The last big thing on the schedule was for the evening, the reunion dinners. Traditionally the 25th reunion gets a big formal banquet at the upscale restaurant and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's class missed that because of the pandemic. At the time, she remembers, the administration said they wouldn't miss the banquet-hall banquet, they'd just hold it on the 30th. And, indeed, whereas ordinarily only every fifth year through to the 50th reunion gets a special designated event, this year the 55th reunion got its banquet.
So the Class of '96 got put in the campus's athletic center, in a meeting room on the top floor set between the basketball court and the swimming pool --- one window onto the basketball court was open so we could have jumped out into the bleachers --- and catered by the campus food service. It wasn't well-attended, either, which maybe justifies dropping it into the least space available.
Also, weirdly, while there was a cash bar there was not, like, soft drinks available. This is especially weird because up until shortly after bunnyhugger's time there Earlham College had been a dry campus, a rule taken seriously enough that it produced a scandal when it turned out the college president's house had some alcohol for entertaining guests. There was some iced tea at least; bizarrely, there wouldn't be coffee.
They did, though, have a copy of the Class of '96 yearbook, so I could see bunnyhugger's photograph. It was a large one, showing her at the table in the seminar room. She was surprised to see it had her listed under her birth name, rather than the nickname she used so rigorously through college that when she reverted back to her birth name friends gave her a hard time for it. She wasn't sure just when she had chosen to put aside her college name and it was at least as far back as Picture Submission Deadline. Or she felt a Permanent Record like yearbooks needed more gravitas.
A little into the night --- where the football player mentioned earlier was entertaining everyone as though the evening's success were his responsibility --- someone came over to say the president was trying to get to all the class reunions and had a few minutes to take four or five questions. bunnyhugger and I independently thought this meant the class president, and no, this was the college president. (bunnyhugger had the advantage of remembering the school didn't have class presidents; being a Quaker school, one might have a convener but not a president.)
Anyway, the four or five questions spun out of control as the first person to ask anything decided to ask several follow-ups, mostly about the existential threat the school faces with collapsing enrollment and the endowment dwindling. (At an appeal for donations later the appealant claimed only three percent of the Class of '96 had donated anything, which as I work out the class sizes implies ... like ... eight people donated? That seems implausibly low.) And then the next person wanted to make clear that while he, as a successful Business man, was happy with his Earlham education his daughter who totally exists was concerned that there might not be enough ideological diversity in the board of trustees or in the faculty to represent the sort of people who look and act like, oh, her father. The president got out of the ``won't somebody please think of the cishet white males'' question and also promised they were forming a committee to study what it would take to restart the football program.
Not counting the football player none of bunnyhugger's friends from college turned out to be at the dinner. But there was a designated afterparty, in a bar downtown. The bar turned out to be a combination coffee shop/bar, kind of like what our local hipster bar tried briefly to be. In the bar area was a band performing while alumnae gathered around and watched. Also a couple of those Multi-Mame arcade games; bunnyhugger put up a high score on Bubbles, the cleaning-soap-bubble game.
After the concert ended we went back into the coffee bar area and hung out with some of the people we'd met exploring the mailboxes in the student union. And that included one of them presenting to another a bowl made with a map of Detroit inside. This using a mapmaking style where places of significance are marked rather than, like, just where the roads and the neighborhood borders are. I was able to understand the riverfront; the highlighted spots were, of course, things important to their relationship. They passed it around for us all to appreciate and both bunnyhugger and I were impressed with the craft and artistry and terrified to be holding the thing.
This would be the last organized thing of the reunion. There was a departing breakfast early the next morning and we weren't getting up for that. But we had plans for things to do before leaving town.
And now, we haven't left Little Amerricka just yet, but we are on the train that leaves and comes back to it. Right now?
Returning by train. Here's the swimming area complete with beach sand and a lot of inflatables that look fun to play on, but which were going untested.
And then more of this; it was soothing to spend so much time in the relative calm.
And then we got to the emus and it turns out there's exotic animals here.
Not many we could get good pictures of but here's a zebra, its origins and purpose still a complete mystery.
Back to the rides now, and Meteor. Here's the ride operator hanging on the brake lever.
And here's the train coming to the station.
Trivia: In 1887 a priest near Toulon recommended, as a practical exorcism, that one spill lentils on the floor and leave them overnight. Evidently the theory was that picking up the lentils was too tedious for the supernatural beings. Source: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb.
Currently Reading: American Scientist, November-December 2026. Editor Fenella Saunders.
