Doc & Other Things Herein & Upcoming
FRONT COVER: C. L. Sonnichsen of UT El Paso. Photo by Lee Cain. BACK COVER: Curtain Going Up! Just as the longest journey begins with the first step, the construction of an enormous building such as the University's $6 million Fine Arts Center begins with bulldozers taking the first bites of asphalt and earth. On hand for the first act of the construction are L-R Dr. Clark H. Garnsey, professor and ch;irma~ of the Department of Art; Dr. Harold N. Williams, professor and chairman of the Department of Drama and Speech; Professor Oscar H. McMahan, chairman of the Univer~ity . Planning and Building Committee; Un1vers1ty President Joseph R. Smiley; and Dr. Olav E. Eidbo, professor and chairman of the Department of Music. The Center will be completed in about two years. (photo by Lee Cain)
Editor DALE L. WALKER Assistant Editor JEANNETTE SMITH Graphic Design BASSEL WOLFE Staff Photographer LEE CAIN Contributors ELROY BODE JERRY M. HOFFER BUD NEWMAN ALLEN F. WILLSON
• FEBRUARY, 1972 Volume 7- No. 2 Whole Number 26
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Second-class postage paid at El Paso, Texas. NOVA is published quarterly by the News and Information Service, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO, El Paso, Texas 79968 . It is sent without charge or obligation to former students and friends of the College. This entire magazine is bio-degradable.
C. L. Sonnichsen is the interviewer's dream. Swiftly responsive without superficiality, a superb anecdotist, an effortless word-limner of people and incident, opinionated but never rancorous, capable of making one's questions seem more important than they seemed when being asked. President Joseph R. Smiley aptly described Doc's conversational ability as "the result of his career as a dedicated, enthusiastic teacher as well as a disciplined but not pedantic writer." The NOVA conversation with Dr. Sonnichsen. plus Bud Newman's annotated bibliography of the Sonnichsen books, forms without doubt the longest and most comprehensive view of this exemplary man ever to be published-but it is not enough. If ever there was a subject for a book, it is here. Lacking that for the moment, however, we urge you to read fully our "Conversation with Doc Sonnichsen." Some special things are upcoming in NOVA in 1972. Scheduled for the May issue is a follow-up to the "Lamaseries on the Hi II" survey of the campus architecture (NOVA, AugustOctober, 1971, Vol. 6, No. 4). As this issue was being turned over to Basse! Wolfe for his expert design and graphics work, the editor received a most gracious communication from Her Majesty, Queen Ashi Kesang Wangchuk of Bhutan who received the "Lamaseries" issue and sent two fine books for the Campus Library. One is Bhutan: Land of Hidden Treasures by Blanche C. Olschak, photography by Ursula and Augusto Gansser. Dr. Gansser, of Zurich, Switzerland, you may recall, kindly supplied NOVA-at the request of Queen Ashi-several marvelous photographs of Bhutanese buildings which we used in the "Lamaseries" article. The other book is Sikhim and Bhutan, Twenty-One Years on the North-East Frontier. by John Claude White, C. I. E. Mr. White, of course, was the author of the National Geographic article in April, 1914, from accompanying photographs in which UT El Paso's original buildings were designed. Mrs . Yvonne Greear, Director of Reference Services at our Library, kindly and always with great gusto, helped me in the research for the "Lamaseries" survey, and is now preparing a biography of Mr. White which will also appear in the May 1972, issue. Also in May, we have an original piece of art and a poetic statement on Mount Franklin from the splendid El Paso artist-illustrator Jose Cisneros.
You will find this center-spread display worth saving. If there is a better pen-and-ink artist than Jose, he has not come to our attention. NOVA is not now, nor has it been, a news magazine in the usual meaning of the word. Being quarterly, news cannot be our forte-and there is no reason why it should be. Still, there is that rare occasion when some news event takes place on campus which cries to be "covered"-at least "included"-and which were it not mentioned somehow. would reduce this magazine's historical value, whatever that might be. Such an event was the recent MECHA disturbance. Unhappily, but necessarily rendered and parboiled, and without tears or any other form of editorial comment, some details of it can be found in our News Capsules. -dlw