Images

Every time we head to the Brown Auditorium, we pass by the picture above, which is of the Glee Club at some point in the early forties.  At one point, I remembered seeing the 2010 Riddlers head into the Refectory for a picture-taking session, and I began to wonder whether they had re-created this image.  As it turns out, they had not; the pictures they took have the tapestries as background.

Nonetheless, I am currently in favor of using a juxtaposition these images as a central image (book cover, web page background, etc.) for Semblance of Permanence.  I'd prefer, of course, that the modern picture more closely resemble the older one, but we cannot reconvene the 40s Glee Club, and there is an argument for using these Riddlers rather than making a new version with the 2013 Riddlers.  That argument, of course, is that the singer second from the left in the top row of the 40s Glee Club (Ed Custer '43) is the grandfather of the one fifth from the right in the top row of the 2010 Riddlers (Ben Custer '10).   Adding to the air of permanence, both of them were faculty brats who grew up on campus and whose fathers taught history.  As a historian with a long connection to AOF, I have seen this sort of "permanence" many times; sons and grandsons of alumni becoming friends just as their fathers and grandfathers were, etc.  I suspect that by "permanence" TPR meant the architecture and the character of the place, but I think the people aspect is important as well.

This summer, I have been playing around with the idea of creating this work as an iBook, and I have created a "cover" which has the two pictures juxtaposed as above with "Semblance of Permanence" in between.  If it is possible to share that image in this venue, it is well beyond my abilities, but I think it looks good.

While on the subject of images, I should also explain the origins of the image at the head of this blog - TPR somehow in the midst of a Refectory chandelier.  A few years ago, I was putting together a PowerPoint for use in the background at hiring fairs - just a series of images that give a sense of AOF.  Lacking an image of TPR, I attempted to capture one from one of the school's videos; the video faded from the Refectory chandelier to TPR, and I pulled the trigger before the transition was complete.  I have always liked the result; initially, I thought it was vaguely ethereal, but in the light of TPR's interest in parapsychology, it seems particularly apropos.