WM Winter 07: From Center Hall |
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A Little California in the Soul
We concocted this California of the spirit out of corny beach movies, the driving music of the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean鈥攁 world where all the girls were beautiful, and all the guys were cool, and the sun shone every day. "California Dreamin鈥�" by the Mamas and the Papas was our anthem. When that song was piped into the cafeteria where we gathered before classes, we would jump on the long cafeteria benches and ride the waves off Malibu as we sang along. And on long summer nights, when we should have known better, we would ride skateboards down Lord鈥檚 Hill, flying down the old state highway on first generation skateboards, a step above homemade but not much more than planks on roller skates.
We were maniacs, reckless and wild, brave and free. We were young in a world where everyone seemed young, but we were far from rebels; our world was filled with doing well in school and sports. Our days were filled with practice, work, and homework, our summers spent baling hay, working in factories and shops; and the closest any of us got to the beach was lifeguarding at the town pool. However wild our spirits were, our lives were pure Midwest duty, and that was fine.
Only two of my friends from that time moved west. One of them actually took up surfing in his 40s and continues to surf the northern California coast鈥檚 wetsuit cold waters. But the California dream is not dependent on geography. While the men whose stories you read in this issue of 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 Magazine are all Californians by address, they are, more importantly, Californians by spirit. They are also men of 新澳门六合彩开奖直播, dreamers who have accepted the responsibility of their dreams and have made out of their lives something extraordinary.
新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men have always been Westerners of the spirit. When 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 was founded in 1832, Indiana was the West. When President Charles White addressed the four graduating seniors in 1842, he spoke to them of the "Duties of Educated Young Men of the West," advising them to take up lives of learning and service.
To dream of California is not to turn our backs on Indiana. For 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 College, as firmly grounded in Indiana as any college in the state, is yet, like Hemingway鈥檚 Paris, a moveable feast. If you are lucky enough to live in Paris when you are young, Hemingway wrote, then it stays with you the rest of your life. If you are lucky enough to know 新澳门六合彩开奖直播鈥攁nd, especially, to attend 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 as a young man鈥攖hen 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 goes with you wherever you go. We all know that whenever two 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men gather together, 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 springs out of the conversation. Yet even individuals carry 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 with them. Indeed, we all carry 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 with us, faculty and staff, men and women, students and teachers; and in that pride of ownership, that honor in who we are as 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 and what we can become, lies a greatness of this College.
For to be at 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 is to learn that the frontiers of the spirit know no boundary.
One can be a dull and unimaginative thinker in San Francisco, and a vital dreamer in Indiana. Recently the student body elected as their new president Jesse James, a junior from Sullivan County, Indiana. Even with a name that resonates with the American romance of the outlaw, Jesse could be seen as having rather homebound ambitions. He wants to go to law school, return to Sullivan County, and eventually become a judge in service of the place where his family has lived since the 1780s. But our Jesse James is also a Californian of the spirit, full of dreams and ideas for the betterment of 新澳门六合彩开奖直播, Sullivan County, and the larger world, not unlike two other Sullivan County men who preceded him here and had their own adventures in California鈥擶ill Hays Sr., Class of 1900, and Will Hays Jr. 鈥�37.
Jesse, like these and many 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men today who lead and animate this campus, has much in common with the 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 Californians profiled in this issue.
新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men are born with a little California in the soul鈥攓uestors who face the world with a confidence, innocence, and a freshness that makes them not only ready for the world, but ready to change the world. This "California of the spirit" is beautifully illustrated, ironically enough, in a book set on the East Coast. In the final passage of The Great Gatsby, the young Midwestern narrator Nick Carraway recalls the Dutch sailors who navigated Long Island Sound and saw "a fresh green breast of the new world" where man was "face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
This capacity for wonder鈥攖his ability to be delighted and amazed by the world鈥攊s what I see in so many 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men as they speak of their lives, what I remember as the black top flew below the rumble of our skateboard wheels years ago on Lord鈥檚 Hill. This amazement is coupled with the energy to dream and to accept the responsibility for that dreaming, the conviction that is so rich in the California of the spirit, the conviction that one can literally make one鈥檚 life. This complex conviction is carried by 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men from Nepal to New York City, from South Africa to South Bend, from China to Chicago, from Seattle to San Diego, and all places in between. Where 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men dream and work, where 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 men bring to life their best imaginations and their deepest energies, there is 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 College, alive, strong, and fully realized.
Yours in 新澳门六合彩开奖直播,
Pat White
Contact President White at whitep@wabash.edu
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Growing up teenagers in Dixon, Illinois in the mid-1960s, my friends and I all wanted to be Californians. It wasn鈥檛 as though we actually wanted to move to Bakersfield or Sacramento or even Los Angeles or San Francisco; and when it came time for college not even the most adventurous of us sent off applications to USC, Stanford, or Berkeley. And this was long before the most famous graduate of our high school, Ronnie Reagan, became governor of that state. Our California was not a political unit or even an address. Our California was a state of mind, a state of the spirit.