A reader commented critically on my post “A personal note on the Ides of March.” He asked a rhetorical question: “Why should I be interested in this?”
I write about what interests me and hope it interests others. When a post is personal in nature I try to let the reader know in some fashion on the home page, as I did in the heading of that post. It should be easy to skip what you don’t find of interest or skip everything I write.
I intend to post two or three more items of a personal nature this week, starting tomorrow. I will flag them as “Personal and confidential” and indicate the subject. I want to make it easy for readers to skip these posts.
I am working on one keyed to the school librarian at my high school alma mater. Her name was Cornelia Kaercher. I asked the St. Paul Academy alumni office if it could provide me any information about Miss Kaercher and promptly heard back from Kate Bogdan. Ms. Bogdan kindly dredged up a copy of a page on departing staff from a 1968 issue of the student newspaper at the time (Now and Then) with an intriguing profile of Miss Kaercher as she headed into retirement after 14 years at the school.
The profiles of departing staff are unattributed, but they must have been written by John Bratnober, my classmate and incoming editor of the Now and Then. John died in 2006 at the age of 55. I didn’t know John well, but this note from his obituary fits with what I knew of him as a classmate: “John was intensely interested in music, art, photography, and theater.” I didn’t know this: “He was a devoted follower of the philosophy of Wilhelm Reich.”
More to come.
