{"id":189,"date":"2007-11-12T17:44:47","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T17:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/11\/12\/a-way-of-life\/"},"modified":"2007-11-12T17:44:47","modified_gmt":"2007-11-12T17:44:47","slug":"a-way-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/11\/12\/a-way-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A Way of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Steve Charles\u2014<\/em>Filmmaker Ted Steeg \u201952 spent his first years after Wabash in Greenwich Village, sharing an apartment with screenwriter Dan Wakefield and immersing himself in the \u201calternative society\u201d of the New York City of that day\u2014the new journalism of the Village Voice, the writing of Kerouac, Salinger, Mailer, and Ginsberg, the music of Thelonius Monk and Mabel Mercer, and the efforts of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in New York in the 50s was like being in Paris in the 1920s and 30s,\u201d Ted said. \u201cIt was where it was happening; all the new stuff was happening right here.\u201d
\n<\/span>
\nNot the typical Wabash man\u2019s life of the 50s, perhaps, but no film I\u2019ve seen has captured the spirit of Wabash and a liberal arts education as well as Steeg\u2019s documentary, \u201cA Way of Life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The music of Dvorak\u2019s \u201cNew World Symphony\u201d plays as it opens with scenes of the frontier Wabash would be carved out of, and it just gets better from there. It is beautifully filmed (there\u2019s a vividness of color video just can\u2019t capture), creatively shot, and it gives you a chance to see and hear the Wabash of the 70s and some of the men who made that community.<\/span><\/p>\n

We see Wabash legends like Eric Dean, Fred Enenbach, and Eliot Williams. We sit on the College mall as President Thad Seymour reads awful poetry with a straight face on the infamous Elmore Day, then we watch him welcome with sincerity the new class on Freshman Saturday.<\/span>
\n
\nIt\u2019s almost like seeing your family\u2019s best lost home movies; that is, if Steven Spielberg was the one in your family who liked to play with the camera.
\n<\/span>
\nI got to know Ted Steeg during his service on the Wabash Magazine<\/em> Editorial Board a few years ago. He always had creative, workable ideas, several of which still drive the way the magazine is put together. But seeing this film, I understand even better how fortunate we were to have him on that board, and how fortunate the College is to have his documentaries in our archives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Archivist Beth Swift will be showing \u201cA Way of Life\u201d tomorrow at 7:30 in Salter Hall as part of her presentation \u201cWabash in Pictures and Film\u201d, itself a part of this week\u2019s Founder\u2019s Day celebration marking the 175th anniversary of the College\u2019s founding.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to see some of those legendary names from the College\u2019s history and get a better sense of where we came from, you ought to be there. And given all the talk of tradition on this campus, it\u2019s fascinating to look back at the 70s and see what tradition was then\u2014what has gone away, and what is very much alive today.<\/p>\n

Watching Ted\u2019s movie, I couldn\u2019t help notice how often he used the word \u201cindependence.\u201d He calls Wabash \u201ca way of life, of character, independence, and excellence.” It emphasizes the fact the College has no government or church support. The College\u2019s goal is to educate men to be \u201cindependent, free-thinking individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independence. That\u2019s Ted Steeg. That\u2019s what he went to New York to find, that’s what he brought back with him to make this film. As his friend Dan Wakefield said of their venturing to the City: \u201cWe had decided to take risks, and we had come to New York to become the best we could be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Photo: Ted Steeg during the ceremony marking his donation of his films to the College archives. Ted’s most recent appearance in film was in front of the camera, as he and Dan Wakefield were interviewed for the 2004 film<\/em> New York in the 50s.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles\u2014Filmmaker Ted Steeg \u201952 spent his first years after Wabash in Greenwich Village, sharing an apartment with screenwriter Dan Wakefield and immersing himself in the \u201calternative society\u201d of the New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}