COA MISSION
COVER: “Afternoon” by JoAnne Carpenter, COA faculty member in art and art history. 2006, oil on canvas, 46” x 42”
BACK COVER: “Cows in Vermont: Landscape III” by Coltere Savidge ’06, oil on canvas, 18” x 24,” was first shown in his senior project exhibit, “Portraits of Cows: A Study in Oils.” Savidge, who is currently working in Vermont, says that through his portraits of cows in the Vermont landscape, “I am constantly returned to my home in Vermont, and to the people whose lives revolve around such animals. . . . Cows, that support families by providing milk and beef, take on human qualities on the canvas and further connect me to the Vermont landscape.”
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR The house I live in was built as a restaurant, and some say speakeasy, overlooking the Penobscot River as it opens onto Penobscot Bay. From time to time, earlier residents come back to see the river from our porch again, maybe pick some blueberries and reveal another story or two. A few weeks ago, the granddaughter of the first owner, now in her 80s, came to show us some old photographs. She spoke about the food her grandfather served, how he could buy all the produce he needed from local farmers. For milk, he could rely on the cows that grazed on the fields leading down to the river. Today, that pasture has grown into a tall spruce forest, and the summer restaurant has become a year-round home whose pantry, I must confess, is no longer supplied by Stockton Springs farms. Economics and convenience have streamlined our lives. It means that even in winter, someone like me can buy tomatoes and spinach on my way home from work and have a fresh salad for dinner. At what price? The last issue of COA Magazine included an article about Beech Hill Farm with this statement: “despite transportation costs, organic food from California is cheaper: the scale is larger and wages are lower.” In this issue, in an article about the work of Kerri Sands ’02 in helping local farms with their business plans, Loie Hayes ’79 writes, “Without working farms, rural communities wither.” Underlying just about everything else in these pages—Elsie Flemings ’07 writing about her climate change work, the menacing happenings in the novel excerpt contributed by Tawanda Chaibkwa ’06, certainly the story about the work of Deb Soule ’81, growing and preparing medicinal herbs through Avena Botanicals, and the inspiring letter from our new president, David Hales—is the question of how we will choose to balance the dissonance implied by these two statements.
Photo by Bill Carpenter
College of the Atlantic enriches the liberal arts tradition through a distinctive educational philosophy—human ecology. A human ecological perspective integrates knowledge from all academic disciplines and from personal experience to investigate, and ultimately improve, the relationships between human beings and our social and natural communities. The human ecological perspective guides all aspects of education, research, activism and interactions among the college’s students, faculty, staff and trustees. The College of the Atlantic community encourages, prepares and expects students to gain the expertise, breadth, values and practical experience necessary to achieve individual fulfillment and to help solve problems that challenge communities everywhere.
Donna Gold Stockton Springs September, 2006