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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.

  

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SMSU Pep Band at our last home football game, November 2013. Mustangs won!
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Restarting at Long Last!

5/18/2014

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                       Restarting at long last!

            After a long hiatus, I’m re-launching my blog with a slightly different format. I intend to post twice monthly, one my own piece and one a guest-written piece. So, here is my first blog in ages.

            As many of you know, Southwest Minnesota State University has a yearly distinction, the conferring of the Cathy Cowan Award, an honor given to a faculty or staff member who has over five years of service and has demonstrated devotion to the campus and the community. I am this year’s recipient.

            With all due humility, here is the text of my acceptance. (For those who do not know, the mascot of Southwest is the Mustang. We are the Mustangs!)


Picture
             Cowan Award Thank You Speech
          SMSU Commencement, May 10, 2014

            President Gores, Distinguished Dignitaries and Guests, Parents and Family of our Graduates, Faculty and Staff, and today’s Graduates, thank you all for acknowledging me as this year’s Cowan Award Recipient. I am touched and honored more than I can say. 

            My thanks also to Marianne and Elaine, my wife and daughter, who have helped and encouraged me throughout my twenty-five years here. In fact, today marks forty years of my academic career, from high school teaching and college teaching in four states coast-to-coast and eventually to Southwest in 1989.

            I also want to thank my nominating team for their belief that I am worthy of this distinction, especially since I know all the other 11 Cowan Award recipients. I stand in awe among and with the pillars of this university. Thank you.

            But it is to you, our Esteemed Graduates, that I want to speak:

            A girl enters a wardrobe and finds herself in Narnia. A hobbit leaves his hole and ends up fighting dragons. Dr. Who enters his TARDIS and lands wherever the space-time continuum takes him. You entered Southwest years ago, and here you are today.

            These all seem different, but they are all in fact the same.

            Here’s how: Maybe you came right from high school or maybe as a transfer student. As a graduate of another college or a parent whose children just entered kindergarten, or even a high school student beginning your university career early. You might be someone who crossed a street, the state, a state line, or an ocean; it does not matter. At whatever stage of life you came from, you stepped out of your familiar world into a world you did not and could not truly imagine before.

            This excellent university has brought you to places as far from your previous lives as any magic doorway could. And it has helped make you a citizen of a broader world, a more thoughtful and deeply-concerned citizen, an inquisitive citizen.

            Oh, Southwest may have trained you for a job; perhaps you start next week. Or, it prepared you for graduate school, law or medical school, or to return to that family farm or a family business. Whatever and wherever, you return as a traveler from a foreign land. And as you move on from Southwest to the next stage of your lives, you do so with vision and ideas expanded from those you once had when you came. Savor this! Savor all of this!

            Wherever you land next and next and next, you go there transformed by your efforts, indeed, sometimes transformed in spite of your efforts. Savor that transformation! Be proud of it. As Thomas Paine reminds us: “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”

            This dark world needs your enlightened citizenship.

            In her address at a commencement several years ago, J.K. Rowling stated, “We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.”

             And so, Graduates, of whom we are so proud, as your amazing lives unfold, transform your world. Transform our world. Bring it your light. Imagine for us all a better world.

             And if in a year or ten or twenty-five, when you look back on the road you’ve just trod, let no one, including yourself, ever say, “You did too little with your life; you shone too dim; all because you dreamed too small.” Dream BIG with your lives and your loved ones, with your communities and your careers.

            Play BIG.

            And remember always, you are not Shetland ponies!

            You are Mustangs!

            Play BIG!

            Congratulations once again and thanks to all of you for allowing me this slice of your wonderful day.
                                                                                                        *

            If you are a longtime reader, thanks for looking once more at my blog. If you are new to the Eclectic Blog, welcome.

             At this point in my career, I am off for the summer and will teach only 66% next academic year. The following two academic years, I will teach 50% each year. At that point, I will fully retire. This change allows me to write and publish more. The Marsco Dissident, now available in e-download only, will be available in print this summer. (Details forthcoming.) Marsco Triumphant, Book II of the four-part Marsco Saga, will be available in print and e-download in December 2014. Watch for them.

             Thank you all for checking out my blog and for checking out my fiction. I will be posting a guest blog by Tessa Miller, one of the main characters in The Marsco Dissident, in about two weeks. She will be speaking of her frustrations with the Marsco world and her life just before she enters at the start of Chapter 1. I’m sure you’ll enjoy hearing from her. 

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Marsco Readings and Reports

9/28/2013

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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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In Praise of Great Teachers

12/3/2011

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                    In Praise of Great Teachers

   “And if I were a good teacher, who would know?”  
                Robert Bolt,
A Man for All Seasons

    It’s often easier to complain than praise. Even so, this essay is about the great profs I’ve known, the rare ones who have challenged me to become a better student and a better professor, those who have inspired me personally and professionally. It is offered as thanks to those in academe who keep it alive and thriving.

    Perhaps the best professor I have ever known is Dr. Charles Nelson from my days at Sacramento State University where I completed my MA in English.  SSU was my launching pad.  I did well in my MA work, well enough to voice aloud my desire to earn a PhD and teach at the college level. The MA gave me the ability to teach in the California two-year system with its good pay and multitude of opportunities since the state boasts of so many campuses from the Sierras to the Pacific.  
            
     But Charles stirred me on to the next level. I am forever indebted to him. (As an aside, one of my worst profs at the time urged me to stay at Lucky’s, a supermarket chain where I used to work.  “You’ll make more as a store manager than a high school teacher or a professor,” he explained.  Not exactly a Christa McAuliffe comment.)  
             
     Originally from Oklahoma, in his office Charles spoke with a relaxed twang of the Sooner State. He’d
drop a few Twain-like words, including that colloquial A-word ain’t when we spoke about my next project with him. For instance:  “I ain’t too sure Hamlet’s crazy.” Besides that ain’t, his crazy seemed stretched out by the addition of several letters: crraazzzy. But, get Professor Nelson in the classroom lecturing and he held his own intellectually, bar none, with never an ain’t or other grammatical slip.
              
     Any yet, he did something that few adults do when seriously talking about any subject.  He broke into laughter about the whole situation—genuine, often self-effacing, always playful, never cynical, pure fun-loving laughter at the absurdity of the situation.  (“What?  Killing your brother and marrying his widow for the crown of Denmark? You crraasssy?”)  More than once he pulled my academic career out of the recycle bin.  
             
     I was a bit of a lost puppy at the time.  I did a start-and-stop MA.  I started at Hayward State near Oakland, ran out of money, didn’t finish, and transferred to Sac State in my hometown.  I needed to regroup, then my father got very sick, and here I was stacking groceries all night at Lucky’s, trying to
finish my MA, searching for something professionally. Dr. Nelson helped me when I applied to the Catholic Diocesan system where I taught (sometimes full-, sometimes part-time) for the next four years.  Over the course of one grueling year,
he guided me through my final MA project while I was teaching and while my Father was growing sicker.
              
     To finally graduate, I wrote a series of essays in lieu of a single thesis.  It was probably more
challenging than a thesis since it had to be passed in pieces, and Charles was no slouch about scholarship.  I remember he wrote things like, “Why are you quoting all this outside material if you don’t use it in your essay?” I learned to temper my enthusiasm for long quotes that seemed more like
padding than serious research. It’s a story I still tell my students every time I teach composition. I want my writing students to have the same skills Dr. Nelson taught me.
             
     Two men pointed me toward Notre Dame, my Father (who was a “Subway Alum” always wanting one of his sons to attend ND) and Charles.  When I was accepted, I was also accepted at several other schools, but only ND offered me four years of teaching so I could teach part-time to pay my way through the program.  Dr. Nelson assured me that ND wasn’t just a football school. The rest is history.
             
     Years later at Notre Dame, in order to finish my dissertation, I worked closely with another gem of a professor, Dr. Donald Sniegowski. He made sure that my work was edited well, and he scrupulously went over every detail with me even under adverse circumstances. (This was actually the job of my thesis director, but Don did it instead; that tells you something right there.) One Saturday, we were to meet, but he called to cancel since he was going to
the hospital with phlebitis.  He had limped into the English office that morning to put his completed evaluation in my mailbox so that even though we weren’t meeting, I would have his notes about my next chapter.  
       
     Twenty-some years later, when our daughter asked her own professor to work on a paper dealing with African literature, her prof told her that she
needed to work with Professor Sniegowski, a noted specialist on that topic.  She called, made an appointment, and met with him.  When she entered his office, Don had a copy of my dissertation open and asked her if she was related to its author.  He hadn’t forgotten although the phlebitis had long since cleared up. 
           
     The first department chair I worked with was Dr. Ed Uehling at Valpo U near Chicago but located in Valparaiso, Indiana.  Good school. I faced a rocky year, but Ed helped me so much. He was a genuine man and a stabilizing influence on me. I had high school classroom know-how, a PhD in hand, administrative and university-level teaching experience, yet I was not getting any traction on the
job search.  Ed kept up the encouragement.  When I contemplated other academic careers or different professional tracks altogether (like being a tech-writer for an engineering firm in Michigan), Ed counseled me to stay with our profession.  I did, he worked with me, and I moved along to another campus in a tenure-track situation.

     As a department chair myself now, I often think about how Dr. Uehling would do things.  His calm and thoughtful demeanor managed many a situation (a mess I created or other issues). Well-respected, Ed helped on many levels at Valpo campus-wide.  I wouldn’t be here if not for him.  Even now, I wish at times that my hot Italian temper could be as cool and controlled under fire as Ed’s.
              
     The saddest story to relate in this blog is about Dr. Bob Alexander.  He was nearing the end of his exemplary career at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where I taught for two years after Valpo. This campus and I were not a fit.  We should have been: small, Catholic liberal arts college so like my alma mater from California, my own PhD from ND where the priests of King’s were trained, and the list goes on. But, it never worked out between us. It went from bad to worse.
               
     Bob was an inspiration, however.  He was the professor who used to enter the classroom each day a few minutes late on purpose.  His explanation:  if on time, you looked cowed by the administration; if too late, you seemed to disrespect the students.  His trick was to come in consistently a few minutes late to show his students he was his own boss.  Having taught high school, I never broke with that routine of being “ahead of the bell,” but I loved Bob for his
wise, idiosyncratic attitude.
           
     His heart gave out while he was fighting severe influenza our last winter in Pennsylvania.  He was within a year or so of retirement.  It was the saddest blow since he had been such an advocate of mine at a time when my life at King’s had grown so deplorable. His wife, Gracie, told me later that Bob’s one regret was that he had never written while teaching.  I remember that every time I write now; Bob didn’t write and it haunted his widow and cast a shadow over his fine career.  

    Every career is filled with mentors and colleagues who rise up at precisely the needed moment. We all
could fill pages with anecdotes of colleagues or teachers who inspired us, helped us, kicked us out of our complacency, encouraged us at just the right
moment.
           
     It’s not about their published books or their impressive resumes, although many of these scholars are widely published.  It’s about their humanity in the face of so many obstacles in academe today, their humanity and their love of teaching which they shared with me and so many others. They cared about their students, embraced our profession as a vocation not an occupation, and did their best.
          
     At this time of Thanksgiving past and Christmas ahead, holidays steeped in gratefulness, it’s important to remember all those inspiring men and women from our past.  Colleagues and mentors like these point our way to the future.  


                 
 


  

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Science Fiction: Plans, Sidetracks, and Endpoints

10/26/2011

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  Science Fiction:  Plans, Sidetracks, and Endpoints 
   
     For over a year, I’ve been telling students and colleagues that I was willing to venture into the realm of teaching creative writing.  I am the Chair of an English Department quite famous for its writers. 
I’m not putting myself into that august group, but I wanted to pull my own weight in terms of taking on a
workshop.  The Department has recently begun a new class format that is the perfect venue.  
    
    Instead of a 4-hour weekly workshop, we have these new flexible mini-workshops for only 2 hours per week.  I didn’t need to go off the high dive; I was going to stand on the edge of the pool and dive (or belly-flop) with a short offering.  
 
    It was to be my first-ever sortie into teaching any type of sci-fi and/or creative writing workshop.  
 
    Although eager, I was nonetheless intimidated.  
 
    I shouldn’t be because, after all, I know  something of writing and something of sci-fi.  I have put together 4 such novels since the late 90s, working in a lonely and silent workshop (my home office) and pouring myself into a horrific world not so
farfetched from what we have now.  
 
    In these four linked novels,
The Marsco Saga, I have space travel, love, political catastrophe, plus colonies on the Moon, Mars, the asteroids.  A war is about to break out; a ragtag band of optimistic (and literate) heroic dissidents are not willing to knuckle under; and a religious lunatic (living in a cave) is willing to destroy everyone else to prove his messianic beliefs are correct.  (I slapped
him into an Amazon rainforest cave long before
9/11.)
          
     The creative writing class was a great idea. 
Science fiction and fantasy are extremely popular. 
Since I’m on the verge of publishing my own books, I readily agreed to do a mini-workshop and let the dragons, war-bots, green-goo-attacker-globs, dark
and shadowy killer thingies fall where they may.

    Sadly, these “best laid plans” have fallen by the wayside. I fell behind over the summer so I never got a handle on a clear conception for the class; I had to beg off offering this class in Spring ’12.  To my surprise, my office door on campus was not surrounded by ranks of zombies, creatures from black lagoons, diaphanous and silken-clad alien women lusting for my soul but really desperately needing my blood and marrow to live.  

    Had these ET hordes assailed me, I would have cautioned them, don’t mess with me, you alluring creatures from a galaxy far, far away.  Marianne is
like the honey badger protecting me and will rip out your pulsing innards, you green-blooded beauties who talk in stilted English.  You know the kind, spandex accentuating them just right, threatening with chilling remarks like, “All your orbit bases and hunk-men are belong to us. . . .”
             
     It would have been a good class. 
              
     I had looked for a textbook and found the
How
to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
by Orson Scott Card came with the highest recommendations.  I crossed paths with him once in graduate school before he hit it big as a fulltime sci-fi writer, but he wouldn’t know me from Obi Wan Kenobi.  

     His enormously successful Ender’s Game didn’t capture my attention when I started it many years ago.  Since I was then in my 40s, the appeal of youthful anxiety so central to the novel didn’t grab me, invite me into that world.  My nephews read him while in high school and loved him.  Card’s
protagonist has that dour, loner, teenage angst, which I had long since lost by the time I opened the novel.  It’s not that other works primarily written for young adults can’t hold my attention; I love all seven Harry Potter works and have devoured them twice.  The same is true of
The Lord of the Rings.

    However, Card’s How to Write is helpful and honest about the struggles of trying to craft fiction professionally on a sustained basis.  “Don’t quit your day job” is just one of his many admonitions; “this gig is harder than it looks.”  And I love his understanding of the sci-fi genre and why some of us embrace it willingly: 
  
    “One surprising result of the ghettoizing of 
speculative fiction, however, is that writers have enormous freedom within its walls. It’s as if, having once confined us [sci-fi, speculative, and fantasy
writers] within our cage, the keepers of the zoo of literature don’t much care what we do so long as we stay behind bars.”
  

     I hadn’t thought much about it, but when I created my world of Marsco (disease-ridden, dysfunctional politically and socially, rewarding and sustaining only an elite clique), I thought I was
simply exaggerating the world around us.  I explained to someone recently that the mainthe-reader-has-to-buy-this-exaggeration of the Marsco world is simply that the Third World is no longer out of sight on the other side of the world, but it’s on the next city block.  
 
    Marsco has the power to control who crosses the street and when.  Today, in our real world, Israel is
walling itself away from Palestinians.  In the Marsco world, this is happening but on a total planetary level, not in the far corner of the Mediterranean.

    But, back to class!  We were to read Walter M.
Miller’s A
Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel I want my students to know.  In this Cold War-era story, the world has been destroyed by a nuclear war, typical sci-fi fare from that paranoid and wary age.  The novel is set at a remote monastery in the southwest desert of the old USA. There, the monks are hand- copying books because after the atomic conflagration, the survivors blamed
knowledge and the literate for ending their 21st Century world.  So, intellectuals, scientists, educators alike are doomed, hunted and
attacked with merciless savagery after the atomic fires died down. Any books that survived the war went up in smoke afterwards, scapegoats for the catastrophe that brought the world to the edge of
extinction.  

     As the novel begins, it is 600 years after the war, but the world is still in ruins.  Miller’s world is roughly analogous to the 5th or 6th Century of our real history after the Fall of Rome.  The monks at the abbey are painstakingly laboring away on vellum like real monks did in our distant past.  

     The next section is roughly another 600 years later, in what would be our own historical world on
the verge of the Renaissance. When secular scholars visit the monastery seeking any text that deals with
theoretical physics and engineering, the monks have already made a treadmill-run generator that allows their visitors to read by a primitive electric light.  The visitors are devastated when they realize their incipient theories are not in fact new ones, but rediscoveries from an old world long past; they’re doubly upset because these desert hermits are a century ahead of their fledgling scientific hypotheses.  
 
     The last section is set 2400 years after the first conflagration and the world is on the verge of a second nuclear holocaust.  Having forgotten their own history, arrogant and tech-mastering humans are condemned to relive it.

     Even though steeped in Roman Catholic monasticism (the monks are authentic Dominicans who still speak in Latin), and even though our own Cold War fears have eased, Canticle is a tremendous book.  Well-crafted.  Keenly paced.  Generously
described.  Readers feel like they have entered Miller’s Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern redux. 
He captures the political machinations of those trying to harness science for their own means, not for the good of the whole.  He creates believable characters caught in the political webs and intrigues of their world.  The science fiction creeps in; it does not saturate.  Radiation-mutilated humans with extra
heads or arms roam about, reminders of the nuclear war long past, of science run amuck, of hubris fouling the world. 
 
     The novel opens with the unwitting discovery of a fallout shelter and its long-buried mysteries totally
misunderstood by monks in their nearly-destroyed, post-bellum world; these discoveries are understood by the reader:  Air lock? “Can of kraut and pound of pastrami”? Fallout itself—a mysterious ogre?

     And, Miller asks, how do you make ethical choices in such a world?  Indeed, how do we, today, in our real, wrap-knuckles-on-the-solid-desk-world right before us, how do we make ethical choices?  How do we live amid the injustices of our world?

     I ask these questions in The Marsco Saga.  My characters tend to be of Marsco, of the top 1% of the world in terms of political power and the necessities of life.  They have safety and comfort, freedom
from disease, crime, and the grime of a nearly-destroyed world. Most of the world’s population is held down to languish on the “nasty, brutish, and short” lowest stratum of society.  How do my characters’ consciences allow them to live while aware of this?  How do they live at all?  Or love?  Move about with any degree of freedom while knowing that their world is built on the backs of the
oppressed?

     It’s an exaggerated world, but also one much like our own.  In Card’s words, I write behind these bars.  And I chose to locate there so I can control the canvas backdrop and ask questions about that oppressive environment.  How do we make ethical choices in our own world?  How do we live and love
without becoming calloused and cynical?  
 
    Good speculative science fiction isn’t about the science, it’s about the speculation.  The British war poet Wilfred Owen wrote:  “All a poet can do is
warn.”  
 
    So, too, with the sci-fi writer:  we write to warn.

[So sorry I am late with this!  I plan to write on a more regular basis.  I'll keep you posted.  Also, check for updates on my Facebook wall.]

 
  
          

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Passing

6/22/2011

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    I received an unexpected email the other day.  It was a brief notice from Saint Mary’s College of California where I earned my bachelor’s degree announcing that a classmate of mine had died.  Mike was 60 or 61. 
I dug out my old yearbook to make sure I was remembering correctly,
hoping that I had two classmates with the same name.  His is a common Irish name, but no such luck.  It was a small school, about 1,200 students, and I was right; it was him.  
            
     This shouldn’t surprise me.  As an educator, I’ve had students die tragically in accidents or illness.  Family members have passed on; both my parents are dead. This past winter, one of my colleagues at Southwest Minnesota State University died unexpectedly over Christmas Break.  He was only 54 and in perfect health, but a stroke took him after a long flight to visit his mother.  
 
    So, hearing of Mike’s untimely passing wasn’t out of the realm of my
experience.

    I opened my yearbook and glanced at the senior portraits.  This was 1972, the height of the counter-cultural movement in California; thus, these portraits were informal.  Turns out I took two of them, a fact I had forgotten.  Both were casual snaps of two friends after a play performance. Saint Mary’s had an amphitheatre then; the play, The Birds by Aristophanes, was performed wearing masks the way it would have been in 414 BC when first produced. (If the times were counter-cultural, I hung with the counter-counter-cultural crowd.  I believe the term today would be “nerds,” but that’s another blog post.) 
 
    I glanced at old friends with whom I have not spoken in years.  Partly, this is because I moved away from California in 1978 and have not been back for any length of time since then.  And once my Mother died in 2004, even my trips to family out there have been less frequent.  In fact, since her passing, my family has met here in Marshall or in South Bend more regularly than out West. 

    But, excuses aside, I should have kept in better touch with old friends.

    This past week, we drove to Chicago and Indianapolis to visit Marianne’s
family.  Her uncle, Uncle Tom, a retired priest, suffers from advanced Parkinson’s.  (He is affectionately, “Father Uncle Tom” or “UT”to his nieces and nephews.)  Even with his tremors, his mind is sharp as ever. What
struck me during out visit was his knowledge of classmates from high school,
Notre Dame, and Indiana Law School that he remembers and keeps in touch
with.  It’s a talent I lack.

    Uncle Tom is able to do this in part because he was born and raised in
Indianapolis and except for four years at Notre Dame, two years stationed in
Japan with the US Army in the 50s, and his time in Rome at seminary, he has
lived his whole life there. On the other hand, I have packed up and re-rooted myself several times since I was 28, twice in Indiana, then Pennsylvania, and twenty-plus years ago, Minnesota.  I move, time moves along, old friends are forgotten.

    Glancing through the yearbook of 1972 the other night, I remembered every one of my classmates, even ones I did not know well at the time. 
Several had a band, a retro group that in the early 1970s played 50s
music, their act complete with leather jackets and slicked-back hair.  Instead of individual snaps of these guys, they did a band photo in their stage attire. 
They were pretty good as a mock-rock band and actually ended up performing long after graduation.  They made quite a name for themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area until a few years back.  One or two years
ago they were up for a reprise gig when one of the members (another classmate) died unexpectedly.

    I knew all these guys, but was never close to them, so the passing of one
of them didn’t hit me like Mike’s.

But it was the announcement of Mike’s death that led me to my long-unopened yearbook with grainy black and white photos.  When I came upon the photos of close friends, I had to ask questions for which I don’t know the answers.  One photo showed a recently-married couple.  In this day and age, you have to ask at least mentally, are they still together? A few classmates had become lawyers. Still at it?  I know from recent class notes on the
Saint Mary’s alumni homepage, that classmates who went into high school teaching right after graduation have been able to take early retirement through buy-out programs designed to retire higher-paid teachers.  What are their second careers?  Another classmate once lived in Canada.  Still there? 
 
    It seems like I should know a few of these things, but I don’t.

    The twists and turns of keeping in touch. And the odd ways that old
friends and acquaintances return to your life.

    Soon after we were married, Marianne took a Notre Dame summer class. 
The first day, she came home talking about her new classmates and
mentioned one by name, a Christian Brother out from California for a summer degree.

    “Not Brother Edmund?”  Could he be my Saint Mary’s classmate?

    The next class meeting, Marianne put the Saint Mary’s Alumni Directory at Brother Edmund’s seat.  When he came in, he glanced around the room.  Zarzana is not a common name but when first introduced to Marianne he had not put the two together.  He should have asked about a connection; it’s not a name like Murphy or Smith or Kelly. 
 
    Small worlds do exist.

    On Saint Mary’s alumni webpage this past week, I found out Brother Edmund is now principal of a Christian Brothers high school in Berkeley, California.  I’m a department chair; he’s a principal; a classmate is gone. 
Time moves on.

    This all made me realize yet again how important it is to cherish each day and each friend.  I think this is one of life’s main messages, but daily routine can smother us so we forget it.  We need to relearn it.  And it takes a jolt to shove this message back into the forefront of our lives. 

    Take the sentence, “Life’s too short for. . .” and fill in the blank.  Life’s too short for bad coffee or cheap wine.  Life’s too short for putting up with this or that nonsense.  Life’s too short for wasting on an unfulfilling career. 
 
     For some, life is just all too short, period.

    When an obituary arrives out of the blue, making you realize how short life really can be, it’s time to remember and reconnect.

    I hope you make time this summer for just that: connecting and
reconnecting with family, with friends, and with your own past.

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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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