The Poet who saved St. Pancras

I recently came across this story in National Geographic about St. Pancras Station:

The Unlikely Rebirth of a London Legend

St. Pancras Station, © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons

The poet whose campaign saved St. Pancras was Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984), who was poet laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death.

One of Betjeman’s most famous (and controversial) poems is “Slough,” which expresses, let’s say, dismay at the dehumanizing forces of industrialization in and around the town of Slough, in ten neatly rhyming stanzas. Here’s the final stanza, as a taste:

Continue reading “The Poet who saved St. Pancras”

A Voice Finds Its Place


Guest blogger Jenifer Hamilton Hernandez

Over the course of a semester teaching English 1301, I try to help students find their voices, to become confident in both their own abilities and in the writing process. I want them to develop dexterity and resilience as writers, so that after leaving my class, they feel comfortable entering a world that will ask them to write anything from a cover letter for a job application to a research paper for an anthropology class. 

From one essay assignment to the next, my comments on their papers evolve from “You have done a great job with organization and supporting details; however, lack of proofreading is holding you back” to “This was a pleasure to read.” 

In some instances, I see raw talent from the first essay to the last, and in those cases, I point that out as well: “You appear to have innate writing talent. That is a gift and it can be powerful too. I hope you will continue writing and practicing different types of writing (if that interests you, of course) with whatever kind of guidance works best for you. There are so many ways to go about it: podcasts, for credit college classes (like creative writing or journalism), joining a writing group, or keeping a journal, to name a few. If writing is something you enjoy, then make time for it and keep writing–you never know where you’ll end up as a result.”

After receiving that particular comment on an essay assignment, one student from a Summer 2019 class asked for more guidance. I recommended specific creative writing and journalism classes at ACC, sent him a list of some of my tried and true books on writing, a link to a website with weekly writing prompts, and a list of area organizations providing community and instruction for writers. I encouraged him to meet with fellow writers regularly, to submit his work for publication, and to not take rejection as a “sign” that he shouldn’t be writing–because editorial preferences are always subjective.

Three months later, he emailed to say his work had been published for the first time, a poem in an online literary ‘zine. He said he jumped for joy when he got a note from the editor saying his work had been chosen, that it was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Also that he’s now enrolled in a creative writing class, and that he’ll continue sending his work out to publications.

He also said this: “I received so many rejection letters before this. If there’s one thing to pass along to your other students, it’s that you have to keep going. It can take a long time to find a place for your voice.”

I am so glad that Sean’s first published poem has found its place. You can read that poem, “Refugee/fugitive” here.

Echoes and spaces

Echoes and Spaces, New Paintings by Shawn Camp and Lana Waldrep-Appl

From the February 2, 2020 press release:

“We walk around in a world filled with little moments of clarity amongst a dense fog of existence. Tiny bits of connection, something that feels like déjà vu, arise and form echoes in our experiences.

Detail from Camp’s “I Take Everything as a Good Sign,” 2020

“In Echoes and Spaces, Lana Waldrep-Appl and Shawn Camp explore the feelings of the sublime that happen in those moments when you allow yourself to completely reside inside of the space you are
in. These paintings feel like daydreaming, an activity that takes place primarily when doing nothing. Both artists are interested in exploring the something-ness of nothing. Camp makes paintings of air and space; imagery devoid of solid forms. That nothingness is framed through subtle geometric divisions and contradictory hints of color. Through translucence and refraction, the shimmering surfaces convey a sense of atmosphere and explore the mystery of light, matter, and space. Waldrep-Appl makes paintings of nothing spaces—places of waiting, landscapes that drone by during a commute, visual white noise, the places between places where things happen. These spaces are never flat. A gray is never just gray. Varied chromatic grays, near whites, and unanticipated pastels invite viewers to see there is more to these ignorable spaces.”

  • Exhibition Dates: February 28, 2020 – March 28, 2020
  • Opening Reception: Friday, February 28, 7-10 pm
  • Canopy: Friday, March 6, 7-10 pm

No more “soft skills”!

Words have consequences. When we talk about the skills students learn in the liberal arts, what are we saying when we call them “soft”?

First, as I have frequently said, if “soft skills” were all that soft, employers and CEOs wouldn’t be clamoring for them and they wouldn’t be so hard to find. More importantly, “soft” implies that these skills are somehow squishy, touchy-feely things that you just “pick up” by osmosis rather than acquire through application and dedication. You know, like the “hard sciences.”

When you call LA skills “soft,” you’re complicit in a value scheme that has placed these skills lower — but “the market” is telling you otherwise. So obviously, we need a better term.

Continue reading “No more “soft skills”!”

LA AMP planning framework

This Friday, we meet for a wide-ranging discussion of our vision of our future as an AoS, which we want to capture in our Academic Master Plan. I propose this framework as a resource for facilitating and organizing our discussion around four major areas, drawn from the student “life-cycle.” Students engage in education, not in a vacuum, but with areas of strength and needs, with unique contexts and histories, and with aptitudes and interests. The come with ideas about what they want to learn and why, which means there is an inherent intentionality to their pathway, whether or not they can articulate what that trajectory is or what it involves. Each of these areas suggests possibilities for enhancement, ways we can prepare ourselves to serve them on that trajectory — including helping them develop self-reflection on the pathway itself.

This discussion framework identifies three foundational factors in the student experience plus the student’s  aspirations for the future — which is each student’s purpose for coming to ACC in the first place.

  • The term liberal arts is inherently aspiration-focused, as these studies were originally conceived as equipping people for lives of autonomy,  community engagement, and self-determination. It’s appropriate, then, to talk about the liberal arts as foundational for thriving in a genuinely pluralistic society.
  • The tetrahedron represents the pathway from present realities to student aspirations. It’s four vertices represent four main areas for self-reflection and goals for enhancement; in short, these are four major areas for organizing our AMP discussion and visioning. The four areas are:
    • Support: leveraging student assets and addressing needs
    • Study: the “content” of the student’s path toward mastery
    • Situation: the context that forms the student’s support network
    • Aspirations: the ends-in-view of the student’s engagement in education
  • Obviously, the division of these four areas is arbitrary, as they are actually inextricably bound together in the student experience. (To give an obvious example, a student’s situation in terms of culture, family, faith, etc., has a direct effect on their formation and understanding of their own aspirations. To serve them, we must respect their autonomy, even as we help them in the transformative process of education.)
  • For each of these four, I have taken a stab at some prompts for generating discussion, leading to specific goals, indicated in the slides.

Join the discussion of the future of the liberal arts at ACC! Talk to your colleagues and send your ideas. You are welcome to comment here, email your department chair, or be in touch with me.

Free opera tickets!

First, in case you haven’t heard about Excursions, let me catch you up. Each semester the LA Gateway hosts events that are the opposite of extracurricular: These are events designed to move students from the study of liberal arts in their classes into a larger world where liberal arts forms the foundation for intellectual and creative work.
This spring, the theme for our Excursions series is “Art and Adaptation,” using James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw, as a case study. Here’s the announcement on our Gateway site:
We’re encouraging Gateway faculty and students to read James’s novella and experience two additional works of art inspired by that “original,” a film and an opera. Our first Excursion experience is coming soon, at the end of February. The opera workshop of the Butler School of Music is performing Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera, The Turn of the Screw, and I have 20 free tickets, courtesy of the Butler School of Music, for our Gateway students, for the performance Thursday, February 27, 7:30 to 9:45 PM. The performance will be in the McCullough Theater on the UT Campus. (There are two other performances; see the Butler School of Music announcement for details.)
I will be holding a drawing for these 20 free tickets on Monday, February 17. If you have students who are interested in one of the free tickets, please have them email excursion@gateway.acclahc.org on their ACC student email account and include the following information:
Subject heading: Britten Opera Excursion
Student’s name
LA Gateway course
Phone number
Entries must be received no later than Monday, February 17 at 12:00 noon.
I will notify students of the ticket winners the evening of Monday, Feb 17. Students must confirm with me within 48 hours that they are able to attend the performance. I will continue to draw names from the entries if students do not confirm, until there are no more tickets.
Thank you for supporting the LA Gateway!

Announcing: Spring 2020 Excursion

Collier’s Weekly, illustration by John La Farge – Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

Join us for an exploration of the ways in which a work of art in one genre can inspire a work of art in another genre. In this spring’s series of LA Gateway events, Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw serves as a case study, as we examine the relationship between the “original” and its “adaptation” into two “new” works of art, the 1961 film, The Innocents, and Benjamin Britten’s 1954 chamber opera, The Turn of the Screw. Are these “new” works of art imitations? Adaptations? Or might it be appropriate to call them translations? Join the discussion!

We invite you to read James’s novella, which is easily available (here at Gutenerg, for instance) and join one of our discussion panels. We also encourage you to see Britten’s opera, which will be in production by the Butler School of Music opera workshop Feb 27 through Mar 1 at UT’s McCullough Theater. And stay tuned for the movie, which we will show in April — followed by a discussion led by a film historian.

Dates and places to follow!

Professor Profile: Dr. Michael Endl

Welcome back to the Liberal Art Department’s Professor Profile Series. Last edition we featured an Honors Professor and since it was so well received we decided to feature another! This month we highlight Professor Michael Endl, Honors Astronomy professor.

Welcome to our series, Professor Endl! Tell us about your course and how long you’ve been teaching?

I am teaching the Astronomy Honors Course “Life in the Universe”. This is an intro-level course in Astrobiology for non-science and science majors alike. This semester is the third time I teach it at ACC, but it is heavily influenced by the AST309L course that I have been teaching at UT, starting maybe a decade ago!

In what interesting ways do you engage your classroom?

I totally enjoy teaching an honors course. The interactions and discussions with these bright students are the highlight of my teaching day. I try to have an interesting and engaged discussion in the classroom as much as possible and don’t care too much if it takes time away from my planned lecture. This course also includes a lab part which we primarily spend on the observing deck at RRC campus, using the telescopes to look at planets, nebulae, etc. 

How does teaching an Honors course drive your passion for education?

As I said, the Honors course is the highlight of my teaching work in a semester. It’s fun and keeps me motivated to make this course as interesting and enjoyable to everyone in the class. It also helps with my regular courses, since I can adopt certain things that I see work very well in the Honors course.

Any advice for your students to help them be successful in your classroom?

Just be curious and interested. That’s all you need.

Interested in learning more about “Life in the Universe?” Watch this promotional video here.

Prime Celebration

Today is 1/27, one of my favorite days of the year. In the number theory game I’ve been playing with dates since my junior high school days, today is the only Mersenne prime day of the year.

First, my game.

  • Step 1: Generate a number by writing the digits of the month and day as “mmdd.” Today, for instance, is 0127 or 127.
  • Step 2: Investigate the properties of the number you got from step 1 and celebrate. For instance, 127 is a prime number. Sometimes you get other interesting characteristics — as I recently pointed out about my birthday, 108.

Now, what is there to celebrate about 127?

Let’s start with Mersenne’s prime theorem. If a prime number can be represented as a Mersenne number, then the power of 2 that generates that number must be prime. Mersenne numbers have the form

2^p - 1

For instance, 15 is a Mersenne number because it can be expressed as

2^4 - 1 = 15

Obviously, 15 is not prime (among other things, it’s divisible by 3, as my birthday post revealed), but many Mersenne numbers are — like 7:

2^3 - 1 = 7

Now here’s the theorem: if a Mersenne number is prime, then the power to which 2 is raised must be prime. Since we’re looking at 7, notice that the power, 3, is also prime. Very cool.

(And it’s convenient, too, because we can use this theorem to narrow the field of prime candidates. I like looking for primes among large Mersenne numbers, with a little help from Python. In fact, I’m slowly compiling triple-Mersenne primes. These are Mersenne primes whose power is a Mersenne prime whose power is also a Mersenne prime. You can’t get entertainment like that on TV.)

That brings us to 127, which is

2^7 -1 = 127

127 is prime, and 7 is prime. But 127 is the only Mersenne prime that corresponds to a day in the year, according to my game. Why?

The next lower candidate for a Mersenne prime would use the power 5 (Why?), so we have

2^5 - 1 = 31

31 is not a well-formed day-number according to the rules of my game. (I’m fine with dropping leading 0s, but not interspersing 0s willy-nilly to get an arbitrary result—that offends my basic sense of order and fair play). All the smaller Mersenne primes, therefore, won’t qualify for my game.

What about larger Mersenne primes? The next candidate uses 11 (Why?), but let’s see:

2^11 - 1 = 2047

Two problems: 2047 is not prime. (It’s 23 * 89, in fact.) And even so, there’s no 20th month. (By the way, this also shows that not all primes are Mersenne primes — not even close!)

Yes, 127 is the only Mersenne prime day of the year — but there’s more!

127’s power is 7, which is a Mersenne prime, as we say above. But 7’s power is 3, which is also a Mersenne prime!

2^2 - 1 = 3

So, 127 is a triple-Mersenne prime. See if you can parse this lovely relation:

 2^(2^(2^2 - 1) - 1) - 1

The expression in the innermost parentheses generates 3, the expression in the next pair generates 7, and the whole expression makes 127.

There you have it. 127 is not just the only Mersenne prime day of the year, it’s also a triple-Mersenne prime.

That’s cause for prime celebration.