Op-Ed: Calendar Wars

My wife and I are writers and though I have enjoyed what some might term more professional success (my work has appeared in a number of prestigious publications with sophisticated readership including, in autumn 2006, a letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books), Suzy is a talented woman in her own right.

We share an office in our converted Canadian farmhouse on the non-existant border between Maine and Vermont. For some time, my wife and I have been receiving alumni calendars from our respective alma maters and this led to some friction when I noticed that Suzy was consigning my calendar to the laundry room wall (partially hidden behind an ungainly wardrobe) while placing hers prominently above our desks.

Suzy is a graduate of Bowdoin and I attended Middlebury. At first glance, these institutions strike one as rather similar. Each is a liberal arts college in northern New England with approximately 2,000 undergraduates who tend to hail from the Boston area. Each was founded near the turn of the 19th century, has a student/faculty ratio of roughly 9:1 and boasts an endowment of approximately $700 million.

In point of fact, the two colleges are radically different. I have spread before me the current Middlebury alumni calendar, opened to February. A group of Middlebury Panthers (members of our nationally-ranked ski team) are enjoying mugs of alcohol-free yule grog around a roaring fire (I think I recognize the hearth of the Emma Willard House, a National Historic Landmark which serves as the admissions office).

Further perusal indicates that Chinese New Year falls on Valentine’s Day this year and that the intriguing celebration of Mawlid al Nabi occurs on Feb. 26.

The featured February image for Bowdoin is a hockey rink (empty). That the Bowdoin College mascot is a polar bear may explain, in part, the absence of any athletes from the photo. Though Suzy is defensive on this score, I think most fair-minded folk will concur that such a creature is faintly ridiculous.

I do know that when we met for the first time on Nantucket, Suzy was ecstatic about my sleek, Panther-like physique and I wondered if her frail, puny Bowdoin boyfriend was representative of that college as a whole.

Of course, attractive individuals attend Bowdoin (Suzy is one such), but I can’t help but note the absence of humans in the Bowdoin calendar. I guess what makes Middlebury so special, beyond being rated #4 in the current U.S.News and World Report list of liberal arts colleges (Bowdoin is 6th), beyond Old Stone Row (consisting of the three oldest buildings on campus: Old Chapel, Painter Hall and Starr Hall, which are displayed on the May and July pages of this year’s calendar), beyond the fact that such diverse luminaries as Frost and Marquand taught at the College’s renowned Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, is the people.

My brother, who matriculated at Bates and ultimately graduated from Colby, asks, “Aren’t the affluent, smiling blond people at Middlebury the same as those at Bowdoin?” No, Timothy, they’re not. It’s the very quality of Middlebury laughter, vivacity, and joie de vivre that sets the College apart.

It goes without saying that Middlebury’s setting is also nonpareil. I was therefore understandably taken aback to hear Suzy recently venture that “Bowdoin is far prettier in the winter.” Since that particular season lasts ten-and-a-half months on each campus, I took her comment to mean that Bowdoin is perpetually more beautiful than Middlebury. Thus ensued the most protracted spat of our marriage.

As we entered our fifth week of mutually-enforced silent treatment, my wife and I agreed to objectively evaluate each month from both calendars and to display in our office the most striking image of the two.

Unsurprisingly, Suzy found eleven months of this year’s Bowdoin calendar superior to Middlebury’s (she ceded me August, which features a Bowdoin food service worker wearing a hearing aid).

Timothy says Suzy and I should just be grateful we graduated debt-free from costly colleges, that we had the privilege of attending small classes in gorgeous surroundings, and that our degrees helped us land jobs directly after commencement. Suzy says we should just be grateful Timothy visits once every four years. I’m inclined to agree.

I know all this sounds silly to some, but the 90 percent of you who attended institutions like ours and still live within 125 miles of your campus know how important such matters are. Even the remaining 10 percent who are foreign or come from California (and are, therefore, essentially foreign) realize it’s the small things in life that count.

Wasn’t it Mies van der Rohe who said: “God is in the details?” Perhaps he was even behind a lectern at Bread Loaf when he uttered the words.

The following images all grace Middlebury alumni calendars from the past three years: stone walls, maple syrup, sleigh bells, fields of wildflowers and white picket fences. All of these resonate. But a deserted hockey rink north of Portland? Please.