This three-way discuss took place over Christmas vacation in their Grove Street home front room. Unfortunately, the conversation went in way too many directions to take accurate notes. This is a simple paraphrase and only scratches the surface. To bring you up to speed, the following may help:
John: 2004 BHS grad; 2008 University of Chicago, BA linguistics, minor in Slavic languages and literatures; May 2010 MA, Berkeley, linguistics; in Ph.D. program in linguistics, expects to be completed in May 2013.
Beth: 2006 BHS grad; 2010 Albion College, Michigan, BA in anthropology plus a BA in psychology; applying to grad programs in historical archaeology and museum studies.
Jen: 2006 BHS grad; 2010 Albion College, Michigan, BA music education, K-12, instrumental emphasis, piano minor. Student teaching fall of 2010, Chelsea, Michigan.
Until tonight, when was the last time the three of you were together?
Jen: In August when I moved to Jackson, Michigan.
What was your most expensive book in college?
Beth: A geology book cost $250. I sold it for half that.
Jen: I didn't buy books, but I bought lots of sheet music and CDs.
John: $155 for a Spanish textbook bundle. I never sold any of my books.
Jen: I don't read. I just have thousands of sheets of music.
Beth, what's your favorite period of archeological history?
Beth: Discovering the first contact of humans in North and South America.
John, what's your favorite language?
John: I don't really have a favorite language. My sub-field of linguistics is phonology, the study of sound.
Jen, how about your favorite composer, living and dead?
Jen: That would be Beethoven and Ingrid Michaelson.
Okay, so far for a good warm-up question. Now let's get into the good stuff. Beth, what's the best archeological myth going around these days?
Beth: Probably "When did people actually arrive in North America?"
Jen, what's the best musical myth?
Jen: How Beethoven died. They solved it. I saw a death lock of his hair. It was in a tiny little box. The display arrived in a secure vehicle. It was intense. No flash photos were allowed.
John, your turn - the top linguistic myth.
John: That there aren't 100 words for "snow" used by Eskimos.
You're kidding.
John: It's true.
To all three: Did you know any of this in high school?
No. No. No.
Did BHS prepare you well?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
What was your favorite food in the school cafeteria?
John: Taco freakin' salad.
Beth and Jen together: Fiestada pizza. We ate it a lot.
What was your worst-ever grade in school?
John: A C plus in history in fifth grade. It was in Kalida.
Beth: A 2.7 in Spanish my senior year of college.
Jen: Fall of my freshman year, Calculus I a 1.7. That was like a D. But I didn't have any math for a year before that.
Who is the most famous person you've ever met?
John: When I was at the University of Chicago there was a book signing by Madeline Albright.
Beth: I met Jack Hannah when I was 8 at the Columbus Zoo.
Jen: When I was in Europe I visited Beethoven's birthplace. And I stood in the gazebo from The Sound of Music in Salzburg.
How often do you text each other:
John: I don't text. I use Face book to communicate.
Jen and Beth: We use it on a daily basis.
What's your goal in life?
Jen: To teach.
John: To be a professor and teach.
Beth: I don't want to teach. I'd rather conduct my own research or be a curator.
What's the oldest object you own?
Beth: A book from the 1830s and some shards of pottery much older.
John: A teapot from World War II that was made in Japan, I think.
Jen: I have a Beethoven pianoforte book.
(To Jen): Will every answer tonight involve Beethoven?
Beth: Yes.
John, what would you call the dialect in Bluffton?
John: It's the North Midland dialect. Here's a specific Ohio feature. In Bluffton we'd say, "The house needs painted." People in other areas of the U.S. might say, "The house needs painting."
Jen: In Albion if I said, "The house needs painted," people would laugh at me.
Tell me your thoughts about growing up in Bluffton.
Beth: It's simpler and less busy.
Jen: It's a place where you can trust people.
John: I've learned from Bluffton that you should never underestimate the value of a good reputation.
If you were going to write a novel, what might be the plot?
Beth: It would be that if you play a musical score backwards it would show that Beethoven found some maps and the location of Atlantis buried beneath Vienna.
Who shot Kennedy?
John: Lee Harvey Oswald.
Positively?
Positively.
From here the conversation roamed from the theories of when humans actually arrived in the New World, why the Incas didn't invent the wheel, although it was used in their toys, how to speak Elfin, and some more comments about Beethoven. We hope to pick up on where this conversation left off the next time the three of them get together.
Check out another photo of the three by opening the attachment at the bottom of of this story.
