English Ramblings

Spring Fever

“Can we have class outside?” the students ask. “Can we have class outside?” At this time of year, especially when the soft April warmth feels so lovely and alien on our winter-pale skins, everyone starts to suffer from spring fever. Even though the students might be surprised at this, their professors are often feeling that same little twinge of solar-powered longing. This year, I forestalled the outside requests by beating my students to the punch. “Today,” I announce in grave tones, “we will have class outside.”

Of course, being the professor, I have sound pedagogical reasons for taking the class outside. In my core classes, we are dealing with the fundamental question, “What does it mean to understand and appreciate the natural world?” Where better to ponder this question than out in that natural world?

The problem with this, of course, is that our natural world, the natural world of the Sacred Heart campus, is not the bucolic forest surrounding Walden Pond, but then again, that bucolic forest surrounding Walden Pond was never quite as bucolic as Thoreau led us to believe. From his perch on the edge of the pond in front of his cabin, he could see the train tracks cut a neat tangent line. As we sat on the hillside we had to contend with cement trucks rumbling up with deliveries to the chapel building site, motorcycles roaring past in spring-fever-induced exuberance, and tour groups of high school students and their parents. The tour groups looked longingly at my class sprawled on the grass and talking about the natural world.

Despite, or maybe in because of, the distractions, we were able to talk of the topic at hand. As we discussed the meaning of nature and the place of humans in nature, we followed the truck rolling past and then the wind ruffling our hair. The machine and the garden both found their way into our talk. 

Sometimes we need a break from the walls of the classroom, and sometimes we need a break from all walls. 

Trip of a Lifetime

Back in December, Amy Van Buren, my friend from the Psychology department called me and said she was going with the El Salvador delegation over spring break. A faculty spot had opened up, and she wondered if I happened to be interested. I said yes right away, without really thinking things over. It just seemed like such an important opportunity that I could not turn it down, even when the doubts and fears began to creep in when I started to think about what I had just volunteered to do. 

I started to feel better when we started to have some informational meetings about the trip and I met some of the students who were participating. Everyone involved was so dedicated and earnest about their desire to go and make some sort of difference that I was inspired to think more about my own reasons for going on the trip. Like most of the others, I found my motives coming from two different directions. On the one hand, I felt the urge to give some of myself to others, to help out people who enjoy fewer advantages than I do. On the other, I felt the need to push myself, to test my limits by moving outside of the cozy little zone of comfort that I had built up over the years.

The first shocks of the trip were relatively easy to deal with. When we landed at the airport outside of San Salvador, the tropical sun shone fiercely on our pale New England skins, but we were ready to soak up some of that warmth after the deep freeze of Connecticut February. Slathering on sunscreen, we piled into the back of the cattle truck that would drive us to Tierra Blanca where we would be staying and working. Coming from the land of seatbelt laws and injunctions against riding in the backs of open trucks, we were thrilled by the prospect of roaring down the highway buffeted by the wind, and the novelty of this mode of transportation never wore off during our week there.

The first thing we did after settling in to our new home at the Romero Cultural Center was drive around the area and see the sites where we would be working. Loaded once again in the back of the truck, we bounced over rutted, rocky dirt roads to a small chapel nestled in some trees. The chapel was old and tiny, with roots from one of the huge trees pushing up through the dirt floor. The area of ground next to it was set aside for a newer chapel, and we would be digging the foundation hole. After watching a group of men chop down a huge tree that was in the way of construction, we drove a few miles away where another clearing met us and where we would dig another chapel’s foundation. 

The work was hard, physically demanding, and done under the glaring sun. Nevertheless, we all pitched in, swinging our picks and hauling away wheelbarrows full of dirt and rocks. The Salvadorans working beside us laughed good-naturedly at our clumsiness with the tools and showed us how to use them better. Although many of us didn’t speak any Spanish much beyond “gracias,” we managed to communicate with a lot of signs and smiles and help from those on the trip who did speak the language.

Our work was not all physical. Most of our time, in fact, was spent traveling to different communities to visit the people and listen to their stories about the horrors and difficulties of the civil war years and the continuing economic and social hardships they face. 

One afternoon we drove up a winding rural road along a river, up into the foothills to visit La Quesera, the site of a massacre of civilians in 1980. We sat in the shade of several large trees, hearing the river burble quietly below us, while survivors of the civil war told us their stories. One woman told of stumbling down the hillside behind us with her child in her arms as bullets flew overhead. An old man, his face set rigidly, recounted seeing warplanes strafe his village, and told us that he never saw his wife and six children again.

In a more somber mood, we went to the memorial built at the location of the massacre. The memorial is an arching wall, the roof formed by the protecting wings of a dove. It stands on a small, flat area on a bluff jutting out of the surrounding hills. As we wandered around the area, dark clouds blew through, casting dramatic shadows and making the scene even more touching than it already was.

The trip, though, was not all melancholy. On our last full day, we took a trip to the beach and invited several families from the surrounding communities to go with us. We ate, we lounged in hammocks, we played soccer on the sand. Because the ocean waves were as warm as a bath, we had to splash around in the water. As I stood in ankle-deep water, one of the little girls from La Gracia, a community near Tierra Blanca, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the waves. I hefted her onto my shoulders and waded into even deeper water, laughing and shrieking with her as the waves hit us.

Here is where you can get more information on the El Salvador trips, and even donate money if you are so inclined: http://www.sacredheart.edu/pages/2627_el_salvador.cfm

 

Who Am I?

When I was a graduate student and teaching freshmen at Fordham, I was surprised that I did not run into my students very often in the neighborhoods of the Bronx. I did bump into a student (literally) at a bar once, but that’s a completely different story. One time, though, I remember shopping at Modern Food on Arthur Avenue and seeing one of my students. As he walked up to talk, I nervously scanned my basket to make sure I wasn’t buying anything embarrassing—hmmm, bacon, cheese, not any vegetables at all…not good. My student didn’t seem to pay my purchases any attention, but he did say something that has stuck with me: “Wow, teachers go grocery shopping, too!”

Well, of course we do, I thought. We are human (most of us, at any rate). His surprise is one of the reasons I am writing this blog. I plan to talk about teaching here at Sacred Heart University’s English department, and, along the way, show a small glimpse of the human side of the professor.

Some background is probably in order here. As my students here all know by now, I am a transplanted Californian, although now that I have lived on the east coast for almost 13 years, I don’t feel like much of a Californian any more. Apparently, though, I still speak like a Californian, as one of my classes has found it hilarious to make fun of my west coast accent. Everyone in that class, by the way, is going to fail.

Just kidding.

I grew up in various places around the Golden State, and graduated from Morro Bay high school, which is famous, or wants to be famous, for being the only high school in the country where you can walk directly from campus to the beach without crossing any roads at all. From there I went to the University of California at Berkeley, where I intended to major in engineering. I changed my plans, though, and switched to the English major, which I did mainly for the huge income all English majors can expect to earn.

Keep this in mind, all of you at SHU who are still undecided: English major = big bucks.

After that, I moved back to my home town and enrolled at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where I started teaching while I worked on my Master’s degree. When I finished my degree there I made the big move of my life and flew across the country to get my Ph.D. at Fordham University in the Bronx. While I was writing my dissertation I started teaching full time at SUNY Maritime College, which is famous for having direct access to Long Island Sound. I completed my dissertation in 2002 (wild rejoicing) and three months later found an advertisement for a teaching position at a Catholic university in Connecticut, and in the fall of 2003, I started teaching here at Sacred Heart.

I realize that all of this information reads more like a curriculum vitae than anything resembling a glimpse at the human behind the professor’s desk, but more will follow.