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HOUGHTON ON THE GENESEE
Jul. 12th, 2007 11:37 pmAs noted a couple posts ago, the past weekend found me at Houghton College for Alumni Weekend, which included the joint reunion of the classes of 1991-93.
My years at Houghton were in some ways defining ones that set me on many of the courses my life has taken, vocationally and personally. It was there that I learned how to learn and to value learning, how to probe and question and ponder and probe some more -- invaluable in life in general and just about any vocation, absolutely essential in my chosen field of journalism. It's where I learned how to work; it's also where I learned how to trust and risk, how to actually be a friend rather than just share space. It's also where I made the acquaintance of such minds as Dostoevsky, Wendell Berry, Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath, and, thanks in large part to an elective lit course on the Inklings and their influences, Chesterton, Charles Williams and even the Professor himself. That's to say nothing of the great minds and hearts encountered among the faculty, people like Jack Leax (who no doubt stifled many an internal groan at the cliched and purple prose of my writers-workshop project), Charles Bressler, Richard "Jake" Jacobson (though I only took a semester and a half of calculus, Jake remains influential as the type of person I wish to be) and many others.
Perhaps most importantly, Houghton is where I met many of the people whom I consider among my closest friends, a number of whom I've been blessed and fortunate to be able to keep in contact with over the years (and who pay a visit here to the Land O'Ledley from time to time -- you all know who you are) -- people like Jim Terwilliger and Rick Ives (second from left in adjoining photo -- we were junior-year roommates and, on paper, the classic mismatch as he was, and is, as intense as I am laid back and laconic, yet somehow we thrived as roommates and close friends) and Ivan Rocha (star of this post) and Peter Dupler and Rebekah Prokop and James & Kelly Lindsay and many others (that's just a representative sampling not meant to deliberately omit anyone, etc. etc.) -- and, of course, Randy Hoffman, or![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrgoodwraith around these parts. For that matter, I can't say I was close to many of 'em, but I often crossed paths with Rand, Adam (warning -- URL has sound-y stuff) and many of the denizens of what I call the Ooklaverse (Dave Huth, Thomas Woods, Ernest Scribner, famous unwitting album-cover model Dave Lennon and so forth). The undeliberate tag team of Randy and Dr. Bressler got me interested in SF and fantasy again, which led to my later involvement with fandom and still later involvement with filk.
All these ruminations and name-droppings aside, I should probably continue with the post about, uh, how the weekend went -- but it's an early morning tomorrow at the office and I don't have time to wax long-winded. So further Highlander posts shall ensue.
(The post title, by the way, is taken from a poem that ran in a campus publication around 1903 or thereabouts about the founding of the college in the mid-19th century as a Wesleyan seminary; the poem was so over the top in its celebratory air and foced rhymes that Ivan and I just plain loved it. Sample swath, about founder Willard J. Houghton: "He came to work and he came to do/He worked with brick, and mortar too." Hee!)
Sounds & Images: "Old Friends" (Simon & Garfunkel)
State O'Mind: Reflective
My years at Houghton were in some ways defining ones that set me on many of the courses my life has taken, vocationally and personally. It was there that I learned how to learn and to value learning, how to probe and question and ponder and probe some more -- invaluable in life in general and just about any vocation, absolutely essential in my chosen field of journalism. It's where I learned how to work; it's also where I learned how to trust and risk, how to actually be a friend rather than just share space. It's also where I made the acquaintance of such minds as Dostoevsky, Wendell Berry, Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath, and, thanks in large part to an elective lit course on the Inklings and their influences, Chesterton, Charles Williams and even the Professor himself. That's to say nothing of the great minds and hearts encountered among the faculty, people like Jack Leax (who no doubt stifled many an internal groan at the cliched and purple prose of my writers-workshop project), Charles Bressler, Richard "Jake" Jacobson (though I only took a semester and a half of calculus, Jake remains influential as the type of person I wish to be) and many others.
Perhaps most importantly, Houghton is where I met many of the people whom I consider among my closest friends, a number of whom I've been blessed and fortunate to be able to keep in contact with over the years (and who pay a visit here to the Land O'Ledley from time to time -- you all know who you are) -- people like Jim Terwilliger and Rick Ives (second from left in adjoining photo -- we were junior-year roommates and, on paper, the classic mismatch as he was, and is, as intense as I am laid back and laconic, yet somehow we thrived as roommates and close friends) and Ivan Rocha (star of this post) and Peter Dupler and Rebekah Prokop and James & Kelly Lindsay and many others (that's just a representative sampling not meant to deliberately omit anyone, etc. etc.) -- and, of course, Randy Hoffman, or
mrgoodwraith around these parts. For that matter, I can't say I was close to many of 'em, but I often crossed paths with Rand, Adam (warning -- URL has sound-y stuff) and many of the denizens of what I call the Ooklaverse (Dave Huth, Thomas Woods, Ernest Scribner, famous unwitting album-cover model Dave Lennon and so forth). The undeliberate tag team of Randy and Dr. Bressler got me interested in SF and fantasy again, which led to my later involvement with fandom and still later involvement with filk.All these ruminations and name-droppings aside, I should probably continue with the post about, uh, how the weekend went -- but it's an early morning tomorrow at the office and I don't have time to wax long-winded. So further Highlander posts shall ensue.
(The post title, by the way, is taken from a poem that ran in a campus publication around 1903 or thereabouts about the founding of the college in the mid-19th century as a Wesleyan seminary; the poem was so over the top in its celebratory air and foced rhymes that Ivan and I just plain loved it. Sample swath, about founder Willard J. Houghton: "He came to work and he came to do/He worked with brick, and mortar too." Hee!)
Sounds & Images: "Old Friends" (Simon & Garfunkel)
State O'Mind: Reflective
