From the hills of Maine...

Wabash 29 - North Central 28...apparently a pretty amazing comeback with the backup QB starting because of injury. Check all the details...

Franklin, on the other hand, saw their dream dashed at the hands of the #1 school in the nation. Details here.

By the way, the links post will be up in the mornin'...

TableTopics: #16

Today; question #16: What life experience has strengthened you the most?

There are a trio...

I can't remember whether I've related this story on the blog or not. If so, congrats to the regulars for being around long enough (six years, two months, and twenty-six days as of today) to finally hear me repeat myself. I'm sure I've never done it before...in this forum, anyway.

I'd spent much of my elementary, middle, and high school career unintentionally cultivating a tidy little persona as the smart alleck, smartest guy in the room. I was quick with a comment - most likely an unkind one - and snappy with a comeback to pretty much anything said.

I hadn't entirely noticed the totality of my self pigeon-holing until I came back for my first visit home from Wabash. I was at a friend's house -Todd Kanning's, specifically, if that means anything to you. Many of our group of friends was back together for the first time, and I found myself falling far too easily into the role that I seemed to have written for myself. It wasn't a happy feeling, and I decided to change who I was in my group. I can't say that I am not quick witted or that I don't tend to have a snarky comment at the ready much of the time, but I hope I at least recognize that I don't have to lead with those words all the time.

Next up comes the totality of my time at Wabash. I'll admit that I never felt in high school that there was anyone around smarter than I. I wasn't the valedictorian or anything, but I felt I could have been if I'd wanted to, and I was the best test taker (because that matters in the long run) at New Albany High School. I never felt that I needed to work at much throughout the course of high school. I cruised fairly easily through and ended up doing pretty well (I can still quote my class rank, my SAT, and my AP scores in case you're curious as to the depth of my immodesty).

When I got to Wabash, however, the professors generally weren't impressed. I was an intelligent young man, probably on the high side of the bell curve, but I was surrounded by intelligent young men, some of whom were clearly my academic superiors. Even at Wabash I wasn't necessarily working my hardest, but I was working far harder, at least. During the second semester of my freshman year, I took an English class about short stories. I thought myself a pretty good reader and a talented writer, so I assumed I was in for a breeze. Sure, the class was for juniors, but I was one of three or four freshmen in the class, and I wasn't worried. I got my only Wabash C in that class, and I was the better for it. Prof Stern was a creature I hadn't know before, and he demanded a whole lot more than I was ready or - at the time, anyway - able to give him, and I saw these things happening more frequently at Wabash. Sure, I was pushing work off until later than I should have been, but I was having to start the final push earlier and earlier, to work harder and harder, to spend hours in the library studying where I'd been able to do the same in twenty minutes in high school. Academically, Wabash pushed me, and I'm the better for it.

The single most formative experience for me, however, was my time in Scotland. I went overseas knowing almost no-one (there was one other Wabash chem major there, but Doug and I hadn't necessarily been tight in Crawfordsville, and I didn't anticipate being all that tight with him over there.) I was free to create myself as whomever I wanted to be. I could be more outgoing, freer with a drink, more pursuant of the ladies, more whatever, and through the course of the year I found out which aspects of my personality I was happy with, which ones I wanted to jettison (as much as that's possible), who I wanted to be and who I was comfortable being. I came back a much more confident, fully realized person who was ready for the world to begin. I can't think of any experience that was more transformative than my time in Aberdeen. I can't recommend overseas study high enough for anyone. I was revelatory for me, and the classes weren't bad either.

In case you're late to the party, here's the deal...

Here's what I've answered so far...

• #25 - "I Know What Love Is" by Don White
• #35 - no business 
• #36 - MLK, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech on the National Mall

Already requested answers...they'll be answered (probably in this order)...

• 19...22...24...27...32...37
  

Feel free to request other answers in the comments.

Good ol' Wabash...



Long in our hearts, we'll bear the sweetest memories of thee...



Great finish to a great rivalry game...



Ballad of the Monon Bell



"Operation Frijoles"



Sad news...



When the day is done and the western son is fading in flashing glory...



Well made commercial to show during the Monon Bell broadcast



Frosh doing good deeds...the first guy to speak was my senior roommate and now a prof at Wabash...



Nice video...I have the DVD...



The 1974 promotional video...



History of Wabash football



Even great schools produce videos like this



Choosing a college...like Wabash...



The Great Wall of Wabash

A passing...and another one soon to be

About a month or so ago, Wabash College lost a member of their pretty small family. Freshman Johnny Smith was found dead in his fraternity house, an apparent casualty of alcohol poisoning. Subsequent tests seem to have borne out the connection to alcohol in his death.

This was the second alcohol-related death at Wabash in a year. The other was a freshman in my fraternity, the Lamba Chi Alphas, who fell from the roof of the chemistry building where he clearly wasn't supposed to be on a late night and certainly not with far too much alcohol in his bloodstream.

Wabash has mourned (links here and here), temporarily suspended the fraternity, and eventually shut down the fraternity while leaving open the possibility of their return in four or so years, the last choice because of - as my class agents, Chris Carpenter and Klint Kraus, wrote...

What we do know about the incident itself is that a young man died from alcohol poisoning. The alcohol was not purchased by the house, nor was it at a house-sponsored event. The college’s investigation moved President White and Dean Raters ’85 (right) to conclude that there was a serious enough breach of the Gentleman’s Rule from the fraternity practices in recruiting, through training, in pledgeship and ritual and tradition (rough paraphrase) to determine that there was an atmosphere of irresponsible citizen ship and ungentlemanly behavior.

And now the family has begun legal proceedings, something that few people probably doubted would come to pass.

Wabash College has one single rule governing Wabash men and their behavior, the Gentleman's Rule:

The student is expected to conduct himself at all times, both on and off the campus, as a gentleman and a responsible citizen.

For a century or more, this was it. The one and only rule governing the Wabash man, and it is intentionally vague, purposefully without specification so that every man can help himself and his peers to define what "a gentleman and responsible citizen" would do, to raise the bar for himself and his fellow Wabash men.

Within the past couple of decades, Wabash added - likely at the legal suggestion of counsel - a definition of "the operation of the Gentleman’s Rule with respect to issues of academic honesty" (available here).

My understanding is that this was the first significant addition to the Gentleman's Rule in the history of the College, the first time when the Gentleman's Rule wasn't enough - either clear enough or thorough enough - to give guidance. Likely it was added to provide legal protection for the College and its professors who hope to turn young men into men through their time in Crawfordsville.

No matter the purpose of the first alteration to the Gentleman's Rule, I cannot imagine that the College will escape a much more significant alteration because, as the Smith family's attorney is quoted as saying...

There is no conduct policy at Wabash, there is no alcohol policy. There is a [G]entlemen's [R]ule that is no rule...

And he is both right and wrong. The Gentleman's Rule is a singular rule, applicable to everything a young man could possibly do and the sort of overarching principle to which we should all hope to ascribe.

Be good.

Do good.

Treat other well.

Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Conduct yourself as a gentleman at all times.

Period.

There is always room for debate as to whether a certain action is what a gentleman would do, but that is part of becoming an adult. You can never have a rule that prescribed every action in every situation for every person. All we can ever do is make the best choices when we are given them, as we are nearly every moment of every day.

Our legal system - particularly the civil side of the legal system - has no taste, however, for such vagaries, and I fear that Wabash College, the brothers of Delta Tau Delta's Wabash Chapter (now defunct), and future Wabash men will pay for that.

The brothers of Delta Tau Delta made a number of poor choices, and they likely do deserve to pay in some fashion for those choices. Without a doubt, if they did not take care of their brother-to-be, if they encouraged, allowed, or participated in hazing, they acted ungentlemanly and deserve the consequences that they will be receiving.

Johnny Smith made a poor choice but one that must be acknowledged he made. He has already paid the ultimate price for that choice.

And I would be shocked if Wabash College, one of the institutions for which I care more than any other in this world, didn't end up paying a huge price as well. If they're lucky, that price will be a financial one only and will not require that they abandon one of the core tenants on which their identity if based.

I wish them well.

~One of thy loyal sons

A quick update

Yes, Jay Horrey does look kind of entertaining in that picture. And, yes, he did go to the same high school and college as I did. And, yes, The Pater Familias did coach him in high school.

And, yes, the Wabash football team's scores so far do look a lot like Mt Union's. I know that doesn't make them equals, but the Little Giants are ranked #7 and rolling.

Catch alls

All of these have been sitting around gathering dust while I tried to come up with full posts about them, but no such posts have been coming, so you get a catch-all post...

• Katydid pointed out the coolness of downloading a Wilco song in exchange for your promise to vote in the coming election. She's kinda awesome.
• The Girl and I continue to try to be better to the world, and we've moved to eating seafood that is supposedly friendly to the oceans. Here's Monterey Bay Aquarium's site which has the list that we've started using. We need to print it out, but we haven't gotten that far. She did buy shrimp from Texas at The Jungle this weekend (at $10.99 per pound for about fifteen shrimp) instead of the Asian shrimp that are much smaller but about $9.99 for a two-pound bag. It's not without cost - including never getting to eat sea bass (my favorite fish) again - but it's something that's worth doing for us.
• Forbes's list of Best American Colleges came out recently - as pointed out by Coach Sullivan (thanks, man). Wabash College (my awesome alma mater) came in at a solid twelve overall. The methods are a little different from those of US News, but I like these rankings way better. If ever you had any doubt as to how awesome Wabash is, let those doubts disappear.
• I'm likely to get a nearly totally blind student in my chemistry classes next year, and I'm at a loss as to how to deal with that. But I am finding - sometimes through The Girl - more and more cool books designed to help sighted people experience a little bit of what blindness could be like.
• I love Entertainment Weekly's lists. But I hate the manner in which they typically present them: single-slide-per-entry lists that you have to click your way through. Some of the lists - the 100 new classic movies, for example, are so cool that they must be clicked through, however.
• Ah, a local Hamilton boy gets told to take off his makeup. I know the male assistance principal mentioned, and I'm fairly familiar with the district. This is a total non-story that managed to bumble its way to cnn's website. Meh.
• Reduce, reuse, recycle via Bedrock Industries with their glass tiles and mulch.
• I finally got around to winning Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the Wii and then went striahgt for the cheat codes so I could see all the rockin' outfits and powers that I hadn't taken the time to unlock yet. The game is now even more awesome even though I don't really have any bad guys to fight anymore.
• Funny stuff happens in Middletown sometimes.
• The photo up top is of Hollis Thomas, former N'awlins defensive tackle. I can't link to the site that I found it, but it's a funny picture, i'nit?

Picking at scabs & correcting the rankings

About five years ago now, I read an article in Rolling Stone called "Plague in the Heartland" about crystal meth in the Plains states. It's a plague that has continued to get worse and worse, being chronicled in The Enquirer as a problem in the Cincinnati area.

Recently I came upon a terrifying series of advertisements from the Montana Meth Project.

I can honestly say that the full extent of my drug use in my lifetime has been limited to alcohol - and that's been pretty limited - and one second-hand smoke encounter in Vienna where my traveling companions had to point out after the fact that I wasn't exactly acting myself. But good lord, if I were going to try a drug, I certainly wouldn't pick one that makes me look like any of these folks.

I'd be curious to see, however, how much of an effect any of the advertising ("Just Say No", Stand, or the What's Your Anti-Drug) campaigns aimed at stamping out drug use actually have. I'm sure that somewhere along the way some of the grants have had to prove that they're having an effect, but I've never seen that research.

---

In an entirely unrelated note, guess whose alma matter is the 10th best liberal arts college in the US?

Happy spring, folks

The weather here in the midwest is turning from winter very quickly into spring as all the trees have now passed their blooming stages, and we're smack in the middle of mow-your-lawn-twice-a-week season.

Last night The Girl and I took honorable dog #2 out for a walk around the lake at Voice of America Park, and the weather was gorgeous. This morning it's turned a little chillier, but that doesn't mean I'm any less ready for summer.

And these spring afternoons have been reminding me of spring afternoons at the Lambda Chi house. We would walk back to the house after classes, and from a block away - straight up the street leading home - you would start to hear the strains of music blasting from the house stereo, one of the brothers having dragged it out onto the second-floor balcony and thrown in one of the half dozen discs that seemed to be in permanent rotation.

Spring afternoons, to me, sound like this...


SeeqPod - Playable Search

The Title of the Blog - Part 13

No matter what you're doing, there's a time when you have to stop. This, the thirteenth column of my time writing for The Bachelor was that time because it was time for me to graduate and head out into the world of teaching.

Nuts...now I'm gonna have to find something else to do with my Saturday posts...

You can’t kill an idea… - Bob Dylan

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
-Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare

When the Bard’s Puck reads these lines, he asks his audience not to take any affront from the words that have been sounded upon his stage in the past while. He then asks for the audience to “Give me your hands, if we be friends,” so that he will know their true feelings before he departs. For me, these lines could be a very easy, very conciliatory opening to a close. I, however, choose not to let them be that.

I am not in the mood to apologize to those whom I have offended. In my previous bakers dozen of articles, I have attacked and chastised, poked and prodded, but have always tried to say my piece and get out. If you have taken the time to read my articles – from rant to rage to manifesto – then I thank you. If, even more rarely it seems, you took the time to formulate an intelligent response to that article, then I and the rest of our campus are forever in your debt, for you have helped me carry my torch. For the rest of you – those who quit on me or who chose to call my voice mail to leave obscene and idiotic messages, I wish we could have talked face to face.

I say that because face-to-face is the truest choice of those of us who wish to engage in open, honest debate. If you have a grievance with me, then I invite you to call me or to stop by the Lambda Chi house and talk to me in person. Or, if you don’t want to do that, then please pick up a pen and take my column’s space for next year. Lord knows they’ll need the space filled up.

If you do choose this last manner, then I shall charge you with a great duty. You will be a writer. True, your job will not demand the same objectivity that perhaps a good news writer must have, but you have responsibilities none the less. You must search your heart and the world around you, for the truest words come from both of them together. Rarely can you carry the shield or the sword for a cause in which you have no faith. Rarely will your words ever strike true in the hearts of your enemies if you do not wield them with the weight of conviction. And never will you convince someone else if you have not convinced yourself.

Having said this, I also charge you to choose your topics well. Some battles are lost before they are even begun. You may never convert a single soul if you choose only the fight on a battleground of faith. If you argue a side that some consider morally wrong – be it abortion, religion, or the Indy Star – your words will have to be more then perfect to win, and that is a very difficult thing to muster.

Thirdly and finally, I charge you to fight in the manner prescribed by Basil Henry Liddell Hart. I know nothing of the man other than his name and these few words, but I love what I know…

Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes - so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil – nothing is so self– blinding.

I will not try to improve upon his words, they are far better than mine could be.

I also know that I have no moral high ground when any of these charges are considered. I have called people names, have chosen religious battle grounds, and have contradicted myself in the same article. I am about to do that last again, for I do not think I was wrong in breaking these charges that I give for you. My articles, you see, fall under the opinion section, and that is assuredly where they belonged. These are not to be taken as gospel, accepted without challenge. Nor are they to be attacked because they were wrong in some way. They never have been wrong, for the opinions expressed herein have been right for me – no more, no less.

And, if am lucky, they have sparked something in you. Perhaps you have never thought of that point in quite that light. Maybe you have never realized that someone else was unsure of his place in the world. Possible you saw an issue never before raised to you – whether you agreed with it or not. And certainly, some of you felt confident enough to challenge me on my opinions. Thanks, I hope I did the same for you. Hell, sometimes we just need somebody to say something difference so we can reaffirm our faith in a cause. If I’ve even done that, I leave this space happy.

But please, do not stop challenging the writers in the paper, the professors in your classes, the politicians in your government. If we stop checking them, then we should start being afraid, for then we have given up our power over ourselves and have handed it over to them. Don’t do that…ever…
~ ~ ~
Oh, as it seems I’m usually given free reign, I’m gonna thank a couple of folks before signing off completely. Thanks, JJ, for asking. You may not have expected what you got, but you sure got it anyways. And thanks also to Burr, Smack, Karlen, Keith, and Eric for being wonderful proof-readers, great sounding boards, and occasional inspirations…

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead. – Scottish Proverb

The Title of the Blog - Part 11

Hah! Found column #1. Turns out I had just mislabeled it as a second column 10.

So, here's the deal...

In the fall of my senior year, I took an English course called something like "Essay Writing". Sort of stupid to take that late in a college career, but it wasn't about writing a non-fiction essay for class, it was about writing a two-page essay just for the sake of writing an essay.

We read a bunch of essays in various styles and had to try on each of the styles. Maybe those will make up the next series of Saturday reads.

In one of the essays, we were to use a natural phenomenon as an analogy for some human phenomenon. I remember using the impending spring storms that I loved watching so much (and that I enjoy much less now that I'm a homeowner myself) as an analogy for falling in love.

This column echoes that essay rather strongly, and I'll have to admit that it's a little more poetic than the other columns that I wrote. I think, however, that I still really like it.

In case you were curious, I got an A- in the essay class, and my professor commented to me that my first drafts were probably the best in the class. He wished, however, that I would've turned in a few second drafts.

The smell of fire was on the air. So was that of rain. As often happens during this time of the year, the weather couldn’t make up its mind. Each morning of the weekend that just passed saw Crawfordsville wake up to a blanket of new fallen snow. Somewhere in the neighborhood behind the Lambda Chi house, a home was still clinging to these reminders and remainders of winter. The scent of their fire – warm, slightly acrid, and home – came to me through a window that I had thrown open in rejoice.

Spring was come at last. The sky held in its blue expanse promises of warmth, of rain, and of a few clouds. All usual suspects for an impending spring in the Midwest. I had my window open for the same reason I’d walked to campus without a jacket, for the same reason I had driven with the window down, for the hope of a spring newly born. Ready for that glorious rebirth that comes with the first thunderstorm and the first softball game of the year.

We were caught in the middle. The warm front – passing through and driving away dark clouds of winter- still lingered above our heads. Telling us our past and showing us our future. I saw them both but could find my place with neither one alone.

From the window of room 233 at Crawfordsville High School, I watched the rain roll in and then out. That’s Prue Phillips’s room and mine as well. I teach there from about 8:30 in the morning until about 2:40 in the afternoon. I don’t take classes at Wabash anymore. Teaching is my job, and Mrs. Phillips’s classroom is my classroom. I am now a student of students.

I am in my apprenticeship and must act as such. I wear slacks and shirts to my classes instead of jeans and sweatshirts. Not that I don’t wear those in my off hours, though.

Therein lies the analogy. I am not a suit. I’m not ready, damnit, to play real world, to be an adult, to apply for jobs. I still spend my weekends on college campuses either around or engaged in drunken frat boy activities. I’m still in school. I play practical jokes and revel in locker room humor that Wabash seemingly breeds. Hell, I’m not even old enough yet to drink legally.

But I feel a warm front coming through. Instead of my weather outlook being steady - college degree, calling for a rain of juvenile humor and a 50% chance of asinine amounts of alcohol-induced fog – the front is dragging with it a change of season. Welcome to the real world, baby. Hope you brought your umbrella.

But then again, it’s nothing more terrifying that the same thing we go up against every time our friends visit, every time we head home to see Mom and Dad, or ditch town to visit the girlfriend. Whenever we do that, we slip out of our Wabash mode – hide the beer cans behind the couch, pull the clean shirt off its hanger, and maybe even shower. We leave behind the person who attends Wabash, who works all week and drinks all weekend. And we slip into something more suited for the occasion. We become the Old High School Buddy, The Triumphant Son, or the Loyal Boyfriend. Each of these is just another mask we slip on and off as the situation suits us. Just this time, I’m not going to be able to change back.

And I’ll be honest; sometimes it scares the hell out of me. But my fear of the storm front that the winds of time are pushing towards us is nothing different from the same combination of the electric fear and excitement that hangs heavily in the air when a real storm is brewing, when the clouds are heavy with rain, and when the wind that whips the pines suddenly dies.

Actually, its more like the first time you were up to bat in little league. Sure, Dad had thrown pitches to you before, and you’d even smacked a couple of those things over the backyard fence. But that wasn’t this, and now you’re alone. Everybody’s pulling for you – your sister, your best friend, even your parents. They all want to see you do well, but they can’t help you anymore. Don’t worry, though, its not home run derby. You don’t have to make it all the way around on your first swing. Just keep your head down and your eyes on the ball. You’ll do okay…won’t you?

Sure you will. Because no matter how badly the doubts mount up sometimes, you’ll be ready to scream them back into whatever hole they came from. You’re a man, a Wabash man no less. Just because you’re not ready to grow up doesn’t mean you can’t. It just means that your storm front hasn’t moved all the way through yet. But it will, and you’ll be fine – nah, you’ll be wonderful.

Oh, but don’t forget your umbrella just in case rain comes down instead of sunshine.

The Title of the Blog - Part 12

I know, this should be part eleven, in the string, but I don't seem to have part eleven saved on my home computer. Might have it at school, might just have things mislabeled - who knows. If eleven is at school, I'll post it next week. If this one's really eleven, such is the way of the world.

When today's column was originally published in The Bachelor, it was subtitled as Dusch's manifesto, having come out just after the Unabomber's manifesto was published in the NY Times & the Washington Post. Guess my environmental ideas echoed his in the eyes of The Bachelor's editors.

So be it...

We are being neutered. If you’ve picked up Time or Newsweek or watched the nightly news recently, you knew this, though. Lately scientists have been finding that our better life through chemical living might just lead to an infertile life through lowered sperm counts. In Finland and New York City and France and other places around the world, average sperm counts in males have dropped almost fifty percent in the last few decades. If they drop like that again man will be nearly infertile in thirty years. Those are your sons and mine. No grandkids to expect or even to hope for after that. Ever…and it’s our own faults. Most of those scientists are now thinking that this reduction is due to massive amount of chemicals in our lives, closer living quarters in large cities, and raised aggression levels due to the stress in our lives.

Simple enough then to solve the problem. All we have to do is move back the countries, get rid of our deodorants, pills, and hair sprays, and live happy, peaceful lives. Yeah right, I imagine that’ll happen about as soon as Rush Limbaugh throws a birthday party for Al Franken. And I’m not even suggesting we should try to do any of that. Why give up what we have worked so damn hard to achieve. We have dragged ourselves out from the waters, from the swamps, down form the trees, and in from the cities. Mankind has built the greatest artificial monuments ever seen on this planet. We have created the pyramids and raised the Hoover Dam. But in the process, we also have raped the land, poisoned the air, and killed many of the planet’s other inhabitants.

We are the greatest creation or either some Creator or some creative process, and we are also its greatest failure. Form the words of the Bible through those of Mark Twain, by way of paintings on French caves and from Picasso’s brush, we have forged an intellectual legacy never to be forgotten as long as there are men to read and to look. Through the genocides of Adolf Hitler and wholesale burnings of rainforests, however, we will also leave an inheritance of hatred and murder. Our time has come, and, with a combined effort form ourselves and Mother Nature, it too shall pass.

For the past four or five million years, we, as a species, have ruled the roost. We have been the most dominant animal in a vast web of life on this planet. We have made and massacred gods by the score, and have dared to challenge even Nature herself. But she will not be so easily brought low. Before us She watched the reign of lizards and of fish, both coming to ends by way of disasters to huge to be prepared for. Comets came and darkened the sky, freezing out those who were then masters. Volcanic eruptions covered the planet in lava, warming the very waters in which the rulers did swim. And yet life went on. The slate was beginning to get too crowded, so She came along and wiped it clean, only to see the new creatures write anew. For now we have covered the board until we live on top of one another in our cities, reaching and stretching for every available bit of space and air. It is our time to be washed away.

And we might just be the one doing the washing. We spent much of our time her in small skirmishes, armies marching and tanks rolling along as we killed each other by the thousands. But our numbers continued to grow. And then we found the ability to kill by the millions and then by the hundreds of millions. We tapped the power of the sun, and encased it in shells that we aimed at our own kind. We gave ourselves the ability to end it all, then we grew the anger to do it and, thankfully, the fear not to.

But for more than a generation now, we have pointed these unholy and evil weapons at each other and have bemoaned the fact that we are doing it. Others have fought to end this fatalistic posturing, and perhaps now they have it under control. But we have not been silent and lazy the whole time. We have designed ways to kill the fish and the fowl, the trees and those tramping along below them. In the air we have put chemicals that may slowly be boiling us alive. Into the waters we have dumped oils that poison our foods. Onto the grounds we have buried things that will glow for as long as we have been on this planet. And we have been stupid and blind the whole time.

But now we begin to realize that we will pay for our short-sightedness. And part of me hopes that we do. In mankind I believe the greatest of beauties has been realized. We have made wonderful things, have conquered the tyranny of genes to now let the sick and the lame lead healthy lives, and we have created as none other have ever done. I have to believe this because it s the only way that I can ever justify the rise of our kind. Yet I see the other side, the one that has killed others of our kind, has murdered those we never even got to know, has burned the trees, poisoned the world, and deserved to be cleansed. For these actions sometimes I wish for the destruction of us. Of an end for everything that we ever wrote, drew, or built. We must have wiped away so that someone else can begin anew.

But we must have no fear. Even if we so sicken our world that we can no longer live upon it, something else will be able to. Next, perhaps, will be the time of the rats, or of the cockroaches, or the insects, or the bugs. Out of the very ashes of our cities will rise afresh something that Nature sees every few millennia: the next big thing. She saw the dinosaurs rule for more than a hundred million years, and then they went. So far we have not spent one one-hundredth of that time on Earth as this big thing, and She won’t give a damn about us when we are gone.

So why should we even bother to keep the air clean or to stop killing anything that is less than we are? Roughly ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever existed on our world are now extinct, and we shall join that number some day. So should we not flaunt out moment of glory, grasp the short time that we have the throne, and live our lives as selfishly as we can?

Yes, by all means, we should, and yet I hope we do not. The world is still beautiful, the forests still thick and teaming with lives yet to be explored or lived, the sunsets still draw me to the sea. For these beauties, for your wives yet loved, and for our children unborn, we should protect that in which we find beauty. We must ensure that they will someday be faced with this same choice. Will we – and someday they – pluck flowers from the ground, pave over their fields, and build skyward, or will they cherish, preserve, and enjoy only to give the next generation a chance to choose again?

Only one of those choices allows us to choose again. The other takes the choice away from our children and ensures that Nature will take the choice away from us and us away from our world. Unless we take ourselves away before She has the chance…

I'm not so sure that my ideas found here are very much different from others that I've expressed before. Interesting how little the brain changes sometimes...

The Title of the Blog - Part 10

I love Wabash like almost no other place that I've ever known. My years at Wabash were amazing, and I do everything that I can to pay Wabash back for those years by recruiting in any way that I can manage.

But Wabash isn't for everybody. It's a tiny, all-male school where the students are pushed to do a lot of original thinking and not so much wrote memorization. It's not an amazing party school, and we don't have a hundred thousand students at the football stadium every weekend in the fall.

In the spring of every Wabash year, we host a bunch of high school students for what we call Honor Scholar Weekend. Most of the high schoolers there are taking written tests to earn big, big scholarships. On Friday and Saturday nights and all-day Sunday, the Honor Scholars get free reign to wander the campus and get to know the various fraternities.

We put our best face forward and try to sell the place as much as we possibly can, because not every one of those honor scholars is going to come to Wabash, so we're still selling the school and our own fraternities.

And The Bachelor didn't even ask me to write a negative column. So I offered it on my own.

Let me caution you, good Honor Scholars, for you are about to take a very grave step… ~ Paraphrasing a fraternity brother of mine

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. We’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside… ~ Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – “Karn Evil #9” – first impression, part two

Welcome, welcome, welcome…to the greatest show on earth. This weekend, we present for your approval the greatest circus viewed by any pair of high school eyes. Behind every next curtain lie feats of magic greater than any you could even imagine. Inside each tent awaits a creature previously only seen in sagas and stories, but now ready to be shown to you and you alone – for a small fee, of course. And along the paths lie a multitude of performers willing to astound and amaze you as you travel from tent to tent, from tantalizing trick to terrifying treat…pause a moment., deposit whatever small bit of coinage you may feel required to, and relax…for you are about to see things you never dreamed of…

I think that’s about the best introduction to Honor Scholar weekend that I could ever manage to give you folks. This is the weekend when Wabash spit-shines the bust of old Eli in the library, begs the frat boys to be good for a while, and prays for sunshine, sociability, and silence. We, in turn, clean up the houses and dorms the best we can, try to seem a little more controlled and cultured that we do the rest of the time and try to sell out school, our fraternities, and ourselves to a bunch of high school seniors. You may never get this kind of treatment again in your lives, guys, so enjoy it while you can.

And take it all with a grain of salt. Some of us will lie to you, telling you that every weekend we bus women from Purdue, IU, and Butler to party with us. Others will tell you that we barely miss women around here anyway. We work like dogs all week long and party all weekend long. It’s the best college in the world, and it’s gonna be perfect for you.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone who will sit down with you and talk for a while. He might be honest, and he might be brutal, but listen to him. In fact, listen to everything that you hear, and make your own decision. This place is not for everyone. This place probably isn’t even for one percent of the people who have ever heard of it. The pressure here can sometimes be enough to break men far better than me. The work load at times is insanely heavy, demanding you to push yourself to – and beyond – limits that you never knew you had. As our recruitment flyers said once if not still, “It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.” What they forgot to add was “for some of you.”

Four years ago, I showed up at Wabash knowing one person, and not even liking him all that much. I stayed in a fraternity that I hoped would like me enough to ask me to join, and I made a friend. Nate was the first student at Wabash I could really talk to. Kenny was a little abrasive, but an okay guy. But Nate was to become a friend of mine. As a sophomore Nate wasn’t too far removed from the troubles that I was going through, and I felt that he could help me make it through, and I felt he could help me make it through because he had. That first semester we spent quite a few late nights talking over problems that one of us was having at the time. And Nate became my best friend in the house.

He snapped late in that semester, never finished taking his finals, and wasn’t back after Christmas break for anything more than a visit. It took Nate a year and a half to realize that Wabash was not the place for him. That what he saw in Wabash wasn’t quite really was in Wabash. The next year we lost a couple more people from my fraternity, and in the years since then, we’ve probably said goodbyes to half a dozen guys who decided that this place wasn’t right for them in some way. Others have been miserable but have stayed because they saw no way out for themselves.

And quite a few of us have complained whined, cherished, and enjoyed this place thoroughly and are now a short time from leaving it forever. We have jumped through every hoop that Wabash has set up for us. We have given as much as $80,000 to kill ourselves with work and stress. We have fallen asleep in lectures and discussions because of too many late nights needed just to keep our heads above water. And we have made great friends who have done it all right along side us the whole time.

Many of you will end up going somewhere else, to DePauw, to Ball State, to Evansville, to Ivy Tech. And for that, I am glad. Because this place is not for you. You are no less for choosing to avoid a place that would cause you four years of misery and heartache, and I wish you the best. Some of you will come here, stay a while, and then will leave. For you I am sorry that we could not have let you see all that we demand before you signed on. And for the rest of you, welcome to a small group of men, bound by a common hell and joy that we call Wabash.

Of the last group, Wabash will ask many things. It will demand your trouble, your time, and your toil. It will demand also your money while you are here and will ask for it when you no longer are around. Your fraternity brothers – or friends – or hall mates – or whatevers – will ask of you your heart and your soul and your help. And you damn well better give it to them, because if any of us had to go through all of this alone, then none of us would make it.

But for now, I ask you very little. Have fun, play volleyball, eat the food that we offer you. Promise nothing in haste – if the Lambda Chi’s want you desperately enough, then they’ll wait until you’re back in the fall. Get to know somebody who seems honest with you, get his phone number, and call him when you have questions. (Mine is 361-7042, if you have any for me.) He might not able to answer them all, but he’ll know someone who can. Above all listen to everything that anyone tells you, and take it all with a grain of salt. We want to be honest with you, but sometimes we try a little harder than we should in order to make ourselves look good. Is that evil? Nah, just little imperfect. Kind of like Wabash itself…

And The Bachelor editors felt it was negative enough that they printed an editorial/opinion piece saying how cool Wabash was just to balance out my column.

PS - It was pointed out to me that I've never actually pointed out why this blog - and the originating column in The Bachelor - is called In Deference to My Idols. I don't know that the story is going to live up to any of the curiosity that you folks might have, but I might as well throw down the brief story.

I'd written my first column for The Bachelor - the column about Jerry Garcia - and JJ told me that I needed a title for my column. The first column was a clear shot across the bow of anybody who was sticking to their old idolization of the sixties icons - Garcia, Dylan, and the rest. And the phrase In Deference to My Idols popped fully-formed into my brain, partially because it wasn't remotely appropriate for the first column and partially because it wasn't anything that I was planning on showing.

I'm not the kind to have idols. I don't want to meet the people who make the music that I love, and I don't want their autographs or anything that touched their person or whatever. So I'm certainly not going to hold a lot of deference for the idols of others, either, or to the idols I don't have.

I do hold certain folks in pretty high regard, and I recognize the influence of certain folks on me. I wouldn't call them idols - not exactly, no - but I do respect a whole bunch of folks.

Deference for my idols?

Not so much, though I do like the turn of phrase.

Countdown to 1000: Four posts to the magic number. That's fewer posts than IU has won national titles. Shouldn't be a challenge.

The Title of the Blog - Part 9

I'm not a religious man.

I wasn't raised in a religious family. My parents weren't the kind to get up every Sunday morning - or every Saturday for those of you in the Cathloci or Jewish persuasion - to head to the local house of worship.

We didn't even stop by for Christmas and Easter. The closest I ever came to being a church-going young sort was during summer bible school at Mt Tabor Presbyterian Curch, and that was mostly for the Kool-Aid and cookies.

Nowadays, I claim the simplicity of being an apathesist, but I do tend to be a bit a-religious.

And it tends to bubble forth from time to time, as it appears to have done back then...

A few years ago, a fraternity brother of mine was questioning his faith. He was a pretty religious guy in a conservative, west central Indiana small town. He’d been going to church for all of his life, and sometimes during his high school years, he began to doubt whether everything he’d been hearing all the time was still going down quite right with his thoughts at the time. Doesn’t seem to radical a notion to me.

Well, this fraternity brother of mine – we’ll call him Jimmy Chitwood,, thought that’s not his real name – decided to be open and honest with people about his doubts. He told his parents and his youth pastor about his situation and told them he wasn’t going to be coming to church for a while, just until he could his thoughts straight in his own mind. Until then, he wished them well and tried to go about his way. Little did he know the arsenal that the pastor had at his calling…

The pastor drew Jimmy aside and related to him the following story…

“Jimmy,” she said, “I remember another young man about your age, who was also questioning his faith. He too had decided not to come to church and explore what else was out there. That young man started hanging out with his friends a little more, and even started swearing – just to be cool. It wasn’t any religious problem to him anymore, so he thought it wouldn’t hurt him.

“After that didn’t bring lightning down from the sky on him, Jimmy, the young man tried smoking with his friends too – just to be cool Even though he had learned that it was wrong, some of his friends did it, and he was just exploring anyway. Again, no lightning, so they boy even tried smoking. Nothing big, just tobacco at first. Heck, his friends were doing it and they seemed okay. So he tried it – just to be cool.

“Everything’s going along fine for this boy, Jimmy, and so he tried smoking some other things too. Some illegal drugs. Nothing too heavy, just marijuana here and there – just to be cool. He kind of liked it even, and it wasn’t hurting him.

“Well one day, his friends and he were just hanging out, and somebody suggested that they go up to Lover’s Point. (I made up that name because I can’t remember the real name in their town) and maybe rattle a few cars, maybe shine flashlights in a few window, you know – just to be cool. Sounded good to him Jimmy, so they went.

“They rattled a few doors, shined a few lights, and then one of the guys pulled a girl out of a car and put a bag over her head. You know, just to be cool. That boy started raping the girl and called the young man who was questioning his faith – just like you Jimmy – over and told him to have a go with her. The young man was a little reluctant, but – just to be cool – he went ahead and did it. After all, his friends were doing it.

“Jimmy, the bag fell off the girl’s head, and it was his sister Jimmy. Well I just don’t want to see that happen to you.” The pastor ended the tale then and there.

Now, I am far from condoning sister-raping or anything of that sort. That’s the kind of crime that rates right there with beer-mooching in my book, and it simply shouldn’t be tolerated. Nope, not at all. What I am a bit curious about, however, is what sort of pastor would use a blatant tactic like fear to keep one of his young sheep in the flock. That’s pretty sick, if you ask me. I would hope instead that someone in a position to guide young people, to steer them clear of dangers and the like would instead allow that young person to make up their own mind, would encourage them to explore other avenues in hopes of finding the faith that is right for them.

I would go so far, even, to say that a religion that has to scare people into its beliefs is in a pretty sad state. If the threat of hellfire and damnation is the only reason to follow in your religion, then perhaps you should rethink a bit. In my two psychology classes, we learned that punishment is the least effective means of getting someone to do what you want them to do, but maybe psychologists should take a gander at some of the cults around the world – the Jim Jones, David Koreshes, and Pope John Pauls of the world. Each man claimed to be the chosen one, to be the conveyor of the messages of “Heaven” in some way. They were all infallible, and each has lead his flock into some frightening decisions.

Perhaps Pope John Paul is not the most despicable of the men that have held his office – an elected one, remember. He was not the one who decreed that nations of people should take up arms to reclaim a city deemed holy. He was not the one to call for the inquisition of millions of Europeans in various countries. No, is merely the man most responsible for the failure of a gathering of world leaders in trying to solve the crisis of overpopulation two years ago. He is an old, frail man who leads the single most powerful political force in the world. He is the latest, most successful in a long line of cult leaders.

What would you do if a man came up to you and claimed to have known the son of god? He might have long, black hair, and a fairly short beard, or he might be a black man, or someone from the Middle East. He claims that the man walked on water and was raised from the dead. You have no proof of this other than what the man and his eleven fellow vagrants have said. They look a little shaky and seem to be delirious with their ‘faith.’ Would you cross mountains with them? Would you pledge your life to them? Would you give them a tithe from your wages? How much, and what’s your credit card number…?

The Title of the Blog - Part 8

In which our hero finds that a column has aged well...

I like how this one reads and how it speaks to the fact that we're never mature but rather are maturing and how Wabash helped me along that path.

College takes a toll on us all. We spend eighteen years creating ourselves, craving a niche form our family and from our friends. We chip away the baby fat, shed the oily, pimply skin of junior high, and peel off the high school letterman jacket, leaving ourselves one layer closer to the truth each time as we go along.

Then one day this gangly, ungainly, self-conscious boy steps from his shell knowing that he is a man. Some of us had been kissed, some deflowered, some still pure when this happened, but damn it, we were men then. We had progressed as far as home could lead us, as far as we could grow under a roof that was not ours. At that point we were as manly as we could ever be. Each of us knew that. We were wrong.

And then we left the relative safety nest. Sure of ourselves and confident that we could handle anything that the world could dish out. We had sent away letters and checks, but now we packed something more. We surrounded ourselves with an armor of suitcases and duffel bags, dragged our every worldly belongings into trucks and cars and trailers, and set out.

I put in my yearbooks from New Albany High School because they contained the last four years of my life. They were signed by friends who I had grown to know and who I had actually let know me. They held pictures of the time when I had become what I knew then to be a man. And they let me hold on to a world that I knew would never be the same again.

I packed up my CD’s as well because I liked listening to them and because Wayne and I had been playing them on our high school radio show for a couple of years. Each time I listened to “Cecelia” by Simon and Garfunkle, I heard instead our voices singing along. Wayne was my best friend back then; he isn’t anymore.

When we left home, every one of us – me and my friends, you and yours – put in the things that we thought we could never live without. The picture of us celebrating when our high school won sectionals went into a book to be taken out once we got wherever we were going. The t-shirt we made in high school shop class went to, because it was a reminder of where we came from. And some of us even brought things from further back, things to help us remember times before we weren’t men. No matter what it was, for us Wallies, it found its way into our first room here in Crawfordsville.

For some of us that was in a fraternity, and for others it was in a dormitory. Either way, once we got here and unpacked we set out looking for people with whom we would spend our first dinner, our first weekend, and our first year. Some of the people in this group came from our freshman tutorial and some from our hallway or pledge classes. But I would wager that many of them do not still eat dinner with us on a daily basis.

After the new crowd was found, we settled into a routine of classes and weekends, binges and purges. I know for myself Wabash also meant a routine of long talks with new friends, sitting up into the wee hours chatting about home-sickness, women, and some rather weighty subjects. For other men the first year at Wabash means a first taste of freedom, of unsupervised drinking and partying, of sex and freedom. Some of us handle our first taste, and some do not. The former group ends up stronger for experimenting and for seeing what there is to see. Part of the latter group is no longer with us for various reasons: scholarships revoked, transfers made, money lost, and some even for lives taken by their own hand. But a bigger part of that group that could not handle the initial cutting of apron strings is still with us. They simply bear the scars.

Last Sunday night the Lambda Chi house voted on who to initiate as new brothers. We didn’t have to vote on three freshman because they didn’t make grades. Those three will bear some scars. One of the brothers in the house had to give up an office because his grades slipped a bit this past semester. These four are not to be singled out, however, because elsewhere at this college men are constantly slipping a bit, losing their ways from whatever path they hoped to follow. I know friends with drinking problems and others who had to leave us but who hope to come back. These people are paying the toll that college – and life – exacts.

But these men will likely make it. They will survive and hopefully will be stronger for what they have been through. They will be helped along by friends and by professors, will manage somehow see their ways to the other side of their problems, and will come out much stronger. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

That’s pretty much how I look at my time here at Wabash. I came here as a man – at least as something that I then thought was a man. I joined a fraternity and met a few real men, men whom I respect to this day. I traveled a bit, learned some facts, and most importantly shed a few more layers, leaving me a little closer to who I really am.

Today those yearbooks don’t sit on the shelves in my room because they are not who I am; they are who I was. Instead, they’ve been replaced with different books, including one from one of the Midwest’s finest authors Garrison Keillor. In it, I found a quote that I thought I’d leave you folks with. Thanks for listening by the way…

“I need to know something more miraculous than that, the secret of happiness. What, as a child, I thought Christmas would give or college or show business, and, as a youth, I though sex would give, now, as a man, I am still looking for. I though I’d find it in my writing but is only work, like auto repair except more professional.” - “Who do you think you are?” Garrison Keillor

The Title of the Blog - Part 7

And again I turn to the letter column of another paper for inspiration and take some cheap shots at the conservative folks. Rut, hello...

Thank you, Mr. S.D. Wray. Every week or two, I search my little corner of the world for some bit of wisdom. This I attempt to weave into some creative conglomeration of comments for The Bachelor to give you. This week, I turn to a fellow Wabash man for my inspiration. Mr. Wray, I owe you a debt of gratitude, for your words have sparked a bit of inspiration and possibly of revelation within me.

More than fifty years after Mr. Wray graduated from Wabash, he still finds enough time to keep abreast of conditions at his former school, to think about these happenings, and to comment thoughtfully and with purpose on what he finds. Mr. Wray, I congratulate you, and I hope that you would grant me permission to quote you like this:

There is a gradual awakening across our land of many parents and alumni who have been unaware of the degradation in all levels of education. The demand for greater accountability is increasing. It is time for [Melissa] Butler and [President Andrew] Ford and a host of others at Wabash so see that traditional values will prevail. ~ S.D. Wray, Wabash Class of ‘42, Greentown

Most of Mr. Wray’s letter discusses primarily the showing of 120 Days of Sodom, Morgan Knull, the Wabash Commentary, and a few other situations here at good old Wabash. But these are not the topics that I hope you will consider this week. Try instead to focus in on the last sentence of his letter, specifically on the phrase ‘traditional values.’ In the past decade or less, these words have been brandished about like some sort of holy sword, like the Excalibur of the politician. Some choose to wield it as they would a mace, clubbing people over the head while debasing the true spirit of traditional values. They have used these words as though they were some savage totem, to be touched only when absolutely necessary, and even then to be insulted or put down. I, for one, am outraged.

Perhaps a more thorough consideration of traditional values than these people have put in is needed. Traditional values are what made Ronald Reagan a great man. As his birthday (Feb. 6) approaches us, let us never forget that Old Ronnie was the man who lead us out of the dark times of Jimmy Carter and the last vestiges of hippies. Instead, we got a man who was not afraid to admit that he didn’t know much and a generation founded on more traditional principles like greed and selfishness. But, traditional values didn’t go much further back than our finest President.

Every high school history book relates – and distorts – one of our centuries darkest times for traditional values: the 1960’. This was the decade when blacks began to get even more uppity, demanding that they be given equal citizenship, when they had already been given separate but equal status, just as they had always been, just as ‘traditional values’ had demanded. Not only that, but they often refused to fight for their rights as people traditionally had. Nope, they wanted to get their way by passive resistance. Weenies…

Not only were the blacks a problem to traditional values in the sixties, but the teenagers were too. They wanted to change the world, wanted to make it so everybody could be happy and could love each other. They just didn’t realize that traditional values don’t have everybody happy. The teenagers started doing drugs and listening to ‘musicians’ like Bob Dylan, people who preached peace, love, and DOPE! Luckily, the sixties were also the decade of Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, two examples of the finest traditional values has ever had to offer.

But the 1960’s weren’t the only decade to challenge traditional values. Nope, the 1860’s put up quite a fight as well. That was the decade when the population of the United States, a nation founded on the base of traditional values, split itself into two parts. Not the North and the South, because fighting is a traditional value, but into the blacks and the whites. It was that decade when the black people of America had their finest and worst hours. First, they actually had the honor to fight for something to believe in. But, sadly, they choose to fight against what had been tradition – something we should uphold at all costs – for centuries: slavery.

Moving back through our nation’s history, we find other groups fighting against tradition, a foolhardy thing to do even though a very small minority does occasionally succeed. Women demanded that they be given the right to vote when they traditionally had not. Children cried out when someone said that the tradition of child labor was wrong, that perhaps youth would be better served in schools than in mineshafts. Why, even the Indians fought us when we simply did what tradition demanded and conquered a proud but technologically backward people. Europeans have for centuries been doing those sorts of things, and I for one am thankful that traditional values do win out as they did over the redman.

But, traditional values come from a wellspring far older than even our occupation of North America. Traditions had been laid down for centuries in Europe as serfs plowed and tilled the fields for their masters, their owners, their noblemen. People were unable to read until that damn Güttenburg came along. Christians were fed to the lions. Women were taken first by the king and then by their husbands. Jews were persecuted. Opium was smoked. Women were property. Witches were burned at the stake. A man’s first sexual experience came when he was a boy and it was with another man, between the thighs. No homosexuality involved just solid Platonic relationships. If you wanted a woman, you bonked her over the head and dragged her back to your cave. Damn it, life was good.

But, in truth, life was better even before then. We had a little to worry about. We swung ‘round in the trees, picking food and eating it whenever we needed to. Sure our knuckles scraped the ground, but life was simpler then. Actually, if you ask me, we never should have left the oceans…but perhaps we should ask Mr. Wray…

Dear old Wabash, this loyal son shall ever love thee

And Wabash College's football team marches on.

If you don't know much about Wabash, check out my first Wabash post from a while back.

The Title of the Blog - Part 6

There probably isn't an internal fight that means more to me than the battle that I describe in this week's column: desire vs. duty. I have accomplished less and enjoyed more because of the call of desire than of anything else in my life.

I don't think I'll ever figure out how to be happy with the balance between these two forces, but I am happy with the way that I wrote about that battle.

Twelve days ago, something screamed at me. That’s not too odd an occasion around the Lambda Chi house, as I have been known to pick rather inopportune times to visit my brothers. But this occasion was rather odd. I sat on a park bench, unable to see the path that lay at my feet because the moon was no where to be found and the nearest light was a mile away at the Turkey Run Inn. The only sounds that reached my ears were made by frogs and running water, dogs and swaying trees. The only things that I could actually see may not even exist anymore, though their light is just now reaching our eyes. Above me lay the heavens, bits of light hung tenuously on the firmament. Crystal spheres hung with stars shining down to me from a million miles away. At the center of the universe that night was me- hearing a voice that owned no mouth.

Late at night, in that moment after my mind goes clear and before sleep visits me, I hear again those voices. They compete, you know. I hear them too as I sit here at my computer terminal, pouring forth another week’s column, laying aside a lesson plant that I have been working on because I have again been able to draw the muse close to me and beg her to work her magic. They both speak to me from within. One telling me that I have something else due tomorrow, that I must remember to buy wire for my chemistry project, be in lab Tuesday afternoon, do my homework, finish this assignment type that letter, call that person…on and on it drones.

SHUT UP!!!!! The other voice takes over for a second, bursting its own tenor through the madness, across the unending litany of chores. But then it lowers its tone, ceases to scream and instead seduces. This voice owns the charm of John Lennon –“all you need is love”- as well as the beautiful body of an open field where I could lie all day long, thinking nothing but the most beautiful thoughts, caring not one iota about what I need to do, what I have to be doing, what I should get done. This is the voice that I ignore more than is healthy for me.

I should embrace these sweet tones, turning my back instead on the call I hate. The sweeter is the one that draws me to my lover’s bed, that convinces me to drive to Clifty Falls and let the water pour down over me. The harsher is the sound that makes me sit at a desk, type out a paper, worry about a test. Nearly all of my actions are begun with a command from one of these voices. Call them Duty and Desire if you will.

Duty intones me to finish this column before giving in to slumber. She can be a harsh mistress, using every weapon upon me – Responsibility, Fear, Shame. Duty punishes if she does not get her way; she meets out failing marks, broken bank accounts, and reproaches from your superiors. But she can be just as hard a lover as well, for when you give into her alone, you ignore Desire…

…who is beautiful. This is the voice that keeps you sane, that turns you attentions away from the daily responsibilities. Hers are the gifts that give you relaxation, love, freedom. Embrace her often, and you will have no cares. Ignore her wonderful touch, and you invite stress, ulcers, heart attacks, and breakdowns. Keep her only as a mistress, though, and you will find yourself outside society’s walls, unable to play their games and live by their rules. You will be behind and perhaps even unable to catch up. Take neither of these women to the full exclusion of the other. If either of them takes full hold of your affections, then she will cause you only problems – one doles out the punishments from within, the other from without. These are the two voices to which I often have to answer.

I fear that some of you have fallen too far into the clutches of Duty. You wander about the campus, head pointed down at your feet, trudging resolutely from lab to lecture to lunch and to lab again. Your evenings are spent catching up on yesterdays readings, finishing up tomorrow’s problem set, perhaps even working a day ahead so that tomorrow night won’t be quite so bad. When some tiny thing goes wrong for you, it often escalates into a major crisis because your schedule leaves you no leeway for mistakes – or for free time. When you do have a moment –an evening – to breather, you often spend it concentrating all of the fun into two hours, drinking yourself into a stupor, and passing out – praying that you wake in time to begin the cycle again.

You are killing yourselves. These are supposed to be the most carefree years of our lives. We have few responsibilities of the scope that many of us will in a few years, and yet we have as much legal freedom as out society offers anyone. And yet you spend this time bitching about your workload, swigging coffee so you can pull another all-nighter to catch up, and working yourself into the hospital.

Here’s a hint folks. It’s something that Desire whispered into my ear half a fortnight ago. Back off. Take time to do what you want to do. Eat a peach. Head outside tonight and watch the sun burn a crimson path into the sky as it leaves to lighten the world to the west. Drive to a par. Pet a dog. Fall in love.

I will admit that I sometimes find myself responding more to the whips and chains of Duty than to the loving caresses of Desire, but I know that I am occasionally able to hold off Duty while I embrace Desire. She is beautiful, you know. I just wish that each of us would take the time to look…

The Title of the Blog - Part 5

Don't know exactly what to say as an intro this week. Column number five dealt with collective memory and my views on the idea of a tradition at a place that changes its personnel every four years. Upon rereading this one, I'm struck by how scattered the ideas are.

I do want to warn you that there is a spicy word in the middle. I was in college, so I clearly had to curse from time to time - because that's the truest measure of mature writing, doncha know...

Let me drop a phrase on you just to see what your reactions are: collective memory. Just take those couple of words and mull them over a bit before you give me an answer; no pressure involved here; just a columnist wondering what a couple of words mean to you. Okay, guess time’s up. I might as well wander into my column now, hope you like, here it goes…

I came to Wabash, just over three years ago, as a fairly impressionable freshman. I wanted to fit in, to what everybody else does and has done for years now. I joined a fraternity – partially because most of the guys who came here do that too. I screamed my lungs out at chapel sing, a bit because all of my associate brothers were doing it too. And the next year, I encouraged the new freshmen to do things just like I had done them, because what I did was right for me. Not that I knew them at all, not that I had any idea of what they should do based on who they were, just because I did those things, and they should too. Seems pretty average, fairly easy to understand, doesn’t it?

Well, in these last few days, I’ve been wondering about why something that someone did in the past should have any influence on what you do today or tomorrow. More specifically, what I’ve been wondering is why anything that somebody calls a “tradition” should influence my behavior. Here at Wabash, we seem to pride ourselves on traditions, on things that we do or believe that tie us into some sort of cosmic past. It is these things that I have come to call into question this week.

There are actually three things that I’ve been pondering. First, I am not too sure that we should be followers. Then I’m having questions about the people who put those footsteps there in the first place. And last, my eyesight is a little bad, and I’m not sure I can see those footsteps all too clearly.

The world needs ditch-diggers and phone sanitizers and even ice cream scoop girls. If someone enjoys their job and performs it well, then they should hold no shame in what they do. Some people were born to lead, like the man who pointed the direction as the elephants marched across the Pyrenees, and some were born to shovel up behind them. That just is. I will not question that. What I am pondering is whether I should be a pointer or a shoveller. One of those men gave the orders, told everyone where to go, and made the rules - the traditions. The other did what he was told, got to play with manure, and followed those rules.

Each of us has a choice, a choice that we have been making for roughly twenty years each: are we to sit above the shit or are we to play in it? Here at Wabash, I would hope that we are becoming men who will lead our country, who will forge new paths where the old have become overgrown or obsolete. Some of us, I am sure, will find our calling by walking where others have walked before, but I would like to think that we can do better than that. I would claim that we should be leaders – not followers.

We, the Wabash students, are a community of men. I say that because somebody said that to me a few years ago when they wanted me to come here. We have one rule, and one rule only: to act as a gentleman at all times. Again, somebody told me that, but I’ve forgotten his name, so I’ll not be quoting my source this time. Heck, it’s a tradition that we say this to each new prospective when he tours our fraternity house. “One rule…treated as an adult…lots of studying…some partying…busloads of women every weekend.” Well folks, I was lied to in at least one of these areas, and I’ve been a little hacked off ever since.

But, I’m going to give that now-departed Wally the benefit of the doubt. I will assume that he was merely following a tradition that had lied to him before and to his liar before that. Does this mean that some of our past Wallies haven’t been totally honest, haven’t been fully truthful, haven’t followed the Gentleman’s Rule to the letter of the ‘law?’ Dare I question the choices made by those who have gone before my? Hell yes, I dare. I doubt whether that lie is worth getting another student next year. I doubt whether it makes any sense to dress a freshman p as a woman and parade him around the track. I doubt whether we should be all male. Do I dare to say every act gone before me was wrong? No I don’t. Quite a few of them were excellent deeps, done fore the right reasons and at the right time. Heck, I’m not even saying that those three doubts should fall either way for me. All I am saying, is that just because someone does something, it doesn’t mean that you should do it. It’s as simple as when my mom asked me “If Wayne jumped off a bridge, would you?” And it’s as simple as the tradition that I will likely continue by asking that of my children someday.

Now I return to the idea of collective memory. We, now we are ‘the seniors,’ have been around this place longer than any of the students, and we know what things should be like around here. We know that tradition says we’ve always had comps in January, that Wallies have always partied on Saturdays, and that the Phi Psi’s always win the IM crown. We know these things because they’ve been true since we came to Wabash…since three years ago. That’s it. Our only basis for claiming things as traditions is three years of Wabash’s hundred-thirty-four. Well, freshman, I’m here to tell you that we don’t know that much at all. If this senior class were to decide ‘tradition’ demands that every one of us come to commencement naked, then in it would be tradition on less than half a decade. Three classes have only us left to learn from, and we are the ones who are left to pass along the ‘traditions.’ Remember that.

The collective memory of this student body is something around four years. I can only tell you what Wabash was like three years ago. Heck, our president can’t do more that from his personal memory. The only people around here who can recount what Wally World was like longer ago than that are the professors and the custodians. They are the ones who know what the traditions of this place really are. They can tell of oral examinations twice weekly for every student, of Saturday classes, and of a day long in the past when the Lambda Chi’s won intramurals. Wabash’s memory lies with them, and often that fact is overlooked. We turn, instead, to the members of our fraternities for guidance, to tell us what we should do, how we should be. Is that right? I can only tell you the traditional answer.

Now comes the hardest part for me: telling you what I think you should do about all of this. Am I condoning mass over-throw of anything denoted ‘tradition?’ Do I want Chapel Sing, Homecoming, and the senior Bench demolished? Should you spit in the face of convention and take only the path un-traveled? No, that’s not quite it. Those well-trod paths were traveled by amazing people, and we ach need the opportunity to walk there ourselves. My charge for you is a more complicated one, a more difficult one, I think. I want you to think about your traditions and about ours. Take what is right for you and discard what is wrong for you. Adapt the trappings of the past to your todays, not to those of your processors. And, if need be, burn the bridges built by those who went before you. Be not scared to take a leap if faith and try something different, you never know when you can do something better than your idols could…

Friggin' DePauw

Looks like Wabash's football team won't be ending the season undefeated. They headed into the final regular season game - the traditional Monon Bell game without a loss, but the hated Tigers kicked a last-second field goal to cap a ten-point final quarter comeback.

Bastages...

If you want to check out a recap of the game, click here.

If you want to see photos of the game and the festivities, click here.

If you want to hear the "Ballad of the Monon Bell", click here.

There's always next year...