University of Detroit - Tower Yearbook (Detroit, MI)

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You may hear that we're not Catholic — But don’t let that fool you. University of Detroit We come from a long line of Catholic Institutions. As our bulletin explains, “The University of Detroit is one of a group of twenty-eight Jesuit colleges and universities in this country. From The Jesuit Order the University receives a permanent contribution of educational and religious service, and a rich heritage of four centuries of educational experience. “Because it is a Catholic university, it seeks to generate a clearly ecumenical, intellectual, moral, social, and liturgical witness to the life and teachings of Christ, and a climate that creates the desire among students of all creeds to lead lives centered in a high sense of values.” The University of Detroit

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Beyond the Blue Horizon gad the Plessure Princiale by alison sneider Narrative description of demographic and intellectual classification schema prior to time to. Pe. walked in—I must be pre- cise — Eucalyptus walked from where she had been (what was the “outside” in the sense of weather or “naive climatic data’) to where | was, that is, my room in the boarding house. She carried a brown pa- per bag and was wearing, among other things, my jacket and my scarf. The bag contained a dozen bagels, of which pum- pernickel were the most stale, the plain the freshest the warmest. The only other Sicilian | ever knew took fried eggplant sandwiches on picnics — Euc. was simply a bagel-despoiler. | owed her 50c for my share of the bag, but | gave her a pack of cigarettes instead. | was a student hanger-on at the Uni- versity. Not motivated enough (and, | suspected, not competent enough) ever to be professional, much less academically distinguished. If | was to hierarch things on a scale of intellectual-moral values, | would put myself above the common man, and even the common student, but below anyone | really admired. | occasionally became disgusted with my lack of direc- tion, but tried not to think about it. To occupy time while hanging on, | needed to develop an occupation. Having gone through a long stretch of curb-sitting days, | moved indoors to begin reading Euc.’s dictionary through the winter. | had previously borrowed a four foot, lopsided- ly hexagonal piece of concrete from one of the University parking lots and placed it on the floor parallel to my bed for just that purpose. | was in the middle of the D’s when | came across Webster’s piece de resistance. Dissectio, dissector, disseize, dis- seizin, disseizor, dissemblance, dissemble, disseminate. DISSEMINATE: ‘to spread abroad.” Euc., still lazing her way through a pumpernickel, didn’t laugh. | looked up from my dictionary and said “You know, | really am Pope Alexander WAL “You really are a fart,” Euc. said. (At that time a fart was considered vulgar, and not raised to the high degree of musicianship it occupies in this age). | was a principle in the Taoist sense. | wasn’t hot or cold, rich or poor, cretinous or gifted, A or not A. | floated in the middle. Part of the rules was to establish some really distant goal to give some rationality to the present. Are you any different? Events connected with time tg... . | got a camera. It could “freeze dry” things. All of a sudden Things started to be vibrant. Everyday objects hypnotized me. Baked beans. Trash cans. Insides of mouths. | remember a sausage quite clear- ly. | recall feeling very impotent when | considered Things. Things were stronger than people. They were firm in being what they were, always consistent. They had a distinct unique essence or nature in a clas- sic philosophical sense. That sausage was really a sausage and was firmly a sausage; it never wavered, was never indecisive. It gloried in being a sausage. It would fight wars to make the world safe for sausages — it was convinced of its own importance. Everything had a formality about itself, like a stuffy English butler who does not wish to be disturbed or® distracted from being what he is. | was walking outside (in the sense previously described) in the snow, care- Continued on page 9.

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Beyond, cont. Continued from page 7. fully crunching it, listening to it, watching it turn from white flakes to drops on my jacket. Then | saw the net or grid lying in the snow. Although it seemed very heavy, it didn’t sink in. This wasn’t like snow, not to let things sink in. Real snow would have been compressed by such a heavy looking net. Snow must not do that. It must be consistent. Things wouldn’t do that to me. They, at least, were sure of themselves, | re- minded the snow that surely this net should sink into it; perhaps it had had a lapse of snowness, an ontological amnesia. But still it did not sink. Perhaps | was to save the snow! If | could force the net into the snow, everything would be where it should. | looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this. | was worried. Perhaps my trash can would walk away, perhaps my sausage would change into a bird, like the detergent commercials. | jumped onto the net — the weight would force it down into the snow. Time to Well, this section of the narrative is too familiar to you to need description. | awoke in what looked like a laboratory of some sort. It was fairly dark and | was cold. Later, when the director came in and explained that he was from what to me was the future, and that | was a speci- men from my age to represent 1970 on his channel 137 talk show for Friday night, what could | say? | hadn’t been to class in two weeks, so what would another week matter? Besides, | didn’t want to read linguistics anyway. A dwarf behind what | took to be the camera cued me in. The interview was conducted by a tall, long-legged blonde. SHE: Welcome to the “Blast from the Past” show. ME: I’m on the air! I’ve been on a lot of things, but never on air before. SHE: Why don’t you introduce yourself? ME: Not much to say — Herb Gordon, a student from 1970. SHE: What do you think of what you’ve seen of our age? ME: Well, it seems that there’s been a lot of progress over the years. Just when is this anyway? SHE: The 11,104 triad. Roughly the year 2400 to you. ME: It seems you’ve solved most of the problems we had — population, war, pov- erty, pollution. How did you do it? SHE: Anaximander’s Princple. He dis- covered that the principal problem in the world was a lack of harmony between things and people. Some people caused wars and crime by wanting to aggrandize things to the harm of other people. For example, people in your age were ob- sessed with the apparent fungibility of matter. There was lots of matter around, so you created the so-called pollution problem by making everything disposable. Anaximander perfected a way of cata- loging and measuring the fundamental vi- brations of all things, including each per- son, and demonstrated the irreplacibility of material things; all th ings were neces- sary for the harmony of the universe. The most your age knew of this was the old wives’ tale that “matter was never created nor destroyed.” In practice this principle means that each person could be meas- ured, and then his place in the universe could be discovered. For example, Anaxi- mander and his followers discovered that one-legged men made the best taxiderm- ists; that dwarfs made the best electricians. This is the basis of our whole civilization. ME: That's terrific. A place for everything and everything in its place. SHE: Right. Anything else you'd like to know before we go on? Our Shtick Is News. sntick With Us. ME: In most of the books about the future, the propagation of the species is not what | know it to be. How do you do it? SHE: Anaximander discovered that wide- hipped brunettes between 1.7 and 1.8 me- ters in height made the best procreators. These women go to the Birth Houses, are inseminated electronically from the Anaxi- mander Spermbank, and lay eggs. Each egg is checked for the correct vibrations. If the egg has bad vibrations, it is hard- boiled and put into the Eggbank. ME: Ugh! What about good old-fashi oned sex? Time ty + 1. | was exhausted. It seemed that they never had sex, and every woman in that world wanted me, as | was the only one on the planet properly equipped. Com- plete pandemonium ensued on the planet. | was finally locked up, but it was too late. | had aroused the possessive instinct in females. Thirty-four women were tram- pled attempting to break into the studio where we were taping. A violent mob Continued on page 237. il write that paper for you (and no one will ever know) PAPERWRITER (313) 885-2563 Black Communicator All News. All The Time.