Break a Leg
It’s a format more befitting a Seinfeld episode: take the best creative moments of a given time period and blend them into a coherent, sentimental whole. It’s a touch trickier to pull off, though, when the stage is the medium; yet, the College theater department managed to do just that on a night in early March—15 years of theater at Middlebury summed up in about, oh, an hour and a half.
The production, Curtain Up, was performed as part of the weekend celebration to commemorate the naming of the 15-year-old Center for the Arts: now the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts. Staged in the Seeler Studio Theatre with no blackouts—the lights never went down for a scene change—the performances by alums and current students were a rapid-fire parade of charades and scenes culled from choice performances from the past decade and a half. Stoppard, himself, would have been proud.
During tech rehearsal, actors chose props: “Which of these is the funniest egg-beater?” asked Lauren Kiel ’07 of her cast mates for On the Verge.
Others selected music: “No, that music’s too cute,” said codirector Cheryl Faraone as a group sampled sounds from a mixing board. “Use the second one. I like that one. Yeah, we’re going to use it to death.”
The most daring moment of the tech rehearsal occurred when Greg Naughton ’90 was formulating his stunt, which had to do with the stage, the catwalk, and the sudden realization that the year was no longer 1987. “You’re actually jumping?” codirector Alex Draper ’88 asked, watching as Greg threw one leg over the railing of the catwalk.
“You’re not 22 anymore,” another concerned voice added.
Greg was unfazed.
“Wait, are you actually going to jump?” a third chimed.
“I’m going to dive, actually,” Greg announced.
With emphatic comedic effect, he clung first to the catwalk rail and then to the support beam, before lowering himself to just a few inches above the stage. And then he let go. Later that night, as Megan Byrne ’96 delivered a monologue, Naughton, sporting a smoking jacket, performed the stunt perfectly. For a few moments, Byrne’s voice was drowned out by uproarious laughter.
—Alex Crumb ’ 07
Go Figure
7,823
Number of students who applied to
Middlebury for
a spot in the
Class of 2012
600
Approximate
number of spots available
18
Percentage
acceptance rate
23
Percentage
acceptance rate
last year
49
Percentage increase in applicants since 2005
91
Percentage increase, since 2005, in
applicants who identify themselves
as students of color
78
Percentage increase, since 2005,
in international
applicants
91
Percentage
of applicants who used the electronic
application
Faculty Shelf
Robert Pack taught in Middlebury’s English department for 34 years, and he directed the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for 22 of those years. He was, as his former students fondly recall, a teacher of terrific energy and vision, and his classes were legendary. For Pack, poetry was a personal matter, whether he was talking about his traditional favorites—Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Frost, Stevens—or writing his own poems. Indeed, he has just published an eloquent new volume of verse, his 19th: Still Here, Still Now (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
I thought of Frost as I read these bracing poems, written in heavily cadenced language, full of concrete images that summon a vision of the natural world. The poet himself is very much at the center of this work, the lyric “I” who moves through the universe with a clear-eyed joy, even a sense of abandon, as in “Happiness,” where he writes of a memory of self-delight in the act of swimming:
The memory that leaps first into mind
Is swimming in a lake to nowhere
In particular, feeling my body’s glide,
Easy and smooth, stroke by untiring stroke,
As if I could go on forever with
No need to read, no need even to think
Of anything but being where I was,
Right there, right then, the luminescent
water
Sliding out and dripping from the curve
Made by my lifted arm, catching the sparks
Of slanting red and orange evening light.
This is composed in one of Pack’s favorite forms: an idiosyncratic blank verse that accommodates the poet’s shifting moods. The clarity of the work is a given: Pack has always backed away from obscurity. He invites the reader into the poem’s landscape, and there is rarely anything that a reader would find confusing. But there is plenty of material here that will challenge, even trouble, the attentive reader: poetry must do this to earn its keep. Readers who remember his poetic sequence about Professor Hans Pagels in Clayfeld Rejoices, Clayfeld Laments (1987) will discover a number of the same concerns rising to the surface here, as in “Conundrum” or “Logical Speculation.” The latter opens with a lively meditation on the fate of mind in the process of evolution:
For sure, it’s easier to fabricate
A virtual universe, a fake,
Than one that’s actual, composed of stuff
Obeying laws that make life possible
Including consciousness, if given fourteen
Billion years, but under fixed conditions
So particular and finely tuned, like getting
heads
Four-hundred coin flips in a row, that they
Defy chance as a workable hypothesis.
There are lovely personal poems here, too: about being a grandfather (“Grandfather”), about growing old (“Old Man Walking” or “Darwin’s Beetle”), about the poet’s own complex feelings about his heritage and its complications (“Meditation of a Jew”). One expects a good dose of humor in Robert Pack, and it’s here, as in “Paul Sees More Light” or “The Rabbi’s Spiel to his Congregation.” Yet the poems that spoke most deeply to me were the nature poems, a type of verse that predominates here. In a sense, these are all nature poems, in that the poet endlessly takes the measure of his surroundings, attempts to understand what he sees, what appeals to his five senses. And so, in “Sunrise,” he writes:
The sun, about to rise into my sight,
Makes the mute mountain’s shadow
Shudder in the lake, its trees
Emerging greenly at their tips;
For just an instant sun rays seem to pause
As silhouettes of birds streak past,
Too fast to be identified or cause
Their names to take shape on my lips.
—Jay Parini is the D. E. Axinn Professor
of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury
Incident on De Ribas Street
During winter term, a class cotaught by Professor Michael Katz (Department of Russian) and Rabbi Ira Schiffer (associate chaplain) traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, and Odessa, Ukraine, to study the two main sources of East European Jewish culture. One afternoon during their week in Odessa, Katz accompanied two students on a shopping expedition along the main pedestrian street in town. On their way back to the hotel, they were stopped by the police, who demanded to see their documents. Later that evening, the Russian professor recounted the episode to his close friend, Mark Naydorf, a professor at the Odessa National Polytechnic University, who also writes a weekly column in a local newspaper. Naydorf wrote and published an article about the incident, which Katz translated into English for his students. What follows is an abridged version of the column, reprinted with permission of the author and the translator.
The American Slavist Professor has been in our country several times—both when it was part of the Soviet Union and since then. He has an excellent command of Russian, has translated several Russian classics into English, and recently introduced the world of English readers to the best novel about Odessa, namely, The Five by Vladimir Jabotinsky. This time the professor brought a group of his students. They came during their school vacation and paid for the trip themselves. Inquisitive and intelligent young Americans, who, as it turned out, already knew a great deal about us from books, articles, and newspapers. But nothing can ever replace personal experience. Therefore, their full schedule included visits to museums, lectures, meetings, and walks around town.
Once, during a stroll along De Ribas Street, the professor and two of his students (one of whom was a student of color) attracted the attention of the police. “The police officer,” reported the professor, “stopped us and asked that we show him our documents.” The professor showed his driver’s license
(in the U.S. it also functions as legal identification) and his ID card as a college professor. The “officer” (that’s what the professor called him) demanded to see his passport. The foreigners had left their passports and money in their hotel rooms. The hotel administration had recommended that they deposit their valuables in individual safes in their rooms, the American explained. The officer stated that according to the law they were supposed to have their passports in their possession, and he invited (or ordered) them to accompany him to the police station. The professor said that he didn’t feel like it: he was tired (!), since they had been on two excursions, but that if one of the officers (eight men in uniform were standing next to the police car) would escort him to the hotel, which was located a short distance along De Ribas Street, then he could see their passports. “No,” said the officer, “that’s not the way it works; according to the law, tourists must have their passports in their possession.” Moreover, his tone began to change somewhat. He was interested in knowing where the students were from and why they had come. The professor explained, and then added: “This incident reminds me of the former Soviet Union; I thought that everything would be quite different in the new Ukraine.” That argument proved to be persuasive.
The professor quoted the officer’s final words to them: “I don’t plan to take them to the police station. They’re normal, serious people,” he said turning to his colleagues. “Does anyone want to take them in?” No one did. Their documents were returned to the three of them.
The professor, in my opinion, conducted himself heroically in this episode. And the student who was studying Russian was grateful for the language practice. “I understood everything you said,” he remarked excitedly to his professor on their way home.
—Story by Mark Naydorf.
Translated by Michael Katz,
the American Slavist Professor
Hoop Dreams
It was a season of firsts and accolades for the men’s hoops squad this winter. We asked head coach Jeff Brown to weigh in on some of the milestones.
School-record 19 wins in a season (finished the season 19-8, 6-3 in conference): It’s obviously very satisfying to finish with the most wins in the 90-year history of the program. We played a challenging schedule (six of our eight losses were to NCAA tournament teams), were very successful on the road in conference (5-0), and, really, performed at a high level from start to finish.
School-record points in a season (2,082): Our up-tempo style of play was the reason for this. Plus, we had a really balanced group of scorers—seven guys averaged more than seven points per game.
School-record three-pointers in a season (236): Several guys could really knock down the three—Andrew Harris ’08, Ashton Coghlan ’11, and even one of our big men, Michael Walsh ’08.
First NESCAC tournament victory (Panthers knocked off Williams, 96-59): It was exciting. Early in the second half, we had a one-point lead (42-41), and then we closed the game on a 54-18 run. Six of our players put up double figures, and the crowd in Pepin—packed house, very loud—was amazing.
First NCAA tournament appearance (Panthers fell to Rochester, 56-43): A great experience. We were playing a senior-laden team on their home floor, and I really liked our defensive tenacity. Our inability to hit shots in the second half hurt us, but I was really proud of the team.
Senior Andrew Harris’s selection to the District I Academic All-American team (second year in a row): A perfect example of the true student-athlete. Andrew’s passion for learning and working were on display in the classroom and on the court for all four years at Middlebury. As a player, he had the strongest work ethic of anyone I have coached at Middlebury.
Junior Aaron Smith’s second team All-NESCAC honors: Well-deserved. Aaron had a great season—he was our second-leading scorer and the second-leading rebounder in the conference (8.4 per game). He also shot over 60 percent from the field. His ability to create shots inside gave us a powerful inside-out attack, and you have to like the fact that he was one of only three non-seniors on the all-conference teams!