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A Sweet Cawing from the For the 16th consecutive year, the Association of Old Crows (AOC) recognized a Manhattan College engineering student with a prestigious scholarship. Christopher Barsi ’06, a senior electrical engineering major, joins fellow Jaspers who have won more than $37,000 in scholarships from the AOC. Christopher, a Yonkers, N.Y., resident, competed with students from some of the finest engineering schools in the metro area to win a scholarship award for $3,000. A dinner to honor the winners took place in November in Long Island, N.Y.
Making Sense of
Old Crows A nonprofit professional group, the AOC promotes careers in the defense industry and awards scholarships to worthy computer or electrical engineering students. The Empire Chapter, which awards up to three scholarships to area students in their junior or senior years, considers students who are residents of New York City, Westchester, Nassau or Suffolk counties.
advancement of electronic defense development. It is comprised of more than 100 corporate participants with more than 14,000 members and is committed to trying to help Congress and the Department of Defense create a policy that will provide more defense for the dollar using the technologies of Electronic Warfare, a force multiplier that can do more with less.
For nearly four decades, the AOC has been a leading and knowledgeable organization that promotes the
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Nature and the Environment
Author Robert Sullivan engaged the College in November in a witty, entertaining discussion about garbage, the environment and rats. Sullivan is the author of Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants, The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt. Often described as a nature writer, Sullivan was quick to say that he fell into nature writing and is constantly questioning traditional perceptions of the environment and nature. In a not so straightforward lecture, sponsored by the international studies program, that answered the question: What Is the Environment Anyway?, Sullivan discussed how he tackles nature writing and what he discovered about the environment along the way. For Sullivan, writing about nature is not to just quietly observe beautiful scenery and then write about it. It is more about truly immersing oneself in any type of environment whether it is a beautiful piece of land surrounded by mountains and pretty streams, or if it is an urban area riddled with garbage and smoke stacks. “You have to look at things that are not exciting, sometimes you’ll see that there’s excitement there,” he said.
In his book The Meadowlands, Sullivan observes the “nature” and “environment” of a garbage-filled area. He actually paddled his way numerous times through the dirty waters of the Meadowlands and wrote about it, describing the area as filled with “streams” of garbage and “hills” of trash. He joked about how easy it was to use the language of a nature writer to describe what is essentially a swamp and not much to do about nature. But that was Sullivan’s main point — that the environment is so much more than hiking beautiful trails or sitting peacefully on a picturesque campsite. One could also hike the Meadowlands and gain insightful observations on nature and the environment, he said. “Instead of exploring mountains, I’d go to New Jersey and do an exploration by canoe of the Meadowlands,” said Sullivan, adding jokingly that most people thought he was nuts. He said though the area had been abused, there was still something special about it. A highlight was meeting and interviewing the people of the area who really knew the layout and the history behind the place.
creatures. He observed the patterns and lifestyle of rats, and he also interviewed many people linked to the creatures, such as exterminators, civic activists and garbage men. His book continuously examines the environment of rats and then makes many comparisons between rats and humankind. He said that the book, though classified also as nature writing, is secretly about humans and cities and reveals that the many habits of rats mirror those of human beings. Sullivan provided a different kind of discussion on the environment, insightful and funny. It’s not just observing nature’s beauty, he said, but it could be where you live, the Meadowlands, or observing rats in the city. His career into nature writing has taken many twists and turns. He has written about the environment but in the process examines it more deeply, sometimes even looking to his own personal journey for inspiration. Sullivan, a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, is a contributing editor to Vogue and writer for The New Yorker.
He used the same technique in his latest book, Rats, where he devotes one year to a lower Manhattan alley and observes the city’s most unwanted
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