Undergraduates 1981 St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico

This is the list of people who graduated from the Santa Fe, New Mexico campus of St. John's College Undergraduate Degree in 1981. From a notice that appeared in the New Mexican Newspaper, Friday May 22, 1981. There were 36 degrees awarded.

Added Tom Slakey, who wasn't on the newspaper list.

Names in Blue Bold have signed up with SJC Connect.

Names in Red Bold are deceased.


Bonnie Bassan, Oak Park. Ill .
Joshua Dan Berlow, Bethesda. Md .
Martha Reeves Billington, Las Cruces. N.M .
Peter Fletcher Brush, Rutland. Vt ;
Alison Carper, Alexandria, Va ;
Paul Richard Cheney, Santa Fe;
Geoffrey J. Comber, Annapolis, Md.;
Katrina Renee Crater, Denver;
Monica Lamont Creelman. Baltimore, Md.;
Corey Keith Crume, Tustin. Calf..
Thomas More Donnelly, Oak Park. Ill;
Catherine Dory Eisenbeis. Patagonia, Ariz.;
Lance MacConnell Forsythe, Tucson. Ariz ;
Armando Guadiana , Laredo, Texas;
Hazen Howard Hammel. Clarks Summit, Penn ;
Charles J. Harrison, Hyde Park, Ill ;
Terrilynn Hicks, Santa Fe;
Maria Cristina Ironside. King of Prussia. Penn .
Maha Khoury. Chicago. Ill :
Mark Lonsdale Langley, Tucson,
Lisa Lashley, San Marino. Calif ;
Elizabeth Morgan Mills. Solana Beach. Calif
Joseph Moore, Newport Calif.;
Barbara beth Obata. Mill Calif ;
Aimee Elsie Robson, Starkville. Miss .
William Geoffrey MT Rommel. Pewee Valley, Ky.;
Sabine Schweidt, Valley Stream. NY. ;
Tom Slakey
Michael Phillips Stanton. Miami. Fla.;
Karl William Stukenberg , Worthington. Ohio;
Carla Ruth Tangora, Phoenix, Ariz.;
Robert Edward Tangora. Austin, Ind ;
Michael Earl Urena, Alta Loma. Calif.
Michele Ann Varricchio, Allentown. Pa.;
John Jefferson Watkins Jr., Mount Ida , Ark ;
Jonathan Blake Weis, Mount Hermon,  Mass :
Zelda Zinn. Houston.

Bombs in the Basement - 7/7/16

Somehow I learned to make explosives in the basement when I was a kid. I can now see how the parents of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris might not have any idea what their kids were planning, as I managed to keep this under wraps from my Mom, who otherwise seemed to have extra-sensory powers able to divine what I was up to. I made small fertilizer bombs, utilizing the same ingredients that McVeigh used to blow up that building in Oklahoma. Mine were of course much smaller, the size of liquor bottle minis. If everything went as planned though they made a sizable bang. I enlisted the aid of my erstwhile partner and neighbor Alex. I remember going to hobby shops and general stores to get the ingredients and mashing everything together in the basement. I lit one off in the road in front of the shrink's house down the street, and I think it was that explosion that made him think I had mental issues. He managed to convince my Mom that I needed to see a shrink. If I had never made a homemade explosive and lit it off in front of the shrink's house, would my life have taken a different turn? Or at least if I had waited until July 4th to light them off, when such explosions might be more sanctioned? Why wasn't I commended for managing to cook something like that up all on my own, long before the internet made it easy to find stuff like that out?

Seven Jobs - 8/9/16

First seven jobs. I've had a lot of jobs. Might have left some out.

1) Stock room at Hahn's Shoes at Montgomery Mall. Hated it but it was interesting. There was an entire hierarchy of shoe salespeople.

2) Barker on the Olympic Bobsled ride in Ocean City Maryland. Great job. Unfortunately I got fired for saying "Casey's Games are rigged" over the mic when I thought no one was listening. Someone was always listening.

3) Wrangling 50lb bags of roasted coffee beans at Georgetown Coffee Tea and Spice. Not real memorable, but I learned a lot about high-end coffee years before Starbucks.

4) Telemarketer at Time-Life Books. Lasted (what was for me) a long time at this one. Wasn't good at sales and was moved to "Confirmation" where I did well. In "confirmation" we had to determine if the people who were sent books would actually pay for them. If they didn't, there was nothing Time-Life could do.

5) DJ at Latino gay disco in Santa Fe. Don't recall the name. I remember saying at the interview that I wasn't gay, and the owner said it didn't matter. Didn't last very long at this one.

6) Computer room tech at a TV ratings company in Santa Fe. Very early computer tech at this place- punch cards came in and were entered into the computer and then the data was sent over telephone wires to Chicago. Hard drives were the size of large car tires and were in a rack. I enjoyed this job, but it was seasonal, tied to the TV ratings season.

7) Cheese and meat case at The Winery Deli in Santa Fe. My first and last food handling job. Got fired for letting the restaurant make a sandwich from spoiled lox, eating too much of the goods, and sitting down on the job. Sold corned beef to Amy Irving.
Not listed: A bunch of florist jobs.

ICQ - 9/10/16

In the 90's it seemed like an innocent chat program was changing people's lives- it was ICQ. You could meet people on it, get to know them, become friends. People were meeting other people online, leaving marriages, moving to god knows where to meet god knows who. I remember becoming friends with this one woman online. She was moving to Northern New Mexico and I was living in Santa Fe at the time, and she wanted to meet people in Northern New Mexico. She was moving there from Georgia. So she moves to Northern New Mexico and we keep chatting but she's living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile I am meeting and sometimes visiting other women all over the state of New Mexico, making up for when I was a student living in the dorms at St. John's and never went anywhere. I wanted to see the state of New Mexico and if some woman was in some remote corner of the state I was game for driving hours to meet them. Anyway the woman from Georgia one day says she's met some guy on the chat program in Australia and she's leaving to go to Australia and I can come over to her trailer and take anything I want because she can't take anything to Australia with her except her son and a suitcase. So I drive out to her trailer and it is in the middle of nowhere but it is smack dab also in the middle of this incredible view, one of those New Mexican views where you can see to the horizon in every direction and it's very dramatic. So I fill my car with her book collection, everything except the recipe books, and she asks why I don't want the recipe books, and I say "Have you seen how many recipes there are online?". The son looks dubious about making yet another move, this time to friggin' Australia. So that was the first and last time we ever met in real life. I wonder what ever happened to her. Chat programs seemed like such a big deal in those days, but now I don't chat online much anymore. Probably because I'm married!

Onibar - 9/26/16

Another thing that you didn't know about me: I sleep-walked (slept-walked?) at one of the many sleep-away summer camps I went to. It might have been at Camp Onibar. "Onibar" was the name of the camp owners spelled backward, "Rabino". It was a Jewish kosher camp that my father had went to. For some reason I only went there one summer. Besides the sleepwalking the main thing that stands out about the camp were the huge baseball card "free-for-alls" where they would toss hundreds of baseball cards off the balconies of the cabins and all the campers would scurry around to pick them up. By the end of the summer I had a substantial baseball card collection, even though before that summer and afterwards I never gave a crap about baseball cards.

Food Prices - 10/26/16

Sometimes I will post a comment here that I posted on someone else's thread. Sometimes what other people post inspires a RANT. What inspired this rant was a bunch of posts about how food prices have remained stable since 1980, according to the Consumer Price Index of the US of A Gov't. According to a chart and data the guy posted, the price of food has increased modestly- if at all- over the years. I've heard other people say that too. I call BULLSHIT ON THAT! If you've been grocery shopping for the last 20 (or more) years, you've seen FOOD PRICES GO UP dramatically! Your gov't figures are massaged if you think that food prices are the same now as they were thirty or forty fucking years ago.

You simply can't compare the price of food in 1980 to the price of food today. You're comparing apples and oranges! Back in 1980, who was buying organic food? Who was buying artisanal cheeses and breads? Who was buying lattes at Starbux? The entire food landscape has changed. TheRE is a huge variety now in quality that just didn't exist then. Food just isn't "fungible" like gold- which is why gold makes sense as an economic indicator over time whereas food doesn't. An ounce of pure gold from 500 years ago or 50 years ago or 5 years ago from anywhere in the world is the same as an ounce bought tomorrow. There is an economic indicator called the "Big Mac Index" which is about as fungible as food gets. It compares the price of food around the world based on what it costs in US dollars to buy a Big Mac in those places. The idea being that a Big Mac is pretty much the same in Moscow, Paris, London, Johannesburg, Beijing, Baltimore, and wherever. But when it comes to sushi, for Pete's sake, there's sushi from Giant (which has improved immeasurably over the years BTW) to award-winning sushi from Matsuri here in Baltimore to sushi at Whole Foods (overpriced IMO) to sushi from the corner Chinese hole in the wall (you are basically risking your health with this stuff) to high-end sushi in Tokyo where one fish can go for tens of thousands of dollars. Hell, there are pizza slices that I wouldn't touch with a ten food pole which folks here in Baltimore scarf down by the hundreds every day to very good pizza at Bella Roma in Hampden which is excellent- AND IT'S the same price! But with the government food data figures, over the years they can change what food is in the basket to get any number they want. What could be more politically sensitive than the price of food?

Google Knows Where You Are - 11/2/16

After a bit of online research, it looks like my Nikon D5200 camera doesn't include location data in the exif file it attaches to each photo. Exif data is data generated by the camera that gives you info about each photo- when it was taken, what camera and settings were used, etc. Apparently newer cameras do have GPS data built in but the D5200 doesn't. However I noticed when I backed up the photos to Google Photos, Google was able to accurately pinpoint where each photo was taken. At first I thought the location data WAS in the exif file and I looked and looked but couldn't find it. Finally I did some research into the camera - the D5200 simply doesn't have location data built into the exif, like on a smartphone. Your smartphone does. So how does Google know where your photos were taken? Well from what I can find out, it compares where you were at the time when the photo was taken, using the data continuously broadcast by your phone, and that's how. It's kinda creepy. The way to test this would be to go on a short photo excursion and leave the cell phone in the car.