Hello Lynn,
I received your note and the magazines, and thank you for reaching out. I enjoyed talking with you, which reminded me that one of my secret aspirations was to teach, if not at Storm King then perhaps another private school.
Just behind our conversation about visiting was the memory of an actual visit I made to campus, within the last year, on a day the campus seemed to be empty. I did not want to make any demands on who ever might be there, as I have no right to expect hospitality if I show up unannounced, so I left without any human contact. This is why I said I would write to you if I planned to be in the area again, so there could be an announced visit. I am not now planning that visit, but I wanted to reciprocate your reaching out to me, and thank you again.
I realize that the cultivation of relationships with alumni is an important part of what every school must do. Unlike hospitals, whose alum are likely to revisit many times, before they actually expire, or the military, which must actually provide health care to its retired soldiers, schools have a time-limited occupancy with a distinct beginning and end. The only relationship is "You were once part of this community". But that relationship is meaningful to the student as much for the period of life it overlapped, as for the people and lessons that were learned. Any experience at that time of life will be meaningful. But for the school, this tautology is irrelevant. That relationship is a source of continuing benefit to the school, and perhaps also of accountability to its mission, so there may be something reciprocal and conservative about the relationship, although ultimately transactional.
I have positive memories of my time at Storm King, but in other ways my two years there were merely a hiatus from my emotional development, which resumed when I returned to my neighborhood school. Important growth in my brain, my cognitive powers, insights in the nature of human life and my life, were denominated by isolation, meanness and entitled arrogance, and I have no way to account for the loss implied. In the vast range of ways to be in the cosmos, I do not blame Storm King for not being what I needed it to be, but neither do I feel indebted. It gives me cause to wonder what being an Alumni of any school really means. Like my meditations about religion, if they all claim to be correct, then which one deserves my loyalty? If I find reason to believe in family, community, and principles of the social contract, Storm King was a model of both what to do and what not to do.
I like the circle of community still embodied by the campus. I liked the individuals who were thoughtful and kind. I enjoy now the sense of communality of dormitories, a central dining hall, an infirmary, and a small account at the school store for postage and supplies. I also got a personal and visceral exposure to privilege and entitlement whose "positive" is that I know what form I do not want my community to take. The other boys I remember were full of themselves and their ambitions made them obnoxious. There is not a single one of them I remember fondly or that I wish to catch up with. My failing in emotional development was that I did not know how to protect myself from unkindness, and one boy made my life so miserable that I hit him. My roommate for one year was also very cruel to me, and I didn't know I could ask to be given a different roommate. My roommate for the other year was a baseball fanatic, which had no meaning to me. When my father asked me if I wanted to go to Storm King, I only asked "Can I do woodworking?". I was told that I could, but when I got there, I was told that only maintenance people could use the wood shop. So I have a lot of pain connected with my years at Storm King.
There is no lesson I wish to impart. I am indulging this moment to express feelings long held, to reflect on the meaning and purpose of an Alumnus relationship. I have always wanted a family where I could be safe (which I approach in my maturity), and Storm King was another of those places that didn't offer that to me. So I am and remain ambivalent about my connection to Storm King.
As 1/7,700,000,000 th of humanity, My family feels too big with too divergent interests for me to feel safe. Embedded in a time of rapid growth of technology and decline of the biosphere, I feel danger growing around me exponentially. The United States is led by a madman who wants to plunge the world into war, and the model of military hegemony by which the United States has protected (and sacrificed) its white citizens for a century is now being turned against it by a country with all of the technology and energy that we have, and a massive population with which to execute that model. The best way to survive in the world is to make friends, and work together to make the world a better place. Yet what is the central premise of our foreign (and domestic) policy? It is the way of the bully. To win or lose. Likely, against that bully, to lose.
I have friends with whom and relationships in which I feel safe, and yet I find very little else to be loyal to. I have been a defender of the underdog for my entire life. I have espoused cooperation and sharing as sustainable social models which could help assure the survival of humanity and life, and I have watched their opposites increase in control of our country - selfish me-ism, security through wealth hoarding, neglect of the social fabric and avowed elitism, racism, sexism and phobias of various sorts, and status seeking through consumption of stuff. It is very short term thinking which advocates me-first-ism. Imagine believing the world will continue as it is and that wealth could possibly protect a person from the inevitable degradation of the environment? There is so much work not being done. Is Storm King preparing young people for this world?
Stephen Marshall.
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