When you introduce food into the classroom, something shifts. People open up and reveal themselves in new ways—suddenly there’s a whole new room, a new teacher, new students. People talk with their stomachs and their hearts as well as their brains. Even more of a transformation takes place when the schoolroom gets left behind and students gather at someone’s house for a meal (and possibly a beverage). Anything could happen. Susan and Cary Stickney (St. John’s College, Annapolis ’75), longtime St. John’s faculty members, have always brought their students into their home for dinner parties. “You’re not just having some sort of dry, academic exchange,” says Ms. Stickney, 66, of their dinner seminars. “You’re fully inhabiting your own thought and expressing it, you’re fully present. I think that making food, and eating together, and sitting around talking and laughing is the same kind of being fully present.” “We’re trying to treat our students like somebody we really do want to be friends with,” says Mr. Stickney, 59. “If they want to talk about hip-hop, we …

Alex Kongsgaard loves working with his hands. As the winegrower of Kongsgaard Winery he spends much of his time out in the fields, alone, caring for the grapes. He drives the tractor and does the green-trellising by hand, operates the press in harvest time, and does the bottling. It’s up to the grapes to grow. “We like to say that we’re ‘minimal interventionist’ winemakers,” says Kongsgaard, 31. “Which is, of course, relatively silly, because the idea of planting a vineyard is an incredibly intentioned, deep, manipulative activity over the landscape.” Kongsgaard himself is no stranger to deeply intentioned endeavors, which, considering that winemaking is the family business, is either ironic or makes perfect sense—once you know his reservations about winemaking. And don’t let his California drawl fool you, he has enormous self-possession and intensity, and throws himself wholeheartedly into anything he does. After all, Kongsgaard is a guy who once hosted meat orgies during his time at St. John’s, who built his first boat when he was ten years old, who spent almost an entire …