MAIN JESUIT HOUSE IN PARIS
View from a window in the oldest part of the complex. This area is for visitors from other lands there for short term stays. Jesuits in Paris for longer term, e.g. studies might be housed in the "students wing" see straight ahead and right to the street (Grenelle 42.)
DEPICTING EARLIEST JESUIT COMPANIONS
FIRST GET-TOGETHER FOR VOWS, 1534
A painting showing the 1534 vows of Ignatius, Xavier, Favre, Bobadilla, Rodriguez, Salmeron, Laynez.
CONTEMPLATIVE SISTERS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD WHO SERVED
IN OMAHA, SUPPORTING SCOLA IN ITS EARLIEST GROWTH.
Top row L-R are Sisters: Angeline Ianazzo, Grace Irene Marshal, Carmel Margaret Haschke,
Adele George Dunlap, Dorothy Agnes Haschke, Cecilia Porter, Joan Fidelis Birmingham,
and Elizabeth Clouse.
Front Row, Seated, are Sisters: Edith Hesser, Irene Raphael Haschke, Vincent Napier, Rose Rojakovik,
and Clare Filipowicz.
THE CURRENT SCOLA TEAM AT THE MCCLELLAND IOWA ANTENNA FARM
First names, not present: Auston, Matt, Heather, Stacy. Group rear L-R: Charles, Leon, Leslie, Spencer, Joe Gulizia, Melody, Lee, (Kate), Francis, Rosalie, Cheri, Dan, Marilyn, Ed, Lori, Lois, Bob, and (partly shown) Felix. FRONT ROW Ric, Michael, John, Dawn.
An image of IGNATIUS LOYOLA on the campus of XAVIER UNIVERSITY in Cincinati, Ohio
(COPY of THE WHOLE WORLD.doc as of 10/30/04)
NOT JUST A BUNCH OF
FOREIGN TV PROGRAMS
While it would indeed be a big mistake to expect the SCOLA story to be a mere grocery list, diary account of events proceeding from an initial vision and ending in a packaged product, still on the
opposite end one should not expect SCOLA to be the compendium of what wisdom professional critical political analysts, philosophers and political scientists should have been remarking upon the dramaturgic scene. SCOLA is as an atmospheric tool, the aire you breathe to be or not to be.
What the gamut of nations and peoples tell us of themselves by spilling out their hearts and souls in dramatic full-motion color video productions “live” every single day of the world must be some kind of search-engine’s dream. The panoply of actively endlessly newsifying on the scale of 120 nations beats out transcending any (even if 24-hour) miniscule, teensy-weensy micro view news dimension.
As a polity fed digitally to the world, we begin actually to believe that we really are whom the viewers see us on the tube to be.
With a cautionary; still, the panoply unfolding is more about the people who devour the drama and are indeed drawing conclusions as to where the world is, is going, whether well or ill, why and wherefore. No wise leader makes up “his own mind.” And holding one’s own country exclusively to a sway of home-bred views is a definition of being held hostage.
For this reason the story of SCOLA is routed through all the elements of the mixtum gatherum of
the human race: young and old students of the languages, politicians, statesmen, world leaders, even government intelligence agents—all balancing staggering amounts of input in the process of critical decision making. Most look at the human action for clues upon which to base attitudes, motives, aims and objectives. Most do this in the critical formative decision stages when trying to reckon just how good or bad is the work they attempt for common good.
Startling as the results may seem, analysts of the world scene even now feel inclined, rightly perhaps, to label and classify the countries around the planet according to their ability to “belong” to the smooth functioning trading complexus of nations globally and relatively peacefully.
For reasons like this, it is intrinsic to the SCOLA visionary objectives that video material from countries outside the mainline highways of commerce and travel be included, even featured in its regular offerings. We call these places the “small or developing countries,” their languages “less commonly spoken or taught.” Unless the real threads of communication, the languages and cultural icons of these peoples and countries be dressed and ready to awaken to their just place in the world, they would be not only left out but more likely avoided by the big guys in the grand parade of globalization
Being left out, for such life-doms, makes bullies of the rest of the world, and jacks up the ante on global resentment in the hearts of those who have nothing. And “naughts” are what feeds hate, destruction and hopelessness. Maybe satanizes even otherwise well-meaning intentions.
Brain trusts, seers, prophets and enlightened consultants for the leaders who try to steer us through the impossible contradictions and abutting opposites of today’s world, still do not, will not, give in to the irrefragable experience that communication is rooted in and through language, preferably by people face to face voicing audible phonemes in an exchange wherein they arrive at a settling pause-point from which they can move on, each richer and for the better. Translators can’t really help; that is only interference. Machines have fooled us into thinking they might get better. Even if everyone learns English, that won’t do it; it’s still lingo that carries its cultural baggage . Everyone in the world learn English? What a great tragedy that would be for the world.
The coloration of the world-mind lost in the process would reduce us all to babbling repeaters of the same sets. The in-core participants speaking to those outside the core in their own minor language in their own places is the only "where" where they can join the core and build selves into a coherent legitimate participating modern nation. This is their “coloration,” what is the fluorescence and energy of the rare (unique) free spirits we want recruited for our world to be. And anywho which has had the good fortune to live and work with simple citizens in almost tribal contexts becomes acutely aware of the moxie genius potential for hordes of supposed "nobodies" in "nowhere's-ville."
So it aint the money nor the teky junk that monster nations brag that drags tiny lands into the main stream. It is the free-er and creating-est spirits in the people-hood lying fallow for willy-nilly talk. TALK is the megaphone of the spirit, the brain, the guts, the soul spilling out its mettle and pluck in every mutual CON-VER-SA-TION, even between native speaker and any barbarian, as long as the barbarian has done the long hard dirt road of mutualizing, scilicet, climbing the frontier mountain, learning even their lingo enough to greet your own idea of a barbarian with "hello" in his own "X#%&*9T" language. East is East and West is
The point is, that although SCOLA itself dast not or perhaps better deigns not, claim, as NGO and non-profit, quasi a-political, to be a player in the cosmic decisions of world political life, it lays itself out bare and flat on an open stage for all to see, how each country tells its own people each night before they go to bed what is going on of import in the land they love. They, the natives, are the only true judges of the truth and sincerity of what they are regularly media-fed, their own home-made progress report.
SECULAR SALTING RELIGION
However,on a supra international scenario SCOLA might be living out a model for the way spirit meets spirit through prime matter of lingo-jingo hocus-pocus. The nationalistic-minded communist People's Republic of China, as of this writing, refuses foreigners the right to work religiously, missionize, for any forms of Christianity in China. Quite partly properly, however, the task is reserved for native citizens. This seems to work for the Chinese, by and large, except for the requirement for all to belong to what is generously named the "patriotic" church.
Some Chinese Christians, both protestant and catholic, have long refused to kow-tow to the Beijing religious office as an objectionable secular interference in world-transcending matters; these are labeled "underground" churches and have suffered a lot of legally imposed strictures and jail penalties for their faith.
But then again, a hearty plurality of Christians and catholics have for some long time realized a sort-of Pax Romana whereby these easier-going compromising (only in non-sacred essentials) entities register with the officialdom in Beijing, get their church buildings back for religious use (under certain conditions) , and Beijing (sort-of) will not mess up in purely religious affairs or appointments. Not a perfect situation, but, then again . . . .
Religious people of mission bent, knowing that China has dire need of assistance from non-Chinese experts in many areas, are often the first to grab contractual service jobs doing distinctive work for and in China, usually for teaching crucial specialized subjects for which Chinese experts are in short supply.
The most popular job taken by Americans and other nationals has been teaching English in schools, or indeed many other important subjects in demand in China.
The main idea behind such maneuver is definitely not a feined missionizing move (and any violation would be quickly punished), but a genuine realization that this kind of mixing-it-up with and for the Chinese nation will help ever-so-little-maybe, the country to rise to where it joins the world and assuages some of the humanly objectionable aspects of communism.
So, for example, an important Jesuit in charge of monitoring Jesuit educational operations in East and Southeast Asia, encourages this solution, proclaiming that it is as good a Christian thing as catechism, if you have any expertise needed, to volunteer to teach it or do it in China, for no other reason than "If we are ever going to have a better world, we can't have it without a better China."
SCOLA, founded by a Jesuit on a Jesuit University campus, is incorporated simply as a non-profit educational organization. The matter of being religious or not, or of any particular kind, is simply not labeled. This is in no way an exclusionary but rather all-inclusionary move. So that all the merrier when we had to move off the city campus to the wild open spaces of a country farm, we found talented country folk zealous for the SCOLA mission hammering at our door to be included in the work they perceive as transcending all throttling narrownesses in politics, international affairs, education and religions.
So it is a Farm, an antenna farm, where in celebration we also grow trees of all kinds and abundant flowers wild and tame supervised by physicist John Wymelenberg, S.J. of the Creighton faculty. A garden of faith-filled cosmo-politanism.
Now SCOLA in its organizational format was definitely not deliberately following the lead of the PRC in its religious affairs, but there are some cleansing considerations. The various kinds of protestants in PRC China are lumped together as "Christians," a definite triumph, nominally, at least, for union of sorts.
And there are now some signs that the so-called underground churches will be increasingly surfacing, giving up old martyr complexes, and facing the realities already proven safe (sort of) by their "patriotic" brothers and sisters (approximately). As this happens, so also we can let come about a real togethering of the pragmatics and the astigmatics out of a poop situation where "traitors" called the other half "dimwitts".
Moving SCOLA out of Omaha to a nice open sky farm not too far away into Iowa was eventually required if only to have enough room for our antennas and escape the microwave interference in the city. It was, however, also true that such an assertive presence as SCOLA's was uncomfortable for the University in many ways: the antennas , it seemed, ("they" said) were taking up increasingly ever more (parking??) space--expressions using the words "kittens" or "rabbits" were heard; and when rumors abounded that SCOLA customers (hangers-on) included "shady" USA agencies like National Cryptologic School (founded by George Washington during the Revolutionary War), NSA, CIA, State Dept., Library of Congress, FBI, and innumerable foreign embassies, etc., was a time when key people defining the campus began to show signs of a certain uneasiness with the very idea of a nice, neat and clean educational campus sharing bed and whiskers with the likes of them.
Uneasiness, more like skittish about, like, the School of the Americas,-- places at the gates of which students went to protest, admittedly, nothing that had anything to do with SCOLA transmissions being key language resources for all the language learning there but having to do with kinds of training given there once upon a time for controversial military or police elements in South American countries. (Cf.: the murder of seven Jesuits and a staff lady and her daughter in El Salvador >http://www. < ) It's a little stretch, but students have to protest something. And a pink blushing of awkward positioning or, heaven forefend, even scandal due to SCOLA being so linked through any of its users seemed to be a "shoo!" susurrus that suggested "locate elsewhere," and while you're at it incorporate separate.
TAKE A BREAK
Here is a note dropped IN as a filler in our SCOLA newsletter dated June, 1983:
In February, 1945 Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his article published in “Wireless World:” “An ‘artificial satelllite’ at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e., it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range on nearly half of the earth’s surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, could give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet.”
STILL IN THE SMOKE SIGNAL STAGE ?
And in 1977 Arthur wrote in “The View from
Serendip:”I submit . . . that the eventual impact of the communications satellite upon the whole human race will be at least as great as that of the telephone upon the so-called developed societies. In fact, as far as real communications are concerned, there are as yet no developed societies; we are all in the semaphore and smoke signal stage; I believe that the communications satellite can unite mankind.”
So, I think this story has to look large, far and deep down yonder into the earliest primevil stages in the beginning and SPOOKY development of SCOLA. From that point onward let’s look at implications for the future from things gone so far bye.
DEREGULATION OF SATELLITES
SCOLA came about simply because seemingly all of a sudden in flurries of catch up media activities in the 60’s and 70’s, television from many countries of the world became watchable in most other countries all around the earth. This was the result mainly in a period around 1978-80 when the United States Federal Communications Commission deregulated the communications satellites business and encouraged aggressively the “cabling” of America. From that event exploded a flurry of private satellite and cable TV distribution companies and the USA cities moved quickly to sign contracts with cable companies.
Outside the USA, meanwhile, Russian satellites were widly covering the earth with their own and that of their friends media programs of all sorts. Note well that "have-not" countries were noticing the downpours of information and entertainment readily gobbled up by their eager citizens, so much so that they were quickly decrying the desecration of their cultures, mores, morals and fabric of their identity. So serious was the assault that representatives of these countries already assembled for such purposes ganged up consistently against the superpowers in many a major move and project at unesco generaL assemblies.
The New World Information communications Order NWIOC was a sort of voting bloc of developing smaller countries at UNESCO in Paris, often ganging up against the miserable big boys, since each of the large number of the little countries had one vote, adding up easily to defeat big country priorities, That distress and some charges of mismanagement, led the USA government to depart from unesco in 1984.
SCOLA. Of course, which had joined the IFTC/cict-unesco in December, 1983, continued to work as as member. The luxury of contacts with most "other" countries of the world was extremely profitable for expanding contacts with the most important nations of the world: the ones (still) developing. (here** move section on dec. mtg. Syria complaint)
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THE PRIVATE SATELLITE INDUSTRY
Thought then to be one of the first expos of its kind, the designers and builders of “back-yard dish” systems showed their wares in Omaha, Nebraska in, as I recall, August of 1981. The thinking of the newcomers to space transmissions was: that since the “footprint” on earth of the satellite’s signal was probably stronger in the center and weaker on the fringes, then it would be wise to show off their newly introduced signal reception systems in the geographic reception center of the USA—which is pretty much indicative of Omaha, Nebraska; right?
I got out there to the big parking lot at the 72nd St. Holiday Inn rather late in the afternoon of the expo’s first day. I parked where I had to walk through all the “dishes” set up in the parking lot and where their designers were hawking the wonders of the far-ranging television sources available through these white “tin cans” (parabolic antennas) pointed up at seemingly “nothing” in a seemingly “empty” sky.
Dashing towards the expo hall to visit the various booths of the equipment vendor before they shut down for their happy hour, I made a mental note en route through the field of antennas at what stalls were
showing stuff like French programs or whatever most bizarre foreign sources there might be, etc.; but I definitely made special note of where one dealer had turned his antenna around completely in the wrong
(northeast) direction to receive signals (video + separate radio only at this time) from an unusual elliptical orbiting series of satellites broadcasting a clear strong color television signal, a Russian network 24/7 “live” from an Earth Station north and West of Moscow. This was the Russian “Molniya” system, which antedated all the geostationary systems since rockets adequate to launch satellites into elliptical orbit were readily operable by the Russians much earlier than those needed for the geostation-aries.
Inside the expo hall, and $125 poorer, I dis-covered a whole world of wonders beyond belief—the luxury of the information riches available from anywhere and everywhere—and being struck like lightening with visions of what it all meant for: (dizzy-list☺): people-hood-ness, dialogue, tower of Babel, lingo-madness . . . . But stop. Look at what a difference it is to see the world elsewhere and hear them really talk like you are trying to learn. No corner of academania, I thought, could be left unaffected by this mess-ture of glosalalia, circus, drama and burlycue of the universe.
Luckily, one of the vendors from an area of Wisconsin familiar to me were in a booth and available for good palaver about all the potential of this stuff. They had designed and built the electronics, the receiver you’d have to use together with some form of antenna like the big white parabolic antennas filling up the parking lot. We became ultimately good friends; We had to. We were destined to take this stuff and run. So, they sold me their original prototype model decoder receiver (have no idea where the money for it came from) which is still in use at the Creighton University scola campus cable head end.
These guys run the cable system in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin—right on my way to places I visited regularly anyway. This town is on the
Mississippi and surrounded by bluffs and hills that ever prevented good broadcast TV reception from big cities at a distance. For this reason, Prairie du Chien was one of the towns given priority by the FCC in getting licencing for cabling their town. Because of this emphasis there, we realized, with their help, how to begin our operation by cabling our university campus and spreading the same to other colleges and universities. After all, unless campuses jumped in, the big city cables would gobble up all the channel capacity and limit the educational potential.
The pioneers here in Prairie were interested in what we were doing and were always very obliging, handy and graciously available to guide burgeoning SCOLA through all the critical electronic communications loops we needed in order to grow. I returned to this booth at the expo for all three days it lasted, learning all I could from a few of the great originators of the “Private Satellite Industry” responsible for all those “backyard dishes” you would see around for a few years—some even till the 1990’s.
But there’s another miracle demoed at this expo; clever entrepreneurs from Montana (They called themselves some name like phantom or ghost busters referring to how tv from satellite is clearer than broadcast TV in the Montana mountains) were demonstrating their “home-made” spherical antennas at the expo. These are nothing but large (8’x8’ to 12’x12’) frames rigged with supporting metal grid to hold ordinary window screen in place after pulling it into the “segment-of-a-sphere” shape using a measuring (the length of one-half the diameter of the segment’s imagined sphere) wire stretched from an anchor stake to each key spot on the screen, pulling the screen to a matching distance from the stake, and
fastening in place.
Needless to say, I was counting on this simplex patch-up of two-bye’s and wire to make the whole dream budgetarily possible. They had gone to a lot of trouble to put a couple of these things together for demo in the expo parking lot; but had sold none. As they faced packing up and going home to Montana they offered me the spherical antenna demos for a song. So scola started with two home-made window frames on the roof of a sculpture studio on the Creighton University campus.
Making these babies are a somewhat demanding labor-intensive job, and gradually prices for parabolic antennas came down to where they were preferred even by scola. But, for starters, these did the job just fine for a no-budget start-up.
Word did get around, however, that “things” unavailable elsewhere were watchable up on the roof of the sculpture studio. One evening, having heard that we had the british TV comedian Benny Hill’s program on tap regularly up there on the roof, Mike Morrison, president of the University (Creighton) climbed up the ladder to sit up there on the edge of nothing to watch it for an hour or so.
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