Merlin CCC

Reading & Discussion Series: Jewish Environmental Wisdom
2024-10-30 19:00 - 20:30, 2024-10-16 19:00 - 20:30, 2024-10-02 19:00 - 20:30, 2024-09-18 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver) | Reeder’s Alley Conference Center, 101 Reeder's Alley, Helena, MT, 59601, United States
What We’ll Explore
This reading series will be guided by the following central question: What wisdom might Jewish traditions offer for our current environmental crises? Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, should be open to wisdom wherever it embeds itself. The Tanakh, the textual source of Judaism, arose from within a largely agrarian society with deep connections to particular lands and places. It seems reasonable, then, to start with the assumption that the traditions of thought and practice that have grown out of the Hebrew Bible (and inspired it!) might offer environmental wisdom for our pressing times.
The French and Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, had something similar in mind for his own philosophical project, which has been described as an attempt to translate Hebrew into Greek—that is, to express a Hebraic way of thinking within a Greek, or philosophic, context. Following in Levinas’s tracks here, we will also consider larger, contextualizing questions about the possibility of “translating” non-philosophical ideas into philosophical terms.
Together, over 4 every-other-Wednesday sessions, we will closely read and discuss the contemporary import of essays from a variety of Jewish authors including Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jacob Howland, Daniel Delgado, James Hatley, and others. Sessions will be discussion-based, facilitated by Kaleb Cohen and Mitchell Conway, with one additional guest facilitator joining along the way.
While each session will be self-contained (such that you can attend a stand-alone session and still benefit), participating in as many sessions as possible will allow more time to make and experience larger connections between readings, ideas, and questions explored.
FREE & open to the public. Donations appreciated.
When
Every Other Wednesday
September 18th - October 30th, 2024
7pm - 8:30pm

Where
Reeder's Alley Conference Center (101 Reeder's Alley)

RSVP
Sign up here! (Seats limited)

Other
Readings will be e-mailed upon sign-up

Cost
FREE (Donations Appreciated)
Session Readings & Focus Questions

9/18 — Judaism, Philosophy, and Translation

Readings: Jacob Howland, “Plato and the Talmud”
Core questions: How might Hebraic ideas inform philosophy? Are they philosophical or solely religious ideas? Can those ideas have any meaning outside of their cultural context?

10/2 — Between Home and Exile

Readings: Daniel Delgado, “You are but Tenants and Settlers” (supplemental/optional: Susannah Heschel, “An Exile of the Soul”)
Core question: What role might the Jewish notion of exile hold for an environmental ethic?

10/16 — Jewishness and Montana: Bison and the Soul (with guest scholar James Hatley)

Readings: James Hatley, “Living with Ghosts”
Core question: In Montana, how ought we respond to a history of violence against buffalo and Indigenous peoples and what could Jewish traditions teach us about these responses?

10/30 — Shabbat and Sh’mitah: Rest, Release, and the Land

Readings: Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Architecture of Time” and Nigel Savage, “Resetting the Planet through Sh’mitah”
Core Question: What is the meaning of rest in an age of industrialization and unrelenting resource extraction?

Series Facilitators

Kaleb Cohen’s work sits at the intersection of philosophy, environmental studies, and critical theory. He has presented and published papers on various topics, including the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, settler colonialism and environmental responsibility, and the importance of oral traditions. He holds an MA in Environmental Philosophy from the University of Montana. His graduate work culminated in developing a distinctly Jewish and anti-colonial relationship with land. He also has a background in farming, gardening, ecological restoration, and conservation. Kaleb lives in Missoula, where he teaches for the Wild Rockies Field Institute, makes bread, and hibernates during the winter.

Mitchell Conway is a Community Philosopher at Merlin CCC, an adjunct philosophy instructor at Carroll College, and serves on the Academic Advisory Board & Questions? Journal for The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization. A student of philosophy, a theater maker, and a teacher who cares ardently about empowering young learners, his work has often been an interweaving of education, story, and inquiry. He also relishes walking in the forest. Mitchell has a Bachelor’s degree in Theater from Skidmore College and a Master’s degree in Philosophy & Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Make a Donation Here
Our philosophy activities are FREE to the community. While donations are never expected, they are always appreciated and help to keep programs like these going. Donations help to cover activity leader honorariums, implementation, and resource archiving, and more! If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can do so by clicking here. For those facing more challenging financial circumstances, we ask that you please try to “pay it forward” with acts of kindness for your neighbors and community.

How Did We Get Here?: Ghost in the Machine
2024-10-17 18:30 - 20:00 | Reeder’s Alley Conference Center, 101 Reeder's Alley, Helena, MT, 59601, United States
What We’ll Explore
Until roughly the 16th century, nearly everyone in Western Europe — from common farmers and laborers, to highly educated scholars and clerics — took for granted that they lived in a cosmos teeming with a wide range of spiritual beings: living yet discarnate powers who occupied various intermediate positions between God and human beings, and who were a good and necessary part of the smooth operations of the world. These beings were known as ghosts or spirits (terms which were interchangeable in this period: the English word ghost, German geist, and Latin spiritus were all used to translate one another), or by various more specific names for their different kinds. In its broad outlines this was, as anthropologist Marshall Sahlins notes, a view Europeans shared with “most of humanity.”
Then, the story goes, everything changed, as the Scientific Revolution cast out all these intermediary spirits, leaving a cosmos that resembles a collection of inanimate machines, rather than an ecology teeming with living agents: a process which the pioneering sociologist Max Weber famously termed “the disenchantment of the world.”

And yet.

Even within Europe and its diaspora, large numbers of people still believe in — and interact with — angels, demons, and other ghosts and spirits. And this doesn’t have to be a “religious thing” — as indeed, for most of European history, it was not a religious thing. Just consider the popularity of “ghost hunting,” or how many of us name our automobiles, and talk to them to encourage them in challenging conditions. Maybe the Revolution was not quite so total as we’ve been told, and some vestiges of these spirits live on amidst the mechanized cosmos: ghosts in the machine, as it were.

In this evening’s program, we’ll consider this process of disenchantment within its historical context, and its consequences for ourselves and our modern Western worldview. We’ll examine the older, pre-Revolutionary world-picture, which historian C.S. Lewis has famously termed “the discarded image,” as it appears in history, literature, and the “natural philosophy” that would be supplanted by the modern physical sciences. We’ll consider the context in which the intellectual battles of the Scientific Revolution were fought, including the political and theological polemics of the Protestant Reformation and its aftermath, as well as the craze for witch-burnings that swept Europe and the Americas during this period. And we’ll observe some of the impacts of the disenchanted, mechanistic worldview in the development of the new social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology.

Finally, we’ll reflect on the consequences of the mechanistic worldview, however fully or partially it has been adopted: What has all of this done, to the ways that we’re able to interact with the wider world and its inhabitants? What has it done to our own self-understanding, both as individuals and as societies? And what does it mean, that the ghosts in the machine seem to live on, however awkwardly and uncomfortably, in everyday life and discourse?

When
Thursday, October 17th from 6:30pm-8pm

Where
Reeder’s Alley Conference Center

RSVP
Sign up here!

Cost
FREE (Donations appreciated)

Other
Hot tea & lights snacks provided. BYOB.

Event Facilitator

David Nowakowski is a philosopher and educator in the Helena area whose professional work is dedicated to helping people of all ages and backgrounds access, understand, and apply the traditions of ancient philosophy to their own lives. David began studying ancient philosophies and classical languages in 2001 and has continued ever since. A scholar of the philosophical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean (Greece, Rome, and North Africa) and of the Indian subcontinent, reading Sanskrit, Latin, and classical Greek, he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 2014. His work has appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Philosophy East & West, Asian Philosophy, and the Journal of Indian Philosophy, as well as in presentations to academic audiences at Harvard, Columbia University, the University of Toronto, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and elsewhere.

After half a decade teaching at liberal arts colleges in the northeast, David chose to leave the academy in order to focus his energies on the transformative value of these ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions in his own life and practice, and on building new systems of education and community learning that will make this rich heritage alive and available to others.

A hermit by nature and by committed choice, he balances contemplative solitude with his active work in teaching, counseling, and the healing arts. David can be reached at david@merlinccc.org or via his personal website.

Make a Donation Here
Our philosophy activities are FREE to the community. While donations are never expected, they are always appreciated and help to keep programs like these going. Donations help to cover activity leader honorariums, implementation, and resource archiving, and more! If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can do so by clicking here. For those facing more challenging financial circumstances, we ask that you please try to “pay it forward” with acts of kindness for your neighbors and community.

Philosophy Walk: Re-Indigenizing Public Lands (Registration Full)
2024-10-13 10:00 - 13:00 | Ten Mile Creek Park, 1505 Williams St., Helena, MT, 59602
What We’ll Explore
In this walk led by Dr. Shane Doyle (Apsáalooke nation) we’ll reflect on the significance of public lands as both the nexus point & the dividing line between ancient ways of life and the post-colonial world. Some of the questions we’ll consider include together:

Public lands belong to everyone, and no one; how do we most appropriately honor those lands in perpetuity? And what variables should be considered when thinking about how best to protect (all or parts of) those landscapes?
Did wilderness exist before white people came to Montana, and if it didn’t, how would we know?
How do Tribal oral traditions inform our understanding of wilderness from an Indigenous perspective?

When
Sunday, October 13th from 10am-1pm
Where
Ten Mile Creek Park (1505 Williams St., Helena MT 59602)
~ As you are head west out of Helena, turn right (North) onto Williams Street and follow it around until you see the fenced parking area on the east side of the road. ~
RSVP
Our walk is at max capacity. If you’d like to be placed on a waiting list please e-mail us at marisa@merlinccc.org & we will contact you if someone cancels to see if you’d like to join us.
Cost
FREE (Donations appreciated)
Other
Wear weather appropriate attire & comfortable shoes

Walk Leader

Shane Doyle, Ed.D (Independent Educational & Cultural Consultant, Native Nexus Consulting) is a Crow tribal member who grew up in Crow Agency, and currently resides in Bozeman, MT. A singer of Northern Plains tribal style of music for 30 years, Shane also holds a Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction, and completed a post-doctoral appointment in genetics with the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2016. With 20 years of teaching experience, Shane is a full-time educational and cultural consultant, designing American Indian curriculum for many organizations, including Montana public schools, the National Park Service, and the Museum of the Rockies. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Bozeman-based Extreme History Project, Hopa Mountain, and the Archaeological Conservancy, as well as serving on the Montana Arts Council culture and aesthetics committee and the Governors Parks in Focus Committee. Shane was a founding member of the Montana Wilderness Association’s Hold Our Ground Campaign in 2017, and speaks throughout the region on the topics of northern Plains Tribal culture and the importance of public lands in Montana. He was instrumental in the repatriation of the Anzick Clovis Child, and worked as a consultant and actor for the History Channel’s “Lost Treasure of the Little Bighorn Battle.”

Make a Donation Here
Our philosophy activities are FREE to the community. While donations are never expected, they are always appreciated and help to keep programs like these going. Donations help to cover activity leader honorariums, implementation, and resource archiving, and more! If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can do so by clicking here. For those facing more challenging financial circumstances, we ask that you please try to “pay it forward” with acts of kindness for your neighbors and community.

Philosophy Think & Drink
2024-10-10 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-09-12 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-08-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Reeder’s Alley Conference Center, 101 Reeder's Alley, Helena, MT, 59601, United States
Fun Gatherings that Stimulate the Mind!
Our Philosophy Think & Drinks are casual, community-oriented gatherings that are intellectually stimulating and fun. You don’t need a background in philosophy to enjoy & participate. An open mind & desire to engage in thoughtful dialogue (whether from a listening or contribution standpoint) is all that’s needed! For those who love philosophy but prefer not to partake in the libations side of things, don’t let that stop you from participating in the fun. We emphasize the think over the drink!
When
2nd Thursday of every month from 7pm-9pm
Where
Reeder’s Alley — If the weather is conducive, we meet outdoors in the pavilion. If it’s cantankerous, we meet indoors in the Conference Center.
Other
Light snacks provided. BYOB.

How Do They Work?
Step into the dojo! Our Think & Drinks are monthly gatherings that consist of a “meeting of minds” over libations. After nabbing goodies and seats, getting acquainted & settling in…the eve begins.

No topics are off-limit; no questions are too broad, narrow, abstract, or concrete. Questions are posed by participants in a “round-robin” fashion, clarified, and then voted upon collectively.
Once our “avenue of philosophical pursuit” is in place, we’re ready to dive into a fun night of facilitated philosophical discussion.

Philosophy Walk: On Travel
2024-09-28 10:00 - 13:00 | Spring Meadow Lake, 2715 Country Club Drive, Helena, 59601, United States
What We’ll Explore
According to urban legend, some famous novelist (maybe Tolstoy or Dostoyevski?) once quipped that there are only two stories: “A stranger comes to town” and “Someone goes on a journey.”
Regardless of who first said it, there’s something to the notion that travelling is essential, both to the ways we live, and to the stories we tell to help make sense of those lives.
In this walk, we’ll explore some of the ways that travel can be a space of encounter, transformation, and meaning. We’ll compare modern experiences of travel with traditional theories and practices, including:

the deliberate, mindful walking of philosophers across the ages, from Aristotle (whose school became known as the “Peripatetics,” literally, “the people who walk around”) to Henry David Thoreau
the practice of pilgrimage in literature and in human life, from Chaucer and the traditional travels that inspired the Canterbury Tales, to contemporary spiritual journeys to shrines, temples, and other numinous sites around the world
the traditional account of human beings as “self-movers,” in that we’re choosers and initiators of action and motion, not just passively getting bounced along by external forces.

As we walk and talk together throughout the morning, we’ll think through what each of these three case studies can illuminate for us, regarding contemporary practices of travel:

How might different approaches to travelling enhance (or impede) our fundamental human capacities and abilities?
How can travel create (or obstruct) opportunities for meaningful, transformative encounters?
In what ways can the journey itself — or the even the mode in which we travel — be just as significant as the destination, or even more so?
And when we travel — whether close to home or to exotic destinations, whether as a vacation or as part of our daily routine — how can we dance between purposeful planning & mindful openness to the unexpected?

When
Saturday, September 28th from 10:00am-1:00pm
Where
Spring Meadow Lake (Our group will meet in the main/North side of the lot at the far end of the entrance)
RSVP
Sign up here!
Cost
FREE (Donations appreciated)
Other
Wear weather appropriate attire & comfortable shoes

Walk Leader

David Nowakowski is a philosopher and educator in the Helena area whose professional work is dedicated to helping people of all ages and backgrounds access, understand, and apply the traditions of ancient philosophy to their own lives. David began studying ancient philosophies and classical languages in 2001, and has continued ever since. A scholar of the philosophical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean (Greece, Rome, and North Africa) and of the Indian subcontinent, reading Sanskrit, Latin, and classical Greek, he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 2014. His work has appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Philosophy East & West, Asian Philosophy, and the Journal of Indian Philosophy, as well as in presentations to academic audiences at Harvard, Columbia University, the University of Toronto, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and elsewhere.
After half a decade teaching at liberal arts colleges in the northeast, David chose to leave the academy in order to focus his energies on the transformative value of these ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions in his own life and practice, and on building new systems of education and community learning that will make this rich heritage alive and available to others.
A hermit by nature and by committed choice, he balances contemplative solitude with his active work in teaching, counseling, and the healing arts. David can be reached at david@merlinccc.org or via his personal website.

Make a Donation Here
Our philosophy activities are FREE to the community. While donations are never expected, they are always appreciated and help to keep programs like these going. Donations help to cover activity leader honorariums, implementation, and resource archiving, and more! If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can do so by clicking here. For those facing more challenging financial circumstances, we ask that you please try to “pay it forward” with acts of kindness for your neighbors and community.

Reeder's Alley Summer Series (RASS)
2024-09-24 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-17 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-10 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-03 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-27 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-20 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-13 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-06 16:00 - 20:00 and 1 more date | Reeder’s Alley, 200 S. Park Avenue, Helena, MT, 59601, United States
Kick-Back & Enjoy Community!
Nestled in the grounds of historic Reeder’s Alley, this fun, grassroots-inspired Summer series hosted by community philosophy non-profit Merlin CCC features live local music, a beer garden, food trucks, historic Pioneer Cabin & alley walking tours, living history demonstrations, lawn games, and more.
Dog-friendly and laid-back, this community-oriented event invites you to take in the charm of the alley & history of Helena in only the way that Reeder’s Alley can offer! Bring a picnic blanket or your favorite low-riding lawn chair & grab a spot in Caretaker’s Lawn. Roam the alley, share stories, play games, eat food, sip brews or wine, and take in the tunes. What better way to celebrate Tuesday nights in Helena this Summer?!
Check out the Schedule Here!

Reeder's Alley Summer Series (RASS)
2024-09-17 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-10 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-03 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-27 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-20 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-13 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-08-06 16:00 - 20:00, 2024-07-30 16:00 - 20:00 and 1 more date | Reeder’s Alley, 200 S. Park Avenue, Helena, MT, 59601, United States
Kick-Back & Enjoy Community!
Join us for the 2nd Season of our Reeder’s Alley Summer Series! Nestled in the grounds of historic Reeder’s Alley, this fun, grassroots-inspired Summer series hosted by community philosophy non-profit Merlin CCC features live local music, tasty eats, a beer & wine garden, historic Pioneer Cabin tours, living history, games & more.
Dog-friendly and laid-back, this community-oriented event invites you to take in the charm of the alley & history of Helena in only the way that Reeder’s Alley can offer! Bring a picnic blanket or your favorite low-riding lawn chair & grab a spot in Caretaker’s Lawn. Roam the alley, share stories, play games, eat food, sip brews or wine, and take in the tunes. What better way to celebrate Tuesday nights in Helena this coming Summer?!
Check out the 2025 Music & Activities Schedule Here!

Philosophy Walk: Conversations with the World
2024-08-22 18:00 - 20:30 | Spring Meadow Lake, 2715 Country Club Drive, Helena, 59601, United States
What We’ll Explore
Quite often, discussions of ethics circle around lists of rules to follow. What happens if we take a different approach altogether, and think of our ethical lives as a series of conversations with the world, with the communities we inhabit, and with our neighbors? In this evening’s walk and discussion, we’ll reflect on what it would mean to focus our ethical lives around dialogue, relationship, and conversation.
We’ll begin with a suggestion from Aristotle, who notes a close link between ethics and habits. Here, we can examine ethics as a conversation between ourselves and the families and communities in which we’re brought up, where our characters are formed — as well as ongoing adult conversations with those same societies, or with other communities that we choose for ourselves.
Then, drawing from Plato’s Phaedrus and Matthew Crawford’s work on communities practice, we’ll move on to consider the deeply transformative place of love, and its associated vulnerability, in our moral lives. Here, we’ll reflect on the difference between ethical judgments based in abstractions, and those that spring from relationships with individuals and communities.
Finally, we’ll reflect on what it would mean to expand the frame of our ethical conversations in various directions. How might we include what ecologically-informed thinkers in recent decades have called the “more than human world” of other animals, plants, and ecosystems? Or conversations across the years and the generations, with our ancestors (something like Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead”) and our descendants?
Throughout our own conversation, we’ll examine specific strategies for, and implications of, organizing our ethical lives as conversations. And we’ll reflect on some of the ways that approaching ethics as a series of conversations with the world might help us to celebrate and embrace the diversity of individual human lives, of communities and cultures, and of the more-than-human world.

When
Thursday, August 22nd from 6pm-8:30pm
Where
Spring Meadow Lake (Our group will meet in the main/North side of the lot at the far end of the entrance)
RSVP
Click here to let us know you’re coming!
Cost
FREE (Donations appreciated)
Other
Wear weather appropriate attire & comfortable shoes

Walk Leader
David Nowakowski is a philosopher and educator in the Helena area whose professional work is dedicated to helping people of all ages and backgrounds access, understand, and apply the traditions of ancient philosophy to their own lives. David began studying ancient philosophies and classical languages in 2001 and has continued ever since. A scholar of the philosophical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean (Greece, Rome, and North Africa) and of the Indian subcontinent, reading Sanskrit, Latin, and classical Greek, he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 2014. His work has appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Philosophy East & West, Asian Philosophy, and the Journal of Indian Philosophy, as well as in presentations to academic audiences at Harvard, Columbia University, the University of Toronto, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and elsewhere.
After half a decade teaching at liberal arts colleges in the northeast, David chose to leave the academy in order to focus his energies on the transformative value of these ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions in his own life and practice, and on building new systems of education and community learning that will make this rich heritage alive and available to others.
A hermit by nature and by committed choice, he balances contemplative solitude with his active work in teaching, counseling, and the healing arts. David can be reached at david@merlinccc.org or via his personal website.

Make a Donation Here
Our philosophy activities are FREE to the community. While donations are never expected, they are always appreciated and help to keep programs like these going. Donations help to cover activity leader honorariums, implementation, and resource archiving, and more! If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can do so by clicking here. For those facing more challenging financial circumstances, we ask that you please try to “pay it forward” with acts of kindness for your neighbors and community.

Summer La Mesa - *NO MORE SEATS*
2024-08-09 18:00 - 21:30 | Residence of Barry & Hetti Louise Ferst, 712 Holter Street, Helena, MT, 59601, United States
What are Las Mesas?
Our “Las Mesas” are intimate, salon-style gatherings where friends come together to explore philosophy and ideas over hand-crafted meals & wine. Each season, a different community member(s) hosts a “La Mesa” dinner at their house, opening up their home for community members to gather and enjoy the fun of philosophy, the beauty of rich and meaningful conversation, and the joy of good food & friends (old and new).
La mesa translates to “the table” in Spanish. It’s where people come together & break bread! It’s where stories & laughter & ideas are shared. It’s where toasts are made & moments honored. There’s something special about this — something worth cherishing & pursuing. That’s the basis & inspiration for our Las Mesas — gathering ’round a table with friends, over good food & good conversation….and, of course, philosophy!
Summer La Mesa Details

When: Friday, August 9th from 6pm-9:30pm
Hosts: Barry & Hetti Louise Ferst
Where: 712 Holter Street, Helena MT 59601
RSVP: THERE ARE NO MORE SEATS LEFT!
Other: Total guest count for our Las Mesas are limited to 10 people.
Donation: $100 per guest (includes dinner, drinks, facilitated conversation structured similar to our Philosophy Think & Drinks & good cheer!)
Proceeds from seat donations are tax-deductible, benefit Merlin CCC & go toward our free philosophy in the community programs. You can bring a check with you the night of or make a donation on-line. (If you opt for the latter, if you would please be so kind as to check the box to include the payment platform processing fee in your contribution so that the Merlin is able to apply the entire $100 donation to our programs.)

About Our Summer La Mesa Hosts

Harriet Louise Porzig Ferst spent the past 75 years trying to figure out what she wants to be called; not really a nickname, (that had been Harri-Lou when she was little), but maybe a call name, (not really liking any of those given to her by life). Recently she settled on “Hetti”, for Harriet, having learned that Social Security cares only about first and last names and a person can have as many or as few middles as she likes.
Hetti and Barry came to Helena in 1980 and she soon discovered that, as someone whose interests range broader than deeper, she might rather have earned a degree in ag (encompassing eco-diversity, food, geopolitics, mechanics, genetics, soil, health etc.) instead of her honors philosophy BA and MA from Tulane University with a concentration in aesthetics of theatre.
Having purchased a double lot with what was once the “gardener’s cottage” for the house next door, she has been kitchen gardening and food preparing ever since, exploring the lush horticultural and culinary traditions encountered on numerous drives through southern Europe, North Africa and the near Middle East hunting Roman sarcophaguses for Barry’s encyclopedic project.
Hetti served as (then) Montana Committee for the Humanities first Scholar in the Schools bringing garden plans, mosaics, fresco, Philosophy for Children, and a home-ec class Roman dinner to White Sulphur Springs schools. She also earned National Endowment teacher fellowships to explore the landscape tradition in early Renaissance Sienese fresco and to consider how Persian construction of walled gardens influenced European garden tradition and illustration.

When we moved to Helena, wondering how long that first, non-tenure track professorship at Carroll would last, we joked about how, if it didn’t, we’d hang out a shingle for public, street-side philosophy. We remain in awe, and grateful, that under Marisa’s guidance and extraordinary energy Merlin has succeeded so mightily in that improbable enterprise. — Hetti & Barry

Barry Ferst grew up on Chicago’s south side and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Tulane University. He began teaching at Carroll College in 1980 and leaves there a legacy including the Honors Scholars program, a thriving philosophy department, an established speakers series, and a collection of unique community-campus programs that integrated thought, science and the arts around timely issues. He often encounters one of his 9,000 or so former students when travelling or on the streets of Helena, where he exchanged his classroom for a curiosity shop filled with his own 3D collages and a universe of the most unusual and bizarre curios internet suppliers and second-hand shops have to offer.
In addition to making his visual art he writes short stories that explore fantastical alternate realities peopled with idiosyncratic human characters. And an approximately fifteen-year quest to document all the extant Roman stone sarcophaguses led him from Moscow to Marrakech and from Copenhagen to Cairo, photographing in museums and along ancient decumani. The resulting volume is the definitive documentation of that sculptural body.
Barry’s philosophical concentrations include ancient philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind. His popular culture interests include American religious history, fashion and evolving lifestyles. All appear in his several publications.
