Where's Armand?

Raising It Higher

In July of 1943, Armand and Mary drove to Estes Park, Colorado and after some scouting around, we've found a garage converted into a passable 2 room and toilet apartment.This was their base for the next two weeks as they made some strenuous hikes and long car trips. On August 11, they took a leisurely stroll to Dream Lake, one of their favorite locations that also became the spot of an Armand siting some sixty-three years later.

While the young professors shared a love of the outdoors and the adventures of travelling (without reservations) their conversations often returned to matters academe:

...musing over fact that so many college undergraduates acquire a haphazard and incomplete education, we conceived of a course of studies, based on a 5 course a year, 4 year plan, with spectator sports out, some personal athletics substituted, formal and non formal (i.e., games or hiking, etc.), outside activities of fraternity type either de-emphasized or ennobled.

Our idea is this. Require 4 of following sciences: geology, chemistry, physics, botany-biology, astronomy; 4 courses of language, all one or 2-2 split; 4 courses in a combined history-economics-political science; 1 course in art or music appreciation; 1 course in general philosophy; of the 2 remaining, they would have to be elected in one of above fields, and whatever they were elected in, added to what one already had to take, would = major and minor.

Difference between major and minor would consist in an original paper and research, which would be necessary for granting a degree - i.e., whichever of 2 fields one wrote his paper in would = major. Since everyone isn't equally proficient in all fields, he would be allowed to put more time in his favorites - a certain number of term papers would be required - one or 2 a year and these could be done in the courses most interesting to student, carrying with them extra credits - so many of which (4 or 8) would be needed to graduate.

The idea in all these courses would be to give student integrated picture of world he lives in, eliminate petty details, etc. Idea not to turn out professional historians, chemists, etc. but educated men with broad outlook in life. Each department would realize this, help teach their courses with this general plan in mind.

To prevent possible cry of a tendency in this plan to make for lack of originality and breed uniformity of minds, there would be 2 or 3 times a week round table discussions led by professors where students would discuss and debate ideas, help integrate their knowledge as they went along. Also, since extracurricular activities would be de-emphasized students would be encouraged to spend their leisure time following ideas that interested them, and all teachers would be expected to help students on those problems and researches.

A good library would be essential, teachers interested in teaching more than merely research (although research to some extent would be wanted among the faculty), good outside lectures, opportunities to hear good artists, exhibitions of paintings, etc.

Variations in this curriculum plan easily possible - if man saw he liked languages, say French, in addition to his 4 years, he could take one extra course, and substitute, say his 4th year of English (of the 4 years, one would be composition rest poetry and other forms of lit. and some world lit.) for extra course in French. Independent work with professional help would be encouraged.

Such a curriculum would lead to a Ph.B. It could be done in a small college, or as part of a big college, taking in the more promising students, especially the "C" group - those with some ability but who under normal conditions leave college with a smattering of much, a grasp of little. D & F students would be out.

This plan, or with modifications, affords a more or less balanced education, something today quite lacking in college education.
-Written by Armand Singer on August 10, 1943.

Photo: zesmeralda

Offering Perspective

This is a wide-eyed view of Armand's diary. You may not be able to read it but what I wanted you to experience is the glow from two pages written in August and September of 1942 when Armand was twenty-eight. The pages in this book are more brittle than his earlier diaries, maybe this one sat on a desk near a window because all of the edges feel dry and fragile. The words and sentiments however, are rich and alive.

At the top of the left page Armand writes:

Mary says a good pun = "Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder", which we decided would make a swell "pun-ad" for a beer co.

Two paragraphs down he lists the totals from a recent trip from Fairmont to Estes Park, Colorado (1, 497 miles) and back to Morgantown (1,509 miles):

(thus excluding original 20 m. to Fairmont from here) = 3300 m. exactly. Total gas, oil, repair (about $2.50), grease, etc. = 38.00 - approx. other costs (room, amusements, food costs beyond 1$ a day, food) = 45.00. Total trip = 83.50. We had about $110.00 to spend, so buy a bond (war) with difference, get car greased, etc. + $3 for some Viewmaster views.

The three circles at the bottom are sketches of the lunar eclipse that he saw on August 26:

Someone said there wouldn't be a solar eclipse (in these latitudes, I suppose) until 1980 or so - ho hum!

Sunday aft and Monday eve., rehearsed for a small part in radio drama "Free Labor Will Win" - one of weekly set which Monongalia County Civilian Defense puts on- locally written, directed, acted - which being considered, it wasn't bad. Gave it over WASR this eve 8:30-9. I was Hirohito with 6 or 8 lines to say in my best oriental colored English. A man - Williams at Law School, who knows Japanese, said imitation very good. Ho!

I wish there was a recording of it, Armand impersonating Emperor Hirohito! A few lines down he injects:

Then there's my joke about the doctor's patients who all went from bed to hearse. And, I just thought, if someone wrote an ode to a downtrodden Mexican serf, it might be entitled "Paean to a Peon who got Pee-ed on".

The drawing of a living room at the very bottom of the right page is quite detailed, the books on the shelf are are of differing sizes and some are leaning on others and some stacked up. Armand saw a similar display in a furniture store and he liked the idea of a mural with mountain scenery, set in the recess of a wall.

Armand documented his life in perspective. He counted his pennies and tallied up the miles; observed the idiosyncratic arrangement of non- moving objects as well as he tracked planetary rhythms; he was a scholar and a comedian. Those two pages speak volumes.

Pondering the Arts

This diary entry was written by Armand Singer when he was twenty-two years old. It is a previsionary description of his interests and contributions for the next seventy years.

 

Wednesday, January 22, 1936:

Today I went against my better judgment and bought another book: "An Almanac for Moderns" by Donald Culross Peattie - seems to be very fine. It is a day by day account of one year in the life of a poet biologist (the author) who loves and writes about the outdoors. My total for books this month is 25$.

Why is it that we have to be educated to great works of art - to be shown where the author portrays this or that - human nature, human form, mountains or the sea - to perfection? Why don't we naturally enjoy Bach as much as Strauss or even Irving Berlin?

Why aren't we struck with a sort of awe in the presence of a great painting - a sort of intuition which immediately tells us, "This is immortality"? Is art so recondite, such an esoteric matter that we must be initiated into mystic rites, as it were, before we can appreciate and worship? It certainly seems so, or else the so-called great masterpieces are not great, but merely exalted because we have been trained to see what that art portrays as beauty.

Few of us believe or would admit that once we are admitted to the inner circle of revelation we seem to know we are right - whether deluded or no - and point with pride to our appreciation. Pray to God we are right. If not, it would be a fine shock to discover we spent our lives worshiping false gods, false standards, or to put it succinctly - trash!

Mr. Peattie likes spring as exemplified in biology and all living things. Others like winter. Some history, some French, some the classics, some the ultra-new. I enjoy them all: the forested hills, the jagged, foreboding summits, the plains, deserts, the gorges of Arizona, blizzards and cold, rain and heat, the cities, towns; languages, sciences, histories, the theoretical and the practical. If you are a DaVinci or an Aristotle, you are called a genius, a man of universal knowledge; if not, a dilettante. I sincerely pray I avoid the latter as much as I fail in the former.

One gains a lot in having such a wide scope of interest just as one suffers. In some ways it must be hell to be so wrapped up in French literature that you must consider the biologist a fool. Yet it does help when you want to decide your life's work. I don't want to to be a dabbler. Naturally I have preferences.

 

A man's a stupid dolt who can't choose some things he prefers to others - just a feather blown around by learning. Yet must he be so deaf to every cry but to his own that he despises and ridicules other man's vocations?  Hard as my tastes may make it for me, I hope I keep them.

 

I think how, for instance Professor Loomis would look on Vigny, or Rebert on echinoderms or Humphrey across the hall on anything he couldn't rationalize into cold hard truth - as he sees it! It's a sort of sensitivity that makes me open to so many things. God knows it brings lots of woe with its blessings. But it wouldn't exchange it, still. Anyway, who gets a chance to change any of his characteristics? "Sour grapes", said the fox.

 

 

The Fox and the Grapes, a tale by Aesop.

Photo:Derek Farr

Watching The Three Sisters

May 1943. Thursday heard that K. Cornell was in Pittsburgh in Three Sisters - Geefer had touted it so highly. We wanted to go, but hated to use more ration tickets. Couldn't find anyone else going however, so went Saturday, taking 4 college girls at buck a piece. Very enjoyable day. Luncheon (for M & I) at Wm Penn - $3.50 in toto and worth it.

Then across the street to Nixon Theatre for box seats ($2.25 per) for matinee of A. Chekov's The Three Sisters. A dream cast: the 3 sisters, Olga, Judith Anderson; Masha, Katherine Cornell; Irina, Gertrude Musgrove. The brother Andrey, Joseph Wiseman. His shrewish wife Ruth Gordon who seemed all innocence. ...Fine sets by Motley; staged by Guthrie McClintic.

Theme of play is dry rot that sets in, in a small city not far from Moscow. The sisters and brother long to go there and live, never succeed in doing it. Play laid in 1900 or so, over 3 year period.

Chekov portrays the longing of these people as tragic, and yet, deep down in, pokes fun ironically at their slight shallowness. They are justified in their laments and still, their laments are somewhat ridiculous. The philosophizing colonel, whose philosophy is repeated over and over and rather ordinary, represents to them something fine.

Noone was outstanding in cast and all were excellent - some fine scenes: the doctor drunk trying to forget his criminal medical inability; the brother lamenting his lot; the dinner scene in act one, where all talk and yet you hear, so naturally, here a remark, there a remark - just what you're supposed to hear; the affected innocence of R. Gordon when in act I, scene two, she talks to her husband about the baby.

In all, the best play I've ever seen.

Just in case you think that we are about to lose the playful Armand to a staid professorship and highbrow culture, on the next page of his diary he wrote:

New saying by Singer: It's an ill body that blows no wind.

Photo of Time Magazine cover: Wikipedia

Time Out

On August 24, 1941, Armand and Mary reached the city of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico and after dinner (true to form) took in a movie:

...went to a first-run movie house, saw Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Brennan, James Gleason, Edward Arnold in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe - a well-done version, with unique twists, of Capra's theme of how ruthless big interests try to crush little man (Mr. Deed's Goes to Town; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) - unsuccessfully; only, as usual, you get feeling the big interests really would win if Capra wasn't on little man's side. We enjoyed it.

...When we went to start out this A.M., saw buzzards perched, one on each fence post, one on edge of garbage can - he'd jump down in the can, out of sight, from time to time, grab a bite, hop back up on rim. They're very sleepy, silly looking birds. Twice this A.M. we saw at least 20 of them all perching on a carcass (one was a dead burro). One Mary said was just a skeleton by that time.

We like burros - they're so cute, especially the young "colts" a sort of pleasant "beauty"; some are quite graceful, remind one slightly of a deer, for some reason or other. Yesterday we saw a grown male freak burro, with a thing a good foot long or more!

Armand continued calculating:

Including 4 1/2 months in Europe as a boy = 19 weeks.
Almost 3 months in Europe, second trip = 13 weeks.
Approx a month in Canada during high school = 4 weeks.
In Canada after my trip to California after high school = 6 weeks.
Summers in Canada, 1st 3 years of college = 36 weeks.
About 1 month, end of summer, end of college = 4 weeks.
Most summers except one month of summer of my teaching year at Amherst = 9 weeks.
5 Xmas vacations + 3 spring vacations, my 5 Amherst years = 13 weeks.
3 Xmas, my 4 Duke years = 5 weeks (+).
3 six week summers my 4 Duke years = 18 weeks (+)
+ 2 weeks, odd visits this last year, etc. = 2 weeks.

Armand's meticulous list ended with the last 6 weeks in Mexico to arrive at a grand total of 135 weeks, his time out of the country.

I have thus spent almost 3 full years out of the U.S. in 26, or over 1 in each 10.

And those are the stats, my friends. Would anyone care to guess the grand total of years Armand spent out of the country by the time he was 92?

Photo: Denver Post
Click the photo for an Armand-like accounting: "Rockies Outlast Padres in 22 Innings".