Memorial Day Weekend Hiatus

I'll be away from the blog for a few days over the long Memorial Day weekend while Clara and I travel to Oberlin, Ohio, for reunion and commencement at the best college east of the Mississippi.

Oberlin recently hired a marketing consultant to come up with a slogan to sell the college to prospective students. Above, you see the results: we are oberlin. fearless Despite the ridicule it has provoked, the new slogan has at least garnered some media attention, such as this May 1 story on NPR's "All Things Considered."

I'm skeptical of the need to hire marketing consultants and create expensive and ridicule-provoking media campaigns. Another northern Ohio-based institution, the United Church of Christ, did it a few years ago, creating the God is Still Speaking Campaign, complete with television ads and merchandise. None of it drew as much media attention to the UCC as did the recent controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The best publicity for any institution comes from actions, not overpriced words. And for 175 years, Oberlin has been a place of fearless action. The college, founded in 1833, was coeducational from its beginning, and admitted African-American students beginning 1835. Not surprisingly, the first African-American woman to earn a college degree, Mary Jane Patterson, graduated from Oberlin in 1862. Oberlin was founded by Congregationalist clergymen—predecessors of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, like Rev. Wright, brought their evangelical fire-and-brimstone religious style to the pressing social justice issues of the day. In 1833, the most pressing issue was the abolition of slavery, and Oberlin's early leaders, men like Asa Mahan and Charles Grandison Finney, saw to it that Oberlin was in the forefront of the abolitionist movement. The town of Oberlin was also an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Oberlin always was fearless.

While Clara (Class of 1983) and I (Class of 1986) are attending Clara's reunion, her fearless brother (Class of 1976) and our fearless nephews (Classes of 2007 and 2011) are on the first leg of their epic bike journey from Izmir, Turkey, to Berlin, Germany. If John can find internet access along the way, you can follow the journey on his blog. I'll be back on Monday or Tuesday with a report on our Commencement and Reunion weekend in Oberlin. Meanwhile, enjoy Memorial Day if you're in the U.S.A., or your spring Bank Holiday if you're in the U.K.

Musical Outro. Click here for The Decemberists performing "Song for Myla Goldberg" in Minneapolis in November 2006. Myla Goldberg is the author of the wonderful novel Bee Season, and a graduate Oberlin College. How cool is Oberlin? Its graduates inspire songs by The Decemberists.

Iron Bridge Update

In November, I blogged about the Iron Bridge (also known as the Waterford Bridge): the "most deficient" bridge in the state, and high on the list of bridges to be replaced in the wake of the 35W bridge collapse. The good news is that the bridge will be replaced, but the old bridge will be preserved as a pedestrian bridge. The plans, developed through several years of talks between Carleton College and Dakota County, also call for the construction of a boat launch on the Cannon River near the old bridge. Here are some informative links:

The Waterford Bridge Update on Carleton's Cowling Arboretum website.
A May 19 story on plans for the bridge from Carleton's news service.
A May 21 story from the Northfield News.
A May 21 story from the Minneapolis StarTribune.
A May 21 post from Locally Grown.

Wordless Wednesday: Flowering

Editor's Note: My Blog Friend Forever, Chris, has fallen down on the job, leaving me this week without one of her beautiful "Wordless Wednesday" photographs. To pick up some of the slack, here's a beautiful flowering tree near the corner of First and College Streets.

Rough Draft: "Memo Mori"

Last week's poetic rough draft included the line "as if we needed another poem about mortality." Perhaps we don't, but that's what we have this week. It was inspired, oddly enough, by going through another batch of photographs from our year in England. Each month this year, I'm ordering prints of pictures I took in the corresponding month a year ago. Hence, yesterday's mail brought photographs from May 2007, including this photograph of rapeseed, or rape, blooming in the gentle hills south of the Hatton Locks on the Grand Union Canal. The yellow field in the middle of the photograph is rapeseed. One of the footpaths that Clara and I walked regularly (because it led to one of our favorite pubs) crossed such a field. When the flowers were in bloom, the yellow pollen was so thick and sticky that it clung to us and turned us yellow.

Comments on the poem—in the form of either criticism or praise—are greatly appreciated.

Memo Mori

A year ago we walked through English fields
of rape that turned us golden as we passed.
You said that in a year we’d be back home
to walk among the unhedged fields, uncastled towns.
Now here we are, looking back at everything
we were looking forward to a year ago.
A year of our lives has stretched and shrunk
between anticipation and remembrance.
Meanwhile, we live from heartbeat to heartbeat,
breath to breath, one foot in front of the other.
As if life were what lay on either side of now.
An urgent cardinal circles us in red, calling
hurry hurry hurry. There are things to do.
The trees are covered in sticky notes.
But one by one, October will take them down,
another summer crossed off the list, another year.
Sooner or later, everything becomes undone.

Pastoral

Yesterday was the annual Carleton College Classics Department picnic, lamb roast, and marathon reading on Mai Fête Island. While the lamb roasted, students read aloud Robert Fagles' translation of Vergil's Aeneid. The reading started at about 1:30 and went until after 11:00 p.m. I contributed by reading the second half of Book 2, in which Aeneas rescues his son and father from the ruins of Troy, but accidentally leaves his wife behind. The Aeneid may be the only work of non-English literature (other than Le Petit Prince) that I've read in its entirety in the original language, and I found that as the English translation was read, some of the familiar Latin words echoed in my head. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit...

Rob reading Vergil while students attend to the lamb.

As I was starting to read, Jane Hamilton (author of The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World, etc.) showed up, but decided the party wasn't worth crashing yet. Meanwhile, red-winged blackbirds danced in the air around us, a Baltimore oriole arrived and sang brilliantly over its nest, and geese lined up on the shore to listen to the Orphic performance on the island. Later in the evening, a green-backed heron made a low pass over the island. By around 4:30, the lamb was beautifully roasted, and the island was teeming with classicists. It was an extraordinarily windy afternoon, and in the evening around 7:30 a little rain passed through, producing a spectacular rainbow that framed the nearly full moon.

Evening clouds moving in over the Lyman Lakes

Nesting, Part II

A Baltimore oriole's nest on Mai Fête Island on the campus of Carleton College. I've spotted one oriole, and heard another, in the vicinity of the island.

Sesquicentennial

A "Dunlap Broadside" copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Minnesota became the 32nd state of the Union on May 11, 1858—150 years ago this past Sunday. It wasn't until today, though, that I had a chance to celebrate my state's birthday with a trip to St. Paul to visit the Minnesota History Center and the State Capitol. The special draw at the history center was a rare original copy of the Declaration of Independence—one of only 25 in existence, and the only one to tour the country. The copy is one of the "Dunlap Broadsides"—printed copies produced in Philadelphia on the evening of July 4, 1776 to be distributed throughout the colonies. It was especially exciting for me to see it after having seen an original copy of the Magna Carta in Salibury, England, last summer. It's a reminder of how potent and world-changing the written word can be. Although the copy we saw in St. Paul had none of the signatures that are on the "engrossed" copy in Washington, it was inspiring to think of this copy being read aloud in July 1776, and to think of the ordinary people hearing those famous words for the first time in history.* The Declaration of Independence is on display at the Minnesota History Center through this Sunday, May 18.

The Rotunda of the Minnesota State Capitol.

We (my friend Peytie and I) got in to see the Declaration just before a deluge of blue-shirted students from Thief River Falls, in St. Paul for a field trip. After pausing to admire the document, we walked over to the State Capitol to admire the rotunda, to peek into the Senate and Supreme Court chambers, and to see the remains of the flag carried by the brave men of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg. The Capitol was completed in 1905 and designed by Ohio-born St. Paul architect Cass Gilbert. Next weekend, Clara and I will be in Oberlin, Ohio, for Clara's 25th reunion at Oberlin College—where Cass Gilbert designed several of the most beautiful buildings on campus, including the incomparable Allen Memorial Art Museum.

After a brief tour of the Capitol, Peytie and I headed over to Como Park for a walk around the beautiful conservatory, followed by a wonderful picnic in the park. Here's a little gallery of our day in St. Paul.

The Minnesota History Center

The Cathedral of St. Paul

The Minnesota State Capitol

The Como Park Conservatory

Bonsai in the Conservatory (an 85-year old Chinese elm)

The Interior of the Conservatory

*According to one story, the "patriot printer" Isaiah Thomas was the first person to read the Declaration in Massachusetts. A copy—a Dunlap Broadside—was being carried by post rider from Philadelphia to Boston, and stopped in Worcester, Mass., where Thomas lived and worked. Thomas took the copy and read it from the steps of the town hall to a cheering crowd.