Thursday, September 24, 2015

Post 3073 - Acadia Questions

Hi. So, we are back from the opening concert of the 2015 Deep Roots Festival. The concert tonight featured Old Man Luedecke and Matt Andersen. Well, Matt and a bunch of his friends, including the Hupman Brothers and others. Excellent show.

We sat up in the balcony at Convocation Hall at Acadia University in Wolfville. I had only been there maybe one other time since I graduated from there in '88. And I am sure I had never been in that section   of the venue until this evening.

It gave us a unique vantage point. We were able to look over at the huge chandelier suspended from the  ceiling. At that angle I could see something I had never been able to see before. On one of the lights on the chandelier was "'25".

It is a tradition of the graduating class at Acadia to purchase some kind of gift for the university. Because, of course, you work your rear end off to get your degree and spend many thousands of dollars doing so. And, sure, you owe them a gift at the end of all that effort. Anyway, if you walk around the campus you will see benches that have a label on them stating they're a gift of the graduating class of whatever year. If you look atop Convocation Hall at the clock, you will see that I believe two of the faces that instead of "7" it says "77". This means that the clock, or at least the faces, was a gift of the graduating class of 1977.

It is not hard to surmise, therefore, that the chandelier was a gift of the graduating class of 1925, a full 90 years ago.

I graduated in 1988. Do not ask me what we bought for the university. It's not like anybody asked me what I thought.

This gets me to wonder: is there a list somewhere of all of the gifts of all the graduating classes going back to when this tradition started, which I now know was at least 90 years ago? Are all of these gifts still extant? Did someone destroy the gift from the graduating class of 1943, for instance? Did some urban renewal-bent university president a long time ago cause to be razed some university property, part of which would have contained the gift from some long-ago graduating class, and maybe the president didn't even realize it, because he didn't know that the gift was even there? Were some of these gifts in such a state that they had to be torn down or ripped out or something? Do people even know what all these gifts were, and where they are? Who would know what these gift were, or are, or where they were, or are?

I over think too much. I should stop now.Hi. So, we are back from the opening concert of the 2015 Deep Roots Festival. The concert tonight featured Old Man Luedecke and Matt Andersen. Well, Matt and a bunch of his friends, including the Hupman Brothers and others. Excellent show.

Friday the festival picks up at noon. Guess I should turn in so I can be ready for everything.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

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