IT IS HERE.

For various reasons, I've been thinking about my college experience lately. My ten year reunion is coming up this summer.

I had a really unique and unusual college experience. Imagine this:

No textbooks. No lectures. No tests. For four years.

I attended a special program at my college that was like a "school within a school." Forty-two students started out in this program Freshman year. Eighteen graduated.

We had our classes only with each other. The curriculum was pre-set . . . no real choice about what classes to take. As a matter of fact, we pretty much had the same four classes for four years: Math, Language, Science Lab, and Seminar (where we studied philosophy, religion and literature).

In each class, we covered the relevant subject matter chronologically, historically. In math, we started day one of Freshman year with the Geometry of Euclid from Ancient Greece, and by the end of Senior year we had worked through Einstein's theory of relativity. In Science, we studied astronomy from the old earth-centered point of view, replicated eighteenth-century chemistry experiments, and bred fruit flies to study genetics. We read Plato and Chaucer and Zen Poetry and Zora Neale Hurston and everything in between. We studied the Bible, translated ancient Greek poetry, read the oldest known piece of literature (Gilgamesh, which happens to feature a fabulous gay romance), went stargazing and birdwatching, and reviewed the documents which inspired the American Revolution.

The method for all of our classes was the same . . . we read a source text (with no interpretation or commentary whatsoever), we formed our own conclusions about the ideas expressed in the text, and then we sat down and discussed those ideas for a few hours.

This may sound a little dry, but it wasn't. It was like rediscovering the universe. Discussions were passionate, ideas were revolutionary, everything was very immediate . . . we felt like we were the first people ever to read these texts that were hundreds or thousands of years old. Because we were encouraged to ignore everything everyone had ever said about Shakespeare or Genesis or Calculus or the workings of the human mind . . . and form our own conclusions.

Believe it or not, this is actually pretty hard. Because at age eighteen, as rebellious as you may think you are, you are pretty much conditioned to look to other people for truth. And what I realize now is that, sure, the breadth and variety of the texts definitely encouraged free-thinking . . . but the real secret of the program was the faculty. Free-thinkers themselves, we got to watch them approach the material with enthusiasm and creativity, and we got to hear them say over and over again, "Gosh, I don't know. What do you think it means?"

Of course, this was usually said with an ironic smile, because they always had some wild idea of their own which they would eventually share with us . . . once we became secure enough in our own ideas to interpret theirs in the proper perspective.

The real clincher, though, was that our faculty, like our curriculum, was allowed to be truly interdisciplinary. I learned about the history of chemistry from a dedicated disciple of the beat poets. The moderator for our discussions on Renaissance philosophy was a nationally recognized biologist. A philosophy professor showed me how to observe the markings of birds and tell a pine tree from a spruce.

The other day, I found a list on the internet of the current faculty of the program I graduated from. Most of my professors are still there. Listed along with their names were their particular areas of academic interest and research. It made me laugh . . . in a good way.

We imagine sometimes that we are completely self-invented. But I realize in retrospect that I was formed by these people far more than I have previously recognized. Not so much by their specific interests, methods, and fields of study . . . but by their willingness to pursue anything and everything which interested them, and damn traditional academic boundaries.

Brother Kenneth Cardwell - scientific rhetoric, biblical numerology

Theodora Carlile - gardens in Shakespeare's Plays, feminist critical theory, modern drama

Steven Cortright - Plotinus on the One and the Many, the Catholic philosophy of work

John Albert Dragstedt - Marxism, the U.S. labor movement, history of the liberal arts

Jacob Lester - history of taxonomy, parasitism

Brother Raphael Patton - Babylonian and Greek astronomy, Roman architecture

Rafael Alan Pollock - Chaucer and the astrolabe, classical Chinese poetry

Edward Porcella - Greece and Greek (ancient and modern), medical ethics

Michael Riley - Comparative Mythology, Mark Twain

I think "Sleeping Beauty" is the story where each good fairy waves a magic wand to give the infant princess a magic gift. Is it any wonder I have turned out the way I am, with such a great variety of magic wands being waved over me for four years?

OK, I had to do it . . .



It's a BRANILLA SUNDAE with SPRINKLILLIAM TEDS!!

Not much of interest has been happening the last few days. Oh, yeah, except for the fact that there was a HUGE FUCKING EXPLOSION in the garage of the building I work in.

It actually happened right before I got to work, and I am thankful that the security folks had their shit together enough to actually TELL me that the building had been evacuated before I went in. Several years ago, working in another building, I came back from lunch, sailed up the elevator, cruised over to my cube and found . . . a ghost town. Everyone was gone.

I went back down to the lobby, and was told by security that there had been a bomb threat and my floor had been evacuated.

I nearly flipped my shit. There was a bomb threat? Everyone was evacuated? And you just let me wander my ass on up into the potentially deadly bomb threat zone? WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!

Do I look like a sniffing dog?

But anyway, yesterday - thankfully - I was stopped at the door and told to go to my designated "evacuation zone" - a parking lot with a lovely view of the Bay Bridge. There I chatted with co-workers for a good forty-five minutes before we got the scoop on what was going on.

Turned out, a generator had exploded. The fire was quickly controlled, there was no structural damage to the building, but there would be no electricity, light, climate control, phone service, or network access for some time. So they sent us home.

Spending my whole life in California, that's the closest thing I've ever had to a "snow day." Out here, I guess we just get "generator explosion days."

I took myself out to brunch. I did some shopping. I napped a little. It was great. Because the company network and phones were down, I couldn't even try to check e-mail or voicemail.

Unfortunately, I had been away from the office for two days prior, meeting with clients and stuff. So today I had almost a full week's worth of work to do in one day.

But what the hell, right?

I can do anything.

There's a flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream called Peanut Butter Me Up.

It is half chocolate ice cream and half peanut butter ice cream, with fudge chips mixed in.

But here's the amazing part . . .

It has a Peanut Butter Caramel core.

PEANUT BUTTER CARAMEL!!!

The fact that Peanut Butter Caramel EXISTS is ample proof to me that the universe is benevolent.

I can't write about it today. I don't want to. I'm ANGRY.

I'm not watching TV.

But I read something. I read that Mission Commander Rick Husband had two passions in his life: space flight, and singing.

Rick grew up singing in Church and school choirs, and went on to sing in barbershop quartets.

I found this pre-mission interview with Commander Husband, where he says:

Oh, being able to sing, especially when you're singing a song just from the standpoint of if it's something that you really think is a beautiful song and you can really belt it out, or sing it with the kind of precision that's necessary to sing, just depending on the type of song it is. It, first of all, I think gives you a feeling of teamwork with the other members of the choir. It also gives you a feeling of almost release, in my particular case, because, it's, I'd say, very relaxing. And then, especially with some of the songs that we sing in church, just being able to sing a song to tell God how much I love Him, it just feels great. It really does. And I think it's probably almost as good as exercising.

Relax Rick.



SONG FOR A FALLEN BARITONE