To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

We still shall hear a calling bell

2013-10-07T23:37:16Z

I'm reading You Are One of Them right now, and today I came across this description of the narrator's college experience:

Midmorning lectures in imposing Gothic buildings, afternoon seminars in quaint clapboard houses, late nights in the library, where friends were never more than a few carrels away and could be easily coerced into coffee breaks. It was a picturesque campus on a hill, and even in winter, with several feet of New England's snow on the ground, the place seemed to be bathed in warm light. It was a nostalgia factory; we were being trained to be sentimental about the school so that we'd respond to their relentless appeals for money after we left.

Now, I know many small liberal arts colleges are more similar than their advertising would like you to believe, but still, something about that passage was awfully familiar. Even with the half-hearted attempt to disguise the location (New England, hah), I was getting not so much an imagined image as a memory...

Oh, look, Elliott Holt is a Kenyon alum. No one is surprised.

P.S. While I was looking up the lyrics to "Kokosing Farewell," I came across Kenyon's new 404 page. Bwahahahaha.

comments

Things you find on your semi-annual trawl through Facebook

2013-06-30T03:29:21Z

THE PINK MONSTER LIVES.

(Context, for those of you left scratching your heads. Also relevant.)

comments

Links of interest

2011-09-23T05:04:55Z

Neutrinos break the speed of light! Obviously this means we're only a few years away from Starfleet, yes?

*

I found several recent articles about the movie Liberal Arts: filming at Kenyon, interview with Josh Radnor, interview with Allison Janney.

The film still sounds awful--the female lead is named Zibby, which I think tells you everything you need to know about it, though IMDB also has a summary--but apparently almost all of it was filmed on campus. I have to watch when it comes out! Maybe with the sound off.

comments

Link-de-link

2011-07-21T04:21:42Z

Seal says hi.

Creepiest ice cream truck ever. Seriously, that should turn up in a horror movie some day.

Kenyon's Special Collections has put up an impressive amount of photos on Flickr. There are several duplicates, and several that share no obvious connection to Kenyon, but most of them are very cool, especially the ones from before WWII. (Uh, well, they're probably not as cool for people who didn't go there. But fellow alums, you should check them out!)

( Some of my favorites )

Odd fact: The account is Flickr-friends with Wil Wheaton, of all people. Huh.

comments

Assorted fandom babblings

2011-06-02T03:37:53Z

Query: Since three is sacred to the Minbari, does that mean they really, really like waltzes? (Someone should write that fic.)

*

Ideas for two vids are poking me, but they would require rewatches of the entire runs of BSG and the X-Files. Since both are on Netflix Instant, this is in theory not completely impractical, as I could figure out which episodes I need clips from and then just have those discs sent to me to rip from, but that is a LOT of TV, even if I just do one of the vids.

The first is a Six- and Baltar-centric BSG vid to "Calling," by Leona Naess. I think of it as a Six-and-Baltar vid largely because of the second half of the chorus, because both could be such unpredictable characters at times. (Also, of course, there's the line about angels, and, well...) I can see it in my head; in addition to maybe fading to white with each transition in the second half of the chorus, I would make sharp cuts to highlight the emphasized beats that come right before the last syllable of each line of the chorus's first half, and I think it would look really cool.

The second is a Scully vid to Hem's "Leave Me Here," because she is really just so tragic sometimes, and has kind of a horrible life, but remains still so very, very strong. I can't see it as well in my mind as I can the first one, but I think it could be pretty. It's just that there are NINE SEASONS of the show to wade through if I ever make the vid.

*

Someone has written CSI fic set...at my undergraduate institution. I...um. Somehow, these two things just do not co-exist in my head. I've never watched CSI, but I'm reading these fics where the characters are running along the Gap Trail and see the old steam engine, or go to the butterfly garden at the BFEC and then haul themselves up the hill to campus to visit the market, and my head is kind of exploding. I've read, like, X-Files fic where Moose & Squirrel come to Nashville and not had this kind of reaction. I think here it's perhaps because Gambier and Kenyon are so small and off the beaten path that it's hard to imagine people who are not me and my friends there. Lower Broad or Centennial Park--eh, hundreds of thousands of people pass through there every year. It's easy to see fandom characters there. Middle Path, NOT SO MUCH.

(Also, oh god, I just did a search at FFN, and there are like five Twilight fics set there. I don't even want to know.)

*

And in non-fandom-but-related-to-that-last-bit things: Allison Janney and Josh Radnor, both Kenyon alumni, are starring in a movie about a liberal arts college, to be filmed at Kenyon. The plot sounds like unwatchable hipster tripe of the highest order, but hell. I think I have to Netflix this when it comes out.

comments

It's not Kenyon unless you have a rock in your shoe.

2011-05-31T00:11:17Z

For those of you just joining, I went to my college class's five-year reunion this weekend. It was epic, in the way that only a tiny liberal arts college (my class = ~400 people, 170ish of whom were back for the reunion) in a tiny town (full-time residents = ~600ish; "town" is one street in the middle of campus with roughly eight places of business) in the middle of nowhere in Ohio (a dorm on campus with nine stories is the tallest building in Knox County) can be epic. In other words, amazingly so.

Note the first: This will be 75% nostalgia for fellow Kenyon grads, and 25% pretty pictures and explanations for everyone else. Just FYI. But there's a reason Forbes named it one of the world's ten most beautiful college campuses, so, you know, pretties!¹

Note the second: All thumbnails are linked to the original photos, which are some 5-6MB rather than the usual scaled-down versions, in case anyone who was there wanted to download them for some purpose that required the big original.

( Image-heavy, obviously. Also, ten pages long in Word. )

comments

This is just to say

2011-05-29T23:47:54Z

I have returned from the reunion, and IT WAS GLORIOUS. Those of you who couldn't attend missed out, and we missed you. :(

However, a full report, with pictures and video, shall come along tonight or tomorrow. Short version to whet your appetites: Sergei, Chamber Singers, monstrosities on Middle Path, singing on the Rosse Steps, servery madness, ballroom dancing, a conspicuous absence of Jesse (BOOOOO), an excellent absence of cicadas (YAAAAAAY), pretty trees, and ice cream. Plus much more! Stay tuned.

I'll be skimming my flist, so if there's something I should comment on but I don't in the next twenty-four hours, please do poke me.

P.S. to Ellen: FLAILFLAILFLAILFLAILFLAIL. How much TV have you watched this weekend?

comments

Guess who reads her alumni mail.

2010-12-15T21:54:39Z

Kenyon-era Bill Watterson art!

Awww, the BFEC barn! Gates of Hell! Peirce! (Something very like) my freshman year dorm room, down to the giant built-in bookshelf and the ugly tile! (Though he's missing the middle panel in the window.) I'm pretty sure the teacher here is Martin Garhart, who I met once during the semester I took an art class, and apparently still remember, why?

And my favorite, because really, it is SO TRUE: Caples!

comments