Kendal U.

On two occasions in recent weeks we've enjoyed visits from faculty members from nearby colleges. They appeared as part of the ongoing program of the Kendal Speakers Committee to bring outstanding academic lecturers to the campus. Both were hits.

Judith Dann, Associate Professor of Humanities at Columbus State University, spoke of her work on an archeological excavation on a Roman bath house in Isthmia, Greece. Illustrated with projected images, the presentation treated both the historical background of the location – Isthmia was important as one of few sites for the staging of the ancient Olympic games – and the nitty-gritty of daily life at the dig. Anyone whose ideas of archeological digs had been shaped by the Indiana Jones epics would have found the collision with reality chastening. But even while dampening expectations of tales about dramatic chases and escapes from Nazi scientists, Dr. Dann conveyed something of the intellectual excitement that comes when careful record-keeping and painstaking sifting are rewarded with an unexpected insight into the social habits and belief systems of people who lived two millenia ago. Residents were able to see the people of ancient Isthmia as neighbors.

Karen Spierling, Associate Professor of History at Denison University, spoke about the Reformation, and she too had a series of projected images to help her deliver her message. Dr Spierling's goal was to complicate people's views of the Reformation. She set out to do this by presenting evidence that undercut the tendency of many moderns to let received and rigid views of the Reformation obscure evidence of interconfessional cooperation and interactions among Catholics and Protestants, and the range of joint projects designed by people in both camps to make daily life in an era of religious quarrels somewhat more pleasant and predictable. She stated that her goal, when she taught college students, was to prepare them for the real world of today in which the complicated social and political circumstances they read and hear about from the media are not reducible to formulaic oversimplifications. The residents appreciated her point of view and applauded her goal.

From the remarks I heard afer both talks I concluded that the residents of Kendal at Granville share an enthusiasm about the importance of education – and perhaps that's not surprising, given the number of retired teachers in our ranks. Even more happily, the residents are optimistic about the future of education. This is important (says someone who is very much a partisan on this issue) because in this era of challenges to many of the foundation stones of the American polity, education needs all the advocates, defenders, and cheerleaders it can muster. Drs. Dann and Spierling have shown us the project is good hands.