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Sebastián AbellaHunter Cox

Michael FoglemanRobert George

Drew MenzerEvgenia Olimpieva

Louis PishaHollis Thoms

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The thank-you for my piano playing which someone anonymously published in last week’s Gadfly was very touching; you’re certainly welcome! I’m glad

people enjoy it when I play.Speaking of people enjoying my playing: when the entire dining hall gives

me a standing ovation, I know that the magnitude of appreciation that you are expressing is exceeding how you actually feel, which makes it feel fake. I would prefer it if everyone made their applause proportional to their actual enjoy-ment. If I finish a piece and some people clap, but you didn’t like that piece, don’t applaud; I’d rather know that everyone who does applaud actually means it.

One more thing: I may be good at rattling o! half-baked arrangements of video game music, and I’m glad if that’s what everyone likes, but I’m not really a good pianist. I know approximately one “classical” piece well; if you give me a Beethoven piano concerto to play, I will be absolutely stumped. There are a number of Johnnies who are much better pianists both technically and musi-cally, and I think everybody knows that. So if you like my music, great, I’ll keep playing; but please don’t tell people that I’m a good pianist. Because then some-body might hire me, and then I would only play video game music, and then I would get fired, and I don’t want that.

Louis Pisha

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It’s been awhile, Gadfly readers, but we’re pleased to be back—and

with an issue chock full of amusing and provocative pieces. We hope you enjoy.

Please remember that we are always looking for pictures of campus life to publish in our pages. If you happen to snap some photos of parties, athletic events, or Johnnies-in-the-wild, send them to us! Our gmail address is listed in the masthead above.

Happy reading!

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Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the stu-dent newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and sta! of the An-napolis campus.Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gad-fly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine.The Gadfly meets where the body meets the soul.Articles should be submitted by Friday at 11:59 PM to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com.

Nathan Goldman • Editor-in-ChiefIan Tuttle • Editor-in-Chief

Hayden Pendergrass • Layout EditorReza Djalal • Photographer

Sasha Welm • CartoonistJonathan Barone • Sta!

Will Brown • Sta!Jacob Glass • Sta!

Andrew Kriehn • Sta!Sarah Meggison • Sta!

Kevin Morris • Sta!Charles Zug • Sta!

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For years I have been asking to play Kunai. I am envious of the fact that women get to play twice as much sports as men do here, with the fact that

they can play in both Kunai and our coed league. And netball, they get to play netball. How awesome is that? (answer: twelve. Netball is twelve awesomes.)

At least once every year, for the past four years, I have made my case to the Kunai captains of why I should be allowed to play Kunai with them, but every time I was answered with resounding nos. They would give me very reason-able explanations about how, if they let men play, the men would ruin Kunai with their testosterone and excessive competitiveness. They would explain to me that Kunai had a very special atmosphere that would be jeopardized by the introduction of men, but I wouldn’t really hear anything they said after that because by then I would be curled up in a Kunai-less ball of sadness.

I had almost completely given up hope of ever getting to play kunai until I heard about Kunai’s season pass. It turns out that, while I can’t talk my way on to Kunai, I might be able to buy my way on. This is a pretty big move for Kunai, so they are understandably being very careful about who they give the season pass to. With that in mind, allow me to explain why I should be the one to get the season pass.

First and foremost is the fact that I would fit in with Kunai: while I do enjoy some good competition, fun is of paramount importance. Being on the Spartan intramural team, I’ve perfected the art of having more fun than the other team while still losing the game. This takes us to the second reason I should be al-lowed to playing Kunai: I’m not actually that good at sports. It’s not like they would be letting Lebron James in to Kunai; I would not be having a huge impact on the outcome of games. I would not be altering the way that Kunai functions now, I would be just be adding to the fun, and that is why I should play Kunai.

Drew Menzer

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Lucinda Dukes Edinberg

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At St. John’s we pride ourselves on the questions that we ask and our pursuit of them. As we engage in discussions

with our peers, we seek not simply the answer to, What was Oedipus’s mistake?, but what this question actually points to: What is good? How do we know the truth? Does it exist? But among these great questions, one gets overlooked in the class-es. I am, of course, referring to the question at the bottom of a bottle, the question that we supposedly answered in our appli-cations: Why am I here? I propose to investigate this question through a close examination of four key texts. By looking at what motivates Achilles, in Homer’s Iliad, St. Augustine, in his Confessions, Don Quixote, from Cervantes’s novel of the same name, and the Absolute Knowing Conscious, from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

In Book I of the Iliad, Homer uses the jerk Agamemnon to illustrate how great Achilles is and why he came to fight. Agamemnon states: “Son of Peleus, you always want to get the chicks, but I will not give up the girl” (III. 8354). This quote shows that Achilles only decided to go to Troy to win chicks, and when he will not get the girl, he refuses to fight, for com-pletion without chicks just isn’t worth it.

In his Confessions, Augustine is tormented by the act of stealing pears when he was a youth. As he recounts the acts of his youth, he asks what it was that caused him to steal pears that were unpleasing to the eye and to the tongue. He states: “Was it for the love of friendship? Or was it done for the de-sire for a juicy fruit to quench my thirst? Nay, I did it for the chicks” (Confessions p. 98983). It becomes quite clear that the only reason Augustine did anything was for the ladies, even if it was just stealing pears.

It is now time for us to turn from the ancient dead to the modern dead, starting with junior year and the delightful tale of Sancho Panza (later Sancho Druid, first Druid captain) and his fearless leader, Don Quixote. As Don Quixote embarks on quests of danger to prove his courage and chivalry, he fre-quently reminds the reader of the beautiful Dulcinea del To-boso. After facing the daunting giant windmill, Cervantes informs the reader: “Although his pride and body were hurt, Don Quixote would not allow himself to forget the beautiful Dulcinea and uttered a silent plea aloud to Sancho: ‘Sancho, if I die, tell Dulcinea that I love her. She’s the best (like the Dru-ids)!’” (Great Books edition, p. 69). This quote, while not us-ing the word chick, clearly shows that Dulcinea, being a lady, causes Don Quixote to do all that he does.

Finally, to finish my search of why I am at St. John’s, I turn to Hegel, and then because it doesn’t make sense I turn away and look instead to Marx, but before Marx I look to perhaps the longest book on the program: War and Peace. At the end of the book (spoiler alert), right before he has his sixth child,

Prince Andrei tells his best friend in the waiting room: “Gosh, I do everything for the chicks” (p. 1,257,842). This quote doesn’t need any explaining, and if it does, you should really ask yourself: Why are you at St. John’s?

It can be seen from this investigation that the great men of action, of faith, of stories, and of nobility all do everything for the chicks. This knowledge leads me to my conclusion: I’m at St. John’s for the chicks. But how can I fulfill my time at St. John’s if I never ever ever come out for the ladies on the Kunai field? Thus, in order to actualize my potential, I seek to play Kunai. A lot of Kunai. As For how much I will pay, I turn to my friend Marx. Marx comments on the value of items, say-ing, “Coats are worth money, but sports and work should be shared by everyone, and the state will pay.” Thus it is seen that Kunai should accept me, and the state will pay for me to play with them in netball and all other awesome sports. But I am willing to pay for my sweet jersey and the jersey of one other player. !

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!"#$%#%&'()*$+,-./,012$34$56.7689Books, balance, freedom, free men.Not an illusion freedom, but a true freedom of mind.It is only found by the ways taught hereLight. Light. Joy. Euphoria.St. John’s CollegeForgetfulness of the world and everything, except Descartes. Grandeur of the human soul. Liberal Education, the modern world has not known you,

but I have known you.Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.I will never get a jobNothing in this world is free, neither is liberality What am I doing here!? Let me not doubt the Program everThis is the noblest life, to have experience d you, the Program,

and the ones that breathe life into you, the Great BooksGreat BooksGreat BooksI did not read them that well. But they are all on my bookshelfLet me never be separated from themSubmission to Junior Year, total and sweetEternal joy in math and FrenchAmen

! Evgenia Olimpieva, A’14

Hunter Cox A’13

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photo by Anyi Guo

I don’t think there’s one of us here that doesn’t search for validation in one

way or another.Now, I’m not saying whether it’s

wrong or it’s right, healthy or unhealthy, but I do think we need to take a step back and look at our motivations once in a while. I seem to remember someone recommending us to examine our lives from time to time, and I tend to think it’s good advice.

So, back to the matter at hand and a question we all struggle with: Where do we find our worth?

Since we’re all here at St. John’s, I think it’s safe to assume we wanted to escape the cutthroat academia of many colleges, where the object of learn-ing is driven largely by taking tests and maintaining 4.0 GPAs. We’re here partly because we’re more interested in pur-suing ideas and thoughts than chasing after grades. It’s a choice we made, con-sciously or not.

And yet, I think it’s easy to get sucked into a di!erent kind of self-evaluation. At least, I know I did. Ever since the begin-ning of my time here, seminar has always been my most di"-cult class. Freshman and especially sopho-more year, I struggled with participation. I constantly tried to validate my per-formance in class by comparing myself with other people. I worked very hard on making sure that I wasn’t the person who talked the least, and in the majority of my seminars, I’d pay close attention to who was (and who wasn’t) speaking. I was hoping that by doing that, I would somehow persuade myself that I was improving.

But it didn’t work. I’d come out of seminar feeling unfulfilled, that I hadn’t tried my hardest, and it was deeply dis-

couraging. Even so, I couldn’t will my-self to do better. I turned to the athletic field, hoping to find some value and self-worth there, but my striving in sports was just as fruitless as my striving in class. I even contemplated leaving St. John’s, because I had lost my passion for the school.

One moment stands out to me as a turning point from this mindset. I was having tea with a tutor, and we were talking about seminar and how di"cult it was. She suggested that I wrestle with the text and make it mine, to wrestle with these ideas in more than just an intellectual way. hat advice has helped focus me in many ways, because it brings me back to the essential question: Where do I find value?

I have come to realize that more than I more than I value the Great Books themselves, I find value in trying to com-municate with my friends about these

books that we both love and hate. In try-ing to understand a work, I shouldn’t be seeking validation in how much I know (in pursuing knowl-edge for knowl-edge’s sake); rather, I should be seeking after knowledge be-cause it’s something that I enjoy and care about. It’s important to remember that the work you do and

the books you read do not determine your meaning; you give meaning to these works by how much you invest in them. In this way, your performance does not dictate your worth; your worth dictates your performance. I hearken back to a passage I’m probably misquoting from a book I haven’t read called Big Game, Small World by Alexander Wol!: “Win-ning is good, playing your hardest is bet-ter, but loving the game is best of all.” I think the analogy to life is pretty apt. !

W hile I appreciate Mr. Hope’s concerns regarding the qual-

ity of conversation in our Old Testa-ment seminars (cf. “Examining the Bible,” Issue 5), it seems unlikely that his recommendations for approaching this text will bring about the honest “dialectical examination” he desires. Here’s the problem, as far as I can tell, according to Mr. Hope: the Bible is be-ing given unfair privilege amongst the Great Books. It is not being submitted to the same challenges and questions as the other books on the Program. The Bible does present a unique chal-lenge to our conversation, as has been discussed in previous columns. To treat this challenge as above question-ing would be a serious misstep.

In light of this, Mr. Hope suggests that we treat the Hebrew God like we did Homer’s gods, whom “we were quick to judge.” He alleges that “we don’t criticize the parts that don’t make sense to us at first.” While ratio-nalizing the wrathful actions of the di-vine with the pretense that they must adhere to an imported sense of justice and the good is a regrettable approach, relying on quick judgments and criti-cisms based on limited understanding seems hardly better.

Near the end of his article, Mr. Hope remarks that “the Bible is a great book for the same reasons people looked to it for guidance years ago.” While I think this is true, the wrathful nature of God’s presence begs the question: Why is this the God they chose to look to for guidance? Why this God and why these prophets? A reliance on crit-icisms founded on knee-jerk prejudic-es to guide our conversation does not seem to get us closer to tackling those questions. Rather, it will leave us artic-ulating what is most evident (the harsh nature of God’s character) and skirting more fundamental issues (how this na-ture is incorporated into the guidance the text provides).!

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Robert George A’15

“ It’s important to remem-ber that the work you do and the books you read do not determine your meaning; you give meaning to these works by how much you invest in them. In this way, your performance does not dictate your worth; your worth dictates your performance.

A Response to “Examining the Bible”

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Jonathan Barone A’13 photo by Anyi Guo

What is your current job?I lead the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMC-SA), a federal agency that works to improve highway safety and save lives by preventing crashes involving trucks and bus-es. FMCSA is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation. President Obama appointed me to serve as FMCSA Adminis-trator in November 2009.

Did you attend other schools after St. John’s?Yes, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, where I received my Master’s in Public Administration in 1984.

Did you know what you wanted to do while attending St. John’s?When I was young, President Kennedy’s call for volunteers to sign up for “the toughest job you’ll ever love” left a big impres-sion. My interest in serving in the public sector evolved during my years at St. John’s and was strengthened by my service in the Peace Corps (Cote d’Ivoire, 80-81).!

Did St. John’s help prepare you for work in the field?Yes. Reading, asking questions, and discussing original texts of writers and thinkers whose works influenced civilizations and democracies through the centuries gave me critical think-ing skills. Also, St. John’s cemented for me the fundamentals of an e"ective dialogue—listening, asking, reflecting, respect-ing. My St. John’s education gave me a solid foundation for every job I’ve ever had.

What didn’t St. John’s prepare you for?Marriage and motherhood! All kidding aside, the curricu-lum and St. John’s community gave me every opportunity to engage fully in all aspects of academic and college life. The campus location, in the center of one of the most beautiful and historic state capitals in the US, gave me plenty of opportunity to work in town and balance school life with the larger com-munity.

How did you feel you compared, in graduate school or ear-ly jobs, to people from di!erent educational backgrounds, particularly those with field-related degrees? I compared well to co-workers and fellow graduate students. In fact, the confidence to ask questions, work collaboratively, and solve problems civilly were real assets in graduate school and the workplace.

Can you describe a general track someone from St. John’s might take to get into a career in this field? I encourage SJC graduates to seek out jobs, education, and ex-

periences that challenge them on all levels. There is no one track to pursue a career in the public sector—I chose the Peace Corps, graduate school in public policy, local government, and odd jobs in between before settling on the path I’m on today. Careers in the public sector are as diverse and exciting as the needs of communities.

Any general advice, especially for an upperclassman who is interested in this field but is not quite sure what to do?Talk with SJC alumni who are in positions or fields that inter-est you. These conversations will help you establish a sense of the many rewarding paths people pursue in public sector careers and the range of routes they took to get there. The conversations also build a network of contacts you may use in the years to come.

How did you market yourself with a St. John’s degree? I highlighted math and philosophy as my primary areas of con-centration and emphasized good communication and problem solving skills with a strong work ethic.

How would you characterize your field as a whole? Is it accessible to newcomers? Stable or fluid? etc. Public sector career paths are numerous and dynamic. In fact, there is such a wide range of opportunities and points of entry that it may seem daunting to figure out where to start—edu-cation, law, government, not-for-profit, community service, policy development, military service, and more.

What was your senior essay topic? Billy Budd, Sailor, by Herman Melville; my senior essay was titled “When you say Budd, You’ve said it All”…allusions to our lives of thirty years ago, when the Little Campus served as our watering hole and think tank…

What is your favorite book on the Program? My favorite SJC courses of study were math tutorials and seminar readings on our country’s founding documents. Like most Johnnies, I have a few favorites: Plato’s Republic, the Federalist Papers, and Gulliver’s Travels. Another favorite was Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which we studied in Miss Brann’s music tutorial.

Do you find that you lead a philosophical life? I’ve led a life of inquiry, thoughtfulness, humor, reflection, and always in pursuit of a good discussion. Without question, my life is richer for my St. John’s education. I highly recommend the program whenever I speak to high school students and their parents, and would love to return myself some day. !

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Anne Ferro, A’80, testifies before a House subcommittee.

!"#$%&'()*+",-In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed a St. John’s alumna to head a life-saving federal agency. Anne Ferro, A’80, discusses her path to the nation’s capital.

James A. Garfield for President in 2012! Forget Romney or Obama! Educator, congressman, general, and 20th President of the

United States, James A. Garfield (1831-1881) was an extraor-dinary Statesman-Literary Man, but his life of 50 years and presidency of just a few months was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, causing his speeches, writings and presidency to fade into obscurity. It could be argued that Garfield was our first Johnnie President and in 2012 we need a Johnnie President— one who can read and think comprehensively and deeply. We need a Garfield!

Garfield was deeply a!ected by books of literature from many di!erent fields of learning, purchasing books through-out his life and eventually amassing a large personal library. He loved to read, think, write, discuss, and speak about ideas he read in the books he accumulated, as evidenced in his ex-tensive diary volumes, the many notes he left in preparation for talks, the speeches he gave throughout his life, his personal collection of books, and the many books he checked out from the Library of Congress during his tenure in Congress.

Colleague and life-long friend, B. A. Hins-dale, who was, like Garfield, President of Hiram College and spoke at Garfield’s memo-rial service at Hiram College, after the assas-sination, noted that Garfield loved reading “everywhere, on the cars, in the omnibus and after retiring at night, and rarely, or never, went away from home, even for a few hours, but he took his book and kept his mind full and fresh.” Garfield’s scholarship and famili-arity with general literature was well known and respected in the educational arena and in the halls of Congress. Hinsdale remembered that “he had great power of logical analysis and stood with the first in power of rhetori-cal exposition, the instincts and habits of a scholar, loved to roam in every field of knowledge, delighted in creations of the imagination, poetry, fiction, and art, loved the abstract things of philosophy, took a keen interest in sci-entific research, gathered into his capacious store-house the facts of history and politics, and threw over the whole, the life and power of his own originality.”

Garfield’s love of books can be seen by looking at three doc-

uments available in the James A. Garfield Papers at the Library of Congress: his extensive personal diary, particularly during his years as a student, teacher and school administrator, 1848-1860 (James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress, Series 1, Diaries, 1848-1881, 21 Volumes, Reel 1, Volumes 1 -12, 1848 January 1873); the equally extensive ledger listing his personal collection of books that he put together in 1872 (James A. Gar-field Papers, Library of Congress, Series 17U, Reel 169. Library Catalogue 1872-1884); and the detailed ledger kept by the Library of Congress of the books Garfield checked out from the Library of Congress while Congressman during the years 1863-1867 (Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Receipt Book M, 1863-1867).

Garfield’s DiaryGarfield kept a meticulously detailed diary, starting in

1848, and one can follow his educational development as a student and teacher. Early in the diary he al-ready showed a love for the study of Latin and Greek. On April 15, 1850, he wrote “Amo Li-bros” (“I love books”), on May 23, 1850, “Per-severentia vincit omnia” (“Perseverance con-quers all things”), and on December 7, 1851, “Lege et cogite” (“Read and think”). He loved reading Latin and Greek texts and became so proficient in reading and translating both that he would impress his friends by simulta-neously translating Latin with one hand and Greek with another. In one of his most vision-ary speeches on education on June 14, 1867, he wrote:

Greek is, perhaps, the most perfect instru-ment of thought ever invented by man, and its literature has never been equaled in purity of style and boldness of expression. As a means of intellectual discipline its value can hardly

be overestimated. To take a long and complicated sentence in Greek—to study each word in its meanings, inflections and relations, and to build up in the mind out of these pol-ished materials, a sentence, perfect as a temple, and filled with Greek thought which has dwelt there two thousand years, is almost an act of creation; it calls into activity all the faculties of the mind.

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Hollis !oms AGI’06

The cover of President James A. Garfield’s ledger of his personal collection of books that he put to-gether in 1872 kept by the Library of Congress

In addition to being Principal of West-ern Reserve Eclectic Institute at age 26, he was also a teacher of Ancient Languages and Literature, teaching Latin and Greek, geology, religion, English, and history.

Personal Collection of BooksAmong his extensive papers at the

Library of Congress is a journal listing his personal collection of books, which numbered in the hundreds. He catego-rized all his books according to topics and also manually compiled an alpha-betical listing. Garfield must have been a Johnnie; his personal collection of books closely resembles the Program: Aeschy-lus, Burke, Calvin, Cicero, Dante, Dred Scott Decision, Euripides, the Federalist Papers, Herodotus, Homer, Horace (his favorite writer), Pla-to, Plutarch, Lincoln, Lucretius, Milton, Rabelais, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Thucydides, Tocqueville, Virgil, U. S. Constitu-tion, and, of course, the Bible. In addition to Latin and Greek grammars and texts, he had grammars and texts in German, French, Spanish, and Hebrew. He read in almost every subject area; there was nothing that escaped his interest.

Library of Congress ReadingsBy scanning the Library of Congress ledger of checked-out

books for the years 1863-1867, one can see that Garfield read diversely. Some examples from the 200-plus he checked out: Je!erson’s writings, Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Rousseau’s Social Contract, Thucydides, Hobbes, Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Thack-eray’s Vanity Fair, Shakespeare’s tragedies, Hamilton’s writ-ings, Tennyson’s poems, James Fennimore Cooper’s Deerslay-er, and Cicero’s letters and orations.

Garfield had an amazing life, rising from the log cabin to the White House. His life can be summarized as follows:

• Born November 19, 1831• Father died May, 1833• Student at Geauga Seminary, 1849-1850• Taught at District Schools, 1849-1851• Student and Teacher at Western Reserve Eclectic Insti-

tute (later Hiram College), 1851-1854• Undergraduate Student at Williams College, 1854-1856• Principal and Teacher of the Eclectic Institute (Hiram),

1856-1860• Ohio Senator, 1859-1861• Soldier and General, 1861-1862• Representative in Congress, 1862-1878• United States Senator from Ohio, January, 1880• Nominated for Presidency by Republican Party, June,

1880• Elected President of the United States, November, 1880• Inaugurated President, March 4, 1881• Shot by an assassin, July 2, 1881• Died from the wound, September 19, 1881

Garfield came almost out of obscurity during the Repub-lican National Convention in 1880 and emerged as its nomi-nee on the 36th ballot! If you read his most famous (but today

unknown) speeches you will see that he was able to balance what we would today term Republican and Democrat values. He understood a partnership role for gov-ernment (common welfare and commu-nity) and citizen (individual liberty and responsibility), especially as he thought about education.

Garfield might have been describ-ing himself as a Statesman-Literary Man when he wrote about the true Literary Man in his “The Geology of Literature” essay back during his undergraduate years at Williams College:

The di!erence is, that while the small man is a small, the great man is a broad and full, reflection of his day. But the true Literary Man is no mere gleaner, follow-

ing in the rear and gathering up the fragments of the world’s thought, but he goes down deep into the heart of human-ity, watches its throbbing, analyses the forces at work there, traces out with prophetic foresight, their tendencies, and thus, standing far out beyond his age, holds up the picture of what is, and is to be.

If one were to measure Garfield’s stature as a Statesman-Literary Man, one could look at two presidents who followed him. Garfield was to some extent a composite of Theodore Roosevelt, military man and man of action, and Woodrow Wilson, Christian moralist and college professor. Garfield was no “mere gleaner, following in the rear and gathering up the fragments of the world’s thought.” Hinsdale remembered, as we noted earlier, that Garfield “gathered into his capacious store house the facts of history and politics, and threw over the whole, the life and power of his own originality.” He had an ability to make sense out of the “fragments of the world’s thought,” and from those fragments created an intellectual whole. Garfield came at a time when America needed a vision-ary president who, with the strength of his will and imagina-tion, could creatively take the fragments of a country still shat-tered by the remnants of the Civil War—educational, financial, psychological, sociological, philosophical, and political—and put these fragments together into a beautiful whole, building a unified nation. One wonders if Garfield had had the chance to fully realize his Statesman-Literary Man stature, what “pro-phetic foresight” he might have had for America, and “stand-ing far out beyond his age,” what vision he might have had as to what America was and was to be.

We live at a time where we need a leader that can creatively take up the fragments of a country shattered by perpetual war and economic disasters. One wonders what Garfield could do if he were elected president today in 2012 and what vision he might have had for America’s future.

At least we would know that our president loved to read and think, that he read books we loved, that he cherished the discipline of study, that he was not afraid of intellectual chal-lenges that even tested his own beliefs, that he could think deeply and expansively, and that he delighted in learning and discussing. He was a Johnnie.

Garfield for President in 2012! !

For those of us who absolutely nothing about it, can you describe Circle Mirror Transformation in ten words?The best short description of the play that I’ve ever seen is in a review from BackStage. “[Circle Mirror Transformation] is about real people exploring their lives through tiny leaps of faith and creativity.”

How is this genre of play, and this play in particular, di!er-ent from other recent SJC productions?This play does diverge from St. John’s’ tendency to do old-er plays. Circle Mirror came out in 2009 and won the OBIE award (an award for excellence in o!-Broadway theater). It is also interesting in that it has an essence of improvisation, and it is full of theater games (most of which are scripted). Yet, at the same time, I’ve never seen a play that’s felt more real.

Is there a certain way you think the audience should ap-proach Circle Mirror Transformation?The audience should be willing to give the play a chance, and to trust it. It tests the trust of the audience just as much as it tests the trust of its characters and actors.

What inspired you to choose Circle Mirror Transformation as your first production at St. John’s?While I was participating in a play-writing apprenticeship at the Pitts-burgh Public Theater in my senior year of high school, all of us involved got to see their entire season of shows. I ended up seeing Circle Mir-ror twice, as well as getting to talk to the cast, crew, and director. The show was so di!erent from everything I’d seen and done in theater before, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since then. I decided over the summer that I wanted to make my directorial debut at St. John’s College with a play that has inspired me so much theatrically.

With a title like Circle Mirror Transformation should the audience expect a lot of special e!ects?Haha, no. Circle Mirror Transformation is actually one of the acting games in the show. It appears in Week 3 (the show is split up into six weeks).

Are there any controversial topics Circle Mirror Trans-formation draws attention to that the audience should be aware of before coming?The only topic that could be seen as controversial is the abuse of one of the characters as a child.

It sounds like emotions behind the scenes are important for Circle Mirror Transformation’s fruition as a play. Why is that?We have been rehearsing this play since the second week of school, with about three rehearsals a week. One interesting

aspect of our play practices is that we begin every practice with acting games that appear in the play. At the beginning of every rehearsal, we play a game during which we lie on the floor and count to ten, and have to start over if two people say a number at the same time. It really allows us to focus at the start of practice. After that, we usually play a few other act-ing games that appear in the script, such as playing a game of explosion tag, using the other cast members to act out important scenes from our lives or conversing using only the words ‘ak-mak’ and ‘goulash’ (the cast favorite). The games range from silly and active to serious and revealing. Over the last six weeks, we have em-barrassed ourselves and realized the need to just go for it. We have learned to trust each other. We have allowed our lives to imitate the art. Through giving ourselves completely over to the play, and trusting it, we have grown together. !

!"#$%&'("##)#'*#+,-.)#/+0"),We do not often associate heartfelt appreciation with subtle taboos and social strangeness. !e modern mentality, it seems, would rather we not subject ourselves to these things at all, let alone "nd them endearing. Circle Mirror Transformation, the College’s "rst theatrical production of the semester, seeks to tap into the awkwardness of human interaction, moving us to sym-pathize with the characters if for no other reason than acute un-derstanding; we know how they feel, because we’ve been in their positions before. I spoke with Nicole Havranek, the director, to learn more about the method and intent behind Circle Mirror Transformation.

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Reza Djalal A’15

And which now your own feminine fantasy wins,Tho’ it scarce seems a lady-like work, that beginsIn a “scratching” and ends in a “biting”!

Yet oh! that the dames of the Scandalous SchoolWould but use the same acid, and sharp-pointed tool ….

“Etching Moralized,” To A Noble Lady, Thomas F. Hood (1799-1845), British humorist and poet

I had the pleasure of working with the Freshman Lab classes while they were exploring the magnolias and other foliage

around campus at the beginning of the semester, and while they were examining the attributes of the plant, I found myself evaluating my own observation skills.

Among many of the topics included in working with the classes was the importance of the line in art. The line has so much work to do—curved, broken, jagged, undulating—and how much that mere shift in touch changes the interpretation of a work.

Because many students have had writing assignments, it has provided me, as the Mitchell Gallery Art Educator, opportu-nities to discuss the works from the exhibi-tion in other ways—sometimes one-on-one, other times as a group. These discussions al-ways renew my appreciation for the works, but they also provide other points of view and observations.

“Pushing the Line: American Women Printmakers” comprises 54 fine prints from 1879 through 1993 by 44 American women artists through the generous loans of Syracuse University Art Galleries and Baltimore-area print dealer Conrad R. Graeber. Line is the primary element in most of these works executed in drypoint, aquatint, collagraph, silkscreen, lithography, and mezzotint. The selection of prints shows both the evolution of printmaking and the role of American women printmakers as practitioners, teachers, and innovators, from the 1870s-1900s American Etching Revival to the last decade of the 20th centu-ry. While most of the 44 artists were well-established, such as Mary Cassatt, Helen Frankenthaler, and Isabel Bishop, others received no recognition. The works of these artists range from the traditional work of skilled technicians, for example, the 1879 drypoint and aquatint portrait by the self-taught print-maker Anna Lea Merritt (1844-1930) of Louis Agassiz and Mary Nimmo Moran’s multiple tool and technique method, to Helen Frankenthaler’s unorthodox use of silkscreen and the traditional, but exalted, use of mezzotint by Carol Wax.

In my research for the exhibition, I found little contempo-raneous scholarly attention to early American women print-makers, in part, due to the overall number of printmakers. However, New York Public Library Curator of Prints Frank Weitenkampf (1866-1962) wrote a concise history of Ameri-can printmaking, titled American Graphic Art, with commen-dations on the first exhibition of prints exclusively by women artists held in 1887 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and a second one, the following year, at the Union League in New York: “The best of their work deserves praise unmodified by

any reference to sex.”Owing to, in part, societal proprieties and limited educa-

tional opportunities, the usual subjects of the 19th- and early 20th-century works of women artists were domestic scenes, portraits, animals, and landscapes, as seen in Mary Nimmo Moran’s 1883 Tween the Gloamin’ and the Mirk When the Kye Come’ Hame and Mary Cassatt’s c. 1905 drypoint Denise Hold-ing Her Child. Moran’s etching style is distinctive and like many of her other prints, she used many techniques to create the mood of this Long Island landscape, which hints of her native Scotland.

It was not until the last half of the 19th century, when the more open society and economy of the United States facili-tated the entry of women artists into the art world as early in 1848, that the Philadelphia Academy of Design for Women was established. The formation of various etching societies in New York, Chicago, and California helped produce the Etch-ing Revival movement (and the birth of American printmak-ing as a fine art) but also enabled women to learn and enter the field of professional printmaking. In addition, the burgeoning publishing industry o!ered job prospects for women with

graphic arts skills.By the 1930s the Works Progress Adminis-

tration nurtured the employment of women, thus expanding their subjects and experience of the world. Artists such as Mabel Dwight (1875-1955) and Peggy Bacon (1895-1987) be-came well known for caricatures and satirical humor. Mabel Dwight’s urban vignette of a common New York neighborhood, Backyard,

magically conveys both physical decay through the dilapi-dated backyard fence and vitality, seen in the cat walking on it, the large hovering tree, and, in a window, a man reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. Several prints demonstrate the continuing interest of women printmakers in genteel sub-jects, yet also their turn to new subjects. One of the wood en-gravings, Forgotten Things (1943) by Grace Albee (1890-1985) is a rural scene, which explicitly evokes a nostalgia for a van-ishing rural America, while one of the lithographs, Top Deck (1938), by WPA artist Margaret Lowengrund (1902-1957), is an industrial scene.

Breaking the boundaries of art became the central preoc-cupation of late 20th-century American artists. Anne Ryan’s haunting 1947 woodcut of ships at sea, Now, Ever Alack, My Master Dear, I Fear a Deadly Storm, uses the simple shapes and wood grain to express the horror of two figures watching the foundering ships and texture of the roiling sea. In sharp contrast is Carol Wax’s poetic treatment of a humble and out-moded typewriter, Remington Return (1993), in which her full range of black to white mezzotint animates this ordinary, now out-moded, machine. In the last 50 years the achievements and influence of so many American women artists, in all me-dia, have been so much more recognized that one hopes the gender expectations of Hans Hofmann’s comment to his stu-dent Lee Krasner, “This is so good, you would not know this was painted by a woman,” have become, like Wax’s typewriter, obsolete. !

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Editors’ Note: Because of the Gad!y’s October printing schedule, we were not able to publish this piece before the exhibt ended on October 14, but we hope you enjoy reading, even after the fact.

Lucinda Dukes Edinberg Art Educator, !e Mitchell Gallery

“ Breaking the bound-aries of art became the central preoccupa-tion of late 20th-cen-tury American artists.

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What were you doing before becoming the Athletic Director at St. John’s? I was hired to start the o(ce of Recreation and Intramu-ral Sports at The New School three and a half years ago. Before that I was the Coordinator of Intramural Sports at “the other” St. John’s in Queens, NY. I also have back-grounds in teaching sociology, experiential education, and o(ciating various sports.

What brought you to St. John’s? What are your im-pressions of the school so far? I grew up in southern Montgomery County (near Tako-ma Park) and had heard of the academic program here. It has always intrigued me. I was also ready to leave New York City after living there for five years. The commit-ment of the students to the Program and athletic pur-suits is amazing!

How do you think the academic and athletic pro-grams complement one another? I am still learning about the academic program, but I def-initely hear some of the ties through the chants, cheers, and motivational talks during halftime.

How important would you consider the athletic pro-gram to be in relation to the College community? The athletic program is obviously ingrained in the cul-ture of the whole community. I love seeing tutors and faculty participate!

What do you hope the athletic program will accom-plish for the St. John’s community? Whenever I start in a new situation, my main goal is not let the program diminish. Then I can use that time to ask questions, observe, and plan what future changes we can make.

Have you spoken to former director Leo Pickens? What are your impressions of him? Mr. Pickens has been in contact in all forms of communi-cation since my appointment. We definitely come from di)erent backgrounds, but with his knowledge and com-mitment to the College and my experience of running and organizing athletic events, I’m hoping for a smooth transition!

Have you spoken to any upperclassmen about their experience with the St. John’s Intramural program? I have been working constantly with the Intramural and Kunai captains. They have such a passion for their pro-grams, and I am trying to balance getting my input in but

also staying out of the way when I can.

If you had anything to say to freshman you are un-certain, what advice would you give to them? As I said in my orientation session with the freshmen, this is their time to redefine themselves, within athlet-ics, academics, and through other avenues of their lives. Leaving home and becoming part of a brand new com-munity as dynamic as this o)ers so many new opportu-nities.

Any upcoming events we should be aware about?Intramural sports are still rolling. Reasonball has begun. Kunai is transitioning to netball, then handball soon. Keep an eye out for two new programs that I’m look-ing to implement. I don’t have a name for one, but it will be about general fitness, and the other is a running club (I’m a runner and will probably be running a marathon in the next six months or so). !

An Interview with Athletic Director

Sebastián Abella A’15

Sophomore Sebastián Abella speaks with Michael McQuarrie, St. John’s’ new Athletic Director, about his background, his experience at the College so far, and his plans for the future.

!"#$$#%&$#'()$*%+'$,-*CAREER CONVERSATION: The Skills You’re Gaining at SJCWednesday, October 17, 5:30pm, Private Dining RoomJoin an open discussion about the skills you bring to the workplace.

THE EX LIBRIS SYMPOSIUM: Conversations on CareersSaturday, October 20, 10am – 12:30pm, Conversation RoomOpen at 9:30 with a continental breakfast and with lunch following at 11:30. RSVP required if attending lunch. Panel-ists will include: • Talley Kovacs (A01) – law (attorney in private practice) • Louis Kovacs (A02) – medicine (family practice physi-cian) • Jay Schwarz – architecture • Loretta Haring – journalism • Claiborne Booker (A84) – finance• Bryan Dorland (A92) – science/physics (U.S. Naval Obser-vatory)• Ethan Bauman (A78) – government (NSA)• Julie Janicki (A06) - education

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Ian Tuttle A’14

Call it the Big Bird & Barack Barnstorming Bonanza. Capi-talizing on Mitt Romney’s vow, during the first presiden-

tial debate earlier this month, to stop subsidizing the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which has long enjoyed pecuni-ary assistance from the United States Treasury, the president has taken to the road promising, in his second term, to “worry about Wall Street, not Sesame Street.”

It’s too bad the president couldn’t think of that line dur-ing the debate. Instead, he stood behind the podium looking more like Oscar the Grouch.

There is a certain aura of surrealism surrounding these last weeks of campaign. T-minus 30 days and the sitting president of the global super-power is traveling cross-country riling up supporters by promising public funding for sock puppets. You couldn’t write this stu!.

It’s hardly worth countering the presi-dent’s bird-brained argument, but just to be thorough: The Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street, reports an annual operating budget of about $130 mil-lion. Combining government grants to the Workshop directly and federal dollars that end up in its co!ers after filtering through local PBS a"li-ates, the organization receives about 10 million government bucks a year. In the meantime, it brings in $50 million from merchandising alone: must-haves like Elmo’s Potty Time DVD ($13), Bert and Ernie finger puppets ($8.50 each), the Grover Reusable Tote ($10), etc. And in case the numbers are not enough to guarantee that this childhood staple is in no need of government assistance, Sherrie Westin, executive vice president of the Workshop, announced on CNN recently that “Sesame Street will be here”—even without a welfare check.

Yet last Thursday, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, aboard Air Force One, “There’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”

In the week after the first presidential debate, Obama mentioned Sesame Street characters 13 times. He mentioned Libya…zero. You remember: Libya, where, on September 11, a mob armed with mortars and RPGs overran the poorly protected American consulate in Benghazi and killed four sta!ers, including the American ambassador, Christopher Stevens—an attack the Obama administration blamed on a “spontaneous” movie protest. That was the line from General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta!; Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and even Sec-retary of State Hillary Clinton. Until last week, when the ad-ministration suddenly changed the narrative, acknowledging that the film in question, Innocence of Muslims—whose cre-ator was marched out of his California home in the middle of the night shortly after the Benghazi attack, purportedly for a probation violation, and whose family is now in hiding—actu-

ally had nothing to do with the attacks.But the first death of an American ambassador in 25 years

does not merit a mention on the campaign trail, nor do the myriad questions that arise, such as why requests for in-creased security at the consulate were ignored, or why the Obama administration trotted out a false narrative of the attack for nearly a month, when intelligence available from hours after the attack indicated a long-planned terrorist op-eration.

Never mind, though. Threats to national security and American personnel abroad are not as important as (halluci-

nated) threats to Count Von Count here at home.

Average household income is down 8.2 percent since President Obama took of-fice in January 2009. Unemployment has hovered at 8 percent for three and a half years, despite the president’s promise of 5.6 percent unemployment by July 2012. The national debt has soared to $16 tril-lion under Obama—and, in an appearance on “The Late Show with David Letter-man” last month, President Obama could

not even remember that number. He ought to look it up: That figure is one of the reasons the nonpartisan Congressional Budget O"ce predicts the U.S. economy will collapse in 2027. Obama’s Health and Human Services department has im-posed a mandate on religious employers that directly violates the conscience rights of religious citizens, while Obamacare is so unpopular that it merited only a sentence in the most re-cent State of the Union address and has garnered even less at-tention on the campaign trail. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are falling to pieces in the wake of the American military with-drawal, and Iran is on the fast-track to a nuclear weapon, fully aware that the present American leadership lacks the moral courage to resist. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the United States will no longer be the world’s leading economy by 2016, and China fully intends to take its place.

But those things don’t come up. Instead, the president em-phasizes abortion “rights,” government-funded contracep-tion, and tax dollars for Sesame Street.

During his 2008 campaign against John McCain, Obama said, “If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.”

This election is huge. But the president is showing just how small he really is.

A reminder: The second presidential debate will take place to-night (Tuesday, October 16) at 9pm ET. The townhall-format debate will be broadcast from Hofstra University, in Hemp-stead, NY. The final presidential debate will air next Monday, October 22, at 9pm ET, from Boca Raton, FL. !

“T-minus 30 days and the sitting president of the global superpower is traveling cross-country riling up supporters by promising public fund-ing for sock puppets. You couldn’t write this stu!.

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Michael Fogleman A’13

This past Thursday, October 4, the SCI convened in the Private Dining

Hall to discuss the role of music in the Program. We began the discussion with a quote from J. Winfree Smith’s A Search for the Liberal College, which discussed Jacob Klein’s conception of the role of music in a liberal arts education. Klein “considered the study of music to be the study of rhetoric in its purest form and as deserving a place within a liberal arts curriculum because of maintaining, not as is so often said, a balance between the intellect and emotions, but a balance within the intellectual life itself.” How is the study of music a study of rhetoric? How does it balance the intellectual life? How e(ectively does the music program enable us to achieve these goals?

Those at the meeting agreed that music did have a rhetorical aspect. Its elements, such as chords and modes, allow for a study of tension and resolu-tion. While the music that we sing and study often has a text, it was noted that even without words music has rhetori-cal power. Several upperclassmen and tutors mentioned Plato’s Republic and the interest Socrates shows in music. Freshmen may find it helpful to keep this connection in mind while singing in chorus, and while reading and discuss-ing the Republic. It was unclear whether awareness and consideration of music as rhetorical began in the freshman or sophomore year, but it was agreed that freshman chorus provides a necessary and helpful prerequisite for that study.

Some sophomores expressed concern that, while these goals seemed noble and worthwhile, their music tutorials have found it di)cult to discuss mu-sic, whether as rhetorical or otherwise, simply because many students limited themselves to discussing their emotion-al reactions to a piece of music. It was also felt that Zuckerkandl’s idiosyncrat-ic attempts to provide a common techni-

cal vocabulary could be distracting and obstructive. The upperclassmen and tu-tors sympathized with these complaints and confirmed that they were recurring concerns. However, they stressed that criticizing Zuckerkandl was a red her-ring because his text is a manual and not the content of the music tutorial. Fur-thermore, students observed that these di)culties are not accidental, but are ac-tually the music tutorial’s central work. Just as freshman laboratory gives us a chance to learn to see with reason, the music tutorial allows us to develop our ability to hear. We can learn to supple-ment our feelings with a rational under-standing of order and proportion.

The discussion turned to finding the best way of gaining that technical vo-cabulary, so that classes can discuss the shared phenomena of music. Like other tutorials, the music tutorial re-quires a certain amount of preparation and legwork from its students in order to accomplish its goals. Students and

tutors shared sug-gestions for how students could make this prepara-tion more active, such as copying scores, attempting to compose one’s own music, playing piano, and, most

importantly, singing. Neither Zucker-kandl nor the score are the text of the class; the experience of hearing and per-forming the music is the text. While the tutors were adamant that students have not really prepared for class if they have not brought the music to life, they em-phasized that they were doing this work on their own, too.

Overall, there seemed to be a consen-sus that music has a unique role in the Program, with its own di)culties and opportunities. Still, comparing both freshman chorus and the music tutorial to other classes proved helpful for find-ing ways of overcoming the di)culties of music, so as to take advantage of its opportunities. !

“How is the study of music a study of rhetoric? How does it balance the intellectual life? How e!ectively does the music program enable us to achieve these goals?

!"#$%!&'#(!$)*++,!!##$*($,(%!-&)!,*(.Examining Music in the Program