Farmington High School - Laurel Yearbook (Farmington, ME)

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THE LAUREL 23 Twenty-five years later, Joan's mother and brothers sued the courts and had the case tried over again. The Pope declared Joan of Arc innocent. Not until five hun- dred years later, in 1920, was the Maid of Orleans enrolled into the catalogue of saints! Apt indeed is the tribute Bernard Shaw pays to the Holy Heroine, in his play Saint Joan , Half an hour to burn you, dear Saiint, and five centuries to find out the truth about you. George Bernard Shaw's remarkable play Saint joan , which has just com- pleted a successful season in New York, with Katherine 'Cornell in the title role, embodies his unusual and exceedingly in- teresting idea of Ioan of Arc. He shatters all romantic and glamourous conceptions of her as a beggarmaid or a princess. Katherine Cornell portrays his creation of joan to perfection, yet her mere utterances in simple and unelaborate words cannot help but impress one. Shaw believes that joan was great because she was simple and direct, intellectual, though illiterate. She believed staunchly in her- self and her mission, but she was not a ro- mantic little plaster saint with a conscious halo around her head. On merely read- ing the play, one is nearly converted to George Bernard Shaw's Joan, but Shaw's subtle wit and occasional digs at conven- tion interfere just enough to prevent one from agreeing completely with his Joan. After seeing the play with Katherine Cor- nell as the honest, able-bodied, confident, magnificent rustic, it is difficult to adopt any other view of Joan of Arc. In the English playwright's idea, Joan was burned essentially for what we call unwomanly and insufferable presumption. In the prologue, he states in his inimitable manner- that As her actual condition was pure upstart, there were only two opinions about her. One was that she was miracu- lousg the other that she was unbearably presumptuous. She lectured, talked down, and overruled the king, statesmen, prelates and generals. She was the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. The expressions he uses in describing Saint Joan are-- A sane, shrewd country girl with extraordinary strength of mind and hardihood of body, a woman of policy, a daughter of the soil in her peasantlike matter-of-factness and doggedness. She could coax and she could hustle, her tongue having a soft side and a sharp edge. She was very capableg a born boss. He denies that she was the least bit pretty, but the possessor of a very uncom- mon face: eyes wide apart and bulging as they often are in very imaginative people, a long well-shaped nose with wide nostrils, a short upper lip, resolute but full-lipped mouth, and a handsome fighting chin. The centuries have passed. Justice has been rendered to Joan and to her work. It is now for sincere hearts to recognize the divine character of her wisdom. For my part, I agree with Mark Twain in acclaim- ing Saint joan of Arc as the most noble life that was ever born into the world save only One. Mary Magoni '36. YT DREAMS OF CONCRETE AND STEEL ODAY, in various parts of the world, many gigantic constructions are being developed. Hardly is one world's largest or world's highest completed before the inventive mind of man has perfected new methods and new materials making still more colossal constructions possible. So rapidly is this progress and development being made that soon the historic caption One of the Seven Wonders of the World will be changed to merely One of the Wonders of the World. Within sight of each other in San Fran- cisco Bay there are two vivid examples of the progress being made along the line of bridge construction. Entrance is gained to this bay through the Golden Gate, a strip of water about a mile wide between two narrow peninsulas. Immediately inside

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22 THE LAUREL SALUTATORY PARENTS, friends, teachers, and schoolmates: As the spokesman of the Class of 1936, I am here to extend a welcome to you and to express our appreciation of your presence at this event which forms a milestone in our career. As the solicitous mother bird encourages her hesitant fledglings to the exploration of the unknown spheres, so the understanding of those gathered here will inspire courage in us to try out our new wings and take fiight into the awe-inspiring future into which we are about to wing. It is largely through your encouraging assistance and cooperation that we have successfully terminated our period of prepa- ration for the more fruitful and serious part of our lives. Therefore, in class of 1936, it is my happy privilege to convey to you a sincere and heartfelt wel- behalf of the graduating COIHC. - The Warrior Saint SAINT person, virtueg one blessed in heaven. Authority quoted-Noah Webster. A saint is a person of heroic virtue whose private judgement is privileged. Authority quoted-'George Bernard Shaw. Controversies arise out of these diverse opinions of the qualities of a true saint, yet Ioan of Arc, the Holy Heroine, em- bodies all these as well as other saintly at- tributes and was duly canonized May 16, 1920, in the words of the Pope, for her heroic virtue, glory, and blessedness. Today Saint Joan of Arc is perhaps the most widely admired, well-known heroine and saint. But how was she regarded in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and -eighteenth centuries? What are the con- flicting views of poets, novelists, dramatists and ecclesiastics as to her character and sanctity? 'They are widely divergent in their views. Witness the two extremes: Mark Twain's Joan clothed in a romantic, is a holy or sanctified eminent for piety and dazzling garbg and George Bernard Shaw's joan in a plain, unornamented frock. Joan of Arc was born January 6, 1412, in the province of Lorraine, in the little village of Domremy in the valley of the Meuse, of a family that were honest, good Catholics and well reputed. It was when she was thirteen, the day after her first communion, that she first heard her voices. She was in her father's gardeng the Angelus tolled its pious chantg the vision of Saint Michael, the Archangel, came to her saying, 'K Be good, Jeanne, be good. Finally, after frequent visitations from Saint Michael, Saint Marguerite and Saint Catherine, it was revealed to her that she was to fulfill the old prophecy of Merlin: By a woman shall France be lost, by a Maid shall it be redeemed. The heavenly mission she was destined to fulfill was twofold: CU She was ordained to win back France from her enemies, the English, by raising the siege of Orleans. Q25 She was ordained to consecrate and anoint at Reims the Dauphin, Charles, who had been disinherited by his mother. We are all familiar with the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Bloodless March to Reimsg the magnificence of the ceremony at the Cathedral of Reims where Charles VII, King of France, was anointed with the sacred oils, the capture of joan effected by treachery, the severities in- Hicted upon her in the dungeon-like tower of the Rouen castleg the trial by the corrupt courtg and finally, the burning of the di- vinely iinspired maid as a miserable witch, a victim of vengeance, May 30, 1431. Yet, when she was on the scaffold with the fiames bursting around her sanctified body, 'the entire mob, touched to the heart by her last supplication, burst into weeping and lamentation. The judges and the soldiers weptg even Cauchon, the chief figure in her condemnation, was overwhelmed with emotion. From her executioners at the foot of the scaffold, the cry went up, For- give us, O Lord, we have burned a saint!

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24 THE LAUREL these, the bay stretches to the right and left for about fifteen miles in each direction. The width varies from five to fifteen miles. On the tip of the southern peninsula is situated San Francisco. It is from this point that each of the bridges has a begin- ning: the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge extending in an easterly direction across the bay to the city of Oakland, and the Golden Gate bridge northerly across the Gate to the tip of the northern peninsula. The Gate bridge forms the key link in the proposed All-Pacific 'Coast-Highways Sys- tem. When the bridge is completed in May, 1937, coastwise traffic will no longer have to be ferried across the Gate. Instead, it may cross the new bridge and continue di- rectly along the coast, thus saving much time and expense. The bridge itself will be the world's long- est and most magnificent single span sus- pension type, and the first ever to be stretched across a major harbor entrance. This single span, looping gracefully from the high towers, is approximately four-fifths of a mile long. Probably the most interesting parts of this bridge are the two cables from which the deck, or roadway, of the bridge is sus- pended. Composed of thousands of strands of steel wire about the size of a lead pencil and supported by two towers of reinforced concrete each 745 feet high ftaller by 191 feet than the Washington Monumentj these cables, thirty-six and one-half inches in di- ameter, are constructed in place since there is no mechanical contrivance that could pos- sibly raise them to their high saddles. Enormous spools containing sixty miles of this wire are placed on each end of the bridge. Bights, or loops, are carried' in- dividually over the towers, allowance being made for the proper amount of sag. At the ends, these wires splay outward to the va- rious portions of the anchorage. The wheels carrying these bights have been per- fected to the extent that it is possible to string about three and a half million feet of wire in eight hours. While these cables are being spun and the decks assembled, much progress is being made on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. This bridge crosses from San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, bridging a two-mile expanse of water with twin suspension spans. The piers and towers on which these spans rest were constructed in water over a hundred feet deep plus an additional hundred feet of mud which had to be cleared away so that the piers might rest on the rock bottom of the bay. The construction of these piers differed from the regular mode in that they were built from the surface down instead of build- ing from the bottom up. Huge cellular, or honey-combed, caissons were constructed and floated to the pier sites. The honey- combing consisted of wells of steel tubing about fifteen feet in diameter. Metal domes were fitted and welded to the tops of these and then additional air compressed into them to make the whole structure buoyant. Concrete, poured around the wells, caused these caissons to sink. As they sank, the wells were lengthened by welding sections of tubing to the tops of them. This process was continued until the bottom of the cais- sons touched the mud. The domes were then removed and the mud brought to the surface by means of buckets. More con- crete was added as the caissons sank deeper into the mud until they finally rested on the bedrock. Yerba Buena Island, the eastern anchor- age for the second twin span, is situated midway between San Franciscoand Oak- land. This island rises 340 feet above the surface of the bay. Since the lower deck of the bridge is only 185 feet above the water, the height of the island presented an obstacle. After some consideration a tunnel was drilled completely through it, a distance of three thousand feet. This tun- nel has the largest bore of any ever built. This extraordinary width and height is necessary to accommodate the double decks of the bridge.