Briefly This Semester

What does it take to get through Walt Whitman’s epic Song of Myself, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2005? A February event in the Donnelley Lecture Hall/Film Theatre revealed an answer: 40 readers-faculty, undergraduates and grad students-took about three hours, with intermission. “The poem almost demands a variety of readers,” said organizer Jeffrey McDaniel ’90 of the writing faculty. “It has such a wide embrace, and we wanted the lineup to reflect that.”

In the fall David Brody ’08 and Sarah Kobetis ’08 established the SLC chapter of STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur). Money they raised by selling T-shirts was sent to Darfur schools; a winter rummage sale helped bring to campus two of the Lost Boys, the group of young men who have managed to escape Sudan’s civil war.

Letters sent, received; found, retrieved. The musings, news and emotions of private letters can convey both the immediacy and the timelessness of art. In March Lauren Palmor ’08 organized a reading, “If I Write You a Letter, Will You Write Me One Too?,” which she hoped would draw students not normally attracted to performing. Letters she had collected included some written in the many throes of love, and “letters my father received from a girl he drove from St. Louis to San Diego.”

”If a bomb was smart it wouldn’t go off.” Maybe not groundbreaking comedy, but laughs were only part of the point at Stand Up for Peace, an event at the Black Squirrel that aimed to build a bridge of humor between Jews and Muslims. The two visiting comedians exhorted students to get involved in the peace process: laughter may be good medicine, but committed action remains the only cure.