.Come Away to the Water.

When Scott and I found out there was a soundtrack for The Hunger Games called Songs from District 12 and Beyond, we checked it out on iTunes and really enjoyed it.  The title, like the album itself, suggests roots to Appalachia (and beyond).  We honestly haven't stopped listening to it since we bought a number of the songs last week before going to see the film.  My personal favorite on the album is Maroon 5's "Come Away to the Water," featuring Rozzi Crane.  When I listened to it, the song made me 'feel' what I had felt when I read the book.  I definitely think some of these songs would have really added to the film (only instrumental songs were included in the film other than the two songs during the credits - Arcade Fire's "Abraham's Daughter" and "Kingdom Come" by The Civil Wars' feat. Taylor Swift).

The language in "Come Away to the Water" reminds me of Jesus' journey to the cross (and maybe this is simply because it's Lent and only a week away from Easter).  But, to explain a little more what I'm talking about I've included the lyrics (in italics) paired with some of the Scriptures they remind me of.  Now I'm not at all suggesting that Katniss, Peeta, or anyone else in the film/books are sacrificial like Christ, (although others have) I'm merely sharing a personal connection to the song.

Source: civa-artists.ning.com

Come away little loss/ Come away to the water/ To the ones that are waiting only for you

(Luke 19:10) For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Mark 1:14-18) After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,”he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.

Come away little loss/ Come away to the water/ Away from the life that you always knew/ We are calling to you

(Mark 1:9-10) At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

Come away little light/ Come away to the darkness/ In the shade of the night we’ll come looking for you/ Come away little light/ Come away to the darkness/ To the ones appointed to see it through/ We are calling for you/ We are coming for you

(John 8: 12-13) When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”

Come away little lamb/ Come away to the water/ Give yourself so we might live anew 

(John 1:29) The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!  (Hebrews 10: 9-10) Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Come away little lamb/ Come away to the slaughter/ To the ones appointed to see this through/ We are calling for you/ We are coming for you 

(Matthew 27: 27-31) Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

Come away little lamb/ Come away to the water /To the arms that are waiting only for you/ Come away little lamb come away to the slaughter/To the one appointed to see this through We are calling for you/ We are coming for you/ We are coming for you/ We are coming for you

(lyrics from Songlyrics.com; verses taken from NIV)

.our bully society.

Bullying has been on my mind lately...

There's a new book out I'd like to read, called The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools by Jessie Clein.  The Women's Media Center included a piece discussing the book's focus on the impact of gender and sexuality on bullying situations.  MS Magazine also included a recent piece on the many different programs working toward ending bullying in middle and high schools.  Cartoon Network and others have sponsored a Speak Up campaign against bullying.  And today a friend on Facebook shared this NYTimes article about a new documentary coming out this Friday called Bully. Basically, I've been seeing this topic everywhere I look!

Source: womensmediacenter.com via Jade on Pinterest

I couldn't agree more with Clein's assertion:


"Our children need a compassionate school community to counter these despairing trends. Keeping discussions about gender and sexuality out of schools reinforces isolation and cements our schools’ bully society. Even schools that take bullying seriously often miss the connection to gender. They may punish the bullies and throw one after another out of school, but they leave the culture of sexual harassment and bullying firmly intact. Schools can and should instead become leaders that change these hostile conditions. Doing nothing means students fend for themselves; and that’s why so many choose violence. One-day workshops and after-school programs do little to change our schools’ culture of hostility."

Because this has been on my mind lately, and because I continue to be reminded thanks to the media and many others that bullying is such a huge issue, I'm thinking of doing a related community outreach as a project for the Feminist Theory class I'm taking this quarter.  As an option our professor is letting us choose a topic/problem that relates to feminism/women's studies and try to create a related community service project.

I was reminded as I read these articles and thought about a future prospective project, of my students in my English 102 classes; both times I taught it I've had several people write papers on bullying and cyberbullying.  Most all of these students wrote about it because they were victims of it sometime during middle or high school (it's still a problem that's close to them and that they wish to combat as freshmen in college). I was a witness to some of their 'stories of bravery' as they shared them in their short argument reflections.  This past quarter, similar to my Women's Studies professor, I gave students the option of writing a letter to someone about their topic or doing a 'pocket-size' service project that related to their topic in some way. One girl who chose cyberbullying as her topic wrote a letter to her high school, advocating for more actions to be taken against cyberbullying: teacher-led workshops, a counselor on campus for students to talk to.  Another girl chose to do a small service project by signing a pledge on Stand Together and sharing her number on her social networking sites; she said many of her friends joined her in the pledge against bullying - - I thought this was so exciting for her; she saw that in taking this seemingly small stand, she became more than just a number!

As Clein suggests, as teachers we have an obligation to create a dialogue with students to "help them creat[e] friendships based on trust rather than social climbing and clawing. Instead of more punishment and increasing suspension rates—another form of social exclusion—conflict needs to become an opportunity for teaching where students learn to stand up for one another, refrain from vilifying others, and learn ways to appreciate, support, and help everyone in their community."  But, sadly, as Clein and the NYTimes article both suggest, "cruelty is embedded in our schools and therefore in our society as a whole."

Perhaps the best way to combat this growing problem is by providing a place for sharing our stories, making them our own, and becoming people who've overcome rather than people made into victims.  The Born This Way Foundation has a mission of 'inspiring bravery,' and has created a place for people to share their 'stories of bravery,' personal experiences with bullies.  I think this is one very helpful way to put an end to bullying, by sharing those stories with others and having people listen.  I shared some of my own stories in part of a memoir I wrote for a feminist memoir class, and I can't tell you how good it felt sharing those stories, making them my own.  Similar to my students who shared their stories with me, I was glad to have witnesses to these events (I might get up the courage to share them on here sometime).  If more of us understand that we've gone through these experiences, we might find a better way to combat the issue and understand the underlying problems.

Trip to Pennsylvania: ASA conference #2

..the ASA banner hanging downtown..

This past weekend Scott and I ventured to Pennsylvania (for the third time in our two years living in Ohio, I might add) to the Appalachian Studies Association Conference at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  It was a great end to my spring break and seemed more like a mini-vacation than a trip that will eventually end up on our resumes.  Because it's never one of our adventures without some minor mishap, we took a wrong exit, which resulted in paying an extra turnpike toll and seeing the welcoming (not!) sign that the next exit was 14 miles away, which then meant turning around, paying another toll and traveling the 14 miles again to the correct exit.

Despite our memorable little detour we made it to Indiana, PA in pretty good time, checked into our hotel and headed downtown to the small college shops, pubs, and restaurants.  We decided on The Train Station for dinner and had the place all to ourselves (which made the little train circling our heads seem even louder).  The food was good but the decor and the fact that we were alone but for our waitress and the cooks made it seem like we'd stepped out of time.

...the restaurant - a converted train station...

Friday morning we got up and went to the school, checked out the vendors - schools like Berea College and ETSU handing out flyers on Appalachian Studies programs, publishers selling books, and local artists and activists handing out pamphlets, stickers, and PENS!!! (Scott says I might have a serious problem about picking up pens on tables...). I presented first and really enjoyed listening to the other presenters on my panel.  They were very encouraging and asked some really great questions for further research on my paper.  From their presentations I learned about Diane Gilliam Fisher's collection of poems titled Kettle Bottom, and the Centralia, PA mining fire that created a ghost town: only 10 residents were living there in 2010 (I had honestly never heard of this tragedy before).

...the UIP campus was beautiful and busy with students...

 

Scott's panel was also very interesting...I learned a lot about Moutaintop Removal and Ann Pancake's novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been about the effects of MTR on a family in West Virginia.  I went to a Folklore and Storytelling panel where we heard a couple Jack tales performed by a professor at IUP; she also shared some picture books that would be great in the Appalachian classroom (adapted for all ages and grades): Mountain Jack Tales by Gail E. Haley, Momma Was a Miner by George Ella Lyon, In Coal Country by Judith Hendershot, and Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds by Cynthia Rylant to name a few of my favorites.  Cynthia Rylant's When I Was Young In the Mountains would be a great guided writing assignment for students (similar to George Ella Lyon's 'Where I'm From' poem).

I went to a 'Digital Appalachia' panel where I learned about Mappalachia, a digital archive of drawings of Appalachia, created by Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.  Can you believe a grad student all the way from Texas presented about this resource? She was analyzing how it served to depict Appalachia since it included drawings outside of Appalachia, as defined by the ARC.  Another presenter spoke about the Eastern Kentucky Arts Project which "seeks to nurture the visual arts of Kentucky’s Appalachian counties by providing information on the region’s arts-related resources" ('like' their Facebook page here).

...Si Kahn during his Keynote address...

We also attended the keynote address by activist, writer, and musician Si Kahn (I mentioned him in my previous post).  He weaved folk ballads like "I am a Union Woman: Join the NMU" and "One Man Dead on the Harlan County Line" while he spoke of what it means to be Appalachian and what it might mean fifty years from now.  He pondered whether you're born Appalachian or made Appalachian...reminded me of Simone de Beauvoir who said, "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman."  He asked if it were possible to decide to become Appalachian or to no longer be Appalachian.  It was really interesting, and I absolutely loved his use of the ballads during his talk, almost like musical chapter breaks.

Well I've come to the end of my post and I think the only way to end is with a couple of the ballads he shared, "I am a Union Woman" by Aunt Molly Jackson, the "Kentucky Coal Mining Diva" (you can listen to her sing it here).  I also found this video of Si Kahn at a bookstore and he talks a little about Molly and then sings "One Man Dead on the Harlan County Line" (it's in two parts)...

I am a union woman/ Just as Brave as I can be/ I do not like the bosses/ And the bosses don't like me. Join the NMU, Join the NMU 

I was raised in Old Kentucky/ Kentucky born and bred,/ But when I joined the union,/ They called me a Russian Red. 

Join the NMU, Join the NMU

This is the worst time on earth/ That I have ever saw,/ To get killed out by gun thugs/ And framed up by the law.

Join the NMU, Join the NMU 

If you want to join a union,/ As strong as one can be/ Join the dear old NMU/ And come along with me. 

Join the NMU, Join the NMU

We are many thousand strong, /And I am glad to say/ We are getting stronger/ And stronger every day.  

Join the NMU, Join the NMU

The bosses ride fine horses/ While we walk in the mud,/ Their banner is the dollar sign, / Ours is striped with blood. 

Join the NMU, Join the NMU 

(lyrics from here).

.What is 'Appalachia?': Reflections on District 12.

I read the first book of The Hunger Games trilogy over Christmas break, and I hope to read the other two this summer.  My husband knows the entire synopsis of the series thanks to the internet, but I want to wait and read the books.  This weekend we went to the see the film in theaters twice (yes, twice...not necessarily because we wanted to see it that bad, but because the first time we watched it the teenagers around us wouldn't stop whispering.  I would've liked to have taken a poll of that first audience to see how many people had seen it already.  There's no way that many people wanted to see it and yet talked through most of the film.  But I digress...)

Since I don't know the whole story and I read the first book several months ago, the opinions that follow are solely based on the film adaptation, and they're merely the musings of an Appalachian, reflecting on the role and representation of Appalachia in the film.  Basically, I'm wondering what it really means to be 'Appalachian' today, and what others outside the region and culture seem to think it means.  Part of the reason I'm thinking about this is because of the keynote speaker at the Appalachian Studies Conference Scott and I attended this past weekend (related post coming soon).  Si Kahn, an activist, writer, and musician, posed these two questions to the audience: (1) What does it mean to be 'Appalachian' right now? (2) How do we suspect this will change in the next 50 years?

With those questions in mind, I turn now to the representation of District 12 (culturally and geographically located in Appalachia) in the film.  I think it's interesting that the film-makers (and Suzanne Collins herself) chose to depict District 12 in such a way that makes one think of the turn-of-the-century rather than 50 years in the future.  I'm wondering if audiences think that Appalachian people still go around hunting in the woods for food, bartering and trading, and making their own clothes, because I'm here to tell you, they don't.  I'm sure this is no surprise, but when my husband and I moved outside Appalachia (the area of Ohio where we currently reside is outside the geographic definition of 'Appalachia' according to the ARC) people didn't look at us and automatically guess we were Appalachians (they figured that out when we opened our mouths and started talking with our 'mountain' accents, which I might add the film did not represent - my husband was actually pretty disappointed they didn't).

No, Appalachians today are not much different from anyone else thanks mainly to technology, the media, and Wal-Mart.  Yes, our ancestors might have differed significantly from people in other regions of America, but we carry cellphones, watch 16 and Pregnant, tweet and use Facebook just like anyone else.  We wear the same clothes from Abercrombie and Hollister and Gap, and we drive Hondas and BMWs just like anyone else. This discussion goes back to the assignment I created for my ENG 102 students in my Appalachian-themed class: how has modern technology and media impacted our sense of place?

Getting back to the film, if you haven't seen it I'm not giving anything away by providing these pictures from District 12 (I already posted a couple of these on a previous post).  What do we see?

Source: thehungergames.wikia.com

To me, these pictures look like we've taken a few steps back in history, and perhaps this is because of the rest of the story (what I've not read yet).  Maybe in the destruction of America as we know it now, people adapted to a new way of life.  Living in the mountains might have meant going back to the 'old ways' of living off the land, making do with what you had, similar to our great-grandparents.  If you're an oppressed people lacking in resources, I'd say that would be the smartest thing to do.  (Side note: when they showed the miners in District 12, I was reminded of my great-grandfather who carried that same kind of silver lunch pail everyday to work, not my dad who currently works for a coal company, and I definitely didn't think of some futuristic way of mining coal...the clock, to me, appeared to have gone backwards several decades).

Yes, there are places in Appalachia that still look not a year over 1950 (the film took place in an abandoned mill town in North Carolina) but most of the people (and I qualify saying 'most') don't barter for goods, don't make their own clothes, and don't go around covered in dirt and grime.  And we certainly don't take baths in old washtubs like Katniss does before the Reaping.

I'm not at all criticizing the film, the film-makers, or the author for representing Appalachia in this way.  My mom told me she didn't really appreciate the way they depicted us, and I have to say while I was watching the film, I didn't really take note of it.  Instead, I was proud that Katniss came from District 12.  She's smart, strong, and compassionate, and these traits have a great deal to do with where she comes from.

The film's representation of Appalachia brings us to an interesting discussion of how the film-makers might have otherwise distinguished and represented Appalachia if they hadn't gone back to our ancestral roots, back to the small mining towns, coal dust-covered streets, and simple, practical wardrobe (I was sometimes reminded of October Sky, although District 12 is much poorer, and again, October Sky was set in the past not the future).  What distinguishes us as Appalachians today? Merely our accents? The stereotypes that continue to represent our people?  It's definitely something to think about: how will our children think of Appalachia?  Will we be any different than anyone else in America? And is this a positive, negative, or a little of both?  There's no doubt we come from and still share a rich culture, but do we still embrace it?

No conclusions here...like I said, just some musings.  Any thoughts?

.the nature poems of Mary Oliver.

So the other day I wrote a post about 'writing the body' and how examples were revealing themselves to me everywhere I went, in whatever I was reading.  A similar thing has been happening since I discovered the nature poetry of Mary Oliver, an American writer born in Maple Heights, Ohio.  She's written countless collections of poetry and prose, (you can view many of them here) and I've decided she'll be the perfect companion for when my husband and I go camping this summer.  (We'll also be taking The Night Circus...my husband is really intrigued by this new novel).

I first discovered Mary Oliver thanks to a blog I follow called Kingdom Poets.  Then she showed up again in the daily post by The Writer's Almanac today on behalf of the first day of spring.  I'm already in love with her poems - lovely descriptions of nature, animals, and natural life.  I also love that you can find so many of her poems on the web, and lots of them are recorded.  

I really enjoyed this one (from Poetry Magazine), titled "Spring."  Signing off to continue reading and enjoying the lovely weather (even though we've leap-frogged spring and found ourselves in summer temperatures, humidity and all)!

Source: amazon.com via Jade on Pinterest

.truth, beauty, and sharing with strangers.

It's spring break (!!!), which for me means catching up on some fun-reads, working on my independent paper due next quarter (ha, we'll see), and laying out on our balcony doing absolutely nothing but listening to the birds and the children in the playground next to our apartment.  I started Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at the beginning of last quarter, but it's been so long since picking it up that I'm kind of lost (I'm going to get back to it soon, Lindsey!).

Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com via Jade on Pinterest

In the meantime I've picked up Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, a memoir about her friendship with fellow poet and writer Lucy Grealy.  We read Grealy's memoir Autobiography of a Face in our Writing the Body course so I feel like I already know Ann and Lucy, like I'm on a first-name basis with them.  We also watched an interview with Lucy on the Charlie Rose Show in class (rather strange, actually...we were all pretty appalled at the way he dominated the conversation and asked irrelevant questions) and I've since watched Ann on The Colbert Report (thanks to a friend sharing it on Facebook).  I've also started following her blog, which details the progress of her independent bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee, Parnassus Books and gives her very own book recommendations.  It's funny how after you've seen or heard an author you feel like you know them personally, and even more so when you read their memoirs, although Lucy was known for recreating the truths in her autobiography, taking hold of the 'real' events and making them her own.

Here's a priceless picture I found of Lucy and Ann - courtesy of Books on the Brain

Anytime you read something you tend to connect in ways that relate to your own life and in reading Truth and Beauty I've been reminded of my relationship with my best friend/husband.  It's strange how these two women's relationship has reminded me of my marriage.  But in the ways that she describes their close, encouraging relationship with one another I couldn't help but think of my husband and our relationship as best friends before and as wife and husband.  For instance, Ann writes, "As two reasonably intelligent and very serious writers in a reasonably serious writing program, we didn't so much discuss our work as volley ideas back and forth until neither of us was sure who belonged to what.  Not that it mattered.  Since we didn't share a genre, we could both find plenty of space inside the same idea" (22).  Now, my husband and I would not call ourselves 'serious writers,' but we are both writing in our programs, working on our separate projects, he in theology, I in Literature and Women's Studies, 'volleying' our ideas over dinner or over the sink while brushing our teeth.  Their relationship of sharing ideas is a form of intimacy, just as I feel ours is.

Another way our marriage relates to their relationship is in their differences of comfort in 'squalor:' "Unlike Lucy, I could never give myself so completely over to my art that I would not notice the half-eaten plate of spaghetti in the middle of the living room floor.  After a few early discussions it was agreed that my standard of acceptable cleanliness was something she would never be able to comprehend and I was unable to live at the level of squalor in which she seemed comfortable...The compromise was that I would do all the cleaning and cooking and that neither of us would complain about it..." (23-4).  Now I will say that I don't do all the cleaning and cooking (quite the contrary since my husband actually cooks most of the time due to my weird schedule) but we can definitely relate to their differences in 'levels of squalor.'  The level of trash might have reached my comfortability days before my husband, so I laughed out loud at Ann's commentary of this aspect of their relationship. I'm sure many couples, roommates, and friends can relate to this!

Finally, I was able to relate on a personal level to Ann's assertion that "The process of putting the thing you value most in the world [writing] out for the assessment of strangers is a confidence-shaking business even in the best of times" (63).  I feel this every time I turn in a paper, read poetry or essays aloud in class, or even post on my blog.  Even though I know I have a limited number of readers, there's a drop in my stomach every time I click the "Publish Post" button, sending my thoughts out to be judged and critiqued by others.  Fellow bloggers and writers might either agree or find this silly, but I think it's the 'curse' of sharing the private and personal with the public.  But then again, I'm grateful that Ann and Lucy shared their valued personal work with total strangers, like myself.

.Appalachian Studies Conference #2

Last year Scott and I attended the Appalachian Studies Conference at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) in Richmond, KY.  This year the conference is being held at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and we're both presenting in panels!  The conference is next weekend so today I've been reviewing the conference booklet we got in the mail several weeks ago (just now getting around to finding the panels I'm interested in attending).

The panel I'm in is titled Literature about Coal Mining and my presentation is called "An Appalachian Pilgrimage Toward National Identity: Cinematic Narrative in Muriel Rukeyser's 'The Book of the Dead.'"  There are three other presenters from Penn State, Goucher College, and IUP.   Scott's in a panel titled Ann Pancake, Mountaintop Removal, and Environmental Justice Critiques of the Crisis; his presentation is called "The Bio-Power of Mountaintop Removal and the Globalized Reach of Appalachia."

Some of the other panels I'm interested in checking out during the conference (and hoping we have the time) include:

Women's Experiences (very excited about this one!) - - "Boarding Houses, Hotels and Mansions: Appalachian Women as Property Owners in Turn-of-the-Century Bramwell, WV" -  "'A Big Smack in the Face:' College Experiences of Girls from Rural West Virginia" - "Oral Histories of Older Women in Appalachian Heritage: Stories of Urban versus Rural Life" - "Single Mothers Staring Down Stereotypes"

Razing Appalachia film viewing (about mountaintop-removal mining)

Women's Literature - - "'The Days of Man:' Depictions of Community in Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven and Menna Gallie's Strike for a Kingdom" - "'You have even been to lady school:' Pierre Bourdieu, Lee Smith, and an Appalachian Education" - "Wilma Dykeman's Wide Reach and Imperative Vision"

Digital Appalachia - - "'Mappalachia:' The Region's Digital Reach" - "Teaching Appalachian Studies in the Digital Age" - "Reconstructing the Inaccessible Past through Virtual World Platforms" - "Helping Eastern Kentucky Art Teachers Build an Online Community"

Developmental Education in High Schools and Community Colleges  - - "Appalachian Girls' College Preparedness: A Comparison of Intervention Programs" - "Perceptions of Teaching by At-Risk Students at a Rural, First-Year-Experience College" - "West Virginia Northern Community College's Attempts at Workforce Development in the 1970s and 1980s" - "A Narrative after Tutoring in Humanities at a Community College in Eastern Kentucky"

Writing into the Forbidden: Women from Appalachia on Cultivating the Courage to Speak panel

There are so many more great panels throughout the three-day conference, and lots of interesting things to explore: books are sold and signed, lots of organizations hand out information (last year we found out about the Bee Hive Collective and bought one of their posters to hang on our wall) so I'm excited to see what new stuff we learn this year.

- - Exciting side-note: we're also planning to see The Hunger Games while we're gone since it comes out in theaters that weekend (for all who've read the book(s) this is another connection to Appalachia since District 12 is considered the Appalachian region of the fictional dystopian society).  Here are some neat pics I found of District 12 in the film.  Enjoy!

Source: thehungergames.wikia.com via Jade on Pinterest

Source: thehungergames.wikia.com via Jade on Pinterest

Source: thehungergames.wikia.com via Jade on Pinterest

Source: thehungergames.wikia.com via Jade on Pinterest

.Welcome to Holland.

One reason I love being a teacher is that I get to guide students in learning new things; but another is that my students help me learn new things too!  This quarter I was blessed with a really great class - the students worked well together, there was a great sense of community, and they encouraged each other in their individual projects.  Overall, it was a great learning experience for me after last quarter which was unpleasant to say the least.  But I can see how I did things differently at the beginning of the quarter and how this created a better, more communal learning environment (sometimes difficult to create, I've found, with freshmen undergrads).

One of my students wrote her 102 paper arguing that parents should not choose to put their disabled children up for adoption.  She was very close to this issue because she is a triplet sister to a brother with cerebral-palsy. When she first began this project I wasn't sure where it would take her.  I didn't know that there would be many people out there against her argument, but we both found out there were plenty of counter-arguments to address. I tend to be pretty open to any project student might propose.  I mean, I won't let them go down a dangerous path that might have them frustrated and weary by the end, but I don't set strict limits about what they should do.  I have found so far that when they work through whatever problems might arise with their topics it can help them problem-solve and learn.

This quarter I also gave them the option (and encouraged them) to conduct interviews with someone connected to their topic in some way.  This student chose her mother and through that interview discovered a poem that her mother read when she found out about her son.  This was a special experience for the student and her mother; she told me she started to cry when her mother described the poem.  She shared it with me and I'm sharing it with you today!

Here's a recording of the poem or you can read it below - -

Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley (1987)
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......


When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.


After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."


"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."


But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.


The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.


So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.


It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.


But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."


And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.


But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

.writing the body: everyday examples.

Have you ever learned a new concept and then it seems to continually reveal itself to you?  You might learn a brand new vocabulary word and then you hear several people use it in the next couple of days...or you might become interested in a new show and then everyone around you seems to be talking about it.  Well that's been happening to me lately while in my 'Feminist Theory: Writing the Body' class, a class focused on...well...the body, and writing the body.  When I first started the course (and even before going to class) I didn't really understand that concept "writing the body;" I definitely wasn't the only one in the class who felt this way.  Based on our conversations I'm pretty sure all of us felt that way at the beginning.  But as we've read, discussed, and practiced writing the body, I've been finding other examples in my everyday readings. Here are two recent examples - -

The first comes from Take This Bread: The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-first Century Christian. The author, Sara Miles, is a left-wing journalist raised atheist as a child; she received communion one day and embraced a faith she'd once scorned. Here's a beautiful excerpt from one of her chapters:

"The entire process of human production was, if I considered it for a minute, about as 'intolerable' as the apostles said communion was. It sounds just as weird as the claim that God was in a piece of bread you could eat. And yet it was true. I grew inside my mother, the way Katie [her daughter] grew inside me. I came out of her and ate her, just as Katie ate my body, literally, to live. I became my mother in ways that still felt, sometimes, as elemental and violent as the moment when I'd been pushed out from between her legs in a great rush of blood. And it was the same with my father; He had helped make me, in ways that were wildly mysterious and absolutely powerful. Like Jesus, he had gone inside somebody else's body and then become a part of me [here, she's talking about Jesus taking on flesh, being born in Mary just as her father's sperm went inside her mother to create her - some might view this as more spiritual, but that's what (my husband and I feel) she's discussing here in relation to the physical body]. The shape of my hands, the way I cleared my throat, the color of my eyes: my parents lived in me - body and soul, DNA and spirit. That was like the bread becoming God becoming me, in ways seen and unseen" (71).

I found this next one while browsing the pages of Real Simple - yes! even this women's magazine focused mainly on home organization, food, and beauty secrets includes examples of 'writing the body.'  Elizabeth Berg, a New York Times Bestselling novelist shares how she came to accept her belly after years of sucking in her gut, holding her breath, and covering it up.  I've included a couple quotes below, but you can read the entire article, "Beautiful, In Every Single Way: An Essay on Body Image Issues," here.

"For my entire life, I have hated my midsection. It was always too big for the rest of me. Sure, my arms and legs were long and thin enough. But, then, right smack in the middle of my body was my excessively large blubber belly.


...A few years ago, I was on a trip with my best friend, and we were lying on the beds in our hotel room. Her blouse was raised a little and I glimpsed her belly, and lo and behold: I saw that it was even bigger than mine.


But it wasn’t awful at all. It was part of her. And as such, I loved it...


...I have stopped hating my belly. Realizing that my mother’s varicose-vein anxiety was as pointless as my own adipose-tissue worry was a turning point. But I have also seen enough of the world and its sorrows to know that this type of thing is not worth my time and energy...


I have come to hold a certain respect for fat cells. They may make us look less than ideal (if you define ideal as those angry-looking models who wear their ribs as accessories), but they serve a few rather exalted functions: They store energy in the form of reserved nutrients. They give us insulation from heat and cold. They provide protective padding around internal organs. Isn’t it nice to know that the so often maligned parts of our bodies are looking out for us in these ways?..."

I love both of these examples, Miles's beautiful and physical imagery of reproduction and Berg's realization that all the parts of our bodies are "a part of [us]" and we should love that, embracing the 'imperfections' that are only defined as 'imperfect' simply because they don't meet the 'ideal.'

(After searching for an appropriate 'body image' photo to include in this post I stumbled here and learned about a blog called The Belly Project, whose mission is to provide "a place to come and put our bellies in perspective and to share them anonymously with the great wide Internetz." - - just found it interesting. Oh the things you can find if you follow enough hyperlinks...)

Signing off and reminding you to LOVE YOUR BODY and all its many perfections!

photo came from here.

.Appalachian Resources.

I'm putting the final touches on the Appalachian class I've been building this quarter (I'm sure some of you are as ready as I am for it to be finished just so I'll stop talking about it on here..haha!).  Anyway, it's been one of those projects you feel like it's your baby so I'm glad the 'pregnancy' is over.  With that said, I wanted to share some of the resources my students will/would explore and discover during the course. I'm pretty excited about finding and exploring these myself so I hope they appeal to working-class/Appalachian (or even non-Appalachian) high school/college freshmen.


Part of the class is focused on the controversial topic, Mountaintop Removal (MTR) since it's such a large part of the culture in Appalachia (the other subtopic is technology and modern media's impact on place and heritage - might blog it soon).  I'm not having students argue or debate the MTR issue; (since it is so controversial and many might bring personal baggage to this issue) but rather they'll be looking at how different groups (coal companies, workers, environmentalists, church activists) depict, represent, and discuss the issue, people, the mountains, etc. Here are a few of the resources for the MTR unit that I'm pretty excited about - -


Thorney Lieberman’s Honoring America’s Coal Miners: A Photographic Project  - - This online book provides pictures taken for Lieberman’s traveling photographic exhibit honoring coal miners.  


I've talked about this next one on my blog before...The Bee Hive Collective’s “The True Cost of Coal” graphic concept booklet (excerpt) - - The Bee Hive Collective, an organization of artists and environmental activists, travel and raise awareness about environmental issues, including MTR.  This graphic concept booklet describes some of the specific illustrations in their mural, “The True Cost of Coal.”  Though they are discussing the consequences of MTR, they do so through visual narratives, depicting the stories of the different groups involved by portraying them as animals of the forest.  For example, the excerpt “The Dance of Hard Choices,” (pictured below) describes the broken-down miners (frogs) continuing a dangerous cycle – they work, they hurt, they buy addictive pills from pharmaceutical companies (depicted as an Ass in a well-endorsed lab coat), they work to buy more pills. 

Source: beehivecollective.org via Jade on Pinterest

Coal: A Love Story - - Very excited to find this resource! An interactive site produced by Powering A Nation includes small video vignettes about different aspects of the coal industry.  It also includes a tool to calculate one’s daily use of coal, which will be a fun interactive activity for them.   


Video Clips from SpikeTV series Coal: “Life of a Coal Miner” and “Economy of Coal” - - These clips provide a brief overview of coal miners in West Virginia.  Students will get to hear from the workers, listening to their ‘voices’ and views of the issue.


We'll also be watching an episode ('The Spoil') from the FX original series Justified.  The characters represent different groups involved in MTR - Carol from Black Pike Mining Company; Boyd Crowder a Harlan man hired out by the company to persuade families to sell out; and Mags Bennett, an Appalachian woman and leader of the 'Bennett clan.'  Carol makes her argument that “we can bring prosperity back to this land; God put coal in these hills for just that purpose,” while Mags argues “the story’s always been the same – big money men come in and take the timber and the coal and the strength of our people, and what do they leave behind? Poundments full of poisonous slurry and valleys full of toxic trash.” In this interaction, both women argue within the conventions of the specific groups they’re a part of – both are trying to put their arguments into language patterns that will appeal to the Appalachian community members – Carol mentioning God’s plan of coal in the mountains and Mags’ assertion that only dangerous leftovers will be produced.

Mags Bennett

Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

Carol of Black Pike Mining Company and Boyd Crowder
Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

I hope you enjoyed exploring as much as I have.  If you find any other resources about Appalachia that might be helpful for this future class feel free to share! (Thanks Chelsea for telling me about the Snakeman show on Discovery; didn't get to work it in but I definitely think there's a place for it in a larger course design!)


P.S. It's Appalachia Awareness Week at Scott's school, University of Dayton - - interesting!

.with these, our sisters.

Today for Women's History Month I'm sharing this beautiful prayer I found by B. D’Arcy (I was actually searching for another prayer...I'll keep searching, but this one is beautiful nonetheless). 

Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

With Miriam, who with Moses and Aaron

led the people of Israel out of Egypt;

with Deborah, who judged the people of Israel

in truth and righteousness;

with Ruth, who was an example of faithfulness;

with Mary Magdalen, who first

brought the good news of the resurrection;

with Phoebe, deacon and leader of the early Church;

with Priscilla, who labored with Aquila

in the service of Christ;

with Dorcas, who spent herself doing good

and helping the poor;

with Mary the mother of Jesus,

who said “yes” with no holding back.

With these, our sisters,
We pray for women everywhere who see
their families divided,
their children sad;
we pray for women who against all odds
create a good place
for their families to live in;
we pray for women who,
when tempted to give up,
find new strength from their sisters
and go on. Amen.


(Excerpted from Living God’s Justice: Reflections and Prayers, compiled by The Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors, National Pastoral Life Center Editorial Board, St. Anthony Messenger Press).

.let's hear it for the w-o-m-e-n.

It's Women's History Month so I thought one way to honor the lovely occasion is by sharing some women who inspire, challenge, empower, and encourage me! This is of course one in a series of posts because I won't be able to fit them all in one (and I'm sure more will come to mind as the month goes on)...here are just a few to start!

Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

Barbara Brown Taylor pictured on her farm with her chickens (I hope I kind of look like that one day, chickens in arm and all).  I first fell in love with Taylor's writing when I serendipitously stumbled onto her book at a Border's that was going out of business about a year and a half ago.  I loved the cover and read that she was a former Episcopal priest but now resides on her farm, worshipping God in the many 'altars in the world' (the name of the book, in fact - Altars in the World); from that book I've been hooked on her memoirs, lectures, sermons, and essays.  Altars in the World inspired the name of my blog actually! Her writing is poignant and helps challenge and encourage my spiritual growth in so many ways.

Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

Jessica Chastain - It might seem odd to follow a writer/theologian with an actress, but I'm just loving this woman's talent, not to mention her choice of roles.  She's one of those actresses you have to take a double-take to recognize in films (I did this recently when watching The Debt).  There's not one of her movies I've seen that I haven't enjoyed - - Tree of Life, The Help, Take Shelter, The Debt, all great films I highly recommend!

Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

Melissa Harris-Perry - Scott and I have begun watching her show on MSNBC airing on weekends at 10 am.  I wrote about her segment on The Help a week ago and I hope to blog something about her segment this past weekend on America's Education.  You'll definitely hear about her if you're tuning into my blog!

Source: google.com via Jade on Pinterest

My mother is of course another woman who has served as a source of encouragement, empowerment, inspiration, and challenge in my life; I am the woman I am today in part because of her guidance and presence in my life.  I'm married and living miles away from her but we still talk every couple days or so.  Last year when I wrote a memoir in my feminist memoir class, my teacher noted the significance my mother played in shaping my me, even in ways that we're different.  

Amy Tan says it best in her book The Joy Luck Club, a fascinating story (and movie) about the mysteries of the mother-daughter relationship: "I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way."

What women encourage, inspire, empower, and challenge you?