from the new incarnation of my undergraduate library

In one sense, St. John’s is exactly as I remember it. This wasn’t the library when I was here. It was the Maryland Hall of Records, despite being on our campus. I believe Alex haley researched his book Roots in this building; the records of the Maryland slave trade were the grimmest documents to be found in this building. In 1996 the College bought or rented it, or whatever the arrangement is, and the St. John’s Library was relocated here. I’m going to hunt for the exact physical copies of books that meant a lot to me at that age. In particular, I always had Heidegger’s Vom Wesen des Grundes checked out back then. I’m referring to the red, clothbound, dual-language Northwestern edition, translated by Hollywood director Terence Malick (no joke). They also had Jakob Klein’s personal copy of the first edition German only version of that work. I advised them a few years later to move it to the Rare Books Room, but don’t know if they did it.

*everything seems physcially smaller on campus than I remembered it, but that’s a fairly typical experience when visiting sites from the past

*I ate lunch at the dining hall. It looks exactly the same, but the food is much better than I remember it being

*can’t get into any of my old dormitories, because they put security locks on all of them; nonetheless, campus security is *less* uptight than they were in those days. I seem to remember visitors signing in in those days, but in 2011 everyone seemed to be wondering why I was asking if I had to sign in.

*It being Sunday, no one is on campus but undergrads. And of course no current St. John’s undergrad knows me from a hole in the wall, so I’m having the strange experience of being an intruder in a very familiar place (almost perfectly remembered this time) where absolutely everyone is a complete stranger.

*Making a blog entry from campus is also weird. We didn’t even have email accounts in those days. Postal mail was our contact with the outer world. And they had three deliveries just like the old days; apparently they’d send campus staff to the main post office three times per day.

*Annapolis looks much swankier than I remembered, but I don’t think that’s my memory playing tricks. I think it *has* gotten much swankier since 1990. Students and faculty used to live in moderate numbers in the historic district next to campus, but just from the looks of the area now I’d have to say it would be close to impossible in financial terms.

The sorts of events and discussion groups advertised on the bulletin boards are exactly the same as ever, though. Euclid reading groups, etc. And I see Eva Brann is still at it, leading discussions on the side. She must be close to 90.

Morton at DePaul

Meanwhile, Tim seems to have had a great time at my doctoral alma mater DePaul. HERE.

Villanova

That was a very good conference, arranged by very nice people. There were also quite a number of people at my talk who were either long-time email correspondents or else figures from the distant past I hadn’t seen in years (21 years in one case). Nice party afterward as well, excellently catered and in a charming old house over in the UPenn area.

I’m dragging a bit this morning and need to pack quickly, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Annapolis coming up.