Single Entity

The following may be one of my new favorite poems. I'm not sure, but I keep returning to it out of interest. It's by Robert Hass, from his collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. It is the first poem in the collection, which is part of the reason I find it so interesting, along with its brevity and layers of complexity.

Iowa, January

In the long winter nights, a farmer's dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrows.

Another thing I particularly like is the title of the last poem in the collection: September, Inverness. The mirroring just makes me happy.

I wanted to ramble about sewing. Because, truthfully, right now I would really like to be sewing something for myself. In fact, I probably would be sewing now if Walmart had any decent fabric for clothes. But they don't. And I have so far managed to resist the temptation of buying fabric online. Although not very well. And I just got my bank statement, and I have about a hundred more dollars than I thought I had....so I might get some fabric to make a dress. We'll see.

This is the dress I want to make. The pattern is mine, and I have fabric at home to make it -- big purple flowers with yellow spots on a black and white ground. I would make the version on the right. I call it the "Nancy Drew Dress." And -- get this -- it has POCKETS! I also want to make one of these dresses. And...maybe these shorts. I have finished all the projects that I brought back to school with me after break, so now I can only haunt the fabric and pattern websites. And haunt I do!

Fact: I just got done reorganizing my bookshelf, and I was extremely close to giving all you readers a list of what was on said bookshelf. Be glad I didn't. There are about 15 books per shelf, six shelves.

Instead, I'm going to ramble about something that I meant to ramble about a long time ago.

On February 27th, 1949, a spark in a fireplace in the oldest building on my campus turned into an inferno, killing nine students and becoming the worst tragedy in the campus' history. Years worth of accumulated dust in an old, boarded up chimney allowed the fire to spread quickly between the ceiling of one story and the floor of the next, in a building that housed almost one-quarter of the students. It was the wee hours of a Sunday morning, after a dance; all the girls had returned to the lent rooms of faculty and other chaperones. None were reported missing, though campus legend says that there were girls illicitly in the building, who died that night, and that the college denies their existence to keep down the scandal.


The 1827 building, Old Kenyon, was truly gutted, but it was rebuilt in just over a year -- completed for the opening of the '50-'51 school year, fully modernized, of course. The original stones from the building were so thick that the contractor numbered each stone, cut it in half, and used each half to rebuild the north and south walls! (The photo above is looking at the north wall -- note the figures silhouetted against the flames at the bottom edge.)

There are reports of selfless bravery that night, of students going into the building repeatedly to find and rescue incapacitated comrades, exposing themselves to third degree burns to pull one more person out of the flames. One student on the third floor hung onto the iron fire ladder, four feet from the window, and caught fellow students as they leapt toward him, so they could then descend the ladder in safety. The president of the college himself went into the building to search for his students.

After the fire, six students were missing. Two had died leaping from the third floor, with all stairwells full of flame, and the last victim died at the local hospital from his burns. The nearby woods were combed for evidence of the six missing boys, in the hopes that they had survived the jump from the third floor. Fragments of bone were found in the rubble of the building, corresponding to where each had lived. It is believed that they died of smoke inhalation before even waking up. Most of the victims lived on the second or third floor of center section of the building, where they had the least warning and were trapped the soonest, asthe fire started in a first floor lounge of the center section. One set of parents refused to believe that the remains found belonged to their son, and refused to take them. He is now buried in the campus cemetary.

There are reports of ghosts in the building, only seen from the knees up, as the foundation was raised 18 inches during rebuilding (from the floor below you can see thier feet dangling from the ceiling). Some have reported being shaken awake, with voices yelling about a fire.

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, which seemed to go woefully unnoticed by the student population, though the alumni bulliten and other publications commemerated it, which is why I have gathered all these reports to file here.

In Memory:
Ernest Ahwajee
Edward Hyman Brout
Albert John Lewis
Martin Elliott Mangel
Jack Boland McDonald
Marc Spencer Peck
George Leon Pincus
Stephen Mahlon Shepard
Colin Macrae Woodworth

Sources:
The Special Collections Page: there is usually a video of the fire on this page, though it seems to not be working right now.
Student Documentary: This was chilling, and touching. Be warned, the editing is occassionally heavy, and the video begins to play when the page is opened. The volume is rather variable as well. Watch it anyway.
Alumni Bulliten: A look back, after 60 years.
Alumni Bulliten: Another look back.
Ghost Stories: Scroll down about half way.
More Ghosts
Memories of the Fire
A Nurse's Tale: an account by a girl who visited for the dance that night, and served as a nurse to many of the injured, including one of the boys who died at the hospital
The Victims