Seeley Hills Classic

It was sometime around the winter of 2004 or so.  The ski season was in full swing, even though there may have been little to no snow in central MN.  Jim, Bob S. and I jumped in the Astrovan and set off for Hayward, WI toward the Seeley Hills Classic.  The race takes place on the Birkie trail and is one of the premiere classic technique races in northern Wisconsin.  I traveled to a few ski races with Jim, but this was by far the most memorable, mainly because it was an over-nighter and we stayed at Telemark Lodge.

The election media hype was in full swing and Bob couldn’t get enough of the CNN coverage, and Jim listened to his noise canceling headphones and read books.

The snow conditions were pretty good, I can’t remember the wax, but I do remember that my skis were pretty good, and this was with the help of Jim.  I remember passing him on the trail giving a yell as we crossed paths. Jim probably won his age group at the race as he did so often.

Jim was an endurance athlete, and endurance athletes eat healthy, right? Well, I was a bit surprised when Jim announced to us that he was going to have a Hardee’s “Thickburger” on the return trip from Hayward. For some reason this sticks in my head, and it was true we all ate a “Thickburger” on the way home.

– Ryan Ness

Letters from the editors

I was Jim’s editor for only the tenth edition of his widely used text, Contemporary Moral Problems. Textbooks do not make it to their tenth editions unless they are created by master teachers, are deemed useful by a large number of professors, and are capable of holding the interest of college students, a group so dedicated to finding ways to be distracted from their studies. This text was used by many thousands of students as they reflected on the moral dilemmas of their day. The Wadsworth Philosophy list is teeming with diligent, congenial authors, and even in this exceptional group, Jim stood out. He was efficient, innovative, a skillful writer, and chronically ahead of schedule. He was also sharply focused on quality and precision, especially when it came to ensuring students were exposed to examples of good philosophy. In one of our conversations about the tenth edition, he expressed his frustration at being unable to find a well-argued opinion taking an opposing stand to some perennial moral issue. “There just aren’t any well-written arguments against out there,” he complained. Naming a selection by a well-known author that appears in almost every competing textbook, he said “And don’t try to convince me to use that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a non-starter.”

Philosophy and philosophy education has lost much with Jim’s passing.

Joann Kozyrev

Sr. Sponsoring Editor, Philosophy and Religion

Wadsworth | Cengage Learning

“As always, I’m staggered by your efficiency and authorial integrity. Thanks for the great work ahead of schedule.”

Editor Ian Lague (April 15, 2010)

“Jim was one our most efficient, creative, focused and creative authors. We will miss him.”

Wadsworth Philosophy Editorial and Marketing Team

To Jim

To Jim

.

Life can be a bowl of cherries

But cherries do rot;

.

Time in and time out

That’s what life is all about

We don’t choose our parents

We don’t choose the place

Where we sprout and grow up

We don’t choose the language

That our mothers coax out;

.

In fact

We don’t choose

All those reversals

Those fortunes and misfortunes

That determines the lot

Of our variegated life,

.

Luck and chance,

Along with some good and poor choices

And a lots of lovin’

Determine a lot

About the lot         of our life;

.

Sometimes we control

Sometimes we do not

About how we go in

And how we go out,

Doing the best we can,

Determines the way to live

And the way to live is to love         to love

And  how to love is        to enjoy our selves

With others in all our clans in our ins and outs;

.

Life is something that happens         that just happens

And the little we know, and the ignorance we know about,

And the way we passionately feel

Helps a hell of a lot          about how much and what we love,

In finding and creating the beauty to be found in life;

.

But eventually what does us in

And what does us out,

And in the end

What finally terminally happens

After all those innings of our ins and outs,

Is that it all comes to a very unlucky       dying living-end.

- GEY

James Lundquist

Alongside the Beaver Islands Trail south of the St. Cloud State campus is a path that follows the riverbank. It was on that up-and-down, twisting-and turning singletrack that Jim White would work his mountainbike at unlikely speed. He had a way of riding that at first looked awkward–all elbows and knees and feet–a matter of high cadence and low gearing.

Now and then when he would see me running (such as it is) along the paved trail, he would pop up off one of the connectors on his black and yellow Gary Fisher and we would talk, mainly about the many years we’d shared at SCSU.

These were conversations in motion. Jim could balance his bike slowly enough to match my plodding progress as we ranged over books, movies, music, politics, and old academic gossip. Not once can I recall a topic beyond reference for him. Can’t say the same for myself.

The Sunday-morning seminars at Barnes & Noble were expanded versions of these conversations, and they were also in motion when Jim was there to keep the discourse moving as we geezer savants held forth on whether an atheist could ever be elected president, whether space travel is possible, and whether certain ancient professorial hijinks actually happened the way we remember them.

And always we had to return to the debate over materiality between Lee Davis and Jim concerning whether the table in front of them actually was a table – or not. You had to be there.

Not long after Jim’s death, I was back on the Beaver Islands Trail when I saw a bike pop up out of the woods in the dappling sunlight. It wasn’t Jim White, but I sure wished it so. And on the days when that happens again, as it does, I welcome the memories of such a good friend.

– James Lundquist