Vol. 41, No. 4, Arches Summer 2014
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University of Puget Sound Sound Ideas Arches University Publications Summer 2014 Vol. 41, No. 4, Arches Summer 2014 University of Puget Sound Follow this and additional works at: https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/arches Recommended Citation University of Puget Sound, "Vol. 41, No. 4, Arches Summer 2014" (2014). Arches. 19. https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/arches/19 This Magazine is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at Sound Ideas. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arches by an authorized administrator of Sound Ideas. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND Commencement Day. Blue skies and big smiles all around.The procession begins. "Pomp and Circumstance" plays. Except that suddenly circumstances change. Dramatically. Like, wind-blowing-the-flower-arrangements-off-the-stage, thunder, lightning, and sideways rain kind of circumstances. And then, then it turned wonderful. RonThom tells the story, page 1. PLUS: In Mongolia, trying to explain English • Book excerpt: Microsoft Is My Neighbor Now m.. ■ from the president Beauty is truth It wasn’t pretty: The torrential rain that as they were, bless them, never seemed to broadcast journalist and host of NPR’s seemed to burst without warning through lose their grit or enthusiasm or good spirits. Weekend Edition Sunday, a poised and game what had been a brilliant, sunny sky. The As they finally heard their names called and Rachel (eight months pregnant) stepped to sudden, bone-chilling drop in temperature walked across the stage, many now barefoot the podium as she had stepped before live that shivered through every cap and gown, because their fancy shoes had been ruined, cameras and microphones so many times— high heel, and sports jacket. The mysterious they reached for my hand and for their on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan swoosh of wind through the stadium that diplomas, their faces shining in undiluted joy covering those conflicts as national security swept the mortarboards off the graduates’ through their matted hair and amidst cheers correspondent for NPR, and in our nation’s heads and lifted the pages of the speech that from rain-soaked family and friends. They capitol before that as White House corre was being delivered (with such indomitable had made it. They had triumphed. The glow spondent for ABC News. spirit) by our student speaker, Haley Andres, on their faces was—truly—beautiful. And Rachel reminded us toward the end of into the air and out of sight. The orchestra then the sun came out. her address about her own journey through playing “Pomp and Circumstance” nearly There was a lesson here. Two things had life and war and about what she had learned drowned out, literally, by the tent’s bulging happened between the ugliness of the storm from it all, and from her own mother, about roof above, filling with water, threatening to and that moment of pure beauty, which, at negotiating the inevitable storms of life. “The burst upon them. Nor pretty. least for me, had sparked a transformation. It happiest people I have known have all had a Then, the rumble of thunder and a flash was only after the whole thing was over and I deep ability to see joy where it’s hard to find,” of lightning. We had to clear the field— looked back on the field of battle that I could she said. And continued: almost 700 graduates and a couple thousand see things for what they were. Those secret We often think about the joys and pains of family members abandoned the field and sparks had arrived in two inspiring pieces of life happening in cycles—we talk about them were led to refuge in Memorial Fieldhouse, wisdom. Wisdom issued by two Muses about as ups and downs, like a roller coaster. Highs while thousands of other stalwart family the journey on which we all were embarking. and lows. But my mom told me once that she members bravely held to their seats under the First, while warehoused in the field house saw it differently. It's like train tracks, she said; stadium roof, as the almost-apocalyptic storm (crammed to the rafters with wet graduates each side represents either joy or pain ... and we blew through. The heavens issued to the Class in black gowns along with their allies in what ride them simultaneously. There is no such thing of 2014 a chilling welcome into the cold and was once their Sunday best), the crowd in as ‘I'll be happy when I just get over this one cruel world. It wasn’t pretty at all. retreat had a chance to hear, through the obstacle—when I get the right internship or job, Until it was. That was after we had finally din, ^ inspiring Commencement address by when I get the right relationship, when 1 lose 10 reassembled the troops back on Peyton Field, Rachel Martin ’96. It was projected for them pounds, when 1 have this much in the bank. * arranged again by department and in alpha in the field house on a large video screen by Because there will always be something else. betical order, after their time of retreat into live feed from the stage outside, where the As if channeling Aristotle along with the field house. The students, wet and cold platform party remained. An accomplished her mother, Rachel was recalling for us that Cover photo by Ross Mulhausen. happiness is not a feeling we have, but a series she was interrupted by the howling wind, lue never had before at RDG; andfought for a of things we do, choices we make in develop thunder, lightning, and rain that erased her cure over countless miles during Relay For Life. ing a purposeful, even virtuous character that notes as if written in disappearing ink. But Then Haley returned to her title and the leads somewhere: Haley carried on. I can still see her standing fact that each one in the graduating class (and The key is to make the decision to lean a there, the rain-drenched, crumbled sheets of all of us) is metaphorically holding a blank little hea vier on that joy track. To mix meta her ruined script (the few that hadn’t been sheet of paper in our hands, a paper that is phors—ivhich Vm sure is making my UPS Eng swept away by the wind) still in her hands, awaiting the map we will draw upon it, that lish professor cringe a little, but indulge me her fists lifted toward the threatening heavens will chart out how we will get from where we here—to me it’s like skiing... because when as she shouted her message, her classmates are to where we are going. “Although, on this you lean further on one side, that becomes your cheering her courage and determination, day, we have begun a lifetime of continuously compass; that becomes the direction you will go. drowning out the thunders roar. That image arrested falling,” she said, “that movement ... When it seems life is pushing you into a pain- was beautiful, too. And there was wisdom in may be backwards, to the side, or forward; fid place, push back—lean into the joy. See it in the scene. it may be fast or slow; the point is that we others around you, and it will grow in your own But her words also were wise. Like are moving, making new maps, and actively life—and it will take you wherever you want Rachel, she spoke to the idea of moving for engaging with the spaces around us.” to go. ward, quoting the phenomenologist Erwin Beautiful, right? Two Loggers from two So that’s the first piece of wisdom. The Straus, who described the act of walking as generations, at different stages of their respec mountain road on which we are traveling will “continuously arrested falling.” As we walk tive journeys—on different coordinates in present us with often-surprising conditions from this place, after four years of prepara the maps of their lives—reminding us in the we cannot control. What we can control tion, into the world that awaits us, Haley midst of a storm to choose to lean into joy is the choice we make about how we will said, “we are all throwing ourselves into a when the rains come and to recall that every embrace and manage them, and in what state of continuously arrested falling that will step forward is a determined interruption of spirit we will do so, which will by definition last for the rest of our lives—strangely fright falling down. take us where we want to go. That choice ening.” Then she added: Maybe it wasn’t pretty, that Commence becomes our compass. Rain or shine. But it is not all scary. ... The falling that ment Sunday. But it was beautiful. And so The second piece of transformational wis Straus speaks of is arrested; it stops. We are the eminently true. As Keats put it, beauty is dom came earlier. In fragments. It came from ones who stop it. As a class we have already truth, truth beauty. That is really all we need the aforementioned Haley Andres T4, whose proved ourselves capable of continuously arrest to know. address to her class was as visually inspiring as ing our falls. We have defied expectatiom and it was conceptually profound. Ironically, the dazzled audiences by putting on magic shows speech was called “A Blank Sheet of Paper,” with the Wiz; supported our peers ivho felt pow the very condition her script assumed when erless, with groups like Peer Allies; danced like Ronald R.Thomas summer 2014 arches 1 photojournal LIVING LARGE As the spring semester ended.