Category: Marshall

Marsco Readings and Reports

9/28/2013

September 28, 2013 – Saturday – Grading and Game Day

            Okay, so I am slow on the uptake of technology. I have begun to make PowerPoint presentations for class in the past year, for example; it’s taken me that long to get going on that.

            I was looking for my Cloud connection today, so I can send my work from my office computer to my laptop easily. Instead of finding the Cloud, I found this instant blog link. So, I’m writing this “entry” in my journal this morning with the intention of posting it via my computer right to my blog. We’ll see if it, one, works, and two, if I have anything to say.

            I started my blog to get more buzz out there about my work, specifically The Marsco Saga, my four-volume speculative sci-fi piece. I am happy to report (as many of you know) that the first novel, The Marsco Dissident, is now available on Amazon for e-reader download. It has been up since June and sales are happening.

            This month, I did a pair of radio interviews locally (NPR hasn’t called yet). These shows were via SMSU and owe their manifestation to Jim Tate who is the campus PR guru. Jim organized them and was my front man for them. In a word, they were a hoot. I had never really been on a show like this. (I have to add, by the way, that Jim is part of a gaggle of SMSU folks who have made this project possible: Jim, Marcy—the cover, Dana—Kindle format, Neil—encouragement to go to e-publishing format: SMSU all!)

            The first locally, KMHL in Marshall, I sat in the booth with the glass separation and deadening sound. Earphone and mic. I saw the radio host on the other side of that dividing glass. It went pretty well. The second I was at home and did the same over a pre-arranged phone call. I liked the first better; it gave me a sense of “being on the air” as opposed to just chatting and looking at all-too-familiar surroundings. Those listeners who heard me said I did a creditable job. I thought so, too.

I was asked to speak of future projects, so I explained that all English profs have at least one novel in them parodying academic life. That caught the campus attention. I do have such a novel organized; it will have to wait until after The Marsco Saga and The Aries-Augustan Saga are published; both multi-volume sci-fi works. Marsco is finished; Augustan is underway.

My two readings went extremely well on Tuesday September 17th. At noon I was at the Marshall/Lyon County Library. That night back at SMSU.

The Library garnered a small crowd of 16 listeners. But, they listened and asked good questions. This experience was a great warm-up for my evening reading.

Back on campus, I spoke and read to 115 people. I was blown away by their attendance and interest. I spoke, read my first passage and then answered some questions. Once more, good questions. Then I read a second passage with answers following. My whole time went an hour. Not sure how many sales I made, but it has all generated a host of Spur articles, (our campus student newspaper) and a bit of buzz in Marshall.

To current readers and owners of The Marsco Dissident, I once more say thanks. To future readers, I do want you to know I have reduced the price to $3.99. Dissident can be downloaded to a Kindle, an iPad or iPhone, or any PC with the right (and free) app. I am looking into print-on-demand; will keep you posted on that. Of course, I won’t chase away the chance to have a publisher pick it up for mass marketing. To viewers of this blog who might be unwilling to buy the book, there are two chapters posted on my site that give you a taste of the novel. Enjoy them first before you download the whole piece. I am sure they will convince you that my work is worth the time and effort to read.

Until next time, good reading and Go, Mustangs! And Go, Irish! Beat the Sooners!

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Taking Stock: Third Week of April 2013

4/16/2013

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Taking Stock: Third Week of April 2013
*

A Year in a Nutshell
or
Welcome Home!

            This is my second blog post in Spring ’13 semester. I originally began this blog site in February 2011, and kept posting essays fairly regularly until last Spring. Then things got pretty crazed; I have only now settled down into a routine. And I do know that this is the second blog in a row I’ve begun with a whining excuse. So, enough sniveling excuses, here it is.
            This past summer, I moved about 25 feet, from BA 221 to BA 224. But that short distance was, metaphorically speaking, enormous. I moved from the office of Chair of the English Department back to my longstanding faculty office, almost immediately next door. It’s the same office I’ve occupied since I arrived on the Southwest campus in August 1989.
            Five and a half years ago when I began my first term as Chair, I took over from an excellent Chair and colleague, Dr. Lori Baker. I left the office in steady, capable hands, with Dr. Neil Smith at the helm. I came in to the Chair’s office under President David Danahar, and left while an interim president, Dr. Ron Wood, ran the show. Late this past February, a new President was named, Dr. Connie Gores, SMSU’s first woman president. I expect great things out of Dr. Gores when she takes over July 1, 2013; I’m sure the campus, community, and I won’t be disappointed.
            Changes and more changes.
            This past summer, a neighbor, Bob, moved to the Cities. Bob was here next door when we first moved to this house in 1991. He and all of us in the neighborhood struggled through the ’93 floods together. Several summers later, we celebrated when the city finally redid the back easement and our main sewer lines, and tore up our lawns and removed our privacy hedges. Over all these years, we’ve exchanged Christmas gifts and dinners. He and I fell into a routine of going to breakfast at Mike’s or Hy-Vee every so often; I miss those eggs and hash browns mornings.
Surviving events like a flood can bond us. Bob is retired and has all his family and many of his friends in the Cities; he wanted to be closer to all those family events. Didn’t take long for him to pack up and move leaving a void in the neighborhood.
            On campus, the Whitman Room is quiet different as well; its voices and laughter and youthful energy. That’s our English student hangout and lounge. Last May, in one of my final acts as Chair, I formally greeted our newly-minted graduates as they received their degrees at Commencement. Several great students with whom I had worked closely for the past four or five years graduated that day. Many are currently at law school or graduate school in the Cities, Iowa, or Alabama, points over the horizon.
            All these folks off on their new adventures.
            But moving 25 feet is an adventure, too, a grand adventure.
            For one, I teach differently. Specifically, I am back to fulltime in the classroom since I no longer have the added duties of Chair. No extra meetings, no interrupted days with gloom and joy, deaths in families near and far, engagements, expectations of new life, broken hearts, disappointments and acceptance letters, problems with a DARS (our electronic academic record-keeping system), and complaints about the weather. No more long conversations with profs concerning students, schedules, career choices, lack of opportunities, lost causes, fellow colleagues, my decisions (good ones and bad ones—plenty of those), the Admin, the Contract, our pay frozen for four long years, and the weather. Always the weather.
            We live in Minnesota. Somehow the damnable weather must be someone’s fault. And of course, we live in Marshall. Someone must be able to shut off its continuous wind.
            And my short move over last summer hasn’t been as easy as just closing one door and walking through another. I had a semester sabbatical in Fall ‘12, rich with possible blog posts but instead you had to follow me on Facebook. Great travels to London, Bath, and Canterbury to study, to immerse myself in British literary heritage, and to daily walk the ways of Dickens, Browning, Chaucer, Austen, and Pip, Little Dorrit, and so many others.
            But, it is this term’s classes that are occupying me now. Four classes, all different preps, two new to me and both almost still just-out-of-the-box brand new to the campus. My third class I regularly teach, but I significantly changed it. The last is a milk run for me, but one I haven’t taught in five or six years. Frankly, I’m struggling to juggle all this, to know all my 85 students’ names, to plan ahead when at times I have only my experience and intuition to guide me. But, I’m managing. And, I don’t have any of those endless, albeit, necessary meetings.
            (One of my good friends once had a sign on his door: “Call a meeting, the creative alternative to work!” So right he is.)
            Five years as Chair! It still boggles my mind. I had planned on one year; it grew into five.
            But I did like it. I’ll leave it to others to judge how good a job I did, but I know I enjoyed myself. “Enjoyed” in the sense that each day I did have a strong sense that what I did mattered and that I had actually helped people, students mostly. I have the same sense as a professor (i.e., one who’s teaching fulltime), the awareness that what I do matters. The classroom, however, is planting an orchard knowing I will not taste the fruit.
Being a Chair is often like being an air traffic controller: okay, that one’s landed; this one’s taxiing; that one has taken off. You can see what’s what, often the day it happens. With deadlines and specific tasks, you know when to check off something from the “To Do” list. Not so with lecturing on Browning to high school teachers-in-training or future grad students. Will this end up at Marshall High? In a MA thesis at Kansas State? And what of those who are struggling even to pass the class? Is their possibility of graduation fading?
            In addition to returning to the classroom after a restful sabbatical, I returned to the classroom after an amazing weekend in the Cities called the Landmark Educational Forum. A few of you may at this point believe I drank “the Kool-Aid” or suffered a mind-meld or was abducted by aliens in London, but far from it. Marianne and I went together to our Forum; it was intense and enlightening.
            First off, be clear: Landmark is not a cult. And be forewarned, it is brutally honest. However, the sharp honesty it demands starts with each participant, (that would be me) being honest about the games and stories we (that would be I) believe are true. And believe them even when we know they are our own fictions.
            I won’t give away too much on the whole weekend’s experience, but I will say that even here in Marshall, there are introduction sessions open to all. Or, wherever you live, you can look up Landmark Educational Forum online and find out about introduction opportunities in your location. It is worth the time, effort, and (yes) money to attend a Landmark Forum Weekend.
            And so, this semester: I believe the rest and change in routine created by sabbatical, the passing along of Chair duties, and the personal enlightenment of Landmark have all helped me begin this term on much better footing. I’m behind in grading. Break Week became a grading frenzy marathon, and still I stayed way behind. But, it’s all good.
            And it’s good to be back where I belong, at the chalkboard, at the lectern, holding office hours, grading those long-neglected stacks of frosh comp.
T. S. Eliot said: “And the end of all our journeys will be to return to the starting point / And know the place for the first time.”
            It’s great to be home.

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Marshall High School's Annual "Schwan's Speech Spectacular"

3/8/2012

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Here we are again. This is from last year but we're at the Schwan's Speech Spectacular weekend again. I hope to start my blog on a twice-monthly basis soon.

Stay tuned.
                                    *

                Marshall High School’s Annual
                “Schwan’s Speech Spectacular”

                        "If I could pick one
                 factor in selecting a student
                    who will excel in college,
     it would be participation in high school Speech."

        John Sexton, President New York University

Quote supplied by Mr. Rick Purrington, Marshall Senior High Speech Director

                                     *
    I was introduced to the excellence of Minnesota high school speech my first year of graduate school at the University of Notre Dame back in 1978. One stellar Minnesotan first-year student wrote about her four-year career in high school speech. Her essay was so extraordinary that I kept it, duplicated it, and shared it with my next class, and my next, and my next. My ND student wrote about her hours of
preparation and practice as a member of a champion-caliber team. She then explained the thrill and keenness of the competition at the larger high school meets. Generally these were in the Cities, although with her skills, she eventually went to meets at the regional and national level. I first read that essay nearly 35 years ago, and yet I still use this piece
whenever I teach composition.

     When we moved to Marshall 23 years ago, I was again introduced to Minnesota speech, this time more specifically Marshall High’s stunning team.   Next to our rented duplex, a family with four children lived. The older two were at Marshall High while the youngest was our daughter’s preschool age. It was a perfect set-up: a new friend for our daughter and competent babysitters right next door. Through them we heard all sorts of praise for the Marshall schools, especially all the extracurricular activities
the high school had to offer, like Marching Band, Choir, and Speech.

     Very early on in our life here, we stocked our freezer with Schwan’s mini-pizzas and boxes of cookie dough sold door-to-door by MHS Speech
members. They always seemed to come on the coldest January Sunday in pairs or sets of three.
Perky, smart, and respectful, they had a confident, winning attitude.

     Our daughter’s first year at Marshall High coincided with the first year of the Schwan’s Speech Spectacular twelve seasons ago. I was able to help with the first and second Spectaculars, both held
exclusively in what is now the Marshall Middle School campus. I did hallway monitoring to guide scurrying participants to their right rooms. Having previously taught high school for four years, I suspected that at this first Spectacular I would have to be policing noisy students, asking ebullient participants to quiet down or move along. I assumed that I might have to break up a boy/girl couple or two. I even imagined having to confiscate cigarettes.

     Was I ever wrong twelve years ago at that first Spectacular.

     I had never worked directly with speech teams before that weekend, but I was delighted with all the
students. They were respectful, self-disciplined, focused, and polite. Also dressed professionally with suits and ties for the young men; blazers, skirts, and crisp blouses and heels for the young women. I felt like I was at a job-interview-practice-camp for Wall Street or some law school that only took outgoing and talented 17-year-olds.

     And did they know the three key elements of excellent tournament play: “practice, practice, practice.” You must attend one of these meets to understand what I am about to describe. It was at my initial Spectacular that I first witnessed what can only be described as “the Speech-Wall Syndrome.” Walk down any speech venue corridor, and scattered about at what seems to be a mandatory seven-and-a-half-foot interval are participants practicing, practicing, practicing their moving oratory, their wry smiles at a punch line, their statistical evidence backed by appropriate hand gestures. Bricks or school lockers do not respond, but these sharp contenders do not care. They don’t want an
audience at this point; they want eight minutes to make certain their timing is perfect, their hand movements are natural, or their smiles are sincere.

     At that first Schwan’s Spectacular, I witnessed something else besides the talent and enthusiasm of individual participants. I realized that being on a speech team was a “big deal” in ways I was only just beginning to understand. This particular tournament was able to garner participating high schools from Denver and Tennessee. I couldn’t believe it. It
was typical Minnesota winter weather, yet buses of students from as close as Canby and as far as the slopes of the Rockies were here. And when not presenting, most of them seemed to find a quiet spot and deliver (all by themselves) with their noses brushing a brick wall or a student locker.

     I took a hiatus from the Spectacular until three years ago. Mr. Rick Purrington, the MHS director of Speech, put out a call for volunteers to help judge. I was game. By now, the high school had its sparkling new campus across Highway 23 from SMSU where an additional set of rooms were needed to handle the 800 participants from seven states competing in
categories as varied as “Original Oratory” and “Great Speeches” (two vastly different types of presentations),“Informative Speaking” and “Discussion.” Shuttle buses run participants and
judges from the high school to the university so there are rooms enough for all the events. A judge like myself might hear eight“Extemporaneous Readings” from a Nobel Prize-winning novel then,
after filing scores, have to hustle across the highway to hear seven “Informational Speeches”on topics like the history of Jell-O or resilience as a necessary trait of personal success.

     On the recent Schwan’s Speech Spectacular weekend, I was unable to judge the first event
round. But while still on the SMSU campus, I came face-to-face with a professionally dressed young woman whose hair was in a tight bun that made her look older than her high school years. “Speech!” I blurted out, “you’re here for the Schwan’s Meet.”
Yes, she said, and told me she was lost. I showed her where classroom BA 235 was, but we both knew this had to be the place. Six other nervous young men and women had already gathered outside the classroom, each as formally dressed as the next, and each talking to the wall as a gaggle of college kids, in gym shorts and sweatshirts, moved along ignoring them.

     Later that afternoon, walking through MHS between events, I saw 800 nerdy yet competitors
practicing, encouraging, coaching teammates, and eyeing the other contenders. I saw former students
who, as high school teachers now, brought their teams to compete. I saw ranks of Marshall High parents keeping the refreshments flowing and
helping lost participants find the right room. The whole utter chaos of between-events is managed so miraculously that at the beginning of a competition round, the school is suddenly silent as most of the students draw a deep breath, nod to their judge, and begin. Those not presenting wait patiently, listening with a tuned ear to their fellow competitors. As this next round begins, 800 taut teenagers are in the right place and instantly as quiet as senior citizens at church.

     As the weekend progressed and I found the classroom where I was to judge, or wrote up my
scores, or scurried off to my next venue, I had the deep sense that I was amid such talented and hard-working high schoolers that one or two were destined to be a state governor, others will definitely become mayors and legislators and senators. Many will be surgeons and perhaps astronauts. Most would complete university degrees and be our next generation of business leaders, teachers, and articulate parents. Many are aspiring lawyers; a few destined to be future judges.

     I love many aspects of living in Marshall, but one of the best is the way the parents of current students here are really devoted to the high school and its extracurricular activities. In some school systems, I think this devotion is tied solely to athletics. I know many parents here follow our local winning sports teams closely, no doubt, but I have always been positively struck by how the parents and grandparents around here support the Speech team,
the Marching Band, and the arts in general.

     This carries over to the high school students as well. Time and again at MHS I have seen signs pasted to lockers encouraging Speech students to “Orate Like a Champion Today!”or “Bring Home the Gold!” It’s the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for football or basketball stars. But in Marshall, it seems that a student can star at athletics and Speech and Band yet not seem out of place. Striving at all the extras seems encouraged. Being well-rounded is encouraged. A wonderful, supportive attitude permeates the whole community. Marshall should be justly proud of this tradition; it’s rare.

     The two-day meet on the last weekend of January was a dizzy, exciting event. I have judged three Spectaculars in a row and have already blocked off my January 2013 weekend to make sure I have no conflicts for the 13th annual event. The silent bricks along the MHS Fine Arts wing are already waiting for all that last-minute practice.

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"Libraries of My Life"

2/5/2012

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Nota Bene: Reports of my discontinuing this blog are premature! Christmas came and went with this essay lingering on my computer. Then the semester began in a rush. But, I am back to the blog-task and hoping to get one a week or two a month posted throughout this semester. Thanks for hanging in with your absent blogger!

I hope you enjoy.

                 “Libraries of My Life”

     As an English professor, libraries have always been a part of my life. Fortunately for me, I work on a campus with a wonderful, recently-renovated university library and also live in a town that opened a brand new city-county library. They are gems open to all out here on our wind-swept prairie.

     My earliest memories of libraries go back to the Ella K. McClatchy branch library in Sacramento, California. I went there for school projects and general library use from grammar school up through high school. Set in a neighborhood, this one-time mansion became a public children’s library in the 1940s. Recently, I looked at pictures of the building on Google and remember the long exterior stairs going up to the main door. I also remember the dark woodwork and the racks of books in salons and sitting rooms with marble fireplaces and gleaming mirrors, sentinels of times past welcoming and tolerant of the hordes of noisy children trooping through the stacks, often lost amid the Dewy Decimal System.

     It’s ironic, but as a child I was slow to learn to read. Grammar schools, I am convinced, are designed to teach girls not boys. We are messy and energetic multi-taskers who find it hard to focus on neatness and the minutia of details. Reading, spelling, penmanship—beyond most boys’ ken. My lack of precision on 1950s drill sheets led the nuns to assume I wasn’t getting it. One spring in the 5th grade, the nuns tested me and said I read below a 2nd grade level.

    Fortunately, my parents sent me to a reading tutor after school for a year and then a private summer school program to brush up on my reading after 7th grade. When tested again after completing that summer program, I scored high enough for my teacher to say I could get into West Point if I applied myself. (My goal in life at that time was a career in the Army.)

    Taking standardized tests was boring. I quickly got lost in the rows of circles, and after a time, I didn’t care where I marked or whether I marked C
when I should have marked D. I wasn’t a slow learner, I was a bored learner.

     Even so, I loved the McClatchy Library. I knew all those books were a treasure that only a genie could open for me. That genie was the force of will it took for me to concentrate and read carefully. I never marked up a library or school textbook, but once I bought my own books, I began marking them
and jotting notes in the back to force myself to concentrate and remember.

    To this day, I still read with a pen in hand. For me, that became the key. But that key unlocked the
door when I was in college. Getting there was an anxious and frustrating experience, but I knew I
wanted to go to college and not seek my fortune as a grocery clerk as too many of my family and teachers suggested. Determination has always been a driving force within me not easily shut down. It also helped to have supportive parents who believed in you.

     I learned early on as a college student to use a library as a quiet place to study. At Saint Mary’s College, that was St. Albert’s Hall. I seem to have a knack for being at schools with new libraries; St. Albert had just opened when I matriculated at SMC in 1968. I have one visual memory from those
evenings I spent studying in St. Albert’s. One quiet reading room had a common but expensive wall clock that shows the whole world on its broad face and a wave diagram passing over the surface of the planet to designate the edge of daylight or the coming of night. Although SMC had a European travel program, I wasn’t able to swing a trip during my undergraduate years. But that clock always reminded me of places I wanted to visit, especially
England. I finally made it, several times: alone, with
friends, with Marianne and Elaine, with students, with my brothers.

     Sacramento State University, where I earned my MA, also had a new library. The North Wing, as it is now called, opened in 1975, two years after I started part-time there. (A South Wing was added in 1990.) Even after I went to Notre Dame to start my PhD, I used the Sac State library in the summer. There
in the North Wing, I mastered French—translation French that is. (As my colleagues in the SMSU French Department will tell you, my pronunciation of their beloved language comes out like horrendous French mixed with Klingon plus spitting and a soupçon of belching.) But, after that summer, I could sight-read French fairly well, even Baudelaire’s poetry, a much
more difficult form of writing than prose.

     At Notre Dame, I started out regularly using the Hesburgh Memorial Library, the one with "Touchdown Jesus." At first, I had a locking cart which allowed me to check out books directly to it
instead of lugging them home. On quiet nights, like a Friday or Saturday after a game, when only grad students were trying to study, we did race on our four-wheeled carts, but mostly I was a serious student.

     In time, I got my own study carrel, about twice as big as a phone booth. It had the same privilege
as my locking cart, which I surrendered in lieu of a private carrel. I graded papers, read, prepped for my comprehensive exams, actually took my comps and wrote my dissertation in there. I know it sounds a little like solitary, (after all, there is no room for a carrel-mate), but for the neophyte scholar, it was all the room needed. “The mind is its own place, and can make a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell,” as Milton tells us.

     In time, before my comps, I got one of the few study carrels with a window. Mine overlooked the quad facing west, allowing me to see the famous Golden Dome about a quarter of a mile away. It was under the Dome that one up-and-coming associate editor, Marianne Murphy, worked. Cutting to the chase, after we were serious, then engaged, then married, I knew when she was leaving work (before email or texting) and could watch for her crossing the library quad on her way to meet me for dinner at the end of the day. And I still got my dissertation done, her wonderful distraction aside.

     Although a bit dingy when I arrived, the SMSU Library has always been a great place for me as well. I quickly found a window seat in the campus library and went there regularly over the years for reading or grading or prepping. My special nook was a corner which is now office space for the library staff. My particular window faced north across prairie almost as far as the eye can see.

     Several years ago, the SMSU Library closed for 18 months for major renovation. Its grand reopening was a dazzling sight. New computer banks and labs, sleek circ and reference desks (always staffed by helpful librarians and perky students), quiet study areas, and its wonderful conference room on the top floor with its vista of the endless prairie (and now the new Marshall High School campus). There is not much to see on a prairie but wind and space; the Conference
Room gives you an unconstrained view of that endlessness.

     Because of his generous bequest, the SMSU Library has been renamed the Dorothy and D. C. “Pat” McFarland Library. Mr. McFarland left the campus a cool $2 million, the largest single donation from an individual to the university to date. SMSU is coming of age.

     Besides this treasure of a library, to Marshall’s credit, a second exciting and grand library has opened just across town. Entering the new Marshall-Lyon County Library is truly an “out of Marshall experience.” It’s hard to believe you are still even in Marshall once you cross into that welcoming, lovely place. It opened just a few months ago but I visit it regularly. The last time I had visited the now-closed, musty downtown library was seven years ago.

    The new open and airy space invites you to sit, read, and enjoy your time there as you would savor a five-star meal in the Cities or Paris or San Francisco.

     In a few months time, my five-year tenure as English Chair will end. I will get a short sabbatical and then return to fulltime teaching. I am looking forward to the change of pace, mainly, a change that will give me much more control over my time. It’s a heavy teaching load, but my days will be spent around my schedule and not other people’s meetings. (The creative way to avoid work is to have a meeting!) When that time comes, I am planning on scouring both the McFarland and Marshall Libraries for just the right spot to prep and grade and then sneak in a guilty pleasure of a sci-fi or military history on the side.

    Life is good in a fine library.

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Logan and the "Retarded"

6/7/2011

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         Riding home from campus on my bike the other day, I passed by a house that is a residence for adults with developmental disabilities. In social work parlance, it is a group home. Two residents were each pushing lawn mowers down the street while a third talked to a neighbor. These residents had a caretaker with them who was kindly walking along keeping the three on task. This across-the-street neighbor was kidding the men, all in their late 40s or older, because he had seen them out at a local restaurant the other night. He was needling them for all the BBQ ribs they ate. The good-natured chiding, the laughter, the warm feelings: it may have been a work crew finishing a long week together or a bowling team after a tournament. Guys having fun. Guys sharing a laugh with one of the guys.

     I found the sight heartwarming.

     I know one of the residents by name, Tom. He is quite the Notre Dame Football fan, as I am. I owned a few ND shirts I didn’t want anymore and made it a point of dropping them by his residence several years back. He
still lights up when he sees me. This was during the darker years of ND Football when the Faithful (Subway Alums or graduates alike) needed to rally to the cause. Tom was right there.

     This particular residence has 4 or 5 adults. It’s a stable group. I think Tom’s lived there for about 15 years, a few of his housemates about the same. Every workday, a bus gathers them up, drives three blocks to a second group home and gathers another 4 or 5 adults, and off they all go, lunch boxes in hand, to productive work in a sheltered workshop or another business here in Marshall.

     As a homeowner, I appreciate these group homes because their lawns are
cut, their siding, windows, and roofs are in good shape. I don’t want to cast aspersions at any other neighbors in these tough economic times, but the two nearby group homes look far better than several houses around here. And at first glance you would never suspect these homes are in fact used for institutional purposes.

     I know at SMSU every few weeks, yet a third group of adults with
disabilities comes up to collect recycling. This particular group is not as high
functioning. But their caretaker moves them along and they complete their task in a satisfactory manner.

    When we were first married, Marianne worked for an agency with the long-outdated name of “Council for the Retarded.” In charge of this agency’s PR, Marianne’s first task was changing the name to Logan, because their buildings were on Logan Street in South Bend, Indiana, and their campus had become known as“Logan Center.”

     Of course, “retarded” was the term of choice when this agency first started about thirty years before Marianne joined Logan. Retarded was a polite euphemism that became the vogue in the 1950s. At that time, the parents of the children this agency initially served were proud of the name, Council for the Retarded, because few agencies or groups were doing much for their special-needs children. Back in the early 50s, the correct medical terms and psychological titles for children and adults with these disabilities were idiot, moron, and imbecile. If I had a child which the state and the medical community labeled as “moron” or “imbecile,” I’d feel that “retarded”was a much softer, friendlier label. “Oh, my son’s not an idiot;
he’s just slow or retarded.”

     How times have changed.

     About the time Marianne worked at Logan, the last of the Indiana state
hospitals for such adults were being closed. These institutions had shunted children and adults with disabilities out of plain view, often out of parents’
homes. In the 80s, group homes like the two in our neighborhood were becoming more and more common. Two social forces met and agreed on this: the cost-cutters who never loved any state agency and the social activists who saw warehousing high-functioning adults as cruel.  Warehousing is also self-fulfilling. It suggests that “these morons can’t do anything else,” so well-meaning bureaucrats set up a system where the developmentally disabled could not do anything else. But when given the chance, oh, how
these young men and women shine. We see it every day.

     Logan ran about six group homes when Marianne worked there. I remember filling in for the caretaker staff one night to make sure the six residents were fed dinner. I hadn’t barbequed on their grill before, but I gave it my best shot. Well, the men loved my burnt chicken. Loved? They devoured it.

     A few of them were workers at a South Bend steel finishing works. They did all the labor of the regular crew. In fact, a study of their work productivity showed they actually out performed some of the longtime workers there. These guys were on time each day. They were scrupulous about their break time and lunch time. They punched in and out accurately. They didn’t sneak off to smoke on the company’s time.

    When Logan bought its seventh group home, however, the neighbors raised a stink. All of Logan’s group homes had to meet stringent State of Indiana regulations. So many bedrooms so there was no overcrowding; so many bathrooms; and an adequate suite for the live-in caretaker. Logan did not want to saturate any one neighborhood, so for the seventh home, it went into a higher-end location. This upper-middle class neighborhood had families with good sized broods of children, thus the houses were larger, well suited for Logan’s needs.

    It was only here that Logan ruffled some feathers. However, at a public meeting, the confrontational neighbors were embarrassed to hear themselves essentially saying they didn’t want “those kind of people” as their neighbors, saying that “those kind of people” weren’t welcomed. As these complaining
future neighbors heard themselves speaking out, they grew humiliated and humbled by their own heartlessness and mean-spirited attitudes.

     But what good neighbors the group home residents turned out to be. The group home residents cut their own lawn. When the guys realized there were two widows on either side, those lawns were cut also. And what guy can
resist a powerful snow blower? Plus, South Bend is in the Great Lakes’ Snow Belt. So, three driveways got cleaned up early every morning it snowed. Baked cookies soon replaced complaints as reluctant neighbors realized what great new neighbors they had.

    Marianne’s second task at Logan was getting the PR ready for the International Summer Special Olympics which were being held at the Notre Dame campus. By the time the Games were held, my new teaching position across state had moved us away from South Bend and her job at Logan, but the experience has stuck with us.

    Special Olympics. Group homes in residential neighborhoods. The
clerk at a local supermarket here in Marshall helping me load my bags of
groceries in my car. The visible and normal lives of our fellow citizens with special needs. No longer labeled as morons, no longer warehoused out-of-sight, no longer shunned.

     They’re carrying their lunchboxes, going to work, and every once in a while packing away the BBQ ribs like one of the guys.

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Marsco Readings and Reports

Taking Stock: Third Week of April 2013

Marshall High School's Annual "Schwan's Speech Spectacular"

"Libraries of My Life"

Logan and the "Retarded"

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