Raccoons Rule at the Old Amphitheater!

There’s a great place to take a walk between classes, particularly on a cool Autumn afternoon; it’s the road behind the gym, past the amphitheater, and down a winding paved path until it ends in a sudden drop off where some excavation has taken place in times past.

On this path you are surrounded by trees, and even though you are technically on campus, there is no sight of anything but forest primeval.

It has to be one of the college’s greatest assets; not many schools have such a resource on their campus.

The Bells of St. National’s, or Quasimodo, is that you?

The bells that ring each quarter hour, half hour, and hour at the college keep everyone well notified and running on time. Students know exactly when the last second arrives to be in class without receiving a late mark, and faculty know exactly when to pounce on an apprehensive class with an armload of freshly printed exams. Those bells are an audible ruler that measures our time on campus, and you could say that it is, if not comforting, at least somewhat reassuring in the sense that we always know what time it is, give or take ten minutes or so on either side of the national standard “ brought to you by radio transmission from the atomic cesium clock at Fort Collins, Colorado”.

That being said, there is another function the bells perform that is open to debate, if not outright contention; this being the playing of music each day before noon and before six in the evening. The music consists primarily of Sixties and Seventies songs of a Lawrence Welk variety, such as “Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago, “Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head” (cutely enough played on rainy days), the theme from The Godfather (haven’t really figured out the symbolism on that one), and of course, at Christmas, “The Little Drummer Boy”. The bells perform these masterpieces one note at a time, as if someone were playing a keyboard with one finger, which indeed may be the case.