Where Do We Go From Here? (Final Essay)

The air was crisp and fresh as Eleanore opened her window.   She couldn’t help thinking that there was, perhaps, no place more beautiful than St. Olaf College in the fall.  She’d heard someone else say that once before, and had immediately begun using the phrase herself.  It was tricky, Eleanore thought, to say what people wanted to believe without losing the way things actually were.   Thus, it was useful to have in one’s conversational repertoire a phrase that people were drawn to, something that might even be true, if arbitrary opinions of beauty could be proven.  Besides, she really did find the fall campus beautiful.  Moreover, generalized statements about the campus lent her an air of knowledge beyond her meager freshman status, and demonstrated school loyalty.  It was a balance she had mastered almost perfectly. 

 She couldn’t help but think that her profound, almost stifling social awareness was a product of growing up in Webster, for in the Knutsen household; one was nothing if not an expert at walking on eggshells.  But she brushed the thought aside.  She had other things to think about today; for today was the day she had been waiting for almost two weeks.  George Onstad was to be her date to the annual Halloween party.  The event was bound to be wonderful, even though Halloween wasn’t actually until the next day.  The boys from “Ytterboe had been invited to Mohn basement” (Shaw, Dear)for a “night of disguise, “terrifying” treats, a musical program, and even a walk through “Hades and the Haven of Delight”.  (Hallowe’en Party 1). The party was always one of the most exciting parties of the year, and the girls were ecstatic.  The boys, in reciprocation for the girls’ hard work, had been sure to ask for dates.    George Onstad hadn’t needed much of the persuasiveness garnered on the Freshman debate team to convince Eleanore that they should go together.  It would be her very first date.  Truly, the day could not be any more beautiful.  Eleanore’s musings were interrupted by a sharp rapping at her door. 

“Come in!” she answered, already guessing who it would be.  The door swung open, and to no surprise, the round face of Lena Haagstrom appeared.  Lena was a lively, well-dressed woman who could be described conclusively as the most exuberant of Eleanore’s friends.  She was also the fashion expert amongst the ladies.  At her side stood Margaret Nielsen, a Danish girl whose sharp features made the perfect complement to Lena’s roundness.  

“Hello, Girls!” Eleanore sighed, already feeling the tinge of nerves and embarrassment that came from knowing her date was only in a matter of hours.  She ushered the two girls into the room, sensing that they were intent on making a big deal of the occasion. 

“Elle!” Lena exclaimed, biting her lip in anticipation.  “Only a few more hours until the party! Can you even stand it?” The question was rhetorical, of course.  Lena rushed on, “Have you finalized your costume yet?  I know you wanted to go as a Pilgrim but I just don’t know.  The apparel is so drab.  I mean, you would look lovely, but I just keep thinking of that “blue shift you bought from Elton & Ellingboe Brothers” (Jenson 349), and I really think we ought to fashion something out of that.  George wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off of you. Oh my goodness.  I am just so happy for you.  I can hardly breathe.”

“Calm down, Lena,” Margaret laughed, “Before you faint of excitement before the party has even begun.  Eleanore, I was thinking, your blue shift is long-sleeved, right? “

“Yes, with ruffles on the bottom”

 “Excellent!  See, I was thinking you could wear your blue dress with your Pilgrim apron, and use your nightcap to be an 18^th century maid!”
                “Isn’t that great?” Lena grinned.

It was.   Eleanore could see it now, “the silky, ruffled, elegant blue dress, offsetting her blue eyes, accented by the white of the apron and the cap.  She could set her curls in a sweeping bun that peeked out of the cap, further framing her face.  She would be the picture of beauty and civility” (Historical Costume Party).            

“You two are brilliant,” she squealed, “Let’s get dressed now!  We should see how this costume looks in the flesh.” 

Eleanore’s friends quickly began the transformation.  The scene was like watching Cinderella, clothed by a flurry of little birds.  Only rather than turning Eleanore into a princess, she became a servant, and she was lovely.  Turning side to side, she let the ruffles on the bottom of her dress brush against her calves, and soon forgot her nerves, if only for a few minutes.   She had a wonderful costume, wonderful friends, and it was going to be a wonderful night. 

                Seven O’clock came sooner than Eleanore had believed possible.  There was a frantic scrambling in the basement as the last forks and knives were set in place, the last hanging cobwebs were adjusted, and skirts were smoothed.  “Then came a rather unladylike rush to the reception hall where the boys were to be received.  Seemingly casual postures were taken, though the air in the room was rife with anticipation” (Mohn Hall Reception Room). 

                The boys arrived in small groups.   Eleanore held onto the back of a chair, hoping that the tightness of her grip did not show.  Momentarily, George’s face appeared in the doorway, slightly above the other boys.  His normally curly hair was slicked down in a side part, and grayed with powder.  The sparkling brown eyes below were a playful surprise beneath the shock of yellow, still clearly visible behind a small pair of frameless glasses.   His eyes scanned the room and found hers.  “His body was clothed in a slim-cut, pinstriped suit, complete with an American Flag pocket square with a pinned sign that read“He kept us out of war,” (Woodrow Wilson-Biography). Slowly, he moved towards her, a young, handsome Woodrow Wilson.  Eleanore released the back of the chair, smiling with all the joy of a nervous schoolchild.  He couldn’t have been handsomer.

                “Welcome George, to the annual Halloween party!” Eleanore effused, “trying not to sound falsely cheerful nor bored” (Ytterboe 7, 10).

                “Why thank you Eleanore, I have been looking forward to tonight all week.” George replied, his eyes continuing to twinkle in apparent amusement.  “Your costume is quite fetching.”

“Thank you,” Eleanore replied.  “Yours as well.”

George smiled and said, “Why, thank you!  Now, what do you girls have in store this evening?  I do hope it includes a Halloween supper!”

                “Why, of course! You wouldn’t think we would let you starve, now would you?” Eleanore joked.  She gently touched his arm and led him towards the stairs.  “But you ought to take caution.  Some of the girls have cooked up some rather ghoulish things!”

                The two descended into the basement, which was decorated in the style of a haunted mansion. 

                “Here we are, the place settings for George and Eleanore, or, should I say, Mr. Woodrow Wilson and the kitchen maid!” Eleanore declared with a flourish.

                The two sat down, and Eleanore prepared to relax, until she looked around.  The other boys and girls were still upstairs, and the two were completely alone.   She felt herself start to blush.  Her mother would not approve. George did not seem to notice.  He was sitting, idly touching his fork and staring at her, his eyes sparkling in the mix of electric and candle light.   Eleanore faltered.  ‘I shouldn’t worry so much,’ she thought.   “‘This isn’t Webster.  Pappa isn’t going to tell you that an unmarried Christian woman is never seen alone with a man.  Mamma isn’t going to make you copy bible verses because you touched his arm.” (Ytterboe 8)  This is George Onstad. He is smiling at you, and you should really try and make conversation or he’ll think you a bore.’  

                “George, I am so glad that you could come this evening, especially because I know you have been so busy with debate team .  How is the preparation for the Macalaster meet going?”

                “It is going fairly well, I would say, though there is still a good amount of work to be done to polish the performance. We all sometimes forget the finer points of our argument.  But let’s not talk about me.  I want to hear about you.  “I feel we get so few chances to speak, save after our Alpha Beta Chi and Phi Kappa Phi meetings” (Shaw, History, 214). I don’t even know about your family. I feel that this is something a man should know about a girl before they consume ghostly treats together!” He laughed.  Eleanore, meanwhile, felt the inner burn that comes from being asked an uncomfortable question.   What could she say about her family?  

                She recalled them with a profound fondness and a faint discomfort.  Did she mention her jovial and pious father, whose full beard nearly radiated light from the paleness of its yellow? Or did she tell him about her mother, the tiny woman whose serious demeanor would often give way to a deep nurturing that Eleanore longed for when she felt alone? Surely, George, the son of a wealthy textile merchant, could not understand the rigor of her childhood education or the struggles she now faced on the Hill.  Everyone knew that George’s family was rather liberal as far as Norwegians went. He could not possibly understand the simultaneous desire and fear of exploring the opportunities and temptations forbidden in a traditional family.   Besides, her family was more strict and foreign than the parents of anyone she knew, even at a school like St. Olaf.  Her parents were Norwegian immigrants to a fault, and they entertained the extremes of opportunity and restraint in raising their children.  Eleanore and her sisters read daily from two until four each afternoon, after having already returned from the township’s schoolhouse.   “Reading, her father impressed, was the key to being American. You must be educated.  Reading, her mother impressed, was the key to being Norwegian.  You must be an example of piety to others.  When you are a mother, you must bring culture into your home” (Rolvaag 76-77). Otherwise…but that part was never explained.  The future was as mysterious to Eleanore as the boy sitting in front of her, brown eyes sparkling; waiting for the response to what had seemed to him a simple question. 

                “Well,” Eleanore managed, “My family lives in Webster, and they are Norwegian, as I suppose you might have assumed.  My father is a clerk at the local bank and my Mother does clothing alterations from our home. Um, I have two little sisters, who are 10 and 13, and we attend St. John’s Lutheran Church.”  She thought that she had adequately addressed the subject without revealing too much.   She looked up, but did not meet his gaze.  He might read in them the rules of her childhood, and the frugality, and all that was forbidden. 

                “Ah,” George said, clearly still interested, “Now, how did they decide that you should come to St. Olaf?” 

Eleanore took a deep breath.

                “My parents have always been believers in co-education and the university. My father’s brother’s son attended St. Olaf a few years back, and assured him it was a good institution with good Lutheran morals, and, as “I graduated in the top two of my high school class, I was afforded a scholarship. (History, 188)” She shrugged her shoulders and accidentally gave out an “unladylike giggle” (Ytterboe 27) before falling silent.  She didn’t mention how often she wrote home to convince her Mother that the distance hadn’t caused her to forget her family.  She didn’t mention that she had to hide her novels inside of her sweaters each time she went home so that her parents wouldn’t throw them out when examining her trunks.  She didn’t mention that her parent’s idea of gaining a “wider-world view” meant meeting a nice Norwegian boy and living down the street from her childhood home.  Or that she might want something more.

George looked at her intently, turning his fork from side to side, as if waiting for her to go on. 

Eleanore bit her tongue and began to speak before he could ask her another question.  “George!  I know I told you that I love your costume. The hair powder is genius.  But I never asked, how ever did you come up with it?”

                “Ha!” George laughed, a low, rumbling laugh.  It was almost awkward. There was a pause.  Finally he managed to say, “Well, Eleanore, I’m sure it seems grim, but I have been preoccupied lately, thinking about the Great War, and the sacrifices our men are making abroad. One cannot change the war-drawn ways of men, or the fact that men are dying every day.  I feel that Wilson embodies the spirit of this time, or what the spirit of our time should have been, if things hadn’t changed so since his campaign. Nevertheless, I felt Wilson was an appropriate costume for the evening, even as a festive tribute to mourning.” (Woodrow Wilson-Biography).

                Eleanore was silent.  She wasn’t sure what to make of his cryptic speech. She felt sure that he hadn’t fully explained himself, and that she had also missed something of the point.  “Festive tribute to mourning.”  “War-drawn.”  “Should have been.”  She wasn’t sure if he was eschewing violence or the United States or both.  He seemed to have a sense of patriotism, and yet also, there was a hint of sadness, like a father speaking of the child who had disappointed him.  She looked up.  George’s eyes were dark.  She didn’t know what to do.  Luckily, at this moment, Lena’s round head appeared at the bottom of the stairs, clad as Marie Antoinette with Bjorn Johnson behind her, dressed as a Roman soldier.  Immediately following was a rush of boys and girls, Indians and monsters, the Three Wise Men and Robin Hood.   The sound of their laughter filled the room, and soon glasses were tinkling with the sound of apple cider being poured, and plates were clinking as ghoul cookies, spider-drops, and ladies’ fingers were distributed.   George and Eleanore were sucked into the whirl of the party, Lena loudly attempting to question George without appearing rude, and Marion Svendsen chattering in Eleanore’s ear about some upcoming Phi Kappa Chi meeting.  Eleanore wasn’t listening.  George, too, was staring off into space, his eyes looking at Lena, but not seeming to see her.  He spun his fork.  Eleanore nibbled at her lady’s finger.  The two didn’t get a chance to be alone again. 

                 After conversation, the group took turns venturing through Hades and the Haven of Delight, which ended with giggles, laughter, and screams from both sexes. The program was the last event of the night, and “ended with Margaret and Edgar Brekken singing popular patriotic songs” of the year (Hallowe’en Party).  The group joined in on the last refrain, singing loudly, “Where do we go from here boys, where do we go from here?  Slip a pill to Kaiser Bill and make him shed a tear; and when we see the enemy we’ll shoot him in the rear.  Oh joy, Oh boy, where do we go from here?” (Howard) Eleanore found herself singing a little softer than the others, and she met George’s gaze.  He, too, could barely be heard.  Blue and brown twinkled in the electric and kerosene light of the basement.   The program came to a close, and it was time to say goodnight.  George smiled as they parted, and as they stood on the doorstep of Mohn, Woodrow Wilson and a servant girl, there was something exchanged between them that Eleanore couldn’t describe.  George promised to see her the next night at Literary Society refreshments.   She told him she would wait for him by the door.  He squeezed her hand, twice, and walked away. 

                That night, Eleanore couldn’t fall asleep.  She replayed the conversation with George in her mind, the minutes sprawling into a timeless expanse of confusion.  What did he think of her now?  He must think she had an awful skeleton in the closet, or that she was terribly poor.  She shouldn’t have mentioned her scholarship.  Or... but it was no use.  To say nothing would have been shameful and harmful to their tentative courtship.  She had told him what she could muster, and that was that.  Her mind then came to rest on the more puzzling portion of the evening.  Whatever did George mean about the War?  Clearly, “he was not as avid a patriot as one would expect of a boy who marched  in formation to and from class each day”(Shaw, Dear, 93). She supposed she should be worried.  But instead, she found herself merely perplexed, and more with herself than with him.  She had always assumed that America was right, but it occurred to her now that she had never asked herself what “right” meant, and she honestly didn’t know.  She had never asked herself what it meant to be here, in 1917.  In her 18 years of life, Eleanore had swallowed being Norwegian and living in America as if they were pills to be passively consumed.   She rolled over and looked at the small beam of light that entered between the window curtains.  He had squeezed her hand.   Somehow, in her silence, and his veiled speech, each had gained something that, if perplexing, held its attractions.  There would be other times and other occasions in which to furnish the truth and to stab in the dark for what it meant.  Moments of bare honesty would come, and she would learn to navigate them.   For now, she closed her eyes, and willed her mind to stop speaking .  As Eleanore fell into a 1917 slumber, she felt only ambiguity.  There was no past,truth, or questions, only beauty, beauty, beauty, and George Onstad’s face.  

America is Process

John A. Kouwenhoven's "What's American about America?"  Pulled together many of the concepts (and authors) that we have explored in AmCon thus far.  I won't take too much time getting into the parts of article that irritated me (insulting the reader by consistently using words like "obviously," making a list of the things he is going to talk about only to say at the end, "I don't have time to talk about this,"  and oversimplifying and even worse- glorifying alienated labor) but will rather focus upon his general thesis about America and my own views as to its validity.  He writes, near the end of the chapter, "Th[e] quality I would define as a concern with process rather than product-or, to re-use Mark Twain's words, a concern with the manner of handling experience or materials rather than with the experience or materials themselves"(10), and, on the last page, "America is process."  While I found his list of American "things" to be rather random (and not at all what I think of when I think of America)  I can see the validity in his point that America is deeply concerned with process.  His writing takes me back to the discussion we had in class after reading Ragtime about whether or not America is a process of dissatisfaction.  Many of us in class agreed that, yes, Americans are constantly dissatisfied, but the nature of that dissatisfaction is mainly a search for something that is better and more progressive.  In some ways, this is what I think John is trying to say in this chapter.  America is always transforming in search of something better.  This can be seen today with arguments over whether or not to cut funding for lots of Medicare, or whether or not it is "American" to create universal healthcare, or how much the government should do to keep businesses and other nations from going bankrupt.   The values, and the processes we go through to uphold them are constantly changing, and come into conflict with others' views of what America is supposed to be.   Yet the process is there, despite the resistance, serving as tension to the changes which are always, sometimes subtly, and sometimes dramatically, taking place.  Personally, when I think of America, I do not think of skyscrapers or of jazz.  I don't like skyscrapers or Jazz.  Really.  Not at all, and as I like America, for what it is worth, I would prefer not to think of us as a tall, overly shiny building or as a cacophony passing as music.   But I have always had the image of America as a beautiful sort of teetering-on-the-edge-of-chaos.   More specifically, as that one friend (that most people have)  who is slightly scatterbrained, slightly all over the place, and somewhat inappropriate, yet nevertheless the sort of person people want as a friend.   Partially because he/she is interesting, and partially because he/she is fun, and partially because you never know what they are going to do and don't really want to be on the wrong side of any sort of emotional breakdown.  This may well be my little America-centered self glamorizing us.  But also, I definitely see it as messy, and, as viewed as a person, America still makes sense in terms of Kouwenhoven's writing.  A person is never complete, and is always changing, always trying to define his/herself, and always trying to reconcile the past with what they see themselves as now, what others see themselves as, and what they want to be.   In that sense, I have to agree.  America is process, and it is the lack of finality that makes it interesting and worthwhile.

The Joys and Irritations of History

The readings for Monday ran the gamut in terms of the emotions they elicited from me.   Rolvaag's essay, while it did not draw upon nearly as much research or proof as I would have liked for making a convincing argument about Norwegian spirit and the inadequacy of American schools in relation to other countries, was pleasant to read.  He embodied a love for both St. Olaf, Norwegian heritage, and being American that I think well reflects what I consider the "St. Olaf Spirit"  I was struck in my own research how much the "Norwegian Spirit" and love of freedom relates to the American spirit.  No wonder Norwegian immigrants did so well here, and no wonder St. Olaf continues to operate to this day.   He also nicely addressed the issue of moving forward and raising the bar on education, an issue which constantly presents itself to educators.  Boe, on the other hand, I found to be completely insensitive and rude.   His letter to Macalaster assumed a Norwegian superiority over the Scottish (and being equally Scottish and Norwegian in my heritage, I found this annoying.)  His letter to the student was really the worst offense, however,  While he came from a more traditonal time, during a war nonetheless, He refused to even consider the opinions of the student and told him he was stupid and should go to a different school.  That is not particularily modern or encouraging of learning, or innovative.  He could have at least been civil in his letter.   It makes me have very little respect for him.   The final two news-clippings were sweet, and I thought showed the positive aspects of a culturally-based college in creating a lasting community as well as the difficulties of homogeny in an increasingly diverse world and student body.  

Go DeAne, It's your Birthday

Way TO GO DeAne.  Your "As Sister, Wife and Mother: Education for Young Norwegian-Amerian Lutheran Women" was great.  Concise.  Informative, and not at all obnoxious to read like a lot of scholarly writings that beat you over the head with jargon so hard it feels like they are hiding flaws in their argument...  Practicing what you preach.

( and mega brownie points for me for actually putting this on my blog.)

Now on to my response to the content of the essay as well as the Ladies Hall section on the St. Olaf archives.   The essay will prove extremely useful to me as I consider my "Day in the Life of an Ole" essay, because my topic directly concerns a woman student at St. Olaf who comes up against the very issues of women's education presented in the article.  My character, Eleanore, is a woman who grew up in a traditional Norwegian-American home where Norwegian was spoken, the religion was Lutheran, and female respectability was important.  As such, Eleanore is torn between the wish to become educated and have new experiences and the feeling that she has been raised to execute traditional family roles.   "As Sister, Mother, Wife," gave me new context with which to examine her identity dilemmas.  For some reason, before reading this, I had been under the impression that women were able to go to college in the early 20th century, become teachers, nurses, or secretaries, get married, and continue to work so long as it was in these accepted "women's" professions.  In retrospect, this was a silly assumption, as it goes completely against the other information I knew, which was that women were expected to take care of and run the home.   The essay explained that for the early coeducational institutions, women were being educated primarily to hone skills and culture that would make them  better mothers.  Only a minority of women went on to even higher education or careers outside of the home, and those women were not married.    Now I can include a more complex struggle with my character, as she can question why her family is sending her to school and at the same time can try and decide if she is actually content to be a traditional women, or whether she is simply conditioned to accept them.  The rules dictating appropriate behavior on campus and even off campus applies directly to my interest in dating and social life during this time.  I was amused to see on the Ladies' Hall page that even earlier than "The Shack" dance mentioned in class on Wednesday, ladies were bending the rules- even having a "Grand Ball" in the attic of the dormitory.  While it is a mystery to me how they would have had enough room to dance in an attic, let alone how they snuck men into the hall, it is a pleasant thought to think of people so long ago experiencing some of the same things we do today.  It is easy to just assume that people in the early 1900s were stuck-up, boring, and nothing like college kids today.   The ladies hall page and DeAne's essay helped to show that social life was still an important part of these students' lives, albeit one that was much more structured than today.  The role of extracurricular clubs, town businesses and restaurants, and outdoor activities were important parts of academic life, though certainly secondary to academic and religious pursuits.   I will be interested in examining further the ways in which the religious and church affiliation of St. Olaf affected the policies in place at the time, as was mentioned in DeAne's essay.   All in all, I feel that I have some interesting information in place now, particularly concerning women, that will help me develop an accurate social setting for my final project.

School Time

In reading the three pieces assigned for Wednesday, I came to the conclusion that St. Olaf seems to embrace an educative philosophy most akin to Dewey's quote on democracy.  AsBlanche Brick quotes in her , "Changing Concepts of Equal Educational Opportunity,“Democracy is a way of . . . life controlled not
merely by faith in human nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished.”(Dewey 1955, 311).   In my opinion, Aune highlights these same ideas in her essay, "Both sides of the Hyphen,"  in which she writes, "St. Olaf was not simply a transplantation of what had been known in Norway...based on the study of classical languages...designed for the few...rather it explicitly emphasized the egalitarian development of moral character within the context of a Christian view of life."  From its earliest days, St. Olaf had a democratic sense of education.  While the articles did not indicate whether the school was integrated in terms of race from its founding, it did allow both men and women to attend, which was not common in that time period.  Similarly, it rejected the idea of the natural aristocracy and sought to cultivate the possibility of knowledge within different types of people, many of whom came from farming families.   The school also combined the ideas of faith in human nature and faith in human intelligence that Dewey attributed to democracy, seeking, amid criticism from Augsburg, that they were sacrificing faith at the expense of knowledge.   Instead, the idea of the whole person, knowledge and the arts included, being related to faith was nourished.  A quote which struck me was from Rolvaag, who said, "Norwegians...are deeply rooted to a place while possessing at the same time a restless desire for adventure.  They have a love of home and of the memories and traditions that belong to it.  They value equality and hospitality.  They have a keen desire for knowledge and a particular feeling for art and beauty.  they also possess a deep religious feeling manifested in a personal relationship to God.  Most important...is the love of freedom." Using his vision of what it means to be a Norwegian, St. Olaf College, in my opinion, should not have been criticized so heavily in its early days.  Immediately, they sought to uphold these very ideas central to the Norwegian spirit-perhaps not specific doctrines and customs as much throughout the years, but certainly the spirit of hominess, beauty, God, and freedom.  In many ways, this is very American- not only Norwegian.  A love of the land, a welcoming of others, and freedom are concepts one thinks of often when thinking of America, and to bring that together with Norwegian heritage makes perfect sense for a college founded on Lutheran-Norwegian roots.   Even today, while some may say that the Lutheran-Norwegian roots of St. Olaf mean little, I see Rolvaag's quote as completely pervasive on campus.  There is an attachment to this campus as an isolated, special place that continues (as we wrote about in our first semester Olaf papers).  Art and Beauty hold a large place in St. Olaf culture, with all of our musical ensembles and Christmas Festival.  People are gosh-darn friendly and hospitable, on the whole.  And while the college may be more diverse than in 1875 in terms of heritage and religion, there is still an embrace of both, though I would say more welcoming of different backgrounds and religions, as seen with different Ethnic weeks we have and what I perceive as a general religious tolerance on campus for different religious beliefs.   Overall, I think St. Olaf is doing a pretty good job of living up to its founding principles, while transitioning and evolving to satisfy modern times.