Adventures in Colorado and New Mexico

August 26, 2007 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Aug 13, Monday – Though still tired and sore from our strenuous hike the day before, I went to the Sun gym to do the physical part of my fitness assessment. Even more tired after that!

Aug 17, Friday – Took a 6 pm flight from Denver to Albuquerque, where Steve Ediger, a long-time Woodstock friend, picked me up and drove two hours to where he and Sharon Seto and their son Robin live. Steve and Sharon work at the United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico. The school year was just starting, so Sharon had to be at her dorm to welcome the kids (she supervises a dorm of 45 girls, and also runs the school’s outdoor program).

The hummingbird feeder on the porch is refilled daily, attracting dozens of birds from several species. Heard close to, hummingbirds sound disturbingly like very large insects.

Saturday we visited the local flea market.

Sunday Sharon and I went to Santa Fe, then Steve drove me back to the airport in Albuquerque.

Another busy week at Sun ensued. I was intensely disappointed to learn that the fitness assessment had been a mistake – as a contractor, I’m not allowed to use the gym! (I hope the nice guy who did it for me didn’t get in trouble for having done the assessment – he was supposed to have checked my badge, apparently.) All my motivation to start getting into shape had to be postponed. I do have his detailed assessment and recommendations to work from, at least.

Aug 26, Sunday – I survived a scary (for me) drive to Conifer, Colorado, to the mountain home of my colleague Charles. He and his wife Elaine had invited me and a long-time friend of theirs, Marj, who graduated from Woodstock in 1978 (she was a lofty senior when I was a lowly freshman, so we hadn’t really known each other in our schooldays). Marj and Elaine had met years before when both were teaching in El Salvador.

It always seems to happen with Woodstockers that we find plenty to talk about even if we didn’t know each other well (or at all) while at school. Marj had brought albums of fascinating photos from a trip she and her husband had made to the far corners of the world – fuel for conversation. Charles and Elaine are no slouches in the travel department, either – they’ve even lived in Antarctica!

Woodstock School

Silly Costumes

August 24, 2007 Ross Leave a comment

original

10 minutes.

Always the longest in my life!

10 minutes between the end of the lesson before the lunch break and the lunch break!

10 minutes from 4:00 to 4:10 when the schoolday ends.

10 minutes between the end of the schoolday and the after-school snack.

10 minutes from 8:50 to 9:00 when mandatory study hall ends (you have to stay in your room, quiet, possibly studying, for an hour and a half).

I begin to dose out my life in minutes! 40 or 80 of lessons, depending on the day.

5 or 2 minutes before lights-out.

â€œ All right girls! You have 25 minutes before lights out!”

â€œAll right girls! You have exactly 30 minutes to hand in your clothes to be washed!â€

â€œAll right girls! You have 30 seconds left to pick up your clean clothes before I lock the laundry and you’ll be cold and naked for ten months!”

Exaggerations apart.

â€œOk girls!â€ It’s time for my favorite announcement: “The hour and a half of study hall is over and they’re selling food downstairs.”

I go.

I wasn’t waiting for anything else.

Aug 24, 2007

MomComm: Midlands, the girls’ dorm, has a loudspeaker system now, so announcements can be made at the touch of a button. I’m not sure I’d like this particular manifestation of modernity. I suppose there’s an electric wakeup bell or announcement as well. In our day, we were woken up by Dham Singh walking the halls, swinging a large, bronze handbell. This was, perhaps, kinder – the bell would reach you from far away, gradually growing louder as you swam into consciousness, arriving to clang right outside your door, and then fading away again as Dham Singh proceeded down the hall.

The bell for meals, instead, was a piece of railroad track hanging from a balustrade, which was whacked vigorously with a crowbar. It would start out slow, gather into a rapid crescendo, and then fade away again. I don’t know whether this musical approach was devised by the man who banged it every evening.

Once, for a prank, Jenny Rudolph and friends stole both bells and hid them. The next morning Dham Singh walked the halls with a tinny-sounding decorative brass bell that the supervisor kept on her desk, which woke us up by its sheer novelty.

Mrs. Silver got her revenge – she locked the doors and wouldn’t let anyone leave for school until the bells were returned (being late for school would have incurred penalties).

Woodstock School

Every Picture Tells a Story – Rossella’s India Diary

August 23, 2007 Deirdre Straughan 26 Comments

Rossella’s diary of her year at Woodstock School on the SAGE Program.

diary

2007 Feb 25

Jul 27, 30

Aug 7, 10, b, c, d,
e, 13, 16, b, 17, b,
c, 21, 22, 24, b,
27, b, 28, 31, b, c

Sep 3, b, 6, b, 7, 10, b, c,14, b, 17, b, 18, 19, b, 21,b, c, 24, 25, 26, 27, b

Oct 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16,30, 31

Nov 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 16, a,b, 17, 18, TOS gallery, 20,24, 25, 29

Dec 1, 2, b, 3, 8, 10, b, 13,18, 22, 25, 26

2008 Jan 18, 24, 29, 31

Feb 5, 11, 15, 20

Mar 9, 20, 26

Apr 2, 9, 21, 22, 24, 30

May 12, 13, 16, 17

Graduation awards,baccalaureate, bacc videos,behind the scenes, banquet,banquet videos, photos,graduation, photo gallery

India

Toys of Empire – Teaching Young Bengalis to be Bureaucrats of the Raj

August 22, 2007 Deirdre Straughan 3 Comments

While I was in New Mexico last weekend, Sharon and I drove to Santa Fe. The town has many museums, but we visited only one: the Museum of International Folk Art. It’s not big, but offers plenty to keep the attention. One room has drawers full of decorative panels from Bangladeshi rickshaws, and molé cloth work.

Most fascinating to me was the Girard Wing, created from the personal collection of a bi-cultural globetrotter whose taste in funky objects I completely concur with. It’s an enormous room crammed to bursting with toys, figurines, masks, and tapestries, arranged according to some interior logic of the donor, which doesn’t always make sense to the outside observer. Girard didn’t believe in labels, and I can see his point: I get distracted reading the text instead of observing the object it describes. So he put discreet little numbers on the cases, corresponding to a catalog with one terse paragraph of description per case. This was very frustrating at times – you’re left wondering: “Where is that thing from? What does it mean? Why does this mask show a person with pursed-out lips with a lizard climbing down his nose?”

And: “Why does this 18th-century Bengali story-teller’s scroll illustrating the life of Krishna feature (Indian) people and gods dressed for the French royal court in knee pants, hose, and big wigs?”

We weren’t sure if we were allowed to take photos (though there weren’t any signs saying otherwise), but I couldn’t resist snatching some shots of these.

The catalog inadequately explained that they are from Bengal, and represent scenes of the workings of the British empire – intended as educational toys, perhaps to show Bengali children the (limited) jobs that would be available to them in the British bureaucracy.

At the top of the page you can see a higher court in full session. Aren’t these guys wonderful? Look at the detail of their moustaches and beards, and the little white pith helmets on the table.

Below is a detail showing the British judge in his white jacket, with the plaintiff in the white dhoti and turban in the foreground, under the watchful gaze of a guard in blue.

Below, I think, is a low-level magistrate’s office with a “native” judge. I’m guessing from their loincloths and hairstyle that the plaintiffs are tribal people.

^ Here’s a surveyor’s office, everyone busily drawing maps – except their British supervisor (who appears to be a close relative of the judge). There’s even a guy with a rod, ready to go out and take more measurements.