Blake School - Reflections / Call O Pan Yearbook (Hopkins, MN)

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The first man I'd like to tell you about is Mr. Harold Fallow. Harold was one in a long line of glass cutters and window repairmen who have been employed at my father's hardware store and the first in a long line of glass cutters and window repairmen with whom I have had the pleasure of being acquainted. Harold was one of the tallest men I have ever known and he had a long nose which gave him the mellow voice he was constantly utilizing. He would be standing in the back room at his glass-cutting and window-repair table and I would be standing at my bicycle assembly stand, tightening the handle-bars on a Captain Kangaroo-approved Schwinn bicycle when suddenly Harold would come up with a conversation-instigating question such as: What does it mean to be twice blessed? Well, being only in the seventh grade at the time, and being no Shakespearian scholar, I had to say I didn't know. So Harold explained it in detail until he was sure I understood the passage in its entirety ... Our conversations were by no means limited to literary considerations. When it came to the Great Outdoors, Harold Fallow was the original Natural Man. He spent one evening discussing the superior characteristics of the canoe. He just couldn't see speedboats. But the canoe is beautiful because it is silent and graceful and its form follows its function, he said, quoting Horatio Greenough and Louis Sullivan. Mr. Fallow detested bowling, but he loved fishing ... About this time I began to suspect that Mr. Fallow was more than just an interesting eccentric. Lately in our learned conversations Mr. Fallow had been bringing up the subject of bees and asking me if I'd ever had any experiences with bees. I told him I hadn't outside of the very ordinary experience of being stung on the elbow. One warm Wednesday afternoon on Christmas Lake as I fished with Harold Fallow ... the bee stories were born as Harold related to me the Bee Story (part 1) in which he held a conversation with a bee. The bee only had a vocabulary of two words, however, yes , which the bee signified by flying up and down, and no , which the bee signified by flying back and forth. Then Mr. Fallow related Bee Story (part 2) in which he was driving his car down Excelsior Blvd. and a bee flew in. ... and landed on his eyeball. As if he knew I was there Mr. Fallow said. I was convinced that there was a future for Harold in the insane asylum. Before too long he was in St. Peter. It seems that his wife had had enough of his little eccentricities which included his insisting that she save all the food scraps, including potato peelings. This was a habit Harold picked up while far from noise and smoke but near starvation in a German POW camp. This story has a happy ending, for my dad and I visited Harold and all he could talk about was how great it was. There was hamburger gravy on mashed potatoes and dances every Saturday night with the lady kooks and lovely young student nurses ... I've been talking now for about five minutes about a subject having nothing to do with a moral, spiritual, or religious nature. Just about 2 or 3 men I consider to be my instructors in the homespun realities of the common man. It is just an accident that they are both glass cutters and window repairmen. I would have talked about coal miners or cowboys or cod fishermen or anyone who is not a member of the 10% elite we are 27 all members of. But I don't know any personally. Novels about ranchers, riverboat pilots, gravestone carvers, foot soldiers and immigrant farmers — Great American Novels by Great American Novelists like Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Steinbeck — are read by Blake students and are then put back on the shelf. We remain convinced that the only people who matter are those who graduate from Harvard, Princeton, or Yale and carry around in their heads the accumulated culture of the world — connoisseurs of antiquity; men who value beauty; highly educated; sensitive; the well-rounded man — one must belong to the elite — and leave failure to itself. I'd like to tell one more story about one more gentleman. I can't really say that I know his inner soul because he is very silent and very old. He's a symbol to me of a man who's just about lived out his life — a full life, spent as a farmer close to the earth. But a relatively uneventful life; he never built the Empire State Building, he didn't sign the treaty ending World War II. He didn't discover how to split the atom. Never an Olympic champion, although he likes to tell about when he used to race motorcycles. Unknown by kings, queens, presidents he just lived as a farmer until the suburbs caught up with him and surrounded his stone house with pink and yellow and green boxes that house the population explosion. Now he has a garden and some chickens and he makes a living sharpening saws and scissors and lawnmower blades. Once, when he came into the hardware store to pick up a load of unsharpened saws and blades I asked him in the ritualistic manner, How are you, Mr. Walton? Listen, Johny Karmer's son. You don't know how it feels to be eighty-five or you wouldn't ask stupid questions like that! CHRIS KRAEMER This summer I was at school during the New Boys' picnic and saw something that struck a chord in me. What I saw was a boy walking up the driveway and I knew he would be unhappy at Blake. For some of you a description will explain why. He arrived at the informal picnic with his best white shirt, buttoned at the collar, his best wool pants, white socks and black tennis shoes. He was accompanied by his mother and was fat and crewcut. Why would he be unhappy here? I think I could explain why but not how it could happen. But I won't. If I had to, it wouldn't do any good. Unfortunately I will leave Blake feeling inferior and frustrated. Everyone is better; they say so, don't they. Seriously, these can't be unique feelings. Generally, there seems to be a lack of respect for others' feelings and opinions. After thinking about this lack, it doesn't seem logical that so many people can be so overly sure of themselves so often and the words facade and fear come to mind. People who constantly criticize an individual without a valid reason appear insecure. Those who have the answers all of the time appear in want of the right question. Someone who refuses friendship is in the greatest need of what he turns away. The greatest need here is that of friendship. Most of you could not honestly say you have a close friend. Acquaintances? Yes. A friend? Probably not. FRANK JOHNSTON

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At Blake the morning chapel service represents a formal opportunity for students and faculty to communicate their ideas. Some of the more significant speeches have been reprinted on these pages as a record of this exchange of ideas. Hi there gUd you could all come |u« straighten your ties and listen to a tale my name is Prester John I'm a king from deepest africa ancient Coptic Christian in heathen jungle, where tigers and tarzan compete (or prize money, while camera roll and monkeys scream I'm Prester John son of the Magi magi that's right magic idler of lies teller of truth teller of lies so just straighten your ties and listen I'm an old man once I was young rolling in hay heaving bright air through fields bones of beasts not yet risen burned me through laughter, silence. then one day then one day the day turned aquick black then back again new before I knew I was pounding in the dark and afraid but I could not go back tosmileand. I pounded and frowned and groaned pounded and groaned and frowned groaned and frowned and pounded I moved slowly into enclosures of steel then quickly broke them down fearing dreams and fearing days writing my name in different ways then one day then one day I awoke to the dream of the ancient earth Quakers I cracked like a fissure, hooked on my own worm like Jonah in my own new whale. (my name remember is Prester John, priest john. your neckties arc asleep, wake up and listen.) so I climbed fresh-blakcd on a bright bus which wound its way toward Washington where we meant to carry candles, chant and further exorcise the place, we shall be a million strong, we sang and we shall overcome, we rode like children. and then and then far back deep under the dark rear of our bus arose a flower arose a dark, dark lady on a seashell from beneath the green seat a dark, dark lady riding a seashell a dark, dark lady riding a shell and she drew me and drew me and drew me back, back into the bus, back, back, back, back back, back, black bus, black, back, back, back (Wake up! Remember! I am Prester John, mythical ruler in northern rockies a holy flower colony of children where our own few seeds sprout, and we survive and live and grow.) So she drowned me and my lady and I were lost and I was lost, and white Washington temples were lost and we awoke exhausted in Ithaca, New York. I read the news of Washington, groaning in Ithaca nowhere. My dark lady laughed her rage and screamed her laughter into frozen nights. So I went away, away, away, away. Wake up! This is the last time! Remember! I'm an old man making food in my children's colony, bearded like Moses or Ulysses or Prester John I rule my flower children with a fist so they may survive in wilderness. but my days grow yellow. my children are not sane. the ground lies fallow, while my sons steal down the mountain to find a hamburger stand, and my eldest, now, he wears a coat and tie, and my youngest, now, he wants to be a business man, and my daughters, now, they want to go to school HENRY COULD OUTLINE OF A FEW SPECIFIC IMPROVEMENTS CORRESPONDING TO PURPOSES A. Development of the student 1) . A schedule of increased freedom and privileges from the third grader to the senior engaged in independent study must be thought out and implemented. An exciting target is the senior year where the student is totally responsible for all parts of his education. 2) . The curriculum should be modified to one of choice. One term courses, electives to replace required courses, and elimination of course requirements which are not fully justified are part of a long list of worthwhile possibilities. 3). The student council should be abolished. A student board of planning would replace it. Meeting with the faculty and administration planning groups from January to August, this group would have the opportunity to control the course of the school year. This plan is justified by the fact that every student council in my five years has wished to change something — as its justification for existence. They have not succeeded because a school cannot change in mid-air . If we are to have student leadership, why frustrate it with an impossible task? This plan gives student leadership a workable base. 4) . The daily schedule must concentrate class time for seniors to allow afternoons for greater extra-curricular possibilities. 5) . A faculty committee on outside experiences for Blake School should be established to take advantage of every opportunity for the Blake student to have contact with our community ... 6) . A maximum student opportunities board should have the power to make special exceptions to rules or requirements for students who want some expression of their individuality beyond our present freedoms whether it be growing his hair long or spending a term at Central High School. EDMUND CHUTE

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Dr. James Bond Analyzes The State Of Education In The U.S. And At Blake The Martin Memorial Lecture Series presented Dr. James Bond from Bowling Green State University as its annual speaker. His topic was Interpersonal Relations in their regard to education. Covering ideas from the community responsibility of a school to the individual commitment by the student, Dr. Bond reaffirmed the excellence of the Martin Lectures. After his speech Dr. Bond talked informally with various group of students. A meeting with the faculty continued the discussion of his ideas in relation to Blake. The day altogether was informative and thought-provoking at a time when ideas and thoughts are most necessary. TOP LEFT: Dr. Bond's enthusiastic responses had great appeal for questioning students. TOP RIGHT: Dr. Bond discusses various aspects of Blake education with the faculty. ABOVE: Mr. Harold lundholm exchanges ideas with Dr. Bond. 28