General Studies Lounge - ARCHIVE 2006-2011

Today is the 111th Birthday of Brody Berg., our GS VP of Communications. I want to send out some love to this noble spirit who has painstakingly corrected errors in code on my pages and irregularities in my espresso production methods. I want to thank him for his sagacious minutes taking (while often lacking in verbiage) and his uncanny ability to tell anyone from President downwards that, to quote, "its not gonna pass". Thank you, you great hiking sage who will bear the windswept glaciers of Iceland with strength and the easy trails of the Berkshires without too much ridicule of struggling comrades. Thank you, old wise one, whose knowledge of computer programming and proper crema put all us mere mortals to shame. Thank you Brody, and I wish you only the best of birthdays.

On Saturday, October 27th, Allen Settle and Jessica Collins went back in time to the Middle Ages. We spent the day in the Cloisters, a magnificent museum right in Manhattan which uniquely reproduces the architecture and design of the Romanesque, Gothic, and High Gothic. We saw the beautiful unicorn tapestries (Jessica was saddened - "the poor unicorn!") and relished in the ornate treasures of the Treasury (located in the basement of the Cloisters). We saw medieval playing cards, tapestries, furniture, sarcophagi, and hundreds of relics and artifacts. Furthermore, we were able to pretend, for a few hours, that we were living 600 hundred or more years ago - the rain that poured throughout the day only added to the experience. We met fellow pilgrims, including a woman from Zurich who took these pictures. We plan on returning soon. Hopefully some more GS students will want to accompany us in our time travelling?

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In December 1978, the Cultural Revolution was over and it appeared to Beijing residents that China would naturally move toward democracy. No Mao, meant no People’s Republic thought many. Utilizing the political teaching of the rising Deng Xiaoping, Beijing urbanites began to emphasize the concept of “seeking truth through facts”. On a wall was a long brick wall on Chang'an Street in the Xidan District of Beijing, political dissidents and the politically aware began to document publicly problems in China and call for change in the politics of China . The most famous statement, the statement which truly began the Democracy Wall Movement, was a poster entitled the Fifth Modernization by Wei Jingsheng who signed it and placed it on the wall on December 5, 1978. After Agriculture, Industry, Science and Technology, and National Defense (Promoted by Deng Xiaoping in 1978), Wei Jingsheng added Democracy! Chinese citizens wrote feely in prose and poetry (poetry being the traditional way to inform the government of prolems). Beijing citizens now had a catharsis to assuage the anger and fear they felt. They were a community in pain, a community without a way to publicly portray their frustrations, a community kept in silence, a community finally allowed to open up. While ultimately unsuccessful, its effects still linger. Even today Chinese and Westerners talk nostalgically to the Democracy Wall Movement.

We are a community in pain, a community without a way to publicly portray their frustrations, and a community kept in silence. We just may need a Democracy Wall of ourselves