1,721,990 research outputs found
UMUC - Asian Division - Mason G Daly - Greetings - March 27 1960
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryGreetings: Dr. Mason G. Daly, Director
Far East Division
Commencement , 27 March 1960
Dignitaries
Faculty
Students
and Guests
The faculty of the Far East Division meets with students in classrooms at more than 45 locations in Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Guam. Only on this one day of the year do we feel the need for a centralized campus and a big auditorium.
We find the Kudan Kaikan, however, curiously appropriate for this American academic convocation in 1960, the centennial year of Japan-American diplomatic relations.
A former building on this spot served the Tokugawa government as the Barbarian Books Investigation Office, a place to censor western publications in a sealed-off Japan not yet visited by America’s Commodore Perry. The same building sorvad to house the first US Consul General to Japan, Townsend Harris, during his long-delayed visit to Edo from Shimoda. And, on this corner of Tokyo, beside the Imperial moat, the great Tokyo University began.
It is fitting that this convocation has an historic setting rich with tradition, because these robed dignitaries and students draw upon hundreds of years of solemn European and American tradition for the regalia and ritual of this ceremony.
But change is also symbolized here today. Whereas a university once prided itself in being the quiet citadel of learning, designed to formally educate the few and the young, the modern university has been challenged to uphold its traditions and values and at the same time contribute dynamically to a society everywhere in cataclysmic change. There is more to be done than to pass on the accumulated knowledge of the past. The university must interpret the immediate present, it must experiment with and predict the future; it must be in the marketplace, at the space launching pad, at the labor forum, in the underdeveloped country, the refugee camp, merged into every sphere of human endeavor.
We may take some satisfaction in the fact that even this new peripatetic development is not without comforting tradition. The teaching orders of the Middle Ages went everywhere in the known world, carrying tradition, religion, culture. Also, in America we can recall the energy with which established universities spawned little teaching coteries and colleges on the western frontier as fast as new settlements were made. We do not expect to leave satellite universities strung out across the world because of Maryland 's present overseas activities. But we are surely demonstrating, as did the medieval scholar and the pioneer American, what is by now an accepted university maxim - that the university campus is not a close or a cloister, not the refuge of a few intellectual aristocrats, not separate from the rest of society.
There may be no medieval or pioneer precedent for one aspect of this event today: the alliance of the military and the civil academic. All but ten of these graduates are in one of the United States armed forces; the other ten are affiliated with these forces, either as employees or as dependents. Fifteen years ago the US military,made the baccalaureate degree the goal of its personnel, and began establishing many means by which its people could advance academically with civilian institutions.
Maryland is here at the invitation of these overseas commands, operating with complete academic autonomy, abiding by the same university regulations and requirements in Seoul or Taipei or Itazuke which apply at College Park, Maryland.
In this audience and on this stage are commanding officers from all over the Pacific and the Far East who are determined to make this academic objective part of the United States military tradition. In this audience are civilian education specialists, hired by these commands to promote and guide this objective, men and women through whom this university coordinates its program.
The military student receives tuition subsidy and command encouragement to develop knowledge and skills that are not military in nature, but are part of the intellectual development needed by an American in or out of uniform. No other military service in the history of the world has invested so much in developing the citizen soldier.
We are pleased to have so many Japanese university presidents and professors here today. Your highly literate people are making far greater demands upon your university facilities than American institutions ever faced. Your struggle to uphold tradition during a time of immense change and bursting expansion is one of the most noteworthy phenomenon in education today. You will, we trust, find this ceremony interesting, this off-campus activity both acceptable and challenging.
On behalf of the staff and faculty of the Far East Division, I congratulate these graduates; I warmly praise the civil and military education personnel for their assist ance to these graduates (and to the thousands of others who have studied with them during this last academic year); I applaud the families who have generously shared the off-duty time and energies of these graduates. And, I invite all of you, participants and guests, to take pleasure in this ceremony and in the reception which will follow
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Commencement Remarks - May 28 1967 - Heidelberg
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryCommencement Remarks Dr. Mason G. Daly
Heidelberg, 28 May 1967 Director European Division University of Maryland
A university may have once prided itself in being the quiet citadel of learning, designed to formally educate the few and the young, but the modern American university has had to face the challenge of upholding traditions and values while it moves dynamically within its society. It found that it must be in the market place, at the space launching pad, in the developing country, in the jungle and on the ice-cap, merged into every sphere of human endeavor. Especially the American university must be with Americans wherever they are in the world.
And that is why we are here today, in solemn convocation in an historic setting rich with tradition, with robed dignitaries and students drawing upon hundreds of years of European tradition for the regalia and ritual of this ceremony.
The tradition is enriched because we are a vivid representation of how far the American university has taken its resources in order to reach mature and deserving students. We reach Americans on military enclaves in Europe and Africa and the Middle East. We reach them because the US military, as no other military in the history of the world, wishes to develop its citizen warrior with knowledge and skills that are not military in nature, but are a part of the intellectual development needed by an American in or out of uniform.
The University of Maryland is here at the invitation of these overseas commands, operating with complete academic autonomy, abiding by the same university regulations and requirements on its world-wide campus which apply on its home campus.
And so today, as a representative of this overseas division, I lay full claim for this class, and for this faculty, to the most important fact of academic life: the fact that we have been, as free individuals, on an unconditional search for truth. This search for truth -this educational process -can be formalized and vigorously pursued anywhere in the world, and without a doubt on remote military enclaves. These graduates have glowingly proved that, and that is our, crowning achievement, dramatized here today.
For graciously providing us with this historic setting for this solemn convocation, we are, for the fourteenth time, indebted to the renowned Heidelberg University. Our host, representing the Rektor and the University, is Professor Dr. German Muller. Will you please stand Professor Muller.
For all of the commanding officers present here today, commanding officers who support these students and the thousands who study with them, may I ask General James H. Polk, Commander-in-chief United States Army Europe and Seventh Army to rise.
For all of the professional education advisors and education officers and their staffs, represented here today, the men and women who counsel and enroll and guide these worthy students, may I ask two men to rise together, Mr. Tilton Davis, Chief of Education for US Army Europe, and Dr. K. Douglas Beakes, Chief of Education for US Air Forces Europe.
For all of the professional librarians, Army, Navy, and Air Force, who support this faculty and these students with resource materials and reading rooms and research facilities in every corner of these commands, may I ask Miss Mary Vocelle, Chief Librarian for USAFE to take the bow.
For the many faculty members of all nationalities, who supplement this robed group on the platform, may I ask Dr. Lotte Fester, lecturer in German language and culture during all of our eighteen years overseas, to please stand.
Our sense of history and continuity and tradition is strengthened today by the presence of two individuals. Here today is a man who served as director of both this European Division and of our Far East Division, a man who molded and guided this overseas venture, a man whose contribution is a heritage enjoyed by this graduating class. Dr. Augustus J. Prahl, Professor of Foreign Languages, University of Maryland, will you please stand.
And also present is the widow of our late, beloved director, General Herman Beukema, who directed this division for six and one half years after a long and distinguished career as professor at West Point. Mrs. Beukema will you please rise.
You are all welcome at this ceremony, participants and guests, and at the reception which follows
UMUC - Asian Division - Mason G Daly - Greetings - 1959 University of Maryland Commencement -Tokyo
No full textAsia;Hoffmann, Rosemary1959 University of Maryland
Commencement
Tokyo, Japan
Dr. Mason G. Daly, Director
* GREETINGS *
No other American university has ever enjoyed the opportunity to convene in formal convocation nine thousand miles from home, in a foreign land, associated with men and women of letters arising from another culture. The University of Maryland is here, in full panoply of academic convocation in the very heart of Tokyo, Japan, a few yards from the Imperial palace. This surely dramatizes the proximity and interdependence of the United States and nations of the Orient.
This is a true convocation, traditional, correct. It is invested with all of the significance a university can place in the dramatic moment of endorsing those who have fulfilled degree requirement's and are therefore ready to be formally charged with the rights and responsibilities that go with membership in the family of letters.
We are here today because America's alliances take its citizens to far places, and because America has asserted that its citizens in uniform are neither separate nor unique. The man flying aircraft based on the Kanto plain of Japan, pulling sentry duty on the jagged scar of demarkation in Korea, patrolling the troubled water between two Chinas, securing island fortresses in positions of containment, and readiness - that man must have access to the system of education from which his culture and his country spring.
These graduating seniors have shouldered impressive responsibilities, personal and professional, for many years. And yet they are like many tens of thousands of adult Americans everywhere in the United States who insist that higher learning is not limited by age, by offspring or job; adults who insist that higher education is as much the right and responsibility of the mature man and woman as it is the more fortunate youth who proceeds without interruption from secondary to university classroom. Our universities have learned to keep their doors opened wide at night, on weekends, around the clock, if need be; universities and their professors now freely go into centers of population, into bank buildings, city halls, Church basements, at hours and places determined in part by the student. The great military Pentagon building in Washington D. C., becomes at 5 o'clock each evening a hall of learning, accommodating five universities, of which Maryland is one. And so it is that every airfield, army post, navy shipyard within the United States and throughout the world where Americans are stationed, may house a segment of a university. Something is being taught. There may be only one course in European History or in Mandarin Chinese for fifteen students on an island radar station, or there may a twenty five courses for several hundred regular students to choose from, as at Tachikawa, Seoul, or Sukiran.
As we proceed in this ceremony today please understand that the Far East Division of the University of Maryland may be host at an unusual commencement event, geographically speaking; it is not however, engaged in an unusual educational venture.
The men and the one woman honored here today are a representative segment of our Far East student body of many thousands scattered around Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Guam. The faculty on the stage here are a senior, continuous segment from among two hundred lecturers, including a score of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese scholars who instruct in our classrooms.
Among this audience are those civilian and military educators who serve all phases of education on the United States military installations in the Far East and cooperate with us to provide university training for their personnel. We wish to single out the civilian education advisors and directors for a special word of thanks on this occasion. Without their interest, cooperation, and professional advise our students could not enjoy a coordinated educational venture such as ours.
We are appreciative of and honored by the presence of high ranking military commanders today, leaders who show a sustained personal interest in the education of their men generally and an individual pride in the achievement of each graduate honored today.
And in this audience we are delighted to see so many Japanese educators and leaders, come to observe us honor our Ambassador to Japan and to make academic tribute to one of the great Japanese of today. The whole world is benefiting from Japan's tradition of higher learning, its tradition of national literacy, of developed research, of artistic and scientific development. To be associated with you on this day, in this way, will always be a memorable moment in the history of the University of Maryland.
I would also like to make reference to this setting, because the Kudan Kaikan occupies an historic place of unusual interest to an academic gathering. During the Tokugawa period of Japanese history, the period in which Japan withdrew from the outside world, there was a building here known as the Bansho Torishirabe Sho, approximately translated it means Barbarian Books Investigation Office. Here western publications which otherwise could not be seen in Japan were scrutinized and evaluated for possible translation and careful dissemination during that period of intense Japanese xenophobia. The country was closed to the west, but right here there was one significant, official source of contact and intellectual observation.
The Far East Division of the University of Maryland is proud to be host to this assemblage on this historic spot for this significant event. We welcome all of you to this commencement and invite you to join us in the reception immediately following this ceremony
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Dr. Don E. Totten
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Don E. Totten
First letter to Mr. Don Edward Totten to Chicago, dated 11 July 1950 (in March he had finished his MA at Chicago: in May he had married Christine Schmidt-Rohr)
“I have written to Colonel Schroeder, asking that a request for travel orders be issued for you from Westover Field to Rhein/ Main. All requests must originate Stateside, and upon request of same we shall cable back priority. I should like to point out that at the present time all flights are cancelled over the Atlantic, and at this very moment we are still looking for five professors from our campus who were due to arrive last Friday.”
Signed Ray Ehrensberger
in November 1962
“The staff joins in asserting that you serve as an inspiration to all of us -an inspiration because of your untiring dedication to the job at hand, to scholarship, and to high standards in every thing involving faculty and staff. We also wish to thank you for our no-so-incidental increase in the awareness of the wonder of Geography.”
***************
He is The Master of the TWX -more TWX mileage than all Marylanders put together. It is rumored that General O'Meara is relieved to see him leave.
The Master of TDY -topped only by the Dean among Marylanders, and you may be sure Don's routes and purposes were more direct and to the point than . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Once he registered 185 days of TDY in a 24 month period.
The Master of house full of women -including Christine Margaret, Margaret Christine, Julia Ruth, and Katherine Claire
The Master of Maps
-by Abraham Ortelius, (?) Dutch engraver. (1527-1598)
-copper engraving done in 1580
-two Significant things. Orteliu was one of the early mapmakers . The AtIas this is from was published in color – the colors are the original old colors, as published. It is asserted that most prints were printed black on white, then hand-colored or painted.
There 's no BOQ in Col-o-rad-doo
Maryland my Maryland
It's just the same in CIarion, too
Maryland my Maryland
You've had it good, you know the facts
You left the ship, you scairdy rats,
And MAN! When you pay that income tax
Oh, Maryland my Marylan
UMUC - Asian Division - Mason G Daly - Far East Commencement Greetings - March 24 1958 - Tokyo
No full textAsia;Hoffmann, RosemaryGreetings
Commencement Ceremony, Dr. Mason G. Daly, Director [Far East] Division, University of [Maryland] Overseas Division, Tokyo, Japan, March 24, 1958
The commission to extend greetings to this assemblage on behalf of the Far East Division of the University of Maryland Overseas Program, happily falls to me. We all know this division in Maryland’s world wide educational venture is the youngster, the new one; but those of us in it do not feel of another generation, we know we are quite dry behind the ears, we may have gotten started ten years late, but that does not mean we are a decade behind. We are, in fact, feeling very important today, sure that we have emphatically made our mark, confident that we deserve a full measure of attention. We are insistent that the size of our graduating class is not small, but startlingly large, and we have been insistent that the event getting underway here today must measure up to the significant number of significant men who are being honored.
This audience has assembled, I am sure, out of shared interest and effort, out of pride, and out of curiosity. Many of you are men and women who have worked directly with us and our students in your education services, you have invested time and energy in unmeasured quantity, and you have come to see an especially dramatic result of your cooperative effort. Others of you who have shared in the effort have perhaps come to collect some of the psychic pay that a teacher takes as part of his reward. You are the large number of lecturers who have bolstered our teaching staff and helped make this program possible. There are many commanding officers, from Generals and Admirals to company and wing commanders, there are fellow students, and there are the wives and children of these graduating men, all here in large number, all taking pride in their relationship with these men. And, there are many others present who are not immediately involved or closely acquainted with the graduating group or with dignitaries appearing here.
Many of you are Japanese who have come to observe this American ceremony taking place in your midst. Your press, radio and television are here and they will bring this event to the attention of still more people in the Orient.
You are all welcome, indeed. You are going to observe a traditional ceremony with is also unique. It is traditional in that it is being conducted in the same spirit and with the same procedures that hundreds of commencement are staged annually in the United States. I tis unique in locale, it is unique in the personnel of its graduating class (at least in terms of their age level and accumulated off-spring), and it is certainly a unique representation of an advance in university educational philosophy, a philosophy with now permits, even expect, a university to reach mature and deserving students wherever in the world they may be.
We were asked one day this fall, and not too facetiously, when we expected to set up classes on the far side of the moon. I suppose the replay must be: as soon as the requirement exists, and as soon as the conditions up there are correct (those conditions may have to include a big boost in the oxygen supply when college professors report in for action). I won’t dare anyone present to say that Maryland on the Moon is too wild a dream. However, it will be enough today to contemplate the significance of this American event in this place, to contemplate the significance of this American even this this place, to contemplate the fact that these graduates represent a Maryland student body of many thousands here in the Far East, many more thousands in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Atlantic area, the State of Maryland, Washington D.C., and the Pentagon. We bid you all welcome to our commencement and to the reception which will follow
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Citation for Stephen Meltzer - August 27 1966 - Munich
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Mason G. Daly Director European Division University of Maryland
Munich 27 August 1966
CITATION for STEPHEN MELTZER
This statement must be read to this august assemblage - in this ancient Bavarian capital - on this massive military kaserne astride this mediaeval crossroad to the Tegernsee. It must be read because it takes the form of a fairly cryptic citation, and citations are too dignified and too dramatic and often too droll to be left to the chance choice of words.
It is a great relief to know that Stephen J. Meltzer is not to become a Ph.D. drop-out. A Ph.D. drop-out is more tragic than a junior-high drop-out -for a man this age is too old to learn a useful trade, is too clogged with cholesterol to start a new life, is too encumbered with legitimate offspring to escape responsibility, is too tormented by success to be fulfilled short of those ultimate letters on the signature block -Ph.D. LBJ and the Great Society have set up all sorts of retrieval systems for drop-outs in our complex and confusing society, but we do not yet have an LBJ Salvage Corps for Ph.D. drop-outs, and this man is too old and too realistic to sit around waiting for one.
This man can lay claim to calm good judgment, we know that; thus we know this decision about the Ph.D. can only be right. After all, this man can claim to know the difference between a unit and an agency - and he's one of the few in the world who does.
This man can claim to know the difference between one kind of APO and another, and it's a lucky man who sees that difference at once.
This man can claim to know the difference between a quarterly report and a window box, we suppose because he and some of the educational carpenters present have hammered out some of each.
This man can claim to have tried nobly to define "on-duty education" for those in high places in the command , and if there has been a temporary set-back, he knows full well that the semantic mazes of on-and off-duty education will soon have troops streaming back into the halls of GED at all hours of the day and night because we all know, all too well, that all men in uniform are really on-duty 25 hours a day, 367 days a year, and we can have all the time left over to educate them.
This man can claim he knows the re al difference between a district supervisor and a GED coordinator, and that's because Bill Brenner told him.
This man can claim to have tried to keep USAFI-Europe from slipping into another camp, but he watched with the rest of us as USAFI, making up letter-heads for others, lost its own letter-head. But it has a new building, it still has Larry Gates, and it enjoyed throughout its recent metaphysical changes, warm regard and continued requirement s of this man and his agency.
This man can claim to have taken less TDY than his predecessor, Warren Winstead, but then, who can't?
This man can claim to have foster-fathered a fine graduate program (which was fathered with a certain amount of trumpetting for a first-born by that same predecessor), can claim to have quietly fathered a second graduate program with the steadied calm of veteran paternalism, and he can claim to have patiently nurtured that everlasting academic agony in your midst - that 17 year old Maryland just passing out of puberty. But he hasn't fathered or fostered or nurtured anything until he broods and gives birth to that NYU dissertation.
This man can claim to be escaping the stigma of home-steading, but then Russel the Wise is escaping that too by just normal retirement.
This man can claim (and rightly) to have been a calming, steadying influence in all circumstances surrounding GED. Why, even the Maryland director (and this will surprise everyone here) has raised his voice and has been unnecessarily histrionic in the presence of this man. But this man just gritted that pipe stem tighter and remained absolutely coherent and calm, and soon even that Marylander returned to coherence and calm. If only we all could so firmly grip a good pipe stem we might better weather these crises we so often share. Yet, this man must somewhere, sometimes perturb, he must surely release a head of steam in some setting. No doubt Florrie could fill us in on that. We do know that she escaped him for some reason two nights of ever y week up there in Heidelberg because she regularly attended Maryland classes. That gave her six full hours reprieve from this man per week and we can only presume she needed that. But before we congratulate Florrie too much for her escape and her scholarship, we probably should know whether or not this man takes that pipe to bed.
This man can claim to be returning to a wonderful world of stable living, a world where you dare to predict even a month ahead the country, the city, even the house you will live in. And he's heard so many reassuring things about other returnees such as Larry Snell's $70,000 pad with 5 bedrooms and six baths and garden wall to garden wall swimming pools teeming with chlorine and dead leaves.
And so this man has led us through an astonishing period of reorganization and window boxes, led us with a calm demeanor and a steady intellect, and a firm grip on his pipe.
After Egbert the Elder, and Warren the Wonder, we had Stephen the Steady. And now, in another of our interregna, we fall back again -with confidence -on the experience and judgment of George, the Ringer, the longest stand-in in GED history. We wish him God speed good window boxes, and brand new, better definitions of on-and off duty education.
And now to Steve and Florrie Meltzer the Marylanders in Heidelberg want to be remembered - along with Heidelberg - by this fairly schmaltzy mug which shows the old Neckar city. It will be, you may be sure , appropriately engraved and sent to you as soon as you send us the address of your new splitlevel pad in the Great Society
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Cry Chaos - Cry Cosmos - April 18 1967 - Rhein-Main
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Mason G. Daly
Director
European Division
University of Maryland
Rhein/Main
18 April 1967
Protestant Men of the Chapel.
CRY CHAOS -CRY COSMOS
The United States was once described in a moment of exuberance as "bounded on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by the primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment . " It is still an apt image big, cataclysmic, confounding, exciting, irrational, paradoxical. Certainly the United States has never found it more difficult to define its place in the universe, its purpose on earth. It reaches for the cosmos, it is on the edge of chaos. And surely when the United States cries cosmos from the edge of chaos all mankind shares that paradoxical situation.
Man has flung his first hesitant challenges into space, he has tuned in for remote whispers of his universe. "He flings treasures of million-dollar bills to the fire-winds just to touch the moon poets used to give us free." The poet asks, and so for that matter do some of us, why space? Why rockets? Will space travel pull us taller, make us wiser, move us closer, live us better?
A Great Societyman says "our entire society is the launching pad from which our rockets take fire. We must not send the childish, the uneducated, the sick, or the criminal into space. Those who travel up, those who stay behind, must be made whole, entire, and well. Otherwise, space is indeed meaningless, and our survival is in danger. "Surely that suggests the proximity of cosmos and chaos?
There is walking in our midst, sitting with us here today, an omnipresence -an omnipresence of change -major, drastic, radical, sudden change. It is in everything -in science, engineering, medicine; in merchandising and mobility; in pills and promiscuity. This omnipresence shakes our stability, the security which stemmed from the certain, the unchangeable. Morals and ethics fail to adjust fast enough. Religions falter and fumble the answers, religions which, from the beginning of time, were based on the acceptance of the incomprehensible. There is awfulness as well as awe in the new knowledge of the body, the mind, and the world; and the worlds and the worlds and the worlds about us. There is fear as well as fascination in having Robert Hutchins refer ahead to the day of zero employment, when all that mankind will have left to do is to study, reflect, develop culture, and enjoy life. What kind of world will it be, run by machines? What kind of man will it be in such leisure?
Man’s Concept of Man
Automation is here to force the individual -and all mankind to reconsider his conception of himself. As a professor at Carnegie Tech states: "The definition of man's uniqueness has always formed the kernel of his cosmological and ethical systems. With Copernicus and Galileo, he ceased to be the species located at the center of the the universe, attended by stars and sun. With Darwin, he ceased to be the species created and specially endowed by God with soul and reason. With Freud, he ceased to be the species whose behavior was potentially -governable by rational mind. As we begin to produce mechanisms that think and learn, he has ceased to be the species uniquely capable of complex, intelligent manipulation of his environment."
So man, consciously or unconsciously, is now setting out to find a new way to describe his place in the universe. Copernicus, Darwin, Freud are not enough. Machines and machine systems may not show clear signs of many fundamental human qualities such as imagination, compassion, love. But man's ability to build machines which learn, and store, and recall, and reassemble knowledge, machines which do possess so many qualities we today call "intelligence," means that some of the most fundamental changes we have ever experienced are in store for us. The conception of our role as human beings is in for a shattering revision, and this before 1984. This change in man's idea of man promises to be a cosmic leap, but automation and our response to it can mean chaos. Automation promises man the time and ultimate leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of immortality, to reach and feel the cosmos. Yet automation wipes out 40,000 jobs a week, hitting hardest the young and the old, the minorities, and all men and women in depressed areas. There is the chance for dignity; there is also looming disaster.
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times;
It is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness;
It is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity;
It is the season of light, it is the season of darkness;
We have everything before us, we have nothing before us.
That was Charles Dickens writing of France and England in 1770. How true it is as we now near 1970. As we move on into an age which is witnessing new heights in social justice and new depths in social degradation.
Chaos or Cosmos -- Nuclear
Everywhere we look man seems to be in a race against disaster. There is the great nuclear race which must somehow be controlled this side of chaos. The science and genius behind that race can take us to the cosmos and will, if conferences at Geneva can stay in session and stay sane long enough. Control or chaos, cosmos or chaos are the unquestioned alternatives which mankind discusses endlessly at Geneva.
The Protestant Church, which feels it is or should be so close to humanity, must surely be involved in that terrible alternative. First, I suppose, the Protestant Church must join some others in asserting that there is something between the two alternatives, that if a degree of chaos comes there are some lives to save after multi-millions expire in the holocaust. So get on with blood banks and fall-out shelters and pocket-sized Geiger counters. Any agency dealing in humanity, in saving souls and human dignity, any agency committed to the proposition that man is essentially good and worth saving, must not leave all the discussion and all the action to statesmen only.
Chaos or Cosmos -- Population
The nations meet in Geneva on nuclear proliferation and they confer with more and more regularity about another proliferation. Recently it was in Belgrade that they met; right now it is in Santiago, Chile. They are meeting about the proliferation of people. Perhaps the Protestant Church is properly concerned and carefully listening to these meetings about mankind; but perhaps it is just the statesmen agonizing some more together.
These meetings signal a belated recognition on the part of international bodies that here is another race against disaster, another place for control or chaos. At Geneva, arms-control or the threat of wiping out millions of lives; at Belgrade and Santiago, birth-control or the threat of multiplying millions of lives to the impoverishment of mankind.
The population conferences signify, dramatically and certainly, the belated acceptance of the fact that nature, tamed by science, is no longer to be relied upon to hold the balance. Man, not nature, must decide the future of mankind. The old, almost comfortable beliefs that population will be controlled by famines and epidemics and wars, have disappeared -except for the bizarre comfort we may have to take in the potential destructiveness of the next war. The science which has done so much can probably keep up yet a while, keeping us from serious pestilence and actual starvation. But in multiplying the quantity of life, the discussions at Santiago last week indicated that the quality of life will be wholly destroyed.
The whole tone of these conferences, as reported back, is set by the leaders of the developing countries, the ones most hit by the population explosion. Something must be done to relieve them of this terrible burden of excessive fertility, they say. They are the ones quoting Aldous Huxley to the effect that a "civilization which practises death control must practise birth control." They know the despair, these leaders of developing countries, the despair of seeing hard-won increases in national output swallowed up by new mouths to feed, old mouths which do not die. The developing countries, and to be sure the developed ones (if that is the word), like our own, have seen the dreadful drift of surplus populations into cities unready for them, with consequent cancerous slums, with unprepared and inadequate social services, with hideous inadequacies in education facilities creating more illiterates and more poverty and more disaster.
Can any one concerned about humanity doubt that man, about to leap to the cosmos, his greatest fulfillment, is on the edge of chaos, his greatest disaster, because he has death control widely and successfully practised and birth control almost totally ignored.
Surely this is an area for the Protestant Church to study and enter into more actively. The Catholic Church and its Pope agonize publicly and privately every day. I do not know the dimension of your present involvement in this disaster area around the world. I would not pretend to tell you what you should do, actively or otherwise. But I do assert that you should be carefully listening to the debate, preparing to enter into that debate, readying to exert your efforts in guidance and communication. We have worked miracles in lifesaving. Now we must work miracles in life-prevention, as incredible as that sounds.
We know there are millions of mankind who see no connection between their own personal desires and the fate of nations. To succeed with them seems to call for a psychological revolution which would have to reverse the instincts of eternity. Procreation is indeed a very private and personal thing, almost mystic. It is a driving emotion, to frustrate it can be dangerous and difficult.
But the consensus at these international meetings and in intelligent conversation anywhere, is that limitation is necessary if mankind is to have any long-range dignity. There is hope, with the U. N. and other great agencies, and whole nations now entering in this race against this disaster, and there can be no doubt that science can cope with it, and there can be no doubt that the Church, both Protestant and Catholic, must be involved.
Urban Disaster or Urban Dignity
There is a related American phenomenon worthy of intense attention and concern. It is the edge of chaos on which America is now perched in the unready shift of its unready population to unready cities -with all of the accompanying pollutions of air and land and sea and space and souls and politics and people. Now, at last, we have an urban secretary ln the cabinet. But we have the megapolis, the metroplex sprawling so fast that it will take more than the bureaucratic sprawl of the new department to catch up.
A dispirited conservationist says the last species of vegetation between Boston and Richmond is soon to be the thruway cloverleaf, and we hardly wonder if that is a too-exaggerated hyperbole. What has been a kind of skirmish against slums must now become an all-out war for urban survival, and we are mustering slowly for that war. The picture is the same everywhere -masses of palpitating humanity disputing with insistent, motorized vehicles for living and breathing space. There are sociologists who hardly sound preposterous when they postulate the death wish for our cities and therefore for our civilization.
Our cities are right now disaster areas of fearful dimension because we will not break the stagnation of mind, and thereby, the condition which assumes that whites and non-whites cannot live together as friends and neighbors. This stagnation of mind is not just in the slums, it is in middle-class suburbia, in plush country estates and in city apartments, as well as in Protestant churches. Until this stagnation is removed our city blights will continue and endanger our society and kill our way of life. It takes no sociologist to tell us this. And it takes more than legislation and a cabinet secretary to change this looming disaster to reasonable dignity.
It is doubtful that urban disaster would have been fully realized even now, if the American Negro had not decided that chaos and disaster, which are his special national heritage, should not be meekly endured. I believe you might well wonder about the appeal and involvement the Protestant Church has for the American Negro right now. I wonder how effectively the great churches of America are getting to the disaster which is bleeding away the vitality of a large segment of 1/10th of our people, the disaster which is too personal for late legislation now so belatedly passed? Are you getting to the Negro who now knows that "north to freedom" is a hollow mockery? Are you getting to him in the wreckage of his southland, in the wreckage of his slumland?
This disaster is upon us, and every legislative and executive and judicial agency we have is not enough without the humanitarian agencies, without the great churches and their impulses and powers to humanize human beings. For we now see what happens when the individual who is colored begins to assess himself as a human being, we now see what happens when that individual sees, however dimly and viciously and frustratingly, the clear link between a rotting shack or tenement and a rotting America. We now see what James Baldwin meant in "The Fire Next Time." "Next Time" seems to be now. We now have the generation on hand that looks for an alternative to a lifetime of broken minds and souls, and if that alternative is violence, so be it. The creativity of that generation must sing out in other than the frightening Los Angeles rhythms of "kill-kill-kill."
You know, it took four years for anyone, much less the church groups which did finally react, to see that Prince Edward County, Virginia, with no schools at all for half its young ones, was a major disaster area. Why wasn't someone there with books? Why can my youngsters learn to swim and save lives and be fulfilled when their fellow Americans -same age, different color and fortune -fail to see a swimming pool until they are old enough to know they aren't wanted in it? We know there is to be no dignity for them, no salvation for us in our present predicament, unless we get those little ones, when very little, clothed in a little dignity, given a little glimmer of what it is to be human and loved and filled with something other than fear and frustration .
Project Head Start began, only began the gesture that is so late in coming. It recognizes belatedly what has been so obvious so long -that the bleeding cycle of illiteracy and poverty and more illiteracy and more poverty must be broken at the beginning. The head start is not soon enough or yet reaching a fraction of those who need it. All LBJ's proverty programs are in need of far more than a big bureaucracy and big budgets.
Hedonism or Humanism
The dimensions of disaster, the promises of chaos in our society are, to be sure, enough to scare any church group to its prayerful knees, at least enough to stop the reasonable digestion of today's lunch . As our populations more densely congregate into impersonal cells of self-concern and sheer survival, how many church groups are aghast that a human being can be raped or murdered or robbed without the slightest energizing of help or compassion from his church-going neighbors. There's enough in any daily paper, certainly including Stars & Stripes, to convince us that ours is about to become an hedonistic society . But there are a few columns of print to show that pleasure has not yet quite become the sole or chief good in our lives, that our moral function is not yet solely fulfilled through pleasure-fulfilling, selfish instincts. A cry can go forth from a young president which does cause a gratifying proportion of our society to say "what can I do?", which does cause a Peace Corps and reveal what might be called a national conscience . A great mandate can be given another president to change our laws, to amend our ways and erase some of our shared national shame . There is great dignity in much that we now accomplish. It is still possible for American men and women to see reality as the God of Genesis saw the chaos -as clay to be worked, that clay to be worked into a thing of order and beauty and purpose, into man's individual fulfillment.
In discussing here today the proximity of chaos and cosmos, in trying to suggest some new dimensions of disaster and dignity, I have been not a little like the man of old who, with all of human kind, once peered fearfully out over the rim of the future by finding answers in the entrails of a newly killed sheep. The ritual changes, and we try to read computers now. The punch cards or tapes or ticks thrown out to us from elaborate machines seem to indicate a lot of scary, looming disaster. Over-population, overaging, over-leisure, over-contamination, over-killing. But a proper reading of the machines, or of whatever devices or instincts we are reading, can do more than create anxiety. We know the early man probing those entrails was filled with anxiety too, about a mysterious plague, or a blighted crop, or a barren wife. We know that present man, with his irreconciled political systems, his danger of nuclear war, his certainty of over-population, must, like the early man, find his best hope not in magic but in new knowledge, in the better ordering of the knowledge he has; he must find it in banding together, as nations or as neighboring men of faith, as did early man, to ward off disaster, banding together voluntarily for service as well as for political and economic security. Fear of chaos can be turned to calm concern and foresight and thoughtful questioning and productive controversy, can be turned to great cosmic leaps
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Christmas 1962
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryChristmas 1962
This is a great occasion. Our little organization has become a big organization. We are delighted that so many former employees came to join us tonight. All of our guests tonight are warmly welcomed.
We have become a big staff and we are in a big year. We have here a big gift, obviously. It is the gift of the year. Its proportions are baffling and mysterious.
I do not know much about its contents, but I want to assure Ann Reed that it is not all of those official records which have not come in; I want to assure Marge Fry that it is not late registration from madrid; i want to assure bill leffland that it is not an IBM machine; I want to assure the house printery that it is not another employee ; or another room for an employee; there is the rumor that it may be a Westphalian ham that has ripened into something larger than life size.
There is nothing to, do but see just what it is.
There is a little item not on the program which the chairmen did not give me permission to do. But I am going to do it anyway. There are a few advantages to being a Director, and this little chore is one of the happiest ones I have had. It is the first time I have played this role, and I am a little shaky over the responsibility. I am even quite emotional about it. It is a role that I expect to play one day, when I am much more aged and experienced, to be specific when my daughters are grown young ladies . My emotion, my shakiness stems from two things: joy and pleasure at being asked to be sort of a daddy to an already grown up young woman, shock at being considered already old and dignified enough to take on the daddy role. But to get on with it: I am over=whelmed with the pleasure and responsibility of announcing for our broken up beauty Johanna Martin that she is engaged to Marry It. LeeDarrow.
Now let me continue with just this much. Unless the Army gets to playing musical assignments with Lt. Darrow, we do not lose Johanna. For 'at least another couple of years we should be dialing number 39 and hear that very lovely and gracious voice saying Admissions Office, Mrs. Darrow speaking. For that we rejoice. Of course Mrs. Reed will be burdened with the fear of a pregnancy from another source, but I’ll let Ann take that up with the Lt. I would be very bad advising in that area. So far as I know no wedding date has yet been set. Presumably it will have to wait a while at least until that grotesque cast is removed from our broken beauty. For heaven's sake Lt., keep that gal off the ski slopes. Mrs. Reed simply cannot be worrying about you two that much.
From all of these Marylnders gathered here, Lt. Darrow, let me say that, you have raided our camp in the most pleasant and thoughtful manner, that we all know you are getting a wonderful and remarkable young woman, that we are all sure that your future will be a golden future
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Graduation Speech - Blunt Items and Gentle Bravery - 1965
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryGraduation Speech Dr. Mason G. Daly
Director, European Division
University of Maryland
BLUNT ITEMS AND GENTLE BRAVERY
Graduation speakers, it has always seemed to me, are (one) too long winded, and (two) afraid to be blunt about the advice they hand out. It matters a lot that they are too long winded because they trap and torture• a group of graduates who are understandably ready to jump right out of their skins with relief and joy. It matters a great deal less that their advice is not blunt enough to be heeded because it is a rare group of graduates which is really changed by any speaker who might happen along in this graduation ritual.
But your school officials want me to say something that may keep you inside your skins for the next few minutes. I'll try to be brief, and I intend to be blunt.
I will start by admitting that I actually represent all the adults here today who are just a little reluctant to grant that you are once and for all, for better or for worse, at the close of adolescence. In actual fact, we know that most of you left adolescence behind several years ago; most of us are startled at how early you seem to gain some semblance of maturity, even if we hate to admit it publicly. I'll admit that I have a nine year old teenaged daughter right now on my hands. If present trends can't be headed off, the whole count-down of what is pre-teen and teen-age and adolescent and grown up will have to be changed. Whatever the countdown should be, however, we adults tonight insist that we confer upon you, here and now, a kind of adult-hood when we confer that diploma. A kind of intellectual as well as chronological maturity has been arrived at, and reluctantly but inevitably we adults have to recognize it; it can't be postponed one day more. In a sense, then, this speech from me is our last gasp of delay -and, well, you can't expect us to give it up, can you?
Let’s be blunt, then, in this last gasp from this adult representing these adults. Blunt item: you graduates have achieved these diplomas by some hard work, sure, but not a single one of you paid your own freight. But then, why should you? Society, the Air Force, your parents, invest in many things, and one thing in which they never over-invest is intellectual training. You are in debt to society, and I suppose to the Air Force and to your parents, but this is one debt that will be paid off-not always by each individual, but by this generation, by this whole class. Another blunt item: that sheepskin won't get or hold a job for you, my young friends. It doesn't guarantee personal profit to you. It isn't the sheepskin it used to be when your dad or mother graduated, when I got it. Although it probably stands for better education than many of ours did, it has in this society been downgraded in its' assurances of success. Even while it became enriched and became more available to more of your fellow citizens, it became less an end in itself - in fact became no end at all compared to what it once was. But this is not to be regretted or despaired over. A college diploma is no more unattainable to the average American citizen with reasonable intelligence and reasonable ambition than the high school diploma was to my generation of Americans. That diploma, while not so much the end in itself that it was, then, is a far more certain stepping stone.
Blunt item: you have finished this phase of your education in a time of wild uncertainty, unrest, unprecedented change. Anyone, without half trying, can be mighty bleak or cynical, even despairing -and some of your generation is getting pretty far out of it all. You can play it cool, but you have no right to abdicate hope at this time. You are of the at least partially educated brood of the most powerful nation on earth. You are citizens of a country that is fat while much of the world is lean or hungry or starving. Sure, there are alarms and excursions and panic buttons and there will be times when you will want to say -"Let someone else make the hard decisions as to what our policy and our purpose should be. Just let me have a little corner in suburbia and the golf course or a little corner in a military housing area, also with golf course." Whole nations live and die without having any opportunity to be decisive upon the history of our time when it is written. Whole generations live and die without being anything to the course of history. Not so with America; not so with your generation . It is this America and it is your generation, however you live or die, which will determine human history on this tormented globe. There may be suburban homes and golf courses, but there will be no abdication.
Blunt item: you are approaching the age of full citizenship, with that diploma tucked under your arm, at a time when the greatest stain on our society is being washed in public -with the whole world looking on. It took us a long time to realize that you don't keep a man in the ditch without staying down there in the ditch with him. We learned it the hard way; and although much ugliness is still before us, the back of segregation is broken and a whole new era is before you new citizens of America. You have had a chance, in the education you have already had -an education denied millions of Americans your age, both black and white -to pick up a few ideas about the dignity and the freedom of the individual, about his right to be different, about his right to be wrong, about his right to be black, about his rights under the law. You are going to have the agony of living with underdeveloped citizens who will have the same franchise you have until we all together, but you especially, get them ready for the full citizenship they just now are gaining. It isn't going to be an easy time. It isn't going to be heaven. But it is not going to be the hell that one-tenth of our population has known in the recent past.
Blunt item: President Johnson is always talking about the Great Society we are forging, but apart from the political catchword that it is also, his Great Society is a long way off, and yet it is right at hand. In that Society our deep racial tensions are on the surface now and being dealt with. That Society, great or not, is going to be made up (while you are young and productive and taxpaying) of millions of elderly citizens. Now, these elderly citizens, without your concern, are not likely to have golden years at the end, but rather will have barren, horrible years. I will become, my young friends, and so will your parents become, your greatest responsibilities and your greatest, most tormenting problem as we age and age and populate the nation with a staggering percentage of old, rather useless, but altogether human and deserving beings. And, you know, you will live to be still older citizens than your parents and I can ever dream of being The Society, great or not, is one that will have violence and crime in its midst so long as you and I permit so much of its citizenry to be underprivileged and undereducated. Two and a half million crimes are committed in our fat and frustrating land each year. The Society, great as it may become, is riddled with anxiety about job displacement, resulting from automation. Half, perhaps two- thirds of you will start out in jobs, even spend half your working lifetime in jobs, which will altogether disappear from human endeavor before you finish this life. All of you are apt to spend more time as retired people than you ever spend as workers. But the anxiety which pervades the Society you are entering is that you will spend more working years as unemployed or unemployable than you spend as workers. The Society, great or not, is one that will have produced more than seven and one-half million dropouts from high school in the 1960's, thus marring our society and our future in a dreadful and wasteful way. And don't be too proud that you were smart enough, or prodded along enough, to stay on to the finish. Some pride is warranted, yes, but you have not experienced the hopelessness, boredom, and despair that others your age have lived in this Society. You have had your break; now see to it that this dreadful waste does not increase in the 70's; see to it that it is eliminated.
Those are some blunt items concerning our Society, which does have some promise, through you, of becoming more than a political slogan, does have-a chance of becoming the Great Society.
My last gasp before your adulthood is conferred must include two or three other blunt items.
Another: we may have orbited men for days and days in space and had them taking space walks. We may have an enormous stake in the vast adventures of outer space. But I should not have to remind you that the most important space in the world is within the three pounds of the human brain. It is in that "inner space" that much of man's salvation will have to be worked out. There is so much that is unexplored in the nature of man and what it is in that skull of his that has caused generations and millenniums to be blighted because he has not learned how to live peacefully on this earth and how to enjoy the life he has. Our nation, you, must not, therefore; lose the sense of perspective over the exotic vistas of the stars. We must not become "space happy" and "earth sad." There are three billion of us spinning on this planet, and spawning on this planet at a rate that will surely destroy us in a few more generations unless we get things sorted out in that brain, in those instincts we have. There is no "salvation" for us on the moon or on Venus or Mars. We must work out our salvation here on earth -through this most fantastic of instruments – the human mind.
Blunt item: You will have to learn to live with the many fears that plague mankind, and those many fears are by no means imaginary. We have many times already in your short lives seen how slim the thread is that holds that nuclear sword of Damocles. We have seen, in your short lives, hundreds of millions of people in the emerging nations tremble in fear toward a tomorrow as bleak, or worse than, the misery of their today or their yesterday. Their fears are our fears. Their misery is our misery. It is not generosity which tells us that we must help these peoples conquer poverty, illiteracy, disease, and malnutrition it is selfishness, for if we do not, mankind will fall prey to chaos and all hope for all of us will be lost. We must above all help to instill hope, and the record is already clear that it is the younger generation of America, with its Peace Corps and its vast energies and generous spirit, which best transmits the hope there is. And the best hope of all comes with our realization that we can do all of this for others, must do all of this, even while we set our own house in order, even while we do what has to be done for the forgot ten man who lives in fear and hopelessness in our own country .
Last blunt item: This world has gotten far beyond being taking for granted, and so every belief, every dogma, every "truth" is up for re-examination. Every few years we abandon the world we knew, we move into a new age with new dreads and new hopes. No man with a decent mind, with one of those diplomas, can ever stop saying in this world, "show me," "how do you know?” "have you tried it?" "have you seen it happen?" "what makes it impossible?" You young graduates have always been audacious enough (sometimes rudely) to challenge your parents and their beliefs and their ways of living, and although you have come away bruised from some of these encounters, you almost instinctively took delight in questioning and arguing, you almost instinctively knew that you would catch up with this older generation and leave us behind. Too bad you didn't sometimes handle that instinct more kindly, but thank goodness for the instinct. The audacious challenge of each generation, of the new graduates with their fresh intellects, will always be at the heart of human progress.
We know that science once declared that no object heavier than air could ever be air-borne. Fortunately, the Wright brothers said "show us!" We know that objects like the Dead Sea scrolls must be translated and dated in time, even if the scriptures and the faith of centuries are damaged.
We know that "truths" are too often "half truths" or "untruths." We know that this world insists that we speculate and explore into the unknown.
We know of a Tennessee high school teacher who, in this century, was brave enough to insist that Darwin had a theory that must be given attention, especially in a classroom of youngsters who cried, "show me!"
He know that we must one day, somehow, check Einstein's "twin paradox" which hypothesizes that a twin brother who takes off on a long space journey in which he travels at a sizeable fraction of the speed of light would return to find his earth-bound twin brother either older than he or little more than a dim recollection in the memory of his descendants.
"Show me" how we know this. "Show me” that the earth is flat, that man can't fly, that the sound barrier is unbreakable, that Einstein is right.
"Show me" that we can't overcome the sins of our fathers who brought slavery to our shores. "Show me" that my nation must remain a spectacle before the world, systematically insulting the sensibilities of the colored tenth of its population.
The "show me" attitudes of you graduates of today has a Cal Tech admissions dean admitting that the freshmen of ten years ago would fail miserably in competition with you.
Blunt, but wonderful item, isn't it, that you have the right and the responsibility and the instinct to challenge all that the world knows and stands for.
To live with this right, my young friends, is very high adventure, a cause for great bravery. I want to ask for GENTLE BRAVERY – not just bravery. Gentle bravery.
Brave enough to seek all answers and know you will never find them a ll. Gentle enough to insist on the search without arrogance.
Brave enough to speak up in dissent. Gentle enough to be understood even when the majority is against you.
Brave enough to face the unknown. Gentle enough to strive patiently for enlightenment.
Brave enough to shatter cities with atomic thoughts, shatter creeds with new revelations. Gentle enough to live with any fellow man
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Christmas Party 1963
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryChristmas Party 1963
You have noticed who is the MC. That is because he heard his main mission would be the leading of Christmas Carols. Don Totten loves this. He has been doing it every chance he can get-ever since he joined Maryland. You know, tradition has it that Christmas Carols all got started with St. Francis of Assizi. Well, the Italians may have their St. Francis of Assizi. We have our St. Donald of Schlierbach!
I was told yesterday that it was a tradition to have the Director say a few words of greeting at this traditional Christmas party. I doubt very much if the tradition really exists. But if it is my responsibility to do this (as well as my privilege) I fully intend to write the responsibility into my job description and get it on file in the Personnel Section. Maybe I can get my category up-graded. Nice thought. You see, I really thought I had gone as far as I can go in this outfit.
Thinking in terms of tradition in Christmas affairs, I discovered that the first Christmas card was made by a Bavarian named Louis Prang, made in Boston, after he went to the States.
I found that the misletoe tradition (you've noticed all that stuff hanging around the Comptroller's Office) goes back to the tradition of old Druid (Celtic) priestesses, or young ones, I don't really know, hanging up misletoe and then standing under it for purposes of prophesying something, standing under it until they got some sort of vision. Now, I guess our high priestess of the mistletoe is Doris Reisig. But I'm rather doubtful if what has been going on under our misletoe had or has much to do with prophecying, although there may be inspiration of sorts involved.
Further, in tradition, it seems that that Christmas tree goes back to an English missionary named Boniface who came to this wild country of Germany way back once and tried to get these wild Germans to quit worshipping the burning spruce tree. He conned them into decorating the spruce tree at Christmas time and shifted the worship a little. Then the tradition has it that Martin Luther is the first to use lighted candles on the Christmas tree -no doubt trying to burn down some Catholic church . Prince Albert, a German Prince who became Victoria's consort, is credited with taking the Christmas tree to England. The missionary cycle full circle. And German immigrants are credited with taking the tree to the States.
It is the tradition of the winter soltice, the return of light, the time of the year when the long winter nights begin to shorten, the time of the year when we no longer come to work in the dark and go home in the dark, therefore have to be increasingly careful as we approach the office building or leave the building because daylight will give us away to those beady eyes looking out of that fish bowl Comptroller's office over the entry-way.....It is the return of light which was picked up by the early Christians as the symbol for the birth of Christ , the light of the world.
To bring a bit of lasting light into the world of some handicapped children, we decided this year to dispense with exchanging gifts among ourselves and to take up a collection which was handsomely contributed to. This money will be given to the Wielandsaeim in Schliesbach , and we have asked that the money be used as needed for special happy occasions throughout the year, rather than just at Christmas time .
And now I turn this back to St. Donald of Schlierbach
- …
