Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Oberlin has art too

In Slaughterhouse-Five, "so it goes" is said after every death.

Gifford Doxsee taught Middle East History at Ohio University. Doxsee was a very polite man, open, and friendly man.  On the first day of class, he introduced himself. The clam juice company was his family's. He thought grade inflation was a problem. He had taught at the American University of Beirut.  Since news coverage in America was local beyond real importance, everyone in the class would be subscribed to the Christian Science Monitor.  He went to the Episcopal church that was surrounded by the campus, and next door to a restaurant, on top of Morton Hill.  He would tell his classes, Vonnegut was true. They had been prisoners of war together in Dresden.

In Oberlin, by the post office (built under FDR & the New Deal), and the library, both very near campus, there is a mural with bicyclists riding on a main street. Saw this detail within the mural, a movie poster of Charlie Chaplin's A Dog's Life 1918. 
A large multi-scene mural is on a wall that faces a large shared parking lot adjacent to campus. This is a portion. Oberlin has some albino squirrels, and a music conservatory.
On the entrance to Fairchild Chapel/Bosworth hall there is a quote from Esdras: [Women are strongest:] but above all things Truth beareth away the victory — 1 Esdras 3.12,  Greek Esdras, Esdras A.  This is canonical in the Orthodox churches; in Catholic churches it is part of Pseudepigrapha; and among Protestants it is part of the Apocrypha. 
In that same parking lot mentioned earlier, there is an empty Thai restaurant, with three murals. I suppose they served chicken, but dragon?

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