St. Olaf as a Place...and What a Place

The reading for today's class mostly focused on places as dense facts, which is really a divergence from how I had been thinking about dense facts. Once the concept was discussed in class though, it started to make a lot of sense. In fact, the way that places like colleges or towns are planned can say a lot about both the planners and the inhabitants of the community. This is true about St. Olaf as well. Just by looking at the building complex that includes Rølvaag Memorial Library, Buntrock Commons, and Boe Chapel, a lot can be discerned about the type of community that uses these facilities. To begin, there is a chapel, so it's safe to assume a large portion of the community has some sort of religious beliefs. By looking at the large cross on the top, it is also safe to assume that the affiliation of the community is of some sort of Christian denomination. Judging by the fact that the three aforementioned buildings are connected by tunnels, one could assume that there is some sort of reason why for part of the year it is less than ideal to be walking around outside. In this case, the culprit is the Minnesota winter. After walking through the tunnel, one will see hundreds and hundreds of post office boxes, and none of them have locks. In fact, on Fridays some even have pretty little flowers poking out. This is an indication of both the trust and safety provided by this community as well as of its friendly nature. In Buntrock, one large, wonderful cafeteria can be found, which serves all of St. Olaf. Although students may not realize it, this too is a testament to the togetherness of our community. Just try and keep that in mind next time you try and get dinner at 6 PM on a weeknight. I could go on with this for pages and pages....but frankly neither of us want that to happen. I think I have made my point abundantly clear; a place both changes and is changed by the people that inhabit it. Although it may will get cold on the Hill in coming months, there will also definitely be a certain warmth as well. To quote Mark Twain, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."