One is not born

http://chicagoist.com/2008/02/01/the_friday_flas_4.php

Ahem. Shown is a photograph of Simone De Beauvoir unclothed (one hesitates to say "naked") from behind. Even though I have settled down quite a bit in my old age, it is a lovely photograph and highlights the simple beauty of a healthy body.

Warning: if one is likely to be offended by the skin with which our gracious creator/ evolution has gifted us, or if your self-image is likely to be threatened when one does the math and finds out how old she is in this shot, you should probably not click the link.

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant...

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/guide/hum/philosophy/philos_song.au

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/guide/hum/philosophy/philos_song.html

Some Points to Which to Get

Well, anyway, some time after I graduated, I was living in an apartment in Hyde Park with some other former Shimerians and friends and working as a mailroom clerk at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. I was still in touch with friends who remained on the Mount Carroll campus and would frequently go out to visit on weekends. We knew right away when the first closing was announced. We knew right away when the announcement was rejected and wondered what we could do to help.

I thought maybe I could find something in the archived papers of William Rainey Harper relating to the Frances Shimer Academy that might be useful, so I looked. What was most useful was actually a volume from the main stacks at the Regenstein which was evidently issued in connection with the memorial service at the time of Frances Shimer's death. How I used it (or should I say: "How it used me"?) was to write a song about the struggles of Frances Ann Wood and her partner Cinderella Gregory to establish and maintain the Mount Carroll Seminary from the point of view of one of the locals. The song has never really been finished- I got about as far as the Civil War and then the words stopped flowing.

I played as much as I got, though, out in Mount Carroll at Frances Shimer's final resting place, at alumni gatherings, at Orange Horses at the old campus, in Waukegan, and now in the Cinderella lounge in the new IIT digs. I'm told that David Shiner has kept the song alive even in my absence, which I guess makes it a genuine folk song or something. I can't wait to hear what Lance Dyke does with it on the ukulele. After my performance at the Orange Horse on the new campus I was told by some stranger who had evidently participated in the recent move from Waukegan that I had no idea how much that song has meant to the community during this last transition.

Maybe, but the song and the chord it seems to strike in the hearts of many Shimer people point to my first point: THE CORE OF THE SHIMER EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE GREAT BOOKS, NOT THE DIALOGIC PEDAGOGY NOR THE COMPREHENSIVE CURRICULUM; THE CORE IS A COMMUNAL LOVE OF LEARNING. I emphasize the "a". There are many other communal loves of learning but Shimer's is that shared by individuals gathered into a specific community streatching back to Frances Ann Wood and Cinderella Gregory.

There is more to be elaborated on this point but it has gotten late and I am still a working stiff, so later. Right now I want to make sure I get my second point out, which is: I have often been told that I should record that song (and other fine tunes inspired by my studies at Shimer.) OK, well I'm willing and if we find someone who can record them for commercial distribution I'm quite willing to sign my cut over to the College. If the songs are as successful as they might be, perhaps some more of our fair share of prospective students would hear about us. Trouble is I'm never going to make the arrangements, myself, so somebody else would have to push the project through to completion. I'll try at least to get the songs online somehow so anybody out there who cares and knows how can make their own judgment about the merits of the proposal.

Some other quick points without support or argument.

Start an online Shimer Historical Society to archive and share documentation of the history
of Shimer and its curriculum. Include reminiscences from alums (and old journal entries)

Buy an island 0n Second Life, scale model all three campuses and conduct virtual classes.

Get some sleep.

Up to Speed

I've just finished reading this whole blog from start to finish. I am impressed and disappointed not to have been reading it while it was being written. I'm tempted to offer as an excuse for not following the move more closely the fact that during the six months between July and December of 2005 I was undergoing chemotherapy three days out of every two weeks following the removal of most of my colon at the end of May. I know better, though.

Right now it's three in the morning. I'll be getting up at five to go to my job as interlibrary loan coordinator at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois. That's about as far south on the Metra Electric as Waukegan is north on Metra's North Line. (I should know- I don't drive: Waukegan is farther but they're both end of the line.) After an 8:30 to five day shuffling books and affiliated papers, including a lunchtime meeting of the Friends of the GSU Library Historical Society I'm trying to foment, I'll be meeting with the board of the South Suburban Heritage Association till passed ten. Shimer's got me pulling another all-nighter.

I graduated from Shimer the same year as Young Kim, 1973. Same year but maybe a few months earlier. I completed my coursework in three years, one in Oxford sandwiched between two in Mt. Carroll. Alas! The comprehensive wasn't offered until late in the following fall so I didn't get the degree until the February of my fourth year. I still claim to be an early extrant.

What gave me a jump was the placement exams and the preparation for them that I had gotten from my parents and my high school. My parents met at the University of Chicago in the late Hutchins era. They participated in one of the early Great Books Foundation's reading groups
and the kids of all their friends were our friends so we all grew up with the same books. And the parents all took an interest in what was going on in the schools. And our favorite teachers were all U of C graduates or spouses of U of C graduate students. So when I got to Shimer I was used to small group discussions of seminal texts. And while I found myself quite at home, it was not at last but still.

I came to Mt. Carroll in the aftermath of the GIS. There were still students around from the time of that catastrophic event, and we listened to their tales of the bygone glory days, and the Grotesque Internecine Struggle like ghost stories around the camp fire. Oh! would we had a blog such as this of that!

Anyway- I see that 5am is pressing closer and I'll have to break off soon and haven't gotten to any of my points. I've got some, really. I just had to put up something so Sara would know I was serious about getting permission to post.

also on 12/10/00

i'm really out of sorts lately. i know, i write that a lot, but i mean it this time. it's the first time all semester that i've wanted to leave campus but somehow been mentally incapable of it. there were a million things i wanted to do in the city yesterday, and a million of things i wanted to do today, none of which i did.

i'm trying to figure out how much of this is because i'm working through that book, and how much of this is because it's the end of the semester. i got in an argument with my housemate about the FRIDGE, for christ's sake. there's never any room in it and i never buy any groceries because i know they won't fit, and she says it's because i'm too lazy to clean it out. (except she insists that when she said "you" she didn't mean me. or some shit.) i say that i don't like throwing out other people's stuff, and maybe if everybody else would stop taking up all the shelf space, the two of us who have NOTHING in there could buy a bag of apples every once in a while...anyways...

i finally finished my semester project, almost. we don't really have finals days at my school, some of the classes I'm in have final papers or exams (usu. take-home exams) so there's really not a big push for studying for finals. however, during writing week we either have to take Comprehensive Exams or do a semester project. There are only two comps, the basic comp and the area comp. I've already basic comped, and don't have to area comp until next semester. So all I have to do this week is work on my project. We're supposed to spend forty hours working on our projects, though most students don't...they call it (writing week) "drinking week and writing day." But we're not allowed to work for the school or rewrite papers or anything this week, and I do my best to try to spend all forty hours on it.

One semester, I did an analysis of religion and mysticism by having students fill out surveys about whether they believe in god or faeries, and analyzing the results. My first semester, I did a zine about my experience at college. Last semester, I wrote a huge (thirty or so page) essay about my friend who passed away on mother's day, and my reaction to it, and my thoughts about how the school was handling it.

This semester I'm doing the newsletter, and I'm almost done. I have an intro page, 4 pages of places to go and things to do in this lame-ass town, three pages of things to do in Evanston and Chicago.

There are also articles about the electives in our school, and how there are more Humanities electives than Soc. and Nat Sci. ones. I interviewed the Dean and two students and we tried to figure out why. There's one on the selection process for RA's, tutors, editors, etc. and it calls for open application processes from the school as well as students not selected being told the reasons why, with quotes from a student chosen as an RA, one not chosen, and the person who chose.

There's an article on housing disputes and conflict resolution, interviewing two dissatisfied people, one RA and the Housing Director. There's a rumor control section, which was fun, I went around and verified all the rumors going around, mostly false. There's an article I wrote about the enviro group and what we've done all semester, which was originally printed in a copy of the school paper that didn't quite make it into everybody's mailbox (they're doing an awful job this semester). I also interviewed the computer lab director (my boss) abt. new developments, and all the banks in the area about their accounts. There's stuff I copied from off of the walls in the dorms, a piece on detoxing with herbs, an article on doublecasting for the play, and one on the controversy of the tutor system in the school. I worked really hard on it!!

So far two students have offered to do columns if I keep doing it next semester, so I'm planning on it...part of it is that our school paper rarely has articles about things going on...but partially it's because I'm pissed that I didn't get picked as editor for the school paper this semester (even though I wrote for it a lot)...and I just think it's good to have a paper not officially sanctioned by the school.I'm tired...and hoping I can get my ass out to Chicago tomorrow instead of sitting around and whining about wanting to go and not going.

posted at 12:49 AM