Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Welcome
I know we all remember Murphy's Irish Pub on Wells Street very well. How many beers and how many arguments over Aristotle and Heidegger did we have? What better venue for our discussions? This blog can serve as our virtual trip down memory lane and might be a better medium than an email chain for posting comments to what we're reading.
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12 comments:
Warren - this is a greta idea, although there were othern venues that we could have chose - Haggerty's, Von Trier's, Zicron's (home of the boot of beer), although Murphy's is a great choice. I have forgotten the name of the coffee shop, although I think I owe my permanent state of acid reflux to the amount of black coffee I downed at that place.
I will send out an e-mail to the group. I hope you enjoyed the article and I will get the ball rolling as promised with some comments/discussion threads.
I am glad that you are aboard!
Yeah but wasn't Murphy's our go to place. If I remember correctly, it wasn't our favorite, but close to Soderquist's apartment and had cheap beer.
What was the name of the sports-type bar around the corner? I definitely preferred that one.
As a former employee, Troy should remember the name of the coffee shop. It had some really great coffee and scones.
Stone Creek
Sports Bar? unknown. unless you are talking about the AVALANCHE!
I am glad Troy was able to remember the name. Warren, are you thinking of the bar near the big parking garage, on the corner of 15th and Wisconsin Ave? Troy might be right that it was called the "Lanche."
Welcome to Bill and hopefully John, too.
By the way... Brian may be itching a little for some baseball talk, given he is surrounded by soccer fans in Copenhagen... so permit me to start another thread.
Ellsbury, Lester, plus another prospect for Santana - I would pull the trigger. Crisp is a young and more than serviceable centerfielder for the next few years. Guys like Santana are proven commmodities and once in a lifetime. I think Theo thinks he can wait out the Twins and get a better deal, or at least continue to win with what he has next year.
Hi everyone. Trying to figure the place out here.
Murphy's is a great name. If I remember right, I think Bill had warmed the place up before the rest of us even made it to Milwaukee....
Cheap beer and darts.
Will you all fill me in a bit on what you're up to?
I'm in Copenhagen working a bunch of odd jobs, all more or less centered around the U of Copenhagen. I have an office at the Kierkegaard Centre (I do translating, editing) and I teach classes at the theology dept and at DIS, the "foreign exchange department."
I drink Carlsberg and watch the Twinkies on MLB.com. On rare occasion, when I watch the national league, it's the Brewers.
My girlfried in an art historian who works at a museum in a tiny cathedral town on the other side of the country. (It's a small country obviously). My son Johannes is 7 and he's quite shy.
Bill... Here is a quick update. Thanks for sending along the e-mail with the update and your address.
Currently I am in my sixth year as an Academic Dean/Director of Admissions of Saint John's High School in Shrewsbury, MA (adjacent to Worecester). SJ is very much like a Marquette High School.. all-boys, very strong academics, great sports, tradition-laden, etc. We are not a Jesuit school, but run by the Xaverian Brothers, (SJ Prep Danvers is also one of our schools). I also get to teach a morality class. I am also part of a 5-person administrative team. WE have 1000 students and a staff of about 120.
I transitioned to SJ (my alma mater) after three years at Stonehill College (full-time non-tenure track) and absolutely love it! In some ways, I am interacting with a very high level student - at a younger age. I have found that I love the formational piece of working with high school students. They are truly grateful for the work you do form them. The job is also stable and pays well compared to the option of being an associate professor at a small Catholic college or state school.
Beth and I are now in our 11th year of marriage, with three kids, Sam-7, Will-4, and Lilly-2. We live in Northborough, which is about 15 minutes East of Worcester and 30 minutes WEst of Boston. Northborough's character is very New England small town, which I love.
Beth has begun working towards her Master's in Speech Therapy and is at home full-time.
That is the short version...
Thanks for the updates.
John - My maternal uncles went to your sister school, Saint John's Prep.
So, what's going on with me?
Tina and I married in 1997 (God really smiled on my on that day). We have three beautiful child: Maria (who we lost during the pregnancy), Peter (now 6) and Julianna (now 6 months). Family life has been really great for me.
I am also back at Marquette finishing a Masters in Applied Economics. I have been working on it for a while and only have my thesis left, and the school has assured me that they will kick me out if I don't finish next year. Guess I better get after that, huh?
I worked at Strong Investments from 1996 - 2005, in a variety of jobs, eventually managing one of the compliance groups.
On September 3, 2003, Eliot Spitzer decided to make some changes around my company (for more on this fine human being, read http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/01/spitzer200801). In the end, Strong was sold to Wells Fargo, and I have stayed on and have been quite happy. While to took a while to make the cultural transition, I have managed to make a nice career for myself here. In my current role, I am working as an investment analysis for several of our asset allocation funds. I am also schedule to sit for the first of three examinations for the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in June 2008.
I still see Rice about twice a month at cards, although, for the life of me, I can't get him to play the Indian card game anymore. He is now retired, but remains as fiesty as ever. Outside of that, I rarely see faculty (although, at Rice's retirement party, Twetten mentioned that I had given him a bad review in the Aquinas class - someone must have been matching handwriting).
I am flattered that Brian suggested that I warmed up Murphy's before the group arrived in town ... I will mark that among my noteworthy contributions to the world!
I also have a fond memory of having Mike Dean buy several of us beer at Haggerty's one night - although beer and age clouds exactly which of us. As I recall, the cost of the beer was absorbing some name calling from him, but nothing tastes as good as free beer.
Oh ... and I think that the sports bar on the corner is The Annex.
Stay well and thanks for inviting me to the blog!
Your friend,
Bill
Bill - Thank you for the update. It is great to hear that your family has grown and that you are still keeping in touch with Dr. Rice. Send Tina and Dr. Rice my best.
Was the Annex the new Marquette run estbalishment (built below a bunch of apartment housing) or the place more on Wisconsin Ave. I do remember the Avalanche - it was not the sports bar on the corner of Wisconsin and 15th (or 16th)? The `Lanche was the real dive bar on Wells Avenue, proximate to Louie D's....
Just the thought of Louie D's has me thinking about making a patty melt with suateed onions some time in the next few days.
I am still one bar name short.
Troy Bracher completed a similiar program to yours at BC, getting a Masters in Economics. He also works in the field of financial planning, having taken similiar exams.
For me, it is interesting to reconnect with former philosophy people. I have a couple of students who are interested in pursuing graduate work. The bad news is, that save for Brian, none of us are "teaching" or "writing" in philosophy. The good news is that we all have managed to find gainful and succesful employment in a variety of fields. The time does not appear to have been wasted.
I do hope we all make the effort to post updates and philosophical musings for a while.
One final thought... please send my best regards to your Mom. I have seen Mom's like your make the sacrifice to send their sons to all-boys Catholic schools, in the hope that the influence of the school will support the tough job that they have at home. It is not an easy task, but very rewarding when the school has a positive impact. (Assuming you thought Cheverus made a difference - interesting.. did you and Warren ever connect on both having attended all-boys Jesuit schools?)
The bar I'm thinking about was neither the Lanche nor the Annex.
A lot of graduate students hung out there, and it had a female bartender that, as one denizen described her, "was built like a brick shithouse."
Bleachers???
The Annex was the bar under that new Marquette housing complex on Wells and 17th. The 'lanche was next to Louie D's and I remember hearing people say it had a reputation for naked beer slides. I don't really know what those are.
It seems to me like philosophy grad students tend to land on their feet ... the hard part is figuring out your brand story for the business world - i.e., how do you spin it so that you don't look like an stoner who thinks solely about the sound of one hand clapping (a very common misconception in the business world). I think that the trick is to understand the industry you are trying to get into, and spin the philosophy as rigorous intellectual caleathenics (spelling?). I am working to bring a another philosophy flunky (from BU) into my area as an investments writer.
I definitely appreciate the sacrifices that my mother made to send me to Cheverus (and they were many), and Tina & I are huge fans of Catholic education - with Peter at our local parish school (although we are thinking of putting him into another more rigorous Catholic school in the area that is not affiliated with a parish. Cheverus, however, was an unfortunate waste of my mother's money. The quality of the education was fairly low and any sort of character formation was non-existent (I have been told that this has changed). But, at the end of the day, we have seen some pretty amazing Catholic schools in the area to let this one spoil it for us.
Warren - are you think of the bar next to Walgreen's on 17th between Wisconsin and Wells? It is now called Caffery's, but I think that it might have been called Bleechers back in the day.
Keeping the thread going with a few notes for different people. I hope others are checking in.
Brian - I have a student who is absolutely enthralled with Kierkegaard. Would you mind if I had him get in touch with you? He originally started out as an Economics major at Tufts U., where they brought him in to the schools because of his 85 mph fastball and the ability to paint the corners at will. He did not like the environment at Tufts, and the baseball coach at Assumption College gave him a great opportunity to play baseball, go to school, and not be saddled with heavy loans, back in Worcester. He took a core course in Philosophy at Assumption, then discovered he loved it and is off and running. Last year, he received an award for being the top first year student academically at Assumption College. In particular, he is enthralled with Kierkegaard.
Could I put him in touch with you to talk about Kierkegaard studies at a higher level?
Bill - So glad to hear that you are invested in Catholic Schools. I had forgotten the value of my high school experience until returning to the Catholic High School environment.
Two interesting notes: 1. The new president of Cheverus is outstanding. His work porevious to this appoinment has focussed on Jesuit "Nativity" schools, which are schools that target inner-city kids to prepare them for college prep high schools. He has a very strong sense that students must be challenged academcally and live in accordance with high standards of behavior. He also realizes that to make this happen, faculty must invest time. He is a great example of obedience, as he accepts what he is asked to do, even if it means leaving a more comfortable situation, like his current job at Holy Cross.
I would love to hear about your Catholic grammar school experience with your older child. I spend an inordinate amount of time in Catholic Grammar schools as part of my position and have some insights on thier struggles.
To everyone...
Troy Bracher should be reporting the birth of his third child sometime very soon!
Visintainer - post on this blog so we can talk about the great playoff series.
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