by Carl Strang
Class reunions are revealing. I graduated in 1969 from Culver Community High School. That school district is so rural that my graduating class had just a few more than 100 people in it, and that was after consolidating 4 entire townships (from 4 counties!). Recently we celebrated our second big reunion. The first, our 20th, I enjoyed, but I remember noting how we fell quickly into old roles, how there was a fair amount of posturing, how emotional wounds still needed healing in many of us. The 40th was different.
Clearly we had grown beyond those old influences. We each had survived our own battles, had become comfortable with our selves.
Though naturally we conversed mainly with our closest childhood friends, there was an interest in what everyone had done, and I felt a collective sense of pride at how much we as a group had accomplished.
What does this have to do with inquiry? So much of who we are is established in our school-age years. We find our first interests, and test them out. Someone remembered me giving a talk on coots, how they are different from ducks and so forth. It turned out that several people remembered my coot talk. I was not one of them.
Probably that talk grew out of a period of a few years when I reported to the state conservation department on the numbers of various waterfowl species stopping by Lake Maxinkuckee during migration. I filled out a postcard form each week and sent it in. That experience taught me a little about making careful observations and recording data, and was so enjoyable that it reinforced my established interest in nature study.
The tone of the reunion was of mutual support and congratulations. Again I thank the organizers, and all of you who helped frame my development in those important formative years.
