Updates

I still haven’t gotten far with my next piece, and it’s down to the wire! While I do have access to students with HPV, I’m not sure that there is a story there. I’m now thinking of writing a piece about “dating” on campus (hooking up, relationships, and the party scene) or about the new HPV vaccine. I have more ideas for the HPV story, but I think the other could be more fun to write.

For the HPV story I could talk to students who have gotten it, or are in the process to find out why they decided to get it, what the process is, etc. I could talk to women who aren’t getting and find out why they decided not to get it. I could talk to the health center about giving it and how they are getting information out to our community. Finally, I could look into the health insurance coverage of the vaccine. I have information on this from a meeting I had with Lisa from the Health Center last week, so it’d be an easier piece to write.

I’m not sure what would be the focus of the piece on dating. I’m thinking about asking lots of people how they met their significant other. My goal would be to get information about hooking up and the party culture at K. I think it could just be a fun piece to work on.

Any ideas or opinions? Thanks!

Final Draft: Spirituality

I forgot to post my final draft! Here it is!

Dr. Rev. Mary Ellen Ashcroft, the Chaplain here at Kalamazoo College and a professor of English, walks up to the trunk of the tall tree and places both of her hands firmly on its smooth and rippling grey trunk. She looks up, “Beautiful tree isn’t it?” and then places her forehead on the trunk and stands in silence. She describes how people often feel most connected to their spirituality in nature, and that is part of the reason she enjoys nature so much. For her, spirituality is the “longing for something more than a consumer society.” Her two dogs bound around her as she wanders through the nature reserve.

Mary Ellen has lots of passions in her life. She began seminary, moved to South Africa and worked with an Anglican parish to fight the apartheid movement. She returned to the US and worked as an English professor for years. After finding that she kept looking at students writing for the deeper and more personal issues, and after years of commitment to her Episcopal church, she decided to get ordained as a priest. She took a sabbatical and moved to Cambridge to study. She does not want to be a full time priest, but decided to combine her Priesthood with her teaching in the form of being a chaplain. Here she works hard to help fulfill needs she sees on this campus. “[Students are] not enjoying each other and connecting with each other…but what is most distressing is [students] equating grades with who they are,” so she created ways for student connect in spirituality groups and a place for people to meet and escape from the realities of campus, called The Cavern. She thought students need a connection to spirituality because they “need something beyond just grades and resumes.”

The Cavern, with its bold and simple colors, and inundates visitors with the calming smells of sandalwood and spices. It is structurally just the basement of Kalamazoo College chapel, but as one student says, it is a place of “peace, balance, and escape.” “I wanted to created literal and metaphorical places for people to grow spiritually.” “I wanted it to be funky and classy,” Mary Ellen explains. A large bookcase on the opposite wall is stuffed with 12 boxes of Celestial Seasons, varieties of coffee, and coffee condiments. A large Hamilton Beach coffee warmer warms water. A coat hanger on the wall has been turned into a coffee cup holder with each labeled for the mugs owner. The harsh fluorescent lights are covered with fabric to give a calmer light effect to the space. Students wander in and out; a student chaplain sits at a desk in the front of the room welcoming Cavern guests. In the chapel library, cushions and floor chairs supplement the couch and chair for sitting places. Cookies are in a container on the table in the corner. Further down the hall is Mary Ellen’s office, a tiny room, with one curved wall. A bookcase, her desk, and a lectern occupy the room.

One of her passions is her current partner, Suzanne. As friends for years, Mary Ellen says that Suzanne was, “[the] perfect support for me,” when she and her husband broke up. Suzanne and Mary Ellen had similar break-ups with their husbands and both have three children. Mary Ellen talks about how she wasn’t sure that she could ever be happy again. She recounts feeling a strange feeling in her the time after the divorce where she would think, “oh, that must be a ting of happiness,” but it was never a lasting feeling. Suzanne provided friendship and support though this hard time in her life.

Mary Ellen recounts when she knew that Suzanne was more than just friends. Hiking together on the Superior Trail in Northern Minnesota, Suzanne fell off of a bridge and hit her head on some rocks. Mary Ellen ran to the nearest road to get help. When the nearly 25 First Responders came to help, they left their radios on and Mary Ellen could hear them talking about how much blood Suzanne was loosing and Mary Ellen fainted. They took her to the hospital and came back and got Suzanne out. Mary Ellen remembers when one First Responder visited her in the hospital to update her on Suzanne’s condition (she was stabilized). The First Responder told Mary Ellen that Suzanne was the most amazing person they had ever met; she had been encouraging them for the 6 hours it took to get her off the trail. Mary Ellen says, “I realized the way I felt was more than just good friends… [the next] few days spent together [were] sacred time.”

Suzanne and Mary Ellen have found home in Kalamazoo. About 8 months after realizing they were more than just friends, they had a commitment ceremony- that was 2 years ago. Shortly after that they moved here to Kalamazoo for Mary Ellen’s new job. For Mary Ellen, her same-sex relationship plays out in her faith because the strongest element of faith is when something good comes out of something bad. They moved to Kalamazoo together from Minnesota, but still spend their summers in the woods of northern Minnesota- hiking, walking, picking with wild-flowers, and bird-watching. The community here is very open to their same-sex partnership and she recounts nothing but stories of openness and sharing from the community. Here they share an adorable welcoming home within walking distance of the college. Suzanne spends does a lot of volunteering and, as Mary Ellen says, “nurturing plants and people.” They have a beautiful, well tended garden in their back yard. Their two dogs bound around her as she works with the plants.

Mary Ellen’s partnership with Suzanne is another facet of her life which makes her a fantastic resource for our campus. As a very open person who listens and shares; she has many ways to relate to members of our college community. Mary Ellen’s Christian beliefs inform her own life, but she focuses on bring all spirituality to our students. As a woman priest in a same-sex relationship, her position on spirituality is extremely open-minded. She works hard to bring opportunities for spiritual growth to our students, to show our students that our lives need not revolve around grades and resumes.

Final Piece

I was thinking about looking at STIs on campus for my final piece, but I’m not sure how I’d go about doing that. I spoke with Lisa of the Health Center and they have no data about STI rates on campus for many reasons. I am thinking about just speaking with students about their experiences, but I am not sure what my “point” would be in that case. I’m still thinking of ideas. There is a lot of information about the new HPV vaccine, so maybe I could look into that. I could speak with students who have taken it or are in the middle of their course of shots as well as providers of the shots.

Sorry everyone... can I try again?

Hi everyone! So, after reading some comments, I realize I completely missed the ball this the last article- it wasn’t a feature. I was looking for “messy” and just got crap. It was scattered and needed more focus. I apologize to everyone who did read it.

I’m posting a new article. I’m sorry to make people read twice. This one isn’t so messy, but is a feature on a new band called Panic! At the Disco that was in Rolling Stone. I had never heard of them, but was intrigued to read the article because of it’s tag-line: “Panic! at the Disco went from a group of teenagers who'd written only three songs and never played a live show to the biggest new rock band in America. Their secret: Put together a band the way you'd create a MySpace page and let the kids run wild.” Not knowing the band before, I had a definite image of them painted in my head by the end of the piece.

Again, sorry for the last piece! But in case you still want to take a look: Bareback Mountain.

This week's reading posts

Yuck.

I don’t like this piece at all. I’m not showing, but telling. I don’t have a good synthesized story. There are too many facets of her life that I am trying to touch on. This has proven to be a very difficult piece for me to write. I talked to other people in the cavern, but they didn’t give me “anything good.” Access proved to be more of a problem than I anticipated. I wasn’t able to schedule another meeting until Thursday, where I’ll get more informal time. Between that meeting and the workshop, I hope to have more ideas, drive, and focus for this piece.

Balance

I walked into The Cavern, with its bold and simple colors, and was inundated with the calming smells of sandalwood and spices. “I wanted it to be funky and classy,” Mary Ellen explains. The oversized futons invited me to take a seat. A large bookcase on the opposite wall is stuffed with twelve boxes of Celestial Seasons, varieties of coffee, and coffee condiments. There is a large Hamilton Beach coffee warmer that was just warming water. A coat hanger on the wall has been turned into a coffee cup holder with each labeled for the mugs owner. Students wander in and out; a student chaplain sits at a desk in the front of the room welcoming Cavern guests. In the room adjacent, books of all sorts line the walls- spiritual, classics, fiction. Cushions and floor chairs supplement the couch and chair for sitting places. Cookies are in a container on the table in the corner so us to nibble on. Further down the hall is Mary Ellen’s office, a tiny room, with one curved wall. A bookcase, her desk, and a lectern occupy the room. Mary Ellen’s most known addition to our campus since she arrived in September 2005, was the creation of The Cavern. The Cavern is structurally just the basement of our chapel, but to our students it is a place of peace, balance, and escape. “I wanted to created literal and metaphorical places for people to grow spiritually.”

Mary Ellen, a woman in her mid-fifties with short grey hair, invites me into her office as she finishes writing something on her Macintosh computer. She finishes up her work and we chat about a photo she has on her desk of Lake Superior. You can see the calmness in her face as she recounts taking the photo- when the air is well below zero, but the lake is only 32 degrees, a fog affect makes an optical allusion on the lake. She then opens the bottom drawer on her desk, props her feet up and reclines in her chair.

She moved from Minneapolis, but has spent significant amounts of time in South Africa and England. She and her ex-husband moved to South African to work for the anti-apartheid. Her youngest daughter ran home from school one day demanding that her mother tell her school friends that she really was African- all of Mary Ellen’s children were born in South Africa. She has two sons and one daughter. The daughter, the youngest, just got engaged. The oldest son is expecting- it will be Mary Ellen’s first grandchild.

Mary Ellen has lots of passions in her life. She has been an English professor for years. After finding that she kept looking at students writing for the deeper and more personal issues, and after years of commitment to her Episcopal church, she decided to get ordained as a priest. She took a sabbatical and moved to Cambridge to study. She does not want to be a full time priest, but combines her Priesthood with her teaching. Here at Kalamazoo College she helped create and lead different men’s and women’s spirituality groups, but also created the Cavern space for students to escape to. She is passionate about helping to fulfill needs she sees on this campus. She also has two fabulous dogs. She just recently lost her favorite dog, but has two now who come to visit campus frequently to brighten up people’s days, “they have the quality of getting one out” she says about her pets. She loves taking them out on walks.

But right now, one of her biggest passions is her current partner, Suzanne. After a bad split with her husband of thirty years, Mary Ellen wasn’t sure that she could ever be happy again. She recounts feeling a strange feeling in her the time after the divorce where she would think, “oh, that must be a ting of happiness,” but it was never a lasting feeling. Then God brought her happiness that she never thought she’d feel again. She and Suzanne had been friends for years, and eventually realized it was more than just a friendship. “She was a gift,” she becomes more sullen; “a resurrection.” They spend their summers in the woods of northern Minnesota- hiking, walking, picking with wild-flowers, and bird-watching. Suzanne is a well-balanced, friendly, open-individual.

Suzanne and Mary Ellen have found home in Kalamazoo. About 8 months after realizing they were more than just friends, they had a commitment ceremony- that was 2 years ago. Shortly after that they moved here to Kalamazoo for Mary Ellen’s new job. Mary Ellen’s kids are open to Suzanne and love her. The community here is very open to their same-sex partnership and she recounts nothing but stories of openness and sharing from the community.

Now Mary Ellen works to bring peace, connection, balance and spiritual growth to our students at Kalamazoo College. She has started spirituality groups for men and women, runs the chapel program, and started the physical space of the Cavern all so students can learn what it is to them to be spiritual.