Letter to Class of 2012

6 November 2008


Dear Class of 2012,

We are writing to thank you for engaging in the first year book project. As you all know, this year was our first time with such a project. We appreciate your willingness to work with us and to read Terry Tempest Williams’ book, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert. There is no doubt that this book was a hard read, yet we think you understand that it was selected to introduce you to the type of work we engage in at the university. As you proceed through your studies here, you will encounter readings difficult to understand, tough to decipher, or simply not enjoyable. The key, as Williams explained during her campus visit, is to enter into conversation with those readings, with one another about our reactions to what we read, and to discuss our ideas about what we encounter inside and outside the classroom. Through conversation, through discussion and reflection, we learn and expand our thinking.

We also want to thank you if you attended Williams’ talk, and we’d especially like to recognize those of you who stayed afterward and engaged in a dialogue with Williams about Red, what you liked and didn’t like, what you learned, and what you think about the book and how it relates to your lives and your communities. Terry commented to us that she found your willingness to challenge her as a writer one of her most amazing—and difficult—experiences in presenting her work to an audience. If you stayed, you participated in the kind of work that is at the heart of a university—learning about ideas; questioning ideas; sharing ideas. We do this in a community of learners who bring many different perspectives and sets of experiences to the table.

Your participation and engagement is what made this project work. It was a challenge for most of you, and for us, the faculty and staff, to make it happen. Terry navigated your criticism and compliments with grace and was grateful for your level of engagement.. Our combined interests and energy made the first freshman year book project a success. We hope you take some of the lessons of Red –its message, its focus on story – with you throughout your studies at UMass Dartmouth. Your engagement with this community will make it a better place for all of us.

Sincerely,

Catherine Houser
Professor & Chair, English

Jen Riley
Associate Professor, English & Women’s Studies

Mary Beckwith
Associate Dean of Students

Wow.

More later, but for now, all I can say is "Wow," with a side of "amazing" and garnished with "awesome."

Photo by James Minior.

Almost Time!!!

Don't forget:

Terry Tempest Williams

will be here
Thursday, October 23!
Tripp Athletic Center
7:00 p.m.

Free and open to the public

Cancel your wedding! Get a sitter! Ditch work!
This promises to be both awesome AND cool.
All the other kids are doing it...
Yes, this is the one and only time you should give in to peer pressure.

Oh! I almost forgot!
Books will be available for sale and she will sign books immediately following her talk. Yay!!!

MORE!!!
Join Williams from 3:00-4:00 pm in theLibrary Browsing area that day. Ask questions about her writings and the writing process. Or bask in her genius. Your choice.

Code Name: molly, This Post is for You!!!

Please email me at prego@umassd.edu with your real name and student ID number.

Thanks!

Matriculation Talk for Class of 2012

Jeannette E. Riley

Associate Professor, English and Women’s Studies
29 August 2008

A New Way of Being

Hello class of 2012.

Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert is a book of questions, paradoxes, and metaphors. In the last month, I have heard rumblings on campus and in our Red blog that confirm the book’s complexities. As part of those rumblings, a question keeps coming up: “Why did we have to read this book?” I want to begin to answer that question drawing upon a posting by Penny Piva, our blog administrator:

When you guys begin your college career . . . you’re embarking on four years of reading and learning . . .For each class, you’ll need to understand more than each individual word—you’ll need to put concepts together, understand context, move toward comprehension. Think of it as a party: Each guest is a word. Clusters of guests are the concepts. The reason for the party is the context. Having a great time, enjoying the party is comprehension.

At every party, in every class, you’re meeting people you never would have known, you’re learning concepts you otherwise never would have understood.

We’ve chatted about “place + people = politics”; think about this equation:

Reading + comprehension = learning.

Reading can introduce you to people you might never know and take you places you might never go.

Penny is right on target here. Reading introduces you to new ideas, new experiences, to new communities. And it is in those communities that we can come to a fuller understanding of the places we inhabit. So, when the orientation planning group decided to pursue the idea of a first year reading project, Williams’ Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert presented us with a wonderful opportunity to introduce you to the life and work of the university—the place you will call home for the next four years, as well as introduce you to the expectations we have for you as a learner; the possibilities and challenges that await you in and out of the classroom; the experiences you might never encounter without reading new things, talking with different people, and entering into our community.

I’m sure some of you are wondering how one book can accomplish all this, and today I’m going to answer the question, “Why THIS book?” in more detail for you using 3 metaphors from the writing of Terry Tempest Williams. These metaphors are:

1. The “strike moment”
2. The language of red AND
3. Ground truthing

By the end of my 15 minutes (yes, that long!), I hope you will understand that higher education is not about answers but about exploring questions and through questioning, you will join us as active meaning makers and learners in our campus community. I offer you these metaphors not only as a way to further understand and explore the book, but also as tools for your education and your time with us. For not only are you here to pursue a major and earn a degree, but you are also claiming an education, developing your intellectual curiosity, and growing your imagination.

Throughout her work, American writer Terry Tempest Williams argues that the environment teaches us about ourselves—our fears, our desires, our assumptions, our politics—and if we understand our relationship to the land or our place, we can transform not just how we see the worlds around us, but also how those worlds develop and can become sustainable for all living things.

This examination of who we are and how we see and know the world is at the heart of my research and my teaching—and it is what draws me again and again to Williams's writings. For Williams, learning to value our environment teaches us about what we believe, what choices we want to make, and how we want to shape our communities. Williams' writings teach us how to merge conflicting positions—to break new ground—important work that encourages new ways of thinking about who we are and who we are becoming, as well as our community and the work that we engage in each and every day here at UMass Dartmouth. We see these possibilities for such growth emerge most powerfully through Williams’ use of metaphors.

Metaphor #1: the strike moment

In “Strike Moment,” a chapter late in Red,, Terry Tempest Williams contemplates a work by a Spanish artist who uses a simple matchstick to create his ars poetica—his statement on his art. She asks her readers, “What is it that ignites an artist’s soul, a writer’s hand. What is responsible for that strike moment, when the match and band of sandpaper unite in a friction that produces flame . . .” (191). What is it that creates ideas? Movement? Change?

For Williams, as Red demonstrates, one way to create movement—to reach that strike moment—is through the act of questioning, something you’ll do a great deal of during the next four years. Williams asks us many questions in Red, among them:

• “How do I learn to speak in a language native to where I live?” (137)
• How do we define progress?
• “What do we choose to act on and what do we choose to ignore?” (164) and why?
• “How can we begin to understand what wilderness is if we have never experienced a place that is unaltered and unagitated by our own species? (177)

I’m betting that most of you realized that Williams does not answer these questions. She proposes them—she floats them in front of you, her readers, in an effort to engage you, to make you think, to make you respond and create your own strike moment. As our blog revealed, many of you accepted that challenge. You chose to create that moment as you responded with postings asking more questions, with postings offering insights into how you see the world around you, and with postings sharing ideas, engaging in conversation. As a result, the blog represents the accomplishment of one of Williams’ primary aims that she reveals in her question on the first page of Red: “How are we to find our way toward conversation?” (3).

The blog is that conversation; our presence here today and the discussion groups we will engage in following lunch is that conversation. In fact, we hope that your experience here at UMass Dartmouth will enable you to continue that conversation, equipping you with new ideas, new knowledge, new sparks. Each of us contains the spark that creates conversation—the strike moment out of which fresh ways of knowing and creative directions might arise.

At the root, Red is about questions, ideas, and new ways of knowing—work that is at the heart of the university. When presented with a research, art or science project or problem, we don’t start with answers; rather, we begin with questions. Questions that make us think, that make us explore what we don’t know, questions that make us imagine new possibilities. Williams is always looking for that strike moment—for the idea that will create a new way of thinking that will bring people together rather than divide them. For Williams, in Red, this search for the strike moment is why she writes. As she tells us in the chapter “A Letter to Deb Claw,”

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears in black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. (112)

Here at the university, we write, draw, question, and converse to discover, to uncover, to create change, to create new ideas. Every day we search for our strike moments, and it my hope that in your courses and in your engagement with the campus and the local community that surrounds us, that you too will seek out your strike moments…find them, light them, and build them into flames that fuel your curiosity and imagination, that build your knowledge and your understanding of this complicated global community in which we live in the 21st century.

Metaphor #2: The language of red

A little more than halfway through Red, Williams asks us: “Can we learn to speak the language of red?” (136). This question is not a simple one. Williams’ draws her language of red from the Utah wilderness. She also draws it from her reading of the work of Joseph Chilton Pearce, who has spent over 30 years studying human development and how children grow up. Williams uses Pearce’s ideas as her epigraph to the chapter “Red,” which reads:

…twenty years ago a child or young person was able to differentiate 360 shades of red, and today that’s down to something like 30 shades, which means the subtleties are lost to the pure, heavy impact of red” --an interview with Joseph Chilton Pearce (Wild Duck Review IV, no. 2)

Explaining this finding, Pearce discusses how compared to children in 1978, children in the late 1990s only comprehended information from their environment at 80% of capacity. That means that children were twenty percent less consciously aware of their surroundings. In addition, the primary signals children bring in are “bursts of stimuli which are highly charged. If it’s sound, it must be a loud sound. If it’s touch, it must be an impact. If it’s visual, it must be intense” (from The Wild Duck Review, 1998, http://www.wildduckreview.com/journal/Issue%2017-Education/Pearce/Pearce.pdf).

They cannot catch subtleties “because they are not sensitive to their environment.” In order to be fully conscious and contributing members of our communities, we must learn to pay attention to our surroundings.

The language of red allows us to return to subtleties and fine distinctions, to restore our abilities to comprehend and register information, to help us re-learn how to listen carefully and observe the world around us in all its nuances. The language of red, for Williams, is a language that desires connection, a language that "marries" differences, a language that centers us in a "place", in the land, and keeps us there. This language, for Williams, enables us to see the world as a spectrum, where all living things—human and non-human--exist equally.

Seeing the world as a spectrum of life and color occurs when we engage in conversation. The act of conversation anchors Williams’s vision, enabling us to see the “world beyond the dualities of black and white” (134). Key questions foster conversation for Williams, as she explains: “I would love for us to listen to one another and try to say, “What do we want as members of this community? What do we love? What do we fear? What are our concerns? How do we dream our future? . . . Then we would have something to build from, rather than constantly turning one another into abstractions and stereotypes engaged in military combativeness.” (in A Voice in the Wilderness, p. 40). This conversation is the language of red.

As a learner at UMass Dartmouth, we want you to engage in that language…to move beyond black and white viewpoints to delve into the gray areas, to engage in conversation with people who think differently than you do, to share your ideas with people who come from different places than you do, to open up your minds to the richness and diversity of ideas you will encounter in your classes, in your conversations with your classmates and professors, in the campus center eating lunch, in your dorm rooms talking with friends about your day. As Williams suggests, slow down. Listen to the world around you. Discover open spaces where you can think. Find your own language of red.

Before the development or destruction of any more wilderness, Williams suggests we need to learn to know the land intimately--both spiritually and physically--to understand its importance. This new knowledge, in Williams's eyes, will create for us the “great map to our own evolution” (188). Now this does not mean that Williams is against all progress and development of wilderness.

Remember that she works from the language of red, not the language of extremes. As she explains in a 2001 interview: “Yes, there is a time and a place for wilderness. As much as possible. Yes, there’s a time for land trusts. There’s a time where, of course, you have to have logging, and mineral extraction, but how do you do this so that it’s not at the expense of something else? . . . That’s why deep acts of play and engagement of the imagination are important, offering us maps that the rational mind cannot envision” (136).

Through deep acts of play and engagement, we can shape our own questions and locate our own strike moments as we learn to speak the language of red. To do this, we must consider our 3rd and final metaphor: ground truthing. Ground truthing is defined as “The use of a ground survey to confirm findings of aerial imagery or to calibrate quantitative aerial observations; [it is] the validation and verification techniques used on the ground to support maps; [when one walks] the ground to see for oneself if what one has been told is true;” (The Open Space of Democracy 28).

After your few days of orientation, you will have a general—that is an aerial—understanding of the place that is UMass Dartmouth. Now, as you explore the university in the next four years, I encourage you to embark on your own ground truthing as you seek to confirm your ideas, to locate your own questions, to converse with those around you, as you seek to find your passions (those strike moments) that engage you in the places you inhabit.

Ground truthing challenges you to reconsider what you think…challenges you to locate your “place” in your social, cultural, and natural environments. Here at UMass Dartmouth you can walk the ground of different disciplines, seek out your beliefs and ideas, and decide what it is you are going to make of your university degree. This is your journey—to ground truth your way through your time with us, to locate your strike moments, to discover your language of red. And in doing so, I hope you learn to dream in new ways—to create new ideas and new modes of thinking—to realize that each of us can be the change we want to see.

So back to the question about why Red? Terry Tempest Williams already gave you the answer….she tells us:

Perhaps it is time to give birth to a new idea, many new ideas.

Perhaps it is time to give birth to new institutions, to overhaul our religious, political, legal, and educational systems that are no longer working for us.

We can begin to live differently.

We can give birth to creation.

[We can be ] broken open to a new way of being. (Red, 159-160)

On behalf of the faculty and the staff, I welcome you to the community that is UMass Dartmouth.

The text of this speech can also be found at: http://www.umassd.edu/cas/wms/riley_matriculation_talk_2008.pdf

The Party's Over??? NO WAY!

Thanks to everyone who joined the fun at UMass yesterday.

As Jen Riley stated in her Keynote Speech, the Red blog (this very thing you're reading) will remain up and running throughout the fall semester. As you explore the book in your English 101 classes, feel free to share your thoughts and ideas about...well, anything relating to the ideas, themes, writing, whatever piques your interest.

And be sure to get a babysitter, ask for the day off, cancel your wedding--Terry Tempest Williams' visit on October 23 will be amazing! You don't want to be the only kid on the block who missed it, do you?

Come Fly With Me

This is my last post to all of you good people. Please.. no applause. My post is a bit late as well. I should of have had my post posted by Saturday, but I have been in California! Yes! The state! My aunt lives out here along with my cousins and finally after twenty nine years my mom has
mustered up the funds to buy an airline ticket and fly myself and my brother out here. Can you imagine not seeing your sibling in 29 years!?

It took me awhile to think of how I was going to tie this into the book. Then I realized I did not even have to. I have been in the West Coast this entire time seeing different scenery, foreign birds (humming birds. Who knew?!), trees (palm trees of course) restaurants (Jack In The Box…. I know! They have them everywhere out here!), and of course cities. The story of my trip would be enough to relate to Red. Storytelling is what Red is all about.

I arrived at Sacramento, California on Tuesday the 19th at around noonish. After flying 7 hours, 3 to Texas, 4 to California my brother, my mother, and I were a bit groggy. Dunkin Donuts of course would be the first thing to run to. Guess what? NO DUNKIN IN CALI! Out here, they drink Starbucks. Yeah. Things are different. Humming birds fly around in my aunt’s backyard
like mosquitoes. It is amazing. And the weather has been 90-94 throughout, but it feels like 80s in MA. I don’t think I have sweat once! It is so comfortable.

My brother and I were amazed when we played Frisbee at a local park. The grass is perfect, and there is virtually no trash in California. Walking around in sandals? Ha! Sometimes I walked around barefoot. That’s how clean it is.

Apparently I have an accent as well. Cahh? No Benny. (as my aunt calls me) Carrrr. However, the few girls I’ve run into have thought it was cute. So I guess the accent is a plus to have out here.

Over this vacation, I have been to the Railroad museum in Old Sacramento to window shop (all the buildings look like wild wild west architecture), the California State Fair (FRIED OREOS), San Francisco (saw the house from Full House), down Lombard Street (the most crooked street on the Earth and also where the Real World San Franciso house was), Coit Tower to see an awesome view of Alcatraz Prison, walked on Golden Gate Bridge, then went to Baker Beach, a nude beach according to the locals, no nudes that day there. Too cold. Ironically, it is also the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge. There I got to splash in the Pacific Ocean. Very very cold.

It is now 2:05 A.M and I am sitting in my cousin’s bed typing out the last of this post. I sit here with laptop on my lap pondering how much I have done in this week and how lucky I have been to experience it. This was the first time in my life I have met my aunt and uncle and cousin in
California. And the crazy antics/behavior still exists out in California. Family is family. No matter where you go.

I think the most I have taken away from this trip is how much I want to keep in contact with my family out here even more. People + place = an awesome time. Especially if the people you are meeting you have literally never met in your life and the place you are in is entirely across the
country. Here’s a picture to end on a light note.

(from left to right: My cousin Adam, my brother Abe, and myself at Baker Beach)

Congratulations, Challenger #3!

Nicole B. was chosen randomly under the watchful eyes of my cat from the correct Red Challenge #3 entries. Are you as sad as I am that we're done? Don't worry--UMass will offer you plenty of challenges--especially if you're in any of my classes!!!

Nicole has won a $50 Sodexho gift card from Student Affairs; the card can be used on campus anywhere, as well as at local merchants, including Mirasol's and Ixtapa Cantina in Dartmouth. The award will be presented during the New Student Convocation on August 29 (tomorrow!!!).

The answers:

1. EARTH
2. RIVER
3. DESERT
4. NATIVE
5. COLOR
6. LISTEN
7. CANYON
8. BEAUTY
9. EROTIC
10. WEST
11. WINTER
12. RED

Super-duper special word? CONVERSATION or CONSERVATION

What Would You Fight For?

I was just pawing through Red, preparing for tomorrow's discussion group and also looking for a passage I needed to reread in order to respond to one of your comments.

You know those flip cartoons where if you look at one picture on the corner of the page, it's just a guy sitting in a car or a girl holding a balloon or whatever?

In each of my posts, and dare I say in many of our posts this summer, we've been picking and choosing ideas from the book to discuss. In fact, that's the nature of the work--essays and entries, lists and language.

And I just want to pause to say THANK YOU to the student writers Ben, Hope, James, and Megan, and to Professor Scott, for their work in making this project successful. And thank you to all the commenters and the readers who didn't comment for one reason or another. (I see you out there!) Thank you to Catherine Houser, English Department Chair and the folks at Division of Student Affairs.

And a special thanks to Jen Riley who made the Red blog a living, breathing entity that I hope will continue to grow as school starts and as we look forward to Terry Tempest Williams' visit in October.

Today I flipped the Red pages and I saw the whole story. (Maybe the rest of you already got this and I'm slow, like the tortoise.) Those pictures in the flip cartoon came together: I saw the guy racing the car and winning, the girl losing her balloon and getting another from a friend. If I were the only one posting to the blog, you'd have only seen one side of the story. One page of the cartoon.

By bringing all our voices together, we get something as unique and intriguing as the desert itself. One message I hadn't realized until today is this:

Terry Tempest Williams is FIGHTING for the desert, for what it means to her, what it can mean for all of us. And in that fight, she has passion for the cause but she also needs patience in order to get her message across, to realize she's not going to change minds over the course of a week, a year, decade, or even lifetime. The fight may never end.

But she's willing--in fact probably needs--to continue her fight. I don't know Williams; I can't even pretend to know what she's thinking except what she tells us. But having read Red, we should all be able to see that this fight comes from the heart.

Which left me wondering...What would I fight for? What would I spend a good part of my life loving enough to give so much of my self to it? My son? More than anything. My family? Without a doubt. My friends? Absolutely. But beyond that, what?

I don't have an answer.

I'm just wondering...do you?

An Enduring Question

Through reading Red, the desert has become my ultimate symbol of endurance. There are few aspects of the desert that are not linked to the concept of "endurance." The desert has existed for many years, years beyond human comprehension, and it continues to exist. It has faced powerful natural forces, such as wind, water, fire, and earthquake, yet it was not destroyed but instead shaped and reshaped. The desert has been both uninhabited and populated, has witnessed the coming and going of ages, has seen the coming and spread of mankind, yet it stays true to itself. And not only must the desert itself endure, but all those who attempt the desert must do likewise. Flora and fauna of the desert endure the heat and the dryness and they wait: wait for darkness, wait for coolness, wait for rain. They are currently enduring the onslaught of human interference.

This place is not a place to be conquered, it is a place to be endured. It has been before you and will be after you. In the desert, it seems that the desert is in the process of being before and after. The desert takes place in real time; endurance takes place in real time. One cannot be sure when they will be through the desert, just as one is not sure when the completion of that which must be endured will come. Both the desert and endurance have the flow of clear beginnings and foggy endings: you only realize that you're through when you're on the other side. It is an important lesson to learn, and we learn it again and again in different shapes and forms.

Despite the negative connotation, endurance is both important and wonderful. I believe that perseverance is simply a nicer, kinder name for the act of enduring. By enduring what life throws our way, both the good and the bad, we grow as people and learn more about ourselves and our world. Welcome to a period of endurance and growth. As freshmen, you’re going to be entering the desert that is college. There will be a lot that is unfamiliar to you, and it will be both good and bad, easy and difficult. Your experience in college will be unique, just as our views on Red are unique, and will be influenced on how you see the world. As I was reading through comments on my last post, I came upon Jen’s comment from August 23:

“What might our world look like if we started to think in terms of commonalities and interconnections rather than oppositions and divisions?”

While we cannot say for certain what the world might look like, we can attempt an experiment in the microcosm that is this blog. Despite differing perspectives and unique thought processes, you all share more commonalities than you probably realize. You’ve all read Red, for one, and you’ve hopefully posted a comment on the blog. If you haven’t, you’ve at least thought about some of the arguments presented and probably have some opinions of your own. More obviously, you’re all part of the UMass Dartmouth freshman class. Enough with the obvious, straightforward commonalities. I want you to dig deeper, and I hope that you enjoy digging deeper. How are you feeling about having to endure your first year of college? If you can, post one thing that you’re excited about facing or one thing about which you’re apprehensive. You are a community now. Listen to each other by reading the comments that come before you. If you agree with something that someone else has said, agree in your post, then go on to share a feeling that you have about a different matter. This discussion is my challenge to you.

Find your common bonds. Red has taught me that isolation is not the answer because it leads to atrophy. It is important to have a sense of community, even if the ties between members of that community are loose. Enduring is easier when you realize that others are undergoing similar situations, and there is a sense of importance that comes from knowing your experience is both communal and unique at the same time. It is up to each of us to resolve our differences and recognize our similarities. Red is interesting both because of the oppositions and divisions which it presents, and the commonalities and interconnections that it highlights; perhaps that is what makes this novel so raw and so true to life.