a key figure who shaped the college, skips lightly through the decades, mentions some key teachers and graduates, describes a major crisis, and looks brightly to the future. To the best of my ability, here's the Macalester story.

If anyone's done a similar narrative for another school, I'd be grateful for a pointer. Thanks.

Edward Duffield Neill & Charles Macalester

Edward Duffield Neill founded Macalester College in 1874, served as its first president, and taught classes for many years. The minister to St. Paul's First Presbyterian Church, Neill had been Minnesota's Superintendent of Public Education and Chancellor of the State University (The U's ancestor, apparently). He'd subsequently had positions in the Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Grant administrations. Banker/financier Charles Macalester, now famous mostly for owning a fancy house overlooking the Delaware, made a real estate contribution to the young school, but plays no other role in this tale. Since Neill and Macalester were both Philadelphia natives, prominent Presbyterians, and politically active, albeit from different generations, I presume they were acquainted.

James Wallace

James Wallace, who joined the faculty in 1887 and taught until 1939, is the most important single individual in the school's history. Dr. Wallace was Macalester's president from 1894 through 1906; his presidential term both stabilized the college finances and established the college culture. One of the dorms is named after President Wallace, and the Fine Arts Center bears his wife's name.

Among Dr. Wallace's legacies to his college was his son....

DeWitt Wallace

If you've spent a few days on the campus, you've likely heard a Readers Digest joke. All Mac students and alumni recognize a heavy debt to the magazine; that recognition generally expresses itself as irony.

DeWitt Wallace began his student career at Mac about the time Dr. Wallace surrendered his presidency and returned to teaching. The younger Wallace made his fortune as the founder/editor of Readers Digest. While he did not graduate from Macalester, his affection for the school ensured the school's financial stability for much of the twentieth century.

There's more about Wallace down the page, but we'll skip to the end for now: DeWitt Wallace passed away on March 30, 1981. (Concert Choir, of which I was a member, sang at his memorial service.) It soon became clear that his will provided a substantial endowment for the college, though the gift had significant emcumbrances.

The school's library, built in the mid-eighties, bears DeWitt Wallace's name.

Macalester students are told a story involving DeWitt Wallace, a cow, a stairway, and Old Main. Dunno if it's true.

Charles Turck

Dr. Turck was President of Macalester College from 1939 through 1958. The school has a decidedly international focus; this is a Turck legacy.

Digression: Hubie & Others

Hubert Humphrey taught at Macalester during World War II; he returned to the school after his Vice-Presidency. The Humphrey anecdote at Mac describes a class session which continued for hours, adjourned for supper, and resumed in the evening.

Macalester's most generally famous current faculty members appear to be Diane Glancy and Wang Ping; former choral director Dale Warland also has some fame, as does one-time Newton's Apple host Jan Serie. As you'd anticipate, many current and former faculty members are well-known within their academic disciplines. David White, Mary Gwen Owen, Ted Mitau, Dave McCurdy, Hildegard Johnson, Chuck Green--these fine teachers, famous within Macalester's community memory, had less public impact beyond the campus.

Walter and Joan Mondale are Macalester alumni. Kofi Annan graduated from Mac. More recent alums include Tim O'Brien (the writer, not the singer), Bob Mould, Charles Baxter, Dorothy Benham, Jeremy & JJ Allaire, Stephen Paulus, Pete Fenn, and Peter Berg. (Someone please mention more women I should include on this list. Miji Reoch seems to be the best I can manage, and it's likely you've never heard of her.)

The two preceding paragraphs are necessarily time and interest bound. Another author would certainly name different names, though I'd anticipate some overlaps.

Alex Haley spent a lot of time on campus, though he wasn't part of the faculty. Apparently he wrote Roots (or was it Malcolm X's autobiography?) in what used to be International House but is now the President's Residence.

Then there's the football thing.

Steeples

Macalester sought to raise its academic profile during the sixties. This campaign had several components; these included a building spree, several new faculty hires, and a fair bit of curricular experimentation. The key component, to all appearances, was a decision to enlist better students. Ten percent of my freshman classmates were National Merit Scholarship finalists. Other schools recruit football players; Mac recruited--and still recruits--bright kids. The school also went out of its way to encourage the enrollment of international and minority students, with interesting effects on the campus culture.

At my first Macalester convocation, someone (I think it was the provost) compared Mac to Stanford, and talked about creating "Pinnacles of Excellence" within the college community. Rich Greenwood turned this image into a parody of the Up with People theme song: "Up, Up, with Steeples! You meet 'em wherever you go. Up, Up, with Steeples! They're the best kind of profs, you know. If more people met more steeples, more steeples everywhere, there'd be a lot more people to worry about, and a lot less people who cared."

Simultaneous with the change in the student makeup was a political shift; late-sixties Macalester was considerably left-of-center, even after you allow for the national and local political landscapes. This was an engagement politics: One fifth of the student body was active in the 1968 election (I know this because I helped coordinate that effort), and I'm one of scores who remained active in the Democratic Party.

There's some evidence that the college overhaul was built on a risky financial foundation.

The Financial Crisis

The campus changes evidently didn't sit well with our benefactor, as Mr. Wallace severely reduced his commitment to the school around 1970. This reduction nearly undid the college, as the school's relationship with Wallace approached dependency. After a couple difficult years, the trustees appointed a new president and reached an accommodation with the Wallace family. A decade of retrenchment followed, during which maintenance was neglected, school fundraising was diversified, and (according to student memory) the college wandered from its educational mission.

Recovery

DeWitt Wallace's will created several foundations, one of which became the basis for securing the Macalester endowment. This gift made the college Famously Rich, and permitted the school to recover its educational mission. While there've been a few setbacks along the way, the school remains well-to-do.

Except that tuition and board have gotten ridiculously expensive, the school prospers. We all look forward to Good Things.

Remember the headline, atop this discourse: An oversimplified history. This little essay's largely factual, but it's a myth.

Though it's well into October, the trees remain stubbornly green. Joan and I went out looking for color on Saturday, with little luck; I got a few worthwhile pix, which I'll doubtless post to Flickr, but the color distribution was one tree here, another across the field.

Took this on yesterday's lunch break. Colors are finally changing....

For a couple years, Cami was among baseball's best; a gold-glove third baseman with excellent hitting skills. I remember him more as an infielder than a hitter; a cat-like pounce and a rifled throw to first. Fans in Houston and San Diego loved the man for his soft-spoken competitiveness. The mid-90s Padres were a formidable team, and for two summers Cami outshone Gwynn and Rickey. Quite an accomplishment.

Of course, we now believe that Caminiti's 1996 MVP season was steroid-assisted, and discount the accomplishment. As we should, I think. That discount brings danger, though; we tend to forget the man and condemn his memory for his Great Sin. In this case, the Sin does not make the following untrue: Ken Caminiti was a talented and disciplined ballplayer; no drug could, alone, have made him the National League's Most Valuable Player. His obituaries make it clear that his teammates thought him a troubled soul; in the end, his demons got him. A sad story.

I also had a heart attack on October 10, 2004; I lived to tell about it. In my heart, Ken's death and my life are connected.

It's also nearly six decades old. A piece of furniture gets pretty battered if you use it every day for 57 years. Even if it cost a fortune, and even if it's made of oak.

Mom passed away a couple years ago, and basically left everything to everyone. The desk was one of the easy pieces to settle: Debbie wanted to preserve it, while Richard and I had/have no interest in it whatever. We both recognize the quality, but it won't fit well in our offices, it needs to be refinished, and the emotional connection's pretty weak. Debbie's office needs are different (she's a preacher-in-training), and she's clearly more attached to the desk than we are. That's fine.

All this came up last weekend as Joan and I were helping Debbie move. Debbie still can't believe I don't want the desk....

Samuel Pepys chose to hear the last sermon of Dr. William Bates.  His diary entry ends with this exceptionally moving passage:

I pray God keep peace among us, and make the Bishops careful of bringing in good men in their rooms, or else all will fly a-pieces; for bad ones will not [go] down with the City.

Great Britain was still reeling from religious wars, and it wasn't clear that they'd not resume.  One of the many fascinations of Pepys' Diary is the insight it shows into that turbulent time.

Joan and I heard Garnet when he was in town last year; that was a powerful evening built on what I took to be a version of his standard performance set. Tonight's show, before a substantially smaller audience, was quite different; perhaps more relaxed, differently introspective, with fewer tales. Garnet's a droll story-teller, a strong and exceptional singer, a very good writer--and an formidible guitarist. He played six or eight guitars over the course of the concert; each instrument change had musical justification, rewarded different technical skills, and improved the song.

His most familiar song, Small Victory, tells about rescuing a horse whose racing career had ended well past her prime years. A new life is one victory for this pony; another victory follows as she gives birth to a foal. Garnet's always been playful with this song's rhythm, aware of the beat but not tightly bound to it. It's particularly fascinating that his voice plays the beat differently from his fingers. A technically sweet performance, both vocally and on guitar, which ornaments and enhances the song's message.

Night Drive is something else entirely. Although this song also has a lyric and a story, the guitar dominates the composition. It's an electric piece, with the rhythm and melody built on echo and harmonics as much as on Garnet's formidable picking and fingering skills. (There's an excerpt available on Garnet's site.) It starts quietly, builds a highway pulse (Night Drive indeed), and grows louder, more complex, and more interesting for ten minutes or so. The vocal portion of the song ended with a quotation from brother Stan's Northwest Passage which is not on the recorded version but certainly enhances the performance; that's perhaps the song's climax, but the guitar continues into the night for some time. By song's end the room was reverberating, Garnet was exhausted, and the crowd was exhilarated.

Then home, through the still-falling snow.

Demographics: Tonight's audience looked a lot like me--most of us appeared to be in our fifties and had probably first encountered Garnet when he was accompanying Stan in the 1970s. I'm not sure the audience makeup bodes well for singer-songwriters, but perhaps it's a Lansing-area thing.

The bike in question was a Schwinn Varsity. Dad had purchased it for me in 1968, for my use as transportation around St. Paul during my sophomore year at Macalester. The bike had served me well over the years, but had deteriorated to the point I couldn't ride it any more.

The first task was simple repair. Didn't know anything about maintaining bikes, then, so I hied off to the bookstore and collected a couple bicycle repair manuals. With their assistance I was able to get the bike apart, cleaned, lubed (with STP!), reassembled, and back on the road. It was immediately clear that the rear derailleur--a (Schwinn Approved) Huret Alvit--was past any hope of repair, and the rear wheel was similarly hopeless. Not knowing what it would cost to replace these parts, I started calling bicycle shops and describing my problem.

By far the most helpful responses came from Bernie (Baisch) Stevenson, one of the owners at Alfred E. Bike, who seconded one of my books' recommendation that SunTour made the best shifters, reassured me that the changer would work on my bike, and quoted me a far better price than any other shop. So I found my way to the shop and spent most of the 40 bucks, came back, and had things working when Mom got back to Kalamazoo.

For the next couple years, the Varsity became my main transportation. I was working on political campaigns for most of '74; in '75 I became active in the Kalamazoo Bicycle Club--succeeding to President when John Busack graduated from college and moved away. Another time's story....

Late in 1975 this bike was stolen, and the new Assenmacher replaced it as my main transportation. Can't say I missed the old bike, but it was a trusty and reliable old friend for many years.