TELLURIDE NEWSLETTER 1990 OCTOBER VOLUME 78, NUMBER 1 TELLURIDE ASSOCIATION TRUSTEES AT TELLURIDE HOUSE CONSTITUTION FOR THE 1990 CONVENTION Preamble The purpose of the Telluride Association ~ to promote the highest well being by broadening the field of knowledge and increasing the adoption as the rule of conduct of those truths from which flows individual freedom as the result of self-government in harmony with the Creator. We, its members, trustees of its property, to perpetuate its existence and make its work effective, do hereby make, execute, and acknowledge thir our irrevocable declaration of trust which shall be and remain the Constitution of the Telluride Association and be binding upon each and all of us and upon our successors in trust hereto forever. REPORT OF THE PRESIDE1fl TO THE 1990 CONVENTION BY KATHARINE EISAUANUAUS SP72 CB73 TA75 Looking through past Convention between a Telluride Association that is programs, defining the Telluride com- minutes, I have noticed an evolution in essentially a series of loosely related munity in'more inclusive ways, and so the nature of the TA President's report. committees pursuing a variety of forth, I hesitate to steal the thunder of Until the late 60s the President briefly projects and agendas, and an Associa- the committees who have actually and rather mechanically enumerated tion for whom the amual Convention is formulated the issues you will be each Telluride activity, previewing - the defining communal rite. In the last hearing about and deliberating upon matters the committee reports would few days, however, as I began to realize over the next few days. treat in more depth. In the 70s and 80s that I was going to have to deliver Thus I have begun to understand presidents generally chose instead to another President's report, I had trouble another feature that I have notiEd i?l discuss some issue of Telluride philoso- knowing what to say. 1989-90 was a my researches among old Convention phy or practice: Deep Springs relations, reasonably smooth and stable year for minutes: that is, that recent Presidents say, or human capital shortages, or the Telluride Association, so no crisis auto- delivering their second report to ideologies of small communities. This matically forces itself upon our atten- Convention tend to wax more personal "geisty" approach seems to me to con- tion And while I am looking forward to than in their first. Doubtless they do stitute a real improvement. Accordingly a reasonably exciting Convention, with so partly because they are, as I am, I followed recent tradition last year major proposals for reorganizing our more at a loss for what to say the when I discussed the tension I see investment policy, fielding new grant second time around, so they revert to October 1990 Telluride Newsletter - 1 President's Report continued makes people stay in Telluride Associa- consistently interesting. I was not tion: upon what keeps them coming wrong in my assessment of the institu- that perennial topic of interest, them- back three or five or ten years after they tion. selves. But there's more to it than that. have ceased benefitting in any obvious But the social configurations that Telluride's great idiosyncrasy--great in way from Telluride's programs. An- are crucial to House life do not persist the sense of striking as well as great in other way of putting this question is: much past graduation, although for a the sense of wonderful--is the extraordi- how does the experience of trusteeship couple of years afterwards a faint and nary youth of the people we make change, and how does it change the temporary simulacrum of them may be responsible trustees, and the relative trustee, as she or he progresses from recreated if enough recent alumni youth, therefore, of even its hoariest brand-new freshman or sophomore return for Convention. There comes veterans. As I stand before you at age Housemember through years of an inevitable moment at which one 34, I feel the odd sensation of an realizes that House life is no longer accelerated senescence. Just as I am transparent to one's gaze, when the beginning to establish myself securely in Cornell Branch Evaluation open the real world, or what passes for the meeting seems more confusing than en- real world in the English Department at lightening, when one has no idea what the University of Virginia, I am simulta- one's political alliances would be if one neously, in the world of Telluride were still at the House and, moreover, Association, experiencing what must begins not to care. This is a moment at happen to elderly people who, when the which many previously active TA newspaper comes, read the obituaries members find themselves unable to fist. Most of those who belonged to continue serving the organization with Telluride when I joined are here no much enthusiasm: when close personal longer; many of my peers have already ties to Telluride are beginning to loosen, resigned or are, I know, considering it. when the memories are becoming a Two of my closest Telluridean friends little less vivid, when undergraduate or were, as you all know, tragically killed graduate- school friendships have not last August, in what marked for me the exactly been supplanted but supple- most significant, and devastating, event committee work and Convention floor mented by a new array of relationships. of my year as President of Telluride debates. Since older Association For those who remain, there is still Association. So at the 1990 Convention members are no longer required to a great deal to learn, but the kind of I find myself, not among strangers of write self-evaluations it is hard to know thing one learns changes. My view of course, but among people other than how representative my experience is, the institution has become less intense, those who originally constituted the but significant change there has less personal, more administrative. At organization for me. And I am power- certainly been. When I joined the the same time, it has become more fully affected by the difference between Association I was happy to regale my generous, in direct proportion as the human lives and institutions operating interviewing committee with the Telluride ideal of community service has in perpetuity. obligatory talk about the values of no longer automatically coincided with This leads me to reflect not upon "citizenship," and I believed--still self- interest, so that for the first time I what moves people to join Telluride believe--that Telluride encourages such have really been doing something for Association in the first place--a subject sterling virtues as hard work and com- other people. Moreover, once Telluride we are constantly discussing but which munity responsibility. But so do a lot of no longer loomed so large in my field of has always seemed pretty straightfor- other activities. The real reason I came vision I finally began making the ward to me--but rather upon what io Teiiuride House and iaier joined connections to the real world exhorted Telluride Association is that I wanted by Telluridean rhetoric. The nature of desperately to be intelligent, and I saw these connections, I am sure, vary as I looked around my TASP that I was depending upon the real world one lh Tdluridc Newkftu, aptb~mof Telliua'e going to have some catching up to do. I haciation, ispoduced lhrce rimes a ymr in Irhacn, inhabits, but again and again when I find New Yodc Submit new, ktfem, a caMtaw to supposed that Telluride provided both that my perspective differs from that of Edh, Telhuidehociatiar, 217 Wcst A-, an imprimatur of intellectual promise my academic colleagues it does so in Ihca, New Yak 14850. and a site at which that promise could some way traceable to my experience in Ediror - He&cr Raaturrin be cultivated. I loved, and still love, the Telluride Association Almost by reflex Mm&ingEdira- RachJDiakinron intellectual energy of House and the in- I think of my intellectual life not as a f+ddionManager- Cynthia mesmith l%ioyaphCndits-JarCX+n,GyulaM separability of that energy from the jos- lonely, heroic struggle but in terms of H& R& C Hadky Smih tling up against one another of complex, my participation in a community. I have strongly marked personalities. Not learned to appreciate administrative because, at least in my time, this jostling talent--the ability to run something was always painless, but because it was really well--a talent many of my col- 2 - Telluride Newsletter 1990 October leagues either fail to acknowledge or for which they display active contempt. Long practice with the TASPs and in preferment and membership debates has rendered me unembarrassed but scrupulous about procedures for selection and evaluation, not because I think it is possible to create perfect procedures but because my experience at Telluride has taught me how large the gap is between the attempt at responsible, compassionate judgment and the refusal to make that attempt. Most significantly, I thmk, I have learned to function in a small cornmu- nity. The Telluride constitution, as you all know, makes much of the values of democracy and self-government. It has never seemed to me, however, that the baroque intimacies and selfconscious intensity of Telluridean social arrange- ments taught me much about participa- tion in a modem nation-state, except by the remotest of analogies. It has taught me much more directly and usefully about the creation of and participation in smaller social organizations: the committee, the academic department, the research group, the circle of friends. Most of us in Telluride are professionals of some kind, or are headed for that kind of career.