THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF A SPEECH GIVEN BY NANCY AT THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BREAD LOAF SCHOOL OF ENGLISH
Bread Loaf in the Age of Aquarius
by Nancy
Davis, aka Nancy Tennessee, Class of 1969
at the Celebration
of the 90th Anniversary of the
Bread
Loaf School of English
June
16-19, 2009
I arrived on the
Mountain in June, 1966, my first big adventure out of Tennessee, and I graduated
in August, 1969, 40 years ago this coming August. My roommate that first year was Joan Connors – here
today as Joan LaPlante—from Cumberland, Rhode
Island. We both had very heavy
accents, and when we heard each other speak, we thought we had mistakenly
landed in one of the foreign language schools.
We were greeted on the
porch of Larch by the Ladies of Larch Welcoming Committee, headed by Suzanne Sheffer who is here today as Suzanne Liggett, Jeanie Baker
whose failing health prevents her from being here today, and Diana Heard, who
has gone -- like so many of our friends -- to that Great Bread Loaf in the
Sky. The committee served scotch
and artichokes hearts and smoked oysters and Vermont cheddar, and I listened to
sophisticated conversations that let me know I was way out of my league. After listening to class discussions
these last two days, I would still be out of my league!
Like most other
students, I was a child of the 50s when the prevailing notion was that God was
in His heaven, and all was right with the world. But growing up in the segregated South let me know that all
was not right with the world. I learned much later that psychological
research in the 50s reported that the family was doing very well. The mothers tended to be depressed, but
the family functioned well..... And the 60s were now well upon us, and
we didnÕt know if either we or the world was coming or going, much less where
God was. A few examples:
á
1960 – The first
civil rights sit-in in Greensboro, NC. The beginning of the US buildup in Vietnam. The ÒpillÓ came onto the market.
á
1961 – President
Kennedy took office, and the Camelot era began. But the Cold War was raging, and the Soviet Union tested its
first hydrogen bomb. I entered the
University of Tennessee. This was
the first year African American students were admitted to the undergraduate
school.
á
1962 – Betty
Friedan published The Feminine Mystique,
which helped launch the Women's Movement.
á
1963
– Martin Luther King, Jr. did his "I have a dreamÓ speech. President Kennedy was assassinated. Rachel Carson published The Silent Spring, which helped launch
the Environmental Movement.
á
1964
– During the presidential election campaign, the Democrats ran the
á
1965
– The first anti-war teach-in. President Johnson signed the Medicare Act and the Voting Rights Act.
That
was the world down the mountain when I arrived here in1966. But the times they continued to be achanging.
á
1967 – Anti-war protest
marches began in earnest. Even here at Bread Loaf, the Ladies of Larch protested
the mowing of the buttercups in the meadow and took Mr. Sypher hostage.
á
1968 – The MyLai Massacre. Walter Cronkite urged negotiations to end the war. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was
assassinated, and riots broke out across the country. In June, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. In August, the Democrats held their disastrous
convention in Chicago. In November
-- speaking of disasters -- Richard Nixon was elected president.
á
1969 – In June,
the Stonewall Riot in New York launched the Gay Rights Movement. In July, for the first time ever, man landed
on the moon and a television landed on the Mountain. David Sanders, the Assistant Director of the School,
borrowed Betsy Hood's station wagon and drove to Burlington to rent a
television, and we all sat in the Barn, transfixed by this momentous
occasion. As we walked back to our
dorms, moon gazing took on a whole new meaning. Earlier that evening, Archibald McLeish read his poetry in
the Little Theater and signed copies of the NY Times that carried his poem
commemorating the moon landing on the front page. In August, while we were graduating here on the Mountain,
the Òthree days of peace, love, and musicÓ were taking place over in Woodstock,
NY. And finally in 1969, the first
e-mail message was delivered.
The world just kept on
with its dramatic changes, so you see why we so much needed Robert Frost's
"momentary stay against confusion," and how the Mountain provided us
with TS EliotÕs Òstill point in the turning world.Ó We needed a place to try to
make sense of all that was happening down the Mountain, in the ÒrealÓ world we had to return to.
Life-changing events
were happening on the Mountain as well as we had the great privilege of being
taught by some of the leading scholars in the world. The classes I attended here this weekend left me delighted
that the new professors sound much like our old professors. My friends and I will always treasure
what we learned in:
á
Helen BaconÕs Greek
literature courses.
á
Wylie SypherÕs Shakespeare and Literary Criticism courses.
á
Rachel TrickettÕs 17th century comic novel course.
á
Ken ConnoleyÕs Epic Tradition and Modern Literature course.
A
brief aside: Rachel Trickett was an Oxford don, and my roommate Louise Wagner,
who is here as Louise Kempka, and I were surprised to
see her and Ken Connoley downtown on the dance floor
on a school night. We figured we
could stay as long as our professors did, so we didn't get back to Larch until
after midnight. The next morning,
Rachel Trickett had everyone in stitches as she read
passages of Tristram Shandy during
her 8:30 class, everyone except Louise and me, that is. We were nearly immobilized by splitting
headaches, and the laughter really hurt.
Among
our other memorable courses were:
á
George AndersonÕs
Chaucer course and his History of the English Language course.
á
Larry HollandÕs Faulkner
course.
Again, I digress: Larry Holland was a brilliant,
incredibly handsome American lit professor from Princeton, but we learned at
some point that he was initially as intimidated by the Bread Loaf students as
we were of the professors. He
heard us talking about our problems with "no-see-ums," and he thought
we referred to insects by their Latin
names. He told us later that he
wondered, "Can I keep up with such brilliant students?" You probably also know that Mr. Holland
died tragically one summer, while rescuing a drowning child. He will always be in our hearts.
Other wonderful teachers
and courses:
á
Bart GiamattiÕs Renaissance lit courses. He played volleyball with us before he
was president of Yale or baseball commissioner.
á
Martin
PriceÕs 18th Century courses,
á
And
many, many others, including Harold BloomÕs Wallace StevenÕs course. IÕll never forget the comment of one
student, John Durkin, about Harold Bloom's course. He joined us on the porch of Larch before lunch and said,
ÒSomething strange happened last night. I thought I understood a Wallace StevenÕs poem. But life is back to normal. I went to Harold BloomÕs class and
learned I didnÕt understand it at all.Ó
Harold Bloom was a
character, a New Yorker through and through. He decided that he wanted to learn about nature, so he
started going with Wylie Sypher on Wylie's daily
bird-watching walks. Wylie was
quite a naturalist, and he taught Harold a lot. But one day Harold came to him and said, "Wylie, I saw
the strangest chipmunk today. It
was black and had a white stripe down its back." "Why Harold," said Wylie, "that was no
chipmunk. That was a skunk!"
Our nurse was a true
Vermonter named Alice Paine -- honest. She had been married to Dr. Paine, but he was deceased. Our librarian was Ruth Pillsbury. She had a very deep voice from years of
smoking. One rainy day, I was
sitting in one of the big comfortable chairs near the fire in the library, and
a wonderful Jesuit, Father Al Reddy, had fallen asleep in another one. It wasn't long before Ruth Pillsbury
was hovering over him, saying in her heavy hoarse voice, "Father Reddy,
Father Reddy. You're snoring....."
And then there was the
blessing of the volleyball court. David
Armstrong was the classics professor that summer, and he delivered an
impassioned invocation to Zeus and any other god or goddess as he saw fit. I don't remember the whole thing, but I
know he concluded with arms outstretched, eyes toward the heavens, and the plea,
"Zeus, bless our volleys! Zeus, bless our balls!"
At about 5:00 p.m. each
day, Jeanie Baker would shout, ÒEveryone out of the pool!Ó and weÕd all head
to the Larch well for cocktails. We also had picnics at Texas Falls on the 4th of July, and I remember thinking something was wrong with my Volkswagen Beetle.
Then I realized it could barely make it up the Mountain because it was so
loaded down with steaks and beer for the picnic.
At 10:00 p.m., we often
headed to the Waybury Inn for drinks and
popcorn. When we started to leave
the Inn about midnight, someone would yell something we thought was funny then,
but now know was not. Some one
would yell, ÒYou drive, Charlie. YouÕre too drunk too sing!Ó I have since decided that a strong argument for the existence of God is
that most of us made it through our twenties. I beg of you young people, please
don't do as we did. Do as I tell
you -- don't smoke, and drink only in moderation as defined by the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, not as defined by fellow Bread
Loafers!
In those days, we also
thought it was funny to call Tamarack ÒMenopause Manner,Ó but we canÕt remember
now what was funny about thatÉÓ
I see my friend Bob
Gallagher reaching for the hook, so IÕll wrap this up. I left the teaching profession after
five years and went on to become a clinical psychologist, but my experiences at
Bread Loaf have enriched everything IÕve ever done. No diagnostic manual, no psychological research, and no books
on techniques of psychotherapy ever had as profound an influence on me as a
clinician as did the literature, the lectures, the camaraderie, and the world view of Bread Loaf. George Viglirolo reminded us in the Invisible Cities class this morning that the only thing certain is uncertainty, and the wisdom
of Bread Loaf has enabled me to press on through the massive uncertainty of the
last forty years. I will be eternally
grateful for my summers here.
I do want to leave you
with a few conclusions I have drawn as a result of my Bread Loaf experience:
á
Everyone
in the whole wide world should have to take an English course every year.
á
English
teachers are the most undervalued people in the world.
á
For
those of you old timers who continued to Ògladly learn and gladly teachÓ over
the years and for those of you who continue to do so, my deepest gratitude and
congratulations. The impact of
your work goes far beyond anything you can ever imagine.
á
For
Bread Loaf administrators and teachers and funders, keep up the good work. This
is truly hallowed ground which is the closet to heaven
you can get on earth. Every
summer, you work your magic so that Bread Loaf continues to be a world of
knowledge and inspiration to the younger generation – our little hopes
for the future. And the friendships
and vision that we Golden Grads gained here continues to enrich us all.
Thank you.
The
t-shirt says, "English major. You do the math."
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