Reed College

I have just returned from the 100th birthday party for Reed College in Portland, Oregon.  I drove down there with my dad.  He is 90, class of '43.  His dad, my grampa whom I missed meeting by less than a year, was class of '19.  I am class of '73 and Madrona Blue, my daughter, graduated from Reed in 2002.  My mom was also class of '43.  My Aunt Rosie was class of '47.   You can go to Reed for a year and be considered an alum.  It's hard work staying there for any length of time.  It's quite a place.  I ran screaming at the beginning of my junior year.  Felt guilty about it for decades.  After all, my parents met there, they want their ashes to rest there eventually and here I was, without the gumption to stay. 

Well, I'm back now, in the Reed fold.  I have been previously disdainful of people's loyalty to a "club" or  organization, or...college.  I understand that I can take no real credit for my family's generational history at Reed.  Except..I am proud of it and so very glad now for it.  I have Madrona to thank:  she thrived there (majoring in a combination Political Science and Biology degree) and during my visits to see her while she was a student, I came to understand how much it had changed for the better since my time, and how, to be honest, it was a lousy place to be in the early '70's for a young artistic type just finding her way during the era of Vietnam.  I have forgiven myself for leaving and am making up for it by going back often, volunteering when I can and enjoying my affiliation and identity as a Reedie.  

What does that mean anyway, especially to an outsider who has no knowledge of Reed or how it could be different from any other school of higher learning?  This is the hard part for me, since when I hear other Reedies define Reed, they usually speak of the high quality of education they received there:  the different goals of self-inquiry and examination, thorough and precise questioning and experimentation of thought... Long nights crafting papers that got minutely examined by their excellent professors who then did not reveal the grades but only wrote helpful comments, so that students were free to keep striving, even if they were already "good enough" thinkers.  Unfortunately, I can't describe my excellent educational opportunities about my Reed classes.  I was lost there and had no good guidance.  There was one kind music teacher who purchased and presented me with a musical dictionary when I tried to take and understand an advanced Beethoven course, and the one Lit. prof. who invited all of us to have classes at his house while we sipped whatever liquid refreshment seemed appropriate to the text we'd been reading (tequila with Carlos Castaneda was a memorable time).  But for the most part, because of problems the college was going through that students were unaware of, the teachers were distant, remote and troubled, unapproachable, to my mind.  I, in turn, felt disoriented and deserted, spending more time marching in downtown Portland against the Vietnam War and helping type up conscientious objector forms for my friends than attending class.  This behavior, after being an A+ student in my high school, left me wondering who I was becoming and where I was supposed to be.  I had been led to believe by my parents and their friends that I would find myself in intellectual Nirvana at Reed and be very happy most of the time.  I was not.  Nor were most of my classmates.  Fully half of my freshman class left the institution after the first semester!  I stuck it out for another year and a bit more before giving up and leaving.  Enough said of that time.  I have learned a little more now about what Reed was going through then with internal conflicts, money problems and identity crisis.  I wish more had been shared at the time with the students so we could have understood what was happening to all of us.

But over a very short time Reed picked itself back up and began to recover.  I have a lot of Reed friends who are younger than I am who loved it there, and I'm glad.  And more importantly, I have forgiven myself for leaving.  For years I would have recurrent nightmares that I was again living on campus, maybe with my family in my room as well, trying to go to class, feeling unprepared and frantic to try and turn in papers and do all the reading, struggling again to succeed at Reed.  I don't have those dreams anymore.  Madrona did succeed there.  She spent a lot of time in her professors' offices discussing her educational progress and goals.  She was awarded Phi Beta Kappa on Graduation Day.  She did it, for herself, of course, but in the process, it cured and absolved me of all guilt for not graduating  from Reed.  And Reed doesn't care, it accepts me as well.  So my definition of a Reedie is broader than how it is to be a present student there.  It has to do with a way of life, a way of life-long thinking and pondering and relating to others, an encouragement to always have an open inquisitive nature, to listen carefully to all viewpoints and to form one's own, based on close examination of the many factors involved, including the humor it takes just to continue on this path of challenging intellectual thinking.  There are many many different types of Reedies:  conservative to communistic, but still, they are recognizable to each other by some sort of clue:  some humorous twinkle in the eye, some nod of acknowledgement to a different viewpoint expressed, to the struggle of encompassing and distilling what is presented, both verbally and non-verbally by others into something of their own intellectual crafting which they continue to examine, not presenting it as fact, but as their offering to the Great Discussion.  Reedies are not only willing but inviting toward criticism and examination, so long as it is given in the spirit of furthering the goal of understanding and even some kind of right action.  I am an avid reader of the Reed magazine, which features articles about the myriad crazy and wonderful things Reedies are off doing, or thinking. 

It was a wonderful weekend celebrating Reed with my dad and a couple of thousand other Reedies.  There were hot air balloon rides, a Ferris wheel, amazing fireworks, lots of fantastic music, a beautiful exhibit of Renaissance teacher and calligrapher Lloyd Reynold's art (I did get to meet him briefly as a freshman after he had retired the year before I got there), and the meeting and greeting of many friends.  Dad not only survived it but loved it, seeing old friends and applauding his sister, (singing in a light operatic Gilbert and Sullivan adaptation of Reed's one hundred years especially written for this reunion), marveling over how big all the campus trees have gotten, listening to Reedie Gary Snyder give a beautiful talk about the enduring qualities of art and inquiry that have helped him on his path as one of our most creative literary artists, and just being there again, where he met Mom, had a fine education and feels, still, very much at home.

I'm so glad we had this time together, he and I.  He now is looking forward in a couple of years, to attending his 70th reunion at Reed in 2013!  I would be honored to be his companion then as well.