Today was a dreary day on campus, cold, wet, and gray. It’s also the last day of the study period before finals begin and between these two things there were very few people about:
I don’t know whether this is paradoxical or not but this cold, damp, quiet day turned out to be the day I began to feel the weight of the long fall semester come off my shoulders and the anticipation of Christmas miraculously begin. How lucky we are to be here!
In 1971 Rice’s annual Christmas in the Chapel departed from the usual musical offerings. Instead of choral works the Rice Players presented W.H. Auden’s great long poem on the meaning of the Incarnation, For The Time Being, written during some of the bleakest days of 1942. I wish I had been there to see this:
Bonus:
I’ll bet Dr. Gardside performed a malevolently luscious Herod!
I had the same thought!
You are both correct about Garside as Herod; he was superb! Since then I have directed several other presentations of that work. I also re-read it every first Sunday of Advent. It is a powerful piece.
What a rich cast of Players. Ahhhhh….
I found that first photo very nostalgic, then realized it is because it dates from before the great hedge remodel in about 1981. So it’s the view I remember from my time at Rice.
Actually I took that yesterday so we have reached reversion to the state of the hedges pre-1981.
See-no-evil is peeking.
Someone’s office, 4th floor, Allen Center?
Yes, 4th floor Allen Center. I’ll leave the see-no-evil jokes to someone else.