08.2023 The Fall Program

the FALL PROGRAM issue

THE FALL PROGRAM ISSUE

02  ANOTHER REGENCY JANE by Sarah

Faulker

06  TUMULT AND TRANSFORMATION: AMERICA IN THE 1960S by Rick

Collin

14  BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION AND THE ARC OF JUSTICE: THE COURT’S GREATEST RULING STRIKES DOWN SEGREGATION by David

Gray Adler

20  JAMES JOYCE: THE HARD AND THE EASY by Brian

Palecek

26  THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF CONFLICT by Kristine

Paranica

32  LET’S GET P.O.W.E.R. HUNGRY! by Jodee

Bock

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38  TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY: GOOGLE FIBER, CHAT GPT, AND THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY by Robert

Mejia

44  BITE-SIZED MEMORIES: THE MICRO-MEMOIR by Christine

Guaragno

46  A SMALL TASTE OF UMBRIA IN ASSISI by Joan

Leotta

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota.

50  PUBLIC UNIVERSITY FALL PROGRAM CATALOG

BEING HUMAN

BRENNA GERHARDT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

In 1874, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote the essay “Schopenhauer as Educator.” In it, he asked, “What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?” Nietzsche believed the answer to these questions would reveal “the fundamental law of your very self.” He offered guiding questions, not the pat answers and “life hacks” dominating social media today.

In 1934, T.S. Eliot presented a pageant play entitled “The Rock,” which lamented “an age which advances progressively backwards.” Troubled by secularization and society’s fixation on material progress at the cost of spiritual growth, he asked his audience:

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Eliot questioned the foundation of a society built upon fast-paced scientific and technological progress that subjugated the human spirit to antiquity. Nietzsche wanted to break open the human heart to plumb its depths.

The humanities ask us to dive deeply into finding the vocation of our souls so we may engage with wisdom in the world’s affairs. From interior spiritual landscape to external social geography, this is the terrain of the humanities. If you wish to be the captain of your soul, as William Ernest Henley advises, you cannot do without the cartography of being human: the humanities in conversation with the arts and sciences.

Blessings on your journey,

Brenna Gerhardt

Executive Director & Fellow Lifelong Learner

ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST, TRYGVE OLSON

Trygve Olson has lived his entire life on either side of the Red River of the North. For more than 37 years he has been a freelance artist and editorial cartoonist (The Forum newspaper). Trygve lives in Moorhead, Minnesota with his wife Cheryl and their two cats, Gunnar and Marte.

Retraction for 2023 Sense of Place issue: We deeply regret to inform our readers that an inappropriate piece was mistakenly published in the recent edition of Humanities North Dakota Magazine. We sincerely apologize for this oversight and any offense or discomfort it may have caused.

ANOTHER REGENCY JANE

by Sarah Faulkner, PhD

It is the rare person who has not heard of Jane Austen (1775-1817) nor her most famous novel Pride and Prejudice (1813). Beyond the merit of her six published novels, Austen’s fame has grown through a constant slate of new adaptations that stokes a dedicated army of die-hard fans. This, in turn, has made her a commercial success; her face has been sold on merchandise as far-ranging as air fresheners, band-aids, mints, and rubber ducks (and yes, I own all of these things—aside from the rubber duck). There is no question that she is the author of her time.

Austen’s time is what we call the Regency Era, which occurred in the first few decades of the 1800s. It is so named because the Prince of Wales, the future British King George IV, served as Regent from 1811-1820 while his father was unable to serve due to mental illness. If you’ve seen Netflix’s Bridgerton or Queen Charlotte, this may ring a bell. The Regency Era was a time of great artistic and literary innovation which produced the works of Jane Austen, Walter Scott, John Keats, and Mary Shelley, as well the paintings of J.M.W. Turner, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the invention of the kaleidoscope.

While Austen may be its literary queen, it is a truth universally unacknowledged that there were hundreds of other successful women writers in the Regency Era. In fact, Austen was by no means the most famous woman writer of her time. She published anonymously—her first novel, Sense and Sensibility (1811), was published simply “By a Lady”—and fashionable society only learned her name either due to the overflowing pride of her brother Henry, who compromised her anonymity by bragging about his talented sister to his London circles, or upon the posthumous

publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, in which a biographical notice of the author officially revealed her authorship upon her early death at the age of 41.

Rather than Austen, most would have thought of another Jane as the most famous female novelist of her time: Jane Porter (1775-1850).

Born just two weeks before Jane Austen, Jane Porter grew up in the north of England and spent some of her childhood years in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was one of many talented siblings— her sister, Anna Maria, was also a famous novelist; her brother Sir Robert Kerr Porter was a famous panoramic painter. She published voraciously throughout her long life, writing magazine articles, political pamphlets, anonymous novels, accompanying historical material for her brother’s paintings, and kept a full correspondence. Two of her novels, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810), became international bestsellers. Yet, while many of us have read at least one Austen novel (whether of our own volition or that of our English teacher’s), very few people have read a Porter novel.

Jane Porter’s most famous novel is The Scottish Chiefs (1810), which came out the year before Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility (1811). While the latter takes the fortunes, friendships, and romances of two young sisters in modernday England as its plotline in a style known as the courtship novel, the former took readers onto the bloody battlefields of the Scottish Wars of Independence (1296-1305).

The Scottish Chiefs follows the life and military career of Scottish patriot William Wallace during the early stages of Scotland’s plight to free itself from English rule. If you’ve seen Mel Gibson’s

Braveheart, you have a pretty good idea of its plot—minus the torture and terrible accents. But Wallace’s stirring speeches, the spurious existence of his wife Marion, and even the impossible relationship between Wallace and the Queen of England all come directly from Porter’s novel.

What may surprise readers today is Porter’s characterization of the valiant Wallace; in addition to wielding a masterful sword for Scotland, he also weeps, recites poetry, gazes romantically at waterfalls, and often is so overcome with emotion he faints. In short, Porter constructs a sensitive, pious soul who defends the honor of his nation. Her depiction of medieval Scotland as a land where “all the women are fair and the men brave” helped usher in a century-long obsession with an idealized Middle Ages in Britain particularly seen in its PreRaphaelite paintings and the poetry of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Alfred Tennyson. Its high sentiment and patriotic glow made The Scottish Chiefs one of Queen Victoria’s favorite novels. That same patriotic glow and critique of tyrants—coupled with the novel’s uproarious popularity—convinced Napoleon that it was a threat of his regime. He banned the French translation from publication.

The Scottish Chiefs is long by today’s standards; originally published in five volumes, the novel spans almost 800 pages depending on which edition you read. That is, of course, if you can find an edition to read in the first place. The only recent editions of the novel are by academic presses, making it outof-reach to the average book buyer.

The most common edition in bookstores today is American publisher Charles Scribner’s edition of 1921, which re-packaged the novel as children’s literature. Beautiful paintings by N. C. Wyeth illustrate Wallace’s glorious deeds, which have been heavily abridged by American editors Kate Douglas Wiggin (author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) and Nora A. Smith to make it more palatable to American audiences young and old. This edition went through several re-prints throughout the first

half of the twentieth century, making it the edition most frequently owned by grandparents or found in used bookstores today.

By blending the facts of history with the imagination of fiction, Jane Porter believed she had invented a new type of novel: what we would now call the historical novel. While credit for this invention would later be granted by 20th-century literary critics to Porter’s childhood friend, Sir Walter Scott, for reasons more than a little prejudiced against female authors, Porter is slowly being recognized as an important innovator of the historical novel today.

This new-fangled type of novel that discussed historical fact through fiction was intriguing enough to spark royal interest. The Prince Regent employed a librarian, James Stanier Clarke, who managed the Prince’s library and literary patronage. He had written Jane Austen a letter requesting that Austen dedicate her novel Emma (1815) to the Prince Regent because he was such a fan of her writing; Austen acquiesced, despite loathing the Regent for his profligacy.

However, when the Royal Librarian suggested to Austen that she should write a historical novel [then thought of as Romance] about the Prince Regent’s noble ancestors, she laughingly declined, writing:

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep

If you’ve read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall or Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, you can thank Austen’s contemporary Jane Porter for bringing the historical novel into vogue.

my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Many fans of Austen praise her for sticking to her guns and her comedic writing style rather than caving to royal wishes. And yet the librarian did not give up on his project; when one Jane refused, another acquiesced.

Jane Porter wrote the requested historical novel, Duke Christian of Luneberg, and dedicated it to the Prince Regent in 1824. Desperate for money due to her brothers’ irresponsible debts, Porter hoped that this novel would result in an annual income from the royal treasury. However, no such funds were sent. The Prince Regent’s niece, Queen Victoria, would later grant her a small pension in recognition for her literary work, but Jane felt great despair upon realizing that the Prince Regent and his librarian did not intend to recognize the great effort she took in researching and writing their aggrandizing historical novel during a time of great personal strife and poverty.

Despite her early success, Porter’s miseries would only grow throughout her life: she lost her mother and sister, with whom she lived and shared a deep bond, within a year of each other in the early 1830s. Having never married despite multiple offers, she then lost her home and became a perpetual guest of her brothers and friends. She watched the star of her fame, which once blazed so bright, start to wink out as she aged and new ideas about novels—and the propriety of female authorship—emerged in the Victorian era.

Many still recognized her work late in her life; a literary society in New York sent her a handsome wooden rocking chair to honor her talented pen. Yet while she had won fame, she never achieved financial security or even a stable home. The image of Jane Porter receiving a chair and realizing she had no home in which to place it is a sad illustration of the precarity of single women without fortunes in

the nineteenth century.

Jane Porter’s story—and this is just a tiny fraction of it—is beginning to be told, and she is only one of the hundreds of women writing novels in the same decade as Jane Austen. While I hope Jane Austen reigns forevermore—she is my favorite novelist, after all—more of her contemporaries deserve to be recognized for their work developing the novel in the early nineteenth century.

We may never see Jane Porter’s face on an airfreshener, but I hope people will know her story, her novels, and her impact on the historical novel in years to come. l

Did you find this article interesting? Sarah Faulkner will be teaching 10 Regency Women Writers Beyond Austen on Wednesdays, Sept. 13, 20, 27, Oct. 4, 11, 18 - 7-9pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/ classes-events

DR. SARAH FAULKNER is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and public humanist. Her research focuses on British women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; she has taught courses on “Jane Austen and Her World,” “The Romantic Age,” “Rise of the English Novel,” and more at the University of Washington in Seattle. She taught “10 British Women Writers Before Austen” for Public University in Spring 2023 and currently works as the Program Manager for Humanities Washington.

In America, the 1960s was a decade of epic upheaval that almost sent the country off the rails.

The Vietnam War. The civil rights movement. The rock ‘n’ roll revolution. The rise of the drug culture. Hippies and yippies and the counterculture. The New Frontier and the Great Society. The sexual revolution and Women’s Liberation Movement. Assassinations and political scandals that diminished, if not nearly demolished, our trust in government and the presidency. And quantum leaps in technology and the Space Race that landed men on the Moon.

TUMULT AND TRANSFORMATION: AMERICA IN THE 1960S

by Rick Collin

These events and more unfolded and intersected throughout the decade, transforming our nation in deeply profound ways that continue to influence us more than half a century later.

America has certainly had other tumultuous decades. But I believe the 1960s was the most turbulent and transformative decade in our nation’s history—even more so than the ‘60s decade a century earlier, when we grappled with a vicious Civil War, ended slavery, and contended with the harsh realities of Reconstruction.

When the decade dawned on January 1, 1960, the man in the White House was a 69-year-old former five-star general, Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower, who had led the Allies to victory over Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in World War II. We were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and Red China, but there was no “Hot War” where the guns were firing and soldiers were dying. The number one song in the nation was “El Paso” by Marty Robbins. The Eisenhower Era was relatively low-key, peaceful, even boring to many people—the calm before the tsunami that was the 1960s.

At the decade’s end in December 1969, Ike’s Vice President, Richard Nixon, was President; many of our cities had been ravaged by rioting; several of our most prominent leaders had been exiled or

assassinated; we were mired in an unpopular war that was tearing our nation apart; and the number one song was titled, appropriately, “Come Together” by The Beatles.

The seeds of what has been called “The Sensational Sixties” had been planted years before— the civil rights movement, for instance, came about in large part because of the laws ordering the desegregation of our nation’s schools and other facilities in the 1950s. The Space Race and the push to land the first man on the Moon had begun in the 1950s, when the Soviets launched the world’s first satellite in 1957, a 184-lb. aluminum sphere called Sputnik I. The hippie movement and drug culture had their roots in the jazz and beatnik generation of the 1950s, which also rebelled and experimented with all kinds of drug use. And Vietnam evolved into a full-scale war because of a commitment to stop the spread of Communism made by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s.

They headed out to Haight-Ashbury and the hippie communes of the West Coast. They joined the sexual revolution or became submerged in the drug culture. The media loved this counterculture. San Francisco’s Summer of Love in 1967, said Newsweek magazine, was “a psychedelic picnic, a hippie happening.” It had everything—free love, crime, madness, sex, squalor, drugs, art, even its own anthem, “(If You’re Going to) San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair,” by Scott Mackenzie.

Yet, the Summer of Love was not all peace and love. Some hippie girls were no more than lonely runaways—children who found themselves defenseless against the males who preyed on them. A common story that circulated during that Summer of Love was of hippie girls being drugged unconscious and then used as a communal sexual resource for anyone interested. The flower children congregating at festivals and in communes crammed into compact living quarters that encouraged poor sanitation. It was the perfect environment for disease;

The turmoil and upheaval of the 1960s turned young people away from traditional American society and values. They looked elsewhere for answers. Those joining this growing counterculture defied the status quo. They let their hair grow and ditched makeup and bras, burned candles and incense, and decorated their rooms with peace and zodiac symbols. They bought clothes from military surplus stores, tie-dyed t-shirts, jeans, and dresses, and wore sandals, beads, and fringed vests as part of their anti-establishment uniform. And they were more open about premarital and extramarital sex than their parents.

They dropped out of society by the tens of thousands, many rejecting the usual route of college after high school and instead embarking on colorful adventures. They took cross-country bus trips like that of the Merry Pranksters, who were friends and followers of counterculture guru Ken Kesey.

pneumonia, flu, and chicken pox spread quickly. Gonorrhea, syphilis, and crabs also ran wild. One of the human vultures who spent time at HaightAshbury that summer of ‘67 was Charles Manson, who would later mastermind the brutal murders of several people in California in August 1969, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight and one-half months pregnant.

Marijuana and cocaine had been a part of jazz circles for many years before finding a much wider audience in the 1960s. Peyote, a cactus bud hallucinogen used in American Indian religious rites that had been part of the beatnik scene in the 1950s, became more popular. LSD, first developed in Switzerland in 1938, reached Greenwich Village in New York in the early ‘60s and hit the West Coast soon after that, along with the slogan “turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Those who called themselves yippies were

The turmoil and upheaval of the 1960s turned young people away from traditional American society and values.

members of the Youth International Party—a largely imaginary organization of political hippies led by counterculture spokesman Abbie Hoffman. They turned out in force at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey to run for President against Republican nominee Richard Nixon and third-party candidate, Alabama governor George Wallace. Events surrounding the convention showed the world, through television, how deeply divided the American people were over the Vietnam War. Antiwar activists called for a massive demonstration at the delegates’ hotel and the convention center. The media gave much play to the plans announced by the yippies calling for a Festival of Life, including a “nude-in” on the local beaches and the release of greased pigs throughout Chicago. They even nominated a 145-lb. pig named Pigasus to run for President, a play on Pegasus, the winged stallion of Greek mythology. “If we can’t have him in the White House,” they said, “we can have him for breakfast.”

One example of a complex hybrid that encompassed several protest movements during the 1960s is the Women’s Liberation Movement. It drew its influence not only from the civil rights movement but also from the rise of the New Left and counterculture. Community-organizing efforts by the national activist organization called Students for a Democratic Society, along with the civil rights campaigns in the South, gave many women invaluable political experience.

Most of the early women pioneers who founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 were not members of the New Left or the counterculture. But these movements helped create the climate that encouraged women to question gender stereotypes. Betty Friedan’s landmark book, The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, sold nearly three million copies in its first three years. Calling it “the problem that has no name,” Friedan defined “the Mystique” as the worthlessness women feel in roles that require them to be financially, intellectually, and emotionally dependent upon their husbands.

In a similar way that Friedan’s book influenced

feminism, environmental issues gained prominence because of another book. The 1962 publication of Silent Spring by marine biologist Rachel Carson detailed the dangers of pesticides to humans and the environment. It is considered to be the beginning of the modern environmental movement.

And then there was the music! When rock and roll first appeared in the mid-1950s, it was dismissed by many as an aberration, an abomination, even a Communist plot to subvert America’s youth. At one end of the spectrum, great classical musicians like cellist and composer Pablo Casals called it “poison put to sound.” On the other end, the iconic contemporary singer Frank Sinatra labeled it a “rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.”

But rock ‘n’ roll had grown stale by the early 1960s, and America was ripe for the taking when the British Invasion launched in early 1964. We had just lost a president with the assassination of John F. Kennedy the week before Thanksgiving 1963. Still in mourning, we were looking for something to cheer us up and get us excited again. It was like we needed a fling after the funeral. Enter a group from Liverpool, England calling themselves The Beatles. They were the perfect tonic.

To this day, I remember the buzz in our home when my sister Mary, celebrating her twelfth birthday, watched The Beatles live on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Seventy-three million viewers tuned in that night—then the largest audience to ever watch a TV program. Another British group, The Dave Clark Five, gave The Beatles a serious run for their money. I remember listening to contests that radio stations ran for teenage girls (my two teenage sisters had lots of girlfriends, so I was surrounded), asking “who do you like better, The Beatles or The Dave Clark 5?” More often than not The DC5 won.

Other British bands and solo artists also recorded so much of the great music of that time that still sounds fresh today, including The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, The Yardbirds, Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Animals, Freddy and the Dreamers, Peter and Gordon, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, The Hollies, Manfred Mann, The Troggs, The Zombies, The Moody Blue and more. While

rock n’ roll was going down one path, folk music was headed down another. The Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Leonard Cohen, The New Christy Minstrels, and many others appealed to those looking for an alternative kind of music and message.

Some songs drew censorship and morality concerns, especially when rock groups appeared on national television to perform them. The Ed Sullivan Show was famous for its efforts to have rockers tone down their acts. In January 1967, The Rolling Stones were told they could perform “Let’s Spend the Night Together” under one condition: that they change the lyric to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together,” which they did. Later that year, The Doors wanted to perform “Light My Fire” on the show. Before their September 17 appearance, producers asked them to change the line “girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” saying it promoted illegal drug use. In its place, The Doors agreed to sing “girl, we couldn’t get much better.” However, lead singer Jim Morrison ended up singing the original lyrics. After the show, a livid Sullivan told the group that although he had booked them for six more shows, they were finished as far as his show was concerned. Morrison’s response? “Hey man, so what? We just DID the Sullivan Show.”

All of us living in that decade carry those years with us today—both the good and the bad. I was born in 1955, right in the middle of the Baby Boomer Generation, making me four when the 1960s began and fourteen when it ended.

In looking back on my life in the 1960s, the paradigm shift in music was perhaps the greatest influence on me. I tracked the release of every Beatles single and LP, running to the store to buy as many as I could afford, never tiring of listening to their constantly evolving and brilliant songbook. My friends all had their “favorite Beatle”—mine was John Lennon, whose cheeky irreverence and distinctive style of songwriting grabbed me and never let go. To this day, family and friends know a safe gift for me is anything related to The Fab Four.

My family lived in Prince George’s County, Maryland, right across the District of Columbia line, and I was old enough to be aware of many events

taking place in Washington. I was fortunate, though, to be too young to have to grapple much with the life-altering changes and unpleasant realities that were part of those years.

I did, however, watch my three older teenage siblings face these realities. My sister Carol, eight years older, dealt with anti-war protests during her daily commute to George Washington University. Many times during the major protests of the late ‘60s that brought tens, even hundreds of thousands to the National Mall, her drive to and from campus was extra challenging.

Carol had set her wedding date for Saturday, April 6, 1968. Two days earlier, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Violent protests exploded in Washington, D.C. and some 160 other cities nationwide. Then a junior at GWU, she remembers her terrible commute home on Friday, April 5. The streets were full of protesters, as well as looters who were breaking into stores and businesses all along Pennsylvania Avenue, her usual route home. Her fiancé, Bob, also was forced to take a long, roundabout way to get home, fighting snarled, slowmoving traffic all the way.

That same day, President Johnson dispatched 14,000 federal and National Guard troops to help the overwhelmed D.C. police force. Ultimately, 13 people were killed, 1,100 were injured and more than 6,100 were arrested as a result of the D.C. riots. I remember the restrictions on how much gasoline you could buy because of concerns that looters would use it to make Molotov cocktails. As for the wedding, between the curfew imposed and the fear of leaving their homes, many of Bob’s relatives living in D.C. were unable to attend. His maternal grandmother called the D.C. Mayor’s Office to get permission to cross the state line into Maryland. Nothing was going to keep her and her family from attending her grandson’s wedding in Prince George’s County!

My brother Tom, who is six years older, navigated the realities of college deferments and waiting out the draft or enlisting in the military. His deferment ended when he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1970—and he was prepared to enlist in the Air Force if his draft number came up after

The last year of the decade was also the first year I began keeping a journal,a practice I continue to this day. Here are some entries from 1969:

Jan. 12 “The Jets beat the Colts in the Super Bowl, 16-7. What an upset! Joe Namath sure is good!”

Jan. 20 “Got up at 9:20 to view Inauguration of President Nixon and Vice President Agnew. His Inaugural Address was average, I thought. I wish him luck. He’ll need it. Wonder what kind of President he’ll make.”

Mar. 1 “Mickey Mantle announced retirement.”

Mar. 10 “James Earl Ray got 99 years in prison for King’s death. Yay!”

Mar. 31 “No school today because of Ike’s death. Today is the official day of mourning for that great man.”

May 26 “Found out today that (next-door-neighbor) Ralph Connors – Bob’s twin brother – was killed in Vietnam May 22 by mortar fire.”

June 8 “President Nixon started his talks with (South Vietnamese President) Thieu today at Midway.”

July 16 “Got up at 8:55 to view the launching of Apollo 11, the greatest historic event in history. Fantastic. Apollo 11 blasted off at 9:32 a.m. Neil Armstrong’s my hero. He’ll be the first man on the Moon.”

July 20

“Watched a simulation and listened to Apollo 11 lunar module land on the Moon at 4:17 p.m. What a climactic moment! I tape recorded their Moon landing and on the Moon, and (Brother) Danny and I took many a picture of them on TV. President Nixon talked to them for about 3 minutes. We saw live coverage FROM the Moon, as they stepped on the Moon. Fantastic! Unbelievable!”

July 24

“Watched Apollo 11 splash down in the Pacific at 12:50 a.m. What a fantastic 8 days. As President Nixon said, “The greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.”

Aug. 2 “President Nixon visited Rumania today. The first President of the United States to visit a Communist country since 1945 when President Roosevelt visited Yalta, Russia.”

Aug. 10 “Sharon Tate was murdered!”

Aug. 17 “Philip Blaiberg, the longest living (to date) heart transplant patient (Jan. 2, 1968) died today. 60 years old.”

Oct. 15 “Talked about the Vietnam Moratorium protest in Civics and Algebra.”

Oct. 16 “The Amazin’ New York Mets beat the Baltimore Orioles today for baseball world championship, 5-3, after trailing 3-0 in the 6th inning. Donn Clendenon won the MVP in the World Series, hitting 3 homers. Fantastic!”

Oct. 21 “There is a rumor that Beatle Paul McCartney is dead. Bull!”

Oct. 26 “The U.S.S.R. isn’t going to land a man on the Moon because they say space stations are more important. Bull! They’re just admitting defeat in the Moon Race.”

Nov. 3 “Nixon addressed the nation tonight on Vietnam.”

Nov. 6 “Bought ‘Suspicious Minds’ – Elvis Presley and ‘Down on the Corner’ – Creedence Clearwater Revival. Also purchased ‘Abbey Road,’ newest Beatle Album.”

Nov. 14 “Apollo 12 lifted off at 11:22 a.m. through the rainiest weather conditions ever for a U.S. manned shot. Watched Moonshot in school.”

Nov. 19 “Got up early to view first of two Moonwalks by Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean, while Richard Gordon orbits in the command module. They are funny. Conrad’s first words on the Moon were, ‘That may have been a small one for Neil, but it was a giant step for me.’ Cool! Stepped on the Moon at 6:44 a.m. Their colored TV burned out so after first 45 minutes of transmission, no more pictures. Take second walk tomorrow morning.”

Nov. 24 “Watched the Apollo 12 astronauts splash down in the Pacific. Mission was 100 percent successful. Dad brought home data in space flights and Apollo 8 and Apollo 10, but no time to view them yet. I like to watch Walter Cronkite (CBS) for all the spaceshots, elections, etc. Apollo 12 closed out U.S. manned flights in its first decade. 22 altogether.”

Dec. 31 “1969 saw 4 men walk on the Moon, the beginning of Nixon’s Presidency, and of course Agnew’s Vice Presidency, the campus mood relatively quiet as compared to ’68, the black man’s continued fight for equal rights, etc.”

he began graduate school at Harvard. It never did. Like so many other college campuses, the war was an ever-present issue at UM. He remembers steady campus visits by national figures speaking out against the war in 1967-68, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy, who was running for the Democratic Presidential nomination on an anti-war platform.

My sister Mary also felt the impact of the Vietnam War. Bill, her boyfriend and later husband, joined the Navy in 1969 and served in Vietnam as a corpsman attached to a Marine Corps unit from 1970-71, working as a medic during battles and firefights. The war also hit my family hard when we found out in May 1969 that our next-door neighbor, an Army soldier, had been killed by mortar fire during the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

Finally, no review of the 1960s is complete without including the Space Race—the competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to land the first man on the Moon. I was fortunate to have a front-row seat; my father worked at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., from 1961-74, and during some of that time, he was deputy director of educational programs. His work included developing and coordinating the Spacemobile Program that shared the excitement of space travel with audiences of all ages worldwide. During this golden age of manned space flight with projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, he often brought home NASA-produced movies about the latest mission. I was the most popular kid in the neighborhood whenever I invited my friends over to watch the latest movie. Those were the days when every launch was big news covered by all the networks, and we were often able to watch them on television in our school classrooms.

The Space Race is a dramatic example of the profound impact that ten years can have on a nation. In 1961, President Kennedy set the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. It was a stunning commitment, considering that the Soviets were ahead of us at the time, and many didn’t believe we could possibly achieve it. When Neil Armstrong landed the lunar module, the Eagle, on the Moon and stepped out on July 20, 1969, the commitment made by JFK more than eight years earlier was achieved—with five months to spare. That

same day, someone remembered Kennedy at his final resting place in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Placed on his gravesite was a handwritten note that read, “Mr. President, the Eagle has landed.”

The Kennedy Presidency and the Moon landing are the bookends to 10 years of tumult and transformation that changed our nation forever. What happened during those years changed the way my Baby Boomer generation looked at the world. It impacted our personalities, political views, career choices, and the way we have raised our children. Not only did the 1960s level the status quo, it replaced it with new approaches and schools of thought that fundamentally changed how we look at the world. Just as we were affected by being raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression and World War II eras, so too have the children raised by the Baby Boomer generation been shaped by the events of the 1960s. Looking back on those years reminds us of the turbulent sea of changes that America faced—and survived. It was a decade that continues to loom large and influence much of how we think and what we do all these years later. It helps us recognize and adapt to other generational changes our nation has experienced, and reassures us that we can continue to move forward. l

Did you find this article interesting? Rick Collin will be teaching From Camelot to Woodstock: America in the 1960s on Thursdays, Sept. 7, 14, 21, 28, Oct. 12, 19, 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16 - 7-9 pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/ classes-events

Instructor RICK COLLIN is a historian with a passion for history told through stories. Rick worked for the State Historical Society of North Dakota and taught “America in the 1960s,” “The American Presidency,” “The History of World War II,” “The United States To 1877” and “The United States Since 1877” at the University of Mary and Bismarck State College. This is his third Public University course – he has also taught “Riding the Back of the Tiger: America and the Vietnam War, 1945-75” and “The Modern Presidency: FDR to Reagan, 1933-89.”

BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION AND THE ARC OF JUSTICE: THE COURT’S GREATEST RULING STRIKES DOWN SEGREGATION

by David Gray Adler

On May 17, 1954, at 1:20 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the United States Supreme Court rendered the most significant decision in its 165-year history. In Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the nation’s highest tribunal held that racial segregation in the nation’s schools was unconstitutional, a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. From that point forward, America’s schoolchildren could no longer be lawfully separated by race. The Constitution would no longer tolerate the pernicious doctrine of separate equality. The Court’s legal earthquake advanced the cornerstone principles of the republic and reminded Americans of the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King’s observation: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Justice Stanley Reed, a southerner who voted to form the unanimous 9-0 ruling, told one of his law clerks that “if [Brown] was not the most important decision in the history of the Court, it was very close.” Time Magazine declared that none of the Court’s prior decisions “was more important than the school segregation issue. None of them directly and intimately affected so many American families.” Whatever status history accords the Brown decision, it will deserve its rank in the pantheon of the Court’s greatest landmark rulings.

The ruling in Brown fulfilled the premise

and promise of equality, which defined the Declaration of Independence and the 14th Amendment. Richard Kluger, author of Simple Justice, the definitive and magisterial 865-page history of the origins, development, and aftermath of Brown v. Bd. of Education, justly concluded that the decision in Brown restored in America “the ennobling language of equalitarianism.”

The Court’s history-bending decision reversed its own sordid role in the evisceration of the purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments—13th, 14th, and 15th—enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War with the aim of placing Black Americans on par with Whites in the eyes of the law. Congress was intent on enforcing the 14th Amendment guarantees—the Equal Protection Clause, Due Process Clause, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause—when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, prohibiting private persons from practicing racial discrimination in public accommodations, including theaters, railways, restaurants, and inns. This historic measure was calculated to work a dramatic change in America, since most acts of discrimination were carried out by individuals.

But the Supreme Court provided evidence for the broad conclusion that it has not always championed civil rights and liberties and, indeed, may take a back seat to Congress as a paladin of liberty, when it

struck down the statute, holding that Congress lacked authority under the 14th Amendment to prohibit private acts of racial discrimination. The lone dissent in the infamous 8-1 decision was that written by Justice John Marshall Harlan who, in his second race to serve as Governor of Kentucky, had campaigned on the theme that the Act squared with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. As a member of the Court, Justice Harlan accused his colleagues of usurping the authority of Congress to decide what laws should be enacted to enforce the provisions of the Amendment. The Reconstruction Amendments, he argued, were written to eliminate racial discrimination. Despite his southern heritage, bulked by familial ownership of slaves, Harlan was passionate in his opposition to racial discrimination, so much so that he denounced it in an extemporaneous speech from the High Bench immediately following the Court’s opinion.

The Supreme Court’s contribution to widespread racism in America reached an even lower point when, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), it upheld a law in Louisiana that segregated Blacks and Whites on railroad cars. In another 8-1 opinion, with only Justice Harlan dissenting, the Court upheld the legal separation on the basis of the Separate but Equal Doctrine. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Henry B. Brown wrote that the Equal Protection Clause was satisfied so long as the separate facilities were equal. The only

inequality, he stated, was the false “assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it.”

In his most famous opinion, Justice Harlan dissented, directly attacking the Court’s disingenuous characterization of the segregation law. Harlan wrote: “Everyone knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.” Harlan continued his blistering attack on the majority: “The thin disguise of ‘equal’ accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done. The law was conceived in hostility to and enacted for the purpose of humiliating citizens of the United

States of a particular race.”

Justice Harlan’s masterful excoriation of the opinion included the admonition that history would shame the Court for its interpretation of the 14th Amendment. “The Constitution,” he wrote, “is color blind.”

Nevertheless, the Court’s ruling in Plessy, and its defense of the doctrine of separate but equal, insured the subjugation of AfricanAmericans. Separate educational facilities for Blacks were not equal. Given the importance of education in life and opportunity, the “white race,” Harlan wrote, would remain the “dominant race in this country, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and power,” if ‘separate but equal’ was the law of the land.

The reality that America had stamped African Americans with the badge of inferiority, as Justice Harlan had described it, and the fact that they were confronted with insuperable barriers to anything approaching equal opportunity, wealth and power, were brought center stage when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the collection of cases brought under the name, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Justice Harlan’s portrayal of the grim dilemma facing Blacks was shared by Chief Justice Earl Warren, newly appointed to the Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Warren’s ascension to the High Bench, occasioned by the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson in September 1953, marked a crucial—indeed, historic—turning point in the nation’s history, since

“The law was conceived in hostility to and enacted for the purpose of humiliating citizens of the United States of a particular race.”

Vinson was not ready to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson and the separate but equal doctrine, which was the foundation of the entire structure of racial discrimination. Legally enforced segregation was the dominant feature in Southern culture and life.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, upon hearing the news of the passing of Chief Justice Vinson, remarked to two former law clerks: “This is the first indication that I have ever had that there is a God.” Had Vinson remained Chief Justice when the Court decided Brown, the result would have been a divided decision, at best, perhaps 5-4 or 6-3, in favor of overturning Plessy. But everyone on the Court understood that a divided decision, as Frankfurter wrote, “would have been catastrophic.” It would have encouraged resistance from segregationists, and Plessy, in all practical effect, would persist as the law of the land.

Chief Justice Vinson presided over the Court’s first conference to discuss Brown v. Bd. of Education, held on December 13, 1952. Vinson opened the conference with the declaration that he was not ready to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson. He would be deferential to the whole body of law that had sustained separate but equal, which enjoyed a “long and continued acceptance” in the nation’s capital.

But Vinson met strong opposition from the brethren. Justice Hugo Black of Alabama, a stout opponent of separate but equal, and an advocate for its reversal, agreed with Harlan and

Warren. Segregation, he insisted, rested on the premise of “Negro inferiority.” For Black, a keen student of history, the essential purpose of the 14th Amendment was “to protect against discrimination” and to abolish “such castes.” Justices William O. Douglas, Sherman Minton, and Harold Burton agreed with Black. “The Constitution,” Douglas stated, barred “classification on the basis of race.” Minton declared, “Classification by race is not reasonable and segregation is per se unconstitutional.” Justice Frankfurter was prepared to reverse Plessy. Justice Robert H. Jackson, although an advocate of adherence to precedent, was decidedly not an advocate of segregation. He was ambivalent. Troubled by the case law and what he initially perceived to be an absence of historical foundation in the 14th Amendment, and concerned about the impact of any desegregation order, he was searching for a path to join a decision that sounded the death knell of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Two Justices, Tom Clark and Stanley Reed, both southerners, were closer to Vinson’s reasoning. Justice Clark said in conference that if the Court were to reverse Plessy and impose desegregation immediately, “he would say we had led the states on to think segregation is OK, and we should let them work it out.” Justice Reed stated that he would vote to uphold “the separate but equal doctrine.” The states, he said, “should be left to work out the problems for themselves.”

A deeply divided ruling to reverse Plessy and overturn separate but equal, Justice Frankfurter, had indicated, would be a disaster. A master strategist, Frankfurter believed that the longer a decision on Brown could be delayed, the greater the chances were to end segregation. Accordingly, he persuaded his colleagues to schedule reargument for the next term, in October 1953. Frankfurter had two factors going for him. First, the conference had not taken an official vote. Second, nobody was urging a vote. Vinson did not want to call for a vote that he might lose. To avoid the perception that the Court was stalling for time, Frankfurter suggested that the Justices frame questions for attorneys of both sides to address at the next argument. On June 8, the Court ordered re-argument, with attention to the original intention of the drafters of the 14th Amendment and the question of an implementation order, should the Court decide to strike down segregation in the schools.

When the Court assembled for re-argument in December 1953, Earl Warren, not Fred Vinson, was Chief Justice. By all accounts, Warren was a superb leader, perhaps the greatest in the Court’s history with the possible exception of Chief Justice John Marshall. His political acumen, his warm, charming, unpretentious nature and knack for listening to colleagues with a sympathetic ear, provided the necessary equipment to fashion a unanimous decision to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson.

Warren’s arrival and skillset justified Justice Frankfurter’s strategy of delay. In a diary entry, Justice Burton, noting the new climate on the Court—the departure of Vinson and the arrival of Warren—observed: “This would have been impossible a year ago. However, the postponement then was with the hope of a better result later.”

At the December 12, 1953, conference, Chief Justice Warren encouraged the Justices to talk through the merits of the case, without taking a vote. Justice Frankfurter called this a “reconnoitering discussion,” one that opened lines of understanding for a Court that had been deeply divided in previous discussions about Brown, Plessy, the history and impact of separate but equal and the immense challenges in forging a remedial order that would shake the South to its core.

Warren opened the conference by stating that he believed the Court had to resolve, finally, the merits of the case. This meant, he said, “determining whether segregation is allowable in public schools.” There was, in his words, the voice of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who had lit the way for the enforcement of the antidiscrimination spirit of the Civil War Amendments, so passionately and powerfully stated in his dissents in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 and Plessy v. Ferguson. Warren declared: “The more I’ve read and heard and thought, the more I’ve come to conclude that the basis of segregation and ‘separate but equal’ rests upon a concept of the inherent inferiority of the colored

race. I don’t see how Plessy and the cases following it can be sustained on any other theory. If we are to sustain segregation, we must do it upon that basis.” He concluded, “if that argument proved anything, it proved that that basis was not justified.”

Chief Justice Warren’s presentation of the case placed those on the Court who were disposed to uphold Plessy in the awkward position of appearing to embrace the racist doctrine of Plessy. Justice Reed, who had previously indicated in conference that he would vote to sustain Plessy, replied that he did not subscribe to the theory of inferiority of Black Americans. The last holdout on the Court, the lone Justice who might have blocked a unanimous decision, found a way to wriggle free of his previous position by describing the Constitution as “dynamic,” and said that the reasoning that held sway in Plessy no longer applies.

Chief Justice Warren’s unanimous opinion for the Court—his first and most famous— represented an upheaval in American constitutional law unlike any ever rendered, before or since. Outside of the Justices themselves, and a few clerks, nobody knew what was in store for the nation when the Court convened at noon on May 17, 1954, to announce its decisions on a variety of cases. The closely guarded ruling in Brown v. Bd. of Education, designed to prevent a leak and insured by Warren’s decision to make just a single copy of the opinion, secured in the Supreme Court’s vault, was

beyond the predictive capacity of those who watched, studied, and wrote about the Court for a living.

On his way to the robing room, just before noon, Justice Clark paused for a moment and advised the law clerks, “I think you ought to be in the courtroom today.” The surprised clerks wondered at the justice’s words. At 1:20 p.m., they understood. l

Did you find this article interesting? David Adler will be teaching The History and Legacy of a Landmark Ruling: Brown v. Board of Education at 70 on Mondays, Oct. 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13, 20 - 6-8 pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/classes-events

DR. DAVID ADLER is President of The Alturas Institute, a non-profit organization created to promote the Constitution, gender equality, and civic education. A recipient of teaching, writing, and civic awards, Adler has lectured nationally and internationally, and published widely, on the Constitution, presidential power, and the Bill of Rights. He is the author of six books, including, most recently, The War Power in an Age of Terrorism, as well as more than 100 scholarly articles in the leading journals of his field. He is currently writing a book, supported by a research fellowship from the Idaho Humanities Council, on the landmark Supreme Court decision in Reed v. Reed, which had its origins in Idaho and transformed the law for American women.

JAMES JOYCE: THE HARD AND THE EASY

by Brian Palecek

James Joyce’s novel Ulysses has become the poster child for the hard book. But let’s start our conversation about hard books with a fable about someone reading Joyce’s final book Finnegans Wake.

THE FABLE OF THE YOUNG MAN WHO LOVED TO READ

Once there was a young man who enjoyed reading. He read many different kinds of books, new and old, classic and popular. Resolving to start a new reading adventure, he went to the bookstore and skimmed through the fiction shelves. Some of the spines had titles that he recognized, some he had read, and most were unfamiliar. In the “J” section he noted two books by James Joyce, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He thought, “I‘ve heard of James Joyce. He’s kind of famous. I should read something by him.” Our open-minded friend bought Finnegans Wake. He saw that it was quite thick, but he had read thick books before.

He had read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and George Eliot’s Middlemarch, both at the insistence of a friend. That evening he settled into a comfortable chair next to his best lamp and opened the cover, turned to the first page and began. He had barely finished the first sentence before an alarm went off in his head. “What’s going on here? I don’t get it,” said the voice. He went on and read, “Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe minor to wielderfight his penisolate war.” He exhaled and took another step: “Nor had topsawyers rock by the stream…” He stopped and thought, “I can’t do this.” He skipped ahead to look over other pages. Nothing made sense. It all looked the same. He closed the book he had been holding, placed it on a shelf, thinking he might try again someday, but it remained forever unread.

This is a sad story. I don’t want readers to feel disappointed and discouraged. Must every copy of Finnegans Wake be labeled with a warning: CAUTION: This book is impossible to read. You won’t get it!

Happily, this is not my story. I am not the young man in the tale. I have been reading and thinking about James Joyce for decades. His work and life are a part

of my daily life. How did I come to this point and how can I share this passion?

I confess that before I tried to read Ulysses, I had read Joyce’s two previous major works, Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I was aware and totally open to modernist, avant-garde experimentation. As I worked with Ulysses, my eager, impatient heart dove for help. I read books and articles with titles like A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce or Ulysses Explained. I read a famous largescale biography of Joyce’s life. Today, the internet is churning with many voices about all of Joyce’s work and about him too; just go to your “search engine.”

To deepen the confession—I did the same with Finnegans Wake, the book that was so troubling for the young man in the fable and thousands of others who have found Ulysses difficult, daunting, impossible. Once again I had “help.” I read Joyce guidebooks, including The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (Viking Press, 1961) by the myth scholar Joseph Campbell and novelist Henry Morton Robinson, as well as a shorter version by British novelist Anthony Burgess (Viking Press, 1967). Roland McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake (John Hopkins, 1980) has been a longtime companion.

Today, I cautiously make three recommendations for the lover of reading who is hesitant about taking on James Joyce:

1. See the four major works as a series or one complete modern epic: Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Note that there seems to be progression in content and readability.

2. When reading Ulysses, accept its difficulties but go ahead and reach for any helpful resources, books, articles, internet lectures, courses, commentaries, documentaries. It is almost impossible to resist these resources. Dare I say that there are two film versions of Ulysses, also a successful film of Portrait of the Artist… No, you are not cheating, just enthusiastic.

3. But with Finnegans Wake I am a contrarian. I am reluctant to give much information that would influence the reader. All the voices, including my own, constitute a worldwide crowd of chatterers. Our voices intertwine with the voices in the book itself. My voice says, “Don’t assume that this book is the most difficult book ever.” Maybe it is the world’s easiest book. How does that strike you, and who am I to say it? What is hard, what easy?

Who was James Joyce? Does knowing details from his life contribute to reading his work? Following is a list that can be read as a litany. All of the information is accessible in a matter of seconds with a couple of clicks.

THE LIFE OF JAMES JOYCE

• February 2, 1882 – Born in Dublin, Ireland

Parents: middle class Irish people who experienced financial ups and downs due to father’s drinking, mismanagement

• Attends Catholic schools run by Christian Brothers and Jesuits

• 1904 – Graduates University College Dublin

• June 16, 1904 – First outing with future wife Nora Barnacle

• Travels Europe, teaches English various places, eventually with residence in Paris, writes short stories

• 1909 – Establishes first movie theatre in Ireland, in Dublin, called The Cinematograph Volta

• 1914 – Publishes novel Dubliners

• Competitor in singing competitions

• Associated with theatre, writes play Exiles

• 1916 – Publishes semiautobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• Heavy drinker. Vision problems; dozens of eye surgeries

• Nora and he have two children, Giorgio and Lucia

• Lucia diagnosed with schizophrenia

• 1922 – Publishes novel Ulysses

• Ulysses banned for obscenity – finally published legally in USA in 1934

• 1927 – Releases small book of poems “Pomes Pennyeach”

• Works on Finnegans Wake for 17 years

• Finnegans Wake published in installments, under title Work in Progress

• 1939 – Published Finnegans Wake

• 1940 – German occupation of Paris

• Nora and James move to Zurich, Switzerland

• January 1941 – James dies at 59, buried in Zurich

THE FOUR MAJOR WORKS

Dubliners, published in 1914: The arrow in the Easy/Hard Meter leaps to easy. Easy because clear prose tells realistic stories of ordinary people in Dublin, Ireland. The prose gives vivid recognizable features of Dublin: early 20th-century clothing styles, buildings, public parks, and other locations. The stories are quite short, only a few pages, and very little happens. The longest, “The Dead,” is usually called a novella. Who are these Dubliners: a boy deals with the death of his friend, a retired priest; young men from various European countries

celebrate modern technology in an early automobile road race; a couple of boys encounter an odd, intimidating man in a park on the day they skipped school; a woman operating a boarding house maneuvers her daughter and one of her male boarders into marriage; a man learns that a woman whom he rejected has died in an accident with a train; a boy promises a girl that he will purchase her a special gift at a bazaar and comes home with nothing; a young woman plans to flee Dublin to make a new life in Argentina with a boyfriend but at the last minute chooses to stay; a stage mom aggressively promotes the career of her daughter; after a hard day at the office, a man beats his son; a woman tells her husband about a teenage lover. We meet many more people living what Thoreau calls “lives of quiet desperation.” They are Joyce’s Dubliners.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: The shaky arrow in our Easy to Hard Meter hovers uneasily near “pretty easy” – a little more demanding than Dubliners. This novel introduces us to Stephen Dedalus, who is modeled on James Joyce himself. We experience Stephen’s early childhood and his Dublin family, as well as his youth as a student in a Roman Catholic school operated by Jesuits. We meet him at Trinity College, Dublin, and then witness the blossoming of his intellectual and artistic life. Taking on the identity of an artist, the young man declares that a thing of beauty has three qualities: integrity, harmony, and radiance; in the Latin words of philosopher/theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Stephen quotes: integritas, consonantia, and claritas

Ulysses: The arrow on our Hard/Easy Meter shoots up fast toward “hard.” It pauses at first since the first few chapters are easily manageable. Ulysses was published in 1922, the same year as T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” and the year Ireland gained its independence. The story of Ulysses

takes place on one day, Thursday, June 16, 1904, in Dublin, Ireland. The three primary characters are the young artist Stephen Dedalus, whom we had already met in Portrait of the Artist, a middle-aged advertising salesman named Leopold Bloom, and Bloom’s wife Molly Bloom, who is a professional singer. The title refers to the Greek epic The Odyssey. Ulysses is Latin for the hero Odysseus. Each chapter in Ulysses is a retelling of some aspect of a story in The Odyssey. We go through the entire day with the three main characters and dozens of other Dubliners. Each chapter presents new writing styles as the story evolves until, in the final chapter (spoiler alert), it is past midnight and Molly Bloom is lying in bed reminiscing on her life and life itself as she slips toward sleep. This day is full and real. The people and the city itself are vibrantly alive. There is a reason that millions of people around the world celebrate June 16 as Bloomsday with public readings, dramatic performances, plenty of drinking, and awareness of how much occurs on any one day of our lives. We all become Dubliners, regardless of where we live, and each person’s day is revealed as a mystery.

Finnegans Wake: Our meter shuts down with a gasp leaving this statement from its AI, “Insufficient data. Cannot proceed.”

Maybe the following three stories can illustrate my current restraint about giving conventional information about this book.

THE LICENSE PLATE

My current North Dakota license plate reads HCEALP. It’s quite common for strangers, friends or work colleagues to ask me about my license plate. I could answer, “It’s something from a book I like a lot. HCE are the initials of one of the characters, a man who lives in Ireland, and ALP represents his wife. Her name is Anna Livia Plurabelle. The book is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.” That would clear up a lot. Friends who know me as an English teacher would not be surprised and would go on with their lives.

But I do not answer that way. I give three clues:

Ulysses is Latin for the hero Odysseus. Each chapter in Ulysses is a retelling of some aspect of a story in The Odyssey.

1. It is important to me. My spouse bought the plate as a gift. You won’t be able to figure it out. It’s not short for something like ILUVUSA, which can be easily deciphered.

2. A small number of people in the world and some in our community would recognize it immediately.

3. The reason I am holding back is because the question that you are asking is related to what it’s all about, namely reading itself and trying to decode language.

WHAT IS A BOOK?

A friend of mine who studied literature in college and had taken a class on Joyce wanted to read Finnegans Wake but was holding back and feeling intimidated. He invited me to have a conversation about the Wake and encouraged me to take the lead. I brought two volumes to our conversation, a copy of Finnegans Wake and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Pointing to each in turn, I asked, “Is this a book?” Suspecting that this might be a trick question, my friend paused. He eventually acknowledged that each of the volumes was indeed a “book,” a paper object with a cover, spine, and pages called “leaves.” The second question for him: Is this a text? Now we are thinking. A book is a physical object, but a text is an organization of language into meaning. Goodwin’s book on Lincoln is clearly a text as well as a book; FW is clearly a book but is it really a text? Maybe it is a modernist, Dadaist sculpture, a book posing as a text. Joyce was familiar with Dadaists. Dadaist Marcel Duchamp has become famous for displaying a men’s urinal in an art gallery and giving it the title “Fountain.” What do you do with the language on the pages or leaves of Finnegans Wake? The young man in the fable faced that dilemma. He had a book in his hand but what should he make of 628 pages of words, words, words? What makes them a “text”? The words of Finnegans Wake are now available

on tablet and online. What happens when you read Finnegan Wake, whatever it is, without its “book?”

A PENNY A PAGE

Another friend told me that she had started Ulysses but grew impatient and doubted whether it was worth it. She said, “I read Portrait of the Artist…I might go back to that.” I made a deal with her to read the first 29 pages, and I would pay her a penny a page. Each of my three children had earned a dollar a page, $29, to read the first chapter. They had to read without checking on commentaries, guides, etc. and then tell me what they were experiencing. They all earned their money.

My friend did the assignment and was extremely frustrated. She said she didn’t want to disappoint me. She wondered whether she was reading at all if she was just searching a page for a recognizable word or phrase. “Is that reading?“ she asked. Good question. Maybe the first chapter was written in this unusual style and things would clear up later. She looked ahead, but no, every page was inscrutable, unreadable, impregnable. I had brought another copy of Finnegans Wake (Penguin Books, 1991) that included an extensive introduction by Joyce scholar John Bishop. I did not encourage her to read it, but she insisted. I turned it over to her. She started with the first sentence. Bishop wrote, “There is no agreement as to what Finnegans Wake is about…” She began laughing uncontrollably but continued, “whether or not it is about anything.” She nearly fell out of her chair. We were both laughing uproariously. This was lots of fun. She did receive her $0.29 in a pretty little bag but felt she was underpaid for all her work. After all, my three children earned a dollar a page.

TO THE YOUNG READER IN THE FABLE:

Thanks for contacting me with your thoughts and questions. Our conversations will be a pleasure for me. Thanks also for sharing the story of your first frustrating encounter with Finnegans Wake. Please indulge me as I summarize my main points:

First, it is useful to read the four major works as a sequence. One can start anywhere, but this sequence is one way.

Second, as to Ulysses, you don’t need to hold back from grabbing any resource. By all means celebrate Bloomsday, whether you understand it or not. Knowing Stephen, Leopold, and Molly is essential whether you read the book or not.

Third: Finnegans Wake. I propose a deal. Read the first chapter, and I will pay you with the Irish beverage of your choice plus a required conversation in a public place. I have been toying with the idea that Joyce’s genius brought him to create a literary work that is both the hardest and easiest of books. I would gladly share my thoughts with you about how I read it as an “easy” book. My other claim is that Finnegans Wake is a deeply social book, meaning that all the commentary about it, including this message and our conversation, is intertwined with the text. All the chatter about it is part of it. You and I are characters in the book. Maybe I could write an article called “Here Comes Everybody and Everybody’s Talking.” Now let’s take a drive and read license plates. l

Did you find this article interesting? Brian Palecek will be teaching Reading Early James Joyce/ Preparing For Ulysses on Mondays, Sept. 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 - 6-8 pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/ classes-events

BRIAN PALECEK is a longtime participant in public humanities programs, since the inception of Humanities North Dakota and its forerunners in the 1970s. He is also a college English, Literature, and Humanities teacher, serving at United Tribes Technical College for 31 years until his recent retirement. His documentary film “Conversations on the Bench” received support from Humanities ND.

By all means celebrate Bloomsday, whether you understand it or not.

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF CONFLICT

by Kristine Paranica

INTRODUCTION:

Human beings experience conflict from birth. We start life in a warm environment and are forced into a cold and frightening space. In those early weeks of life, we experience conflict when we feel hungry or wet, or lack human touch. When people express anger, sadness, excitement, frustration, infants close by feel troubled and react by crying. As we get older, our conflicts get more complex as we develop and navigate relationships, learn to communicate effectively, and try to meet our needs and desires. We can experience complex conflict in our workplaces and as we navigate the many systems we encounter in the world.

Humans learn how to respond to conflict by mimicking others, learning by watching, sensing, seeing, hearing. At some point, these early “lessons” may become inadequate, and so we seek other ways to respond. We are wired to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, especially in situations that seem uncomfortable or scary. These responses typically fail to support constructive dialogue, and for some, even the thought of having conflict with someone can trigger those responses. Eventually, we develop skills to advocate for ourselves, to listen, make requests, negotiate, and we can learn to navigate conflict with skill, mediating our own disputes.

This article is based, in part, upon the work of Joseph P. Folger and Baruch A. Bush, authors of The Promise of Mediation, and the subsequent work of my colleagues with the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. While their book is about mediation, the focus of this article is the self-management of conflict. By applying the Transformative Mediation premises, strategies, and skills to self-manage our conflicts, we can learn to approach disagreement with awareness, compassion, and purpose.

CONFLICT AND CONFLICT INTERACTION:

Conflict is experienced internally, within ourselves, as well as externally, with others. When we are in conflict, we experience both: I am frustrated, angry, sad with you or a situation; but I am also angry with myself for not saying something or for reacting poorly. We also experience conflict with circumstances beyond our control, such as with decisions made by others that affect us, such as political legislation, the decisions of others, etc.

When we experience conflict with others, we consider this to be a crisis in human interaction. Our communication is strained, as well as our sense of connection to the other person. We feel bad, and we often see the other person as bad. This is part of the human experience of conflict: while I may love my friend, in the heat of the moment, I feel justified, angry, and unheard, and they are feeling much the same way. While we all might react differently, our human experience of weakness and self-absorption is universal.

When we experience conflict with others, we consider this to be a crisis in human interaction.

Take this example from Twitter™:

Do you find this guy relatable? Have you found yourself in a similar situation of annoyance?

Thomas’ story works really well for illustrating conflict. Your conflict might be about taking the last cup of coffee without making more or large-scale employee revolt: the same principles apply with this theory of conflict.

Whether the conflict is large like a full-blown toxic workplace environment, or simply frustration over the tidiness of your colleagues, these triggers are actually subjective because we have different values. Remember that one person’s mountain is another’s molehill.

As you begin to relate these ideas, think back to the last time you had a conflict with someone. Remember an instance in which you were irritated, maybe frustrated or angry, and your behavior changed because of the emotions you were feeling. Maybe you stopped talking to the person who was irritating you, or you felt like berating them, for example. Imagine how you felt when it was at its worst. The fundamental experience of conflict makes us feel like the victim, and we see the other as the oppressor. Even though most of our conflicts are with those we care most deeply about, they are the jerk, and we are in the right.

We call this experience conflict, and it creates weakness and self-absorption (where we only see our side of things). The paradox is that the same is true for the other person. As we “recover” from this experience emotionally, we start to regain our sense of strength. We have many ways of doing this. Maybe we speak to a trusted friend or mentor, maybe we take a walk or exercise to rid our body from the fight/flight experience to help restore us to rational thinking. We might even start to regret what we’ve said, and start to think more clearly about what the other person was saying.

CONFLICT

INSIGHT #1: THE UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE OF CONFLICT

Awareness of the incapacitating effects of weakness and self-absorption is the first step to

responding, rather than reacting, to conflict.

People in conflict tend to experience a sense of both:

Weakness: unsettled, confused, fearful, disorganized, vulnerable, powerless, unsure

Self-absorption: self-protective, defensive, suspicious, and incapable of stepping outside of their own frameworks

In order to increase our skills with conflict, we have to increase our self-awareness. What are your triggers and hot buttons? What feels threatening to you, and why? When you are triggered, notice what feelings arise, and how your behavior changes. Maybe, even before you realize that you are triggered, you hear yourself speaking sarcastically, or you feel the effects of stress in your body (e.g., neck, back, headache). These first signals that all is not well can help us to self-regulate before we are in a full-blown conflict.

For example, two coworkers were in a heated argument. Party A seemed oblivious of why Party B was so upset. As they discussed the concerns, B was becoming very upset, while A remained curious and calm. B started turning red and was jittery, and suddenly asked for a minute to gather their thoughts, then went out for a short walk. On the walk, B took some deep breaths, considered their next actions, and came back. B was much more calm and able to describe the situation without shouting, and A was better able to understand the situation. Knowing how to resist reacting to emotional triggers can help us feel balanced and more capable.

confidence organization, decisiveness

Compassion: we make shifts toward increasing attentiveness to the other, responsiveness to the other, openness to the other’s humanity, and appreciation for the other’s situation

How do we make these shifts? In order to experience the move from weakness to strength, we must develop self-awareness, as well as selfregulation, so that the choices we make help us to feel clear, confident, organized and decisive (the opposite of when we are in conflict). We do not like to feel weak and self-absorbed, and connecting to our inner strength is the first step in “recovering” from the conflict experience. We can enlist the help of others to help us make those shifts as well. If someone listens to us, and we feel seen, heard and understood, we can regain our sense of strength, for example.

CONFLICT INSIGHT #2: CHOOSE TO RESPOND EFFECTIVELY TO CONFLICT, NOT REACT

People can and do make dynamic shifts along two dimensions while conflict unfolds:

Strength: we make inner shifts toward increasing clarity, confidence, personal strength, self-

To make shifts from self-absorption to compassion, we first need some amount of strength. As we use our fortitude to step back and evaluate, the situation becomes clearer, and we become more curious, open, and attentive to the other person. We might see the bigger picture, the information we missed, or the impact on the other person. Eventually we may develop deep empathy for the other person, or even apologize. These “shifts” matter because they connect us to our values and make us feel good about ourselves. This experience is much preferred to the weakness and selfabsorption we feel during conflict.

Knowing how to resist reacting to emotional triggers can help us feel balanced and more capable.

In revisiting Thomas’ story, we can see how Thomas moved from frustration (weakness) to compassion (strength).

independent of what the specific outcomes of the conflict are.

Even if our behavior is not perfect or the conflict takes negative turns, we can be satisfied with our efforts and choices knowing what we were trying to achieve, and why. The struggle to act with strength and connection—in the face of differences with others—is a life-long opportunity for moral growth. It supports our effort not to act out of our lesser human traits of weakness and self-centeredness.

SKILLS FOR MANAGING CONFLICT:

CONFLICT INSIGHT #3: Effective communication skills can help make shifts happen.

We can help ourselves and others by paying attention to the signs of conflict, stepping back and taking a moment to observe what is happening. Gossiping, negativity, poor behavior, side-taking, lack of trust are all signs of conflict that is creating an uncomfortable or even toxic work environment. When we notice, we can start to identify the sources of conflict and move toward solutions.

How did these small shifts happen for Thomas? He heard new information: the annoying person was saving his seat and saw him as a friend. As his assumptions were challenged, he ended up feeling empathy and humility, and his frustration dissipated. We can likely relate to this experience.

Because people hold to fundamental ideas about human nature, part of why conflict destabilizes is that it disrupts this balancing act we have between individuality and connectedness to others. The Relational Worldview encourages us to act with a balance of strength and connection so that we respond to conflict with our fullest human capacity—

Checking in with others is also helpful. For example, maybe a co-worker is afraid to speak up at meetings, and you offer them space to have their voice heard. If you notice that someone left a meeting upset, you can decide to take the time to see if they are ok, allowing them to clarify their concerns without confrontation.

We can increase our active listening skills by being attentive, asking clarifying and open-ended questions, using non-verbal communication to show we are listening, and listening for emotions. Reflecting back or paraphrasing what someone has said can also help them to feel heard, and to gain clarity for everyone. This skill is successful in supporting shifts to strength and compassion.

Sometimes in conflict, we may need to seek the help of a neutral third party, such as a mediator. Mediators may use many of these skills to help

people in conflict. They follow an ethical code that provides confidentiality and neutrality, and honors the self-determination of the people who come to the mediation table. If you have employed all of your skills to try to resolve or manage conflicts and still need help, this can be a useful option.

CONCLUSION

As we navigate the bumps, hills, valleys, and triumphs in life, we need to start inward when we seek to increase our skills to manage our own emotions and to understand the universality of the conflict experience. From the beginning of our lives, we learn by observing, experiencing, and experimenting, but in the process, many develop habits around conflict and communication that no longer serve us or those we are in relationship with. Transforming our experiences with conflict interactions can help us both to make peace within and to strengthen our relationships. l

Did you find this article interesting? Kristine Paranica will be teaching Got Conflict? A guide to responding effectively on Thursdays, Oct. 3, 10, 17, 24 - 7-8:30 pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/classes-events

KRISTINE PARANICA, J.D., lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and is a Certified Transformative Mediator and Conflict Coach. She has been an Organizational Ombuds for 9 years, serving North Dakota State University, after 15+ years at the University of North Dakota as Director of the UND Conflict Resolution Center. She is a Fellow of the Institute of the Conflict Transformation, and an active chair, mentor, and presenter for the International Ombuds Association.

Reflecting back or paraphrasing what someone has said can also help them to feel heard, and to gain clarity for everyone.

LET’S GET P.O.W.E.R. HUNGRY!

by Jodee Bock

You read that right.

You wouldn’t be wrong if you thought I’d gone a little bonkers by making that declaration. After all, power has gotten a bad rap from all the dictators and egomaniacs we hear so much about these days.

But I’d like to make a case for embracing personal POWER as opposed to FORCE, because I think that’s what’s gotten lost in all the hype.

If we are completely honest with ourselves, most of us would admit that the world we are living in today could use a little tweaking.

OK, maybe more than “a little.”

If we keep doing the same things over and over again – yelling and complaining and blaming and pointing certain fingers – we are very probably going to get a lot of what we are slinging back in our own faces.

Instead of fighting against those issues we are clear we want to be different, and finding that hustling and grinding and making and forcing and motivating aren’t getting us where we wish we – and the rest of the world – would be, maybe it’s time to reach inside ourselves for our own personal P.O.W.E.R.

The distinction between external force

and internal power or, in the case of this essay, the acronym P.O.W.E.R., is going to be huge, so please hang with me here as I do my best to clear it up.

I’m confident that choosing your own personal P.O.W.E.R. will allow you the capacity to achieve, attract, experience, and become anything you’ve ever desired for yourself and your life, both at work and outside of work. It’s that P.O.W.E.R.ful.

Taking on personal development and selfawareness is not an easy task. Henry Ford told us many years ago that “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.”

The most challenging part of changing the direction of the journey of your life is: in order to create a different result for yourself and the world you live in, you will need to take a different action than that which you’ve been taking.

Yes, YOU (and me: we’re not in this alone).

Instead of getting angry about the way the world seems to be going, with all the issues that are demanding our attention and trying to force a new way of thinking on others, I’m going to invite you to consider that force is external to you. Forcing something to change (or to stop changing), along with making something happen and demanding something of yourself or others, automatically

creates resistance. That’s what force does.

And while it certainly does take overcoming force to achieve a breakthrough (consider how airplanes actually take off and stay in the air as just one example), if we feel forced for too long, that resistance will eventually cause us to stop trying. And that’s how we become cynical and resigned.

Like force, motivation is external and based on fear. It comes from the personality, the senses. And while there is certainly a time and a place for motivation, it isn’t a long-term-relationship-building strategy.

Power, on the other hand, is like inspiration. It can be recognized and experienced only through inner awareness. It’s not even a doing: it’s a being. When you are inspired, you can’t not be inspiring. Your energy is magnetic. You do things from a place of authenticity and a desire to be connected.

So let’s get into the details about P.O.W.E.R.

P.O.W.E.R. is an acronym to uncover those hidden and untapped sources inside that you may have neglected, forgotten about, or not yet discovered: Purpose, Open-mindedness, Wisdom, Energy, and Responsibility.

When you understand your own personal power by breaking it down into manageable chunks, you will realize, as Dorothy did in The Wizard of Oz, that

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

you’ve had everything you need inside of you all along. It’s just a matter of turning it on.

Let’s touch on each of those components.

P – PURPOSE: YOUR DESIRED OUTCOME

We all have dreams. The random wishes and hopes that come to us, seemingly out of the blue, are actually clues to our true desires. But having been trained and programmed and conditioned to be practical, you might begin to notice that your inner critic tends to take over as soon as you allow yourself to think about a possibility.

“If I don’t know the HOW of it, what’s the use?” your responsible side will tell you.

This is exactly why it’s crucial that we talk about the whole idea of PURPOSE.

Before you take on a new task, it’s crucial that you determine what you do know and what you don’t yet know. Just as you need a plan and blueprint to build a house, you need that same vision to build anything you want to take from your head and bring it into the real world. Without a clear objective – a WHY – activity turns to busyness.

Unless you are willing to examine the WHY behind your seemingly monotonous activities, you will find yourself years from now in the same place, longing

for change but not knowing what to do.

Having the curiosity to question a process is one thing. Having the courage to ask the question of a person whom it can impact – especially if that person is in a position of authority – may be another thing entirely.

Once you know what you stand for and are clear on your own WHY, the rest gets a lot easier. Which leads us to the second part.

O – OPEN-MINDEDNESS: YOUR INVITATION TO LIFELONG LEARNING

Have you ever seen those booths at trade shows or events that look like old-fashioned phone booths, but with a bunch of dollars blowing around inside? The idea is that someone has an opportunity to grab as much blowing cash as they can in an allotted time frame.

If you’ve ever witnessed this, you notice that the person inside doesn’t just grab one handful. They are frantically stuffing money into pockets, shirts, pants – anywhere they can so they are free to grab more.

How much money would they gather if they were not willing to part with the cash in hand on the first grab? They have to be willing to open their hands so they are able to get more.

How much information or

knowledge can you gather and accumulate if you are not willing to open your mind to learn more than you already know?

Being open-minded doesn’t mean being empty-headed. It means being coachable. Sports offer a great analogy here.

Take a sport like basketball.

On the court, a player has a definite outcome in mind. That outcome is to score more points than the other team.

The problem with success in basketball is that the more successful a team gets over time, the more likely they are to become less open and less coachable.

They tend to believe that their current status is all that matters, and they may very well hold tightly to that one and only winning formula.

Apply that to your own life off the basketball court. Once you think you know it all, you’re doomed to be as smart as you’re ever going to be. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

When you are open-minded, you are willing to learn and to share your learning. You are also willing to admit what you don’t know.

Being open allows questions even if there are no solid answers. It’s more about the space to question, not about being right about the answers. Unless you

are open to new possibilities, you will always get what you’ve always gotten. Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

This leads us to the next section.

your strengths and know where to go to leverage your weaknesses instead of trying to shore them up.

its rate of vibration. The denser the material, the slower the vibration. Take good old H2O, for example. It can show up as a solid (ice), a liquid (water), or a gas (steam). The only difference is the rate of vibrational energy.

W

– WISDOM: LOOKING BACK TO GO FORWARD

Apple founder Steve Jobs told graduates in a Stanford commencement address in 2005 that we can only connect the dots of our lives by looking backward. That’s wisdom.

You can’t change the past, but you can extract any negative energy from what might not have worked the way you wish it had and keep the historical happenings. Wisdom is knowing what you know as well as what you don’t know. It’s a result of experience, not theory.

Think about it like this. There’s a map and there’s the actual road. The map only tells you about the route, and even though a GPS can tell you a little more detail with a little less hassle, it’s still only telling you about the current situation. You still won’t physically observe and experience the road construction or the beauty of the scenery along the route until you get into it – or until you recalculate and adjust.

It’s only theory until it’s reality.

Wisdom is really a quality of mind – a way of looking at life. You build wisdom when you know

Life is too short to spend your months, weeks, days, hours, or even minutes in regret. Get over the notion that there is a shortcut to success. There will be pain; but make sure, at the end of the day, that it’s the pain of hard work and awareness rather than the pain of regret.

Let’s take a look at the next section.

E – ENERGY: KEEPING YOUR BATTERY CHARGED

Everything you see, taste, touch, smell, and hear – even those thoughts you think – is made up of vibrating energy. Energy is something you can’t touch, but you sure can feel it.

As it relates to us humans, energy is really a pretty simple concept. It’s how you show up in your life. It’s your attitude, your demeanor, your outlook. It’s that old glass-half-full or half-empty story.

And when you really think about it, energy is the most important personal resource available. It’s the missing link between your ambitions and your ability to experience whatever you truly desire.

Going back to junior high physical science class, everything you perceive in your physical environment is dependent upon

You know energy. You can sense it right now. If you are uncertain, ask yourself how you feel. If you feel good, you’re in a higher energy state. If you feel bad, it’s a lower state.

You will attract to yourself the vibrational match to what you’re putting out. It’s science.

And you can shift that energy.

I used to think of the tasks that needed to get done around me as obligations. Over time I shifted to seeing them as responsibilities. But when I shifted to seeing them as opportunities, nothing seemed like a HAVE TO. It was much closer much more often to a GET TO. I realized I had a choice to see things differently.

Ah, it’s just semantics, Jodee. Maybe. But isn’t it true that mindset has a lot to do with why tasks fall into one of those categories? How does it FEEL? If you get that distinction, you’re starting to understand energy.

And, finally, the R.

R – RESPONSIBILITY: IF IT IS TO BE IT IS UP TO ME

Take out a piece of paper right now and write down as many responses as you can come up

Wisdom is knowing what you know as well as what you don’t know. It’s a result of experience, not theory.

with to this question: “What keeps happening to me?”

Got the list done? How did that feel? Heavy? That’s because victim energy looks at everything that happens as a personal attack at worst, and bad luck at best.

Now take that piece of paper and crumple it up. Slam-dunk it into the trash. Let’s start again.

Instead, ask yourself, “What keeps happening FOR me?”

Similar question, very different energy. And a very different focus.

To what or to whom am I most responsible? If the answer is not “myself,” why is that? In order to be the most effective member of any team, I need to work on myself first.

When you realize that it’s possible to imperfectly accept responsibility and start acknowledging the way you ask that question, you will start to appreciate that taking responsibility really offers the most freedom you could ever want at work and in your personal life.

And your decision to work on yourself first will be like dropping a pebble into a pond. The ripples start with you, but go outward in concentric circles, eventually impacting all of humanity.

Being personally accountable allows you the opportunity to direct the one person you will never leave nor lose: you.

While taking responsibility and

being willing to be accountable are actually the highest forms of control you could ever want, when it comes down to it, most people will think it’s all about the other person. They think accountability involves a standard they hold others to, and they seem to think they can make their organizations better by rewarding, punishing, coercing, forcing, and bribing others to hold up their end of whatever bargain they think they’re creating before they decide to do it themselves.

Unless something changes, nothing will change. And you have 100% opportunity to change you.

There you have it: the ultimate formula for owning your personal P.O.W.E.R. so you don’t have to rely on force.

When you clarify the vision you want for yourself and your life and utilize it to set the foundation for your new outlook, the future can look very bright indeed.

It is only your uncertainty that will cause you to fear the choices you have in front of you, and potentially fall back into the push and the force and the motivation that are familiar even if no longer effective.

While there are no guarantees that doing something different will be better, it’s clear that what we’ve been doing to produce desired results hasn’t been working. Something has to be different. And the only way to

better is through different.

Owning your P.O.W.E.R. might be the difference-maker. The time is now.

(This essay includes ideas from Jodee’s book P.O.W.E.R. Tools @ Work: Helping Leaders Build a Strong, Engaged & Connected Culture.) l

Did you find this article interesting? Jodee Bock will be teaching Putting Your Personal P.O.W.E.R. to Work For You on Tuesdays, Sept. 5, 12, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 10 - 6-8 p.m Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/classes-events

JODEE BOCK is a dynamic business communicator who encourages people to have conversations and dialogues that matter, with people who matter (and that’s everyone).

Jodee has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of corporate communication, media relations, executive coaching, and training & development. The author of several books, podcast interviews, speeches, and blog posts, Jodee is a thought leader who has been called a ‘boat rocker’ and a ‘people enhancer’, thanks to her unique ability to add a new perspective to common ways of thinking.

Taking responsibility really offers the most freedom you could ever want at work and in your personal life.

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TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY: GOOGLE FIBER, CHAT GPT, AND THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY

by Robert Mejia

Ten years ago, I sat in the living room of a stranger’s house in Kansas City, Missouri’s historically impoverished East Side. I had come to speak with the owner to learn more about the effect Google’s ultra-high-speed broadband internet initiative was having on her community. At the time, few residential services providers offered internet speeds above 75 Mbps, and 7 million households lacked access to speeds beyond 3 Mbps. Google’s promise of speeds of 1,000 Mbps—which was capable of downloading large files in just minutes or seconds versus hours or days for the average internet user—was so enticing that more than 1,000 communities across the country applied to be the first to receive the service. Kansas City, in both Kansas and Missouri, were selected first, as elected officials offered Google a number of regulatory and economic incentives.

The kickoff announcement on March 29, 2011, exclaiming that Kansas City had won what Forbes termed “the Google Fiber jackpot”, articulated many of the beliefs surrounding the need for ultra-

high-speed internet. “Data speed is like oxygen, right?” said Google’s Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette. Kansas City, Kansas School’s Superintendent Cindy Lane claimed that the average high school student texts 1,200 times before they get to school, “and so their world is fast, fast, fast, but when they get to the school, we slow way down.” Dr. Roy Jensen of the University of Kansas’ Cancer Center rhetorically asked what it would mean for telehealth if “you weren’t constantly reminded that your physician really is hundreds of miles away.” We were encouraged to imagine the impact this “next step infrastructure” would have on education, entertainment, business, and more. Few at the time (or even now) questioned the validity or desirability of those claims. Few, if any of us, will die if our internet is slow. A high school student would need to text 8 to 13 times per minute nonstop to send 1,200 texts before the start of school. Should we be excited that our physician is hundreds of miles away?

It was within this context that I asked the elderly African American homeowner,

“What impact do you believe Google Fiber will have on your community?” She replied, “None.” Then she pointed out her front bay window to an abandoned lot overflowing with trash directly across the street. She told me that the neighborhood had long struggled with reliable trash service, and that some residents had taken to dumping old clothing, furniture, mattresses, and other forms of refuse in abandoned lots like the one adjacent to her house. “When the trash is gone, then we can talk about Google Fiber.” She then proceeded to tell me that the neighborhood had long been abandoned by the city, that sidewalks remained in disrepair, that economic opportunity was sparse. Google Fiber, to her, might as well have been a world away—which it both was and was not.

During the time of my visit—and even to this day— few Google Fiber-connected homes and apartments exist in Kansas City’s East Side, with the vast majority located west of Kansas City’s historical racial divide, Troost Avenue. Here, in the hypersegregated white and affluent Kansas City west side, one would find Google’s office, entrepreneurial communities, the $2 billion-endowed Kauffman Foundation, and more, singing the praise and reaping the benefits of corporate and governmental investment in ultrahigh-speed internet. The distribution of these harms and benefits too, however, were unevenly distributed even within Kansas City’s hypersegregated white and affluent Kansas City, Missouri west side.

During another visit, I booked a stay at what was then known affectionately as Kansas City’s “Home for Hackers.” Established in 2012 by Ben Barreth, a local web developer, this four-bedroom, one-bath home located directly on the Kansas side of State Line Road received international attention for offering transplant tech entrepreneurs six months of free rent and for being at the epicenter of Kansas City’s Startup Village neighborhood—which it helped to

establish. Tourists curious about this burgeoning epicenter of what some believed would be the Midwest’s answer to Silicon Valley, a “Silicon Prairie,” could book one room at the home, and I did just that.

Though national and international media spoke glowingly of this entrepreneurial model and that of similar programs in the area, such as Brad Feld’s Fiberhouse (which offered one year of free residence), I instead found that beneath the veneer of the entrepreneurial lifestyle was instead what I termed in 2015 as “a pressure chamber of innovation.” During my time at the home, the entrepreneurs rarely spoke to one another. One resident abruptly left without explanation—his roommate speculated that it was due to financial stress. My bedroom door did not close properly, leaving approximately a 1-inch gap (affording no privacy) and I was asked not to turn on my room’s space heater, as it would overload the house’s electrical system. I ultimately cut my stay short after noticing a mouse roaming around the corner of my room one morning. The tech entrepreneurial lifestyle was not all that it was made out to be.

It would be a mistake, however, to interpret these two distinct but interrelated experiences as suggesting that all residents—whether those in the Startup Village or those in the Eastside—were equally affected by Google Fiber’s arrival in Kansas City. Though entrepreneurial communities operate like pressure chambers—with most startups failing, many catastrophically—there is a difference between being perceived as a high-risk, high-reward form of investment versus a community to avoid altogether. Those on the west side had access to startup funding and economic opportunities that those on the east side were denied. Those on the west side had access to free entrepreneurial workshops and the general ability to move with relative freedom through the city. For those on the Kansas City

The effects a technology will have on a society are contingent upon the existing political, economic, social, and cultural infrastructure of which it is a part.

east side, however, overpolicing and government disinvestment in public infrastructure severely hindered their ability to take advantage of what should have been citywide opportunities.

I share this history of Kansas City’s experience with Google Fiber as a cautionary tale through which to understand the advent of advanced artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems, such as ChatGPT. Though it is common to speak of technologies like ChatGPT as things in themselves—neutral tools whose effect on society is contingent upon the intentions of the user—technologies are highly integrated sociopolitical systems. The effects a technology will have on a society are contingent upon the existing political, economic, social, and cultural infrastructure of which it is a part. In the case of Google Fiber, Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri have a long history of racial segregation. It is thus unsurprising that the implementation of this ultrahigh-speed internet infrastructure would map onto that existing racial network. This is especially so since many of the biggest advocates for bringing Google Fiber to Kansas City were those who had helped to create that existing racial network in the first place.

This same awareness should be brought to considerations regarding the effects that AGI systems will have—indeed are already having—on society. Focusing on the most popular and successful AGI system in operation, ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, a research laboratory heavily funded by Microsoft. Its development comes at a time when companies—such as Microsoft—are increasingly looking into ways to automate labor to reduce the cost of production and increase profit. Since the United States is increasingly a service economy, with most major manufacturing automated or outsourced to other nations, the most expensive industries have been those most resistant to automation, primarily science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, as well as those working in some creative industries, such as the entertainment industries. It should thus be no surprise that AGI systems, such

as ChatGPT, hold significant potential to disrupt these industries. The disruption will not be because ChatGPT is better at the job than actually existing humans, as that is beside the point. ChatGPT will disrupt these industries because it will be more cost effective to utilize AGI systems than employ actually existing humans. Any tradeoff in quality (whether real or perceived) will be more than made up by the exponential gain in economic efficiency.

There will be many for whom, as with the case of Google Fiber, ChatGPT might as well seem worlds away. The conversation surrounding ChatGPT will seem less pressing than the immediate needs that stand before them. This is understandable, as, for them, ChatGPT will operate as an extension of an already existing system of racial, gendered, and classed domination. Whereas before those individuals would have been denied employment due to lack of connections, lack of opportunities, or abstract notions of ‘fit’, they will now be denied employment because those jobs that do remain will be reserved for the racial, economic, and gendered elite. It too, however, would be a mistake not to take seriously the unique threat ChatGPT will have on already marginalized communities. Whereas more racially, gendered, and economically privileged communities will have to confront the possibility of limited political economic opportunities, already marginalized communities will be at risk of increasing surveillance and policing due to AGI being leveraged by police departments and related institutions.

The futures described above are not inevitable. Like Google Fiber, ChatGPT’s actual implementation is contingent upon existing political, economic, and social networks. Like Google Fiber, those networks favor increased political, economic, and social concentration. Nonetheless, unlike Kansas City’s experiment with Google Fiber, there is still time for concerned citizens to petition their political representatives and demand for stronger regulation and oversight surrounding AGI development and implementation. There is still time to demand that businesses and institutions take seriously the ethical

implications of haphazardly employing AGI systems. There is still time to support research that takes into account the uneven array of possible harms and benefits associated with the widespread or narrow adoption of AGI systems. There is still time to consider whether AGI systems, in themselves, are appropriate to deploy on a widespread or even narrow scale at all.

Regarding this last point, it is all too easy to believe in technological inevitability, that once a technology is developed, it is too late and simply a matter of adaptation. There are, however, numerous histories of technological failures or forceful political, economic, and technical interventions that have fundamentally transformed the operations of a technology. This article focused on Google’s ultrahigh-speed internet service, Google Fiber, as I believe it serves as a compelling cautionary tale regarding considerations of ChatGPT. To offer an example of technological failure, however, I could have instead offered the history of Google’s other products: Google Stadia (a defunct cloud gaming service); Google Glass (discontinued smart glasses); Google+ (a defunct social network). These are just a handful of Google products that were discontinued due to a number of factors: some due to economic pressures, others due to political or social pressures. The point is not to single out Google—indeed ChatGPT is a Microsoft-funded project—but rather to illustrate that even the most powerful of tech companies are vulnerable to public pressure.

As it pertains to ChatGPT, the public discourse must not be limited to hypothetical conversations about what ChatGPT, abstracted from society, may or may not do. As I have attempted to show throughout this article, ChatGPT, like Google Fiber, is already entrenched in existing political, economic, and social networks. Public conversations about ChatGPT must take into account how AGI systems map onto these networks, and how ChatGPT is already being

actively deployed to transform those systems often in ways likely detrimental to various publics and communities. If we are to ensure that technology is put in service of society, then society and its political representatives must have the final say on how a technology is to be implemented. Otherwise, to paraphrase the late philosopher Jacques Ellul, it will not be technology that is configured to serve the needs of society but rather society that is configured to serve the needs of technology and the technological elite. l

Did you find this article interesting? Robert Mejia will be teaching Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact On Humanity on Mondays, Sept. 4, 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23 - 7-8 pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd.org/classesevents

ROBERT MEJIA (PhD, Illinois) is an independent scholar of media and cultural studies. He has published widely on the intersections of technology and culture. His latest work on the intersections of race and media can be found in the Routledge Handbook of Ethnicity and Race in Communication.

Even the most powerful of tech companies are vulnerable to public pressure.

BITE-SIZED MEMORIES: THE MICROMEMOIR

by Christine Guaragno

When my daughter tells me a story, she articulates with gestures and babbles short phrases. Her tiny hands punctuate each sentence–” I grandma! I popcorn! I eat!” I transcribe her excitement into clarifying questions.

“Did you eat popcorn? With grandma?”

“Yes!”

She’s two, and these are the details that matter.

It would be easy to dismiss the storytelling skills of a toddler–but there is so much we can learn from her brevity. Indulge me in some analysis. The “I” in each sentence provides the reader with a strong sense of point of view. The characters are introduced in how they relate to one another, “I” and “grandma.” The “I” being possessive of “grandma.” There is a clear action–they eat the popcorn. Her enthusiastic “Yes!” to my follow-up offers finality and tone. Every word counts in a story with these few sentences. Her story is short and true. There is an urgency in her voice to share these details with me, and I am drawn in by her urgency.

We can take these same principles and apply them to the burgeoning genre of flash creative nonfiction. Also called micromemoir, anecdotes, short talks, or short shorts, flash creative nonfiction is a short form genre that utilizes fewer than 1,000 words per story. (There are variations that ask for fewer than 100 words, or allow up to 2,000 words, but the ethos of the form relies on intensity and consion.) Short and pithy, the writer focuses on a single moment that captures the larger story they wish to tell.

Dinty W. Moore, who runs the online flash creative nonfiction journal Brevity, offers a fire metaphor to capture the genre’s guiding principles. “The brief essay… needs to be hot from the first sentence, and the heat must remain the entire time… The heat might come from language, from image, from voice or point-of-view, from revelation or suspense, but there must always be a burning urgency of some sort, translated through each sentence, starting with the first.”

Metaphors aside, Mississippi poet laureate and author of Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, Beth Ann Fennelly offers this definition, “A true hybrid, the micro-memoir strives to combine the extreme abbreviation of poetry, the narrative tension of fiction, and the truth-telling of creative nonfiction.”

Short, narrative, and true. A burning sense of urgency. Heat. It’s a challenge, but authors of short form nonfiction embrace the challenge and see the paradoxical freedom that restraint offers the writer. Fennelly explains, in her article, “Making much of the moment: A guide to the micro-memoir”, that after spending years writing a novel, she reveled in writing “little snippets,” memories, and overheard conversations. She had assumed that eventually the few lines she jotted down in her notebook would begin to form something larger, an essay, or story. But those feelings

changed.“These little clusters of sentences: What if they weren’t supposed to “add up to something” but instead were somethings? What if they were exactly the size they were meant to be?” Eventually the “little clusters” were bound together as a collection of micro-memoirs. Much like a collection of poetry, each micro-memoir stands on its own but works in concert with others. When read together, the micromemoirs create a cohesive collection bound together by theme.

I can’t pinpoint what drew me to explore writing in the form of flash nonfiction. I have always been a writer, but unlike my friends I didn’t spend my childhood writing 800 page trilogies. I was a voracious reader, (still am) and I felt a lot of shame that I never wanted to write a novel. Creating an entire world from scratch? It never appealed to me in the same way that writing flash did. Instead of worrying about plotting or character development, writing flash allows the author to focus on specific moments, images, or conversations. Also, and almost more importantly, writing a micro-memoir is a lot less daunting! “Unlike the novel, micro-memoirs were low-stakes. If one failed – well, so what? Throw it away, all 30 precious words of it, and write another.”

Fennelly offers this advice to writers exploring flash for the first time, “Consider your quirkiest memories. Forget about big memories.” Instead of worrying about how to introduce “heat” to your story, try her approach. Seek out the idiosyncratic moments from a larger memory and build the story from there. Remember my toddler’s enthusiastic rendering of her day out with grandma? She had actually spent the day at the park, gone shopping for new light-up sneakers, and had gone to a special musical storytime. But to her, none of those details captured the relationship between her and her grandma, the absolute adoration she has for this woman who cares for her so tenderly. For my daughter the heart of the story was two people, eating popcorn. l

Curious about flash creative nonfiction? Here are some resources to check out!

Brevitymag.com Online and free! Published three times a year in the winter, spring and fall. In addition to flash nonfiction, Brevity has archives of craft essays and teaching resources.

Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

“Making much of the moment: A guide to the micro-memoir” by Beth Ann Fennelly

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teachers by Dinty W. Moore

Did you find this article interesting? Christine Guaragno will be teaching Bitesized Memories: Writing a “Micro” Memoir on Tuesdays, Sept. 5, 12, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 10, 17 - 6-8 pm Central time, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd. org/classes-events

CHRISTINE GUARAGNO is a writer, adjunct professor, and assistant librarian from Pennsylvania. She writes poetry and nonfiction. You can check out her latest project, a collection of poems about motherhood at Stirring: A Literary Collection.

The writer focuses on a single moment that captures the larger story they wish to tell.

A SMALL TASTE OF UMBRIA IN ASSISI

by Joan Leotta

Each of Italy’s twenty regions has a distinct culinary profile. Within those regions individual towns are immensely proud of their interpretation of that tradition and of their own unique additions to the foodscape of the area. My daughter Jennie and I decided to go to Assisi for an overnight on our recent (March 2023) trip to Italy. We wanted to enjoy the town that nurtured the animal- and nature-loving St. Francis and his spiritual sister Clare and the artwork of their respective cathedrals. Even though the brevity of this stop gave us only one lunch and one dinner, we wanted to use those mealtimes to sample as many Umbrian specialties as we could.

Pre-trip research was a help. Umbria takes special pride in their cured meats, including some that have achieved the coveted DOP (official seal of approval for a food item uniquely produced in a particular area) and particular cheeses. Umbria’s cured meats, mostly pork, rivals that of the famous Parma hams. Prosciutto di Norcia and a wide variety of artisanal salamis and cappacola are advertised on billboards and posters and are touted on restaurant menus all over the region. Our problem was having only two days—one lunch, one dinner, and one breakfast to sample these delights.

My daughter Jennie and I arrived in

Assisi, after a short drive from Rome, at noon, too early to check into the Giotto Hotel and Spa. We consigned our bags at the desk for storage and walked up the hill to the main square (about two city blocks).

Wanting to avoid the most touristy locations, we avoided restaurants fronting on the delightful square and dipped onto a side street. There we found a restaurant entrance (Ristorante Taverna Dei Consoli) flanked by flowers and a blackboard menu touting some interesting plates. Entering, the owner/host directed us to a table on the balcony overlooking the Piazza and its lovely fountain, so we had the bonus of being able to enjoy the square with a local food setting.

The variety of foods on the menu and the fact that the tables all around us were filled with Italians confirmed that we had made a good choice.

The menu offered an array of local items including local meats, wines, and sweets and the Umbrian pasta, stringozzi, with fungi, sausage, and spinach. We opted for a light lunch since our walking tour was due to start at two. Jennie ordered the meat and cheese plate (local offerings promised) and a roasted artichoke. I ordered local grilled vegetables (eggplant, radicchio, zucchini). We decided to share everything. Although

the menu offered a wide variety of Umbrian wines, thinking of our impending tour again, we decided on sparkling mineral water instead. A special Umbrian focaccia, like dense pita bread cut into triangles, was served on the meat and cheese plate Jennie ordered. The local bread came with my grilled veggies and fresh greens salad.

When our waiter realized we were serious about knowing more about the various meats and cheeses, he brought out the whole capicola (house made) from which our portion had been sliced and proceeded to tell us about the prosciutto, a delicate, delightful naturally cured prosciutto from the nearby town Norcia. In my opinion, and certainly all over Umbria it

is the equal of the famous San Daniele in quality. The cheeses had names that were new to us, but by taste, we could tell they were all varieties of pecorino— sheep’s cheeses. One had been aged at least 18 months, from the way it crumbled. The taste was mild, but hearty with salt kept well in check so that the cheese went well with honey. The other was a similar cheese but had been aged with truffles. We noted something different about the local bread when tasting it and the next morning at breakfast, learned that the local bread is made without salt to make it a suitable background for Umbria’s salty meats and cheeses. My seasonal grilled vegetables, eggplant,

red peppers, and zucchini, were delightful—just enough of the local olive oil, lightly salted. Jennie’s artichoke was as tasty as the ones in Rome and very fresh.

On our way back to the hotel to meet our guide, we wandered slowly back down the hill, enjoying fully the peaceful atmosphere of the place—even the pigeons seemed well behaved in Assisi, as if to honor Saint Francis, who is often pictured with them, with sparrows and with various forest animals. Our tour guide, Andrea, was delightful. She explained the art and the legends of the city with just enough emphasis on each. We ended the tour in the Piazza Santa Chiara, with the church dedicated to St. Clare, where we enjoyed an

apertivo with our guide before she left us. The sun was beginning to set, and we took full advantage of the overlook to let the scene enchant us, imbue us a sense of contentment. We tore ourselves away from the viewing area only when the darkness was almost full and headed down the hill to our hotel.

Italy was still on standard time during our visit. By dinnertime, around seven, it was very dark, enough to make me a bit nervous about tripping on the cobblestone streets if we were to try to go back to the center of town. We took a look at the hotel menu, saw it was outstanding, and made a reservation there.

The hotel did not offer the region’s signature pasta, but rather offered pasta and rice courses that were made with regional touches. Everything on the menu, we were assured, was fresh, and locally sourced. We split a first course, fantastic cheese, and eggplant timbale, Tortino Melanzane, enhanced with both a basil and red sauce, making the dish a work of art in the Italian flag colors, red, white, and green. Rich but delicious.

Jennie then ordered the linguini special of the night, a shark and tangerine pollen special, sprinkled with flavored breadcrumbs. I had the riso sedano verdurine, which was a risotto with celery, elevated with abundance of saffron and a liberal sprinkling of bits of fried guanciale from Norcia throughout. We were both very pleased with our choices.

The wine list offered many local whites and reds. Our waiter recommended a local Fiordaliso, a crisp dry white wine with a pleasant

floral taste and clear golden color. We ate overlooking the sparkling lights of houses spread like stars in the undulating Umbrian hills through the floor to ceiling windows in the dining room.

The following morning, I took one last look out at the countryside from the hotel’s patio at the view where St Francis and so many pilgrims seeking peace have found solace. Assisi is a special place, one to which I hope to return—a place that offers unique nourishments for body and soul.

After a breakfast of breads and local jams, on a buffet that offered foods to please travelers from all over Europe, Asia, and the Americas, we were off to Tuscany to Siena to see the Cathedral, the Campo (main Piazza and site of an annual horse race) and take an art class and of course to eat the world-renowned sweet of Siena, Panforte, but that’s another story. l

Did you find this article interesting?

Joan Leotta will be teaching Writing from the Kitchen—Let Food Inspire Your Pen on Thursdays, Sept. 7, 14, 21, 28 - 1-3 pm CST, using the Zoom platform. Register at humanitiesnd. org/classes-events

JOAN LEOTTA is a writer and story performer who often tells tales of food, family, and strong women. A journalist for many years, she also writes fiction, memoir, poetry, and essays.

We learned that the local bread is made without salt to make it a suitable background for Umbria’s salty meats and cheeses.

HUMANITIES NORTH DAKOTA WELCOMES NEW BOARD MEMBERS

MARK HOLMAN

Getting his start on the family farm in the Red River Valley, Mark Holman has lived across North Dakota and Minnesota, spending much of his life working in different facets of education and agriculture. He lives in Williston with his wife, Gina, and works as a teacher/librarian for Williston Public Schools. He is committed to the humanities in North Dakota and is excited to continue contributing by serving on the board.

DOROTHY LICK

Dorothy Lick, senior vice president of education for the North Dakota Bankers Association, lives in Bismarck and is originally from Hazen. She graduated from the University of Mary with degrees in English and Business Administration and worked for the ND Department of Commerce for six years before joining NDBA in 2000. Active in the community, Dorothy is a United Way board member and past chair of Women United. She volunteers with the North Dakota Leadership Seminar and previously served on the board of Missouri Valley Family YMCA. She is a 2013 graduate of the Center for Technology and Business’s Women’s Leadership Program. In her spare time, Dorothy officiates high school and college volleyball. She is married to Brad, a retired high school teacher.

TRYGVE HAMMER

Trygve Hammer is a retired Marine Corps officer and a veteran of both the Global War on Terror and K-12 classrooms in rural North Dakota. He served as an infantry weapons platoon commander in Iraq in 2003, taught 7-12 science at TGU Granville from 2016-2019, and was on the front lines of hybrid inperson and on-line teaching as a long-term substitute teacher at the height of the pandemic. Trygve has also taught at the college level, returning to his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, to teach leadership, strategy and tactics, and a Marine Corps capstone course. He has written speeches for ambassadors and admirals and is a sought-after speaker for military-related events in the Souris River Valley area. Trygve has three adult children living near Navy bases on both coasts.

FALL 2023

Public

Registration is currently open

Class sizes are limited

CLASSICAL CHAT: MEET THE ORCHESTRAS OF NORTH DAKOTA

Linda Boyd

This is a 9-meeting virtual class using the Zoom platform. First Tuesday of the month: Sept. 5, Oct. 3, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, 2023 - Jan. 2, Feb. 6, March 5, April 2, May 7, 2024 - 7-9pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This class will offer an indepth introduction and discussion of the pieces to be performed by the four orchestras in North Dakota: Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, Bismarck-Mandan Orchestra, Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra, and Minot Symphony Orchestra during the 2023-24 concert season.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Linda Boyd served as Executive Director of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony three times: 1993-96, 2007-2019, and once more as interim 2022-23 (during a year-long CEO search). Her career also included stints as a recording studio and record label owner (19952011); high school, college and church choral director and composer; elected official (Fargo City Commissioner/Deputy Mayor and School Board Member/President (2004-2018); and visual artist/graphic designer. She has a passion for introducing people to arts experiences by meeting them where they are.

LEARN HIDATSA!

Lisa Casarez

This is a 11-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Sundays, Sept. 10, 17, 24, Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, Nov. 5, 12, 19, 2023 - 12:30-2:30pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This class will be an introduction to Hidatsa, which is part of the Siouan Language Family and an Indigenous Language of the Northern Plains. It is spoken by the people of the MHA Nation of the Fort Berthold Reservation.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Lisa Casarez is MHA/Chicana. Language Warrior.

GOT

CONFLICT? A GUIDE TO RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY

Kristine K. Paranica

This is a 4-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Thursdays, Oct. 3, 10, 17, 24 - 7-8:30pm CST

University classes are FREE to everyone, thanks to the support of the members of Humanities North Dakota

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This course is designed for anyone, and any level, because we all experience conflict. We will learn more about how and why we respond in certain ways in conflict, what our conflict styles are, and how we experience conflict internally and relationally. We will practice skills for effective conflict management and learn new ways to respond that can lead to much better conversations.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Kristine K. Paranica is a Certified Transformative Mediator(TM), a Conflict Coach, and an Organizational Ombuds. She has worked in higher education for over 25 years. She led the Conflict Resolution Center and taught at the UND School of Law for 17 years, and is now at NDSU.

REMEMBERING AMERICANA

Raffi Andonian

This is an 11-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Thursdays, Sept. 7, 14, 21, 28, Oct. 5, 12, 19, 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16 - 6:15-7:45pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: Peanut butter and beer, St. Patrick’s Day parades and cultural memory, and historic monuments and mummies in museums. When looking back to the past from our present, how do we select what to remember? The debates about what qualifies as appropriate history have occurred for generations as we seek to understand and validate who we are. In this course, we will look beyond our own opinions, and together as a group aim to learn more to pause and inquire so we may contribute constructively around us.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Raffi Andonian is a frequent guest on ABC-NBC-FOX-CBS TV stations nationwide and also produces and hosts his own streaming TV show that aims to challenge the present by inquiring about the past. He has authored 3 Amazon best-selling books, and he has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in history and another master’s degree in historic preservation. He began his career as a guide working at the Gettysburg battlefield, the Martin Luther King Jr. childhood home, and in Los Alamos where the atomic bomb was created.

WRITING FROM THE KITCHEN—LET FOOD INSPIRE YOUR PEN

Joan Leotta

This is a 4-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Thursdays, Sept. 7, 14, 21, 281-3pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: Food is a subject that activates all five senses and our imagination. Food allows us to relive memories, reach out to others, and create “tasty” articles, poetry, fiction, memoir, and more. In this class we will explore the role of food as prompt and prop to energize your writing with all of the natural vitamins food can offer.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer, author of eleven books published by five different publishers. Both her writings and performances are often foodinspired.. She has written food for magazines, newspapers, books, and poetry. Her latest book is Feathers on Stone. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net Nominee and a 2022 Runner up in the Robert Frost Foundation contest.

READING EARLY JAMES JOYCE/ PREPARING FOR ULYSSES

Brian Palecek

This is an 8-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays, Sept. 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 - 6-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: Participants will read and discuss the short stories of “Dubliners,” the novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the first chapter of Ulysses.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Brian Palecek is a longtime participant in public humanities programs, since the inception of Humanities North Dakota and its forerunners in the 1970s. He is also a college English, Literature, and Humanities teacher, serving at United Tribes Technical College for 31 years until his recent retirement. His documentary film “Conversations on the Bench” received support from Humanities ND.

PUTTING YOUR PERSONAL P.O.W.E.R. TO WORK FOR YOU

Jodee Bock

This is a 6-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Tuesdays, Sept. 5, 12, 19, 26, October 3, 10 - 6-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This course breaks the acronym P.O.W.E.R. into five sections: Purpose, Open-mindedness, Wisdom, Energy, and Responsibility. Participants will gain new insights into the possibilities available to them when they connect to their POWER instead of falling into old habits and forcing results.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Jodee Bock is a dynamic business communicator who encourages people to have conversations and dialogues that matter, with PEOPLE who matter (and that’s everyone). She has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of corporate communication, media relations, executive coaching, speaking, and training & development. She is an author of 6 books and the host of the Circle Up & Get REAL podcast.

BITE-SIZED MEMORIES: WRITING A “MICRO” MEMOIR

Christine Guaragno

This is a 7-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Tuesdays, Sept. 5, 12, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 10, 17 - 6-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: Everyone has a story to tell—but who has the time to write an entire memoir?In this seven week course we will study the art of flash nonfiction, or “micromemoirs” exploring, among others, The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column and Beth Anne Fennelly’s “Heating and Cooling.” Participates will write their own micro-memoirs and have the opportunity to workshop for feedback.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Christine Guaragno is a writer, adjunct professor, and assistant librarian from Pennsylvania. She writes poetry and nonfiction. You can check out her latest project, a collection of poems about motherhood at Stirring: A Literary Collection

A BIOLOGICAL AND LITERARY LOOK AT BARBARA KINGSOLVER’S BOOK ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE

Dayna Del Val & Dr. Andrew Marry

This is a 4-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Sundays, Sept. 10 (chapters 1-7) Sept 17 (chapters 8-13) Sept. 24 (chapters 14-17) Oct 1 (chapters 18-20) - 2-3:15pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: Dr Andrew “Mazz” Marry, a plant cell wall biochemist and Dayna Del Val, a former English professor turned arts activist turned coach and public speaker have long wanted to look at Kingsolver’s book from their two very different perspectives. Join us for what is sure to be a rousing conversation through this fascinating book!

INSTRUCTOR BIOS: Dr Andrew “Mazz” Marry is an Irishman who grew up in England (and worked on sugar beet for his PhD!) who now studies aquaponics for feeding a growing global population and is the chair of the Biological Sciences Dept at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Dayna Del Val is a native North Dakotan who didn’t grow up on a farm but whose ancestors homesteaded in Bowman county in the early 20th century; she has a Master’s degree in English from NDSU. Together, they are a one-two punch of Science, Technology, ARTS, Engineering and Math (STEAM).

NATIVE AMERICAN NEST PRACTICES Ricky White

This is an 11-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays, Sept. 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13, 20 - 5-7pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: These sessions will be rich with cultural teachings that Ricky has attained throughout his lifetime of work in education, growing up on an isolated Reserve in Whitefish Bay First Nation, and in his extensive travels to powwows, gatherings and conferences throughout North America. Each week will be full of cultural teachings, essential understandings and best practices for reaching Native people.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Ricky White is Anishinabe from Whitefish Bay First Nations and is well known throughout Indian Country as an educator, knowledge sharer, POW-wow MC and

consultant. He will keep you very engaged with his storytelling tenor and a healthy mix of deeply connected teachings.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPACT ON HUMANITY

Robert Mejia

This is an 8-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays, Sept. 4, 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23 - 7-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: “I don’t want to insist on it, Dave, but I am incapable of making an error.”

—Hal, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Ever been fascinated with depictions of artificial intelligence in books, movies, or television? Did you think the topics to be the stuff of science fiction, only to realize that today reality can be stranger than fiction? People falling in love with videogame characters, sharing secrets with social media chatbots, being unable to distinguish between reality and deepfakes. Then this class is for you. Join me as we discuss the impact that artificial intelligence is having on society, and what you can do about it.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Robert Mejia (PhD, Communication) writes on the intersections of technology and society. He received the National Communication Association’s Critical and Cultural Studies Division 2018 New Investigator Award for his research. He has edited three books and has written 35 journal articles, book chapters, and popular press articles.

FROM CAMELOT TO WOODSTOCK: AMERICA IN THE 1960S

Rick Collin

This is a 10-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Thursdays, Sept. 7, 14, 21, 28, Oct. 12, 19, 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16 - 7-9 pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This course will examine the political, social and cultural upheavals that occurred during one of the most tumultuous decades in American history – a decade that continues to impact and resonate more than 50 years later. Classes will cover the civil rights movement; the U.S.-Soviet Union race to land the first man on the Moon; the momentous year of

1968; the New Left movement; the cultural and music revolutions; the political assassinations that rocked the decade; the Vietnam War; and the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. The course will meet 10 nights – the first night will be an introduction, then each night after that will be devoted to a particular aspect of America in the 1960s. The goal of this course is to examine key events and movements of this decade, while also providing ample time for discussion.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Rick Collin is a historian with a passion for history told through stories. Rick worked for the State Historical Society of North Dakota for 16 years and taught America in the 1960s, The American Presidency, The History of World War II, The United States To 1877 and The United States Since 1877 at the University of Mary and Bismarck State College. He edited and published Mr. Wheat: A Biography of U.S. Senator Milton R. Young, written by Andrea Winkjer Collin, in 2010 and edited and republished Bloody Knife: Custer’s Favorite Scout, written by Ben Innis, in 1994. Growing up in the 1960s, Rick carries much of the decade with him today. This is his third Public University course for Humanities North Dakota – previously he taught “Riding the Back of the Tiger: America and the Vietnam War, 1945-75” and “The Modern Presidency: FDR to Reagan, 1933-89.”

10 REGENCY WOMEN WRITERS BEYOND AUSTEN

Sarah Faulkner

This is a 6-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Wednesdays, Sept. 13, 20, 27, Oct. 4, 11, 18 - 7-9pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: While many of us are familiar with the novels of Jane Austen, few of us have heard of the women writers who published alongside her, many of whom were far more famous and successful. This six-week course will focus on 10 fascinating women writers who published alongside Austen (1800-1830). Dr. Sarah Faulkner will share the incredible stories from the lives of bestselling novelists and poets including Maria Edgeworth, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Jane Porter, Mary Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Sydney

Owenson (Lady Morgan), Lady Caroline Lamb, Susan Ferrier, Mary Brunton, Hannah More, and more!

This class will be a mix of literary history and biography. Learn how these women were essential to shaping the National novel and the Courtship novel, new forms of Romantic poetry, and philosophy on human rights. And these women did so much more than write! They had torrid affairs with leading celebrities of the time, influenced politics, invented new genres, were possible poisoned, and more! We’ll read short selections from each writer’s work for each class, and Dr. Faulkner will have an ample further reading list ready for you to peruse.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Dr. Sarah Faulkner is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and public humanist. Her research focuses on British women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; she has taught university courses on “Jane Austen and Her World,” “Witches and Monsters in Fiction,” “The Romantic Age,” “Rise of the English Novel,” and more. She taught “10 British Women Writers Before Austen” for Public University in Spring 2023 and currently works as the Program Manager for Humanities Washington.

UNLOCKING CREATIVITY: WRITING FOR SELF-DISCOVERY

Claire Barwise

This is a 6-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays, Sept. 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16 - 6:30-8:00pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: Designed for both beginning writers and those looking to reconnect to their creative selves, this course will explore how writing can help us connect to our past, our present, and deeper questions of self. Each week will feature a new prompt to ignite the imagination, as well as outside examples of poetry, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Participants will have the chance to share and receive supportive feedback on their own creative work.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Claire Barwise holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English Literature. Her work has appeared in The Minnesota Review, Feminist Modernist Cultures,

and Modern Fiction Studies. She currently lives and teaches in Philadelphia, PA.

IMPEACHING A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: LAW, HISTORY AND POLITICS

David Adler

This is a 6-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays, Sept. 11, 18, 25, Oct. 2, 9, 166-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: The swirling conflict of interest concerns surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas and the broader national discussions about judicial reform and accountability, present for us a timely opportunity to consider the Impeachment Clause of the Constitution and the Framers’ criteria for impeaching federal judges, including members of the High Tribunal. Adler’s talk probes the legal and political factors that underly contemplation of impeachment and removal of a Supreme Court Justice and the potential for encroaching on judicial independence universally understood to be critical to the maintenance of the rule of law. We will also examine the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase in 1805 and the subsequent efforts to remove other members of the Court.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Dr. David Adler is President of The Alturas Institute, a non-profit organization created to promote the Constitution, gender equality, and civic education. A recipient of teaching, writing, and civic awards, Adler has lectured nationally and internationally, and published widely, on the Constitution, presidential power, and the Bill of Rights. He is the author of six books, including, most recently, The War Power in an Age of Terrorism, as well as more than 100 scholarly articles in the leading journals of his field. He is currently writing a book, supported by a research fellowship from the Idaho Humanities Council, on the landmark Supreme Court decision in Reed v. Reed, which had its origins in Idaho and transformed the law for American women.

THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF A LANDMARK RULING: BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION AT 70

David

Adler

This is a 5-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays, Oct. 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13, 206-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), remains the nation’s most famous civil rights case. The ruling held unconstitutional the widespread practice of segregation in public schools on grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, paving the way for Black and White students to attend the same classes in the same schools, a result that had been vehemently resisted, not only in southern states but in various northern cities as well. The forthcoming 70th anniversary of this historic case and its anticipated national celebration, invite consideration of its background, including the drafting of the 14th Amendment, the struggle for racial equality throughout American history, the Court’s opinion, its impact on America and the heroes who secured and enforced the legal victory. We will be pleased to review and discuss the heroic participation of the distinguished North Dakota jurist, Federal District Judge Ronald Davies, who played a singularly important role in insuring its enforcement.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Dr. David Adler is President of The Alturas Institute, a non-profit organization created to promote the Constitution, gender equality, and civic education. A recipient of teaching, writing, and civic awards, Adler has lectured nationally and internationally, and published widely, on the Constitution, presidential power, and the Bill of Rights. He is the author of six books, including, most recently, The War Power in an Age of Terrorism, as well as more than 100 scholarly articles in the leading journals of his field. He is currently writing a book, supported by a research fellowship from the Idaho Humanities Council, on the landmark Supreme Court decision in Reed v. Reed, which had its origins in Idaho and transformed the law for American women.

SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES

Stephanie Faatz Murry

This is a 3-week class using the Zoom platform. Wednesdays, Sept. 27, Oct. 25, Nov. 15 - 7-9pm

appreciation for the Bard beyond his “greatest hits” in this discussion—based class! Plays featured will include As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Two Gentlemen of Verona.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: A native of Rochester, NY, Stephanie Faatz Murry holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Arkansas, a B.F.A in Musical Theatre/Dance Minor from SUNY Fredonia and a certificate in Classical Acting from LAMDA. She has worked regionally throughout the United States and in South Korea. She is also the Founder/Producing Artistic Director of North Dakota Shakespeare Festival!

LITTLE WOMEN, MODERN READERS

Randi

Tanglen

This is a 4-week class using the Zoom platform. Thursdays, Sept. 14, 21, 28, Oct. 57-8pm CST

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This is a class for firsttime readers and long-time fans of Louisa May Alcott’s classic 1868 novel, Little Women. We will revel in the adventures and travails of the March sisters and consider how the novel’s depiction of the lives of girls and women; growing up in a time of war; and a commitment to community, service, and family still have relevance for today’s readers. Questions that we will discuss include: 1. Is Little Women a “girls’ book” or a novel for everyone? 2. Is Little Women a timeless classic or a product of its time? 3. And most importantly: Are you a Meg, Jo, Beth, or Amy?

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Dr. Randi Tanglen is Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at the University of North Dakota. She was previously executive director of Humanities Montana and professor of English at Austin College in Sherman, TX. She has published scholarly articles on U.S. women writers and literary history.

ABOUT THIS CLASS: This course will highlight several of Shakespeare’s comedies. Each class meeting will feature a different play, led by a different Shakespearean scholar. Expand your

Humanities ND Magazine Writers’

Guidelines

Humanities ND Magazine is a publication that engages with ideas on all topics related to the Humanities and accepts submissions throughout the year from writers across the United States. In two (Spring and Fall) of our issues, we offer specific programmatic content about the many events, courses, book/author discussions that Humanities ND offers. The other issue, “Sense of Place” (summer), asks for specific kinds of content submissions. Please bear in mind that we seek a variety of voices and perspectives, and, to that end, we rarely publish submissions from the same writers in these issues each year.

Program Issues (spring and fall): Instructors are encouraged to submit “teasers”—not a syllabus or specific course description, but rather something more reflective though related to their upcoming courses. They may submit in any category (essay/ article, fiction, poetry) and must imagine an audience that might be intrigued by their course offering. We occasionally offer other pieces in our program issues, but they primarily focus on courses and events.

The “Sense of Place” Issue (summer): For this issue alone, we focus most particularly on submissions from writers with a direct connection to North Dakota, and consider work from all categories. Writers might focus on how that connection has affected them, in terms of history, memory, education, landscape, ethnic identity, art, music, culture, family—a broad range of topics.

SUBMISSION CATEGORIES, GUIDELINES, AND CRITERIA

Humanities ND Magazine accepts several kinds of submissions and actively seeks those submissions year round.

NONFICTION: Most of our submissions come from writers of articles—essays, creative nonfiction,

memoir. These pieces should fit a range of a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 4,000 words. Although we do accept previously published work (for which we do not pay), we prefer original work.*

Within this category, we also accept “scholarly” essays, with the understanding that they must reflect consideration for a wide audience, not merely for colleagues in the writer’s field. Such pieces should demonstrate careful research, must make a clear, cohesive point within the 4,000-word limit, and must be well argued with supporting materials from personal or professional experience. They may focus on any humanities topic: culture, literature, film, history, ethnic studies, art, music—on any human/society endeavor or product.

FICTION: As with nonfiction submissions, we expect a 1,000—4,000-word range and expect, with certain occasional exceptions, that work will be original/unpublished.* Both short stories and chapters/excerpts from novels will be considered for publication.

POETRY: Poetry submissions must not exceed 60 lines. Given our limited ability to publish the poetry that we receive, we accept no more than 2 pieces/ poems per submission. Submissions of greater than 2 pieces will not receive our consideration. As with all other submissions, we prize original work but may consider previously published pieces.*

ARTWORK: Please note: While we currently seek and encourage submissions of artwork to accompany articles/fiction/poetry, we are not accepting unsolicited submissions of artwork at this time. All submissions—original artwork, personal photographs, graphic art—must be of high, reproducible quality and are only published with appropriate permissions, for which the submitter is responsible.

*REPRINTED WORK: Selections of nonfiction, poetry, fiction, or artwork are allowable submissions. In this case, we generally look for recently published work, though, depending upon context, an older piece could also be considered. These submissions must be specifically identified as such and include both publication information and appropriate permissions—no exceptions in this regard.

PAYMENT FOR PUBLICATION: We pay $250 for articles, fiction pieces, and poetry, and $500 for scholarly essays and artwork selected for publication. Authors and artists maintain rights to their work and, if a piece is used on our website, can request that their piece be taken down at any time. As noted above, we do not pay authors for reprinted work.

SUBMISSION CRITERIA

NUTS AND BOLTS: All submissions must conform to some basic considerations, among them

1. Please carefully read all information regarding magazine issues, guidelines, and criteria prior to making submissions using the Google form (this link can be found in our magazine and on our website at humanitiesnd.org/news).

2. No piece of any kind should be submitted without the writer having performed a careful self-

editing process to ensure that it is as error-free as possible;

3. Pieces should clearly identify the writer and title, and provide the writer’s e-mail address/contact information;

4. Submissions must be double spaced, conform to standard expectations regarding usage, and be written in 12-point typeface with appropriate margins (generally 1 inch) all around;

5. All submissions will be initially reviewed to determine whether they meet both our criteria and our current need. Humanities ND Magazine reserves the right to refuse any publication that does not meet such expectations. Please note: submissions that are accepted are not guaranteed immediate publication. Our acceptance response will indicate when we anticipate publication;

6. Writers should anticipate that Humanities ND Magazine will edit for clarity—in terms of style, grammar, and mechanics. We will never tamper with content, but may ask questions related to it when necessary.

All questions should be submitted to Humanities ND Magazine at programs@humanitiesnd.org

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS & STAFF

HND Board of Directors

CHAIR

Dennis Cooley, Fargo

VICE CHAIR

Linda Steve, Dickinson

Lyle Best, Watford City

Dina Butcher, Bismarck

Patty Corwin, Fargo

Harley Engelman, Bismarck

Angela S. Gorder, Bottineau

Trygve Hammer, Minot

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Hamzat A. Koriko, Grand Forks

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Prairie Rose Seminole, Garrison

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Sarah Vogel, Bismarck

Staff

Brenna Gerhardt, Executive Director

Kenneth Glass, Associate Director

Nick Glass, Director of Fiscal Operations

Sue Skalicky, Program Director

Crista McCandless, Program Manager

Lacie Van Orman, Marketing Director

Kayla Lewinski, Content Curator