Observations on Norwegian Geography

by Carrie Levesque

Hilsen fra Norge! Greetings from Norway!

Bergen, Norway as seen from Mount Fløyen

I’m going to swallow my pride and admit that the first time I met someone studying for an advanced degree in Geography, my first thought was, “Seriously?  How much schoolin’ do you need to know the world capitals, or what a taiga is?”  They didn’t offer courses in ‘Geography’ at my small undergraduate college (and even today, Geography courses there are tucked away under “Environmental Science”).  I knew Geography as simply a Trivial Pursuit category, a Carolina-blue piece of the pie.

In truth, Geography is a broad field of study examining how humans shape their environments and how environments shape the people who live in them, to put it very simply.  These days, I find myself thinking a little Geography background would be very useful as I process my observations on the relationship between the culture and the unique terrain of my new home: Bergen, Norway.

Bergen lies near the southern end of Norway’s west coast.  It is Norway’s busiest port, “a city of seven mountains.”  If you’re up for the climb, or have a ticket on the funicular or cable cars, spectacular views are everywhere to be had.

Orographic Lift

Unless, of course, it is one of the 219 days a year it is raining.  Thanks to the warm Gulf Stream, Bergen has some of the mildest temperatures in Norway.  But the mountains create a meteorological effect called ‘orographic lift,’ where an air mass quickly moving from a low elevation (sea level) to a high elevation (up a mountain range) cools quickly and creates conditions for A LOT of precipitation (16 inches our first month here).

We had four sunny days the entire month of September.  On those days, even if we’d worn ourselves out with the previous day’s hike, I’ll tell you, the urge to get outside every minute that sun shone was overwhelming.  Which leads me to a couple of geography-related observations about Norwegians.  First, they are impressively accepting about how much it rains here, and second, they are a people who LOVE to be outside.

Norwegians have a saying, “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.”  They take their outdoor gear very seriously.  You wouldn’t believe how many layers of specialized clothing you are expected to outfit your children in if you hope to avoid looks of pity and scorn from their teachers.  But this specialized clothing enables Norwegians to do what they love best in any weather: to be outdoors.

The Stoltzekleiven

Bergen provides an overwhelming variety of opportunities to recreate.  There are seven mountains to climb, and people climb them, daily.  Bergensers even run up the mountains; one of the city’s most popular races took place at the end of September — the Stoltzekleiven, where runners climb over 1000 feet up 800 wooden steps, the fastest of them in around 10 minutes.  Cycling is also huge here, along with skiing in the winter months, and on any given day as you look out your window on the light rail train, you’re quite likely to see someone hang gliding from Ulriken, the city’s highest peak.

Bergen’s terrain presents fantastic outdoor opportunities, but also unique challenges.  Bergen is a growing city — currently with a population comparable to Greensboro’s — with little place to grow.   Boxed in by mountains, Bergen struggles to use a fixed land area ever more efficiently.  Traffic is especially an issue, despite the government’s best efforts to make owning a car difficult (i.e., high tolls on roads into the city center and exorbitant taxes.  Norwegians pay 100% sales tax on vehicles.  A Toyota Corolla goes for about $40,000 here.  That’s some painful math, and a topic for another time).

Geography has always presented great transportation challenges to Norwegians, as building new roads over, around or through mountainous terrain is expensive.  Only as recently as 1990 was a modern highway built connecting Bergen to Voss, a major tourist center roughly 60 miles away.  For much of the history of this area, the gateway to the famous fjords, ferries were the main means of transportation.

A Norwegian Fjord

It was on a recent 10-hour road trip through Voss to the mountains beyond and back again that the last hazard of Norwegian geography I will discuss was brought to my attention: aesthetic overload.  On the drive home, I felt completely wiped out, though I’d only sat in a car all day.  It sounds crazy, but it literally hurt my eyes to look at the fjords we drove along (I know, waah waah).  But it made me think that perhaps the brain can only process so much beauty at one time, and I think this is why Norwegians are drawn to the outdoors with such urgency.  It takes a lifetime to take in so much gorgeousness.  As for me, I’ll do what I can with the 6 years I have here.

All Hallows Eve…and Errors

by Matt McKinnon

All Hallows Eve, or Hallowe’en for short, is one of the most controversial and misunderstood holidays celebrated in the United States—its controversy owing in large part to its misunderstanding.  More so than the recent “War on Christmas” that may or may not be raging across the country, or the most important of all Christian holidays—Easter—blatantly named after the pagan goddess (Eostre), Halloween tends to separate Americans into those who enjoy it and find it harmless and those who disdain it and find it demonic.  Interestingly enough, both groups tend to base their ideas about Halloween on the same erroneous “facts” about its origins.

A quick perusal of the internet (once you have gotten by the commercialized sites selling costumes and the like) will offer the following generalizations about the holiday, taken for granted by most folks as historical truth.

Common ideas from a secular and/or Neopagan perspective:

• Halloween developed from the  pan-Celtic feast of Samhain (pronounced “sah-ween”)
• Samhain was the Celtic equivalent of New Years
• This was a time when the veil between the living and dead was lifted
• It becomes Christianized as “All Hallows Day” (All Saints Day)
• The eve of this holy day remained essentially Pagan
• Celebrating Halloween is innocent fun

Common ideas from an Evangelical Christian perspective (which would accept the first five of the above):

• Halloween is Pagan in origin and outlook
• It became intertwined with the “Catholic” All Saints Day
• It celebrates evil and/or the Devil
• It glorifies death and the macabre
• Celebrating Halloween is blasphemous, idolatrous, and harmful

Even more “respectable” sites like those from History.com and the Library of Congress continue to perpetuate the Pagan-turned-Christian history of Halloween despite scarce evidence to support it, and considerable reason to be suspicious of it.

To be sure, like most legends, this “history” of Halloween contains some kernel of fact, though, again like most things, its true history is much more convoluted and complex.

The problem with Halloween and its Celtic origins is that the Celts were a semi-literate people who left only some inscriptions: all the writings we have about the pre-Christian Celts (the pagans) are the product of Christians, who may or may not have been completely faithful in their description and interpretation.  Indeed, all of the resources for ancient Irish mythology are medieval documents (the earliest being from the 11^th century—some 600 years after Christianity had been introduced to Ireland).

It may be the case that Samhain indeed marked the Irish commemoration of the change in seasons “when the summer goes to its rest,” as the Medieval Irish tale “The Tain” records.  (Note, however, that our source here is only from the 12^th century, and is specific to Ireland.)  The problem is that the historical evidence is not so neat.

A heavy migration of Irish to the Scottish Highlands and Islands in the early Middle Ages introduced the celebration of Samhain there, but the earliest Welsh (also Celtic) records afford no significance to the same dates.  Nor is there any indication that there was a counterpart to this celebration in Anglo-Saxon England from the same period.

So the best we can say is that, by the 10^th century or so, Samhaim was established as an Irish holiday denoting the end of summer and the beginning of winter, but that there is no evidence that November 1 was a major pan-Celtic festival, and that even where it was celebrated (Ireland, Scottish Highlands and Islands), it did not have any religious significance or attributes.

As if the supposed Celtic origins of the holiday are uncertain enough, its “Christianization” by a Roman Church determined to stomp out ties to a pagan past are even more problematic.

It is assumed that because the Western Christian churches now celebrate All Saints Day on November 1^st—with the addition of the Roman Catholic All Souls Day on November 2^nd—there must have been an attempt by the clergy of the new religion to co-opt and supplant the holy days of the old.  After all, the celebrations of the death of the saints and of all Christians seem to directly correlate with the accumulated medieval suggestions that Samhain celebrated the end and the beginning of all things, and recognized a lifting of the veil between the natural and supernatural worlds.

The problem is that All Saints Day was first established by Pope Boniface IV on 13 May, 609 (or 610) when he consecrated the Pantheon at Rome.  It continued to be celebrated in Rome on 13 May, but was also celebrated at various other times in other parts of the Western Church, according to local usage (the medieval Irish church celebrated All Saints Day on April 20^th).

Its Roman celebration was moved to 1 November during the reign of Pope Gregory III (d. 741), though with no suggestion that this was an attempt to co-opt the pagan holiday of Samhain.  In fact, there is evidence that the November date was already being kept by some churches in England and Germany as well as the Frankish kingdom, and that the date itself is most probably of Northern German origin.

Thus the idea that the celebration of All Saints Day on November 1^st had anything to do either with Celtic influence or Roman concern to supersede the pagan Samhain has no historical basis: instead, Roman and Celtic Christianity followed the lead of the Germanic tradition, the reason for which is lost to history.

The English historian Ronald Hutton concludes that, while there is no doubt that the beginning of November was the time of a major pagan festival that was celebrated in all of the pastoral areas of the British Isles, there is no evidence that it was connected with the dead, and no proof that it celebrated the new year.

By the end of the Middle Ages, however, Halloween—as a Christian festival of the dead—had developed into a major public holiday of revelry, drink, and frolicking, with food and bonfires, and the practice of “souling” (a precursor to our modern trick-or-treating?) culminating in the most important ritual of all: the ringing of church bells to comfort the souls of people in purgatory.

The antics and festivities that most resemble our modern Halloween celebrations come directly from this medieval Christian holiday: the mummers and guisers (performers in disguise) of the winter festivals also being active at this time, and the practice of “souling” where children would go around soliciting “soul cakes” representing souls being freed from purgatory.

The tricks and pranks and carrying of vegetables (originally turnips) carved with scary faces (our jack o’ lanterns) are not attested to until the nineteenth century, so their direct link with earlier pagan practices is sketchy at best.

While the Celtic origins of Samhain may have had some influence on the celebration of Halloween as it begin to take shape during the Middle Ages, the Catholic Christian culture of the Middle Ages had a much more profound effect, where the ancient notion of the spiritual quality of the dates October 31^st/November 1^st became specifically associated with death—and later with the macabre of more recent times.

Thus modern Halloween is more directly a product of the Christian Middle Ages than it is of Celtic Paganism.  To the extent that some deny its rootedness in Christianity or deride its essence as pagan is more an indication of how these groups feel about medieval Catholic Christianity than Celtic Paganism (about which we know so very little).

And to the extent that we fail to realize just how Christian many of these practices and festivities were, we fail to see how much the Reformation and later movement of pietism and rationalism have been successful in redefining exactly what “Christian” is.

As such, Halloween is no less Christian and no more Pagan than either Christmas or Easter.

Happy trick-or-treating!

Actually, We Can All Just Get Along…And Do Most Of the Time.

by Wade Maki

Who’s out to destroy America? If you believed everything you hear over the next few weeks the answer is just about everyone. Greedy capitalists, lazy moochers, and every candidate running in a competitive race are just some of dangers. Of course if you watch the news you’d also conclude that we’re all about to die from the weather (hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, snow oh my), can’t swim in the oceans (sharks), can’t fly (crashes), and we will be the victims of terrorism, swine flu, computer hacking, identity theft, or sudden onset obesity any minute now.

Similar to how the news exaggerates the risks of daily living, campaigns exaggerate the evil intent of every “other” in society. Luckily, when disasters really do occur most of us get along pretty well (and days without disasters too).

Are the presidential candidates really villains from Batman?

Our predisposition towards cooperation became especially clear to me this summer during a trip to visit family in the hills of northwest Arkansas. On the surface this is a unique region, as you learn when flying into what appears to be nowhere. You land at a very large and modern airport (thanks to Wal-Mart headquarters being in the area). The many small communities contain people from all over the country—most notably retirees seeking warm weather, affordable living, low taxes and a large supply of golf courses.

We stayed with relatives up winding roads in the hills filled with middle class houses and large trees. During the second night of our stay we experienced a very fast and violent storm. The power went out after dark and we experienced the “what do we do without electricity” quandary faced by those too used to technology. Luckily, I had an iPad to light the way until we found a flashlight and got candles lit. As there wasn’t much to do, we grabbed a flashlight took a midnight stroll to see what had happened.

Quickly we realized that this was not a unique idea as there were people roaming all over the neighborhood (in the dark the bouncing flashlights were visible for blocks). Trees were down everywhere. Not just small ones but massive trees lay across yards, power lines, and on top of homes as well. It was bad and everyone was making sure everyone else was okay. We hadn’t made it a block before running into a man with a flashlight strapped atop his head by his shirt and his long wet hair hanging down his bare shoulders looking for the chainsaw he had set down along the street. This was the first, but not last person, who in the middle of the night was already getting to work helping neighbors get massive trees removed from damaged homes.

All night and most of the next day we heard the roar of chainsaws as the cleanup continued. People from outside the neighborhood were driving around offering their services to those needing tree removals (some were professionals, others just a guy with a saw trying to make a buck). It is at a time like this you realize that the “greedy capitalist” you hear during campaign season is a good thing to have around when an 8’ wide oak tree is crushing your roof.

For most of the next day power was out (the company workers were doing their best) as a mixture of volunteers and for profit professionals assisted those in need. One elderly couple had a very large tree crash right into their bedroom. Luckily they weren’t home. Rather than wait to contact them, or wait for an insurance assessor, that same mix of neighbors and professionals got together, removed the tree from the house and put a tarp on the roof to protect this couples’ home from further rain.

There were no bad guys that day. Despite the different political yard signs around, no one viewed anyone else as out to destroy America. When something really bad happened it was amazing how everyone (volunteers, for profit professional, neighbors, etc.) just did what needed doing. As a microcosm of society it is a good reminder of just how well most things work (which is the real magic given how many things could go wrong).

Sure there are problems, differences, and our decisions about what policy or person to support can make things better or worse. For the most part though, society is full of pretty good people trying their best, in their own way, to get what needs doing done. Something to remember as you experience the drumbeat of doom from political ads and “news” outlets—We can and do get along just fine…most of the time.

Deleting the “Human” Factor

by Wade Maki

History is often divided into ages based upon a particular trend. The age of reason, age of invention, enlightenment, information and industrialization are but a few examples. Some ages are known for conflicts, others for prosperity. As we are 12 years into the 21^st century, I’m noticing a trend that may make this the century we delete the human factor from decisions.

“I’m still here! Turn the lights back on!”

This summer my department was moved into new offices. Of course they are not new so much as new to us with some recent updates and fresh paint. One of the first things we noticed was how the traditional light switches were replaced with motion light sensors to automatically turn the lights on when we enter and off when we are not around. One might be tempted to see this as motivated by convenience, but one would be wrong. The idea here is to save energy (ergo money) by removing the human factor from the equation. Humans tend to leave lights on and so the automatic sensor is there to handle things without having to rely on flawed human judgment. Even though the motion sensor must use some additional power, it has been determined that the sensor will be more efficient than people. As with anything new the bugs haven’t been worked out such as the daily tendency for the sensor to turn off my light when I read, work on my computer, or just sit mostly still for awhile. Thus, I must pause in the dark and wave my arms in the air to get the sensor to turn my light back on. True to the trend of deleting the human factor there is no way for me to override the sensor.

We’ve all been here.

This summer I made several airline flights to conferences and events. At every airport where I used the restroom I found a similar trend of removing the human factor from the equation. Want soap? Put your hand here and the sensor will decide how much to give you. Want water? Hold your hands here and a pre-determined amount of water will flow. Want a paper towel? Wave your hands and a predetermined (always too small amount) of paper will be dispensed. The goal, as with my light sensor, is to remove my decision from the equation in the name of efficient use of energy, water, paper and soap. Why this became of interest was that in one of the airports most of the sensors had apparently stopped working leaving only a couple of sinks operational. If you’ve ever seen a busy airport restroom this was quite a sight to watch as dozens of people were dumbfounded (they waved their hands in vain but no soap or water came). You see, as with my light switch, the ability for an actual human being to turn on the water or pump the soap had been removed rendering the sinks non-functional.

The trend then is for small groups of humans (committees I’m guessing) to decide that in the name of efficiency, safety, or some other good purpose, systems should be designed to remove human decision-making entirely. Lest you think that it stops at switches and faucets please know that Google is close to perfecting the self-driving car. As anyone who drives around others knows, the machines can’t possibly do it worse… can they? I suspect this is only the beginning of a century long trend of deleting the human factor.

Self-driving Google car

If this trend continues what will life in 2099 look like? My life will be managed by devices that wake me up, remind me where to go and what to do, perhaps even when to shower (and for how long). My car will drive me where I need to go. Manual driving will be too risky to allow, but drinking and riding while on your phone is perfectly okay. My refrigerator will know what’s inside and order anything I need from the store, which may deliver it (or have my car add a grocery stop to my commute). In addition to managing my life, my devices will track and report my activities to ensure public safety (this is already occurring and will continue to expand). I could go on, but it is enough to note how some of these things we can see coming by 2099 and others are almost here already.

Of this trend most will ask the wrong questions. Most will ask “how does this make life more efficient and convenient?” Some will ask “what are the costs to us by this loss of control?” In both cases there will be important points on each side to be weighed. However, perhaps the most important question we should ask is “how does removing humans from decisions change us?” Who will we become when we make fewer decisions and cede more control to machines (and to those who program them)? By comparison we know how using cell phones has resulted in a generation that no longer remembers numbers and has forgotten many social amenities. What will life be like 2099? I can give you a rough sketch of this future. Who will people be in 2099? That, may be a much more disconcerting question.

The Clock is Ticking

By Claude Tate

I’ve been thinking lately about the problem of overpopulation.

WARNING:  I cannot verify the following story from my sociology professor is true. However, I can verify it got my attention.

My first encounter with the population problem came early in my college career. I had a sociology professor who told us of an effort in a rural village in India to help women use the rhythm method of contraception. The health workers gave each woman of childbearing age an abacus.  Each day they were to move another bead to one side. They were told how it was safe to have sex once all the beads of a certain color were on one side. The abacus experiment did work exactly as planned. The women did not move one bead a day as intended. They simply moved all the beads that indicated danger over at once, and went on their merry way.  Of course in America we believe in using more reliable methods of birth control…or do we?

Recently, the Obama Administration got into some political hot water in issuing a requirement that birth control pills be covered in the new health reform legislation.  Schools, hospitals, and other institutions supported by the Catholic Church felt the government had overstepped its authority in requiring them to offer birth control through the health insurance policies they offered.  For many Catholics, this was a matter of faith.  But unfortunately for many politicians, it was just an opportunity. President Obama thus sought an accommodation. The accommodation, that the insurance companies that cover the costs of birth control must assume the full cost, took some of the air out of the opposition, but it still may have a political impact.  Only time will tell.

And at the time of this writing, a bill is moving through the Arizona legislature that would require employers to ask women who take birth control pills if they are using it for birth control or a medical condition. It will allow an employer to refuse to cover a prescription used for contraception. And according to the American Civil Liberties Union, the law would make it easier to fire a woman if the employer found out she took birth control medication for the purpose of preventing pregnancy. In other words, the beliefs of the employer would take priority over the beliefs and needs of female employees. It has already been approved by the House, and as of this writing, is in the Senate Rules Committee. If approved there, it will be considered by the full Senate.  Whether it will pass or not or what the specifics of the final bill will be is still up in the air, but the fact that it is actually being considered by a state legislature is disturbing. I wonder if those opposed to medicine to prevent unwanted pregnancies would allow insurance companies to buy abacuses. Who knows, maybe they will work this time.

They call the time leading up to elections the silly season. But for this election cycle, we may need some new descriptors. I can see the arguments of the opponents of abortion.  But I find it difficult to believe that insurance coverage for medication to prevent pregnancy be denied, especially in a world whose human population has just passed 7 billion people and counting.

Our world is facing many problems.  In fact, their number is so daunting it’s simply hard to wrap one’s mind around them.  I may deal with some of the others in future contributions, but for this blog I thought I would focus on one problem, that of overpopulation. But as I thought about it, I realized it was simply too broad to deal with in such a limited format as overpopulation is a factor in one way or another in so many of the problems we face today. So, I decided to limit my discussion to only one aspect of the problem, the impact of our increasing population on the future of the biosphere. We are going forth and multiplying at an alarming rate.  And for the earth, that means we are running through its resources at exponential rates.  Mineral resources are growing more and more scarce, the problem of what to do with waste products is growing worse on land and on sea (there’s a major floating trash dump in the Pacific that we do not know how to deal with), fresh water is being depleted and is already running low in many areas, the demand for food is leading to deforestation on a massive scale, and plant and animal species are disappearing daily as natural habitats are destroyed or altered. And of course, regardless of what some still say, we are changing our climate.  If something is not done to rein that growth in, and rein it in soon, we will reach the point where the planet’s biosphere simply will not be able to support any more humans.  We will reach its “carrying capacity”.  And the entire biosphere will be impacted.  Life is tenacious. It will continue. Human life will even probably continue. But it will be different.

As you can see, even introducing the impact of overpopulation of the biosphere is simply too complex to adequately deal with within this space. So I searched for some websites that would introduce this issue to anyone who may be interested in the impact of overpopulation and the environment.  So I typed in ‘population growth and the environment’ and received 5,480,000 results. After closely reading 5,479, 999 websites, I settled on an essay from the website, 123helpme, called “The Population Explosion” .  It provides a nice, brief overview of some of the major environmental problems associated with the growing human population.

Note:  I was just kidding about reading ALL of those sites. I really read only a few hundred thousand or so before deciding on including “The Population Explosion”.

Obviously, we need to bring our population growth under control, but how to do that is still very much open to question. Any solution will involve among other things, something we deal with in the last unit of my BLS class, “Visions of Creation”; how we understand what it means to be human.  However, as with any problem, the ‘devil is in the details’.  And the details here will have implications for every human on the planet.  So any discussions of solutions must wait for another time and another place.

But I do know this… the clock is ticking.

The State of Our Unions: Marriage and the Ballot Box

By Carrie Levesque

It’s a frequent topic of discussion in any election year: just how informed is our electorate?  How much does the average voter know about the issues we’re asked to vote on?  Many of us wrestle, standing alone in front of our electronic ballot, with how (or whether) to vote on races or referenda on which we don’t feel educated enough to make an informed decision.  Do we vote for this person because we’ve seen his/her name on a lot of campaign signs?  Funding this or that public project sounds like a good idea, but have I taken the time to find out whether it’s projected to be worth the community investment, or is it some politician’s pet project that serves the interest of few at the expense of many?  And what about when we’re being asked to vote on one group’s civil rights?

Last week in California, a judge ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional.   Meanwhile here in NC, we prepare to vote in May on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Undoubtedly there are many voters at both ends of the political spectrum who already feel pretty unshakeable in their opinions on the matter, but some recent publications have made me think more about how informed the average voter is or needs to be about the institution of marriage and its role in this issue.  Is it enough to rely on our own experiences or taken-for-granted notions without thinking more about what the purpose of marriage is in our culture, what it has been historically, how it has changed and what these changes might mean for its future?

I started thinking about this issue after catching an episode of the afternoon talk show Anderson devoted in part to Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks’ controversial new book Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone.  Though his work focuses mainly on race and marriage, when I got myself a copy and started reading, his research led me to other interesting works on the topic of marriage, family and American culture.

In his book, Banks examines two developments that he believes account for the African American marriage decline, the first of which interests me here: that the “rules of the [marriage] market have changed, so that people marry for different reasons and with different expectations than in earlier eras.” Banks references the work of marriage and family scholar Stephanie Coontz, whose 2005 book, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, looks at the evolution of marriage from a practical business partnership to a more romanticized, idealized emotional commitment today.  Both Banks and Coontz urge the reader to consider how today’s idea of marriage is a very recent development, not a timeless tradition, and how damaging some of our current expectations about marriage have been to the institution itself.

Another work of interest, Andrew Cherlin’s 2010 book The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today looks at a related issue: the way religion and law reinforce “Americans’ embrace of two contradictory cultural ideals: marriage, a formal commitment to share one’s life with another; and individualism, which emphasizes personal choice and self-development” (Amazon.com).

Other works treat the issue of same-sex marriage more directly, like E.J. Graff’s What is Marriage For?: The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (a pro-gay work which also uses historical perspective to argue that the idea of ‘traditional marriage’ is an oxymoron) and the more conservative scholarly collection What’s the Harm?: Does Legalizing Same Sex Marriage Really Harm Individual Families or Society?, edited by Lynn Wardle.  Whatever your position, why not check out one of these books to find out more about what the other side is all about?   In the bigger picture, it can only help us bridge the painful divide over this issue if we all begin to understand more about the opposing sides’ needs, fears and motivations, even if we don’t agree with them.

Many people think that what we know about marriage from personal experience or the teachings we’ve grown up with is enough, but isn’t part of the purpose of higher education to make us question precisely these sources, or at least the practice of relying on them exclusively?   Don’t we experience again and again in our BLS courses the benefit of having our ingrained ideas challenged, broadened, or deepened by new perspectives, new historical or cultural frameworks?  Even if you think you know what marriage is, and why this right should or should not be extended to gay and lesbian couples, why not check out any of these books and see what others have to say on the topic?  It may not change your mind, but it will make you more informed at the polls this May.

New Year’s Resolutions

By Carrie Levesque

Is it too early to start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions?  It’s not something I usually get to until the holiday insanity is over and the next wave of media bombardment starts pushing gym memberships and Nutrisystem packages.   Though I filter out most of the blah blah blah, I do get to thinking about how to best use this gift of a new year.

While procrastinating online a few days ago, I came across an article, “Five lessons learned from living in Paris.”   I was struck by its epigraph, a quote from Hemingway’s letters, where he writes, “Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.”   Hemingway’s quote and this article on Jennifer L Scott’s new book,”Lessons from Madame Chic: The Top 20 Things I Learned While Living in Paris” are both indirectly about Americans’ hunger for beauty and grace in a commerce-driven culture that sometimes doesn’t seem to have a lot of use for either.

Two of Scott’s ‘lessons’ resonate with me as I reevaluate my life and habits at year’s end.  First was her observation that “Parisians often turned mundane aspects of everyday life into something special.”  She recalls how her host father made an event of savoring a bit of his favorite cheese every night at the end of dinner; it was just routine enjoyment of a cheese course, but he was so passionate about it that it became a special ritual whose memory Scott savored after she returned to American life.  Meals tend to be something we rush through in the US, a pit-stop refueling on our way to getting done more of whatever it is we are always rushing to get done.  It seems if we’re looking for anywhere in our lives to slow down and satisfy a spiritual hunger along with our physical hunger, mealtime is a worthy candidate.

She also comments on the European tendency to take more pride and care in one’s dress while at the same time owning fewer clothes and accessories than Americans tend to, which simplifies the process of making oneself presentable each day.  This calls to mind web projects like Project 333, one of many movements today exploring the benefits of ‘voluntary simplicity.’   Owning fewer things doesn’t only save you money, it also frees you from having to care for and about heaps of stuff, so that you have more time and energy to indulge in things like Scott’s first point: really enjoying and being present for life’s smaller, even routine, pleasures.

OK, so none of this is anything new.  Oceans of ink have already been spilled on these topics (sorry, Ms. Scott).  And yet we still make New Year’s resolutions, and we still hunger and struggle, in all sorts of ways, to be better (whatever each of us decides that means), to improve the world around us.  Which is why at New Year’s I find myself looking to accounts I’ve come across of people closer to home who decided to devote their year to some sort of radical reevaluation of the way we live (like a New Year’s Resolution on steroids), and the lessons they learned from it.

Two of my favorites in the ‘less is more’ genre are Judith Levine’s “Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping” (fairly self-explanatory) and Colin Beavan’s “No Impact Man” (which became a movie in 2009- he and his family sought to live (in NYC, for a whole year) in a way that made no environmental impact).    For giving more consideration to the sacred place of food in our lives, I think of Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” her account of eating only in-season food produced by or close-by her Virginia mountain farm for one year.  Two other works I might get to this year are A.J. Jacobs’ “The Year of Living Biblically”(in which Jacobs, an agnostic, tries to take literal direction from the Good Book and considers the place of the sacred in our lives) and Sara Bongiorni’s “A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy“ (in which she walks the walk of the ‘Buy American’ talk).

While I don’t see myself devoting my year to anything requiring quite this level of discipline (baby steps!), it is inspiring to live vicariously through these authors and reflect on what they gained from their projects.  They and their families forged meaningful new traditions and found a new sense of community that arises when one disconnects a bit from the mainstream economy (potlucks instead of takeout, preparing a fresh meal as a family instead of popping a frozen meal in the microwave, sharing communal resources instead of everyone needing to own and maintain their own whoziwhatsits).   If you’ve got the money, it’s easy to escape to an exotic foreign locale to feed your need for beauty.  But it’s possible if we take them more to heart, these authors’ efforts can challenge us to find a beauty in our own communities that can leave us all a little less hungry in America.

Why I Chose an Online Degree at UNCG – The Asynchronous Advantage of the BLS Program

By Catherine Kahn
(Class of December 2012)

I began my college education as many people do:  fresh out of  high school, living in a dorm, attending a top tier institution.  As many of you know, life has a way of changing your plans.  After three years of working towards my degree, I met and married a Naval Officer.  My education took a backseat to supporting him and his career especially in the aftermath of September 11th, when he was more likely to be flying missions over Afghanistan and Iraq than to be home.  Life eventually settled down, and I thought it time to complete my educational goals, but by then there were a myriad of options− so many online programs− private, public, for-profit, not-for-profit, etc in addition to classes in a traditional setting.

Online courses definitely appealed to me.  I live just minutes from another public university in North Carolina, but the asynchronous nature of the online environment definitely fits into my schedule as a mother of three far better than traditional classes.  It seems that almost all schools offer online classes these days, but the BLS program and UNCG stood out to me for several reasons.  I am not merely an online student in a degree completion program; I have the opportunity to connect with other students and attend traditional classes should I so choose.  I have all the resources of UNCG as a state-supported institution behind me.  The school’s full accreditation and low tuition made it an easy choice for me to complete my degree here.

I’ll admit I really wasn’t sure what to expect from the classes or the BLS program, but I received a thorough well-rounded education.  The BLS program is a traditional liberal arts education that teaches critical thinking skills by exposing students to a variety of topics in the humanities.  In today’s society, which often places job training over critical thinking skills, programs like this are becoming extinct, yet I believe that these sort of classes truly make for better students and better people.

Professor Claude Tate’s “Visions of Creation” class was perhaps the most intense of the eleven courses I took within the BLS program.  By reading and analyzing creation myths from various cultures, the class was able to see patterns emerge and challenge our own views towards creation and learn what influences such beliefs.  This course was more than a religious survey, because it really forced the students to view the studied societies through the lenses of their respective creation myths, and in doing so we saw how these creation myths can shape an individual culture, including our own.

“Women, War, and Terror” taught by Professor Carrie Levesque opened my eyes to how women have been brutalized by war utilizing first-person narratives written by women who had lived through 20th century atrocities such as the Holocaust, Stalin’s post-WWII Soviet Union, and the Bosnian War.  As a student, I had often wondered why we never heard the women’s stories.  Surely, they were just as horrific as the men’s.  Surely they were beaten, starved, raped, tortured, and treated like no human being every should be treated.  Professor Levesque’s class delved into these topics, and while the readings and discussions were often painful, they were nothing compared to what the authors experienced.  The authors were marginalized in their own societies, but our society needs classes like this to remind us that women have voices and sometimes they scream out in pain, and we need to listen.

I could go on and on about the classes I have taken, because save just one or two I have enjoyed them immensely and learned so much.  While studying the plays of Shakespeare, the history of the theatre, writing my own memoirs, discussing ethics, reviewing some of the great trials that have shaped America, or studying one of countless other topics, all the courses in the BLS program forced me to make connections.  I learned to connect whatever I was studying to my experiences and to this culture.  And, that is what critical thinking is all about.  I feel my education at UNCG has prepared me for my next step in life.
I’m graduating next month from UNCG with my BA summa cum laude, because of the BLS program, and next fall I’ll be attending a top ten law school to which I have already been accepted.  The UNCG BLS program has made it possible for me to succeed and fulfill my dreams by both fitting into my demanding schedule and providing me with a world class education.

An Empty Nest

By Claude Tate

Life is full of milestones. And for parents, the most important milestones are those that involve our children. A friend of ours recently sent us a video that brought back memories of one of those parental milestones for my wife and me. Our son had graduated from high school and gone off to college. After graduation he moved to a nearby town and found a job. Yet, it never felt like he had left home. His room was still there, we saw him often, and when he had a problem, we were close enough to help. But then he announced both he and his girlfriend were quitting their jobs and moving to Nashville, TN. He had visited Nashville a few years before with a friend, but neither of them knew anyone there or had any job prospects. They had found a house to rent, but that was it. He had sensed the same thing that we had. He was not really “living” at home, but had not left home either. He needed to truly be on his own. Even if he wanted to, in Nashville he would not be able to call on me to solve his every problem. My wife and I were worried, but we told ourselves we must trust his judgment. So we and his girlfriend’s parents helped them move. After helping them move in, we ate lunch at a nearby restaurant and said our good-byes. It was then that it hit my wife and me.  A major chapter in our lives was closing.  Our son was leaving home. We were happy for him as his excitement was obvious, but we were also sad to see him go. We had prepared him for this moment all his life. He was ready. But we had not prepared ourselves.

If you’ve never had a child leave home, you may see something entirely different in the video clip I’ve included in this post. And even if you had, you may still see something different. But my wife and I loved it and I hope you will at least find it enjoyable.

Robins: 4 Eggs, 4 Weeks from Fred Margulies on Vimeo.

Postscript. Things were not easy at first, but he eventually found a job and his girlfriend found part-time work. After several months in Nashville, they moved to Murfreesboro where his girlfriend went to graduate school. He continued to work in Nashville for a short period, then found a job with Middle Tennessee State.  The Nashville area really is a great place for young people and they loved it.  But my wife and I continued to remind my son that Asheville rhymed with Nashville and was a pretty cool place too. They were married, she finished school, and the “Tennessee Tates” (their name for themselves at the time) moved back to NC. They settled first in Asheville and now live in Hendersonville. Much like the little robins in the video, our son and his wife proved they were ready to fly. And also much like the mother and father robins, it took a little time for us to fully accept that we had done our job and our nest was empty.

Standing on Ceremony

By Marc Williams

In the theatre, opening night is a special occasion.  Months, sometimes years, of work are finally complete and an audience is welcomed into the space to not only witness but also participate in the performance.  As a stage director, my work is officially complete on opening night—and this is true for many of the collaborators involved in a production as well.  In fact, for a lot of theatre folk, opening night is about the only time they “dress up” to go to the theatre. It is a night of celebration.

On November 7, I attended a very special opening night.  Standing on Ceremony, which opened that night at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City, is a collection of eight short plays by some of the country’s finest playwrights.  What’s unusual about this world-premiere event is that Standing on Ceremony simultaneously premiered in more than fifty other theatres at the exact same moment.  I wasn’t in New York for opening night—I was right here in Greensboro on the campus of Guilford College.

The Tectonic Theater Project, led by Moises Kaufman, co-produced this event, for which eight writers each contributed a play on the issue of same-sex marriage.  As the New York cast was preparing these plays for the official opening night performance, other theatre companies around the country—and even a few international companies—were provided scripts so they too could present Standing on Ceremony in their community on opening night.  All of these performances began and ended at the same time, so audiences across the country and world were discovering these new plays at the same time.

In New York, a portion of the production’s proceeds will benefit Freedom to Marry and other organizations dedicated to marriage equality.  The other theatres across the country followed suit, taking donations from audiences to benefit local organizations dedicated to marriage equality in their community. Representatives from EqualityNC, for example, attended the Guilford College performance, using the event to recruit volunteers, distribute literature about North Carolina’s upcoming same-sex marriage ban amendment vote, and ask voters to pledge to attend the primary in May 2012, when the amendment will be on the ballot.

When it at its best, theatre can serve as a lens, allowing that particular audience to examine itself not only as individuals but also as a community.  Naturally, each audience and each community is unique, which means that every production of every play is received in unique way.  This is the reason I tell my BLS classes that a production of a play is a simultaneous expression of two societies: that of the author and that of the audience.  While the author’s society is fixed in history, the audience’s society is always changing—from place to place or year to year.

The performance of Standing on Ceremony I attended was a great example of how this phenomenon works.  New York is one of six places in the United States that permits gay marriage, while North Carolina is one of forty-four places in the United States that forbids same-sex marriage—and the upcoming constitutional amendment vote could make the existing laws even more restrictive. The audiences in New York and North Carolina, therefore, have different experiences with the issue of same-sex marriage and would certainly have differing emotional and intellectual responses to the performance.

Standing on Ceremony has a distinctly pro-same-sex marriage theme—I’d venture to guess that nearly everyone who attended the play was in agreement with its political agenda.  As I sat in the theatre watching the plays and contemplating the issue, I thought about audiences in Iowa and New York, and other states where same-sex marriage is legal, and wondered how they were responding to the plays. Surely there were legally married same-sex couples in attendance!  Were they proud?  Hopeful?  But I also thought of audiences in Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, and all across the South—where amendments banning same-sex marriage have already been approved.  What would be their reaction to a play about an issue that was already decided in their state by a constitutional ban?  And naturally, my thoughts turned back to North Carolina.  On November 7, 2011, the audience seemed hopeful.  How might we respond to a production of Standing on Ceremony twelve months from now? Still hopeful?