..Vodka-Breath to examine Kenyon and Carleton.

Kenyon:  exquisite little campus on a high tongue of land surrounded by fields, centered on a long, trollye-line like pathway, and dissecting and dominating tiny Gambier, Ohio.  Lovely orange-buff Ohio sandstone, especially on 1840's di-style (that's two columns, Ruth) temple-fronted Rosse Hall, with a neat Egyptoid (whoa!  a >single< corner column!! never seen that before) 1999 extension by Graham Gund, alum/architect/benefactor.

But his just finished science complex is sort of mechanistic Gothic - not to my taste (note to self: someone should concentrate on making HVAC equipment interesting, rather than trying to conceal it on a rooftop - suggest to Laurinda Spear if she ever returns those slides of our 1975 trip working for Nigerian architect-shyster).

Episcopal Chapel, 1871, painfully beautiful, original devotional stenciling, big central preaching space, cased ceiling, broad pine floors - are Episcopalians better than everybody else, or do I just think so?).

Stained glass in dining hall with figures of Piers Ploughman, other Great Western Ideas, I wanted to stay and study just literature, like maybe for decade.  But it also seemed a little ... small.

Noticed in the mid-Ohio sky no plane noise, but scores of contrails, at one time.  They seemed very removed.  What do the primitive tribes think of 7 mile high trails of ice crystals?  It made me recall that week in September when there was no plane noise at all over New York - I realized how noisy our sky is.  That's what I will always remember, the sky-silence.

Flew out to Minneapolis over lower Lake Erie and Toledo, where I first set out on my own maritime career (SS James Davidson, running taconite from Silver Bay to Sandusky) in 1971.

Detoured to Sullivan's Owatonna bank - I wanted to cry, so stupendous and subversive.  I have heard that the president hired Sullivan because he thought un-American a "roman temple" bank-competitor across the street, but that building appears to be gone.  But there is a 1922 Sullivan knock-off cattywompus up the street.

Then across the MN farmland - just looking at those remote, frigid farmhouses made me think of hanging myself in the barn - and up the frozen Mississippi, back to Carleton.

Carlton has much less unity, and much less interesting buildings - much blah tudor and a particularly boring Gothic re-revival church - United Church of Christ, which is probably the problem.  In one direction, a fairly good size town (with an adult video store), in the other direction, cornfields.  But the library at Carleton seems so much more ... cosmpolitan than the one at Kenyon, even though the numbers of students are about the same. More energy here, too, but also more plane noise -- that peace and sandstone at Kenyon are pretty attractive.  Not much snow on the ground in either place.

Love to all,  Christopher

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