Welcome
Welcome to the new Blog for the American College in Paris Class of 64-65. This is entirely experimental and designed after several conversations with classmates that I have been keeping up with sporadically as well as a couple I have just reconnected with after 40 years. 40 YEARS!!!! Yeah, well actually this is precisely the point. We are all at a point where we have some life experience and many of us are facing the big “60″ birthday. Most fellow alums are too busy to waste much time in nostalgia. Despite that, since our class did not have a year book and at the time I took snap shots which ended up as some of the only documentation of our time in Paris and created the foundation of my own career as a photographer. So enjoy the scrapbook that is up at http://daprix.com/acp64-65. (If you don’t want your photos included, let me know at peter@peterdaprix.com). The main reason for this blog is that in one on one conversations with the few alums I am still in contact with, we notice that the experience in Paris seems to have given us a different perception of the world than if we had never left the States. It seems to be characterized by an appreciation that the world operates in an infinite set of shades of grey rather than the black and white that tends to be an American approach. We also seem to understand that other cultures can operate quite happily and successfully, at least from their point of view, under different sets of values, ethics, religions, type of political structure, even with rampant corruption. To be sure, everyone bitches and complains about their leaders, but when it comes right down to it, the status quo for the majority of members of populations is preferable to tearing it all down and trying to live with something unknown. Since this is especially pertinent to today’s US foreign policy, I am particularly interested in a wider set of comments from alums as to how they feel their time at ACP and life in Paris help create their view points and how they look at life as a result. So please feel free to express your ideas about your own experiences on any topic here. We may all have more in common that we think no matter our occupation or political stance. Peter d’Aprix “64-’66.
