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History Being Made

6/14/2014

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                        History Being Made:

                                 My part of 



            Southwest Minnesota State University

            I get Harry Potter updates on Facebook, mostly because I do sci-fi and also because I think the Harry Potter books are one of the literary marvels of our lifetime. When the final two books were released, I preordered them for their midnight sales event. One year I was 9th in Marshall (for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and for the last one I slipped to 29th (for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

            The FB info is often about the making of the films, about the actors, now adults, looking back on the filming and all that excitement.

            Those actors, directors, Rowling herself—they must have known they were making history. I like them all—books and films; they’re masterpieces each.

            What I also think about is that rare gift in life to do something and while doing it, realize you and your actions are changing history. The 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion just passed on June 6th. On June 5, 1944, as those airmen, sailors, and soldiers geared up for the morning, they knew they were taking part, however small, in something gigantic and fantastic. Something history-making and history-changing.

            I run in a much smaller circle of world events. I’m not likely to ever produce anything nearly as artistically significant as Harry Potter, although The Marsco Saga may be a success. I doubt I’ll ever be in the political or military spotlight like Eisenhower or Bradley or Churchill, or the ordinary (often drafted) soldiers hitting those beaches at Zero Hour on D-Day.

            My place in history will be pretty small, in that regard.

            I am, however, pleased to know I have contributed to Southwest Minnesota State University.

            This university is significant for two main reasons. It produces its growing share of grads who go off to medical school and fine doctoral programs. Two of my students come to mind. One graduated from Mayo Medical and another is beginning her PhD at the University of Notre Dame.

           But the most significant reason for this university is Main Street. We educate Main Street in so many small towns around here: accountants, teachers, bankers, small business owners, and farmers. During the boys’ state basketball tournament this past Spring when only eight teams were left, SMSU had graduated five of the head coaches. That’s what we do; obviously, we do it well.

           The other significant reason for this university is its affordability and accessibility. For what we do, we are a rock-bottom priced service. Unfortunately, over the past twenty years, I’ve seen the State’s commitment to keeping costs low tip away from students and their parents and towards “tax breaks” and other sham give-to-the-rich schemes. When I came here in 1989, the State paid $2 for every $1 a student paid. The whole state of Minnesota bragged about that. Now, the State reluctantly ponies up about $0.67 (and falling) for every student dollar. Figure out the shift here.

           Besides affordability, accessibility is a major reason we’re here; it makes us such a unique and valuable school. We are not the most diverse student body. Even with three Native reservations within an hour in three directions, we don’t attract many Native students. But, we do attract, retain, and graduate many students who need a fully-accessible campus.

           And, it’s been like that longer than I’ve been here. I don’t think I have gone a semester without a student in my class in a wheelchair, who needs special assistance (like a note-taker due to mobility issues), or who needs to take exams and quizzes in a separate location from the classroom (due to learning disabilities needs).

           I’ve even had students who come in their wheelchairs and with a dog to further help them. For one pair, when I took roll, I noted when Zeus, an 80-pound Lab, was present or when the dog was excused from class. One day I stepped too close to his owner and the sleeping Zeus was up and barking ferociously at me.

           These are the students who make SMSU significant. I’ve taken our students to Europe three times through our Global Studies Program, mostly to England and France. And for all the progressive strides these countries have made, they are a generation or more behind us in disability services. Partly, Europe is built around medieval cities, but partly it is cultural. Americans raise their voices at injustice more willingly than many other cultures. Eventually, someone listens.

           I may not be changing history, but I am adding to this university which in turn adds so much to Southwest Minnesota, the state as a whole, and the nation. We’ve even graduated students from Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, so we’re international in our own small way.

           Our rising costs concern me, however. For one, the Global Studies Program I am so proud of, has risen in cost so that it’s nearly impossible to enroll enough students to make the trip possible. We used to have a subsidy for the trip and most students received a small scholarship to defray costs. But in the end, it became necessary for students to pick up the whole tab for their trip. This decision raised the cost by nearly 35% to 50%; ruinous cost inflation. 9/11 didn’t help, either.

           But the major disaster in higher education in Minnesota was the ill-considered “merger” of the tech and two-year campuses with the seven state universities, which had had their own extremely successful system. “Hostile takeover” comes to mind to describe this, since no one who was part of the universities wanted it or thought this merger was a wise decision.

           This merger has made nothing better in the state universities and often has made many aspects worse. We can’t select what general education classes to allow for transfer anymore; if a MnSCU campus says it meets set standards, we have to accept it. The two-week online Speech class, taught via a two-year campus, comes to mind as a shame, but it counts.

           It’s a sad state of affairs to see something I’ve worked for nearly twenty-five years hit a wall. If orchard growers thought every apple and pear tree should be cut for firewood, not planted, nurtured and prepared for a future harvest, we’d have no fresh fruit. Higher education, especially public higher education, is planting an orchard; its benefits are far in the future, but they are there. Nurture higher ed and in the end the state prospers. The nation prospers.  

           I hope in my final years here at SMSU, I see an upturn in public appreciation and in support for higher ed. Our work is that important. And I have hope. Our new President is sharp and on the ball. I see her leadership at work and her vision for this institution consistent with our history and our mission. All that is good.

           And I have faith. Good things happen when good people put their minds together to create positive solutions. I’m all for that.

           Harry Potter and Eisenhower would agree.

  

Picture
SMSU Pep Band at our last home football game, November 2013. Mustangs won!
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Dogs . . . and Cats (if I must)

7/10/2011

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                            Dogs . . . and Cats (if I must)

    Let me be frank. I love dogs but am highly allergic to cats.  This puts me in an untenable position when trying to discuss either mammal fairly. Around a cat, my nose runs, my eyes itch and tear up, my voice gets hoarse.  I found this out the summer before I started high school.
         
     Those years were in the Dark Ages.  They may have been in the 60s, but “The Sixties” hadn’t officially hit yet.  I left a Catholic grammar school where there were at least girls in the room but where none of the “boy-girl thing” was condoned. During that summer, I didn’t know that a classmate, Alice, liked me.  But in my innocent and not-yet-grown-up boyhood, I liked another classmate, Margaret, who never liked me in that way.  This was awkward because Margaret and Alice were close friends.  
 
     These were two of the smartest and most sophisticated young women in our class.  Margaret had short, blond, school-girl hair, now longer and stylish in preparation for high school.  She was beginning to show her curves.  Slender Alice had long straight brown hair and stood taller than her friend. 
The pair had lost all girlish gawkiness and moved like women, not kids.  I was the self-conscious, scrawny boy who wore braces and who had very low, presentient standardized test scores that absolutely ruled out me ever going to college.
      
     One sultry afternoon, Margaret invited me over to sit on her shady patio
and imagine what high school would be like.  I had no illusions of my angelic blond sweeping me off my feet in an outburst of unrestrained emotion, but jumped at the chance.  I knew that at best ours was to remain a totally Catholic-guilt scripted, early-teenage scene of friendship as depicted in those stilted movies set in the English countryside with a dog nearby and no suggestion of even holding hands. 
 
    Alice was there, the only other guest. Here was my chance to behold the deity I adored, Margaret, and befriend her acolyte, Alice.  
 
     While Margaret fussed about making iced tea and opening potato chips, lithe Alice sat thigh-to-thigh right next to gangly me on a swinging bench meant for three.  We were both in Bermuda shorts; our legs even touched. 
Hers were shaved.  This position left no room for a phonebook between us. 
Girls in her class had been sanctimoniously instructed by stone-faced
Sister Mary Joseph, our former principal, to always keep a Yellow-Pages distance between themselves and boys sitting by them to avoid any near occasion of Mortal Sin.  
 
     Margaret owned a large tomcat, Merlin, whose black and white coat reminded me of our nuns.  Inexplicably, this feline took a liking to sweaty me.  He curled up on my lap and began purring.  Reaching over to pet him, Alice told me animal lovers made for caring friends, a fact she confidently knew.  

    Casting his dark and mysterious spell, Merlin immediately made me wheeze.  Soon defeated as if by Sister Principal herself, I rode my bike home hardly able to see, my first murky sortie into adulthood ended with swollen eyes brought on byallergic reactions not emotional rigidity or spiritual remorse.  
 
     They moved on to McClatchy, the public co-ed high school.  I went to Bishop Armstrong High School which at that time had no girls but, fortunately for me, no cats either.  Only in my senior year did I have a class that included young women.  Six of them, in uniforms, came over from Bishop Manogue, the all-girls’ high school.  My physics teacher, a Christian Brother
dressed like a Medieval monk, needed special permission from Rome to teach them because they were non-male.
  
     Although I was never supposed to do very well in my studies, I did okay
in high school and eventually I enrolled in an all-men’s college.
        
     My first year, I ended up with a puppy living in my dorm room, which
didn’t work since such creatures live to eat, sleep, eliminate, and whimper when ignored.  This was my older brother’s pup, but his RA was onto him and threatened to have him thrown off campus for keeping a dog.  Here I was, a lowly freshman, coerced into taking care of this dog as though it was suddenly okay for new students to house a yapping pet while upper-classmen
couldn’t.  Furious, I gave in to this forced-on-me, fraternal burden. But, in one week, I totally had it.  Fortunately, my brother was engaged and his future father-in-law agreed to take that canine off my hands.   
          
     It’s a tangled web, my relationship with cats and dogs.
  
     Here in Marshall, a friend, Cathy, often hosted us for dinner.  Several colleagues would sit around eating, telling stories, joking, when without warning Cathy would shout at the top of her lungs, “GET OFF THERE!” at her cat behind me tiptoeing on the spread of food.  She was a tall, robust woman and could be indescribably loud.  Her cat ignored her.  

    Cats are vertical, I’ve been told, with an attachment deficit.
      
     When Cathy went on sabbatical, friends agreed to take care of this cat for a year in their home. But, when she came back, the cat wouldn’t stay with her; it wandered back to that cat-sitters’ house, an independent feline to the
end.
        
     Dogs are loyal. They usually figure out who is the leader and follow that leader faithfully.  Man’s best friend after all.
          
     For five summers, I helped run a summer camp while I was teaching high
school.  The camp’s year-round caretaker, called by his initials, T. V., got a month off once 100 screaming campers descended on the place.  T. V. had an old black mongrel dog, Luke, which followed him everywhere.  Luke was no longer in his prime, but he was gentle with the kids, easy to care for, and always at my heels once the caretaker took off.
   
     Luke didn’t bark or fuss.  He was smart enough not to put his nose into porcupines which says something because we had other camp dogs, purebred St. Bernards, that never learned to avoid those smarting quills. (Saint Bernards are not a bright breed.  Those lunkhead dogs kept doing the same
thing over and over and expecting things to change. Vet bills for quill removal proved this.) 
          
     Luke followed me everywhere around camp.  If I needed to leave in the jeep, he moved off to the shade and waited until I returned, sleeping not far from where I parked.

    One hot morning, I walked across camp with Luke shadowing me.  After ten minutes in the nurse’s cabin, I came out to find Luke there on the nurse’s porch as always, but stone dead.  Dead!  Not even my dog.  Dead!  With a fly-covered trickle of blood near his breathless snout.  But steadfast!  He had followed me to the very end even though for eleven months each year he had plenty of time to shuffle off his mortal coil on the caretaker’s watch, not mine.

    The stupidest dog I ever owned was a yellow-Lab mix named Sugar.  She hated men, me in particular.  She was way too much dog for a housedog, and way too independent to live anywhere near a man used to having dogs obey him, accustomed to having his canines die at his feet.   

    Sugar ended up in Pig Heaven.  Unable to keep her, I gave her to a friend who owns a swine breeding farm.  Sugar was content to live out in the barn, eat all the hog carcasses she could dig up, and occasionally run with a pack of wild dogs.  But she lived long, died fat, and never bothered me again.
         
     The smartest dog I ever owned was really my mother’s kinetic and strong
Airedale.  I wanted to call him Brutus, but she wanted him to be Magoo. He became Brutus Magoo, but she couldn’t keep him after I went off to
graduate school.  Hyper Brutus ended up at my summer camp, living the good life until he was hit by a car.  He limped back to camp to die, but not
while I was there.

    The luckiest dog was Mollie, rescued from the local pound.  She was the oddest-shaped creature ever to walk this earth:  a sort of black Lab with stubby legs, a thick neck, a stubborn disposition, but as gentle as can be. 
Abandoned as a pup, she became a garbage gut; she’d gobble without
chewing any roadkill or dead bird she found.  Sit anywhere near her and she’d fling herself onto your lap.  She weighed 55 pounds, so if she caught you off guard, you were in for a surprise.
        
     But Maya takes the cake.  She is our Lab/Bassett mix with short non-Lab legs, long Bassett ears, and sad Bassett eyes. When excited, she barks like her Lab self then bays like her Bassett self then stops to ponder the whole confused process.  But she’s a keeper.  If a bit spoiled, that’s my fault for hiding dog treats in my office which she begs for whenever I sit down to write.  Maya was originally our daughter’s dog, but remained with us after she went off to college.  Now, several years later, there is no way Maya’s moving out to live with her “owner,”possession being 9/10th of the law. 

    And Maya’s not a cat.

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