Very cool. My dad was a member of the first class of the New Program.

Wow, warbaby, I didn't know that! How come you haven't mentioned it before? Did you not know that I was a johnnie?

What was his name? There's been a few different articles about the first New Progam class in the alumni magazine.

Tomorrow, I go to the world Dock Pudding championship.

It puts the baseball world series to shame in terms of being a local competion that gives itself an international moniker.

Incidentally, after writing this I recalled that St. John's College^† had its 300th birthday ten years ago. Of course the Santa Fe campus of SJC, which I attended, is only as old as I am, having been established the year I was born, in 1964.

Albuquerque isn't that old in comparison to, chiefly, Santa Fe, which is 97 years older and is the second-oldest city in the US, after St. Augustine, Florida (1565).

Seanyboy, the craziest traditional event I've seen out of the UK is that "run" (often, as much tumble as run) downhill race. Isn't that in Scotland? I can't recall.

† In Annapolis, and Santa Fe, in the US. TWIAVBP.

His name was Fred and he passed away two years ago.

He always kept that picture of Scott Buchanan and Winkie Barr coming down the steps on his desk. About five years before he died, I noticed a book titled So Reason Can Rule on his bookshelf.

I borrowed it because the essays had a lot to do with the anti-terrorism work I was doing at the time.

A couple of days later, I had to drive Dad 100 miles to the VA hospital in Seattle and we talked about the book, Buchanan and St. John's.

Dad had a work-study position as the campus switchboard operator on weekends. Buchanan and Barr would rush out every Saturday to catch the trolley around noon. And, inevitably, every day they were almost late and would go running out of the building. And they often would continue their shouted conversation in French as they ran to catch the trolley that they always forgot about until it was almost too late. Dad said is was such a regular event you could set your watch by it.

Dad went to visit Buchanan in California in the 60's shortly before Scott died.

I've read everything that Buchanan wrote. Reading So Reason Can Rule was an astounding experience for me. Here Buchanan was expounding on my values -- the things that are eternally true and eternally questioned. I had absolutely no idea where I got these values, but I hold them very close. I never really thought about where they came from. I certainly didn't get them through my educational process.

The answer, of course, was that Dad absorbed these values from Scott and passed them on to me. I suppose it also explains why I am a neo-Platonist as a mathematician. I'm told that is very old-fashioned. I wanted to go to St. John's but didn't have the money for it, so I went to a small experimental liberal arts college in Washington State, instead.

I posted this essay on The Corporation and The Republic by Buchanan on my web site because I was shocked to find that nobody at St. John's had made any of his writings available on the web. That is a real pity and should be remedied.

I particularly like 11 Propositions.

Wow. That's supercool. Thanks for sharing all that. I'm very sorry for your loss.

For posterity's sake: yep, we won the croquet match again, this year.