TDR Winter Carnival Issue

Just read the newest TDR, was a little late in getting around to it. Bravo, chaps! Another issue for the hollowed annals!

Joe Rago has his moments with words, I'll give him that much. And even a sense of self-deprecation, something he apparently does not ask from the rest of the writers. In fact, I might even have a thing or two in common with Joe, pardon, Mr. Rago. Sometimes I too find myself feeling a little alienated by technology. In the spirit of the Review, however, I'll quote only the worst moments from his 'celebration of rusticity':

Technology has always been a part of our College. Was it not founded as a civilizing enterprise, carved out, here in the woods? That took technology, though it had no pretensions: the axe, the saw, the hammer, the plow. The fields would not lie fallow... [My emphasis]

We have something called a ‘Digital Library’ here, which is not a real library but exists only in the ether of the machines...I think it is hopelessly complex, and I am often infuriated by my inability to perform basic tasks. I find myself in a dark and gloomy wood, astray, where the straight way is lost; and it is not easy to tell how savage wild that forest, how rough its growth--—the thought within me renews my fear. I have no Virgil. [My emphasis]

Baker Library is superior in every way to its swollen protuberance, Berry Library...Baker is full of life--—Macintyre called it “that intoxicating mixture of vellum, paper, and dust”—--while Berry is sterile, dismal, mechanical, gray. The elegance of Baker communicates the best of history and humanity; Berry is a flip postmodern sendoff, a sly, desperate joke. Berry is many things, but most of all it is a computer. Baker is not.

I think that last passage might actually motivate me to write something I've been putting off for years now, a defense of Berry against all those vociferous people who seem to favor Dartmouth's stuffy neo-faux-Gregorian style.

The times they are a-changin', Joe. Deal!