Margaret's Nearly Monthly News - November 2024 Edition
Thoughts on the end of an era for my alma mater, plus the usual news, updates, and the Duolingo dystopia
So, this month has been... a lot. And I'm not even talking about the election.
If you know me, you've probably heard me talk about Simon's Rock. Known on its letterhead as "Bard College at Simon's Rock, the Early College." As I tell people who look confused when they ask me where I went to school and they haven't heard of it, "We put the small in small liberal arts college."
SR is why I am technically a high school drop out. The first (and I believe only) standalone “early college,” it accepts students after their sophomore or junior year of high school to immediately begin college work. I earned an AA and BA there, and when I attended we had about 350 students. However, in recent years (due to a variety of forces, including Covid, and the school's own success in evangelizing for the early college movement) the campus population has shrunk, and on November 19, the board of overseers made the decision to close the school's Great Barrington, MA campus and move to a new location in upstate New York, closer to Bard College to consolidate resources.
As an alumna, I have a lot of feelings about this, most of them some flavor of grief. Communities are made up of people, and with this move, more than 100 faculty and staff will be out of a job as of next June. The campus itself also holds a place in my heart. I came of age on those 300 wooded mountain acres, two miles up the hill from the nearest town, where sixteen and seventeen-year-olds shaped the community and institution because there were only a few dozen juniors and seniors at any given time; the juniors were usually studying elsewhere for the year; and the seniors were too busy writing their theses to be bothered with anything else.
It is also not an exaggeration to say that I became a writer because of Simon’s Rock. A quirk of scheduling my first year left me with a hole in my schedule that I filled with a playwriting class. The next semester, the professor offered screenwriting. And the rest, as they say, is history. Almost everyone I know who went to SR has some version of that story. We are who we are because of Simon’s Rock. I am profoundly grateful that I was able to have that experience with my peers, the incredibly dedicated faculty, and the long-term staff who may be the most profound keepers of Simon's Rock's institutional memory.
Of course, some of those faculty and staff have passed away since I graduated, and I can’t help but feel like leaving campus means losing them again.
I'm glad that current stewards of the institution are trying to preserve the heart and spirit of the place. The current Vice President and Provost (the college's highest ranking administrator) came to SR after my time, but has been there more than 20 years. He has assured alumni that he is a saver, and intends to bring everything that isn't nailed down (along with as much of the rest as he can pry up) to the new facilities in New York.
But it won't be the same. And I worry that with the consolidation of staff, alumni will be lost in the shuffle. While my bachelor's degree was technically granted by Bard College, I've never seen any indication that Bard regards me and my classmates as theirs. If the new Simon's Rock becomes just another piece of the Bard system, what happens to those of us who were not?
In a time when many American institutions are on shaken foundations, losing this one hits even harder than it otherwise might.
On that note, on to the news?
From My Desk
No announcements yet, but we’re starting to see signs that Hollywood may have run out of ways to make money by not making film and television and could be getting back into the business of making film and television again. Anecdotal good news is dribbling in, and I pitched a project that's been in development to a new studio just last week.
Unrelated, I auditioned for Jeopardy! this month. Yes, that Jeopardy! This was the third step in a process that started with taking the anytime test online. I did well enough that I got an email asking me to take an online test over Zoom so someone from the show could watch and make sure I (and a group of others) wasn't secretly a team of hyper-intelligent weasels with internet access. A few weeks later, I got an invitation to do a virtual mock gameplay audition. Since I don’t think I totally blew it, I'm now in the prospective contestant pool for the next two years.
(The pool contains approximately ten times as many people as they will need for any given season, so at this point, it's a honor to be nominated and the whole process has been fun. If it goes any farther, I'll let you know when to tune in.)
What I'm Reading and Watching
On the book front, my friend Donna recently introduced me to The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels written by Beth Lincoln and illustrated by Claire Powell. If you loved The Phantom Tollbooth or The Beast in Mrs. Rooney's Room, and are charmed by discussions of nominative determinism, this is the series for you.
As for screened entertainment, on a recent flight home from Boston (to visit fellow Simon's Rock alum and friend of the NMN, Zoe) I discovered Scavengers Reign, a half-hour adult animated series about survivors of an interstellar survey ship making their way on an uncharted exoplanet. That sentence, by the way, does not convey even an inkling of how profoundly strange this show is. Is it a science fiction adventure? A meditation on the nature of human isolation? A weird fever dream? All of the above? Whatever it is, it’s available on Netflix in the US. While it wasn’t picked up for a second season, if you love shows like Infinity Train, don't let Netflix’s short-sightedness be a reason for you to deprive yourself of the what did get made.
From the Cutting Room Floor of the Duolingo Dystopia
I'm entering the section of the Duolingo French course where we're discussing abstract concepts and theories. This month, that’s meant a lot of strikingly germane sentences about politics and the preservation of democracy. While I'm glad to be able to express myself on those topics in two languages, is that the content you come here for? No! It is not!
So, I give you this instead. In case you find yourself struggling for artistic inspiration, allow Oscar to present a different take on the terror of the blank page:
And That's the Nearly Monthly News!
We made it through another month. We're nearly through another year. And sometimes, that's an accomplishment in and of itself. Comments? Questions? Drop me a line. Or not. I'm not the boss of you. Either way, I'll be back in December for the NMN's annual year end wrap up. Until then, take care of yourself, and stay safe out there.