Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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the great texts alive Elizabeth Janeway Czeslaw Milosz Seamus Heaney Sean O’Faolain

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To put it briefly, the Humanities Series exists to give the students of Boston College happy memories. Now in its twenty-fifth year, the Series has brought more than 350 speakers to the campus. Each of the thousands of students, faculty members, members of other universities who have gathered to hear them has his own recollections: “Robert Frost was surprised that 1 was earning my degree at Boston College without taking Greek.” “1 understood the staccato form of e.e. cummings’s poems when I heard him read them.” “When 1 met him, Robert Lowell was certain 1 was an Eskimo. I’m Chinese.” “At her lecture on ‘World Hunger,’ when I suggested to Margaret Mead that the Church should sell the wealth of the Vatican for the poor, she replied that it wouldn’t help much to sell the vestments and paintings. What would help would be to have everyone abstain from meat for a day every week.” “ ‘No, I’m not James F. Murphy,’ T.S. Eliot said. He was looking around for his books, and someone had mistakenly handed him mine.” Where did they all come from?’ Seamus Heaney wondered when he saw Humanities Series: The Sciences are man ' s possession; the Humanities are man himself . — Robert Frost 1100 of us jammed into St. Ignatius Church to hea r him.” And more importantly, the audiences that gathered about the poets, novelists, actors, critics, classical scholars, historians, theologians, journalists, playwrights, heard the great texts they had analyzed in class come alive in the voices of their writers. That is why thirty school buses were parked around Roberts Center the last time Robert Frost came to read. Why the great crowd rose, stood in silence while the old poet walked down the aisle; then greeted him with a storm of applause as he reached the platform. They came from all over New England to hear Katherine Anne Porter, Mary Lavin, Elizabeth Bishop, Sir Alec Guinness, Dame Helen Gardiner, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., James Reston, Richard Ellman, Ralph Ellison, W.H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Anne Sexton, James Dickey, Andre Maurois, Lillian Heilman, Samuel Eliot Morison. It must have been fun for the speakers, too. Elizabeth Janeway lectured six times, as did Stephen Spender. Adrienne Rich made three appearances. Sean O’Faolain lectured twice, and returned to teach a sequence in the short story. Allison Macomber twice demonstrated the technique of sculpture, and then stayed on to found the Studio Art division. Susan Sonntag has lectured seven times. Peter Amott’s astonishing marionettes, performing one of the Greek tragedies, have become an annual fixture. It began in the fall of 1956 with the gift of David Barnard Steinman, a bridge builder and poet. Alumni and friends of the University saw the Series through the next two years. Then it was adopted as a permanent activity, and a community service to the public. In the 1981-1982 year we have welcomed the poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Richard Murphy, Lucille Clifton; the novelist Francine du Plessix Gray,; the Yale Russian Chorus; John L. Mahoney of our own English Department; Roger Angell, New Yorker editor; Giles Constable, medievalist, giving the traditional Candlemas Lecture; Edwin R. Bayley, journalism dean; Peter Amott presenting Antigone; Czeslaw Milosz, poet and novelist, polish Nobel Prize laureate. Many of these events were suggested by students or professors. Some were presented with the co-sponsorship of the intercultural Awareness Forum, the Undergraduate Government Cultural Committee, or the Harry Levine Lectureship in Irish Studies. All were made possible by the generous service of the Gold Key, themselves specialists in happy memories. Irish Consul Gerard Woods and Edward Thomas, ’57 greet Robert Frost on a visit to Boston College in 1957. 28

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Quake puts Weston on the map On January 9, 1982, the New England area experienced the second largest earthquake to hit the region in a century. Registering 5.8 on the Richter scale, its epicenter was New Brunswick, Canada, and was recorded at every major earthquake monitoring station in the world, including the Weston Observatory in Weston, Massachusetts, maintained by Boston College. Vladimir Vudler, senior geophysical analyst at Weston was quoted as saying: “Worldwide, it’s just a moderate earthquake, but for New England, this is a major quake.” Two days later, the area once again felt, “the earth move under it’s feet” as another earthquake occurred, this one measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale. Weston geophysical analysts were once again in the news trying to explain what was taking place. Eight days later, the computers at Weston came alive once more as yet another earthquake struck the area at 7:15 pm. This quake “only” registered a 4.4 but nonetheless caused the Vermont Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon, Vermont to declare a low level alert. This quake had been centered in Laconia, New Hampshire. Pen points to 5.8 Richter scale reading as recorded at the Weston Observatory, January 9, 1982. During this two week period, a rather obscure division of the University received much publicity. The Weston Observatory is classified as a research laboratory under the auspices of the Geology Department. It is located about thirty minutes from campus in the town of Weston, Massachusetts. Originally opened as part of Weston College, the Observatory was incorporated into the Geology department two years ago. According to Assistant Director, John Abel, thirty-six seismic stations are located throughout the New England area. These are all connected to a main computer at the Observatory by telephone lines. If there is a tremor, the stations will detect it and send the information to the main computer which collates all the reports and then prints out a final report. Aside from monitoring earthquake activity, the geologists and geophysical analysts at Weston also study the terrain and atmosphere of the region. One would find a visit to the observatory to be quite surprising. Instead of finding something out of a science fiction movie, one finds a very ordinary looking building surrounded by apple orchards, located next to a typical New England small town. But once a tremor does occur, the Weston Observatory becomes a center for information, and its experts are looked to for answers. The Weston Observatory will continue to be in the news as they try to learn more about the potential faults that lie beneath the earth’s surface here in New England. However, it will probably remain the silent partner in academics at Boston College, wishing rather to record earth shattering events, than to cause them. by Matthew Thomas Fr. James Skehan of Weston displays drilling samples from Narragansett basin coal finding experiments. 30