The Lost Story

I spent my K-12 years in diocesan catholic schools. Though there was nothing posh or ultra privileged about my education I have a certain affinity to stories about private schools. Private school literature can be separated into two distinct groups. The first is about Catholics being brought up in strict middle class Catholic schools where the clergy mocked and beat you. The second is about America’s thriving post WWII Northeast boarding school culture. The boarding school genre is by far the most popular and every couple of years another movie or book revisits this familiar battleground (Dead Poets Society, Catcher in the Rye, Old School).

Yet, the best story ever written about private schools, and in this case private boarding schools is a story that I read numerous times in grade school but have never been able to locate again. When I was in 7th and 8th grade at Aquinas School, late 1980s, there was a cart full of paperbacks that students were encouraged to pick off of for silent reading periods. On this cart was an anthology of American contemporary short stories. The word contemporary is a bit misleading here because like most things at Aquinas School (and most catholic schools) the library and most material was donated. Thus the “contemporary” title was probably describing a book written in the 1960s.

In this particular anthology was a story about a young man attending a boarding school north of Richmond, Virginia. The crux of the story revolved around a student who cheats during a translation portion of a Latin examination. I remember that the translation dealt with Roman engineers building temporary bridges so troops could cross rivers and streams. The story had wonderful inner dialogue and may have been narrated in the first person. After the exam releases the suspense and tension rise to a fever pitch as the student is called to the headmaster’s office to be discovered and then sent back to his room as his father is sought. The climax of the story is the father confronting the son, clearing out his room and the long, silent ride back home.

There are a thousand more details that I remember about this story but I won’t belabor the reader with a story I couldn’t tell you the title of or the author. The fact is that I loved this story. I'm not going to psychoanalyze why, but it really moved me. For whatever reason it has been on my mind lately and I thought I would share this memory in the off chance that one of you might help me figure it out. I have tried a million different ways to Google the plot in hopes of finding the story, but to no avail.

Flat Stanley came to Lewistown

Flat Stanley was in Lewistown this past November and he even stopped by FHS. Flat enjoyed his time here and he even got to get some bird hunting in.

The Historians Dilemma

A decade and a half ago, when I was learning to be a "historian" at Radford University I took a class called Hist 295. Dr. Ferrari who did her best to show me how to use libraries, court house documents and other repositories to find the crucial and raw primary material that makes history work. Yet, I remember what she really emphasized was the need to find those personal documents, the letters or diaries, the notes in the margin of a book read long ago. That was the fodder that makes history alive, personal and real.

Last night while walking the dog around the frog ponds I had what I am sure is not a new Epiphany. In this digital world, where or how will the historians putting together the lives of Americans mine to construct that personal and private world. Where do we deposit our tweets, wall posts, emails, texts and the other dimensions of our lives to that others may glimpse into our world when we are gone? I can remember writing long and dramatic emails to friends during the whirlwind of love when I was a young man. How and where would I attempt to find those now. More importantly how would the historian of the future find them without the passwords and permissions required in this digital world?

Rehberg v Tester

News today that Dennis Rehberg intends to bring in Minnesota Republican and Tea Party aficionado Michele Bachmann to help him announce his entrance into the 2012 Montana Senate race. It is unknown how this will play out in the long run but on its face this appears as a very poor decision.

Jon Tester is a populist candidate with no strong ideological bent. For the strongly independent and libertarian Montana electorate his politics stand in sharp contrast to someone like Michele Bachmann. Time will tell but I feel this is a moment that will come back to haunt Rehberg.

The Honor of Egypt

Like millions I have been intently watching the situation in Egypt and that anxiety brewed over into desperation today as the all too familiar government repression began today. In what seems like a textbook repeat of the Green Revolution in Iran it appears as if the government is going to use sympathetic civilian actors (or plain clothed government agents to handle the dirty work).

I suppose that for a brief moment on Monday or Tuesday it appeared as if a non-violent transfer of power was possible. I wanted to believe that the proud Egyptian people has voted with their bodies and encouraged Mubarek to give up control. As always those thoughts seem idealistic and naive just a few hours after I was thinking them.

One has to wonder what the end game is here. The international community has lost whatever long standing loyalty for Mubarek. A loyalty that perhaps he deserves for so long standing as a pro western voice against extremism. Certainly today's events will convince the world that the government of Egypt is the fraud that Egyptians have been protesting all week.