Life in Vermont: Sugaring

It seems that lately I've been posting a lot about my "job" as an odd mix of tour guide, chauffeur and chaperone, but that doesn't mean that it's not fun. Despite my fearsome reputation and general contrariness I do love my students, which is, of course, how I always get dragooned into taking them places (that and the, what seemed at the time, innocent decision to take the van training at school). One of the great RAs out here at the Q, Nicole Baker, asked me earlier in the week if I would help drive a group of Qsters out to a sugar shack in Huntington (and by ask I mean she, as is her wont, violently kicked at my door until I agreed to serve as the second driver. Nicole is very persuasive - and she definitely has a bright future in international business (if not world domination). So yesterday we loaded up a dozen students in the two school vans and headed off to the wilds of Huntington, which is a few minutes past the Round Church in Richmond. Oddly, despite my eleven years in Vermont I had never visited a sugar shack when they were actually "sugaring," the process wherein you boil down the sap to get the syrup. I've visited the shacks several times, including last year when I was shepherding the visiting Russians around, but it was always off-season. The standard rule seems to be that you have to boil down around forty gallons of sap to get one gallon of maple syrup. On this visit we did get to try some of the sap itself, which just tastes like weak sugar water (and you can see why it would take so many gallons of sap). Nevertheless, despite the fact that Vermont is so small geographically we're the national leader in maple syrup production (although our production is dwarfed by that of our neighbors to the north in Quebec - of course, no Vermonter would be caught dead consuming Canadian maple syrup which they generally consider inferior if not outright toxic). Yes, in addition to being very biased about their maple syrup, they are also very knowledgable. You would be hard pressed to find a Vermonter who doesn't have a favorite grade of maple syrup, and who can't speak eloquently about their choice. The students really enjoy the trip. The highlight, naturally, was consuming sugar on snow, which is heated maple syrup poured on crushed ice (served with a pickle to "cut" the sweetness). The entire process is fascinating and fairly complicated - you can only "harvest" the sap for a couple weeks in very early spring - and since our weather this time of year is pretty unpredictable (we had a blizzard while I was down in Virginia that dumped more than two feet of snow on the ground in one day) it can really be a challenge to get the maple syrup produced. There are a lot of small producers that Vermonters are fiercely loyal to, which is not surprisingly one of the things that I find most charming about the place.

Habitat for Humanity Trip

Just wanted to post a quick picture that Liz Moroski, one of the students who went on the Lexington trip (and a veteran of a couple Scudder classes, the poor thing) sent me. I'll have more to say about the trip later, but I just loved this picture. The students were very proud of the fence they built - and one day into fence construction they were stopping me on walks to comment on the shoddy workmanship of fences along the way.

Lexington Coffeeshop

So why am I posting about a coffeeshop? Good question. I guess that as I'm shutting down the travelling part of my life (at least most of the travelling part of my life) the blog is becoming more of a historical document for me. In a way, it's almost like modern art - I'm recording moods and emotions as much as facts. And for some reason this coffeeshop really speaks to me at the moment. I've been in a black mood for a while now, for any number of professional and personal reasons, and I guess everything is coming together at this moment as I'm sitting here in this lovely coffeeshop. As I wrote earlier, it's right down the street from both Washington and Lee University and also VMI. For that reason there seems to be a steady stream of professors and students coming through here, and while I've been pluggng away grading or trying to put Global Modules together (including this mad scheme to link multiple universities together to discuss the situation in Libya and the broader Middle East) I've been listening to a wonderful series of discussions. For the last four mornings (I always have to be online in the morning because all of my international partners are six or eight hours ahead of me, and if I wait until the afternoon it's night over there and I've lost a day) and there are a couple groups of professors who seem to meet here to have a cup of coffee and chat. And, yes, it's complete nerd heaven for me. In the space of an hour this morning I heard snippets of a conversation comparing the Buddhist and Christian perception of love, and then another professor say "sure, but that's one of the most commonly misinterpretted lines from Vergil." Yes, some of it may have been academic posing (it's not just students who are guilty of posing, you know), but it's still an example of the life of the mind that led all of us into this line of work. One of my main goals since I first stepped through the doors of Champlain eleven years ago was to try and turn the place into a "real" school, and by that I don't mean to turn it into a liberal arts college - that's not who we are - but to always push to create that intellectual/academic "buzz" that you experience at more traditional schools. We've come a long way, but sitting here this week reminded me of how far we have yet to go. The very fact that I can get my students to sit still and spend weeks discussing the Quran or the Analects shows how we've changed - but the fact that my good friends Erik and Steve slave to put together showings of important films to empty auditoriums shows that there is still work to do. However, I never back down from a challenge. So, once again, it's time to gird my loins and continue to push to transform the school. Now, do I have time for another latte?

Stonewall Jackson Cemetery

OK, I'm taking a break from the endless hours I've spent grading and working on Global Module planning to blog about my lovely trip to Lexington, Virginia, specifically carving off a couple hours to walk around the Stonewall Jackson Cemetary. As I blogged earlier I'm acting as chauffeur to a great group of Champlain students who devoted their spring break to helping to build a house for Habitat for Humanity (and I'll have more to say about that later). They've been the ones doing all the work. Beyond driving south from Vermont and some shopping and one short period that I spent unloading a truck, I've mainly been either curled up in my bunkbed reading and taking notes on Journey to the West or sitting here in the wonderful Lexington Coffeeshop on W. Washington Street (the street runs right into Washington and Lee University). I nurse endless lattes and nibble at blueberry muffins so I don't seem like too much of a bum for sitting here for five or six hours sending emails around the world or slaving away at online grading. If you're ever in Lexington definitely visit the Lexington Coffeeshop (more on that later as well).

If you walk further out Main Street (heading in the opposite direction of VMI) you will come to the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. As you might expect, it features the grave of the famous Confederate general (although there is an entire mythology about where his arm is actually buried, but that is another story). It is well-documented that I love cemeteries, and especially southern ones. Now by admitting this I suppose I'm failing one of the classic liberal litmus tests, but I can't help myself. Until you spend any time in the south, and remember that I lived in Georgia for nine years, you can't grasp how different things are. I remember my first year teaching at Georgia Perimeter College (then DeKalb College) in Atlanta when I was teaching American history, specifically the period around the Civil War. One of the students, quite sincerely, asked "what do they say about the War up there?" Now, I had to admit that I had never heard it discussed in my thirty years growing up in Indiana and Cincinnati, but for these folks the War was still something that they lived with. In a sense this is classic - those who lose wars are the ones who remember them. The Serbs remembered and brooded over the anniversary of the Battle of the Field of Blackbirds in a way that the Turks certainly never did. The student who asked the question seriously was considering the possibility that yankees were still laughing at the southern defeat and humiliation a century and a half later. My good friend and former professor Lloyd Hunter has written beautifully on the southern myth of the "lost cause" and you can see it in southern cemetaries. Both sides, and only in the south would there still be a clear sense of "sides", love to over-simplify the War and its causes. Certainly it is inaccurate to think that every northerner was passionately devoted to ending slavery as it is to assume that every southerner was a slave owner. One of the pictures featuring an amazing tombstone from a young soldier by the name of Wilson Newman which speaks eloquently to the southern vision (even if it is mythologized in its own way) of the cause for which the young man gave his life. According to the tombstone, Wilson fell "defending the sacred soil and the constitutional rights of his native State Virginia." Yes, in a sense it is a "corrupted" history (just as the north's version is as well) - and it's the "corruption" that usually leads to the modern arguments - but it's interesting how the south is just "closer" to its history, whereas the north has let it slip away.

I also have to admit that the experience was intensified by being able to listen to Uncle Tupelo on my Droid while walking around - helped me get my southern vibe back.

My Life as a Tour Guide

The debate raging right now at Champlain is whether or not I'm the most collegial person on campus - or whether I'm just an idiot (I'm leaning towards the latter). As I'm sure my good friend Trish pointed out one time or another, when you start getting more involved on the student life side of things you end up acting as a tour guide or at least a bus driver. I should have figured this out when I foolishly became van-certified here at Champlain last year. I did it to drive the visiting Russian students around, but once you are certified you must certainly become certifiable. Plus, my year as a faculty in residence has, by definition, made me more involved with student issues/concerns. In addition, I've always been a sucker for anything relating to students (which feeds off of my natural weakness to be easily "guilted" into anything). Last weekend I (along with my friends "Original" Mike Lange, "False" Mike Kelly and Wes Donehower) took nine freshmen from Quarry Hill up to Montreal (more on that later) to grab a dim sum lunch and see the terra warrior exhibit. I was not even back in the state for twenty-four hours before being roped into another trip. Tomorrow morning I'm helping to drive eleven juniors and seniors down to Virginia as part of an alternative spring break trip. They will be working for Habitat for Humanity, an organization that I've always admired. At the last minute there was a snafu with their travel plans and they were going to have to cancel the trip - and this is where I come into the story. I'm not actually going to be helping to build a house (although I was asked), mainly because I'm buried and really need next week to try and get caught up. Mainly I'll just be serving as an academic taxi service - dropping them off and picking them up - and then in the downtime trying to locate wifi so that I can get some work done. I was hoping to grab an inexpensive flight down to New Orleans to bum around the French Quarter for a few days, but obviously I didn't lock into the tickets before my availability become public notice (grin). Now, after these two experiences I should have been able to say no, but have also immediately jumped into a plan with my friend Kerry to take some juniors in our respective China coureses back up to Montreal to see the terra cotta warriors. Hopefully I am now awash in Karmic coin to valance out my well-documented crimes against humanity.

Nerd Alert: Sabbatical Books

This is one of those posts that really reflects the changing nature of this blog. From a blog designed to allow family and friends to follow me as I was travelling overseas (but which few people ever did) it continues to evolve (devolve?) into a more personal journal for me (which, by definition, even fewer people would care about or read). Sometimes I think this is a glorified memory device whose sole purpose is to trigger responses from me at some future time (when my memory is even worse than it is now). I'm including an odd little picture that I snapped earlier today, mainly in response to my nephew Garrett's amazement at the growing mountain of books that I was accumulating on my kitchen counter (and which inspired him to take a picture, which inspired me to take a picture). For a teaching college (meaning one that doesn't place much emphasis on research) Champlain is fairly generous with its professional development money. In the past I've always spent all of my professional development funds (and usually then some) on travel to conferences. However, this year I've decided to use all of it to purchase books; and this decision is also a reflection of a change in my sabbatical plans for next fall semester (when I am finally taking my long-delayed sabbatical). My initial plan was to spend the semester teaching overseas, and I received interest/offers from universities in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and Slovakia. It was really a very tough decision, with every one of them being a fantastic choice. Logically then, in the end I decided to choose none of them. Instead I'm going to spend the semester hiding out in the stacks working on a writing project that I've been fitfully pursuing for a couple years (not because of lack of interest or passion, but rather because of the demands of teaching and getting the Global Modules project off and running). A lot of things came together at this moment in my life to make this an easy decision, and it came to me suddenly one day with an almost physically tangible clarity. I was explaining this to someone the other day and it came out like this - research and writing is just something that I've failed at over the years, and I hate failure (at least in myself). It started off with the painful end of my graduate career at Cincinnati, when I finished my degree but was ended up so embittered with the whole process and, oddly I guess, "took it out" on history (at least the researching of it). It took me three years before I even went to a history conference, as I licked my wounds and focused on teaching. For the last year eight years every spare moment has been focused on envisioning and facilitating the Global Modules project. Essentially, the vast majority of my publications are either teaching and/or Global Module related (and I've been fortunate to have had fair success in both areas). However, at this point I really want to get back into resarch and writing. I don't know if it's just a reflection of where I am in my career or my advancing age or just a desire to put my stamp on something, but I think it may just be a desire to try and have some success where I've had none in the past (and I love a challenge). The project itself is pretty monumental, and I'm sure beyond the limits of my pitifully small intellectual capacity to carry out successfully - but, again, that's never stopped me before. The idea behind the project is to write a friendly (think of Border's level popular history) guide to the epics. I've been using thin sections of them in my classes for years as a mechanism for understanding history. For example, if a student can grasp why the Romans loved Aeneas (while modern viewers fine him rather cold and strangely tedious) or why the Indians still passionately love Rama (while a non-Indian would immediately fall in love with Hanuman or even the deliciously wicked Ravanna) then you've gone a long way to understanding their societies, respectively. At the same time what I've often thought of over the years is that these stories, far more than simply tools for academic enquiry, are also really fascinating and it's a pity that they are not read more widely - and this is what inspired this project. My initial thought was to pick one epic for each society and use it as a window into that society, although that means making some tough decisions: Ramayana vs. Mahabharata for India; Iliad vs. Odyssey for Greece; or Romance of the Three Kingdoms vs. Journey to the West for China. For that matter, what constitutes an "epic" anyway? For example, it is easy to propose that Gilgamesh or Beowulf is an epic, but what does one do with something like the Arabian Nights (I'm considering putting it mainly because I think of it as an epic without a home - the stories are probably of Indian origin, but we associate it with "Arabia" even though Arabs of a more conservative religious baring are uneasy with the racier elements of the story). The whole process is made more difficult/challenging/fascinating because I'm a historian and not properly trained in literature or folklore (which is why I'm been picking the brains of my great friends Kerry Noonan, Steve Wehmeyer and Mike Lange on an increasing basis). Of course, I suppose that not being trained in those fields is an advantage because it allows me to introduce them to a general audience without feeling that I am somehow doing disservice to "my" field. And, for that matter, just finding complete versions of them are difficult - I stumbled across a new edition of the Persian Shahnama when I was in Washington, DC recently (which I must have taken as a sign that I should shift the plans for my sabbatical) but it has traditionally been very tough to find in the West, and the new volume is undoubtedly a reflection that it plays a small but important role in The Kite Runner. I was sending emails out last week to the New York University Press to try and figure out why their new Clay Sanskrit Library 15 volume collection of the Mahabharata (the tall stack in the middle of the picture) is still not the entire Mahabharata, and wondering when then final three volumes of their new publication of the Ramayana will actually be translated and published. I'm also ordering "side" versions of the epics, such as films or graphic novels or children's books, which reflect the continuing importance of the epics. So, as you can see, I'm totally in complete nerd heaven at the moment. The project is enormous, and even though I'm been working on it in my spare time for a couple years, it is staggering to think of actually producing it, which, of course, only makes me want to tackle it all the more.

Life in a Northern Town

Here's a fairly nicely framed picture looking out on to the quad at Champlain (or at least where the quad would be if it weren't buried under a couple feet of snow). As I've commented on before it is sometimes easy to forget how beautiful Vermont is, but I sometimes wonder if we ever really forget how long the winter is. I guess we just get immune to it. When I lived down in Atlanta I would start shivering uncontrollably when it dropped into the lower 40's (somehow forgetting my Hoosier roots), but now any temperature in the 20's is cause for celebration and it's time to leave the coat at home. And speaking of coats, I often think that the single biggest thing that I love about summer anymore is just the simplicity of leaving the house without throwing/snapping/tying/zipping on ten pounds of clothes. One of my great failings as a Vermonter (although, truthfully, I'm seven generations short of being considered a true Vermonter) is that I've never succeeded in taking up a winter sport. I'm pleased with how many hours and miles I dedicate to biking in the summer, but so far nothing in the winter. I really don't think my wretched hip and knees would allow for downhill skiing, but I suppose cross country is a possibility. My good friends Trish Siplon and Mike Lange have tried to convince me to take up snow shoeing (although the very fact that I don't know if "shoeing" is the appropriate spelling shows how unlikely it is that I will follow their advice).