Furman Magazine. Volume 25, Issue 2 - Full Issue

Furman Magazine Volume 25 Issue 0 1980 All Issues Article 2 3-1-1980 Furman Magazine. Volume 25, Issue 2 - Full Issue Furman University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/furman-magazine Recommended Citation University, Furman (1980) "Furman Magazine. Volume 25, Issue 2 - Full Issue," Furman Magazine: Vol. 25 : Iss. 0 , Article 2. Available at: https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/furman-magazine/vol25/iss0/2 This Complete Volume is made available online by Journals, part of the Furman University Scholar Exchange (FUSE). It has been accepted for inclusion in Furman Magazine by an authorized FUSE administrator. For terms of use, please refer to the FUSE Institutional Repository Guidelines. For more information, please contact . The JffiJ<JJJIR � . Magazine Magazine Spring 1 980/Vol. 25 No. 2 THE FURMAN MAGAZINE is published by Furman University, Greenville, S.C. 296 1 3 and printed by Provence-Jarrard Printing Co. Copyright© Furman University 1 980. Marguerite Hays/Editor Bill Henry/Photographer Tom Hays/Consultant CONTENTS Of London and her river by Willard Pate page 2 The Optimal Man by Tommy Hays page 9 Does anyone have a kind word for Congress? by ]ames L. Guth page 12 Reformer in the Governor's Mansion by Marguerite Hays page 16 Chiming out Bach to rock by jim Stewart page 23 COVER Standing in the middle of Waterloo Bridge, Professor Willard Pate took the photographs of London on the cover and on this page. Dr. Pate re cords her impressions of London i n both words a n d photographs on the following pages. Furman University offers equal opportunity in its employment, admissions and educational activities in compliance with Title IX and other civil rights laws. Author-photographer Willard Pate captures a spectacular night view of London and her river (see story on page 2). Of London and her river by Willard Pate For Furman professor Willard Pate, London has a strong attraction-even after ten fall terms in England. L adies and gentlemen," the pilot's voice crackles over the loudspeaker, "we are beginning our final descent into London's Gatwick Airport." For ten years I have spent nine months of the twelve preparing for these descents into the three months of Furman's Fall Term in England Program. By a mid-September afternoon the students have been selected and oriented, the reservations confirmed, and my friends driven one step closer to madness or murder by my nonchalant rush to the airport. Privately, I always wonder if I shouldn' t be checking in at the local insane asylum instead of the ticket counter. England is the country of Shakespeare and Keats, of stone villages that blend perfectly into the hills; but to be uprooted for three months, and with responsibi l i ty for 40 students, seems too high a price to pay for enjoying poetry and the picturesque. ''I' m not going, " I vow every year as I ' m being driven to the airport. And every year I realize that's a vow that will have to wait to be kept. I 've committed myself, and I always honor commitments. Besides, Furman probably can' t find a suitable substitute with a valid passport and a packed suitcase who can be ready to fly in 30 minutes. So I say my good-byes and resolutely buckle myself into the plane for the n ine-hour buffer zone between my past life and another unknown future. Then that announcement, "Descending into London, " comes to bring m e out of no-man's land and back into responsibility. I am anxious about collecting 40 students and a hundred pieces of luggage, about meeting the coach and driver who will take us on a two-week tour of the countryside, about beginning once again. Yet I also have that lump in my throat that reminds me of one reason I 've flown three thousand miles from home. I love London I When I was a child growing up in central Georgia, Atlanta was about as far away from home as reality could take me. Then in 1 96 1 my father financed the grand tour, and I learned that Europe could become as real - or 2 Willard Pate almost - as Atlanta. London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam, even Moscow - I touched them all. Yet it was London that most touched me. I stood one September day on the Tarmac at London's Heathrow Airport, my j ourney over except for the plane ride back home, and cried (literally), "I will come back to London. " I t took me seven years to keep m y promise to myself, but I have been back every year since 1 968. And counting my private trips as well as the ten I 've made with the Furman program, I calculate I 've spent the equivalent of over three years in London. That's long enough to qualify me as something of a naturalized citizen rather than a map-carrying tourist rushing to see all the appropriate sights before I do my shopping at Harrods, London's most famous department store. Yet I ' m the first to adm it that my equivalent three years have been the time span of an affair, not a commitment. I have no responsibilities to London. I earn no money there, pay no taxes and don't worry about the garbage piling in the streets when the collectors are on strike (which is often) . In all honesty, I know little of the sprawling metropolis of seven million beyond the five or six mile radius that contains my interests in l iterature, painting, music and history. And to top it all off, I can even avail myself of the National Health Service in case I sprain an ankle or have a nervous breakdown. In short, I The Furman Magazine Looking east atop Christopher Wren's Fire Monument, one can see a small part of the panorama that is London. have the best of all possible relationships with London. She gives all while asking nothing of me, but for only three months at a time - long enough lO make me feel secure, yet short enough lO keep me from geuing bored and tempted to move on. The usual picture book offerings first infatuated me with London: Chaucer with the other literary greats gathered about him in one corner of Westminster Abbey; the legends and mysteries of the Tower of London; all those red-coated, precision-stepping figures made for pageantry; the Queen herself, waving wholesomely from a golden carriage driven by a l iveried footman. In some ways, however, these outward trappings have almost become cliches to me now. IL's not that I no longer care that the two Iiule princes were probably murdered in the Tower or that Longfellow is the only American poet honored in Westminster Abbey. (William Faulkner would have been a much beuer choice, of course. ) And despite my telling i t not to be so silly, my pulse still beats a liule faster when I see members of the rnyal family riding off to open Parliament or even a department store. IL's that these are but the surface auractions of the city, there lO beguile, but if the affair is to continue, lO be integrated into a relationship that is deeper and more lasting. IL's probably the l iterature teacher in me that thinks in metaphors. IL's definitely the S (...truncated)