By all accounts, the Telluride Association convention held this month at Deep Springs was a success. The New York-based Telluride Association continued its practice of holding their annual convention every seven or eight years in this isolated part of the high California desert. Although the regular DS population of 45 was tripled by 90 guests over the long weekend, meals went smoothly (kudos to former BH Manager Dewey DeWeese DS’07 who returned to cook for the week), the weather cooperated, everyone found a place to sleep, and self-government got down to business.
TA President Thomas Miller DS’04 had this personal wrap-up:
“The 2013 Convention of the Telluride Association was a great success. Highlights of our meetings included adopting a sense of the Association concerning our purpose, approving a new staffing paradigm for our Michigan office, discussing strategies about future sites for our summer programs, and celebrating the graduation from the Association of Jessica Cattelino and Noah Zatz. We also took advantage of our presence at the college through a labor party with members of the Student Body and a hike to the ‘Druid’ rock formation and Eureka Valley Overlook. Throughout, the entire Deep Springs community was incredibly kind and generous to a large and disruptive wave of visitors.
“Although I have learned first-hand in the past three months that holding Convention at Deep Springs is a major pain, I think that maintaining this custom is important. A past president of TA, Sherlock Davis, speaking to a Convention held at Deep Springs on June 20, 1929, declared that ‘Telluride Association and Deep Springs are engaged in a joint enterprise and are seeking identical ends.’ Few today would endorse such an unreserved claim, and rightly so – the two organizations have developed their missions in distinctive and sometimes contradictory ways. But to my mind this distinctiveness only increases the value of contact, which is also fostered by our exchange programs between the college and our branches. We in Telluride can learn much about ourselves from both the natural beauty of the place and the college’s distinctive educational work. L.L. Nunn’s famous words to the Student Body in 1923, ‘You came to prepare for a life of service,’ in all their enigmatic vagueness, remain for me personally a touchstone for what we likewise are and should be doing in TA.”