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(04/27/11 11:57pm)
For months news has circulated about the possibility of Macon losing the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame to another city, maybe even a bigger city in Georgia. While we may have kept the halls from being moved for now, there is still a chance that they may be lost.
Now, there are more people in Macon backing them.
On June 17th, 2011 while most Mercer students are home for the summer or studying abroad there will be a Halluva Auction. This auction will take place at the train station downtown, right next to the Halls.
A Halluva Auction is to help save the halls because they are considering taking them out of Macon and placing them somewhere else in the state.
The community groups in Macon have all collaborated to help with this. However, A Halluva Action is more than just about the Halls, it is also to benefit the Cherry Blossom Festival and Newtown Macon. The auctions are to help raise money for all three of these causes.
There will be both a live auction and a silent one. They also have an online auction to be held at their website though it is currently not going one.
One of the auction items includes a three-caret, emerald-cut Columbian emerald. The committee is also auctioning off vacation packages, fine art, one-of-a-kind experiences, and the top prize is a reverse raffle.
The tickets for the raffle are $100 and the participants have a chance to win $10,000. With only 400 tickets being sold, those aren’t bad odds.
Purchasing a raffle ticket also means that you have entrance to the VIP party and the event for free. If you would like a raffle ticket, you can send an email to Jessica@newtownmacon.com to be placed on the call list.
You can also go to the NewTown Macon Office to purchase a ticket—the address to the office is 479 Cherry Street in downtown. All tickets go on sale May 18th. For the Goods and L.W. Benton Co Auction and Realty are sponsoring the event.
Tickets to get into the auction are $5 and can be purchased at the door on June 17th. You can learn more at http://www.halluvaauction.com/#! There you can find contact information for the people hosting the event, as well as learning about all the items up for auction.
The website has a new item listed each day, so if you check back every day you will learn about more specific items being auctioned.
The committee, as well as the board of directors for the program, is looking for any volunteers they can find and students who happen to be taking summer classes would be of great use.
You can also go to the auction, as a ticket at the door is $5.
If you wish to donate an item to the event, contact Laura Schofield at 478-321-8711. Also to learn more about volunteer opportunities for A Halluva Auction, please contact Laura at the number above.
(04/27/11 11:57pm)
Mercer University staff and faculty were honored at a ceremony held in the Medical School Auditorium. People were honored for five, 10, 15, 20, 30, 35 and 40 years of service.
There were 46 people honored for their years of service to the university. Each person received a plaque and a picture taken with President Underwood.
Additionally, three people who retired last semester or are retiring at the end of the term sat on the stage. They were Carolyn R. Dawson, J. Barry Jenkins and Gloria O. Marshall.
Dawson was retiring for the second time. She was the switchboard operator/receptionist in the RAC office. She single-handedly boosted the enrollment numbers for the regional academic centers.
Jenkins had a whole list of things for Marilyn Mindingall to read, but she went off script, which for Jenkins was something not allowed. Barry helped several people broaden their scopes and become more well-known at Mercer, including Doug Pearson. He helped shepherd many events at Mercer including the creation of Jesse Mercer’s statue, renovation of the tower stairs and implementing the tower tour, reestablishing Founder’s Day, reestablishing Pilgrimage to Penfield, establishing Family Weekend and the Christmas Tree Lighting, “and other things like the chimes in Willingham that have since been moved to Tarver Library and the lighting of the Spires.”
Marshall worked for three of Mercer’s presidents. She came to Mercer in March 1972 and her first order was to draft a resolution to build the Medical School. She learned from a phone call to the governor’s office that “every resolution must have three ‘whereas’s’ and one ‘therefore.’” Since then she has written over thousands of resolutions. She then helped “plan and implement the dedication of every room” in the Law School except for the bathrooms. She has been told that she is “a happy spirit and [she] can learn” as she moved to the fundraising position in the School of Engineering.
The three retirees all got a moment to listen to a colleague and friend talk about their work on campus and how they have affected Mercer.
After the retirees were honored, the rest of the attendees received attention as well. As Diane Baca called each name, she said something kind about each one and joked with some, even hugging a few when their turn came.
A special thanks was given to the people who had already retired from Mercer and came to see the new honorees. They were recognized and each received his or her own round of applause for their service. A few of the names were Billy Crooms, William Davis, Peggy Dubose, Kenneth Hammond and Bobby Wilder. And as Craig McMahan said in his invocation, “And for each name who is called, and for each one that isn’t, for all those who weave their lives together in the fabric we call Mercer, we are grateful.”
(04/26/11 12:46pm)
Every year Mercer students and faculty have a set of post-graduation plans. This year, while graduating students are leaving after their four years here, a few teachers are also taking sabbaticals.
Senior Rachel Velie plans to relax this summer before continuing her education.
“I plan to take the summer to regain my sanity and then go to grad school to become a CPA, which is a Certified Personal Accountant. I can do your taxes one day!” Velie said.
Senior Charles Peterson has big plans that changed from his original idea. He plans to travel abroad to teach.
“My decision to go abroad was started by my experiences studying in Oxford, England. Upon starting my senior year, my friend encouraged me to apply for the Fulbright scholarship. I was rejected at the national level, but I had already decided upon Thailand, so transferring to Mercer’s Service First program was a natural step,” Peterson said. “I chose Thailand because I am interested in the role of myths and story within national culture. Thailand is a country still in touch with its oral heritage, and I am interested in how a Hindu myth, the Ramayana, influences many of the national stories and a Buddhist culture. If I attend a graduate program after my time in Thailand, I hope to study cross-cultural myth, possibly through comparative literature. Also, I chose to teach based upon my experiences tutoring at L.H. Williams Elementary in Macon. Foremost, I wanted to have a period of time before continuing school in which I was being active in a community setting and using my skills to help promote better cross-cultural understanding.”
Kashfia Khan joked about summer plans.
“Well, I wanted to be a billionaire right after graduation, but reality seems to be so different. So I am going for plan B: Go to grad school at Mercer in Atlanta. Maybe the bigger city can help me be super rich,” Khan said.
Kara Brown has been applying for teaching jobs, but has not heard back yet.
This summer, Jane Frances Abel wants to be an elementary school music teacher in addition to getting a puppy.
Senior Jaclyn Crumbley plans to attend graduate school after taking a little break.
“I’m going to do something for the next school year then grad school after that. I have very well defined plans, as you can see. Yet that’s what’s scary about them. You’re so free, you can do anything you want, so you don’t know what to do,” Crumbley said.
Candace Henderson already has a job lined up after graduation.
“I have a job at Warner Robins High School in Warner Robins. I will be teaching Biology. After a year or so, I plan on getting my master’s,” Henderson said.
Senior Jennifer Smith hopes to break into the publishing industry, but first she wants to relax in the summer and catch up on everything she had to leave behind during her studies.
“If all goes well, after graduation I hope to get a job in the publishing industry, where I can help people perfect their writing while also working on my own. In the meantime, though, I’ll spend my newfound free time meeting some of the goals and doing some of the fun things I’ve been putting off, like catching up on movies, videogames and anime, and maybe learning a new language or two,” Smith said.
Dr. Anya Silver will be going on sabbatical in the fall. She plan to use the time to finish her second book of poetry.
“Although I will miss my students, it’s wonderful to have a semester to recharge my batteries and devote myself to research and writing. My major project will be to finish my second poetry book manuscript and submit it to my publisher. I will also be planning a new English course on young adult literature. I will be immersing myself in young adult literature and criticism so that I can teach the course in the spring.”
(04/13/11 2:51pm)
Dreams shape who we are and what we do, but we also shape our dreams as we grow and learn more about the world around us.
As children, everyone had dreams of the future. Every kid knew what he or she wanted to be when he or she grew up. By the time children become adults, these plans are likely to change, as they did for many of people I interviewed.
Jennifer Smith, senior creative writing major, said she wanted to be a paleontologist or a singer—now she wants to be a writer. This happened when she took her first English creative writing class and enjoyed character development and writing.
Reshauna Edwards, senior creative writing major, wanted first to be a teacher, and after that a lawyer. Now she would like to do something with social work. Her plans changed as she took English classes as well.
Alesa Webber, who wanted to be a veterinarian, is now a technical communications major. She said she changed her mind because she wouldn’t be able to handle doing an autopsy on an animal.
Shandrea Jemison wanted to be a lawyer. Now she wants to be an African diplomat. This change happened when she realized her internship was nothing like the courtroom on Matlock, which was her inspiration to be a lawyer. Africa seems more interesting to her now.
Bryan Gordy wanted to be an old-fashioned pharmacist but now he wants to be a chemical engineer. He changed when he was in high school working for a pharmacy and it was nothing like the image in his head from It’s a Wonderful Life. He learned that reality isn’t like a druggist in the movies, and then college changed his interests.
Senior Stephanie Hennigan wanted to be a lawyer. In keeping with her childhood dreams, she is going to law school after she graduates this year. She wants to help children.
Brice Corum wanted to be a police officer, a firefighter and a football star. Now he’s majoring in computer science. His dreams changed when he figured out that “when you shoot the bad guys, they don’t come back to life.” His football days got cut short because his parents wouldn’t let him play football, and he didn’t like the heat of a fire which ruined his firefighting dreams.
Dr. Scott Walker wanted to be a medical doctor growing up and is now a professor and a minister. His dreams changed when he couldn’t get the science part of being a doctor down.
“When I was a wee little kid, I wanted to work at McDonalds so I would get free hamburgers,” said senior Eric Brown. “Then I wanted to be an astronaut. Then I wanted to be Batman.”
(03/30/11 2:54pm)
For the past two years Mercer’s history department has traveled to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the students participate in an archeological dig site.
The trip occurred during Spring Break and the preparations had taken place throughout the semester. The students dug where previous Mercer students had dug and found artifacts.
According to Dr. Eric Klingelhofer, “Our goals were to determine the extent of the artifact spread, to locate any structural remains and to assign a date to the site.”
The site intrigued them because of what happened before the Danish settled the region in 1734.
“We are investigating the early period of colonization there—the 1600s when first the English and then the French settled the island, only to abandon it. Besides one surviving earthwork fort, no remains from the 1600s had ever been found, yet we know from maps that the English and French had many plantations there,” Klingelhofer said.
Klingelhofer’s History 491 class participated in the trip. The students were Anthony Baldwin, Edmund Balzer, Kimberly Campbell, Jennifer Fingles and Jennifer Smith. The site was located on the old Windsor Estate off the Salt River Bay area. The students worked on the site from March 7-11. On March 6, they explored the area of Christiansted, where they were staying.
“It was a rewarding experience being able to actually see and do what our class has been reading about and discussing the whole semester. Even though archeology isn’t my field, having this experience in a place I’ve never been to really opened my eyes to see past the Hollywood characterizations of Indiana Jones and get at the heart of historical archeology: understanding who these people are and how they lived through the artifacts found and sources and documents left behind,” Fingles said.
The most interesting artifacts were found by the roots of trees and they did not have to dig for them.
“We did some shovel testing and found one really interesting pottery piece dating from before Columbus landed. In addition to the work we did on site, we visited historical locations and forts to learn more about the culture of the island as a whole,” Fingles said.
During the time the students were digging they performed several different tests including a pedestrian survey, a test where they looked for above-ground artifacts that were hampered by overgrown underbrush and thorny acacia trees.
A few other tests were the magnetometer run, where students looked for magnetic changes in the ground where buried items could be found; a thermometer/soil temperature testing, in which they dug holes where the soil’s temperature finally changed; and the trench test, which involved digging holes in the ground and sifting through the dirt to find any artifacts, which lead them to the shovel testing. The team found handmade nails, large amounts of broken roofing tiles and broken pieces of kitchenware. They also found a pipe stem, yellow Dutch brick, two pieces of early wine bottles, pieces of European pottery, Afro-Cruzan ware—that is, pottery likely produced by slaves for their own use—and some prehistoric, native pottery.
These artifacts showed two distinct times. The first was that of island natives, who abandoned or were forced from the site before the English arrived. The second was in the late 1600s, which is the time that would have featured the wooden domestic structure.
What the class found will be presented to the St. Croix authorities, and submitted to Bear Day. They may have found the first site on St. Croix that dates back to the 1600s.
For Jennifer Smith, “This trip was a chance for me to get out of the continental U.S. and see a bit more of the world, not to mention a chance to discover historically important artifacts that have been lying in wait for an attentive eye. Handling the first piece of broken dishware we found was probably the most exciting part: here was a find that was not only historically important, but looked the part as well.”
For Kim Campbell, the trip was tough but worth it: “We spent the first two days battling our way through thickets with thorns that can puncture car tires in an attempt to conduct a basic Pedestrian Survey so we knew where to start digging. I can’t say that it was all work, though; while we did work hard, we also had a great time visiting historic sites and looking at various kinds of cannons!”
(02/01/11 3:52pm)
By Rebecca Reed
Erin Beliu is the Ferrol A. Sams, Jr. Distinguished Writer in Residence for 2011and she has arrived on Mercer’s campus. The Ferrol A. Sams, Jr. course is offered every spring semester with a different poet or fiction writer.
Beliu is the author of three books of poems, winner of the National Poetry Series, co-editor of the anthology “The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women”, co-founder of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts and director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.
The Cluster recently sat down with Beliu.
Cluster: What is your hometown?
Beliu: Omaha, in the Great State of Nebraska. Nebraska’s the best place on earth! Watching a storm roll through the distance out in the Sandhills, mile after mile of uninterrupted space, the geometrical beauty of the place. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I find the quiet and emptiness very comforting.
C: Where did you go for undergrad? Grad school?
B: University of Nebraska as an undergrad, Ohio State University for a Ph.D.— though I bailed out right before my prelim exams because Robert Pinsky asked me to come study poetry at Boston University. My thought was, when the Poet Laureate asks you to come to his writing program, you go. So I finished up with a poetry degree from Boston. I do wish I’d finished my Ph.D.—then my brother would be forced to refer to me as “Dr. Erin.” A missed opportunity!
C: How do you think it’ll feel to be balancing the Sam’s Chair and being director of the Creative Writing Program at FSU?
B: It’ll feel busy! But honestly, I was looking forward to the change and teaching myself how to drive more than 10 consecutive miles at a time. And I hear very good things about you all. Folks couldn’t be nicer at Mercer, for which I am very grateful.
C: What do you like to do in your free time?
B: I don’t actually have free time. I have three jobs (I’m also the artistic director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference in Washington State). I have a wonderful 10-year-old son, Jude, who has his own social schedule—I’m basically his chauffeur. I am secretly addicted to a certain number of perfume websites. I’m obsessed with obscure, hard to find and vintage perfumes and discuss this strange predilection with other weirdoes like myself. I’m constantly getting tiny decants in the mail of rare scents. The perfume counter at Barneys in NYC is my version of Mecca! My partner of many years, Adam Boles, is amongst other things a food writer with his own culinary travel business. So he and I really enjoy trying new foods. On the way up here when I was practicing finding Macon, we came across this tiny little place called the Jesus Maria Taqueria in Omega, Ga. That’s the most real deal Mexican food I’ve eaten outside of Mexico. I recommend it highly. So that’s our idea of a good time.
C: Who inspired you to write poetry?
B: I don’t know who exactly inspired me. I’d wanted to be a writer as a very small child, and because maybe I rhymed better than some of the other third graders that became my persona early on in school. I was lucky to have parents who have always been incredibly supportive of me in that way. They were always, “Okay! You want to be a (fill-in-the-blank)! Where do we sign you up for the lessons?” Looking back at it as a grown-up, it is kind of strange to have come from the suburbs of Omaha, Neb.—not a place at that time where you could imagine a lot of writers coming from—and to end up with parents who had that kind of confidence in my dreams. Such a gift to a young writer. I had excellent teachers throughout my education. I was never really any good at anything else. I’m not cursed with the burdens of the multi-talented. Makes knowing what you want a lot easier to figure out.
C: What is your light side? What is your dark side? (Or your strengths and weaknesses.)
B: That’s a hard question to answer. I like to laugh more than just about anything. I used to be kind of stupidly fearless, which has its own virtues. I suppose my dark side didn’t show itself too much until I had my son. Knowing that he holds my heart so firmly in his hands, that my whole world is in his possession—well, I have to work very hard not to worry an unhealthy amount and be too protective. The world suddenly seemed like a very dangerous place once Jude was born. I wouldn’t trade being his mother for anything, but I came to fear late and it’s been hard to learn to manage that gracefully. I’m still trying…
C: Your father called you Rutabaga. How did that come about?
B: I don’t really know. My dad was quite a personality. He died last year so a lot of memories have been coming back to me since then. I mean, by day he was a gifted and special education teacher for the Omaha Public School system. He grew up in a tiny little conservative town out in the Panhandle of Nebraska, but he was one of the grooviest people you’d ever meet. He was a self-taught but very gifted visual artist. Growing up, our house was wall-to-wall paintings he’d done—copies of great paintings throughout history. We had his version of the Mona Lisa in our living room, though he worried that the mouth was all wonky, which it was, and he free-styled a mural of ancient Roman ruins onto our kitchen wall. He also collected beat-up British sports cars and then hand-decorated them in these crazy ways. So we’d drive through the town in a busted old Morris Minor that was painted DayGlo lime green with giant orange daisies stuck all over it— you know those old bathtub stickers to keep you from slipping in the shower? And toward the end of his life he wrote a sequence of novels about the Salem witch trials. They were supposed to be for kids, but publishers kept rejecting them as way too terrifying for children! So, in the very original context of Wendell Belieu, I guess Rutabaga was his idea of an affectionate name.
C: You chose to sponsor poet James Kimbrell and journalist Diane Roberts coming to campus. What made you pick these two people?
B: Well, they’re both brilliant. I’m lucky to have them as colleagues. Diane is a nonfiction and fiction writer, a journalist for NPR and the BBC and is one of the smartest, most charming people I know. She’s a ninth generation Tallahassean and is related to every major politician, preacher and lunatic ever produced in the history of North Florida. Jimmy is one of the most gifted poets in America— I’m pretty sure he’s won pretty much every prize a younger poet can win. He hails from Mississippi and writes these wonderful poems full of characters and story and has this gorgeous elegiac line of which I am deeply envious. There’s something in the water down here that turns out amazing writers.
C: What advice would you give to someone looking to do to grad school, become an author or poet, become a professor or someone who just wants to write?
B: You have to be brave enough to do what you want. If you don’t want to end up working in a cubicle, then have the imagination to find other ways to live. Go apprentice yourself to a Chinese potter and live on a mat on the ground. Or be the make-up artist for a drag show. Or hire yourself onto a fishing boat in Alaska. I always think life is not a dress rehearsal! And don’t get yourself into debt. Debt determines more of your life as a writer than anything else does. Live simply. Go without all the middle class trappings for as long as you have to. I somehow managed to wander into a proper job with a regular paycheck and health insurance—still not sure how that happened—but I never owned a piece of furniture that wasn’t from Goodwill or someone’s garage until I was 39 years old. Now most of your friends will start getting the house, the new car and the nice couch much earlier. That’s fine if that’s what matters to you, but writers need to be portable and flexible.
Erin Belieu will read from her own poetry on Feb. 22, at 7 p.m. in the choir rehearsal room of the Townsend School of Music. James Kimbrell will be reading on March 15, at 7 p.m. in the choir rehearsal room and journalist Diane Robertson will read on April 11 with the time and place to be announced.