Friday, February 20, 2009
Location, Location, Location
My letter carrier delivered mine just the other day. Maybe you’ve received yours too. If so, I’d be interested to hear if yours is the same as mine or if they send out a variety. I’m talking about the periodic mailings that arrive offering the opportunity to purchase “Great Courses® taught by great professors.” These are so cool. I just love driving around listening to the sample c.d. that they send along with the catalogue. My latest one has a lecture about black holes and a lecture about Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: something for both the left and the right brain.
Understand that I never actually have purchased these, although I sometimes toy with the idea. According to the really enticing catalogue—nice stock, easy-to-read font, appealing layout complete with color illustrations and testimonials—it’s a terrifically good deal: a chance for lifelong-learning on the run. And, if the catalogue isn’t enough to convince you, pop the sample c.d. into your player. The stirring intro: Masterpiece-Theatre-like music followed by a man with an incredible, deep, resonant, radio-voice extolling the virtues of the product, leads right into the sample lectures. Listening in your car can make your vehicle the Discovery® channel on wheels. Sometimes I get so enthralled with the lecture that the traffic around me ceases to hold my attention, but that’s just a pesky, minor drawback.
These lecturer-guys, and they overwhelmingly are guys, only four of the 54 listed in this latest catalogue are women—(Don’t quite know what that says, but there it is. It is what it is, although even the fact that one of the four is named Jeanette doesn’t, in my mind, atone for the female underrepresentation.)—these lecturer-guys, by and large, teach at/went to, or both, what we average Midwesterners think of as hoity-toity universities: Dartmouth, the University of CA at Berkley, Johns Hopkins, or maybe Oxford. Make no mistake, there is a certain amount of snob appeal going on here—but the company is from far away.
For those wanting a lifelong-learning, interactive, classroom experience, another option, which recently was offered in a full-page advert in the New York Times Book Review, is the One Day University®. Choose that route and you travel to Boston, or New York or Los Angeles for the day, attend classes, and are offered “hearty snacks.” These too are far away.
Now, telling an NPR® listener that lifelong-learning is a good thing is carrying coals to Newcastle. The demographics show that you are smart and educated and a lifelong-learner. The value of lifelong-learning is not lost on you. My point is not the process, but the “process-server.” Several of my Michiana Chronicles cohorts are in the education business, as is my lifelong-love, Larry. These people are local and so are you. Lifelong-learning doesn’t have to come from the catalogue of a company in Virginia or at a lecture on the East or West Coast; it can be like tomatoes: homegrown is good.
Maybe you’ve noticed ShoLo™ signs on the doors of businesses around the area as you enter. ShoLo™ is shorthand for Shop Locally. The businesses displaying that sign are owned by Michiana neighbors, not by some far-away conglomerate. If you haven’t noticed the signs, look for them and support businesses that have them. Go off and look at the website, http://www.sholo.org/. It gives you a quick lifelong-learning lesson in why we all should be shopping locally and lists participating businesses.
The business of learning locally can happen too. Our community is gifted with institutions of learning. We also have libraries and locally owned booksellers. We have newspapers and an NPR® affiliate. Travel is broadening, experiences and ideas from outside the community are enriching, but the occasional dose of parochialism keeps the scales balanced.
So cue the stirring, Masterpiece-Theatre-like music that will be followed by Lee, our man with the incredible, deep, resonant, radio-voice, and remember what Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.”
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A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Location, Location, Location / More essays by Jeanette
Heather Curlee Novak -- More essays by Heather
David James -- More essays by David
Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, Ken Smith, Heather Curlee Novak, David James, and Elizabeth Van Jacob.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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Recent pieces
Good Eaters -- Reflections on the topic of food, brought about, no doubt, by this time of harvest and Thanksgiving, led to my reading Thomas Keneally’s recent book, “Three Famines.” In it, he gives a general overview of the physical and mental processes of starvation – pretty horrifying and unimaginable from where we sit – then writes specifically about the three hunger-events. Ireland in the 1840’s, Bengal in the 1940’s and Ethiopia in the 1980’s are the “three famines” of the title. Although seemingly unrelated as to world-area and time period, there is a striking commonality and it’s not the traditional “act-of-God” explanation. “Acts of God:” droughts, floods, etc. often begin the privations, but the human hand exacerbates the problems into a cataclysm. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
The Excellence of the Long Distance Runner -- Consider cross country, the sport of choice for our family’s young athlete. That’s a 5000 meter feat of speed and endurance. At practice each day the teams run even farther, so on Saturdays they’re ready to race each other hard for 20 or 25 minutes. Near the end of the course they speed up because that’s the kind of people they have become, and they don’t stop until they have travelled the length of 54 football fields. By Ken Smith.
Bacon Before Husband -- Do you have a daily list? I don’t mean tasks for work or chores for home, I mean a Happy List. I have a Happy List running through my head most of the time. This list tends to be fickle and definitely changes with my mood. It is rare that something gets crossed off of it but I get immense satisfaction from my list just the same. My list makes friends laugh and strangers think I am...stranger. By Heather Curlee Novak.
“A feminist walks into a fraternal lodge …” -- Today’s story begins like a joke: What happens when a feminist walks into a fraternal lodge? The answer isn’t very funny, and it isn’t really about me -- it’s about who runs for office, and who doesn’t. But, yes, in this scenario I am the feminist cheerfully walking into the fraternal lodge, of the kind gently lampooned in The Flintstones as the Royal Order of the Water Buffaloes. By April Lidinsky.
South Bend Spring -- Would I ever think I’d find myself parting from one group of young adults yesterday, and then actually tearing downtown to join another? My knee-jerk reaction would normally be to slip into my hidey-hole on the third floor of Wiekamp Hall on the IU campus, or to run home—only three blocks—to read in solitude and eat Raman noodles. The first group—my first-ever class of college freshman English students—seem bemused at my political positions and ready to describe me as “professor,” but as a hopeless product of another day and time. By David James.
Call Me Bartman -- It’s that time of year when we wait in expectation of another World Series victory by the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies, while recalling (or trying to forget) another lost season in the sad history of the Chicago Cubs. Anyway, that’s the way Cubs fans talk about it. I don’t see it that way. In my view, the Cubs are the greatest team in the history of sports, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. By Joe Chaney.
Autumn -- Have you noticed too? Can you feel it? Are you as excited as I am? After the wait of nine months for its rebirth, autumn is back. The real weather for football is here. The heat has abated, there’s a nip in the air, spiders are extruding blankets of webbing, and if you look up into the trees, here and there you see a bit of fall color beginning. Like so many of you, autumn is my favorite season. Time to clean up the detritus of summer – those only semi-successful tomato plants, for example – and to move on to the planting of crocus, bluebells, tulips and daffodils: the dreams of spring. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Casting the Bronze Bust of Dr. Lester Wolfson -- There on the floor was the hand-made barrel-shaped white plaster matrix into which the molten metal would be poured. Near it stood a small furnace with a hole at the top the size of your fist. A stream of yellow flames roared from this hole and had been roaring for a long time. The metal inside was now over 1000 degrees. The sculptor’s wife cautioned us, If anything goes wrong, don’t rush up to help, back away—if it touches you, the bronze will burn right through your body. By Ken Smith.
Complaint Department -- I have struggled to maintain the peace and raise my girls well, but the stress of my days often means by the end of each one I am not the sweetest woman to be around. I often hurl the myriad challenges of my day at my husband as soon as he walks through the door. Sometimes dinner isn't made and the house looks like a toy bomb went off and I feel guilty about it. When I try to explain how the day went down I think it is a lot more like complaining than anything helpful. By Heather Curlee Novak.
Mad Men’s Maddening Style -- Oh, the elegant style of the early 60s. For men: the narrowly tailored suits and knife-thin ties; for women, the pencil skirts with wide cinching belts, the clinging cashmere sweaters punctuated by pearls. Take a look around and it’s clear that this season we are mad about Mad Men – and not just the TV show. Suddenly, in the “ya-gotta-have it” world of merchandizing, the winking vintage sex appeal of the early ’60 is being cranked up to sell upscale mall clothing, batwing eyeliner, and even retro telephone handsets so you can have Bluetooth technology but still look like you’re answering the phone for Don Draper in a red-lipsticked whisper. What the heck is going on? I’m a sucker, myself, for vintage fashion, but I wonder why now – in this political moment – we are hungry for the style of those very conservative “men will be men” and “women will be objects” times. By April Lidinsky.
Mandala -- I remember that year as the spring when my dad roared down the driveway at our home near Emory University in Atlanta in a new Austin Healey, a roadster, the proper name for a British rag-top sports car. This one was red with all the trimmings and served as waterproof glue for the closest period of bonding between a father and son. I say “waterproof” because the top on that car was a tight fit from the start, and had maybe fifty snaps to secure it around the cockpit; and of course after a couple times getting wet it shrunk, so there it stayed, behind the back seat squab—British for the seat’s backrest—for seven years, molding in peace. When it rained we got wet, so we cultivated raincoats and laughing. I didn’t mind a bit. By David James.
Acne Hell -- No one has ever asked me what it was like having a bad case of acne as a teen. It’s a topic that never comes up, partly because the embarrassment never dies. Here I’ll raise the question myself – but don’t worry: I won’t subject you to physical descriptions, except to say that, at seventeen, I would gladly have sacrificed a finger for merely the sort of minor pimple problem of the beautiful girls and boys you see on acne medication commercials. Ah, that embarrassing, isolated red zit! So annoying on an otherwise perfect face! Well, perfection was never a possibility for me, and I had no hope of hiding my condition under a few dabs of makeup. When it came to skin quality, my rival was the full moon. By Joe Chaney.
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