Transy! WAS: RE: [Vision2020] Halloween Item of Interest

[Robert Dickow]

Well, now I really have to reveal the truth about my dark past. I taught
music theory at Transylvania University for 6 years before coming to UofI in
1984. I quit there 2 weeks after having received tenure, not because of the
fact that all the classes were held at night and all the students were more
and more anemic, but because I wanted to play my horn more. Just kidding
about the vampire stuff. Well, teaching there was really a job I could sink
my teeth into. Transy is a very old (founded in 1780 by Thomas Jefferson)
small liberal arts private college. That whole region of Kentucky was once
called Transylvania, and there are Transyvania Avenues, Transylvania
Hardware stores, etc. But, I digress. Here's a true factoid about Transy
that really does sound like Halloween stuff:

Every year Transylvania students hold a festival called 'Raffi Days,' named
after 19th C. botanist Constantine Raffinesque. It seems that Raffinesque
struck up a little affair with the wife of the college's president Horace
Holley, himself a scholar of some renown. President Holley summarily
dismissed the scientist, and the story goes that Raffinesque showed up to
work one day and found a locked and empty office-- the method of pink
slipping in the day I guess. So much for tenure protection. Anyway, legend
has it that Raffinesque then placed a curse on the institution. The curse
has been blamed for all the various tribulations from falling ceilings to
financial crises that have befallen the school. Well, to help mollify the
curse, the students hold a midnight torchlight parade, marching across
campus to the site of Raffinesque's tomb, where they proceed to burn an
effigy of the unfortunate botanist. I have visited Raffinesques tomb, which
is housed in the basement of the administration building. Curiously, there
is another sarcophagus in the room with him...someone I don't know. No
danker and spooky a place is there to be found.

Happy HALLOWEEN... bwaaa ha ha ha HA HA!!!!

Bob Dickow

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Tom Hansen
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 7:45 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Halloween Item of Interest

http://www.transy.edu

Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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Vote on November 8th because you care . . .

For our kids
For our neighborhoods
For our town 

VOTE AARON AMENT FOR CITY COUNCIL

http://www.aaronament.net

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