For some reason, I had in mind that today I would post the Campus Calendar for this week in 1955. I find these things endlessly fascinating, especially as I’ve come to understand them better, and these days I slowly dole them out to myself as a special treat. When I went to pull this one out of the box, though, I was immediately distracted by the events of the week of May 2, a couple of weeks out:
Zoom in for a look–there’s quite a bit of interest there. What caught my attention in particular, though, were all the events on Friday and Saturday in honor of the visiting duchesses. I quickly discovered that these were Rondelet duchesses, not, as I had fervently hoped, European royalty. I believe, although with no firm degree of certainty, that a dance called Rondelet still exists at Rice, but I would guess that it has little or nothing in common with this grand event. A bit of digging turned up the program for the 1955 dance, which was held at Lakeside Country Club. This too is well worth your time, as several very familiar names turn up:
And the Thresher had a full page of photos of both visiting and local Rondelet royalty. This was a very big deal.
Those lectures remind me of George Fuermann’s old column in The Houston Post in which he’d list the more arcane lectures given at the local Institute, and some of them were pretty hard to fathom from their titles. BTW, where is the USRR?
Interesting. I’m pretty sure Sandy Havens was in those Shakespearian productions mentioned. I’ve heard him mention them; perhaps he will speak up. In British usage, there is no such address as “Your Highness” or “Their Highness.” A sovereign is addressed as “Your Majesty,” and a prince or princess is addressed as “Your Royal Highness.” A duke or duchess is addressed as “Your Grace” and I think that is exclusive to dukes, duchesses and archbishops (!)
It’s nice to see Burt & Deedee McMurtry among the junior class royalty. Tomorrow (Tuesday) night a book on the history of the iconic Silicon Valley comany, ROLM, launches at Kepler’s book store in Palo Alto (http://www.keplers.com/book/9781937110628). Burt was largely responsible for attracting its four Rice-grad founders to the Bay Area. (You can read about it via Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, starting at page 3: http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Up-Silicon-Valley-Cultural/dp/1937110621 )
The UPS guy just dropped it at my front door! My plan is to go out to the back terrace, sit down and commence reading.
Rondelet was already not such a big deal when I came to Rice in 1967, but I think probably not too many years before it still was.