#1 Pomona College Thread

[Alex Linder]

[This is my own personal thread for tracking my college. You can post in it, but don't clutter it. Just going to post occasional stories I come across, make whatever worthwhile points come to mind.]



"They only are loyal to this institution who in departing bear their added riches in trust for mankind." --graven in wall at Pomona College. (Some history here.)

The riches Pomona added to my intellectual bankbook was an understanding of the types and mindset trying to create a brave new multicultural world order, in which loyalty to race and nation disappear (except among jews), replaced by loyalty to humankind. And presumably if aliens make themselves known to us, in all their furry (or gooey) betentacled splendor, yoomankind will be replaced by biokin, or some other encompass-ism, and racism will yield its ultimate-horror title to planetism or milkism* or Waycism or somelike.

* Favoring creatures from the Milky Way over those from other galaxies. Per usual use-age, "It is milkist not to want your daughter dating a cryoceraflops from z8_GND_5296," said Bunsen Bernsen to the normal person.

[Alex Linder]

Pomona Laments Passing of Haruspex Hagedorn

By Alex Linder [index]

I will write the following in my favorite tongue, near English. If ebonics be legit, then mebonics be legitter. I declare I will practice sociology without a license. Unsafe sociology is the best kind, it nearly goes without saying. I will divine from signs, like a haruspex, but working dry. This is a Pomona professoress, recently deceased. Her name is Hagedorn, pretty sure that's German, not jewish, from New Jersey, into Santeria, of all things. This is the odd sort of creature liberalism abounds with. German-descended liberals mesh very nicely with English-descended libs. Germans have always been known for traveling around, sniffing things, and a certain strain of this impulse routinely throws up creatures like La Hagedorn.

http://discussions.latimes.com/20/la...rn-20131119/10

Katherine Hagedorn dies at 52; Pomona professor was Santeria priestess

Katherine Hagedorn, a longtime music professor at Pomona College in Claremont, became a Santeria priestess after years of studying sacred bata drums.


Look at the look on the dark girl's face - that's your classic 'minority' (that aint) responding to your overly intelligent, caring, helpful white liberal. If you were a mud, you wouldn't like white people either - although you'd damn sure like their bodies and what they put together for themselves, as Sam Kinison put it.

By David Colker

November 18, 2013, 10:39 a.m.

Katherine Hagedorn was not your stereotypical priestess in the Cuba-based Santeria religion, known for its complex, ecstatic drumming that adherents believe can call forth deities.

She grew up in New Jersey, was white, had a doctorate in music and was a longtime popular professor at Pomona College.

But as a graduate student on a cold, rainy day at Brown University in 1988, she spotted a poster for an upcoming performance by an Afro-Cuban ensemble of drummers and dancers. The performance changed her life.

"From the moment the drummers struck their instruments, I was stunned," Hagedorn wrote in her 2001 book, "Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria." "Each delicate stroke seemed to hit my solar plexus, and I was immediately embarrassed lest anyone guess how intimately I was experiencing the sound. I could not breathe normally."

Hagedorn traveled to Cuba, studied with masters of sacred bata drums, and after a decade of practice and study, became initiated into Santeria as a priestess. It was a journey from academic objectivity to total involvement in a world that once seemed entirely foreign to her.

"My wide-angle lens of folkloric performance," she wrote, "had suddenly zoomed in to the close-up focus of personally experienced religious performance."

Hagedorn died Nov. 12 at home in Claremont after a long struggle with cancer, said Pomona College. She was 52, and had been part of the school's music faculty since 1993.

Drumming was just one of several topics she taught at the school. She also oversaw the Balinese Gamelan ensemble and taught courses in gender in music, performance traditions of the African diaspora and protest music. Her classes were emphatically participatory, not to mention loud.

"If we are learning about West African music, if we're reading about it, listening to it, we're playing it too," she said in a 2001 Pomona College Magazine article. "Same with Tuvan throat singing and Balinese Gamelan. I try to get the students to do it."

In 2000, Hagedorn was named California Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

She's red-stamped "good" by the System. Nothing more Systemic than Carnegie Foundation.

Katherine Johanna Hagedorn was born Oct. 16, 1961, in Summit, N.J. Her undergraduate degree was from Tufts University, with a triple major in Spanish, Russian and English studies, plus a minor in classical piano. She earned a master's degree in international relations from John Hopkins University and a master's and doctorate from Brown in ethnomusicology.

Now that's very interesting. Many do not know that New Jersey has plenty of rural area, and plenty of people of German descent, as well as the Italians and jews everyone knows about. Now, the fact that Hagedorn went to Tufts is very interesting, as this is a jewish college. Not all Tufts students are jews. It makes my theory Hagedorn is German rather than jewish less likely, but I still would guess it's the case. The way she wears her hair, in the photo, and her dress, suggest it. The way she gathers her hands suggests Germanic plainscrub piety, rather than jewish accusatory meddling-hectoring. It is clear this unadorned Hagedorn's a rather plain but intelligent white applemeat woman. And it is a guess. Altho her concerns touch on the leftist litany, the feminism etc doesn't appear to be the driving force. She probably belongs to the group that assimilates the going ideals and agenda without any internal objections. Her interest in Santeria and its oinks was no doubt genuine; more that Hagedorn's peculiar interests fit The Agenda, were useful to the System, than that she was an aggressive driver.

In 1989, she made the first of many trips to Cuba to study bata drums, which are played in sets of three. "The only way you can learn to play those things is to be taught by someone who is an expert, who is consecrated," said Raul Fernandez, professor of Latin American studies at UC Irvine. "They knew she was honest and truly interested, not there on some capricious whim."

I remember being in some hall at Pomona, and hearing some earnest liberal say something on the order of, "every time I hear drums, I feel like I'm stealing black culture." I did not grow up among this type; statements like this were the first time I knew it existed. That is, I knew liberals existed from reading the newspaper, but to catch the real flavor of this type and its mindset, have to hear it first-ear.

She completed her first step of initiation into Santeria about a year after her studies of the bata drum began, but then took each subsequent step only after "much trepidation" and self-examination, "shying away from what appeared to be my religious calling," she wrote in her book.

This is why we call liberals onionskins. All this sensitivity. These tears. These trembling vacillations. Yet they turn into great hostile white sharks if you cross them. Crossing them could mean harshly, as in mocking with laughter, or merely softly, with plain honest rational questions. You'll receive dark return. You'll learn, as all before you, that liberals have endless boundless love of their inferiors -- roughly, all muds and white deviants -- and boundless hatred of all their equals - whites and other intelligent folk who don't think the way they do. Invisible plantations and invisible apartheid are their preferred forms. Where a white man, a right man, builds a real-world segregation system based on rational reasons; a liberal creates an invisible empire based on irrational hatreds.

Back to the story - what on earth would Haggy be trepidatin' about? What's not to love about Santeria? It sounds colorful and delicious, like a scooped-out watermelon filled with delicious and colorful mixed fruits. Or like a gutter gushing with delicious red Kool-Aid recently liberated from the throat of an uninnocent yardfowl. Ah, but that's why I can't be a liberal. That's why I failed to cult up like a real softspoken man of the world. My plebeian need to guffaw (a guffaw is a fart to these people), my boorish insistence on the actually-real were too great. How could Katy's delicate emotional conscience handle the rude combo of spicy drums and exsanguinated roosters? Well, we don't know that, we can't enter a plain woman's heart. We can only know the outcome. I divine from the ether that the soft, noble soul of La Hagedorn was in her delicate, sensitiver-than-sensitive way essaying a new branch of Santeria; poking out a new vein of the Old Thing like a watercolorist with his thin swirled brush eking out a new brown tree branch. A new vein that would sacrifice date palms, or ground nuts, or some other native African vegetable, rather than meaty breathers. It's not easy being a liberal. No one ever said that. But with enough patience, sensitivity, imagination, sighs, grants, fellowships, and Gone-Fishing signs over the eyelids, one can overcome the obstacles and unite the opposites. Some thought crimes law doesn't hurt either. Makes it all cohere, you know. Like corn starch in your cooking pot.

When she finally became a priestess, she wore a special outfit for the occasion. It had tiny figures believed to represent vegetarian Santeria priests sacrificing avocados and pineapples on ex-sanguinary altars. Goats that formerly would have been the star of the show now allowed to lick the spilled juices after the service. Friends say she had her gorgeous raiment hand-sewn by an Equitorial Guinean sewing circle microbusiness she encountered on a research trip to Central Africa.

"It's the dress she will be wearing when she is buried," said her friend Margaret Waller, a professor of French at Pomona.

Hagedorn is survived by her husband, Terry Ryan, a professor at Claremont Graduate University's Center for Information Systems & Technology; a son, Gabriel; her parents, Fred and Grace Hagedorn; and her sister Martha Hagedorn-Krass.

Further evidence Hagedorn was probably German rather than jewess.

[email protected]

She does not whiff jewish, going by her particulars. Now, the interesting thing here is how this apparently mild woman would have felt about the thing most associated with Santeria - the thing it's known for: animal sacrifices. One wonders if anyone anywhere ever pressed her on this, how she felt about it. I highly doubt it. Many things evil when white men do them are noble or at least not-to-be-mentioned when darkies do 'em. Sniffing these fine differences is what makes the liberal a connoisseur.

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la...#ixzz2ln5ELhmL

[Alex Linder]

Left a nice comment on the Pomona page about her death:



Alex_Linder • a few seconds ago
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Funny...from her photo, she really doesn't vibe the type that enjoys a nice rooster sacrifice. Eh, looks can fool you.
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Sha

http://pomona.edu/news/2013/11/13-ka...-hagedorn.aspx

If there's anything more fun, including sexual orgasm, than rasping WASP high-mindedness, I hope I never experience it, because I have a feeling it would be too powerful to bear and I'd blow apart.

[Alex Linder]

Again, I read no jew in that face, big-nosed German, like me and millions. No noticeable deception in the eyes, or teeming paranoid hostility. Coloring is very common among Germanicals.

[Alex Linder]

[real CS (christian science) feel) to some of these 'membrances and testimonials. This is what I find really distasteful about WASP mentation and culture, they just can't be content on the plane of reality, everything has to be conducted in hushed whispers like we're in a perpetual funeral home, where everything is fake and very very what-is-called tasteful. This is genuninely white culture, and it is genuinely awful stuff.]


Diana Linden • 3 days ago

I always looked forward to seeing Katherine when we'd both drop off our children at Chaparral Elementary School. She just oozed love for Gabriel and always had a warm, luminous smile on her face as she gazed at him. Such a wonderful spirit. What a tremendous loss. Gabriel is in my thoughts --
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Paul Faraguna • 6 days ago

I first met Kathy (as I knew her) in the 7th grade. We didn't really get along. You know how 13 yr old's can be. We continued on into high school and then junior year I ended up in an A.P. U.S. History course with her. Somehow I guess we had grown up a bit by then and a wonderful friendship developed. We were friends through the rest of H.S. and on into college undergraduate studies, she at Tufts and me at Villanova. We kept close in touch and would get together when we were home visiting our families. We would get together for dinner and a movie. All the things I see in the comments below about the wonderful person she was were just as true back then. We lost touch for some years after I went off to work and she went off to grad school. But she was always in my thoughts. When I thought of the best memories of those wonderful innocent years, she was there, prominently a part of them. We reconnected again in the late '90's when I was doing an internet search on some music information and low an behold, her name popped up in the search. I contacted her and we caught up with each other. A few years later when my father passed away she reached out and helped me when I needed it most. I last saw her in '99. Right after 9-11 happened she reached out again to make sure I was alright as I worked nearby. She helped me discuss the things I had seen. Sadly we lost touch again about 9 years ago. I will forever regret that. I should've done a better job keeping in touch. I can't believe she's gone. I was unaware that she had been ill. I'm so sorry for her family and children. I wish I had some magic words but I don't. All who knew her were lucky to have done so. Looking at her list of accomplishments she clearly lived a well spent life albeit an unjustly short one. For all who mourn her passing I wish us all the swift passage of this pain. May we all take comfort in the wonderful memories she left us with. Clearly she touched so many at Pomona. She was truly special. God's speed Kathy. Rest easy. Paul
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Michelle Kisliuk • 7 days ago

I cannot fathom that my sisterfriend Katherine is gone. So many kindnesses I will never repay, such a sudden and dreadful loss which I was blindly unprepared for. Future times, in this beautiful life, we would have experienced together over the coming years, growing older, will never happen. Ideas and projects that we would have helped each other create have gone silent. I will miss her warmth, humor, and brilliance. Future laughter and wit in duet now deflected or echoing alone. The only way forward is to tend to the special lights that she emitted, and kindled in others. We love you Katherine. Thank you Pomona College for being her professional home for so many years.
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Gregory Melchor-Barz • 7 days ago

Never sure where the line between "friend" and "colleague" was with Katherine. From our time as graduate students at Brown University, Katherine always served as an ally (in many ways). She was there to push me forward with my work (even at times when she herself needed that push). She was there to listen to my problems (even when she herself needed to be listened to). And, she was there to celebrate with me (never expecting others to celebrate HER!). OK, she was a bit of a goofball, but in a superbly amusing way. Her wit was sharp. Her intellect was razor sharp as well. She was "top drawer" in so many ways, and I for one will sorely miss her.
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Ondrej Hochla 2010 • 8 days ago

What a loss. As a professor, she was outstanding and could facilitate class discussion better than anyone I have ever had teach me. The classes I had with her showed me a side of music that I had never seen before. Outside of class she was eternally kind and accepting. It was always a joy to see her because she was delighted to see you. She had the gift of completely validating and accepting a person for what they are while at the same time encouraging them to be better. We will miss her.
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Nina Karnovsky • 8 days ago

Katherine deeply influenced my teaching. At a workshop for new faculty
at Pomona College ten years ago, Katherine had all of us sitting in a circle
playing different African drums, some loud and others quiet. We each had a rhythm
to play. Initially our drumming was a frantic mess. She showed us in a dramatic
fashion how important it is to leave the pauses between phrases empty, so that
the other drum voices could be heard. Whenever there is a pause in one of my
class discussions, I remember Katherine and resist the urge to fill the quiet
with my own voice. So often the voices of students that are not often heard come
forth at those moments. I am so thankful to Katherine for helping me to make
space for those voices.
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Anna Beresin • 10 days ago

Words cannot describe our collective loss. Katherine was my freshman and sophomore roommate at Tufts, a total stranger who became one of my favorite people on this earth. My heart goes out to her whole family. Rest in peace my friend.
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Fred B Block • 11 days ago

By chance I read many of the posts after I noticed that Katerine Hagedorn has passed. I am pleased to learn of her life as it was so wonderfully lived and shared broadly by this passionate generous human being. It appears that she choose music as the best suited way to leave her students, colleagues, family and friends a tangible, vibrant, meaningful, and everlasting way to leave her powerful message . I have read percussionist, Mickey Hart's "Drumming on the Edge of Magic", an eye opening for me to the powerful world of the shamans who were able to venture in the world of the spirits long long ago. I am so impressed with all of you have posted, I send to her family and friends my condolences, and to you her students as well. She is certainly rejoicing wherever she is having lived a magnificent life. Cheers. Fred B. Block, Dauin, Negros Oriental, Central Visayans, Philippines
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Carter • 11 days ago

I still can't wrap my mind around this. Katherine was a professor of mine twice - once my freshman year and once in my senior year, and I had the immense honor of having her as one of my thesis advisors. She continues to be the professor who has had the greatest impact on my academic experience of music. She opened my mind up to many different ways of reading music from all across the world, and I only know that my appreciation for music - on both an intellectual and emotional level - would be much less today without her presence in my life. I cannot thank her enough.

Carter Delloro '07
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Robin Bingham '98 • 11 days ago

This is an unbelievable loss. Always, across the curtain of distance, I planned to say hello soon-- because she was to her students as much a friend as she was our professor. She was one of those people who made an instant connection, a kindred spirit. I remember every class period of Music 11, and think of her and the topics of that class often. I want to write more, but I'm at a loss for words.
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Claire Bergen '01 • 12 days ago

Katherine taught me the value of my own musical story, that there was a connection between learning and meaning. She encouraged me to stay close to my roots and to let my work find me - she seemed to key into what each student cared about, even if we didn't know it ourselves. She did this all with lightness, with grace and humor. Her encouragement continues to inspire me. I am thinking of her family and the Pomona community today.
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Martha Preston, Pomona '10 • 12 days ago

Such a breathtaking, incredible loss to the college, the music community, and this world. Professor Hagedorn was a beautiful mind and a wonderful teacher. Chance encounters with her on the Pomona College grounds, even years after our class together ended, were like running into a favorite family member. She put people at ease, made those around her laugh, and helped me see music in a way that I'd never imagined it. She will be dearly missed.
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Tim Cooley • 12 days ago

Katherine was unusually comfortable in her own person, self-aware, and quietly confident. This gave her a solid platform from which to listen to, care for, teach, and love those around her. This was immediately evident when I first met her in 1991 at Brown University, where we were both graduate students in ethnomusicology. She was a few years ahead of me in the program and became a sort of colleague-mentor to me. This arrangement continued when I too moved to southern California to take an academic post up the street at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Katherine could be trusted with anything from personal matters to academics. I know many reading this also benefited from her generosity, kindness, intelligence, wit, and wisdom. Coming to terms with her loss—if this is even possible—will take us all a long time.
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Nick Snow '01 • 12 days ago

She was a truly memorable professor with her knowledge and enthusiasm for music and ability to connect so strongly with students. She opened my ears to a world of music. What she taught us about non-western music sticks with me to this day. Even though it has been over a decade since graduating, each time I returned to Pomona to attend a music performance, she would instantly remember me and connect on a personal level. She was always looking to bring different perspectives to the music department. She had such a joyful spirit. While we can all celebrate the wonderful inspiration she instilled in many students, certainly a sad loss for her to have left so soon.
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Cindy Peters • 12 days ago

Katherine was so amazing, so full of happiness and kindness. Her radiant smile brightened many mornings as we walked to school with her family. Spending time with her always inspired me to focus on the wonderful moments happening now and not the challenges. I feel so lucky to have known her. Rest in peace my friend.
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Sandra Ofori '13 • 13 days ago

Katherine was such an amazing and dedicated teacher and friend. I met her in my freshman year when I took Music and Dance of Bali. Every time she saw me on campus, she would say "You need to take Music of Bali again." I promised her I would in my senior year and I did. The only difference was she was not around to see me fulfill my promise. You blessed Pomona with your presence everyday and we will all forever be grateful for that. Rest in perfect peace, Katherine. God bless and provide your family with strength through this difficult time.
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Mark So, '00 • 13 days ago

I loved her so much! Such an odd and gentle trust, such a strong inspiration -- she made me (and so many others) feel truly loved, like you could really go inside and dig and stir up something necessary, and it could be arcane or unfamiliar, something to study, but also something right there for you, the gift of music, the heart beating darkly. The topic was one thing, but what counted was the personal connection, the sense that thinking through music should be equal in complexity, vitality, and mystery to its subject, and lead back in the end to the start, to music, perhaps even in breathtakingly unexpected ways. Katherine gave me music again.
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Martha Hagedorn-Krass > Mark So, '00 • 12 days ago

Thank you, Mark you give insight and comfort in your words of remembrance.
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Kenny Endo • 13 days ago

Working with Katherine was always a such positive experience and I appreciate all she did for music and musicians. She left us too early but let's honor her life by living fully as she did and celebrate her accomplishments.

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Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez • 13 days ago

Professor Hagedorn was so full of joy and life. She was on the Watson Fellowship selection committee -- it was the first time I had interacted with her. She was a beautiful person. What a terrible loss.
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Marc Lowenstein • 13 days ago

I worked with her for two years at Pomona. She was a lovely and good person. May her memory be a blessing.
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Amy Lieberman, Scripps '09 • 13 days ago

I had the privilege to work with Katherine as her research assistant from 2007-2009. She was an exemplary person, teacher, mentor, and friend, and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from her. Love and condolences to her family and to her larger Pomona family.
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Carey Tan, CMC '07 • 13 days ago

Years ago, Professor Hagedorn saw some potential in 18-year-old me that I didn't know I had. With characteristic enthusiasm and kindness, she gently encouraged me to face up to new and daunting challenges, all the while assuring me that I was capable of overcoming them. Words can't express how much her vote of confidence meant to me. She was a wonderful person and I feel blessed to have known her. May she rest in peace.
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Alison Noll, '10 • 13 days ago

I knew Professor Hagedorn through Music and Dance of Bali. Being a part of the gamelan for a semester was one of the most unique and memorable experiences I had at Pomona, and I am so grateful for her support of that program. I'll never forget practicing our dance routine in the living room of her Harwood faculty residency. She was welcoming and supportive and will surely be missed by many.
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Leanne Welds '10 • 13 days ago

Seven years since I sat in my first, and ironically only, ethnomusicology class with Professor Hagedorn, and yet I miss her as though I was there just yesterday. She was the kind of teacher that touched lives, and stole a place in all of her student's hearts, including mine. She will be truly missed, mourned for, and celebrated.
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Martha Preston, Pomona '10 > Leanne Welds '10 • 12 days ago

Beautifully put, Leanne.
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Jessie Berman Boatright, '98 • 13 days ago

What a profound loss of a truly remarkable person. Professor Hagedorn had such a big influence on my Pomona experience. She was a role model to so many of us, and one of the reasons why the music department and the college was such a unique and special place. Most of all, she was just a good person, which I know is what will be most missed by her family and friends. I will remember her fondly and keep her family in my thoughts.
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Nicki Lisa Cole • 13 days ago

Katherine was an important part of my student experience at Pomona, serving as an advisor and second reader for my senior thesis on street performers in the urban realm. By all accounts, she was a wonderful teacher to all students she worked with. What a sad loss.
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Sadia Rodriguez '01 • 13 days ago

I am so sorry to hear of Katherine's passing. While I never took a class from her (she was on sabbatical when I took ethnomusicology) I worked in the music department and enjoyed many a conversation with her. I hope that her family can find peace and comfort at this difficult time.
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Jay • 13 days ago

I was in one of her classes, an intro to music history course. She was a gifted professor and will be sorely missed.
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Nancy Treser-Osgood '80 • 13 days ago
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Katherine and I traveled together in January 2007 on a cruise through the Panama Canal and along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica with a group of Pomona alumni. She taught us to dance and shared her love of music, teaching us to listen for sounds that were buried deep within a song. Her love of life was contagious, and we were blessed to have her at Pomona College for the last 20 years. May she rest in peace.
Nancy Treser-Osgood '80
Director of Alumni Relations
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Mary Krass • 13 days ago

She was a lovely person with a kind heart! I am heartbroken that she was taken from this life too soon. I am so sorry for her son to have lost his mother, my sister--in-law to have lost her only sibling, and the rest of the family's loss as well. I am praying that God will comfort your hearts and provide you peace as only he can provide. Our deepest sympathy, Mary & Todd Krass

[Alex Linder]

A WASPing We Shall Go

By Alex Linder [index]

Ok...for those who can't decode WASPing, I'll cut, copy and explain. Using others' demise to further our comedic and educational aims is the heart of everything high-minded WASPs DON'T stand for, but it's also the dead frog-fucking center of everything I DO, so lets embark posthaste.

Such a wonderful spirit.

WASPs have no souls. They have spirits? They have spirits of accountants too gutless to embezzle. Maybe. I mean, I'd bet the other way there too, but I suppose it's possible.

And of course, if you aren't on their like list, then you're mean-spirited. Not wrong. Deficient in some imaginary virtue 'good' people (their circle) possess. This is a chickenshit way of moving through the world, but it is their way. I am quite honest when I say the jewish way is preferable to the WASP way. It's better to be an honest, down-to-earth criminal than whatever it is WASP elite think they are. Again, I'm not talking about Bob Parley in his rotten Ford with his ugly dog, I'm talking about the lacquered and breath-minted elite.

I cannot fathom that my sisterfriend Katherine is gone.

That isn't tolerable. A rat would emete that shit. Your "sisterfriend"? Jesus Christ Risible.

Future times, in this beautiful life,

WASPs are OBSESSED with using words like HIGH and BEAUTY and SPIRIT (it's a softer, perfumigated version of Lenin's PC's attempt to create a alternative reality via words) - really, all WASP culture is like Mary Baker Eddy + water. I know not even one percent of you will appreciate what I mean viscerally, but perhaps you can grasp it mentally: Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health is the WASP mentality raised to the highest degree, or ad nauseam, ad ridiculum, ad abstrusium. Ultimately, by this way of thinking you get to a language in which everything is abstract and, well, glides into and out of everything else, is perfectly transitive. All becomes one. It's the most frustrating thing in the world to read and try to make sense of. Well, anyone with sense can make it for nonsense with a few minutes' review, but you still might have to go to Sunday School for a good many years. Anyway, this high-minded gunk, for proper WASP elite are never anything else, creates a cultic atmosphere that is appealing to many or even most elite women, and far too many elite men. They create an atmosphere through their use of words, and a milieu through their actions and connections and institutions. If you don't speak, act and think like they do, and there are very good reasons not to, they will discover you and ostracize you. They are the opposite of a relaxed, reality-based community; they are rather a cult of high-minded strivers and seekers who call what they do service. They do well by doing good, as they see it. They might say because.

we would have experienced together over the coming years, growing older, will never happen. Ideas and projects that we would have helped each other create have gone silent. I will miss her warmth, humor, and brilliance.

Gauche as a prole's personal ad. The woman willingly spent her life studying and rising in a cult built on slitting animal throats as a way to propitiate the higher powers. Real friggin' noble.

Future laughter and wit in duet now deflected or echoing alone. The only way forward is to tend to the special lights that she emitted, and kindled in others. We love you Katherine. Thank you Pomona College for being her professional home for so many years.

Hmm...I suspect her bioluminescence were due to fungal infection, perhaps contracted from one of the donkeys this bongo-whapper assassinated. One of the risks of the trade.

facilitate class discussion better than anyone I have ever had teach me

That's a good compliment; she can be posthumously proud of that one. ... How WASP of me. I included a positive remark to feign even-handedness. The real me thinks these students praising her class discussions liked her ditching of solid academic work for braindead femalical jibber-jabber.

She had the gift of completely validating and accepting a person for what they are while at the same time encouraging them to be better.

You are awesome, mmkay? But if you were awesome and bathed regularly...holy shit man...Has the chart got a position ABOVE number one??

Katherine deeply influenced my teaching. At a workshop for new faculty
at Pomona College ten years ago, Katherine had all of us sitting in a circle
playing different African drums, some loud and others quiet. We each had a rhythm
to play. Initially our drumming was a frantic mess. She showed us in a dramatic
fashion how important it is to leave the pauses between phrases empty, so that
the other drum voices could be heard. Whenever there is a pause in one of my
class discussions, I remember Katherine and resist the urge to fill the quiet
with my own voice. So often the voices of students that are not often heard come
forth at those moments. I am so thankful to Katherine for helping me to make
space for those voices.

That's called antiphony, nigger! It's damn good too, as the niggers do it, listen to a Farrakhan speech. Listen to a Goyfire.

Words cannot describe our collective loss.

Oh yes they can. Words can describe anything. For example, your bottom looks like a exploded beanbag chair collected in a discount shopping bag.

I still can't wrap my mind around this.

I know, man. The bornin' papers clearly stated everyone gets to live to 92 in perfect health, so what-t-f gives with dying at 52?? We need to appeal this to some federal coroners' court.

Professor Hagedorn was a beautiful mind and a

There it is: the WASP's highest of holies: a beautiful mind. That term is catnip to them, what they aspire to, what they award each other. Remember Barbarba Bush's not troubling "my beautiful mind" with the horrors of (Afghanistan). I've never understood how a mind can be beautiful. The concept is non-cognizant, as the pretentious like to say. It is people who throw around garbage terms like this who are very often the practitioners of the lowest forms of scumbaggery, just as it is very often the people who proclaim their love of animals (another WASP stereotype) who are shittiest to actual humans. As a writer accurately summed up WASPS, they love dogs and hate people. The whole thing is just eddied Eddy: if we pretend bad things don't exist, or anything/one we don't like doesn't exist, then it goes away. Reality is determined by us! Reality is a social construct. And they've done all they could to make it so. All cults are like this. Realitarians are hated and need not apply, and if admitted and discovered, given the order of the boot. My mom graduated from Pomona. She wanted one of her children to go there. I did. If Pomona had had inkling of my views, granted not as fully formed on entrance as exit, I would never have been admitted - and the Dean of Admissions more or less said this straight out in a hostile LTE back when I was Opinions Ed. at the student paper. This cult loves niggers and hates sniggers. Ah, who'm I kidding. I was the bad guy, and I loved it, just like Tony Montana. This cult gots money and power, but it also gots nothing. Big heaping scoops of pissant nothing.

There is only one term WASPs love more than 'beautiful mind,' and that is...enrichment. My college president, David Alexander, among the dead, who will figure in this thread, believe you me, was enamored of this word. If this word could have been animatronicized into a vinyl doll he would have left his wife for it. He could not write a speech, hell a paragraph in a speech without using it. I always thought it was a real tell to where his mind lay. It honestly came off to me, with ears to laugh at it, like a Dickens character or a Butler character (The Way of All Flesh, remember the College of Spiritual Pathology). Everything enriches us, but we never touch on money, altho Dollar is our God and Dollar is our every waking thought. WASP's god is MONEY. He loves money like that ad dog loves BACON! But he can't admit this directly, so he has to come up with useful terms such as enrichment like a sort of e'erlit verbal candle one might buy in one of those womeny smell 'n' cards Stores of Niceness. It's enough to make a sane grown man chew on oleander, which is poisonous, for the arboreally disinclined among you.

helped me see music in a way that I'd never imagined it

Get a little suspicious at this sort of encomium, which is repeated through these letters. I suspect it might tinge into the political here, with them evaluating music by its ancestry rather than its, well, quality. A PC version of Twain's wholly justified snipe on Wagner: It's better than it sounds. I have a feeling that Guangian Throat Clearing fits that bill pretty neatly.

I remember every class period of Music 11

Geezus. No one remembers every class period of anything, even a seminar on Advanced Vampirology taught by Jebus himself. A phrase I can't quite remember fits here; this just goes beyond necessary exaggeration.

Katherine taught me the value of my own musical story, that there was a connection between learning and meaning. She encouraged me to stay close to my roots and to let my work find me

Yeah, that was a tactful way of saying the oboe escaped you, my darling; lay back and await your mate and metier, the noble kazoo. Rooty-toot toot! Woot!

These are all so close in spirit as the queer waiter who said to my table, essaying the sensuous, "I'll be right back with some warm bread and some cold water," a phrase that sparkled me for decades. By these I mean, taught me the value of my own musical story; like a painting that needs to be explained. Dopey broad, if your music has value, it's self-explanatory. Your burbling will hardly enrich it. she seemed to key into what each student cared about, even if we didn't know it ourselves ... That just verges on satire, makes the writer sound like a mind fit for Romper Room. Alt translation is this broad sucked after positive student evaluations, was afraid to kick students in the ass or send their tin ears to the recycling center. You can just see her handing this broad a triangle, "Here, this might be a little more your speed, mmkay?"

helped me see music in a way that I'd never imagined it. What I'll remember most are her potlatch suppers, usually featuring African vegetarian dishes, often based on beans. When the inevitable gas leak occurred, she giggled and called it found music.

Jesus. You can't make this stuff up. The she-Seinfeld of Grouse College.

Coming to terms with her loss—if this is even possible—will take us all a long time.

I feel like the girl in Vacation when Chevy Chase is painting the lily re the dead aunt.

the gift of music, the heart beating darkly. The topic was one thing, but what counted was the personal connection, the sense that thinking through music should be equal in complexity, vitality, and mystery to its subject

Really? Then why did she study third-world music? Has that species produced anything remotely as complex and nuanced as the white west? Isn't that pounding beat characteristic of music at its lowest, with nothing but limbic lust to express?

Beautiful person, beautiful mind, beautiful spirit, beautifully put - I defy anyone to tell me this unwitting repetition of these locutions of high-mindedness as they think of it is not characteristic of a cult. Repeating its mantra. They honestly are not aware of what they're doing, or how weird it is when you look at it objectively, or instinctively find it unappealing rather than appealing.

People these days are all about experiences, having them, collecting them, undergoing them, but it seems these seldom produce any interesting thoughts. A little in this world, any sector thereof, goes a very long way. If you know how to grind it up and make meal out of it.

Then at the bottom, from unrelated article 'beautifully written style,' jesus, it never ends with these people.