The Best of Winter Study

In a 2021 installment of Class Notes, Class Secretary Julie Berens offered this prompt: Recall Winter Study 50 years ago (January 1972). Dozens from our class responded; so many that she published the answers in two installments of the Notes. Here are the complete responses:

Warren Barker described Winter Study as “…a brilliant move by the college to reinforce the nostalgic euphoria we were to take with us after graduation. A month on campus without being buried in deadlines … pursuing a course of choice still seems delightful to me.” That said, Warren’s first WS was a “doomed foray into another language (at 8:00 am),” but senior year’s January course concluded “with a glass bicycle suitable for GI Joe.” I wonder what that final course was called.

Deadlines were almost the death of Tom Lockhart, who ambitiously signed up for Clay Hunt’s “The Bible As Literature.” Expected to read the entire Bible in three weeks, Tom desperately tried to keep up with the assignments, but came down with the flu. “Some friends came into my room, found me conked out in bed with the Bible resting on my chest. They thought I had been given the Last Rites.”

Chuck Chokel described his first Winter Study as “an outrageous thing for a freshman to do.” Sponsored by Roger Bolton, Chuck traveled to Tahiti and “studied the economics, politics, sociology, religion, and culture.” I’m pretty sure he never had to leave the beach to do any of that. He “passed” the course after giving a lecture with 250 slides to a crowd of jealous students.

A couple of language immersion Winter Study classes did not achieve the desired outcome. Tony Brown took an introductory Chinese class offered by a chemistry professor; students (including Tad Fryer) learned to draw 500 Chinese characters. Tony’s error was in also taking a sustaining course for first year Spanish students where he says he “found myself submitting Chinese characters on my Spanish tests.”

Ben Duke studied conversational French with Eunice Smith, “a terrifying lady.” Fifty years later, he still cannot speak French, but has, “thankfully, given up trying.”

Allan Ruchman described his memorable first Winter Study as “nice Jewish boy from Long Island (me) signs up for Conrad van Ouwerkerk’s ‘Ecstasy and the Religious Experience.’” When the famous Dutch theologian (who left a Catholic monastery to pursue a PhD) began talking about being in “a state of grace,” Allan, unfamiliar with the term, asked him to explain. The response took 45 minutes. 

Music Professor Barrow, frequently mentioned in the news for his significant influence on Stephen Sondheim ’50, also impressed a few of us. Judy Mender said her best January experience was getting “a beginner’s taste of playing the spectacular pipe organ in Thompson Memorial Chapel. I have never forgotten the feeling of sitting alone in that magical space producing those glorious sounds!”

Another Barrow beneficiary is Ned Reade, whose first Winter Study was a “crash course” in music history. Ned recalled in amazing detail the mimeographed course outlines, Barrow’s sitting at the piano playing parodies of rock and roll songs, and learning simple chord progressions. Barrow’s energetic and entertaining teaching style could also “bewitch us with Chopin and Mozart.” Ned can trace a line from that Winter Study to running the Pawling Concert Series for 45 years. The first year he was “in charge,” he hired The Hedji Trio (with Julius Hedji) and harpsichordist Victor Hill from Williams. Why go through artists’ agents when you can call on former Williams teachers to fill a concert series? 

Bob (“Milt”) Morin liked all his Winter Study courses; his first one titled “The Politicization of Science” required students to research a scientific issue and then travel to Washington, D.C., to interview someone connected to the issue in the political hierarchy. Bob researched automobile emission standards and met with someone in the (newly formed) EPA. As Bob aptly observed, “What an intense course that would be today.” 

Claire Berman Blum spent her first Winter Study “peering at the pollens and tissue slices in Larry Vankin’s electron microscopy lab and always appreciating the art in nature – which helped me also survive COVID-19 times.” Bread Baking and Pottery occupied two Januarys; and Professor Ferguson’s Russian Literature class came to mind when Claire was in lockdown wearing slippers. She says she thought a lot about Oblomov, title character of Ivan Goncharov’s second novel. 

Steve Stephanian shared two very different experiences. In 1972 he thoroughly enjoyed “Sapphic Greek” which occasionally comes in handy for crossword puzzles. His other vivid Winter Study memory was taking ski lessons at Brodie Mountain on a pair of used skis he bought from Mike Snyder, “definitely the coolest pair of skis I ever owned.” Unfortunately, Steve says he didn’t weigh enough to control them, but if he “stomped on them just right they would literally throw you into the next turn.”

From Peter Hanson: “After yesterday’s blizzard, as I often do when I put on my skis, I recalled January with John Eusden, who sat us by the fire and taught us to breathe in the essence of the apple wood, and breathe out our thoughts, and after skiing all day becoming one with the falling snow and the cold and the wilderness, led us home as we glided uphill through the shadows of the wood under a full rising moon.” 

An independent study left Nancy Reece Jones with an indelible memory. She had lined up a month in Washington, D.C., to compare the interpretive programs of the Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management. Her enduring takeaway from the Winter Study was “don’t walk around Dupont Circle after dark by yourself.” After dinner with Williams classmates, she was walking home alone and was robbed at gunpoint of $50. She recalls that she had never before had so much money in her wallet.

The Winter Study course, “Experiencing the Total Environment of Berkshire County,” was Suzanne Fluhr’s favorite. “We did outdoorsy things like climb the Dome in Vermont with snowshoes, have talks by locals (like the Rotary Club), visited schools, shadowed a local worker (for me a PT at North Adams Hospital), and did a home overnight with a local.” Suzanne says there is a group photo on top of The Dome somewhere on the class Facebook page.

Robert Reder’s memory of January, 1972, was rather succinct: “Williams Hall, Entry B, Zac’s (Peter Zaccagnino) room: ‘American Pie’ by Don McLean, over and over and over…”

Lisa Harris recalled her Winter Study with Bill Boone, titled “Some Fiction of the Supernatural”:  the “cold dark Williams winter accentuated the spookiness of selections from the likes of Nathanial Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft.” 

Dan Stinebring’s favorite Winter Study was “Astronomy in France” with Jay Pasachoff. The class explored Paris, an observatory in Meudon “where the astronomers had wine with their gourmet lunches,” and an observatory in the Pyrenees which they accessed on a small cable car “above an alpine abyss thousands of feet below.” 

Ken Kubie spent a January in Chicago doing ”something I can’t remember, having to do with city planning” as an excuse to visit a Rochester girlfriend (who happened to be my high school classmate) who was studying journalism at Northwestern. 

Perhaps the most practical winter study report came from Polly Wood-Holland who took a month of auto mechanics. “Armed with a little bit of confidence acquired from that course, I temporarily fixed my steering linkage which broke one day on the Triborough Bridge when I was seven months pregnant.”

Liz (Critchley) Haff shared a neologism that appeared in the Boston Globe: “Ephemory – the feeling that you are forgetting something.” That term applies to my faulty recall of my first Winter Study, “The Spanish Civil War,” with John Hyde ’52. I was joined by not one, but two other ’75ers in that class: Hardin Coleman and economics major David Barradale.

David’s most memorable Winter Study was a trip to Moscow and Leningrad in 1975. The group spent ten days in each city where they “were able to explore with a surprising amount of freedom despite the ever present Intourist (KGB) guides assigned to ‘assist’ us.”

A transfer from RPI, Doug MacBain recalled his two Januarys in Williamstown. In 1974 he took a class focusing on the works of Malraux, but his 1975 experience was his favorite: “a field study on the geomorphology of the Adirondack High Peaks (snowshoeing for three weeks in the mountains)”. 

Peter Hillman stuck with his History 101 prof Terry Perlin for his first Winter Study, “Assassinations,” where they studied “facts and circumstances common to most of the tragedies.” His second memory of that January was bringing a hometown friend up to Williams – only to discover that everything had been moved out of his room and replaced with the suite’s regulation-sized pool table. Peter says the “table eventually went out the top floor window.”

The May 2022 federal elections in Australia sent Ben Strout back in time to January 1972 and his first Winter Study where he worked as a volunteer in Manchester, New Hampshire, for Senator George McGovern. His responsibilities included gathering names of Democrats from publicly available electoral rolls and phoning radio stations at the crack of dawn to share “short tapes of key public comments that McGovern had made the day before.” When he finally had the chance to meet McGovern, Ben remembers thinking that the senator “lacked pretty much any charisma.” Fast-forward 50 years from Ben’s first vote in an election (1972) to his first vote in an Australian Federal election (he recently became a dual citizen after nearly 40 years of living in Sydney). This year, Ben’s vote for a “seemingy charisma-free and gaffe-prone parliamentarian (Anthony Albanese)” resulted in the surprise triumph of his choice for prime minister. Ben’s summary seems apt: “Good things come to those who wait.”

The Winter Study Renee Meyer recalled was “’Death and Dying,’ which was spiritually and intellectually a cohesive next step after my Buddhism class.” Renee says that the understanding and empathy she assimilated from that class “might very well underpin what [her] Ballet Mobile company does now.” Ballet Mobile is back on the road making house calls where they meet “such interesting and unnecessarily lonely people.” The goal is always to have people leave the experience feeling changed in some way. Renee has a special ballet class for

seniors (average age is 88!) which she says “is a gift for ME as I watch these courageous men and women move to

the music, no matter what kind of chair they’re sitting in. There’s a beautiful grace inside all of them and it really is my honor to help them realize what they still CAN do.” Renee’s email reminds me that the power of the arts never ceases to amaze . . . I’m thinking a special ballet class might be on the activities list for our 65 th /70 th reunion.