From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Jan 8 01:12:56 2010 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 20:12:56 -0500 Subject: [sticklist] - VF Staff Departures Message-ID: <8FE0012A-E73F-4923-ACF0-82D10EABE7B8@infowarrior.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 All, As of this evening, I understand the following VF personnel have, or shortly shall, be departing from VFMAC employment at this time, the midpoint of the academic year: COL Rudy Klein, VFMAC Mr. John Linihan MSG Michael Groover, USA (Ret) One of the Tacs for Field Music (name not known yet) Several Academy Faculty (specific names not known yet) All the Admin Assistants in the Academy and College I also understand there is a declared reduction in the hours to be worked at key staff positions. More to follow as it develops. Rick Forno '90 '92C Sticklist Administrator -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 9.9.0.397 Comment: Rick's Current Public Key @ http://infowarrior.org/pgpkey.txt wj8DBQFLRoabKWZyO29ebPYRAq00AJ9BIkkZF8LE+2rB5VM8ILHh1g/wWQCfa7Mu 7JS/Nhv7YdrJoA8iXkVDE4A= =BN7r -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Jan 10 16:48:04 2010 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:48:04 -0500 Subject: [sticklist] - VFMAC Presidential Search Notice Message-ID: <103D0DE0-C775-476C-BF91-5BE354222518@infowarrior.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This "head-hunter" ad appears on the home page of Wickenden Associates. The deadline for applications is 22 February. http://www.wickenden.com/searches.html President, Valley Forge Military Academy & College, Wayne, PA Founded in 1928, Valley Forge features an all-male college-preparatory boarding school and a coeducational two-year college located 15 miles west of Philadelphia. Valley Forge is one institution with two distinct academic units: Valley Forge Military Academy is a residential learning environment serving students in grades 7 through postgraduate. Valley Forge Military College is a two-year college for students seeking to transfer to a four-year college, university, or service academy. This year, the college is educating 334 cadets, an increase of 52% from last year. The Army ROTC Early Commissioning Program (ECP), one of only five offered in the United States and the only program in the Northeast, has experienced a 48% increase in enrollment from 50 to 74 cadets. These Cadets will earn their commission as Second Lieutenants in the U.S. Army after only two years at VFMC. Search Status: Prospective candidates should contact Wickenden Associates ASAP. Application deadline is February 22. Semifinalist Interviews will be conducted March 6 and 7. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 9.9.0.397 Comment: Rick's Current Public Key @ http://infowarrior.org/pgpkey.txt wj8DBQFLSgTGKWZyO29ebPYRAu2fAJoCI+5o1jRirPcGVrBxuVfK1qFe7ACgjfht bcwiyplj1ekx97r67rTKq4U= =39WC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Jan 18 23:31:11 2010 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:31:11 -0500 Subject: [sticklist] - Report on AABOD Quarterly Briefing Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The following is being reposted on behalf of COL Dave Haught '77 '79C, who attended last weekend's AABOD briefing. It also appears on Continental Online (http://continentalonline.org/) under the 'Upcoming Events' forum thread. Cheers, Rick Forno '90 '92C Sticklist Administrator - ---------------- Summary of Quarterly Alumni Association Board of Directors (AABOD) Meeting – 16 January 2010 Roughly 25 alumni and administration staff attended the meeting. The meeting was in three parts; remarks by Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Acting President, the quarterly meeting, and AABOD Executive Session (which I did not attend). Main points: • Mr. Floyd provided an update on activities since the resignation of Mr. McGeorge. Mr. Floyd’s remarks were centered on a theme of moving forward. • Current economic reality and employee performance issues were reasons cited for the recent reduction in force of approximately 10%. Mr. Floyd assured the alumni that the reductions were conducted in a compassionate manner and with dignity and respect for the affected employees. He also emphasized that the changes must be seamless to the cadets. • Next President: o The Board of Trustees has hired Wickenden Associates (http://www.wickenden.com ) to lead the search for the next President. Desired credentials are being finalized and should be complete within the next week. Members of the AABOD, staff, and faculty have been included in the development of the criteria. o The Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States – AMCSUS (http://www.amcsus.org) is also going to be included in the process. o The next President does not necessarily have to be a retired general or flag officer. The next President will need to be one who understands the mission of Valley Forge and the world of higher education. Some sort of military background in the candidate’s background certainly would be of value. o The search committee includes Mr. Bill Floyd '63, Mr. Dan Reavy '77, Mr. Bob Bacine '60, Mr. Mike Nolen '66, Dr. Frederick Breitenfeld '99H, and Col Doyle. Ideally, the selection and hiring process will be completed by June. o Leading Valley Forge will be very complex – it will require a great leader. • Related to the search and selection for the next President is the status of the Superintendent, Col Doyle. Col Doyle has agreed to remain in his current position until this summer in order to facilitate transition. The board anticipates a parallel selection and hiring of a new Superintendent. • When asked what the alumni can do to help, Mr. Floyd called for the alumni to unite. The Board expressed an interest in reconciliation and wants the alumni to come back. However, according to Floyd there has been no clear offer of contrition by those alumni designated as PNG. The board was emphatic that it will not tolerate attacks on personnel or the school; and they will not recognize or embrace any who do. • Col Doyle discussed the challenges with respect to accreditation, specifically the pressure the school is under to have greater separation between the academy and college. It boils down to federal funding lines are clean with a college; not so with a high school. • During the open Alumni Association portion of the meeting, the AABOD discussed how they were getting better connected to the administration. Discussion on this point centered on the formation of an “oversight council”, manned by Dr. Breitenfeld, Mr. Floyd, and Mr. Banco. • The AABOD asked members of the alumni to use the AA and AABOD as conduit to the administration. • Naturally, the need for cash is omnipresent. The AABOD did describe an initiative where Mr. Spizuoco is developing a list of projects where alumni can help. The list is being developed with input from the staff and faculty and will be presented to the administration for approval to ensure it reflects its priorities and needs. - ---------------- The above notes are an attempt to capture the salient points to inform those who could not attend or view the meeting online. What is not captured are the body language, emotion, and atmosphere of the meeting. My thoughts and observations: • First, we should express gratitude for the leadership Mr. Floyd is demonstrating as Acting President during these very challenging times. I can’t imagine the enormity of his tasks or walking in his shoes. • The times ahead for our school are indeed very challenging and will be difficult. We, the alumni, should look for ways to provide constructive assistance, input, and advice. • The mission of Valley Forge will not change (as declared during the meeting), but the “how” likely will, consistent with economic, academic, and societal trends. • There needs to be reconciliation between the dissatisfied members of the alumni and the Board of Trustees. In my humble opinion, there is an opportunity to reconcile, but that opportunity wanes with each passing day. And, with each passing day, so rises the unnecessary expenditure of time, resources, and emotion. • As the saying goes, “it takes two to tango.” It would seem prudent for a meeting where all parties can discuss their differences and jointly develop a way ahead. As pointed out by one attending alumnus, it doesn’t cost anything to reconcile. It seems to me that what’s best for our school and its future is a united and participative alumni – a key and essential stakeholder group that we want and that the new President needs in his corner. • Finally, one attending alum stated that alumni can always help by offering time, talent, and treasure. He went on to further say that trust should be the 4th “T” and included in ways we can help. I thought his comment was insightful and one we should all strive for. Respectfully submitted, Dave Haught 77/79C -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 9.9.0.397 Comment: Rick's Current Public Key @ http://infowarrior.org/pgpkey.txt wj8DBQFLVO9BKWZyO29ebPYRAr5HAJsETECHSm+Zp3y3lVGrSZqXKSdUUACfZGE9 I4BAap25yebpdRNINegXTv8= =GL8U -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Jan 28 19:33:53 2010 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:33:53 -0500 Subject: [sticklist] - JD Salinger TAPS Message-ID: <8552CB21-300B-49BB-A890-A977A3CD97DC@infowarrior.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 ???Catcher in the Rye??? author J.D. Salinger dies Writer who shunned the world he shocked died in his isolated home at 91 The Associated Press updated 1:38 p.m. ET, Thurs., Jan. 28, 2010 http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35127071/ns/today-today_books/?GT1=43001 NEW YORK - J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91. Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H. Immortal anti-hero "The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured selection, advised that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the novel will be "a source of wonder and delight ??? and concern." Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Holden soon became American literature's most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn. The novel's sales are astonishing ??? more than 60 million copies worldwide ??? and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams ??? to never grow up. Salinger was writing for adults, but teenagers from all over identified with the novel's themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, not to mention the luck of having the last word. "Catcher" presents the world as an ever-so-unfair struggle between the goodness of young people and the corruption of elders, a message that only intensified with the oncoming generation gap. Novels from Evan Hunter's "The Blackboard Jungle" to Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," movies from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "The Breakfast Club," and countless rock 'n' roll songs echoed Salinger's message of kids under siege. One of the great anti-heroes of the 1960s, Benjamin Braddock of "The Graduate," was but a blander version of Salinger's narrator. The cult of "Catcher" turned tragic in 1980 when crazed Beatles fan Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon, citing Salinger's novel as an inspiration and stating that "this extraordinary book holds many answers." By the 21st century, Holden himself seemed relatively mild, but Salinger's book remained a standard in school curriculums and was discussed on countless Web sites and a fan page on Facebook. Other works Salinger's other books don't equal the influence or sales of "Catcher," but they are still read, again and again, with great affection and intensity. Critics, at least briefly, rated Salinger as a more accomplished and daring short story writer than John Cheever. The collection "Nine Stories" features the classic "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the deadpan account of a suicidal Army veteran and the little girl he hopes, in vain, will save him. The novel "Franny and Zooey," like "Catcher," is a youthful, obsessively articulated quest for redemption, featuring a memorable argument between Zooey and his mother as he attempts to read in the bathtub. "Everyone who works here and writes here at The New Yorker, even now, decades after his silence began, does so with a keen awareness of J.D. Salinger's voice," said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, where many of Salinger's stories appeared. "In fact, he is so widely read in America, and read with such intensity, that it's hard to think of any reader, young and old, who does not carry around the voices of Holden Caulfield or Glass family members." "Catcher," narrated from a mental facility, begins with Holden recalling his expulsion from a Pennsylvania boarding school for failing four classes and for general apathy. He returns home to Manhattan, where his wanderings take him everywhere from a Times Square hotel to a rainy carousel ride with his kid sister, Phoebe, in Central Park. He decides he wants to escape to a cabin out West, but scorns questions about his future as just so much phoniness. "I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?" he reasons. "The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question." "The Catcher in the Rye" became both required and restricted reading, periodically banned by a school board or challenged by parents worried by its frank language and the irresistible chip on Holden's shoulder. "I'm aware that a number of my friends will be saddened, or shocked, or shocked-saddened, over some of the chapters of 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all of my best friends are children," Salinger wrote in 1955, in a short note for "20th Century Authors." "It's almost unbearable to me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach," he added. Salinger also wrote the novellas "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour ??? An Introduction," both featuring the neurotic, fictional Glass family which appeared in much of his work. His last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1928," ran in The New Yorker in 1965. By then he was increasingly viewed like a precocious child whose manner had soured from cute to insufferable. "Salinger was the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school," Norman Mailer once commented. In 1997, it was announced that "Hapworth" would be reissued as a book ??? prompting a (negative) New York Times review. The book, in typical Salinger style, didn't appear. In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor Jerry Burt said the author had told him years earlier that he had written at least 15 unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home. "I love to write and I assure you I write regularly," Salinger said in a brief interview with the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate in 1980. "But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it." ???Ego of cast iron??? Jerome David Salinger was born Jan. 1, 1919, in New York City. His father was a wealthy importer of cheeses and meat and the family lived for years on Park Avenue. Like Holden, Salinger was an indifferent student with a history of trouble in various schools. He was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy at age 15, where he wrote at night by flashlight beneath the covers and eventually earned his only diploma. In 1940, he published his first fiction, "The Young Folks," in Story magazine. He served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, carrying a typewriter with him most of the time, writing "whenever I can find the time and an unoccupied foxhole," he told a friend. Returning to New York, the lean, dark-haired Salinger pursued an intense study of Zen Buddhism but also cut a gregarious figure in the bars of Greenwich Village, where he astonished acquaintances with his proficiency in rounding up dates. One drinking buddy, author A.E. Hotchner, would remember Salinger as the proud owner of an "ego of cast iron," contemptuous of writers and writing schools, convinced that he was the best thing to happen to American letters since Herman Melville. Praise and condemnation Holden first appeared as a character in the story "Last Day of the Last Furlough," published in 1944 in the Saturday Evening Post. Salinger's stories ran in several magazines, especially The New Yorker, where excerpts from "Catcher" were published. The finished novel quickly became a best seller and early reviews were blueprints for the praise and condemnation to come. The New York Times found the book "an unusually brilliant first novel" and observed that Holden's "delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with the adult delinquencies with which he is confronted." But the Christian Science Monitor was not charmed. "He is alive, human, preposterous, profane and pathetic beyond belief," critic T. Morris Longstreth wrote of Holden. "Fortunately, there cannot be many of him yet. But one fears that a book like this given wide circulation may multiply his kind - as too easily happens when immortality and perversion are recounted by writers of talent whose work is countenanced in the name of art or good intention." Seeking seclusion The world had come calling for Salinger, but Salinger was bolting the door. By 1952, he had migrated to Cornish. Three years later, he married Claire Douglas, with whom he had two children, Peggy and Matthew, before their 1967 divorce. (Salinger was also briefly married in the 1940s to a woman named Sylvia; little else is known about her). Meanwhile, he was refusing interviews, instructing his agent to forward no fan mail and reportedly spending much of his time writing in a cement bunker. Sanity, apparently, could only come through seclusion. "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf- mutes," Holden says in "Catcher." "That way I wouldn't have to have any ... stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made." Although Salinger initially contemplated a theater production of "Catcher," with the author himself playing Holden, he turned down numerous offers for film or stage rights, including requests from Billy Wilder and Elia Kazan. Bids from Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein also were rejected. Salinger became famous for not wanting to be famous. In 1982, he sued a man who allegedly tried to sell a fictitious interview with the author to a national magazine. The impostor agreed to desist and Salinger dropped the suit. Five years later, another Salinger legal action resulted in an important decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court refused to allow publication of an unauthorized biography, by Ian Hamilton, that quoted from the author's unpublished letters. Salinger had copyrighted the letters when he learned about Hamilton's book, which came out in a revised edition in 1988. In 2009, Salinger sued to halt publication of John David California's "60 Years Later," an unauthorized sequel to "Catcher" that imagined Holden in his 70s, misanthropic as ever. The curtain parts Against Salinger's will, the curtain was parted in recent years. In 1998, author Joyce Maynard published her memoir "At Home in the World," in which she detailed her eight-month affair with Salinger in the early 1970s, when she was less than half his age. She drew an unflattering picture of a controlling personality with eccentric eating habits, and described their problematic sex life. Salinger's alleged adoration of children apparently did not extend to his own. In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger's "Dreamcatcher" portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues. Ms. Salinger said she wrote the book because she was "absolutely determined not to repeat with my son what had been done with me." Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. URL: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35127071/ns/today-today_books/?GT1=43001 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 9.9.0.397 Comment: Rick's Current Public Key @ http://infowarrior.org/pgpkey.txt wj8DBQFLYeajKWZyO29ebPYRAtMRAJ9Z5vmxuTX4cocBaRk2XvlNC+poWgCffbFd bSWwLMByanhv59VmQ7kPYoY= =pWgT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----