What are YOUR Summer Reading Plans?

Before we take off for the summer, here’s  a piece of news for all to celebrate about! A recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that “For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature”! The biggest increase in reading rates is happening among young adults, ages 18-24. Hard to believe? For more info on the study, check for yourself NEA’s News Room.

While ConXn blog has been preparing for its own summer vacation (we will be back in September with more wonderful posts!), the editors of COCC’s blog invited COCC staff and faculty to tell us about their summer reading plans or other book recommendations they wished to share.  So, take a pen and add to your own list:

Stacey Donohue:

• Straight Man by Richard Russo (a re-read: it’s truly The. Funniest. Academic. Novel. Ever.)
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett (I heard it’s a light, uplifting read)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (different stories about people in a small Maine town—Olive is the recurring character in each story—it’s beautifully written so far)
• Dracula by Bram Stoker (really, I’ve never read it!)
• Home by Marilyn Robinson
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (Obama was caught reading it recently)
• The Women by TC Boyle (another novel about Frank Lloyd Wright’s various women)
• The English Major by Jim Harrison
• Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber
• Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi (author of Reading Lolita in Tehran)
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (another re-read—this is the “restored” edition with some of the deleted sections included)
• Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates
• A Thousand Years Over a Host Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes and Remembrances by Laura Schenone
• How Fiction Works by James Wood

Jonathan Esterman:

•  Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
•  The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
• The Holy Bible
• Walking with God  by John Eldredge

Beth Wickham

• The Guernesy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Ann Schafer
• The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Karen Huck

• Dog Years by Mark Doty
• Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs by Amy Hempel and Jim Shepard
• Doggerel: Poems About Dogs (edited by) Carmela Ciuraru
• Dog Training For Dummies by Jack Volhard and Wendy Volhard

Sara Krempel

• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Monica Vines

• Tweak by Nic Sheff
• Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
• Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Rise Quay

• First of all, I have a tradition.  At the end of each term, I read Momma Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White.  It is a charming book and always makes me laugh out loud.  A friend gave it to me in graduate school and I find it (and a tall glass of iced tea) sets me up for summer. 
•  I just received Into The Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea.  I read his The Hummingbird’s Daughter a few years ago—and found it to be one of my all-time favorites, so I have high hopes for this one. 
• Also on my “starting list” are Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (a Pulitzer winner and author of The Namesake) and a non-fiction title, America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation by Kenneth C. Davis. 
• I rescued Pontoon by Garrison Keillor from the remainder table at B&N….and loved it. It would be a good summer read, too.

John Shannon

• Just finished Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
• Inkheart, Inkdeath and Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
• How Fiction Works by James Wood
• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown [the upcoming NEW book in the famous DaVinci Code series)
• The Starter by Scott Sigler

Audio

• Immortals by Tracy Hickman
• Heaven Seasons 1 thru 5 by Mur Lafferty
• The “Share” series by Nathan Lowell
• Tales of the South Coast
   

Michele DeSilva

• I am currently reading a book called Eating the Sun, about photosynthesis.
• I am planning on reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith;
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides;  
• Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, because I’ve heard it’s interesting;
• The Waves by Virginia Woolf;
• and, because it sounded good in an NPR interview I heard, Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See.
• I’ll also be catching up on all those back issues of the New Yorker and American Poetry Review that have been piling up around my house throughout the year.

Julie Keener

• Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison 
• Run by Ann Patchett
• The Interior by Lisa See
• Lucky Girl by Lei-Ling Hopgood
• In Code by Sarah Flannery
• Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?  By Anthony E. Wolf
• Habits of Mind by Carol Dweck
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind – 16 Essential Characteristics for Success by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick

plus at several kids books, including, 

• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
   

Beverly Adler

• Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay
• Outliers : the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell
• Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

Amy Harper

• With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India by Gayatri Reddy
• Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali by Kris Holloway
• The Afterlife is Where We Come From: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa by Alma Gottlieb
• In Amma’s Healing room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India by Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger
• Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk
• City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin
• Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire
• Murder on Waverly Place by Victoria Thompson
• Dead Water by Barbara Hambly
• The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer
• Catch up on the “…in Death” series by JD Robb
• Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood series) by JR Ward
• The Promise by TJ Bennett
• Das Parfum: Die Geschichte eines Morders by Patrick SüsekindAudio books (for the drive to Montana and back)
• Song Yet Sung by James McBride
• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson an David Oliver Relin

Andria Woodell

• The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston
• Lincoln Child Deeper by Jeff Long (the sequel to The Descent–AWESOME read!)
• Raising Atlantis by Thomas Greanias
• A Primer in Positive Psychology by Christopher Peterson
• and pretty much anything else on my bookshelf that I haven’t read yet!
   

Annemarie Hamlin

• I just started a book called Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.  A friend recently pushed this into my hands and said I had to read it. It is two interwined stories–one of a French girl taken away from Paris with her Jewish family during the Holocaust, and one of a contemporary American woman living in France. It looks like it will be a tear-jerker.
• Next I’m going to read Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, a book about the woman who had an affair with Frank Loyd Wright and lived a somewhat tragic life (I’m told).
• I’m also going to catch up a little bit of recent juvenille literature so that I can keep up with my kids: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, and Love, Ruby Lavender by Deborah Wiles.
   

Tina Hovekamp

• Little Big Man and The return of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger  – American classics that everybody should read!
• Sometimes a great notion  by Ken Kesey  – Oregon author;  wonderful book with powerful depiction of characters and of our state’s logging history/culture.
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis – another classic of the American literature with a critical look at the narrow-mindedness and unimaginative life of people in a small town in the Midwest.
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – for me, one of the best of Steinbeck’s novels!
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison –truly a wonderful, powerful read!
• A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park – this is one of the best children’s books I’ve read. It won the 2002 Newbery Medal, awarded for excellence in children’s literature; a great read even for adults!

Tom Barry

• Lonesome Dove: Larry McMurtry
• Consuming Kids: Susan Linn
• The End of Faith: Sam Harris
• Interaction Ritual: Erving Goffman
• Born to Shop: Juliet Schor 

 

For more titles, visit the following links: The New York Times has posted their Summer Reading suggestions and NPR gives us Seattle’s librarian diva, Nancy Pearl’s, recommendations for summer reading (in addition to a list of summer books in general).

And don’t forget…  ConXn WANTS to publish you, too! We hope that summer reading will be an inspiration for your own writing on a topic that interests you. For more information on ConXn’s submission guidelines visit http://cocclib.wordpress.com/about/. Help us build our campus community!

Barbie Blunder, or an expert’s view on being a parent

blog entry by Amy Howell, Early Childhood Education, with introduction and conclusion by Tina Hovekamp, Library

I recently visited Mommy Ph.D., a personal blog by one of our COCC faculty, Amy Howell.  As Amy herself explains,  her blog tries to connect her expertise in theories of child development with her actual daily experiences of raising her own children. Reading Amy’s blog reminded me of the recent news story of a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist and brain study expert, Jill Bolte Taylor, who herself suffered a stroke to become a first-hand observer of the deterioration of  the human brain. Personal experiences recounted by people with educational or professional expertise in the related areas can indeed offer such unique and interesting  insights!

So, here is one of Amy’s recent blog postings reflecting on her parenting experiences while being a professional in the field of education:

As teachers of young children, it is an interesting moment when our children see us out of the classroom context. I can recall the look of surprise and confusion on my students’ faces when they found me in the aisles of the grocery store and made the unbelievable discovery that I existed outside of the school. Young children are egocentric in the sense that they view the world from their perspective and understanding. It is difficult to consider events and situations from alternative perspectives, and children’s understandings reflect beliefs about how the world works. Teachers, in the example above, live and breathe in schools, of course. Upon talking, playing, and interacting with children, we have the opportunity to see and hear their understandings. In these moments we also have the opportunity to build on children’s understandings in new and meaningful ways. This morning I had the “opportunity” to build on my child’s new understanding that sometimes grown-ups are completely wrong.

What started off as a sincere effort to protect my child from anticipated frustration at school, turned into a great example of my own limitations in perspective.

My daughter decided to bring a toy doll to school. At home, this doll enjoys riding in a purple van and exchanging clothes with several Barbie dolls (dating back to my own childhood). (On that note, I think my children will forever associate Barbie dolls with detached heads and limbs as most of our 30 year-old dolls are frequently visiting the toy hospital for minor and major adjustments.) This particular doll is not a Barbie, in the Mattel sense; however, we call it a Barbie. When my daughter announced her plans to bring the “Barbie” to school, I made the erroneous parental leap to the moment when a child would point out to her and all her classmates that this was an impostor. To “save” her from this moment, I pointed out that this was not really a Barbie. In my effort to protect her feelings, I think I may have simply cut to the front of the line.

Following my ousting of the non-Barbie, I awkwardly tried to gather the tears and smooth away the mess I had instigated. I explained to my daughter that I had said the wrong thing: I had made a mistake. I tried to share my own experience with knock-off Strawberry Shortcake dolls and the feelings I had when a neighborhood “friend” pointed that out to me. In that moment, I realized I was the egocentric one, and I framed my daughter’s experience squarely in my own reflection. Sometimes, grown-ups make mistakes. Mommy said the wrong thing, and I’m sorry. There was that grocery-store gaze again!

How refreshing to connect with my daughter in this way–by letting her know that I was wrong, we were able to start a new conversation from a place of joint-perspective.

For more of Amy Howell’s insights on being a parent, visit her blog Mommy Ph.D.  Also interested in third party observations and advice on raising children?  Here are some good links for you to explore:

Parenting.org - this is a free resource for parenting help on all kinds of topics by Boys Town, a non-profit organization.

Parents Advice Center - this web site is a gateway to getting help and support for parents facing any kind of family difficulties.

And beyond theories and advice… do you really want to know how much it costs to raise a child?   Have a quick check on USDA’s Cost of Raising a Child Calculator.

Doctor/Kake or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Post- modernity

By Karen (Kake) Huck, Speech

If you know me, you may have witnessed or taken part in one of the following greeting rituals.

The writer/artist’s introduction:
“Hi, I’m Kake Huck.”
“Hello, Kate.”
“No.  Kake.”
“Right.  Kate.”
“No, Kake.  With two Ks.”
“Like pineapple upside-down cake?”
“Yeah, yeah, but with two Ks.  And no need to quote Marie Antoinette, thanks.”

 

The collegial introduction:
“Hello. I’m Karen Huck.  Also called Kake.  Or Huck.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Oh, you pick.  Whatever you’re comfortable with.” 

The classroom introduction:
“Here are your choices when you want to get my attention.  You can call me Karen.  You can call me Huck, just plain Huck, like, ‘Hey, Huck!’ or, if you really need to put something in front of my last name, you have two choices:  doctor or professor.  I’m also quite comfortable with ‘M’am’ if you’re ex-military or from the South.”

This multiplicity of monikers sometimes gives people pause, especially if they’re introducing me to someone else or talking about me in front of students (who aren’t allowed to call me Kake). 

Well, you may be  happy to know that I have theoretical grounding for all this ego-absorbed label-mania:  I am a self-aware creature of post-modernity.  Unlike the solid, community-bound self of classical thought or the authenticity-seeking individual of modernity, the postmodern self is diffuse, diverse, and dramaturgical — a co-construction created by embodied beings performing in relationship with others.  Postmodern identity is contingent, open, and uncertain.  According to my Utah mentor, Jim Anderson, the last century’s discoveries in psychology and sociology have thoroughly destabilized the unitary vision of the self and shown us that “much of who we are — is the product of social action, not internal character.”[1]  

Others have argued that the postmodern self is a bricolage[2] of potentialities lifted from mediated representations of being.  It is criticized for replacing class consciousness with classy accoutrements.  In a world of multiple opportunities for impression-management, we grasp at selves sold to us by organizations moving product.  Hence all those Facebook apps in which we identify ourselves through some commercial narrative:  “Which House character are you?”

This, of course, is in direct contradiction of my mother’s advice to “Be yourself.”  Or Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Or that rallying cry of the boomer generation:   “Just do your own thing, man.”  People I respect, however, still hold this belief.  My colleague Michelle Franco celebrates authenticity in her classroom and business, Eloquence Communication.  She inspires her students and her clients by asking that they speak from a true self.  But I’ve challenged her worldview because though it once was mine it is no longer.

For many years I struggled to “be myself,” to become, in Jungian terms, individuated or whole.[3]  But it occurred to me that the famous Shakespearean quote was uttered by Polonius, the pompous old dude in Hamlet who gets stabbed behind the arras.  Not the best source of philosophical mentoring.  And there are at least three other problems with the modernist ideal of the authentic self.

First, as I note above, it doesn’t fit the data produced over the past hundred years by psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and artists.  People are born with certain physical characteristics, certainly.  But what our biology means is a matter of our interaction with members of our culture/family/organization/tribe.  Who we are is who we’re with and what they say about us. 

Second, it isn’t just the social sciences that prove our interior diversity.  Neuroscience reveals the impact of chemicals on both behavior and cognition. [4] When I first began taking anti-depressants in the early 80s,  I changed.  I don’t just mean I was finally able to hold a job or talk to strangers.  I mean that my mind, personality and interior vision of the universe changed.  I not only became happier but many of the things that I considered the core of my being dissolved. This experience, while annoying to those friends who loved my bitter, self-hating wit, was also an intriguing revelation about the indeterminate quality of a thing – my Self – I’d once considered immutable.

And finally, there are pragmatic reasons for enjoying multiple selves.  Sometimes who you really, really are simply isn’t effective for what you really, really want to achieve.  Just ask Dr. David Bruce Banner.

So I sometimes explain to people that I operate (or am operated by) at least two distinct selves:  the artist and the teacher.  Both have experienced the same family and social history but each understands it and re-creates its memories in very different ways.[5]

A newspaper article that never appeared.  Photo by Kake Huck. (click on the icon to read)

The poet and artist Kake Huck, is driven to tell her psychic “truths” of loss, betrayal, destruction and despair.  She looks into the twisted heart of humanity and finds it wretched and perverse.  Child in a family punctuated by madness caught in a world prone to genocide and hate, she is cynical, weary, occasionally enraged and offers little hope that human beings are capable of treating each other decently over the long run. 

Oh, don’t let that poet into a classroom!  She’s sooo scary! 

Of course note here that according to studies done by Nancy Andreason, a lit PhD become neuroscientist, poets are more than 2 1/2 times more likely to be depressives or bi-polar than members of the population at large…[6]

The character who teaches communication, on the other hand, Dr. Karen Huck, is positive, upbeat and relentlessly optimistic about personal change and self-empowerment.  Sure, she’s had the same history as the poet.  But she knows that re-creation is possible.  She’s learned how to live with PTSD and depression.  When appropriate, she mentions them as manageable mountains.  She appears to have conquered her stage fright.  She believes that anyone can give a good public speech or alter their relationships for the better.   And that if life gives you lemons you should request a gol-dang martini glass with a sugared rim!  

I was happy at the convocation on May 8 when VPI Kathy Walsh recognized the positive aspects of socially constructed performance when she noted that I have worked “to analyze the role of ‘excellent teacher,’ to determine what behaviors most assist student learning, and to adopt herself to that role.”

So I’ve learned to be multiple selves.  Is this good or bad?  It’s wonderful, according to America’s great gray poet Walt Whitman who wrote, “I contain multitudes . . .”[7]   Not so hot, according to the Apostle Mark’s story about the pig-infusing demon who screams, “My name is Legion.”[8]  

But postmodernity, at its best, is an ethical incoherence. 

What counts between people must be dependable, even if we change our costumes.   In this way, identity is like architecture.  Postmodern architecture is wild in its multiplicity of influences and fantastic shapes but must be solid and dependable in its plumbing.  The same is true of postmodern identity.  It can be diverse and confusing but there in the moment of our interaction with each other, in relationship, in our here and now, postmodern identity can and must offer compassion, hope, and faith in the protean experience of a chaotic, loving grace.

Architect Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.  Photo by Kake Huck

---

[1] James A. Anderson and Elaine E. Englehardt, The Organizational Self and Ethical Conduct:  Sunlit Virtue and Shadowed Resistance (Fort Worth, TX:  Harcourt College Publishers, 2001) p. 83.  For more on postmodern identity, see also Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self, (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1991).

[2] For critique of this kind of identification, see Michele DeSilva’s previous entry in this blog.

[3] Psychological types; or, The psychology of individuation, by C. G. Jung…Translated by H. Godwin Baynes.  (New York, Pantheon Books,1962)

[4] What, you’ve never had an alcoholic drink, a cup of coffee or a donut?  You really need proof here?

[5] For more about the physical aspect of memory and its variability, please see the work of Joe LeDoux (Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are, Penguin, 2003) and Jonah Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Mariner Books, 2008) or check out this episode of WNYC’s Radiolab

[6] Nancy Andreason , The Creating Brain:  The Neuroscience of Genius, New York:  Dana Press, 2005.

[7] Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself:” “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

[8] Mark 5:9, the story of the demons cast into the herd of pigs.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Of Barns and Social Networks

by Michele DeSilva, Library

I reluctantly signed up for a Facebook account in 2008 at the urging of some college friends.  I thought I’d hate it; I actually love it.  While I’ve been “friended” by the usual barrage of people from the past with whom I have only a tenuous connection, at best, I’ve also managed to keep in closer touch with family and friends who are scattered across the country and the globe (South Carolina, Japan, Africa, Iowa).  Even though I have come to love it, I still have an acute sense of the shortcomings of this particular medium as a means of communication and as a social construction.    

One of my favorite books is White Noise, by Don DeLillo.  Though originally published in 1985, it remains a perceptive view of the modern information society – the modern information society being one in which we are constantly “connected” to one another via various forms of technology.  One of the most humorous passages in the book concerns a trip that the protagonist, Jack Gladney, and his friend, Murray, both college professors, take to the “most photographed barn in America.”  Rather than viewing the barn and photographing it themselves, Jack and Murray disconnect from the scene at hand and display an almost exclusive interest in the other people there who are photographing the barn and, who, because they are so busy taking pictures, never really see the barn, either.  After a philosophical exchange about the phenomenon they are observing, Murray concludes, “We are not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one…We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception.”

 I think we could say the same thing of the numerous social networks to which many of us belong – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace – we’re not there to communicate so much as to maintain the semblance of communicating, of “connectivity,” as William Deresiewicz writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education – and we’ve all agreed to be a part of the collective chatter, tweets (a Twitter update), and wall postings.  As someone with a deep interest in information and communication and how the two affect society, I often find myself wondering:  what is the overall effect of all of these social networks on our relationship with the real world?  Or, to phrase it in White Noise terms, what about the barn that is the focal point of all those images?

One major effect of the use of social networks is the strain they add to our already information-laden lives.  Why do we subject ourselves to having to keep track of everyone’s mundane thoughts and daily routines via their Facebook statuses or “tweets”?  Clive Thompson, in the New York Times Magazine answers this question by explaining the phenomenon of “ambient awareness,” a process by which we gradually piece together these random bits and pieces of information about the people we know (or don’t know, as the case may be) to create a sense of that person’s identity.  But, the status updates and tweets that many people post in social networks are highly stylized versions of their mundane lives; we do not know the person (especially those people we don’t see everyday) so much as the person’s self-created version of him or herself, as best transmitted 140 characters or so at a time. 

 
The relationships developed via social networks, thus, are not always grounded in reality.  Researchers have discovered that the relationships developed via social networks are “parasocial,” similar to the relationships people form with characters in their favorite television shows or celebrities; that is, people feel like they know the person being portrayed, even though all they really know is the public character.  Real relationships are perhaps somewhat obscured by these illusory relationships, just as the most photographed barn in America is obscured by the people photographing it. 

Alternatively, Erika Gordon, in the online journal First Monday, explores the nature of social “performance” in online networks and suggests that the relationships in social networks may serve as laboratories for real world relationships.  Because the demands on our time and attention are so great, we use social networks to “’try out’ emotional engagement and intimacy before dedicating massive social and personal resources to strong ties.”  

The great irony of needing to “try out” relationships with social media is that our lack of time and attention is partially due to all of the various media that require our attention.  We simply seem to have no time to think anymore.  Because we “have” to keep up with so much stuff, our attention span has shrunk.  This also has its effects on society.  For example, a group of scientists at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute  recently discovered that people need more time to process and respond to news stories that require the activation of such emotions as empathy and compassion.  People getting the bulk of their news from online feeds and social networking spent less time processing the stories and thinking about the ethical ramifications of current events.  One of the study’s authors points out the potential impact of these findings on our roles as citizens:  “We need to understand how social experience shapes interactions between the body and mind, to produce citizens with a strong moral compass.” 

While social networks certainly have their benefits, it’s clear that we need to think more thoroughly about how we use them and how they contribute to our participation in and creation of real society  and the “collective perception” of “connectivity” rather than the real thing.  So, please add your comments about social networking to the blog post.  I’d love to know what you think about online social networks and society (and, no, the irony of writing about this as a blog topic, meant to be spread across an online social network has not been lost on me).  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go update my Facebook status.

Of chemistry, soap, and hope

by Carol Higginbotham, Sciences/Chemistry

Long before chemists had any knowledge of atoms or molecules, people were improving their lives by performing chemical reactions on the materials in their environment.  Our ancestors did this when they cooked and preserved their food, and when they fermented foods and beverages.  They also did this when they learned to convert fats into soap.

We still use soaps that are produced basically the same way as they always have been, just on an industrial scale.

The recipe is basically this:  fat + base = soap. The base can either be commercially prepared lye, or the naturally occurring base that exists in the ashes of campfires.  Historically the fats came from animal tallow, although plant oils work just fine.

Producing a basic soap involves little more than boiling the ingredients and then removing excess base and water.  Producing fine soap, however, is a craft that requires skill and experience.  These high quality products are valuable and marketable.

This market for soap is what recently connected me to, of all places, Afghanistan.

Sarah Chayes was working for National Public Radio (NPR) as a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan after 9/11.  But she was drawn away from war reporting.  Sarah witnessed the difficulties faced by ordinary Afghans frustrated by government corruption, an economy dependent on the drug trade, an unreliable infrastructure, and the Taliban.  In response she and a group of locals organized a cooperative to make soaps by hand, utilizing area agricultural products such as pomegranates.  The effort would provide cooperative members with a way to make a living independent of the drug trade.  As a Westerner, Sarah could connect the group to markets in the U.S. and Canada.  They set up shop near Kandahar and named the cooperative Arghand after the region.  

 Arghand had been operating for a while when I heard about them.  My curiosity led me to the web, where I read dispatches from Sarah and discovered the types of support they needed.  I was a bit surprised to see they were asking for consultation with a chemist.  I knew I didn’t know all that much about soap, but I wrote an email to inquire.  Sarah herself wrote me back. 

The cooperative was having difficulty with the natural dyes that color their product.  The soaps were colored with pomegranate, a gorgeous red that unfortunately was fading with time.  I guessed that the problems were likely due to oxidation or exposure to ultraviolet light.   We found some natural products reported to contain antioxidants, and they added them into their recipe.  It seemed to work.

This connection, though transitory, has stayed with me.  When I read news stories or see video from Afghanistan I am invariably thinking of the cooperative, and of the regular people there who are struggling to make a living in that harsh situation.  I am grateful I had the opportunity to make a contribution, however small.  And I am grateful there are people like Sarah who are able to both see what needs to happen and to take up the charge and do it.

Curious about making soap?  Here you can find some suggested links to sites detailing the chemistry of soap and the processes involved in soap-making.

Want to find Arghand body care products?  The Arghand web site lists retailers around the U.S., including Garuda International who distributes them from Oregon.

In a not so black and white world

by Tina Hovekamp, Library

For the last two years, Martha Groom, Associate Professor at the University of Washington has been using Wikipedia for her classes requiring her students to submit articles to the popular, user-generated internet encyclopedia as part of their assignment. An article discussing Groom’s  original teaching approach, cites one of her students commenting, “This assignment felt so Real! I had not thought that anything I wrote was worth others reading before, but now I think what I contributed was useful, and I’m glad other people can gain from my research.”

And then there is the battle of Colbert vs. Wikipedia:

So, is Wikipedia  a valuable resource to promote in our classes?  Last year I asked my LIB127 students to try a search on a topic of their interest in order to compare results in Britannica versus Wikipedia. It was the first time I included such a question in their assignment, not knowing exactly what their responses could be. Well, I have to admit, their answers were an eye opener, a good number of them quite well-thought making it difficult for me to dismiss as inaccurate or irrelevant. Here is one of them, an example of what students may often experience searching and comparing such two tools, an “academic” one and another from the “fee” web world:

“I choose to look up schizoaffective disorder which is a psychiatric diagnosis describing a condition where both the symptoms of a mood disorder and schizophrenia are present.  When I searched for schizoaffective on wikipedia [a pertinent result] came up; however, when I put the same thing in on Britannica Online it showed no results.  I had to look up both mental disorder and schizophrenia which was somewhat frustrating.  I also found the wikipedia information to be much more in depth and helpful than the Britannica Online information…  If I had to choose an article to go with for this research topic it would definitely be the one at Wikipedia.”

I have to admit, even being a librarian doesn’t sometimes stop me from agreeing with my students that “traditional” encyclopedic sources such as Britannica or Oxford Reference Online, both of them databases our library subscribes to, may often fail to be as comprehensive or extensive as Wikipedia. Even the display of results and layout of Wikipedia are often much more user-friendly with features such as the inclusion of links to other terms or to other entries which I found useful in so many occasions, especially when doing quick searches.

While helping patrons at the reference desk or in the classroom, I often hear instructors and students summarily dismiss the use of Wikipedia. I myself also tell my students that although Wikipedia could be a decent tool for getting general information on a topic, I wouldn’t use it as one of my cited sources in a research paper; but then, again, I wouldn’t use Britannica either as one of my cited sources for a college level research project. I guess the main difference most people agree on in using Wikipedia versus other more traditional sources is that since the authorship of the Wikipedia articles is unclear, students needing to use the information for a research paper have to take the extra step of finding other more “official” verification of the accuracy of the information. But is this a reason to completely discourage its use? A few years ago a study published in Nature already found that rates and problems of accuracy between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica can actually be quite comparable. Interestingly, Wikipedia itself offers a caveat for its use in research projects:

“As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible. For many purposes, but particularly in academia, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source;[1] indeed, some professors and teachers may reject Wikipedia-sourced material completely. This is especially true when it is used uncorroborated.

We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.”

Wikipedia seems to have given this issue some thought. But despite its own disclaimer, in a world already dominated by Google and wikis, perhaps the best approach to take may be something similar to Groom’s course assignment that actually embraces the power and benefits of tools such as Wikipedia. Regardless of where information is coming from, being a critical consumer, always looking for ways to validate the quality of what’s been passed on to us is perhaps much more important rather than prescribing the exact rules of what specific tools to use or avoid.

David Parry, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, last year had an interesting article on this topic, “Wikipedia and the New Curriculum: Digital Literacy Is Knowing How We Store What We Know” (February 2008).  Here’s a quote:

“It is irresponsible for educational institutions not to teach new knowledge technologies such as Wikipedia… digital literacy is so crucial for educational institutions: we do a fundamental disservice to our students if we continue to propagate old methods of knowledge creation and archivization without also teaching them how these structures are changing, and, more importantly, how they will relate to knowledge creation and dissemination in a fundamentally different way.”

What do you think?  Should we rethink Wikipedia’s role in our classes?

Thoughts on the “Entitlement Generation”

by Andria Woodell, Social Sciences

 There has been a lot of buzz in the academic world about entitlement. Recently, there was an article by Professor Marshall Grossman published in the NY Times titled “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes.” In his article, Grossman discusses some of his experiences with entitled students and explanations behind this “new” trend. Like many other professors, I can identify with Grossman’s discussion. Some of us have encountered these situations more often than we would care to count. While I believe it is not new for students to focus on grades, it is surreal when a student is arguing they deserve an A despite scoring 70-80s on their assignments. It is also frustrating when they refuse to listen to why they have received those scores or suggestions to improve their grades. This becomes even more unsettling when a student turns hostile towards a professor because the professor stands firm. In the end, it is a no-win situation for both the student and professor. The student feels as if they were unfairly treated and the professor walks away a little more pessimistic about their students.

What is interesting is that when I hear people discussing entitlement today, it is directed toward the younger generation. Jean Twenge’s book , Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before, supports the assumption that people from their teens to their 20s are plagued with entitlement . However, if you read the article “The New Me Generation,” the entitlement generation consists of everyone born in 1970 and beyond. Doing the math here, this includes people who are 39 years or younger. The average age of retirement in the US is currently 63, so the majority of students and workers (including myself) are now part of this entitlement generation! Therefore, the description of entitlement as a generational shift is not entirely accurate. Instead, it appears to be more of a societal shift. The looming question is whether entitlement is always bad. In the “The Me New Generation,”  the author describes the entitlement generation as “smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement.” They are the “co-workers who drive you nuts.” On the flip-side, he goes on to state these individuals are also free-thinkers who are willing to break the status quo and pursue their dreams. Their confidence is what allows them to accomplish great things and can keep companies progressing. So where is the problem?

From an academic standpoint, I see entitlement hurting work ethic. Others might disagree with me here, but there seems to be a pocket of individuals who equate effort with mastery. When we hear, “there is no A for effort”, this is true. I have yet to see a grading rubric with effort as one of the graded requirements. Bottom line, if you do not complete the main components of an assignment, you will lose points, no matter how much effort you put in. As one professor has described it, “If your doctor works very hard at removing your appendix and it turns out you only needed your tonsils out, you are not likely to say “Hey! It’s ok! You worked very hard!”.  The other problem is that individuals who have never been told no or have yet to overcome significant academic challenges seem to experience a high level of anxiety at even the thought of not being perfect. I have seen students work themselves into a frenzy over this, even when they were passing with strong B’s. This is problematic because according to the frustration-aggression hypothesis in social psychology—the more frustrated a person becomes the more likely they may become aggressive. It of course does not explain ALL aggression, but it can explain why a student may resort to rudeness, harassment, slander, or even indirect or direct violence towards an instructor because they were blocked from a goal and they are not sure how to resolve the issue constructively. 

So what is the solution? Apparently, that is the hot research question right now. Grossman mentions that at his school they are retraining students on the purpose of education. COCC sponsored a speaker to educate faculty on the qualities of the new incoming students and how to resolve problems. There are also new policies in place that protect both students and faculty from harassment. Others (myself included) have resorted to detailed syllabi explaining class policy and how to behave. However, I find it unfortunate that my syllabi grew from 3 pages to 8 over the years because I have to explain how not to be disruptive and why a person should not text message in class. I have no answers at the moment. I personally hope we end up in the middle, with professors who can teach freely without having to invest so much energy defending themselves from unreasonable demands and with students who can be free thinkers, push the envelope and earn their grades rather than simply expect them. I am an optimist, but we will have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

Walking With My Feet 10 Feet Off the Beale

by Tom Barry, Social Sciences

In his 1991recording Walking In Memphis, Marc Cohn reflects on the history of the blues.  The references to the general history of this music form are straightforward but arranged in such a way to draw upon the ghosts of the past.  Cohn’s blue suede shoes pays respect to the Carl Perkins 1955 song titled the same that marks, for many, the transition to rockabilly and rock and roll.  The Delta Blues is the home of the blues.  The delta blues is the epicenter of the blues.  The Chicago blues, St. Louis blues,  and the songs coming out of other cities following the Great Migration out of the South call back to the delta.  And then there is W.C. Handy.  With his 1914 St. Louis Blues, W.C. Handy would start a lengthy career that would eventually earn him such titles as the Father of the blues and “the  Beethoven of Beale Street.”

I recently read an article titled  “Make My Getaway”:  The Blues Lives of Black Minstrels in W.C. Handy’s Father of the Blues” (Gussow, 2001).  Much of the article is devoted to understanding the ways in which Handy navigated a culture of racial oppression.  Whether on the stage performing minstrels or singing the blues in clubs, Handy neither shied from giving voice to the struggles of black men and women nor did he make this art a platform for being an activist for civil rights.  His approach is contrasted with other artists, such as the literary giants Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright who wrote more to inform and promote a move to justice.  It is for this reason that 100,000 copies of Handy’s autobiography Father of the Blues were sent to overseas military personnel and Wright’s Native Son remained on the shelves or libraries and people’s homes back in the States.  While Handy’s approach was more palatable to the racial majority, and the power structure of the segregated military that supported troops reading his autobiography, Gussow argues, and I agree, that it would be shortsighted to identify Handy as either complacent or submissive. In his work and his life, he voiced opposition to racial divisions.  He stood for racial justice.  And based on his personal experiences such as nearly being lynched, he realized when and how to be speak of the struggle and when to accommodate in order to survive another day.   

Excerpt from Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis

Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy — won’t you look down over me
Yeah I got a first class ticket
But I’m as blue as a boy can be 

Then I’m walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way  I feel

 

To watch Marc Cohn play his song , see the YouTube clip below:

 

Books That Cook! My First Food Fiction Course

by Stacey Donohue, Humanities Department

One of the many food blogs I read posts recipes, and one of the best is the recipe for delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.   Another blogger I follow (an academic who shall remain anonymous, but let’s call her Sybil) noted in her recent re-posting of the pumpkin cookie recipe that she should just start a food blog, and the cheers of support in the comments section poured in.   That idea (a food blog, for those who cook, for those who eat, or for those who like to read about food) got me reflecting on the food fiction course I taught in fall 2008 for the first time.

Last spring I read an article in College English (70.4) titled “Books That Cook: Teaching Food and Food Literature in the English Classroom” by Jennifer Cognard-Black and Melissa A. Goldthwaite (the entire March 2008 issue is on food).   Since I was teaching a generically titled Eng 260: Introduction to Women Writers course, I decided to try out some of their ideas by focusing on “food fiction” by women writers.  I ended up (after much anguish—I struggle with this choice whenever I teach a literature course) with the following reading list:

Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate 

Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant   

Diana Abu Jaber’s Crescent

&

Isak Dinesen’s Babette’s Feast

Other books I considered but couldn’t fit into our quarter system included the following (note that for all of these texts below, the books are significantly better than the film versions):

Joanne Harris’ Chocolat 
Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Café
Chitra Divakaruni’s Mistress of Spices

As it turns out, the novels worked well together, sharing many of the same themes (including elements of magical realism; fairy tale allusions; and, naturally, all used food as a central metaphor).   And because we focused on contemporary women’s fiction–fiction that is not “canonical”–there were engaging discussions of some issues I’ve explored when analyzing Oprah’s Book Club (high vs. “middlebrow” literature and reader response criticism, for example).

I decided to focus on fiction, but I know there are many, many food memoirs out there, too.  And, of course, I limited the selection to women writers, but someday I can see a separate food memoir course where I could include my favorites such as Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.  

Please share any other titles you have for fiction, non-fiction or memoir:  my Food Fiction course was a joy to prepare and teach, and I’m looking forward to teaching it again next year. 

This spring, Amy Harper is offering Anthropology 299: Food and Culture, an elective course that has over 30 students enrolled.  As COCC looks forward to an expanded Culinary program, I imagine other faculty members will respond with food-related courses within their discipline, and who knows: is there a Food Studies program next?

A new mission for our ConXn blog!

 We are super excited to announce a change in direction for our current ConXn blog!  Although ConXn was initiated as a means for the library to connect with the rest of the campus, it is now aspiring to become something bigger than that,  a campus community space where all COCC staff, faculty, and students have an opportunity to share their interests and expertise for the benefit, enjoyment, and enlightenment of the rest of us! 

So, read our new mission statement and guidelines and get back to us soon with your questions and/or blog submissions!

Mission Statement:

This blog is a place to showcase the talent and interests of COCC faculty, staff, and students. It is an interactive space where the COCC community will share its collective wisdom, expertise, research, or personal interests and accomplishments to connect and intellectually stimulate us all.

Postings will include a discussion of ideas, thoughts and solutions that arise from our own musings, teaching experiences, subject matter, or from responses to questions posed by others. Whether you are interested in hearing insider perspectives on the latest scientific discoveries, book readings, technology trends, provocative issues in psychology, sociology, criminal justice and in health care fields—or perhaps looking for career, educational, or other advice from our expert COCC staff: this college Blog, ConXn, is your blogging community.

Postings in this blog will remain educational in nature and will reflect the respect our community shares for well- informed as well as diverse sets of view points.

This COCC blog is an initiative launched by the following COCC people: Tom Barry; Michele DeSilva;Stacey Donohue; Lynne Hart; Tina Hovekamp; Andria Woodell; and Zelda Ziegler. If you are one of our COCC faculty, staff, or students and you are interested in becoming a contributing blogger, let us know. We need you! You can contribute one blog post or one hundred, whatever you want! Also, you may let us know what you love to do or what you would love to learn about, and we can make that the subject of one of our next posts! Either way, just email Stacey Donohue or any other of the people who manage this blog (see names above) to get more information or talk about an idea for a posting.

Guidelines for submission

The COCC blog is a formal, public presentation of information with an educational content representing the richness of our campus community knowledge and experience. Postings follow the guidelines below:

1. are one to two single spaced pages. Submissions can be short and concise.
2. may involve descriptions of faculty research projects
3. may involve a “theme” to which different faculty or staff contribute based on their knowledge and expertise
4. are descriptions or reflections on classroom successes
5. are discussions based on staff expertise with a purpose to educate
6. provide an overview of collaborative projects both within and between departments
7. are thoughtful, educational, objective reflections connected to COCC’s educational mission.
8. and most importantly, are fun and interesting to engage a wide spectrum of audiences!

Because of the public nature of this blog, postings such as political advocacy commentaries, opinion pieces, general or other internal-related announcements will be directed to the COCC Staff Commlines or Water Cooler folder. Please feel free to submit your ideas for a post to sdonohue@cocc.edu.