Agora Fall 2015

Agora

THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE

FALL 2015

LUTHER COLLEGE, DECORAH, IOWA

Werner Nitschke, “Diane and the Atomic Bomb” IN THIS ISSUE: FACULTY ESSAYS • CHAPEL TALKS • PHOTOGRAPHY • POETRY • MUSIC

THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE

Martin Klammer, editor

FALL 2015 VOLUME 28 NUMBER 1

Judy K. Boese, production editor

Agora, an interdisciplinary journal grounded in the humanities, is a project of the Luther College Paideia Program. Paideia consists of many activities and opportunities, including a three-course interdisciplinary core curriculum; performances and events, including an annual lecture series; library acquisitions; student writing services; networked computer classrooms; and a faculty development program that includes sabbatical grants and summer workshops. All these activities receive support from the Paideia Endowment, originally established through National Endowment for the Humanities grants matched by friends of Luther College. To see the current issue and archival issues on-line, go to <http://www. luther.edu/paideia/agora>.

The primary Agora contributors are Luther College faculty; writing is also solicited from other college community members and, occasionally, from outside writers. The journal was established in 1988 by then Paideia Director Wilfred F. Bunge, Professor of Religion and Classics. Mark Z. Muggli, Professor of English, was the editor from 1998-2004 and Peter A. Scholl, Professor of English, from 2004-2014.

Agora is distributed to five hundred on-campus faculty and administrators and to another five hundred off-campus friends of the college. Anyone wishing to be included on the mailing list should contact the editor. phone: (563) 387-2112 e-mail: klammerm@luther.edu

Contents Interview Interview: Cristina Henríquez Cristina Henríquez......................................................................................................... 3

Essay Diane and the Atomic Bomb Werner Nitschke.............................................................................................................. 5

2015-16 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series: Impermanence: Embracing Change Narrating Change: Norwegian Women’s Abortion Letters Anna M. Peterson......................................................................................................... 10

Sabbatical Reports Revolution, Cultural Policy and Censorship in Cuba Alfredo Alonso Estenoz.................................................................................................. 17 Water in the West: The Gap Between Policy and Science Eric Baack.................................................................................................................... 20

Photography Photos of Viet Nam and Commentary Tuan Vinh Phan........................................................................................................... 24

Sabbatical Reports Fractured Options in a Messy World of Ethics Jim Martin-Schramm................................................................................................... 30 Explaining Emotions and Exploring the Ordinary: A Year in Early Modern England Kate Narveson.............................................................................................................. 35 Test Away!:The Business of Schooling Jacqueline Wilkie.......................................................................................................... 38

Chapel The Blank Page Ruth Caldwell.............................................................................................................. 43 Vigil for the Common Good Mike Blair.................................................................................................................... 45 The Body as a Temple of the Holy Spirit Wanda Deifelt.............................................................................................................. 47

Music, Poetry Plain Song (after Brooke Joyce’s “Prairie Etudes”) Carol Gilbertson........................................................................................................... 49 “Prairie Etudes” Brooke Joyce.................................................................................................................. 50

Cover: Diane (Ricardo) Nitschke, age 5, White Sands, New Mexico, March 25, 1945. Photo submitted by Werner Nitschke.

Introduction

by MARTIN KLAMMER, Professor of English, Agora Editor

T

he theme for this year’s Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series is “Impermanence: Embracing Change.” But I’m not so sure “Embracing Change” is such a good idea—not if we consider what our colleagues write about in this issue.

Eric Baack, Jim Martin-Schramm, and Werner Nitschke discuss the harm brought about by changes humans have caused to—or inflicted upon—the environment. Eric writes about the enormous loss of ground water in the desert Southwest; Jim considers the costs of fracking as an energy source; and Werner looks, in a quite personal way, at the tragic cost of nuclear fallout.

Even beyond science, our writers look at the burden of change, from Anna Peterson’s research into the letters of Norwegian women who felt too poor to bear another child to Jackie Wilkie’s examination of the way we now educate and assess the learning of our nation’s children. None of these changes seems to call out for our “embrace” of change.

And yet in each case our writers argue that the best response is not to shrink from change but in fact to embrace the challenges that change brings. Eric calls for greater efficiencies in water use and for state policies in Arizona and California that best “protect people and wildlife.” Jackie remains hopeful about education because of the “real connections” she observed between students and teachers in Hawaii’s schools, despite the obsession for—and profitability of—testing. And Werner looks into the face of deep personal loss and finds the source of hope that gives meaning to our lives as students and teachers—our life-long endeavor of learning.

Here’s hoping that you will learn from and enjoy this wide range of essays and creations by Luther faculty from across 2

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The Otte family, 1950s, Zululand, South Africa from a painting by Elsa (Otte) Hammond.

Back row: Carl Jr., Carl Sr, Solveig, Lillian, Elsa. Front row: Daniel, Ruth (Otte) Mansen, Paul. the college. As Agora editor, in times of impermanence and change, the quality of my colleagues’ work is what gives me hope for who we are and can be.

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An exhibition called “Triple Vision” at the Center for Faith and Life this fall featured the mixed media art of three siblings from a talented family of Luther College graduates: the Ottes. I first learned of the Otto family during a 2009 J-term trip to South Africa when I met Solveig, the second child and eldest girl of six Otte children who were raised by their parents Carl and Lillian Otte at an American Lutheran mission station in Zululand, South Africa from the 1930s to 1950s. Four of the six children graduated from Luther—Carl Jr. (’56), Solveig (’56), Elsa (’62) and Paul (’62)—and a fifth, Daniel, attended Luther, following in the footsteps of their missionary grandfather Heinrich (1893 graduate) and father Carl Sr. (’25). The journey to Luther College for the Ottes took several weeks by ship and train. Solveig has remained in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, doing

volunteer work with HIV-positive Zulu-speaking women and children.

Elsa (Minneapolis), Paul (Eugene), and Daniel (Philadelphia) settled in the U.S. and over the years each developed forms of art that was featured in the exhibition: oil portraits of children and a large silk-painted banner titled “Jacob’s Dream” by Elsa; batiks in soft images and colors by Paul; and photoand-digital brush paintings and intricate drawings of crickets and grasshoppers

by Daniel, a zoologist and professor of biology at Drexel University. During the gallery reception at Homecoming this October I enjoyed visiting with the three of them and reconnecting with my own time in South Africa.

The painting above, titled “Post World War II Missionary Family,” was done

by Elsa from a small black-and-white photo of the family taken in Zululand before their first trip to America in the early 1950s. Thanks to David Kamm, Art Gallery Coordinator and assistant professor of art, for organizing this exhibit and bringing to campus these three artists whose family connection to Luther College spans three centuries.

Interview: Cristina Henríquez The summer reading for this year’s incoming Paideia class was the novel The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez. In the novel we follow the lives of Spanish-speaking immigrants from various countries in Latin America who live together in the same apartment complex in Delaware. In her convocation address in September, Henríquez addressed the central question of the fall semester Paideia course—“What makes us human?”—with essentially a one word answer: stories. Telling and sharing stories, she said, is what makes us human and allows us to survive and even thrive as individuals and in community.

Following her talk, Henríquez graciously agreed to answer a few questions I posed in this interview.

MK

CH: I think the question presupposes that a liberal arts education might include stories or storytelling, while a different sort of educational experience—one focused on career preparation, maybe, as you say—would not. But stories are all around us, and they’re inescapable. We create a story about ourselves the moment we meet someone and decide what to reveal and what to withhold. We’re late for an appointment because one thing happened, which led to another, which led to another, and that’s a story, and usually it’s one we can’t resist telling someone later. If you miss a due date for an assignment, when the professor asks you what happened, I bet you have a story ready in your mind, regardless of whether you deploy it. My point being that there’s not a divide between a liberal arts education and anything else, as least not in terms of this. There is only us, being human, and one of the ways we get through our days and one of the ways we make sense of the world has always been, and probably will always be, by concocting stories. A more formal investigation, really digging into something like a short story, for example —obviously that’s different. But the

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MK: In your talk you said that what makes us human is language and with language we tell stories—stories that can help us survive. Yet increasingly the value of a liberal arts education is being challenged as higher education moves more and more toward career preparation. How important were stories to your college education and what do you see as the ongoing value of stories for our college and university students today?

Cristina Henríquez speaks with campus pastor Mike Blair after opening convocation, September 2015. speech was about these other, very human narratives that we participate in every day, and how those narratives constitute knowledge that helps us grow, and that changes us both as individuals and as a species. That’s the value. Stories reframe how we see the world.

MK: This question I believe repeats a question that a Luther student asked of you during the Q & A, yet I feel students (and faculty) would benefit again from your response. What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a better writer? Related to that, why is it important to be a good writer?

CH: I believe my advice boiled down to this: Read. Read as much as you can.

When you sit down to write, you make all these minute decisions, word by word. Who speaks first in a scene?

And what do they say? And what do they choose not to say? And when do you include “he said,” and when can you leave it out? And how do you show the reader that time has passed?

It’s endless, down to where to use a comma and where to use an m-dash.

But realistically you can’t stop at every word and weigh your options before you write anything down. You have to just forge ahead, plow through, whatever, and because of that, you’re basically relying on instinct as you go. And that’s where reading comes in. Reading is how you hone those instincts. You Fall 2015/Agora

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can be very deliberate about it. When you encounter a scene in a book you’re reading that made you feel something, you can stop and pull it apart. Figure out how the writer accomplished what he or she did. What was the minutiae of decision-making that went on behind the scenes? You can never truly know, of course (even the writer probably doesn’t fully know), but you’d be surprised how much you can glean from dissembling published work like that. But even if you don’t attack it in that way, just reading at all is going to influence your taste, and that’s going to carry over when you write. It’s going to make it easier to feel your way through a story, and it’s going to give you a foundation for knowing what you want to do and what you don’t want to do in your own work because you have discovered, from reading, what you like and don’t like.

As for being a good writer, what does that mean? There are a million different ways to measure that. And is it important? I don’t know. I think on a practical level, it’s important to communicate effectively, whether that means lighting up someone’s mind because of how you handled a metaphor or whether it means saying something with precision and clarity. There has to be a transmission there. But it seems important to me, too, to be able to reveal something—about the world, about the human condition. That’s why we go to writing, isn’t it? To get the news of ourselves.

MK: We are always looking for texts to assign our students that will engage them and generate lively discussion and writing—as did yours. What books or readings would you recommend to us, or, in the alternative, what books have meant the most to you? Do you recall anything you read in college that seemed especially important to you at the time?

CH: Oh, in college I read a whole bunch of things that were an absolute slog for me. I have no idea why I took so many 18th century literature classes! But there were a few books that I remember made an impression on me. A Lover’s Discourse

by Roland Barthes. Anna Karenina.

Anne Sexton’s poetry. I felt enlarged and challenged most by the philosophy classes I took.

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One of my favorite books to this day is one I read in high school— Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

If students haven’t already read it by the time they arrive at Luther, I think it would fit the bill for engaging them and provoking lively discussion. For more current fare: Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson, Notes from No Man’s Land

by Eula Biss, We the Animals by Justin Torres, anything by George Saunders.

MK: What did you most enjoy during your visit to Luther College and Decorah?

CH: The students! That signing line after my talk was epic. Two girls got out of line, went and bought a milkshake, and came back, and I was still signing.

That’s insane! But it was just because the students really, truly were so enthusiastic and so welcoming. I really thank them for that.

Diane and the Atomic Bomb

by WERNER NITSCHKE, Professor emeritus of Psychology

R

ummaging through family pictures, I came across this photograph of a lovely young girl in her summer dress walking on the vast white desert sands of New Mexico.

I had seen it before. It’s of my wife Diane, then only five and one-half years old. On the back of the photograph there is a date, 3/25/45, reminding me of the extraordinary event that occurred there 70 years ago, and what it would forecast for her, our family and, really, for all of us.

Diane was at the Alamogordo Army Air Field, the neighboring military installation to the gunnery range, some 60 miles south from the tower when the explosion occurred. She hailed from Brooklyn, New York, so why was she there? At least, that was my initial reaction when first seeing the photograph. Others might wonder about the necessity of conducting a test.

Isn’t a bomb just a bomb? Furthermore, we might all arrive at a critical question: Were there, are there, ramifications, meaning were there accompanying hazards? On this 70th anniversary year, these are the questions that focus the story.

Absolutely nothing like it had happened before. On July 16, 1945, at 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time, the first nuclear explosion took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico, approximately 60 miles northwest of Alamogordo between Rio Grande and Sierra Oscura, an area given the ominous Spanish name Jornada del Muerto ( Journey of the Dead Man).

The device that exploded was perched high upon a 100-foot steel tower and produced a shock wave which was felt more than 100 miles away and lofted a mushroom cloud reaching 7.5 miles in height. Richard Feynman, a young, bold physicist, who made his observations without the prescribed darkened safety glasses, noted “this tremendous flash out there is so bright that I duck and I see this purple splotch on the floor of the truck.”

Lansing Lamont in his book Day of Trinity reported:

WIKIMEDIA: BERLYN BRIXNER

The fireball created by the Trinity Test .016 sec after the explosion.

Feynman correctly recognized it as an afterimage. Looking up again, Feynman said, “I see this white light changing into yellow and then into orange … Finally, a big ball of orange that starts to rise and billow” (134).

Passengers aboard the Union Pacific train 70 miles north of the site also saw the fireball (Miller 36).

The entire southern part of New Mexico, portions of Arizona and the El Paso panhandle of west Texas felt the explosion’s tremors.

The cloud drifted northeastward at about ten miles per hour, dropping its trail of fission products across a region measuring 100 miles long and 30 miles wide. In the deep ravines, where cattle grazed, the radioactivity settled in a white mist.… (241242) Left behind was melted silica sand, forming radioactive light green glass named trinitite.

Most will recognize the event as the culmination of the Manhattan Project during World War II. At that time Diane’s dad was in the United States Army Air Corps based west of Alamogordo. His family was housed there as well.

The Manhattan Project is well known by name, but less so in terms of its enormity. As Figure 1 shows, there were many project sites involved, employing more than 130,000 people. But why, we might ask, did this country engage in such an extraordinary and costly effort?

One word suffices, FEAR. It was a race with Hitler’s Germany as to who would first develop such a devastating weapon.

And the most important combatants in this race were physicists, chemists, and engineers. Interestingly, most knew each other well; many had worked together at the University of Göttingen in Germany, and a number had already won a Nobel Prize.

A Science and History Context

In 1938 German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann bombarded the uranium atom with neutrons. Most astonishingly, and actually completely puzzling to the scientists, it had split Fall 2015/Agora

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Figure 1. Major Manhattan Project Sites in U.S. and Canada into smaller parts. A more fundamental understanding would be forthcoming from Hahn’s colleague, Lise Meitner, who at the time fled Nazi Germany.

She, with her nephew Otto Frisch, determined the basic mathematics of nuclear fission, a term first used by Frisch.

We understand fission this way: the most common form of the uranium element found in nature is U-238 and it is not fissile. However, U-235, the rarer form, accounting for only 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium, can be split into fragments. More specifically, if a U-235 atom is bombarded with neutrons and if one neutron is captured, then that atom becomes unstable and fissions into two different atoms.

In addition, there is a release of free neutrons. Of central importance is this: the combined mass of the fragments is less than the initial uranium atom.

Since Einstein has shown there is an equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc2), the consequence of the reduction of mass requires a release of energy. Physicists tell us the amount is approximately 200 million electron volts, not a meaningful number for most of us. However, it may be better understood if we make the following comparison: U-235 liberates millions of times more energy per unit mass compared to that of oil or coal (European Nuclear Society, 2003).

It becomes apparent that if we place 6

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enough U-235 (a critical mass) in one place with a neutron supply, we will initiate a chain reaction. In other words, those neutrons released during the fission reaction will be absorbed by other U-235 atoms, initiating a self propagating series of reactions.

Although significant engineering was involved in this discovery, perhaps the biggest initial obstacle was the daunting chemistry and physics needed to obtain U-235 from U-238.

Several methods were used employing complicated technology. For example, the gaseous diffusion process required a thousand successive stages to achieve the desired separation (Groves 111, 113). The work was done mainly at Oakridge, Tennessee, where one of the largest buildings (K25) was specifically designed for that purpose, covering 44 acres under one roof.

The two types of bombs available for the Trinity test were very different. The one tested used a more complicated design and employed plutonium, a superior fissile material (Bernstein 134, 159). The plutonium was housed within a spherical chamber. Exquisitely timed conventional charges set off an implosion, forcing the plutonium into a high concentration toward the center of the sphere, thereby resulting in a critical mass. Clearly, there were many firsts in bomb physics and a test was obviously needed. The second bomb used a more simplified means of merging two

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chunks of U-235 and a test was not considered necessary.

Ironically, before the Trinity test was conducted the war ended in Europe and shortly thereafter it became apparent that Germany had not been close to developing an atomic bomb. In Thomas Powers’ book Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb, he states that Heisenberg, the lead German scientist, not only deliberately slowed the process of building such a weapon, he killed it (479). Powers claims that the Germans’ efforts were directed at building a nuclear reactor and not a bomb. Considerable controversy exists regarding intentions and capability (Bernstein xii) and aspects of the drama actually became a remarkable and thoughtful play, Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn.

The Aftermath

Lethal effects of direct exposure of high levels of radiation were certainly known. Accidental deaths occurred at Los Alamos and film badges measured radiation exposure for scientists and workers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Obviously less was known regarding the wider effects of radiation associated with the explosion of these new nuclear bombs.

Although by March 1945 the war had ended in Europe, it continued with Japan. The United States decided to drop new weapons on Japan: one on Hiroshima, another on Nagasaki.

It was a decision I am unable to understand, but I can state the disastrous consequences: two cities were destroyed. Dr. Michihiko Hachiya’s touching diary is a moving account of the terrifying experience (Hachiya).

By 1946, the United States developed a program called the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission with the aim of conducting research on the medical and genetic aftereffects of radiation on atomic bomb survivors and their children. Sadly, for the most part, this was done without caring for their medical needs (Putnam). For those who did survive, radiation-induced illnesses became all too apparent with leukemia being the first cancer to be observed in children.

I strongly suspect that the serious and uncommon health issues that challenged Diane later in her life were related to the Trinity test she was exposed to as a 5-year-old.

Several years ago Diane received the diagnosis of primary myelofibrosis (PMF), a rare bone marrow cancer. The diagnosis was made at the Gundersen Clinic and confirmed at the Mayo Clinic. The causes are unknown and there are no cures with the possible exception of a transplant, an option only available for younger patients. PMF is in some ways similar to leukemia. In the case of PMF, it appears to develop when a genetic mutation occurs in blood stem cells. According to the Cleveland Clinic, between 50 and 60 percent of people with PMF have a mutation of the Janus kinase 2 gene ( JAK2), as did Diane.

The JAK2 protein transmits chemical signals and is important for controlling production of blood cells located within the bone marrow. In the case of PMF there is a resulting formation of scar tissue, and because of this bone marrow fibrosis the production of normal blood cells is limited (Keng, Advani and Theil).

The rarity of the disease means a sparse database and at this time it’s difficult to know how the disease advances. Diane’s hematologic puzzle was first revealed when she had a routine blood test. Many with PMF can live years with the disease before symptoms such as critical anemia appear.

Although the cause of the JAK2 gene mutation is unknown, certainly ionizing

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What were the possible consequences of Diane’s exposure to the Trinity test explosion? In short, she was exposed to fallout, the name we give to radioactive material from a nuclear explosion that is carried into the atmosphere and then gradually falls to the biosphere.

We now know that such explosions carry with them forms of radiation that may remain dangerous for an extended period of time. Even to this day the Trinity site is open to visitors only twice a year because the site’s background radiation is about 10 times greater than the earth’s background radiation. And that green glassy trinitite earlier referred to remains radioactive to this day and should not be picked up.

Figure 2. Wind shear (variations in wind speed and direction with altitude) causes fallout to spread over large areas. The 43-kiloton test SIMON was detonated at 4:30 a.m. local time on April 25, 1953, at the Nevada Test Site. Trajectories of the fallout debris clouds across the U.S. are shown for four altitudes. Each dot indicates six hours. The numbered dots are the date in April. Data from National Cancer Institute 1997 radiation looms as a possibility. It’s the type of radiation that contains sufficient energy to have an impact on human tissue and on DNA. Given the high incidence rate in Hiroshima, the risk of developing PMF is increased by exposure to radiation (Keng, Advani and Theil). How much radiation Diane was exposed to, we will never know. The Trinity test mushroom cloud traveled to the northeast, away from her location; however, wind shear had torn the cloud into three sections that drifted in different directions. The radioactive dust that floated in the air and rolled across the desert eventually fell to the earth and became inserted into the food chain (Lamont 251). Soon after the explosion occurred, a cautionary report regarding radiation monitoring was made by Colonel Stafford L. Warren, then chief of the Medical Section at Trinity, to Major General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer (Warren). In this report, he made the following comment: It is this officer’s opinion that this site is too small for a repetition of a similar test of this magnitude.… It is recommended that the site be expanded or a larger one preferably with a radius of at least 150 miles without population be obtained if this test is to be repeated.

More Tests and More Fallout

During the Cold War the United States and other countries conducted nuclear tests. The largest explosion produced by the United States was Castle Bravo, which used a hydrogen isotope (H Bomb). Serious miscalculations of the yield resulted in nuclear fallout that rained down on inhabitants of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, making the island uninhabitable (Miller 193).

At the Nevada Test Sites, 86 aboveground and 14 underground nuclear tests were conducted.

Considering the possible deleterious effects, Simon, Bouville, and Land, discuss the cancer risks due to past exposure to radioactive fallout. They note that the National Cancer Institute estimated that in the U.S. the primary cancer risks from fallout are thyroid cancer and leukemia. Furthermore, they show a depiction of how wind shear and wind directions vary with altitude and determine the fallout path (Figure 2). It can be seen, for example, that the 43-kiloton test SIMON detonated on April 25, 1953, produced fallout over Iowa by the 28th of April.

The Nevada Test Sites were also used in a program called Plowshare, where nuclear explosives were used to determine peaceful construction possibilities such as mining. A number Fall 2015/Agora

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Primum non nocere

Understandably, some people suffering from ailments believed to be caused by radiation exposure turned to the courts for redress. Politics came into play, and we are left with a morass over responsibility and government accountability. In her now-classic Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics, A.C. Titus reports that in 1979 a Senate subcommittee determined that the federal government had been negligent in regard to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada site (131, 132, 137). Apparently, the Atomic Energy

Commission was aware of the health hazards, but saw as their primary goal the development of atomic weapons.

Republican Senator Orin Hatch commented in 1981 that the federal government had committed a great wrong by exposing Americans to radioactive fallout while assuring the public that no danger existed.

In 1990 Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). The Act represented an apology and provided monetary compensation to individuals who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases following exposure to radiation released during atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. This statute is considered to be unique in that it is designed to serve as an expeditious lowcost alternative to litigation.

Trinity Site Obelisk erected in 1965 where the first nuclear device was exploded.

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The consequences of these many nuclear tests were indeed dire. Would it not be more assuring if the government in dealing with its citizenry adopted

the adage from the medical profession: Primum non nocereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;first, do no harm?

This essay began with a personal story about my wife Diane, who passed away in December 2014. Hopefully I have broadened the story to include us all. The legitimate question is how, after 70 years, are we managing the power of nuclear science? Some might argue that weapon development has peaked, and bigger no longer makes sense. And clearly there are constraints in weapon deployment. Nations that currently have a nuclear arsenal in all likelihood understand the grave retaliatory consequences with its usage.

Thus, it appears that fear continues to motivate the use of nuclear weapons in the geopolitical world. Ironically, a greater potential risk may come from the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

We all know of the Three-Mile Island incident in the United States, the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukrainian SSR, and most recently the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Currently, we have 99 reactors in the United States and five under construction (World Nuclear Association, 2015). The perception for some may be that we have created a power paradise. However, great advantages often come with great risks.

What kind of convincing assurances do we need that this technological marvel can serve us, yet be defanged? Nuclear disasters atmospherically have a lengthy

MARK NITSCHKE

Diane Nitschke completed her undergraduate degree at Luther College in 1975. Werner Nitschke, previously an engineer at Grumman, is a Luther College emeritus professor of psychology.

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of underground tests were conducted, including one in July 1962. The resulting explosion created a dust cloud of 1200 feet, which was 50 percent greater than expected (Fradkin 135). Radioactivity was especially high in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Illinois according to the Comprehensive Nuclear-TestBan Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

At a meeting in Des Moines, Iowa in 2002, Iowans talked about their health concerns from fallout. Senator Tom Harkin expressed his constituentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; concerns, which were later included in a review of the CDC-NCI Draft Report on exposure of the American population to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests (National Research Council 2003).

reach and are with us for a very long time; generations would be my unit of measure. There are cautionary lessons to be learned that if not heeded would indeed be sad. T.H. White in The Once and Future King gives us advice: ‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something.

That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.

Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.’ (176-177) Learning–it’s what gives me hope.

Notes This essay is dedicated to my life navigator Diane. I am indebted to our dear friends, Matt and Beverly Dengler, and to my family, Mark and Lori Nitschke, and Deidre and William Dragon, who reviewed this article and gave me much needed guidance.

References Bernstein, Jeremy. Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, 2001.

Bernstein, Jeremy. Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Retrieved from http://www.ctbto.org/nucleartesting/the-effects-of-nuclear-testing/ the-united-states-nuclear-testingprogramme/.

European Nuclear Society. (2003).

Fuel comparison. Retrieved from http://www.euronuclear.org/info/ encyclopedia/f/fuelcomparison.htm.

Feynman, Richard P. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985.

Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, TS Manhattan Project Files, folder 4.

World Nuclear Association. (2015). Nuclear Power in the USA. Retrieved from http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/ Country-Profiles/Countries-T-Z/ USA—Nuclear-Power/.

Fradkin, Philip L. Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy. Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 2004.

Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 1983.

Hachiya, Michihiko. Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician August 6-September 30, 1945. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1955.

Keng, Michael, Anjali Advani, and Karl Theil (2013).The Myeloproliferative Neoplasms Cleveland Clinic.

Retrieved from https://www. clevelandclinicmeded.com/ medicalpubs/diseasemanagement/.

Lamont, Lansing. Day of Trinity. New York, NY: Atheneum, 1985.

Miller, Richard L. Under the Cloud: Decades of Nuclear Testing. The Woodlands, TX: Two Sixty Press, 1991.

National Research Council. Exposure of the American Population to Radioactive Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests.

National Academies Press, Washington, DC., 2003.

Powers, Thomas. Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000.

Putnam, Frank W. “The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Retrospect.”

Proceedings of the National Academy Science, 95.10 (1998) 5426-5431.

Simon, Steven L., Andre Bouville, and Charles E. Land. “Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests and Cancer Risks.”

American Scientist 94 (2006) 48-57.

Titus, A.Constandina. Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics, 2nd ed. Reno & Las Vegas, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2001.

The United States Department of Justice, Radiation Exposure Act. (2015).

Retrieved from http://www.justice.gov/ civil/common/reca.

White, Terence H. The Once and Future King.

New York, NY: Ace Books, 1939.

Warren, S.,L., (1945). “Trinity Test.” U.S. National Archives, Record Group 77.

Fall 2015/Agora

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Narrating Change: Norwegian Women’s Abortion Letters

by ANNA M. PETERSON, Assistant Professor of History To Mrs. Katty Møller,

As I am a complete stranger to you, yet write to you anyways, I must ask the lady to forgive me if I am being intrusive.

My name is Nelly Hansen and the reason I am writing to you today is because I am so desperate. I ask you, Mrs. Møller, if you can inform me as to how to fight a new pregnancy I would be more than grateful. Only my husband knows about this letter I am writing. I am 25 years old, we have been married for 4 years and have 2 children. I had a miscarriage this summer and I am now again newly pregnant, so the lady can probably imagine that I am now desperate.… As you might imagine we need information of this type. I would be able to view this more optimistically if only my husband had work, but there is not even temporary work to be had, yes we are in a very desperate situation as you can imagine ma’am. I have now laid everything out as clearly and honestly as I can so if the lady can help me with this I will not judge you. I ask on behalf of my husband and myself help us if you can, it will brighten our desperate situation. If I have been intrusive I ask the lady to forgive us in our misery.

Nelly Hansen1

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legal abortive assistance both in urban and rural areas.

Women’s lack of knowledge about the particulars of reproduction and the unavailability of information on effective abortifacients also inhibited their ability to control their fertility with any certainty. The majority of women in Norway during the interwar period still relied on traditional methods of birth control, which included abstinence and coitus interruptus.3 Dispersing information about contraception was also legally restricted in Norway during this period, and though reformers were often able to get around many of the legal restrictions on contraceptive knowledge, this information was still socially sanctioned as lewd, unchaste, and sinful. The women who were able to obtain modern contraceptive devices were often disappointed when these methods failed them.4 Women who were not able to prevent unwanted pregnancies from occurring also found it difficult to procure information on effective abortifacients.

As John Riddle has found, much of the shared knowledge women had of reliable abortive herbs and methods had been lost by the modern period.5 Norwegian women who did not have access to legal abortions often resorted to questionable folk remedies, including warm foot baths and the consumption

Katti Anker Møller, 1916 of potent beverages, to self-induce miscarriage.6 By the 1920s some women had also heard of more “modern” methods of ending pregnancies which involved inserting a catheter into the uterus. They were much more wary of this medicalized knowledge, however, and felt that they needed someone medically trained to advise them of methods that were both more innocuous than the catheter and more successful than the foot bath.

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t was 1927 and Nelly Hansen was just one of hundreds of Norwegian women who wrote to the Mother Hygiene Office in Oslo and asked for advice and instruction on how to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies. Women confronted with unwanted pregnancies during this period of time encountered a series of obstacles in obtaining accurate information about abortion methods and services. Abortion was illegal: the 1902 Norwegian penal code stated any woman found guilty of trying to induce abortion faced three years in prison. Doctors could offer a way around this law and provide legal access to an abortion if they determined that a pregnancy threatened a woman’s life or health. This access was limited, and the majority of women who sought abortions were not able to obtain them legally. In 1920 the government noted the occurrence of 115 legal abortions and 600 illegal abortions.2 These statistics certainly do not account for the actual number of abortions that took place in interwar Norway but they do indicate the severe lack of availability women had to legal abortions. Part of this had to do with the fact that Norway was still largely a rural country and many areas were not even serviced by county midwives let alone medical doctors. Class also proved decisive as to whether or not a woman had access to

In the 1920s these women could capitalize on a growing NeoMalthusian movement in Norway that wanted to educate poor women on safe contraceptive and abortive methods. One of the most prominent neo-Malthusianists was Katti Anker Møller, an upper-class member of the political elite. She combined socialist and feminist ideas and began to campaign for “voluntary motherhood.”

To Møller the only way to ensure this was if contraceptive knowledge was readily available and abortion legalized.

During a visit to England Møller became interested in the work of Marie Stopes and decided to translate Stopes’ “A Letter to Working Mothers on How to Have Healthy Children and Avoid Weakening Pregnancies” into Norwegian and have it published and sold as a brochure. In an effort to stay true to her beliefs, and avoid prosecution, Møller omitted Stopes’ opposition to legalized abortion and instead focused her translation on the discussion of contraceptive devices and reproduction.

Møller had been trying for years to set up a mother hygiene clinic in Oslo modeled after Marie Stopes’, and her translation and selling of Stopes’ brochure presented her with the financial means to do so. On April 30, 1924 the Mother Hygiene Office opened its doors. Møller had founded this clinic in order to provide contraceptive advice to the most economically disadvantaged women and she was ultimately successful in reaching even the poorest of women.7 The primary purpose of the office was to sell the translation of Stopes’

While its main focus was to educate poor women on contraceptive options, the Office was soon flooded with requests for advice on how to safely and successfully end a pregnancy.8 This article begins with an excerpt from one of these letters and I created a “wordle” to give a sense of the letters as a whole.

for “help.” It makes sense that this was a word used often by women requesting instruction on how to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies, but seeing it in this way really drove home the vulnerable and desperate position many of these women were in. More than anything they asked for “help.” When it came to the topic of abortion, however, the staff at the Mother Hygiene Office was not legally allowed to offer any type of assistance or advice.

The workers at the clinic often responded to these inquiries by informing the recipient that intentionally trying to expel a fetus from the womb was a criminal act and the Mother Hygiene Office could not offer any help in regards to these types of requests. Instead they would often send them a copy of Marie Stopes’ brochure as consolation, telling them that the contraceptive methods it described

A “wordle” of 15 letters received in the 1920s by the Mother Hygiene Office, Oslo, Norway For those of you who are unfamiliar with wordle: What you do is cut and paste (or type) words into a textbox on wordle.com and the program visually represents the most-often occurring words using font size. The larger the word—the more often the word is used in the text. To get this image I cut and pasted a document containing 15 letters that I had translated from Norwegian to English into wordle. There are 163 letters total.

I was immediately startled by the visual representation of these women’s requests

ANNA PETERSON

Norwegian women who did not have access to legal abortions often resorted to questionable folk remedies, including warm foot baths and the consumption of potent beverages, to self-induce miscarriage.

brochure and the contraceptive devices mentioned therein. The staff also provided counseling on childbirth and breastfeeding. Women who wanted to obtain these services could either come to the office and meet with a doctor or nurse or they could write in to request materials. The option of mail orders meant that women from all over Norway had access to the expertise of the Mother Hygiene Office. Women who lived in remote and isolated areas of Norway, far away from the services of doctors, could forge a connection with workers at the Mother Hygiene Office.

could prevent future pregnancies from occurring. The fact that the clinic was embroiled in a legal battle in 1927 over the legality of dispersing contraceptive information may have influenced these carefully worded responses to requests for abortion advice. Even though the court ultimately sided with the Mother Hygiene Office, Møller likely did not want to risk another lawsuit over an abortion scandal.

This year’s Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series is entitled “Impermanence: Embracing Change” Fall 2015/Agora

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and so far I have mainly covered the particular historical experiences of Norwegian women who sought out abortion assistance in the interwar period. But now that you have a sense of the letters as a whole, and some background on the state of abortion care and the Mother Hygiene Clinic, I will focus on how these women expressed and experienced time in these letters. These women’s requests reveal much about their understandings and constructions of time, including related issues of continuity and change.

Pregnancy signaled a temporary state of change in the bodies of the women who wrote these letters. Yet they also understood this state to be a harbinger of substantial alterations to their established lives and often interpreted their pregnancies based on other timerelated factors. When they found these indicators of time and change to be undesirable, they sought advice on how to return to what they considered normalcy.

In Norway in the 1920s it was rhetorically savvy to draw upon established ideas of motherhood to try and gain access to abortion information.

All of the women who wrote in request of abortions were married women who had children. They all wrote about their marital status in their letters, sometimes signing their names with the addition of their husbands’ or indicating that they had their husbands’ permissions to write to the Mother Hygiene Office.

They also all mentioned that they had previously given birth to children, often multiple children in a short period of time. They often included their ages if they were in their 20s or younger, or older than 40.

The letter writers likely did this to gain sympathy from the women they were writing to. Abortions were illegal and they needed middle-class women who lived very different lives than them far away in the capital city of Oslo to help them do something that was against the law, and in many people’s eyes, against God. Unmarried women did not write in—not because unmarried women did not have or need abortions, but because they likely knew that the Mother Hygiene Office would not assist them with such a request. Married 12

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women who did not have children also did not post letters asking for abortion assistance, likely because they knew that there was a strong cultural expectation of married women to have children. These women probably, and maybe accurately, perceived the staff at the Mother Hygiene Office as being unreceptive to helping married women prevent having any children at all.

The letter writers highlighted aspects of time that would help them create personal narratives that fulfilled the ideal image of a recipient of contraceptive and abortion advice: a married woman who had done her duty and had children, but had given birth to so many and in such a short amount of time that her body and mind were stressed and frazzled. This woman could not fulfill her role of being a good wife and mother to her children if she had more children. This woman was one the letter writers believed could win the sympathy of the Mother Hygiene Office, perhaps especially its creator Katti Anker Møller. She had after all translated Marie Stopes’ brochure on contraceptive methods into “A Letter to Exhausted Mothers” in Norwegian.

In their letters, Norwegian women often used markers of time to interpret and present a pregnancy as desirable or undesirable, including how old they were, how advanced the pregnancy was, how long they had been married, and various other aspects related to the number and timing of their children.

Women used their ages to argue that they were either too young or too old to have more children. Nelly Hansen emphasized her young age of 25 when she wrote: “I am 25 years old, we have been married for 4 years and have 2 children. I had a miscarriage this summer and I am now again newly pregnant, so the lady can probably imagine that I am now desperate.” So too did Selma Beck who described her desperate desire not to have more children as “a matter of life and death.”

She intimated taking her own life if she was not helped and highlighted the fact that she was “only 25 years old” to drive home the tragic nature of this threat.

Other women called attention to their advanced age to stress their inability

to have more children. For example, Sigrid Hovli wrote to the Office after experiencing contraceptive failure. Hovli did not want more children, nor did she think she was “capable of having more” because she was in her 40s.

The letter writers highlighted aspects of time that would help them create personal narratives that fulfilled the ideal image of a recipient of contraceptive and abortion advice: a married woman who had done her duty and had children, but had given birth to so many and in such a short amount of time that her body and mind were stressed and frazzled.

Women also emphasized the length of their marriages and the number of children they had during those years as a reason they could not have more children. More than one-fourth (27%) of the 163 letters I studied explained their need for abortion assistance because of the number of children they had. Margit Kirkerød began her letter to the Office stating: “I must have permission to contact the office” because she had been married for “almost 6 years” and had given birth to four children and experienced one miscarriage during that length of time.

Astri Boe had had three children in four years of marriage: “The oldest is a three year old little girl. Then I had another little girl but she was so weak that she died when she was barely four months old. Now I have number 3, who is a delightful boy.” The close spacing of these children had left Boe “so tired and anxious that [she] could never in [her] life imagine having another one.” Sometimes it wasn’t the length of marriage women used to indicate the rapidity of their previous pregnancies. Sigrid Hansen used her age of 28 to demonstrate that having

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Mor og far med to barn, 1916 (Mother and father with two children, 1916) 6 children by that time, with only one year in-between the three youngest, was the reason she was “so desperate” not to have another.

Many women not only argued for their need for abortions because of the number of children they had given birth to in a short period of time, but also mentioned the age of their youngest child as evidence for why they could not have another child so soon. About one-third (31%) of the letter writers emphasized the age of their youngest child as being instrumental in their reason for not wishing to have another child. Selma Beck had just given birth two months before when she wrote in “fear that [she was] already pregnant again.” Margit Kirkerød’s youngest was nine months old when she decided to ask the Office for abortion advice. And to Johanne Kleven, the reason “it [was] of greatest importance that there should not be any more children brought into this world in our home until further notice” was because she had to care for two children aged 20 months and 4 months.

Another marker of time women wrote about to try and gain access to abortion information was the short length of time that had passed since they had last had their menstrual periods. They likely included this information to indicate

that getting rid of the pregnancy would not be difficult to accomplish. Esther Gundersen believed that it should be possible to get help with her unwanted pregnancy because “it had not gone any longer” than two months since she last menstruated. When Ragna Grongstad wrote to the Office she underlined the word just in the first line of her letter to emphasize the early nature of her pregnancy: “Does a remedy exist that can remove a pregnancy that has just begun.” Emma Warum waited only four days after her expected period to beseech the Office staff: “Tell me sincerely, is there really not a remedy that oneself cannot administer to induce the monthlies or miscarriage at such an early stage.” Sigrid Hovli also wrote soon after her expected menstruation did not appear: “I should have had my ‘period’ eight days ago but I have not gotten it yet and this has never happened except for when I have been with child. At such an early stage it cannot be so large in size that it cannot be gotten rid of.”

To these women, the early nature of their pregnancies would hopefully persuade the Mother Hygiene Office workers that they could be helped, and helped easily. It is important to note that they did not use the length of pregnancy to make a moral argument

about the presence or absence of “life.”

This conceptualization of trimesters and viability of fetuses in regards to the morality or immorality of abortion only crystallized in Western law and public debate in the 1970s—most notably in the United Sates through the court case Roe v. Wade.

In addition to using time-indicators to argue for their abortion needs, Norwegian women also invoked conceptualizations of change in their attempts to describe what exactly was wrong and how the Office could help them. As this was a delicate request, many of the women who wrote to the Mother Hygiene Office in search of abortion assistance never explicitly articulated what the problem was and how the Office could help. Of the 163 letters I studied, 54 percent of them did not mention the existence of an unwanted pregnancy and 30 percent of the letters did not explicitly mention how they wanted the Office to assist them.

The letter writers who did describe an unwanted pregnancy as the reason they needed help rarely used the word “pregnancy” at all. They did not often describe the presence of something, such as a pregnancy, baby or fetus, as being the problem, but rather the absence of a regular marker of their reproductive lives: menstruation. About 42 percent of the women who wrote to the Hygiene Office articulated their problem in terms of a lack of menstruation. Emma Warum wrote: “The monthly periods that always come precisely … are now absent … now …

I am sure as I am too young for it to be ‘menopause.’” While she never explicitly mentioned what she was “sure” of, it was clear that an interruption to her regular monthly cycle was perceived as a cause for concern since she had ruled out “menopause” or the natural cessation to her periods as being the culprit. For Kristi Einarsen, her lack of a menstrual period also signaled an unwelcome change to her body and her life: “it has been 5 weeks since I last had my period so now I am probably in trouble again.”

Given the fact that many women described the problem they were having as a lack of menstruation, it Fall 2015/Agora

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They did not often describe the presence of something, such as a pregnancy, baby or fetus, as being the problem, but rather the absence of a regular marker of their reproductive lives: menstruation.

Usborne’s conclusion is supported by the letters I have studied. Norwegian women thought of the relationship between menstruation and pregnancy as fluid. While they knew that a lack of menstruation could signal the beginning of a pregnancy, they did not necessarily think that this absence meant the immediate presence of a developing embryo. If their periods could be restored prior to feeling the sure evidence of a pregnancy, often represented by fetal movement or quickening which occurred around twenty weeks gestation, then these women often did not believe they were inducing the abortion of a fetus. They were returning their bodies to a state of normalcy. It is worth noting that medical professionals had a difficult 14

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time diagnosing early pregnancy during the first half of the twentieth century. In most cases, doctors could not diagnose pregnancy any earlier than eight weeks of gestation, and many were not able to do so with confidence until after the fourth month of pregnancy.

It was actually in 1927 that scientists first identified the presence of the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin (or hCG) in urine.

They used this discovery to develop a diagnostic test for pregnancy that entailed injecting a woman’s urine into an immature rat or mouse. In the case of pregnancy, the rat would react by going into heat despite its immaturity.

This was a scientific breakthrough, but one that had little effect on women’s lives until the tests became available to some women in doctors’ offices starting in the 1940s. As a result, doctors too often relied on bodily movement, such as Braxton Hicks contractions and quickening as firm indication of the existence of a pregnancy, rather than abnormal menstrual periods which could signal any number of medical conditions.

the days she expected her period, Nilsen demonstrated an overlapping way of thinking about pregnancy, abortion and the restoration of menstruation that many working-class women subscribed to. To them, delayed menstruation represented an unwanted bodily change. They believed that they could re-start their periods by employing a variety of methods. Doing so did not signify the abortion of a fetus, but the reinstatement of a reassuring constancy to their reproductive lives.

Norwegian women’s letters from this period illustrate this fluid way of thinking about menstruation and early pregnancy. Johanne Kleven wrote to the Mother Hygiene Office and requested that, “If it is possible that the office can advise me of a remedy to get my monthly periods back and thereby rid the possible formation of a fetus, you are requested to send the most effective remedy immediately.”

Her letter indicated that she thought of her lack of menstruation and the “possible formation of a fetus” as separate but related. Helene Nilsen wrote terrified that “something might be amiss” in regards to her monthly periods. She asked the Mother Hygiene Office workers if they could send her a “mother catheter” as “I would very much like to have one at hand in case my menstruation remains absent because I cannot bear to have more children in the next couple of years. Do you think that there is any danger in inserting a catheter if I do it one of the days I anticipate getting my menstruation?”

By asking if she could use a catheter to prevent having more children on one of

Economic crisis characterized the interwar period in Norway and much of the Western world. Increased demands for shipping during the First World War had brought economic prosperity to Norway, and at the war’s end in 1918 the Norwegian state had a substantial amount of money that could be used for public expenditures.10 Two years later, in 1920, the economic bubble burst. Prices

Mother Hygiene Office logo, 1920s

The final element of these letters that I would mention is the references they make to time itself in the way of historical context. To a historian, historical context is key to studying other elements of history such as historical change and continuity, shifts in cultural attitudes, decisions of historical actors, etc. In this way, context—the time in which the subject of historical study is rooted—is foundational to understanding the past. In order to better understand the women who wrote these letters to the Mother Hygiene Office and the references they make in their letters, it is essential to know more about what else was going on in Norway, and Europe more generally, in the 1920s.

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is not surprising that 20 percent of them asked for assistance re-starting their periods rather than aborting a pregnancy or fetus. In this way, Norwegian women characterized the help they needed more as a restoration of a stable condition than an end to a pregnancy. This finding is in line with what other scholars have concluded in regards to women’s experiences of and conceptualizations of pregnancy and abortion in the early twentieth-century.

In her book, Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany, Cornelie Usborne argues that women did not distinguish between contraception and abortion and believed that a delayed period and early pregnancy was a continuum rather than a clearly demarcated phenomenon. This belief differed from the one the medical establishment was advocating for at the time, which purported that early pregnancy signified an entirely different bodily state.9

To many of these women, the time that they lived in necessitated the prevention of having more children. Most of the women were of workingclass background and lived in communities particularly affected by the economic depression.

This economic situation is reflected in the letters women wrote to the Hygiene Office asking for abortion assistance.

To many of these women, the time that they lived in necessitated the prevention of having more children. Most of the women were of working-class background and lived in communities particularly affected by the economic depression. These women highlighted the difficult circumstances they and their families were in when writing to middle-class workers at the Office in Oslo. At times they also invoked ideas of class tension and inequality to try and solicit abortion advice and assistance, reflecting not only social but also political shifts that occurred during this period, including the rise of the Norwegian social democratic, or Labour, Party. This political party brought increased attention to class antagonisms and social programs and incorporated working class demands into political action.

The most cited reason women gave as to why they needed abortion advice was the poor economy. You can see from this graph the various reasons women gave for why they could not have another child. Economic factors tied with personal health concerns as the

most cited cause of women’s requests for abortion assistance at 37.4%. Many letter writers gave detailed descriptions of their poor economic circumstances in their letters and tied this to their desire to not have more children, such as Nelly Hansen: To bring more children into this horrible world, yes, I believe that to be impossible. We have done what we could to prevent this but it is not easy when one is poor and does not have any resources. We have to apply for public assistance here in Borge of course. There we receive 15 kroner a week for the 4 of us. The children are 2 and 3 years old so there is not much left to take care of myself. My husband is a good man who does not drink and is not lazy, but only wants to get ahead and cannot get ahead so it is no wonder I am so desperate now. I am so tired and unwell after this long period of unemployment that I believe it is impossible for me to carry this child to term… I would be able to view this more optimistically if only my husband had work, but there is not even temporary work to be had, yes we are in a very desperate situation as you can imagine ma’am.

Other letter writers went into less detail about their economic circumstances and merely mentioned that their husbands were unemployed or poorly paid as

being the main motivation for not being able to have more children.

Many of the women who wrote letters to the Mother Hygiene Office invoked classed representations of themselves as working-class wives in order to assert their need for, and worthiness of, abortion help. Sometimes women used a working-class identity to solicit sympathy and other times guilt from the middle-class workers at the Hygiene Office. Kristi Einarsen wrote beseechingly: “My dears, help me in my time of need as I am a poor working-class wife.” Astri Boe begged for assistance from someone with abortive knowledge: “So if you know please have mercy on me. I do not know if a doctor would help me, but as I cannot obtain the money necessary for medical treatment it does not matter.”

Sometimes women referenced the mission of the Hygiene Clinic to serve underprivileged women in their classed pleas. Sigrid Horvli did this when she wrote: “I believe that the office was founded to help exhausted workingclass mothers and if this is true then I must ask for help.” By framing her request in this way, Horvli encouraged the staff at the Mother Hygiene Office to either stand by their mission and help her, or fail in their stated goals. She and others likely claimed oppressed class identities, particularly during a time of economic depression, to illicit sympathy and legitimize their requests for help.

In a few rare instances, letter writers used a working-class identity to demand

Economic

Health Age of Youngest Child # of Children Contraceptive Failure Exhaustion Husband

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

ANNA PETERSON

began to fall and unemployment rose.

At the economic depression’s height in the early 1930s, around 30 percent of Norwegians were without work. As a result, many thousands of people lived in poverty. Many working-class people had to turn to poverty relief and other forms of public assistance in order to survive.

Cited reasons for needing abortion advice.

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assistance based on principles of equality and fairness. Such was the case with one of the eight letters written by a man to the Mother Hygiene Office.

Eirik Overby had written to the Office for abortion help for his wife and received a standardized reply that they could not assist in such matters. He was not dissuaded by their response and wrote back a frustrated reply.

Overby’s tone in this second letter was very different from most of the women writers. Similar to the other husbands who wrote on behalf of their wives, Overby did not try and cultivate sympathy among his readers for his and his wife’s plight. Rather he demanded that the Office “must” help him and his wife.

He was particularly irritated about what he perceived to be the unequal access working-class women had to legal abortions performed by doctors. In a postscript to the letter he wrote: Why should it be so difficult for those with the most limited means to obtain help in such cases. It often occurs that those who have enough money and encounter an unwanted pregnancy just take a trip into Oslo—maybe other places as well—lie there a few days and return free of all their troubles.

This, according to reliable reports, is surely the case and I cannot understand how you can be so ignorant of this. Do not deny us help if you can in any way do something for us.

While many of the women identified themselves as working-class to try and elicit a compassionate reply, Overby did so to highlight the class inequality involved in abortion access and implored the workers at the Mother Hygiene Office to operate on principles of fairness. This line of reasoning was likely tied to his status as a man and the fact that he had already been rejected once from the Office. It also reflected contemporary discussions of class tensions and equality during a time of immense economic hardship and the rise of the Norwegian Labour Party.

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Conclusion

When I submitted my proposal for this year’s Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series on change, I was actually a little surprised by the topic I submitted to discuss. As a historian, I could have spoken on any number of subjects related to historical change. Historians love to talk about change over time, for example, and I could have discussed the primary research that I do tracing the ways in which maternity policies in Norway changed from restrictive, punitive laws in 1892 to becoming generous comprehensive rights by 1940.

But the first thing I actually thought of when I considered this year’s theme was these abortion letters.

The letters might not illustrate much in the way of change over time, as the time period the majority of the letters were written in spans just over two years. But they do speak to many different elements of change and even time itself. They show how Norwegian women in the interwar period used markers of time to invoke sympathy and compassion for their requests. They also demonstrate the ways in which working-class women thought about bodily change, interrupters, and states of normalcy. Finally, the letters reveal the ways in which women (and men) used the very time in which they lived and the massive economic, social, and political changes that were occurring in late 1920s Norway to argue for their abortion needs.

Notes 1. All letters have been translated by the author. They are all housed in Katti Anker Møller’s personal archive at the National Library in Oslo, Norway.

2. Innstilling fra Straffelovrådet 1956, pages 26 -29. Published as an appendix to Odelsting proposisjon number 15, 1959.

3. Blom, Synd eller sunn fornuft, 41, 52.

4. The contraceptive devices available during this period in Norway included the Mesingaring, sponge, female condom, male condom and diaphragm. These devices were often ineffective at preventing pregnancy, especially when they were not fitted correctly by a medical professional.

5. John M. Riddle, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

6. These methods were also accepted by some medical experts. See Alfred Hall, The Mother’s Own Book and Practical Guide to Health, Rochester, NY: [s.n.], 1843.; Frederick Joseph Taussig, Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, St. Louis: The C.V. Mosby Company, 1936.

7. Ida Blom, Barnebegrensing: synd eller sunn fornuft, 210.

8. Ida Blom found that 6% of the 4,300 letters sent to the Oslo Mother Hygiene Office from 1924 – 1929 asked for advice on abortive methods. Barnebegrensing, 6-7.

9. Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany, 138.

10. Anne-Lise Seip, Veiene til velferdsstaten, 19.

Revolution, Cultural Policy and Censorship in Cuba

by ALFREDO ALONSO ESTENOZ, Associate Professor of Spanish

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n 1961 two young Cuban of the iconic image of Che Guevara. the Revolution, every topic could be filmmakers decided to produce a The image the Revolution promoted addressed. “Within the Revolution, film in the style of Free Cinema, of itself did not exclude a sense of joy everything goes; against the Revolution, the movement born in England a few and celebration. But the bar scenes in nothing,” were Castros famous words. years earlier. According to its manifesto, PM were too much. The people of the The phrase was sufficiently ambiguous central to Free Cinema were the “belief new Cuba should be working or saving to allow a margin of interpretation. in freedom, the importance of people their energy for the hard work ahead, Who was going to decide if a piece and in the significance of the everyday” not drinking and dancing. The officials of writing was against the Revolution (“Free Cinema”). Its adherents would who banned the film denounced the and not merely a constructive go out to the streets with limited documentary as a portrait of the precriticism, something the government technical capabilities and record events revolutionary, bourgeois way of life. The encouraged people to do? That right, of as they were happening. The Cuban assumption that a group of working course, belonged to the leaders of the filmmakers shot an eleven-minute class people—for whom the Revolution Revolution. Many Cuban intellectuals documentary on the nightlife had accepted these leaders not of Havana. They captured an only as the political avant-garde unscripted series of events that but also as the highest authority begin when a group of people in other aspects of life, even arrive at different bars and artistic creation. The Revolution spend part of the night there. had been brought about by a They drink, dance, the musicians group of rebel fighters—the tune their instruments—one writers had done nothing of them smokes what appears inside Cuba or had been living to be a joint. Things get a little in exile until 1959, when new wilder as the night progresses: work opportunities opened the conversations and the music up and they returned to the get louder, people get drunker. island. This caused a sense of People dance at one of the bars featured in Past Meridian.

At the end of the night, with a guilt that explains the attitudes certain feeling of sadness, everybody was precisely made—embodied of subordination that were common goes home. bourgeois values demonstrates that among the intellectuals, at least during even the essential category of social The documentary, called PM (“Past the 1960s. class (which a Marxist revolution was Meridian”), was banned by the supposed to bring to the foreground) The debates about artistic freedom and government office that regulated was relegated when it came to seeing the role of art, nonetheless, continued film exhibition in Cuba.1 Why did everyday events under a political filter. during that decade. Then, in 1968, a film apparently devoid of political the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla won content cause such a stir, to the point Filmmakers and writers protested the the most important poetry award that it is still debated today? On one ban, which led to a three-day meeting in the island with his book Fuera hand, it presented a view of Cuba at the National Library, presided by del juego (“Out of the Game”). The different from the one the two-year old Fidel Castro. The intellectuals expressed poems questioned the epic view of the Revolutionary government promoted. their concern about the limits to artistic Revolution. The most emblematic text Fidel Castro was a media savvy person expression that the ban of PM implied. of the book, “In Trying Times,” tells the and many historians attribute part of In his closing remarks, Fidel Castro story of a man who has to give every his success to a skillful understanding said the words that would define the part of his body to the political cause. and manipulation of the media. After cultural policy of the Revolution for After the man is left with nothing, he he came to power, he had a troop of the next ten years. He explained there is asked to stand up and walk, because photographers traveling with him at was total freedom with respect to form “in trying times // that is, without a all times—most of them had worked but content presented a challenge, doubt, the decisive test.” However, the as fashion photographers before the and concluded that, as long as content collection was published with a note Revolution, like Alberto Korda, author was not against the principles of from the government-created writers Fall 2015/Agora

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and artists’ union expressing their disagreement with its content.

“Within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing,” were Castros famous words.

That the book saw the light showed there was still room for dissent. Padilla, who many have seen as a combination of political dissident, provocateur and opportunist (before he got into trouble he had represented the Cuban government as a diplomat in several countries), continued to voice criticism of the Revolution. In 1971 he was arrested and accused of engaging in “counterrevolutionary activities,” a term that did not necessarily refer to any specific political action but merely to having—and expressing in public—unfavorable opinions. The news of Padilla’s arrest spread quickly and a group of intellectuals from around the world sent an open letter to Fidel Castro from Paris asking to clarify the poet’s situation. There was no answer. Padilla was released six weeks later and made a public confession in which he regretted his attitude, praised the Revolution’s generosity towards him, and denounced other writers. A second letter from the majority of the signatories of the first one expressed their suspicion that a confession like that could only have been obtained with coercive methods.

Fidel Castro broke openly with the signatories of the letter and with all the leftist intellectuals who had expressed concerns about the direction of the Revolution. His closing remarks at a conference taking place in Havana at the time, called the First Congress on Education and Culture, set the guidelines for the functioning of these two areas for the next five years.

Among other issues, the Congress’ final report declared that the “revolutionary intellectual should dedicate his or her work to eliminating the remains of the old society that still persist in the transition from capitalism to socialism” 18

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(16); homosexuality was called “a social pathology,” and during the subsequent years homosexual artists and educators were removed from their jobs and placed in other positions because “they should not have any direct involvement in the education of Cuban youth” (“Declaración” 14; my translation).

The First Congress on Education and Culture reversed a climate of certain openness that had prevailed during the 60s, a decade when most of the Latin American intellectuals saw Cuba as a space of freedom and creation. They flooded the island with their visits and support, participating as juries in the numerous literary awards that were instituted. In their appreciation for the Cuban political process, they projected their own hopes for a better world or, more specifically, for a better socialism.

They were familiar with the Stalinist purges and German Democratic Republic trials, and expected Cuba would not make the same mistakes.

Even in 1968, as two Soviet writers were prosecuted for publishing critical works under a pen name in Western Europe, Fidel Castro was asked by the participants in an international writers’ conference if he would allow something like that to happen in Cuba.

He categorically denied that anyone would be prosecuted for his or her writings. Three years later, his position had radically changed. The Padilla affair transformed forever the relationship of Latin American intellectuals to the Cuban Revolution.

3 3 3 My own interest in Cuban censorship came about during my sabbatical when I set out to study the reception of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ work in Cuba. I found that, in order to tell that story, it was necessary to connect it with the Revolution’s cultural policy. In the 1960s Borges became the anti-role model for the intellectual the Revolution supported and promoted.

He was in his mid-60s and had already published the most important part of his work. What damage could he do at that point? In 1959 the leading Cuban cultural magazine had called Borges the greatest writer alive in Spanish, but

that publication was ordered to close two years later. Other Latin American writers, many of whom broke with Cuba after the Padilla affair, had been involved with the Revolution’s cultural life since the beginning, but Borges was just a distant observer. He had merely expressed his opposition to the political process and had criticized his compatriot Ernesto Che Guevara. On the other hand, he rejected the notion that a writer should be politically committed to a specific cause and defended the right to express individual ideas in spite of the group spirit prevalent at the time in Latin American intellectual life, on both sides of the political spectrum. He was perceived as a bourgeois writer, a defender of values the Cuban Revolution fought against, a writer whose work followed European literary tradition too closely and had little to say about the realities of Latin America.

The scholars who defended Borges’ work even during that time argued that his political opinions were erratic and misinformed and his work should not be judged in light of those opinions.

During the 1960s and 1970s the young Argentine writers downplayed the importance of his work and based their judgment on his political opinions.

Borges’ lowest moment would come later, in 1976, when he infamously expressed support for the Military Junta that instituted one of the worst dictatorships in Latin America, with thousands of political opponents tortured and assassinated. Borges later regretted his position and became a critic of the Junta. The scholars who defended Borges’ work even during that time argued that his political opinions were erratic and misinformed and his work should not be judged in light of those opinions. Throughout his life, Borges himself maintained that a writer should not be judged based on his or

Less than two years before Borges’ death, the Cuban poet and critic Roberto Fernández Retamar, a key figure in the reception of the Argentine writer in Cuba, had met with him in Buenos Aires and obtained his permission to publish an anthology of his work. The publication was also highly symbolic, as if two opposed intellectual positions had finally reconciled. Printing Borges’ work represented the abandonment of the Revolution’s idea that the work had to be judged primarily for its ideological content. But his publication did not put an end to censorship in Cuba.

The exiled Cuban writers still alive at that moment were barely mentioned in literary journals, nor taught at university-level courses. Only after the death of some of them—Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reynaldo Arenas, Lydia Cabrera, or Heberto Padilla, who died in 2000 in the United States, where he was teaching at Auburn University— was the taboo partially lifted, although an ambivalence towards their work and persona still persists.

It is generally assumed that the worst period of control over artistic creation in Cuba ended by 1976 with the creation of the Ministry of Culture.

The repercussions, though, lasted until the early 1980s when a new generation of writers and artists emerged, with other concerns in mind. Their work was skeptical and critical, but their vision could not be expressed directly.

Borges himself had spoken in favor of censorship because it forces the artist to express his or her ideas indirectly, something that art must do in all circumstances. It can be argued on the other hand that censorship also imposes a limitation, a simplification of meaning: everything could be read or seen as a veiled reference to the political situation, even a documentary about people dancing at a bar. The young Cuban writers’ works became highly allegorical, affecting their potential to reach out to larger sectors of the reading public.

Has the cultural policy of the Cuban Revolution changed? What type of

policy, if any, is still in place today, as the world watches in surprise the reconciliation of the United States and Cuba, the last two enemies from the Cold War? It would seem that now that Cuba’s number one enemy is a friend, one of the excuses for the suppression of artistic freedom—that a work which criticized the Revolution amounted to giving the enemy more Borges in Cuba. Somebody placed Borges’ Cuban arms—has been removed. anthology among Fidel Castro’s and Che Guevara’s books But censorship continues to in this uncredited photo. occur in Cuba, at a rate that appears to have increased in act of censoring was more symbolic and the last few years. In the fall of 2014, significant in itself than the content an exhibit by one of the greatest Cuban of the suppressed work. On the other painters working in the island today, hand, not a single incident of censorship Pedro Pablo Oliva, was banned under has had a truly significant impact on the excuse that the painter had not the Revolution’s course. This does not followed the paperwork necessary to diminish the negative effects censorship obtain the permission to display his as a political practice has had on the work—a permission that any book, film, daily lives of Cuban citizens. A proof TV show, exhibition must obtain before of this is precisely that the majority of becoming public. In December of 2014 Cubans have remained unaware of even the film Return to Ithaca (a Cubanthe high profile cases involving artists French production directed by Laurent and writers. The control of information Cantet) was excluded from competing has been essential to the Revolution’s at the Havana Film Festival. The success, if we judge this success by the excuse? A very old one: it was not an capacity of a government to remain in accurate portrait of present-time Cuba power for almost six decades. and presented the Revolution under a critical perspective. In the film, some college friends reunite on the occasion Works Cited of one of them returning to Cuba from “Declaración del Primer Congreso de Spain and express their disillusion with Educación y Cultura.” Casa de las the aspirations they had when they Américas 65-66 (1971): 4-19. were young and idealistic. The film was “Free Cinema.” Screen Online. British Film finally released in theaters this year Institute. http://www.screenonline.org. after an unusual formal protest by a uk/film/id/444789/. 4 Oct. 2015. group of Cuban filmmakers. Just this past September government officials suspended the activities of the group Notes K’ Bolá, a semi-private initiative that 1. The original copy of PM has been brought together hip-hop musicians seen only by a small number of people. and artists from around the island.

OYEBORGES.BLOGSPOT.COM

her politics, using the example of one of his favorite writers, Rudyard Kipling, an apologist for the British Empire.

It appears that the government can still dictate today the limits of criticism. A certain quota of criticism maintains the artists and the public somewhat content and it gives the impression abroad that there is artistic freedom in the island. But certain works prove to be too much and the criteria for banning them seem arbitrary, as if the

The first time it was shown to the public after the ban was during the end credits of Julian Schnabel’s film Before Night Falls, about Cuban writer and political dissident Reynaldo Arenas. A low-quality copy of PM can be watched on YouTube: www.youtube. com/watch?v=I0-8gfWzBa8.

Fall 2015/Agora

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Water in the West: The Gap Between Policy and Science

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n March of 2015, I drove past date orchards and alfalfa fields to the Salton Sea, a lake in the Sonoran Desert. The lake had its origins in 1900, when one of the first irrigation projects to use water from the Colorado River began diverting water near Yuma, Arizona. In 1905, flooding in the Colorado River overwhelmed the irrigation diversion, and the Salton Sink, a low point in California’s Imperial County, had a lake again after being dry for several centuries or more (Reisner 1993). Once the flooding was controlled in 1907, the lake would have dried out once again from evaporation, but from the 1920s the Salton Sea became the drain for irrigation waters.

The Sea continued to grow, and soon became an important stop for migrating birds, replacing some of the wetlands elsewhere in the state that had been drained for agriculture. Over time, however, the buildup of salts from evaporation has threatened the food chain in the lake: the lake is now saltier than the ocean, and will continue to become more salty over time. The Salton Sea is expected to shrink as irrigation becomes more efficient and some of the water rights are sold to San Diego, becoming saltier still as the volume diminishes.

ERIC BAACK

I was visiting the Salton Sea and the Imperial Valley to better understand water in the Southwest. In even years, two vans leave the Luther campus and head towards Colorado and Arizona for a January term course on “The Ecology of the Southwest.” For some

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of the students, this course becomes their Paideia capstone when it is followed with “Environmental Politics and Policy.” On the fourth day of the course, we arrive at the Glen Canyon Dam, near Page, Arizona, where we study the effect of the dam on the fish of the Grand Canyon. The dam exists to ensure a steady supply of water to downstream farms and cities—and eventually the Salton Sea. When the reservoir behind the dam is full, it can hold enough water to meet the commitments to California, Arizona, and Nevada for three years.

As I planned my sabbatical, I decided that part of my time would be spent in dry places to better understand human decisions about water. I planned to live in Brisbane, Australia, which endured a 10 year drought ending in 2008, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the edge of the Chihuahan desert. From there, I planned an expedition across Arizona and California to visit some potential destinations for my J-term course, and to explore the lower reaches of the Colorado River and the places where its water travels in California.

Now, in the spring of 2015, it was clear that water was seizing the headlines in the Southwest. California was seeing the end of its driest winter on record.

Farmers in the San Joaquin valley were seeing their water supply cut. In response, they were pumping water from wells at a tremendous rate, even as the state had finally passed a law that would eventually regulate groundwater pumping.

In the Southwest, water rights are among the most valuable of property.

Water law has deep roots, emerging before any western state. Water rights date to the 1600s in New Mexico and to the 1840s in California—long before they could be informed by contemporary climatology or hydrology.

California’s San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, and the Salton Sea. One of the most important water rights in the Southwest, the division of the waters of the Colorado River, was settled in 1922—and was based on estimates of the river’s flow from ten abnormally wet years (Reisner 1993).

Our laws surrounding water lag the scientific understanding of water, but because the value of water is so high, there are strong forces resisting legal changes.

3 3 3

Desert cities—Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles—are astonishing. Desert agriculture is even more so, but receives much less attention. California’s San Joaquin valley receives 29 cm of rainfall a year on average; the Imperial Valley receives just 7.2 cm (a bit under 3 inches). Here at Luther College, we receive more than 80 cm per year, and we talk of a drought if we go ten days without rain in the summer. These California valleys rarely see any rain from March until November, and temperatures usually peak over 35 C (more than 95 F). The fields of the Imperial Valley receive the single largest allocation of water from the Colorado River: nearly 2.5 cubic kilometers.

NASA PHOTOGRAPH, MODIFIED BY ERIC BAACK

by ERIC BAACK, Associate Professor of Biology

With all of this water from the Colorado River, the Imperial Valley does not need to pump water from wells, so ground water levels are stable.

The San Joaquin valley is another matter. For many years, farmers there have received water from the Sacramento River delta to the north.

However, concerns about endangered fish and the health of San Francisco Bay have limited pumping, particularly in drought years. To make up for the shortfall, farmers have increasingly used well water for irrigation. No one is quite sure how much is being pumped: until last year, California had no laws regulating the use of groundwater.

However, NASA has estimated the loss of ground water by looking at changes in gravity. As water is pumped out of an aquifer, the mass of the aquifer decreases, leading to less gravitational pull on a satellite immediately above. A pair of satellites, the GRACE mission, has been circling the earth since 2003, very carefully measuring the force of gravity. Changes in gravity above the San Joaquin valley led to estimates that 16 cubic kilomters of ground water was pumped out of the San Joaquin valley between 2006 and 2010 (Famiglietti et al 2011). (Imagine your typical water tower, which might hold half a million gallons of water. Now imagine eight million water towers: that’s close to 16 cubic kilometers of water.) Losses have probably been even faster in 2015.

With such rapid pumping of ground water, we might expect California to strictly regulate it. If groundwater levels drop too far, it may become impossible to use it for irrigation. Before that happens, declining groundwater can lead to problems, such as subsidence at the surface. As water is extracted, the underlying sediments collapse, leading the ground to drop. Roads, pipelines, and canals all suffer in the process. While the need to regulate ground water is clear, the challenges

ERIC BAACK

(Imagine two million football fields, each covered by a foot of water. The area irrigated is roughly 200,000 hectares (~500,000 acres), so every inch of soil receives over a meter of irrigation water—more than the rainfall in NE Iowa.

An irrigated field in the Imperial Valley with the surrounding Sonoran desert. of establishing regulation are equally clear: if rules were to go into effect now, some farms might be left dry – and out of business. In order to pass California’s water legislation in 2014, rules governing ground water could not take effect until 2025 at the earliest (Lustgarden 2015).

not understood, and it was thought to consist of underground rivers. When water law was written in Arizona and elsewhere, groundwater was treated as completely separated from surface water.

Even when legal protections exist for surface waters, ground water usage is not restricted.

Fortunately, groundwater can be replenished. Phoenix, Arizona was rapidly depleting its ground water for decades. However, in the 1990s it started to receive water from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project. The extra water has meant that Phoenix could begin to replenish the ground water that it had been tapping.

Water from the Colorado River and from sewage treatment plants forms shallow lakes in the desert. The standing water soaks into the ground. Prior to the 1990s, Phoenix had sections that were sinking each year due to the loss of ground water. Now, some areas are rising as ground water is replaced.

Two cases illustrate the dangers of this approach. When our class travels to Arizona, we stay at the Santa Rita Experimental Range south of Tucson.

The area south and east of Tucson is an important one for wildlife, with spring-fed wetlands. In recent years, rare animals such as ocelots and jaguars have been documented in the area.

The Rosemont copper mine has been proposed at the edge of the Santa Rita, and one particular concern is how the mine will affect streams and springs over the long-term. The proposed mine pit would be 3000 feet deep, deep enough to meet the water table. After the mine is abandoned, the bottom of the pit will fill with water, which will evaporate in the dry Arizona climate. As the water level drops in the pit, groundwater will continue to flow in from the surrounding area, lowering the water table and likely drying up springs. If the mine were back-filled at the end of operations, this would eliminate this particular problem (although it would also drive up the cost of the mine). However, Arizona law does not recognize the connection between ground water and springs (Glennon 2002).

While Arizona has fixed the problem of ground water depletion in Phoenix, elsewhere in the state the gap between science and policy remains. Developers must demonstrate a sustainable ground water supply when building a subdivision—but no such requirement exists if a house is built on its own. As a result, much of Arizona has seen a net loss of groundwater despite the passage of the groundwater protection bill in 1980.

More worrying, Arizona law does not recognize that ground water is connected to surface water. In the late nineteenth century, ground water was

Fifty miles east, a similar challenge exists along the San Pedro River. The Fall 2015/Agora

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San Pedro River supports a forest of cottonwood trees along its banks, which provides an important corridor for migrating wildlife: several miles are protected within the San Pedro National Riparian Conservation Area.

However, the city of Sierra Vista has been growing steadily. Each house that drills a well removes a bit from the water table, potentially pulling away enough water that the San Pedro will run dry and the cottonwoods will die. In 2014 a judge ruled that permission for a planned subdivision was inappropriately granted because of connections between the San Pedro and ground water (Superior Court of Arizona 2014).

However, the Arizona Department of Water Resources has no requirement for individual homes to seek well permits.

Thinking about ground water leads to some unexpected conclusions. Imagine a house in Sierra Vista with a well, a septic tank, and a fruit tree. We might imagine taking a long shower as wasteful, but watering the fruit tree as virtuous. From the point of view of the San Pedro River, the shower has little effect: almost all of the water used will flow to the septic tank, and from there will return to ground water.

(Water quality might be affected, but probably not in a way that would affect a cottonwood tree). Watering the fruit tree will permanently remove the water from the water table: the water applied to the tree will move into the atmosphere via transpiration.

With climate change, the Colorado River will likely have still less water to 22

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ERIC BAACK

Ground water pooling at the bottom of the ASARCO Mission mine, an open pit copper mine outside of Tucson, Arizona.

supply farms and cities, but desert cities will likely thrive all the same. Their advantage is that people use much less water than agriculture, and are willing to pay more for it. As Phoenix has grown, it has displaced cotton fields with rights to water from the Salt River. A farm with a right to a million cubic meters of water (~1000 acres with water one foot deep) could support 7000 people at Los Angeles levels of water usage (488 liters, or 129 gallons, per person per day), or 5,500 at Phoenix levels. Desert cities will be able to buy the water that they need by reducing the water going to desert farms. Most desert rivers, including the Colorado, will continue to see their flow diverted to human use.

The Southwest has endured over 10 years of drought: we would expect Phoenix, Arizona to have strict rules for its residents. All of California restricts outdoor watering to three days per week, and a rebate program helps residents pull up their brown lawns and plant drought-tolerant native plants. But Phoenix has no restrictions on water usage.

As it is, California still has mild rules on water use compared to

Australian cities. Brisbane, Australia residents use just 165 liters (44 gallons) per person per dayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;around a third of the use of Los Angeles residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even now that the drought ended several years ago. There, the government has supported cisterns for gray-water in all new multi-family dwellings. Where I stayed, a large cistern underneath the driveway provided water for outdoor faucets and laundry for a dozen condominiums. During the peak of the drought, sprinkler and hose use was banned, buckets could be used to water plants three times a week, and only the mirror, lights, and windows of a car could be washed. The U.S. could be much more efficient in its use of water in its desert cities.

To keep water flowing to its cities, California is putting pressure on farmers to be more efficient in their use of water. This will be easy to accomplish given present inefficiencies. Much of the Imperial Valley uses flood irrigation: fields are inundated, and much of the irrigation water flows off of the field and into a drain. Many of the irrigation canals have been simple ditches, with no lining to prevent water from seeping into the desert soil. Using water in this

Figure X: Connections between ground water and surface water. A) The water table reaches the surface at a stream or spring. B) If a well exists, it may lower the water table.

Some of the groundwater flow is towards the well rather than towards the stream. C) Continued pumping from a well may lower the water table sufficiently to dry up a stream. An open pit mine that contacts ground water will be equivalent to a well in its effects, but evaporation rather than pumping will lead to the loss of water.

In 2003, the Imperial Irrigation District agreed to transfer water to San Diego and Los Angeles. In exchange, the cities will help farmers become more efficient in their use of water, such as using drip irrigation rather than flooding their fields. The cities also paid for some of the canals to be lined with cement to prevent water from being lost through seepage. More efficient water use means that less irrigation water is ‘wasted’ on a field: more is used by plants. But less waste means that less water will flow to the Salton Sea. The sea will shrink—it has already started to—and will become more salty, with potential harmful effects on migrating birds. Lake sediments will dry up and blow into the towns surrounding the Sea—sediments that include high levels of salt and pesticides, leading to increased health problems for humans. Sound policy may require California to divert some water away from both farms and cities to protect the environment. Back in 2003, when California pushed through the agreement to transfer water from farmers to cities, it agreed to take steps to protect the Salton Sea, although the specific steps were not identified (Goodyear 2015). In 2007, state agencies proposed a plan that included planting and irrigating desert shrubs as the lake bed dried up to prevent dust storms, but the nine billion dollar price tag ensured that nothing happened.

As more water goes to cities and less reaches the Salton Sea, California must act to protect people and wildlife. The science is very clear on the need, but once again the policy lags behind.

Sources Famiglietti JS, Lo M, Ho SL, Bethune J, Anderson KJ, Syed TH, Swenson SC, de Linage CR, and Rodell M. 2011.

“Satellites measure recent rates of ground water depletion in California’s Central Valley.” Geophysical Research Letters 38: L03403.

Glennon DJ. 2002. Water follies: Groundwater pumping and the fate of America’s fresh waters. Island Press.

Goodyear D. 2015. “The dying sea: what will California sacrifice to survive the drought?” New Yorker May 4, 2015.

Lustgarden A. 2015. “Less than zero: despite decades of accepted science, California and Arizona are still miscounting their water supplies.” Propublica.

Reisner M. 1993. Cadillac Desert. New York: Penguin Books.

Superior Court of Arizona. 2014. Silver et al. v. Pueblo del Sol et al. Ruling LC2013000264-001.

Water flows in the All-American canal bringing the water to the farms of the Imperial Valley, and eventually to the Salton Sea. Fall 2015/Agora

ERIC BAACK

way in a desert to grow alfalfa that is then shipped to China or the United Arab Emirates (as much of it is) seems wasteful. However, efficient water use in agriculture can have unexpected effects in the desert—and this brings us back to the edge of the Salton Sea.

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“Piggy Back” This photo was taken in Sa Pa district in north-west Vietnam, close to the border with China. A highland area about 250 miles north of Hanoi, Sa Pa is a favorite place to visit for tourists, featuring villages with unique ethnic groups and cultures, such as the Hmong, Dao (Yao), Giáy, Pho Lu, and Tay. Generally, these minorities live a difficult life. The parents work hard in the fields to cultivate rice and plant vegetables in their gardens. If they are wealthy enough, they might own a couple of pigs, cows or buffalos. If not, they raise a few chickens. While the parents work in the fields, the children often have to take care of themselves as in this photo of an elder sister carrying her younger brother on her back. Generally, the elder sister has to babysit, feed, and play with younger siblings the whole day until the parents come home. No matter how tiring the work was, I always saw a smile of love on the elder sister’s face.

Photos of Viet Nam and Commentary by Tuan Vinh Phan, ’77

“Houseboat Family” This family lives on a houseboat in central Vietnam because they are so poor they cannot afford to live on land. The little boy sleeps and plays in the swinging basket while his mother and father sit nearby, smiling.

In the delta areas, living on little houseboats is common because of the many rivers. There are also floating markets on the rivers where merchants sell merchandise from boats and buyers come to the market by boats.

Hundreds of boats gather early in the morning until the evening to buy and sell.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Harvesting Saltâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Phan Thiet, Central Vietnamâ&#x20AC;?

A woman carries two baskets of salt and unloads them unto a tall pile. Harvesting salt is an exhausting job. Workers start early in the morning from 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. Some rake the salt in the fields into small piles. Others scoop the salt into baskets and carry the baskets over their shoulders. Workers cover their hands, face and feet and work very fast. When the heat becomes intense, they have to stop working and call it a day. Each worker receives only a few dollars a day as compensation because there is no minimum wage.

This was my first photograph of a salt worker. I was so excited I jumped into the mud to get the best angle for my photograph. After taking several shots, I noticed I could not move my feet! My ankles were deep in the mud, my sandals were gone, and I had to call my friends for help. The workers laughed a friendly laugh but never stopped working, as they were racing against the clock.

Fall 2015/Agora

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“We Miss Ya, Daddy!”

Vietnam is known as a country of wars.

When I was little in the early 1960s, I often heard a popular song on the radio: “a thousand years at war with the Chinese, a hundred years at war with the French, twenty years of daily civil war.” A military picture of the Vietnam War is part of art photography that one cannot miss.

Around 2000 as the famous Y2K approached, my friends and I set up a series of art photos to remember the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of others. Luckily, we found a friend who was formerly in the army and had an expressive face suitable for our military photo series. The photo was set up and taken in a small garage approximately 15 feet by 20 feet using a 20-year-old manual film Hasselblad camera that I bought used on the market. In return for posing, the man accepted only a six pack of beer which he enjoyed with his former army friends.

The photo— titled “We Miss Ya, Daddy!”—describes in a black and white portrait a soldier reading a letter from home. While his eyes focus on the letter, written in the hand of his son, his mind wanders back home to his beloved wife and son.

This print won the award for Best Portrait at the 109th Toronto International Salon of Photography, the oldest and most prestigious international exhibition in North America. When the photo was displayed at the Vietnamese Festival in San Jose, California, U.S. soldiers were first being sent to Afghanistan. When I was asked in a radio interview about the photograph, I gladly dedicated it to all the U.S. soldiers who were serving far away from home in Afghanistan.

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “LAND OF OPPORTUNITY”

by Tuan Vinh Phan, ’77 This statement accompanied the exhibit of Tuan Vinh Phan entitled “Photos of Viet Nam,” held in Preus Library, September October, 2015.

T

here is a Vietnamese saying, “Đất lành chim đậu.” A literal translation is “Birds choose a peaceful place to roost,” but it is understood to mean: “Birds settle in the land of opportunity.”

When I was in high school in Vietnam, one of my teachers explained that “the beauty of the educational system in the United States is that it provides opportunity for everyone who has a desire to learn.” This kindled in me a wish to go to the United States to study and to excel.

My family and I came to the United States in the late spring of 1975. With the help of my sister Liat and my brother-in-law James A. Smestad and with the referral of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Jones, my sister Clara (Knudson) and I were accepted to begin study at Luther College in the fall of 1975. Fortunately I brought with me my Vietnamese college transcripts, so I was accepted at Luther as a junior. At Luther, my academic advisor, Dr. Warren Berg, was kind enough to let me sit at a table outside of his office to study for my accounting major and to ask him questions between classes. During the weekends, Dr. and Mrs. George Knudson often invited us over for dinner and for visits.

I studied day and night and after two years I graduated from Luther College magna cum laude and pursued my graduate study in accounting at the University of Iowa, also at the recommendation of Dr. Berg. In my first job, I worked as an auditor for Teledyne Internal Audit and advanced to managerial levels including positions as director of accounting, corporate controller, vice president of finance and eventually chief financial officer.

Luther College, the University of Iowa, and the kind people of the United States equipped me with a first-class education and provided me with many opportunities to learn and to excel for which I have always been thankful and deeply appreciative.

Being the youngest in the family of nine, most of my elder sisters took care of me and were much more talented than me. Some are much more intelligent and some are much more artistic. While I was not good in any kind of art, I was interested in photography but never had a chance to learn and to take pictures in Vietnam.

Learning photography was my dream.

When I was working in Fremont, California I met Nguyen Ngoc Hanh, the most well-known photographer in Vietnam. His photos were all related to the Vietnam War and received international prizes and recognitions, including a top ten worldwide ranking in black and white photography. One day I had a meeting in the board of directors’ room and saw a large black and white photo positioned all by itself on the center of a wall. My staff told me that the photographer was “Mr. Hanh” from Vietnam. A few days later, he came to greet me and invited me to join his photography club and be his disciple. Every day, he brought lunch for me and taught me photography while we ate.

Three years later, I sent my photos to the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (RPS), the oldest and most prestigious art photography society worldwide. I was awarded its highest level of distinction, Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS), which is awarded only to a handful of pictorial

photographers worldwide each year. I continued to compete in international exhibitions and received a top ten international ranking in both black and white and color large print divisions in 2003.

It is an honor for me to have this art show at my alma mater, Luther College, where I had the most memorable time of my entire life. I wish to extend my deepest thanks and appreciation to Luther College and Professor David Kamm of the art department for giving me this opportunity.

This show is dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Jones, Mr. and Mrs. James Smestad, Mr. and Mrs. Lam Dang, Dr. and Mrs. George Knudson, Dr. and Mrs. Warren Berg, Dr. and Mrs. E.D. Farwell, Dr. and Mrs. Svanoe, Dr. and Mrs. Loyal Rue, Dr. and Mr. George Trytten, Dr. Marilyn Draheim, Ms. Ruth Mostrom, and others who helped me in the early stage of our lives in the United States.

This show is also dedicated to my wife Phuong, my son Oliver, and my daughter Tanya from whom I took the time necessary to pursue my interest in photography.

In photography, I bleed black and white.

In real life, I bleed blue and white, and black and gold. Go Norse! Go Hawkeyes!

Editor’s note: Agora readers may know another fine photographer in Tuan’s family—his sister Clara Knudson, who has for a number of years shared her time and talents as a volunteer photographer of children and families at various Decorah school and church events.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Young Cookâ&#x20AC;?

Even the younger children in Sa Pa district have to work hard when the elder girls help their parents in the fields. Here a young boy stays home and takes care of his younger brother. As part of his duty, he cooks rice for the family, blowing into a hollow short bamboo to make the flame stronger. What impressed me most about the children in Sa Pa district was their hospitality and friendliness.

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“Cow Caretaker”

“Ba Be Lake (northern Viet Nam)”

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Fractured Options in a Messy World of Ethics

by JIM MARTIN-SCHRAMM, Professor of Religion

T

he primary focus of my sabbatical involved co-authoring Earth Ethics: A Case Method Approach, published by Orbis Books in November 2015.1 Three of the five books I have published have focused on the case study approach to ethics.

My colleagues and I decided to use the approach again for several reasons. First, the cases educate readers about several social and environmental issues. They are all based on real dilemmas and current moral challenges. Second, the cases immerse readers into the complexities of an array of contemporary issues, especially their various dimensions, via the perspectives of multiple stakeholders.

Third, the case commentaries provide ethical frameworks, concepts and methods for understanding and analyzing the ethical dimensions of current issues raised by the cases.

Readers have to step into the shoes of the main figures and quickly enter the messy complexity of ethics. Fourth, the cases and commentaries can also serve as a starting point for further research to gain greater knowledge and perspectives about the issues, and to update relevant background information.

Since ethics is inherently an interdisciplinary exercise, we have expanded the audience for this book to include not only those engaged in religious studies but also those engaged in philosophical ethics and environmental studies. Our students have always come from a variety of disciplines in the humanities, natural sciences and mathematics, as well as the social sciences. It is our hope that this book will continue to foster critical thinking and student-directed learning in a variety of fields. This casebook will probably work best, however, when it is paired with other books in specific disciplines that help students engage underlying ideas in greater depth.

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We have also expanded our discussion of the ethic of ecological justice as the ethical framework because it provides a common moral vocabulary to engage in civil discourse about the issues in this book. The ethic addresses human-caused problems that threaten both human and natural communities. The ethic unites what are often viewed as separate fields of social ethics and environmental ethics because our moral obligations to other human beings cannot be separated from the welfare of other creatures in the community of life and the ecological systems that sustain us. We all share one planet, after all. Ecological well-being is the foundation for social well-being.

Our ethical obligations overlap and are interconnected. Often the same logic of domination justifies exploitation of people and the planet.

We signal this reality in the title for this book, Earth Ethics. In our view, the term, “environmental ethics” is too small to denote the scope and

magnitude of the challenges we face.

Our friend, colleague, and mentor, Larry Rasmussen, coined the term “earth ethics” when Orbis Books published Earth Community, Earth Ethics two decades ago. To make this distinction clear, Rasmussen writes:

‘Environment’ means that

which surrounds us. It is a world separate from ourselves, outside us. The true state of affairs, however, is far more interesting and intimate. The world around us is also within.

We are an expression of it; it is an expression of us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it….

None of this intimacy is carried by the word ‘environment.’ Nor does our responsibility ring as clear as it ought when we name our woe ‘the environmental crisis’ and offer ‘environmental ethics’ as the antidote…. Earth—all of it—is a community without an

exit. Our problems—peopleto-people and humankind-tootherkind—are genuinely ours all together, for worse and for better.2 Earth Ethics: A Case Method Approach explores several wickedly complicated and interwoven problems in social and environmental ethics and provides resources for engaging in ethical reflection about them. The first three chapters provide foundations for moral deliberation about these issues. The bulk of the volume consists of nine cases that address different and difficult issues in social and environmental ethics. All of the cases are based on actual situations.

Names and places have been changed when necessary to protect the privacy of those involved, but the ethical problems and moral dilemmas posed by the cases are real. Each case is accompanied by a commentary that provides important background information along with normative material that can aid in ethical assessment of the problems.

None of the commentaries, however, take a definitive stance with regard to how the case should be resolved ethically. This is left up to the reader.

The purpose of this volume is to equip readers with skills to do moral deliberation.

The nine cases explore a wide range of issues. Five revolve around choices we make about consumption in general and food in particular. These cases explore human fertility, material consumption, and climate change; water rights, food production, and the protection of endangered species; genetic engineering and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa; the ethical treatment of animals in agriculture; and workers’ rights in the production of college-branded merchandise.

The other four cases revolve in one way or another around energy issues.

These cases explore mountaintop coal removal mining and fossil fuel divestment; nuclear waste disposal and environmental racism; affordable housing, public transportation, and the protection of green spaces in large cities; and issues related to natural gas production via hydraulic fracturing.

I will focus on the latter in the rest

of this essay because the case was drawn directly from discussions about greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction options here at Luther.

Fractured Options is set at a college in the Upper Midwest (Vanguard College) that is exploring various ways to eliminate its GHG emissions.

Like Luther, the school has already reduced its emissions 40 percent via investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy (see below). The question is whether the college should invest in a natural gas-fired combined heat and power plant (CHP) to reduce emissions further, or pursue other options such as a biomass heating plant that may be more effective in reducing GHG emissions but would be twice as expensive and raise other social and environmental issues. This case actually grew out of a seminar Eric Baack and I developed for visit days at Luther during 2012-2014. Titled “The Devil’s in the Details,” the seminar invited prospective students and their parents to weigh the pros and cons associated with Luther installing a natural gas-fired combined heat and power plant.

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems use the same fuel source first to generate electricity and then they use the residual gases to heat buildings.

While the conventional method of producing usable heat and power separately has a typical combined

efficiency of 45 percent, CHP systems can operate at levels as high as 80 percent.3 Since natural gas is about half as carbon intensive per unit of fuel as coal, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity generation are greatly reduced. In addition, the waste heat captured reduces the amount of fuel needed to heat buildings. You get two energy services for the price of one. As a result, CHP is the epitome of energy efficiency.

The problem, in this case, is that the fuel source is still a fossil fuel (natural gas), which is increasingly being derived in a controversial manner. Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) involves tapping shale and other tight-rock formations by drilling a deep well a mile or more below the surface before gradually turning horizontal and continuing several thousand feet more. Millions of gallons of water, a dozen different chemicals, and thousands of tons of silica sand are injected under high pressure into the horizontal sections of the well. Each well requires up to 1,500 truckloads to deliver the water, sand, and well-drilling equipment to the site.

The high pressure of the fracking fluid causes narrow fractures in the shale rock. The silica sand (most of which in our area is mined in southwestern Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota) flows into these fissures to prop them open so that the oil and gas can flow

Reducing GHG Emissions at Luther College At Luther College, 85 percent of our carbon footprint is the result of our direct or indirect combustion of fossil fuels to heat and power the campus. The college burns natural gas every day to produce steam that heats almost all of our buildings. At the same time, we purchase a large amount of electricity to power our campus. In our part of the U.S. electrical grid about two-thirds of the electrons we purchase are still generated by coal-fired power plants. This is why electricity purchases constitute half of our campus GHG emissions. Our combustion of heating fuel produces another 35 percent of our GHG emissions.

The Energy and Water Task Group—one of four task groups of Luther’s Sustainability Council, and the one I chair—has focused on how to meet Luther’s goals to reduce GHG emissions 50 percent by 2015, 70 percent by 2020, and to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2030.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to achieving these goals; it will take many measures. With the addition of three large solar arrays this year, it now appears Luther will meet its 50 percent reduction goal in 2015-16, but it is not clear how Luther will eliminate the remaining 50 percent. It will likely require a similar combination of energy efficiency (30%) and renewable energy (20%) that has enabled us to meet our goals thus far.

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through them into the well.4 Water trapped in the shale also flows into the well along with some of the fracking fluid. As a result, dissolved salts, metal ions, and radioactive compounds end up in the well and are pumped back up to the surface as long as the well is in production. This drilling wastewater can be highly toxic. During the drilling period any recovered wastewater is often held in lined ponds for reuse in other wells. Other wastewater is disposed of by injecting it under high pressure into rock layers deep underground.5 The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the number of producing natural gas wells has nearly doubled in the United States since 1990.6 As a result, the amount of natural gas has grown by 31 percent7 and the price has declined to levels not seen since the 1990s.8 Due to these low prices, many utilities have found they can now generate electrical power at a lower cost at natural gas-fired power plants than at coal-fired plants.

As a result, natural gas-fired power production is growing and coal-fired production is declining. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attributes some of the recent decline in U.S. GHG emissions to this switch from coal to natural gas for power production because natural gas is about half as carbon-intensive as coal.9 Fractured Options examines various environmental and social issues related to fracking. These issues include methane leakage, water quality and use, air quality, land use impacts, and socioeconomic concerns. I summarize each below.

Methane Leakage. Some scientists are disputing the EPA’s claim that U.S. GHG emissions are declining due to increased natural gas consumption.

The primary component of natural gas is methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term compared to carbon dioxide. For example, if the same mass of methane and carbon dioxide were introduced into the atmosphere, the methane would trap 86 times more heat than the carbon dioxide over the next 20 years or 34 times as much heat over 100 years.10 Thus, it is vital to reduce the emission of 32

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A silica sand mine Source: Iowapublicradio.org/post/frack-sand-mining-unlikely-Allamakee-county#stream/0 methane into the atmosphere now and in the future.

The question is how much methane is leaking into the atmosphere from approximately 500,000 wells, 305,000 miles of pipelines, and hundreds of natural gas transfer facilities around the U.S. The EPA estimates that 1.5 percent of annual natural gas extractions are lost via leakage at various points throughout this massive production and distribution system.11 According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, natural gas-fired power plants emit fewer GHG emissions compared with coal-fired plants if the leakage rate from the natural gas wells to the power plants is less than 3.2 percent.12 The EPA arrives at their 1.5 percent estimate via a “bottom-up,” accountingbased approach that assumes a certain amount of methane leakage from each well, pipeline, and transfer station.

Some “top-down” studies have found much higher rates of methane leakage at specific points in the U.S. natural gas system. For example, a study conducted in the Uintah Basin in Utah used aircraft and a network of towers to find that the natural gas fields in the basin leaked 6 to 12 percent of the methane produced, on average, each day during one month.13 Another study used satellite data to discover that oil and gas basins in North Dakota and East Texas leaked 9 to 10 percent of the natural gas they produced to the atmosphere between 2006 and 2011.14

Obviously the leakage rates reported in these studies far surpass the 3.2 percent rate noted above and are almost an order of magnitude higher than the rate estimated by the EPA. It is not clear whether the leakage rates found via these top-down studies are representative of the nation as a whole. Recently a study conducted by scientists at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory analyzed more than 200 technical publications that looked into methane leakage from oil and gas operations. The study concluded “recent regional atmospheric studies with very high emissions rates are unlikely to be representative of typical natural gas system leakage rates.” The study also found “system-wide leakage is unlikely to be large enough to negate climate benefits of coal-to-natural gas substitution.”15 Given this information, it is clear there is genuine debate among scientists about the amount of methane leakage and whether shale gas-generated electricity reduces net GHG emissions in the United States. The latter is the main motivation to install a natural gasfired CHP system at Vanguard College (Luther).

Water Quality and Use. As noted above, hydraulic fracturing involves the injection of millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals deep underground.

Remarkably, most hydraulic fracturing

This lack of stringent regulation is a serious problem because there have been many documented cases of groundwater being contaminated with fracking fluids. In addition, methane and volatile organic compounds have been found in groundwater supplies that furnish potable water supplies for homes and businesses.17 While most wastewater that is not reused is disposed of by injections into deep wells, some of this water is either dumped in nearby streams or sent to public or private wastewater treatments that are often ill-equipped to treat the water before it is released to surface waters.18 There are also legitimate concerns that the huge amount of water withdrawals required for fracking will strain local ground and surface water supplies, especially in more arid regions of the U.S. like the Southwest. While studies show that water use for oil and gas development is smaller than residential and industrial uses in most states, this relatively new and substantial use of water could have serious impacts at a localized level.19 Air Quality. The boom in U.S. oil and gas production has also led to a significant increase of truck traffic in affected states. As noted above, each well requires up to 1,500 truckloads of water and materials. Diesel trucks emit particulate matter that is linked to asthma and other respiratory ailments and diseases. Trucks also churn up huge amounts of dust when they traverse unpaved roads, which can also cause breathing problems.20

SOURCE: WWW.ROCKPRODUCTS.COM

operations are exempt from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) because of a provision inserted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 commonly known as the “Halliburton loophole.” The provision prevents the EPA from applying the SDWA to fracking unless diesel fuel is used in the fracking fluid. A patchwork of varying laws and regulations constrained the activity to some extent in most of the twenty-eight states in 2014 where fracking was taking place, but nine states still did not have any laws regarding the disclosure of the chemicals in the fracking solution. 16

Frac Sand Sources in the United States Other air pollutants like ozone, methane, and volatile organic compounds are often found near drilling sites—especially near oil wells that flare natural gas that cannot be piped economically to the market. Prolonged exposure to these elements can also cause asthma and other respiratory ailments as well as cardiovascular disease and cancer. Here the EPA has been more proactive.

The EPA recently required “green completion” technologies—those that capture volatile organic compounds and methane from flowback water and fractured wells—be installed by January 2015.21 Land Use Impacts. In some areas with high rates of fracking, the construction of roads and well drilling sites can harm local ecosystems by fragmenting wildlife habitats and migration patterns.

This construction also often results in erosion that leads to increased rates of sedimentation in surface waters, which stresses fish and other aquatic species by clouding the water, altering habitats, and reducing photosynthesis.22 In addition, the injection of fracking wastewater under high pressure in deep wells has been linked to a rise in the number and severity of earthquakes in some parts of the U.S.23 Socio-Economic Concerns. States experiencing a boom in oil and gas production due to hydraulic fracturing

also typically experience a local population boom in the cities near the drilling locations. On the one hand, this amount of growth can pump a lot of money into the economy. For example, in 2011, Williston, North Dakota experienced a 76.2 percent increase in local sales tax revenue, which surpassed every other city in the state.24 In 2013, Williston reported an unemployment rate of 0 percent. In 2015 North Dakota led the nation with the lowest unemployment rate—2.8%.25 Other significant economic benefits are land lease and royalty payments to landowners. This unexpected source of revenue has proven vital for some poor, rural families.

On the other hand, the population boom in fracking areas causes enormous strains on local roads and a wide range of public services like police and emergency services, public utilities, public schools, and various social services. In addition, the increased demand for housing often drives up the cost of rental housing to levels that are no longer affordable for poor households. Increases in crime rates have also been reported in boomtowns— especially in relationship to prostitution, alcohol, and drug abuse.26 As noted earlier, the majority of fracksand mining takes place in the Upper Midwest through surface strip mining.

It now constitutes 41 percent of all silica Fall 2015/Agora

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sand mining in the nation. The state of Wisconsin has over 100 mining sites alone. Reasonable health concerns have been raised about exposure to harmful silica dust by mine workers and local residents. Recently the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a Hazard Alert after finding hazardous airborne silica concentrations at several sites in five different states.27 Conclusion. There are no easy answers in this case. The sheer inertia and pervasiveness of a fossil-fuel based economy makes change very hard.

Nevertheless, higher education institutions have an opportunity, and some would say a responsibility, to be a model for society rather than a mirror of it. Someone has to lead. Someone has to show that reducing GHG emissions at the rate required can be done. Someone has to demonstrate the potential of energy efficiency and renewable energy to power a sustainable future. So what should Vanguard College (Luther) do?

What do you do when scientific studies conflict? Which GHG reduction options do you select when it has become clear that every solution has some negative environmental and social side effects? Fractured Options invites readers into the messy world of ethics to decide the best course of action when it comes to trying to reduce GHG emissions on a college campus.

Notes

1. My collaborators were Dr. Daniel Spencer, associate professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Montana, and Dr. Laura Stivers, professor of Ethics and Director of the Graduate Humanities program at Dominican University of California. I served as the lead author.

2. Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, MY: Orbis Books, 1996), xii.

3. American Council for An EnergyEfficient Economy, “Combined Heat and Power (CHP),” http://www.aceee.org.

4. Ibid, 4-5.

5. Ibid, 5.

6. Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Natural Gas: Number of Gas and Gas Condensate Wells,” http://www.eia.gov.

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7. Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Natural Gas: Gross Withdrawals,” http://www.eia.gov.

8. Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Natural Gas: Wellhead Price,” http:www.eia.gov.

9. Environmental Protection Agency, “National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data,” http://www.epa.gov. A recent study published in Nature, however, says increased supplies of natural gas will not only displace coal-fired power but also other low-carbon but more expensive sources like nuclear power and renewable energy. While low cost power from natural gas-fired power plants will improve air quality and energy security, it will also spur economic growth and thus increase the consumption of energy overall. The study concludes that without new climate policies, abundant supplies of natural gas will have little impact on global warming and climate change. See McJeon, H. et al., “Limited Impact on Decadal-Scale Climate Change from Increased Use of Natural Gas,” Nature, Vol. 514, October 23, 2014.

10. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 714, Table 8.7, http://www. climatechange2013.org.

11. Eric D. Larson, “Natural Gas and Climate Change,” Climate Central, May 2013, 20, http://assets.climatecentral.org.

12. Ramón A. Alvarez and Stephen Pacala, et al, “Greater Focus Needed on Methane Leakage from Natural Gas Infrastructure,” PNAS, Vol. 109, No. 17, February 13, 2012, http://www.pnas.org.

13. Anna Karion, et al, “Methane Emissions Estimate from Airborne measurements Over a Western United States Natural Gas Field,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 40, No. 16, August 28, 2013, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.

14. Schneising, O. et al., “Remote Sensing of Fugitive Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Production in North American Tight Geologic Formations,” Earth’s Future, October 6, 2014.

15. A. R. Brandt, et al, “Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems,” Science, Vol. 343, No. 6172, February 2014, http://www.sciencemag. org. A subsequent study conducted a metaanalysis of nearly 100 life cycle assessments of GHG emissions from the production and use of shale gas. The study concluded: “[W]e find that per unit electrical output, the central tendency of current estimates of GHG emissions from shale gas-generated electricity indicates life cycle emissions

less than half those from coal and roughly equivalent to those from conventional natural gas.” See Garvin A. Heath, et al, “Harmonization of initial estimates of shale gas life cycle greenhouse gas emissions for electric power generation,” PNAS, Vol. 111, No. 31, August 5, 2014, http://www.pnas. org.

16. Gretchen Goldin and Deborah Bailin, et al., Toward an Evidence-Based Fracking Debate, 28.

17. Ibid, 8.

18. Ibid, 10.

19. Ibid, 11.

20. Ibid, 12.

21. Ibid, 13.

22. Ibid, 15.

23. Ibid, 13.

24. Ibid, 14.

25. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Unemployment Rates for States,” http://www.bls.gov.

26. Gretchen Goldin and Deborah Bailin, et al., Toward an Evidence-Based Fracking Debate, 14. Another health and public safety issue revolves around the transfer of crude oil from fracked wells via rail to refineries. An increasing volume of oil is being shipped in this fashion, which has resulted in some dramatic and fiery accidents as well as significant delays for other passenger and freight rail service.

27. Ibid, 16.

Explaining Emotions and Exploring the Ordinary: A Year in Early Modern England

by KATE NARVESON, Professor of English

The professional impetus for the trip (funded by a Paideia grant) was research on three loosely connected projects, all avenues opened up by my interest in ordinary lay people’s religious experience.

In the book that I started while on my last sabbatical (and published in 2012), I looked at manuscripts left by Protestant lay folk who lacked higher education but who, through biblical literacy and devotional exercises, gained a way to understand and write about their own experience. Going into my sabbatical year, I had one project that was a direct offshoot of my work on what reading the Bible enabled lay people to do, and two that were taking that research in the direction of the history of emotions, a branch of history based on the premise that emotions are in part culturally determined and therefore have histories—that is, different cultures might conceive of and value emotions such as anger, grief, or shame in distinctive ways, and cultures therefore have “emotion scripts” or particular ways emotions are seen to be

generated and play themselves out. The first project, further testing my claim that biblical literacy allowed otherwise unschooled people to become writers, involved looking at religious writings by husband and wife pairs. The second project was to analyze how ordinary lay people experienced religious emotions, especially one particularly controversial emotion, assurance, and the third was to look at how that long-term layman, John Donne (1572-1631), after his ordination late in life, conceived of his lay audience when he became a

View from my room at St. John’s Croft. celebrated preacher and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I was in Winchester, then, to work on the first two projects at the Hampshire Record Office, housed in a modern building, with a team of archivists patiently helping mostly middle aged people tracing Victorian relatives named Maude and Clive. The manuscript that I particularly wanted to study was listed in the catalog as a collection of religious writings from the early seventeenth-century, and while there, I also wanted to look at the papers of the Paulet family, which had been one of

the prominent local families, regularly sending members to Parliament. Sir Richard Paulet left a record of the Hampton Court conference in 1604 where the newly crowned King James I agreed to sponsor a new translation of the Bible. Paulet was a deeply religious “godly” man, what we now call a puritan, and he left records of his bible reading, as well as meditations and prayers for various occasions.

It turned out that the manuscript that had brought me there was badly water-damaged, and while the conservator was deliberating about whether to let me handle it, I called up some other holdings, which turned out to be quite useful—the serendipity of the archives. There were several prayers in Paulet’s wife’s hand, which added another husband/wife pair to my data, helping me analyze writings by a couple who shared a similar piety to see what difference gender-linked factors such as education made to writing style and range of reference. In London, I’d also looked at manuscripts left by a husband and wife at Dr. William’s Library, the main repository of material on the history of religious Nonconformity, and another set at the Derbyshire Record Office in Matlock, up north, where the stone bridges and hills made me think of Decorah—if Decorah had 800-year-old churches. And in another week, I’d be in Maidstone, Kent, reading a lovely hand-written book of meditations by a Jacobean gentlewoman, transcribed for her admiring nephew to use in his own devotions—and this nephew, an KATE NARVESON

M

y room at St. John’s Croft in Winchester, England evoked Jane Austen, white wainscoting, faded chintz, tall multipaned sash windows overlooking an artfully natural garden with a brick summer house and gnarled apple trees.

The passageway had wide floorboards and the kitchen with its massive farmhouse table had a flagstone floor and Aga cooker, and roses grew halfway over the windows. Staying in 18thcentury manor houses was not the official reason for my sabbatical, but one must feed the soul of an Anglophile as well as her mind.

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antiquarian lawyer, also left manuscript evidence of his literacy and writing style, allowing another interesting comparison.

What did I find? Generalizations from the half dozen cases I have are tentative, of course, but it is clear that Scripture literacy allows even an uneducated person to develop a style rich in biblical metaphor and flexible enough for the many moods and levels of formality involved in prayer and meditation.

Prayers by the more highly educated husband were often less rambling than those by the wife, but they could also be more labored. Education helps prose style, but social or professional prominence is not necessarily a good influence. Something to remember, should I ever gain either.

While gaining more data for that first project was a bonus, my main purpose during last fall’s research trip was to begin my second project, a venture into the history of religious emotions.

A British Reformation scholar, editor of The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, had asked me to study how ordinary lay people wrote about the problem of assurance, a theological term for confident knowledge of one’s salvation

by Christ. Calvinism had developed the idea of salvation by grace alone, in tandem with the idea that since salvation was solely God’s act, only some were chosen, or “elected.” The elect, in theory, would feel faith in God’s grace. Paradoxically, the consequence of the doctrine was that faith could come to seem like something one must try to achieve—re-introducing an emphasis on one’s own work, exactly what Luther and Calvin had rejected. To avoid that conception of faith, pastors had to stress that salvation depended solely on God’s will while at the same time insisting that those who were elect would feel faith and all its fruits—joy, comfort, and love of God and neighbor.

It’s a lovely idea, but could leave a believer with the question of whether he or she, personally, did in fact feel faith.

John Donne wrote sonnets dramatizing tumultuous religious emotions, in one of which he implores God to claim him as one of the elect:

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Oh I shall soon despair, when I do see That thou lov’st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

In theory, if God had granted you faith, you would know it, because it would be the disposition of your heart. But anyone who’s ever tried to figure out how they feel about a boyfriend or girlfriend knows how tricky knowing one’s heart can be. In theory, “papists” consigned people to torture on the rack of doubt whereas Protestants, with their doctrine of salvation as pure gift, liberated the faithful from tormenting insecurity about their ultimate fate— or at least that’s the way Elizabethan Protestants saw things. Protestant pastors were therefore committed to the idea that assurance was possible— indeed, was a key religious good. But they also had somehow to explain why people who wanted to be good Christians might be unsure about whether they possessed true faith.

Indeed, you often read that Calvinist pastors spent all their time counseling poor souls anxious about election.

Assurance, for ordinary lay people, seems to have been fairly common, habituated through everyday devotional activities and through associating with like-minded people.

Yet in reading all those manuscript records of ordinary lay people’s devotion over the past several years, I hadn’t come away with a sense of the writers as anxious about election. Anxious about their on-going proclivity to sinful thoughts, about failing to keep God central in their lives, yes, but not anxious that they were in fact God’s children, heirs to the kingdom of heaven.

Assurance, for ordinary lay people, seems to have been fairly common, habituated through everyday devotional activities and through associating

with like-minded people. I presented a paper on my preliminary findings at a Reformation studies conference in Cambridge last September, and the full-length article will appear soon in a volume of essays on puritan emotions.

The importance of ordinary, habitual devotion as a stabilizer of faith also emerged in my third project, a study of John Donne’s ideas about his lay audience. I was looking at Donne because, as incoming president of the John Donne Society, I had to give the keynote address at the society’s annual conference. Since Donne was not ordained until he was 43 and I had already published on the active interest he’d taken in theology as a lay person, I wanted to examine how he regarded the laity once he was on the other side of the pulpit. What sense of his congregants’ biblical and theological literacy do his sermons indicate, and what sense of what they most needed to hear, and how to get through to them?

Through this topic, I could make an important contribution to on-going analysis of the rhetoric of the sermons.

It meant that I had to get up to speed on recent scholarship on Donne’s sermons. He preached at several parish churches, at Lincoln’s Inn (the law school) while chaplain, at St. Paul’s Cathedral while dean, and at court while chaplain to James I and Charles I. Research on the 160 extant sermons has been booming, spurred by an Oxfordbased project to produce a new scholarly edition. I chose to focus on the sermons that were not preached to the king or “eminent persons” but to ordinary Londoners. What did Donne think they needed to hear?

What I found was a remarkable effort to destabilize English Protestant complacency and re-establish faith on what Donne saw as better, more truly reformed grounds. Most English lay folk rejected Roman Catholics as idolatrous, superstitious, and corrupt.

Donne certainly shared the conviction that Catholic teaching was deeply misguided and the Romish church too focused on money and power. But he also wanted to help his congregants recognize the varieties of idolatry that possessed their hearts, especially the

The work on lay people’s experience of assurance, and on the importance of ordinary devotion in anchoring it, convinced me that there was more work to be done on lay religious emotions, and that became the focus of my final sabbatical project, one that is still in progress after intense research during a month-long fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. March came in like a lion, and went out like one too. I took one afternoon off to ice skate at the rink in the sculpture garden on the Mall, surrounded by tourists from around

KATE NARVESON

preoccupations with money, power, and the body’s appetites that possessed their minds, even while at church. Protestant Londoners in the seventeenth century talked about religion the way modern-day faculty talk about politics—they all took an interest and had done a bit of reading and had opinions and would stand on street corners debating the issues. But, according to Donne, they were insufficiently moved by the central acts of worship: hearing the Word with attention and humility, and accepting the grace offered in Communion, or so Donne suggests in his preaching, calling upon them to value the “ordinary means of grace,” the unspectacular forms of worship that, he argued, God had established to anchor faith, and that were more valuable than showy ceremonies or the ability to dominate debates about election and sanctification. I ended up calling my presidential address “John Donne: how and why to love the ordinary,” and I’ve since revised the address into a full-blown article, which will appear in the John Donne Journal. I also dedicated time this past summer to organizing the 2016 conference, lining up keynote speakers and presenters at special sessions, and I wrote reviews of new books on Donne. Probably the most interesting extension of this work, though, came when I gave a chapel talk last April on the value of ordinary Sunday worship. I hope Donne would have approved.

The Anne Waller manuscript at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. the globe, but mostly the weather kept me in the library reading manuscripts, including two that were especially important to my work, both of which had been acquired from private hands since my last sabbatical. (This kind of thing is inexpressibly exciting to someone like me.)

My project was to explore the cultural impact of the period’s reading and writing practices on religious emotions, looking at how particular emotions were formed and fostered through engagement with Scripture in the seventeenth century. The Folger’s collection of manuscripts allowed me to look at the ways people recorded their Bible reading according to particular “emotion scripts.” One of the new manuscripts was a notebook kept by a gentlewoman, Anne Waller, from the 1630s to about 1665, some of the most tumultuous years in English history.

Waller lived through civil war, the beheading of a king, and the experiment in republican government under Oliver Cromwell. She was married to a man who led troops on the parliament’s side but fell out with Cromwell, and then had to rebuild his political fortunes when the royalists regained power.

Tense times, and Waller records her fears for her husband along with special

“providences” showing God’s hand keeping them from death and disgrace.

She also records “promises”—passages in the bible stating God’s promises to preserve and save God’s people. These lists of promises seem to have grounded a remarkable confidence and hope, despite the troubled times in which Waller lived. That manuscript, along with several other women’s manuscripts that I read during my research in the county record offices in Hampshire and Kent, will form the basis of a conference paper that I’ll give later this fall, and an article expanding on that paper.

I had hoped to end the year with a substantial start on one big new project, but because of the varied commitments I made, and the wide range of conversations and data emerging from the conferences I attended and libraries I worked at, I’ve instead discovered half a dozen possible projects, and have preliminary files of notes for each. The final months of the sabbatical were a time of mapping what I wanted to immerse myself in, rather than of immersion. I’m at a good place to close those files for a while, setting them aside while I give myself to teaching after a full scholarly year.

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Test Away!: The Business of Schooling

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he late Henry Perkinson, historian of education and social studies pedagogy expert, wrote sixteen books on education in the United States in the course of his thirty-four years as an academic.

One of the most famous, The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, first published in 1968, has served as a core text in our Paideia 450 course “Making Decisions for U.S. Schools.”

In this work Perkinson introduced the idea that ordinary citizens and policy makers in the United States have been imprisoned by the false notion that the purpose of schools is to cure the ills of society. In another of his works, Teachers without Goals, Students without Purposes, Perkinson applied this notion not to schools, but to the question of what our brand of schooling does to students. In this later work Perkinson argued that schooling ought to be about young people learning what they need to know and grow as persons and intellectual beings. He asserted that true education does not emphasize artificial objectives measured by standardized tests and he warned that such an approach turns students away from real learning and treats them as products rather than persons. Fundamentally, throughout his career Perkinson fought trends in U.S. schooling that led us away from student intellectual growth as the main focus of our efforts.

When I set off to propose a sabbatical it was Henry Perkinson’s call that echoed in my mind. Though I had been working with middle school and high school National History Day participants for years, it had been over three decades since I had spent more than a few hours at a time in a secondary classroom.

I had taught about the history of childhood and education. I was one of the founding instructors for the Paideia 450: Making Decisions for U.S. 38

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Schools course and had taught that course on campus, in Hawai’i, and online during summer sessions.

My faculty load also included courses in history and geography for education majors as well as advising work with history majors planning to teach. It seemed about time that I had more first-hand knowledge Jackie Wilkie and son Miles in Hawaii about what prospective to use the content in their area to teach college students faced when they set off students how to read better. He or she to become teachers. I hoped to find out must be prepared to tailor instruction to more fully what has happened in the the varied levels of student preparation current schooling climate and where in a typical classroom. What did I we were as a nation in responding to learn? One is that colleagues who are Perkinson’s challenge that we focus on preparing future teachers are very much student growth, not on objectives or interested in getting them ready to help solving social ills. young people learn. The clear aim was to develop the ability to understand what students currently knew and link that to I learned that despite the what they needed to do in order to grow as learners. I also discovered that I have honorable goal for which these been using these techniques without exams were created, they seem being aware of it and this caused me to fundamentally to be lining the be hopeful that U.S. schooling was in better shape than I had feared.

pockets of corporations that market the exams rather than improving our teacher corps.

To this end I took a course at Luther, “Reading in the Content Area,” that did not exist in 1978 when New York State temporarily certified me to teach social studies. The very existence of this requirement for social studies teachers indicates the way in which we have come to expect considerably more of teachers than was true in the past. Now a social studies teacher must know how

Tackling the second barrier to becoming a teacher left me considerably less hopeful. I proposed to take the professional certification exams that all prospective teachers are now expected to pass to become teachers.

I should probably note that when I sought information about renewing my certification from the Iowa state agency in charge of such things I was told that my Doctor of Arts in History Education would exempt me from taking these exams, but that would have undermined the aim of my sabbatical.

What I learned in the process was invaluable—I think I learned that

COURTESY OF JACKIE WILKIE

by JACQUELINE WILKIE, Professor of History

despite the honorable goal for which these exams were created, they seem fundamentally to be lining the pockets of corporations that market the exams rather than improving our teacher corps.

There are frequently errors in both the official materials and in the materials provided by the many companies that have sprung up to take advantage of this new economic opportunity.

The purpose of these exams is to create the set of “highly qualified” teachers that current legislation on schooling aims to establish. This goal is based on strong social science of education research that experienced teachers with a strong grasp of their disciplines seem most effective in helping students succeed. At its heart the requirement that future teachers pass exams at levels established on a state by state basis is rooted in the idea that basic knowledge of the social science of education and one’s specialized fields is necessary (though not entirely sufficient) to becoming a teacher. It applies the notion of standardized test as the most efficient way to measure such basic understanding. These tests include both multiple choice and essay components in order to measure more than memory.

The idea was that I would be the test case at Luther as the Education Department launched their new computer-testing program for the exams. This meant I had three months in which to brush up on the professional knowledge expected of educators and the “U.S. and World History” content expected of those preparing in my specialized field. In preparing to take the tests I divided my time between reading test preparation guides that gave overviews of the content covered in the tests and taking practice exams.

Basically, I created my own personalized cram course in educational psychology, pedagogy and politics for the professional standards (I sort of figured I had the history and philosophy part

nailed already). I also began reviewing the histories of Europe, Africa, and Latin America that I had not studied intensively since the late 1970s.

In the course of all this I discovered that my students’ whining about these tests was absolutely justified. Where to start with my own whining? I guess I will begin with the cost. The exam company protects the actual questions on the test with considerable diligence.

If you want to see the specific kinds of questions that have appeared on past exams, and may appear on the exam you will be taking, you’d better be prepared to pay. One practice test costs $20 and a four-month tutorial for the professional knowledge test will run $50. Additionally, there is only a single practice exam, which you are welcome to take more than once, but what’s the point in doing so. There are any number of companies offering their services for “free,” but a click after any search will reveal there are decided limitations to what you can get before payment is required. Once you pay you will be exposed not to questions from the actual exam but “similar” questions -- after all, the exam company makes you sign a waiver that says you will not copy or publish actual exam questions on pain of a lawsuit. The exams themselves are also expensive. Each test costs between $50 and $160 (they take from an hour to four and a half hours to complete).

I took two exams for a total of $254.

Six months later those same two exams would cost $266. To make matters worse, most people preparing to teach must take more than two exams in order to make themselves as desirable in the job market as possible.

Additionally, there are frequently errors in both the official materials and in the materials provided by the many companies that have sprung up to take advantage of this new economic opportunity. For example, I was surprised to discover I had gotten this “easy” question on “case study method” from one of the “free” practice sites incorrect (see box). It took me a while to realize that while the description identified case method—my answer—as the correct one, the scoring guide had “C. Concept Mapping” as the right

answer. Or, a horrifying example for a historian, another practice exam in world history included a question about why early industrial factories were located along rivers. It had steam power instead of the water wheel identified as the correct answer. To be fair, theoretically one bad question doesn’t really affect the overall effectiveness of the instrument since everyone who is knowledgeable will get the question wrong and it will be eliminated from the scoring. Nonetheless, it is disconcerting for students diligently studying for an exam to be told they have erred on a question for which they absolutely know the right answer.

It is also disconcerting to realize that what you are going to be asked is completely unpredictable. From the practice exams it seemed clear that there would be questions on the professional test related to educational psychologists and their theories, common pedagogical practices, and for want of a better description, the current politics of schooling. So I started memorizing my psychologists, though for the life of me I cannot figure out how knowing the difference between Skinner and Watson’s theories of reward and punishment was going to improve my ability to teach. On the practice history tests I discovered that I needed to improve my recall of Chinese Dynasties since the Asia portion of the test almost always included them. I went online and learned the “Chinese Dynasty” song (Easy) 3. This instructional strategy engages students in active discussion about issues and problems of practical application.

A. Case method

B. Direct instruction

C. Concept mapping

D. Formative assessment The answer is C. The case method is an instructional stragegy that engages students in active discussion about issues and problems of practical application.

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to the tune of “Frere Jacques.” Again, my improved ability to answer those questions should in no way be taken as an indicator of my preparation to teach Chinese history. Finally, for the written portion of the professional exam you can produce practice answers and be told what a right answer might be, but you can’t really get specific feedback regarding your answer. It was odd to be writing responses about how I might handle particularly sticky teaching situations without ever knowing what the test makers thought was a good answer. I admit to being a little miffed that on the essay questions for the professional practices exam that are scored from 0 to 2, I received 11 out of 15 points on the actual exam. What did I lose credit for? I have no way of knowing. One of my Education Department colleagues responded to my frustration about this by sarcastically remarking that the test evaluators had to justify their employment somehow. I am afraid she was right.

Does passing the test mean you are ready to be an outstanding teacher? I have my doubts. The standard for what constitutes a passing or qualifying grade on each exam is determined on a stateby-state basis. The state of Iowa requires prospective secondary history teachers to obtain a score of 166 out of a possible 200 (83%) on the professional practice exam and 148 out of 200 (74%) on the U.S. and World history exam. But that score is based on a complex formula to control for the difficulty of the exam and is only tangentially related to your raw score on the actual test. I did pass both exams at levels that would qualify me for “Recognition of Excellence” award status if that had any meaning outside the rarified world of the Praxis.

And what about my actual certification now that I have aced the exams? I can now submit my scores to various and sundry agencies to regain my certification in Secondary History teaching (though I will have to pay to have more than three official reports sent), but I ran out of grant money.

To become fully certified I will have to come up with the cash to pay for a background check and licensing fees to the tune of around $375.

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It is clear to me that the process created to ensure all teachers are “highly qualified” has spurred new forms of capitalist endeavors that may not really be achieving that noble aim, but what about other experimental approaches to schooling touted by those opposed to our current school structure? I decided to get a better handle on the current school experience and learn more about alternatives to traditional schooling by spending time at an on-line charter school we have visited during the Hawai’i version of the U.S. Schools course. The current evaluation of charter schools by educational specialists is a mixed one. What is clear is that such schools are all over the place—one oft quoted specialist from Minnesota where there is a long history of charters has said, “If you’ve seen one charter school, you’ve seen one charter school.” This may in fact be a good thing if it means that schools are tailored to meet the different learning styles and needs of their student bodies because that may improve student achievement. Still the current record of these schools shows that most fair about the same as public schools in all measures of student achievement. Some charter schools are high achieving, some are poor achieving, and most are about the same as public schools. Additionally, the creation of such schools often stems from political or social motivation rather than pedagogical goals. Lisa Delpit, noted specialist on the education of children of color, has evaluated the experience in New Orleans where all public schools were replaced by charters after Hurricane Katrina as a case in point.

Of those teachers who lost their jobs in the reshuffle, a significant proportion were experienced teachers of color and they were replaced with bright, inexperienced, briefly trained, young middle class white teachers through programs such as Teach for America.

Were these shifts ill-intentioned?

Perhaps not. Did they improve the learning of the majority of young people in New Orleans? The record indicates definitely not, if by this we mean higher scores on standardized tests.

So what was the case in Hawai’i? I was a guest scholar in residence at the Myron B. Thompson academy, an online

school in Honolulu. The school has had many of the difficulties that other charter schools face, including intense scrutiny regarding finances, initial poor performance on standardized tests, and an early reputation as an easy school. In the past few years the administration and faculty have worked hard to improve the performance of the school and they are now listed on the U.S. News and World Reports as a nationally recognized Bronze Medalist.

They were also recently named one of the best high schools in Hawai’i. One of the significant changes the school has made is to shift from being a completely online school to one where students may elect to meet with teachers face to face at their headquarters in the Honolulu YWCA. I was able to spend two weeks at the school observing both online and in person classes for both the middle and the high school. I met with teachers and administrators and assisted students with their first National History Day projects both face-to-face and online. It was fun and enlightening.

Face-to-face classes I participated in had lively discussion going on; online classes were mostly teacher talk.

Since I was there to help with National History Day projects, what I brought to the table was not much different from what I do in Northeast Iowa’s school districts. It was amusing to discover, having anticipated teaching this content online and the challenges I might face, that the junior high kids wanted to come to school to meet me and those who couldn’t would view a video of my interactions with their peers. I did help a high school senior develop her research plan through a Skype session, but overall, what I got to do was hang with a group of very lively adolescents and their equally lively teacher “talking story” about doing history. The only difference I could see between this and my work at Luther with middle school students was the proposed

topics I heard—no one in Hawai’i was interested in researching Norman Borlaug and no one in Iowa suggested doing an oral history of spear fishing.

Sitting in on classes conducted online and listening to teacher and administrator talk regarding what they do at Myron B. Thompson crystalized for me a trend I had been noticing in my work with schools over the last several years. The conversation seems to now be a divided one. Many teachers and administrators expressed concern (as did Perkinson so long ago) that schools, which ought to be about the growth of young people’s intellect, have become more about meeting artificial objectives. Still others echoed business/ political rhetoric about the need for “efficiency” in meeting educational standards that focused on delivering content to students in the shortest, most direct way possible.

I have some sympathy for those who want to make schools more efficient. It is hard to describe a lot of what goes on in high schools in any other terms than “a waste of time.” It is also true that taking classes online requires students to take considerably more responsibility for their own education and eliminates a lot of the busy work that inundates most students’ days. Finally, online schooling requires teachers to develop authentic methods of assessment of student learning because it would be too easy to cheat on tests if they are only assessed on multiple choice questions where students can sit at their computers with two browsers open and no oversight from the teacher.

Still, I found it disturbing that some teachers were no more than a voice from the Ethernet to their students.

There were teacher pages without pictures of the teachers and current technology does not really allow for visual connections of all students and teachers in each class session. While the teachers were all very professional about their work, the medium seemed one that encouraged focus on content more than on what students were getting out of any specific online class session. Faceto-face classes I participated in had lively discussion going on; online classes were mostly teacher talk. It was hard

to assess the degree to which students understood what the teacher was saying, because you can’t read body language over the airwaves and it required even more courage to interrupt and ask a question online than in a traditional classroom (where the stakes of outing your confusion are pretty high to begin with).

Even in a school where teachers and administrators have consciously made the choice to decrease class time and focus on “efficiently” delivering curriculum, I observed real connections between students and teachers.

I listened to one teacher explain an authentic assessment project to his class in which students were expected to write a newspaper article about early nineteenth century reform movements in the United States in the style of a New York Times reporter from that period. The project required the students to know their topic (transcendentalism, temperance, suffrage, abolition) and be able to place that within the period and figure out something newsworthy regarding it. The teacher asked students if they had any questions and none were forthcoming.

I left the session duly impressed by the creativeness of this assignment because it allowed students to craft their work to their own interests and required them to apply knowledge in a new way. This was a very different form of assessment than testing with multiple choice questions! Unfortunately, the next day sitting in on a face-to-face session between the language arts teacher and members of that same class, it became clear that at least a few of the students were confused about what they were supposed to do and about some of the fundamental information the teacher had covered in his online lecture. Not only did they not fully understand the assignment; they also did not feel comfortable asking the teacher

questions online. I ended up doing a tutorial session with a girl in the class on the transcendentalists and what the assignment might look like, encouraging her to look up Emerson’s support of John Brown and try to write about that.

(She later thanked me for helping her do well on the essay.) A lot of authentic assessment, then, relies on student independent work and on the teacher being alert to student needs. Of course, student confusion over assignments also happens in traditional classrooms, and perhaps for the same reason—a national school culture that now focuses on the efficient delivery and coverage of content to meet “standards” to be tested rather than on the growth of students as learners.

What this all seems to indicate is that the trend toward turning schooling into big business that Alex Molnar demonstrated in his 1996 work Giving Kids the Business: The Commercialization of America’s Schools, may in fact be worse than he anticipated. Not only are schools being turned into markets for profit, now prospective teachers are trapped in rules and regulations that require them to prove they are qualified to teach by putting money into the pockets of large educational corporations. Molnar warned that arguments about choice and alternatives to traditional schooling such as charters relied on false notions about schooling that demonized teachers and sacrificed public school financing in order to pursue a “free market” in education.

He noted that the originating legislation allowing these alternatives unintentionally supported white flight from public schools and destroyed any notion of “common curriculum” without showing any real improvement in student learning. Now we have schools both public and charter in which some teachers and administrators talk about efficiency in delivering content and see student learning as a product rather than a process wherein young minds grow.

Still, I remain hopeful about the possibilities of schooling in the United States. In the course of the semester I learned that many of those who are educating prospective teachers are Fall 2015/Agora

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focused on the question of learning rather than command performance.

Even in a school where teachers and administrators have consciously made the choice to decrease class time and focus on “efficiently” delivering curriculum, I observed real connections between students and teachers. I heard from administrators who were dedicated to improving teacher attention to what was happening inside the minds of students rather than delivering content. I had conversations in which teachers and administrators expressed real concern about the diversity of the student body, meeting the needs of students as individuals, and developing students as whole persons in a political culture that emphasizes performance on tests as the sole measure of achievement.

Perhaps this evidence that there is an ongoing dialogue about these challenges among those who practice teaching every day is a sign of the healthiness of the system. If only we could transfer that discussion to the halls of Congress.

In the meantime I still have to find time to fill out dozens of pages of forms and dig up several hundred dollars if I am actually going to renew my certification in Secondary History Education.

Works Cited Delpit, Lisa D. “Multiplication Is for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children. New York: New Press: Distributed by Perseus Distribution, 2012.

Print.

Molnar, Alex. Giving Kids the Business: The Commercialization of America’s Schools.

Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996. Print.

Perkinson, Henry J. Teachers without Goals, Students without Purposes. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Print.

---. The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education. Boston, Mass.: McGrawHill, 1995. Print.

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The Blank Page

MAY 2015

by RUTH CALDWELL, Professor Emerita of French Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, Rejoice! Philippians 4: 4

T

his is indeed an occasion for rejoicing. Congratulations to all of you honorees and a special greeting to you seniors: you have made it! Well, almost—there is a little matter of final examinations (at least in my class)—but basically, for many of you, very soon, “school is out!”

The reason I am standing here in front of you this morning is that I have a lot in common with you seniors. Like you, I am “graduating,” and enjoying my last semester at Luther College.

Of course, there are some differences between you and me. For most of you, your time at Luther amounts to four years, whereas for me it is … 44 years.

Another difference is that although both you and I were invited to apply to Luther, your application was accepted, whereas … mine was not, not at first.

“Dear Miss Caldwell,” the letter from department head Barbara Bahe said, “thank you for your letter inquiring about a position in French at Luther College. We have just sent a contract to someone who I am almost sure will take it. However, we will keep your information on file in case another occasion arises where we can use your services.”

“Oh sure,” I thought, folding away the envelope. I had worked in offices, and I knew about that file. So there I was, in Paris, where I had been researching my dissertation, bound to leave for the United States in a month, not knowing where I was going or what I was going to be doing. A blank page.

But then, a day before I was to leave Paris, a letter from Luther arrived, saying that if I was still interested in Luther, Luther was interested in me. I responded with a telegram, and, upon

returning to Chicago, I signed the contract, sight unseen. Luther College and I took a chance on each other.

Returning to what you seniors and I have in common, I’m willing to bet that some of you, as I, might be getting a little tired of hearing, “What are your plans? What you will you be doing?”

I don’t know about you, but I feel like answering: “What will I be doing?

“Why, nothing.”

“Dear Miss Caldwell,” the letter from department head Barbara Bahe said, “thank you for your letter inquiring about a position in French at Luther College. We have just sent a contract to someone who I am almost sure will take it.

However, we will keep your information on file in case another occasion arises where we can use your services.”

But I don’t do that, because that would make people uncomfortable.

It’s too much like the blank page—the scary unknown, silence, the abyss, an awkward moment, something that needs to be filled. The blank page is a big problem for writers. It has been a subject for authors as diverse as the French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé and the Smashing Pumpkins or Christina Aguilera. There is now a term, “blank page syndrome,” referring to the inability one has to start writing,

since there are no words already on the page. But don’t worry about your final papers, you can find on the Internet lots of techniques to overcome this obstacle. There is even advice on how to eliminate those bothersome blank pages when you are printing out documents!

Clearly, blank pages are not to be tolerated!!

But, blank pages can be instructive.

I was reminded of that this semester when we read a short story by the 18th century writer, Voltaire, known to some of you as the author of “Candide.”

The hero of this story is called “Micromégas,” that is, the Greek words for “little” (as in microphone) and “big” (as in megabyte or megalomaniac). In his snide way, Voltaire tells us that the name Micromégas, “little big,” is perfect for all “big” and important people. But he also is reminding us that size—and other characteristics—are relative. We are big or small, in relation to others.

Relative to us, Micromégas is indeed very big in size (he is 24 miles tall) and very different, because he lives on “one of the planets” that revolve around the star Sirius.

Now for the plot: the aspiring scientist Micromégas publishes a paper comparing two kinds of insects and gets in trouble with the religious authorities of his planet (who make a big deal out of little things—this contrast is continued throughout the story). So, to let things cool down, Micromégas decides to travel and he ends up visiting our solar system.

He first arrives in Saturn, where he strikes up a conversation with Saturn’s Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, who is much smaller than Micromégas but still much bigger than we are. After exclaiming to the Secretary about the Fall 2015/Agora

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great diversity he sees in nature, he asks the Secretary how many senses people on Saturn have. Why does he ask about senses? Because Voltaire is a great fan of the 17th century philosopher John Locke, who in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding proclaimed that the source of our knowledge lies in our sensory experience. It is what we see, hear, touch, smell or taste that helps us to construct reality, and not any abstract or innate ideas.

The Saturnian secretary responds that on Saturn they have 72 different senses, but still they have plenty of time to be bored. “I know what you mean,” says Micromégas, and he points out that he has almost 1000 different senses and still he and his fellow Siriens have some kind of vague desire, or anxiety that tells them that they are missing something.

By this time, we readers should be feeling very inadequate, with just our five senses. Although we might also be laughing at the all too human feeling of being bored, despite all kinds of sensations and experiences that one might have.

Well, Micromégas and the Saturnian decide to travel together to visit the rest of our Solar system. Of course they do. They join all those literary couples who play off against each other in travel narratives: Dante and Virgil, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Thelma and Louise, the little Mermaid and the flounder.…

When they arrive on Earth, the Saturnian concludes that there is no life here, because he can’t see any, but Micromégas points out that this is no way to reason, since the Saturnian doesn’t see the stars that Micromégas can see with his more developed senses.

Sight is relative. So the Saturnian refers to an abstract principle and decides that the Earth is so small and disorganized that nobody of any good sense could possibly live here. “Well,” says Micromégas, “maybe there aren’t any sensible beings here. But let’s do some research.”

Eventually these extraterrestrial visitors manage to see, contact and communicate with a group of Earthlings. They are astonished that 44

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these “insects” and “atoms” on Earth can, with the use of a quadrant, measure the height of both Micromégas and the Saturnian as well as distances to various stars. But when they turn from mathematical reasoning to ideas about the source of knowledge and how one should live, Micromégas and the Saturnian are disappointed. Voltaire uses this occasion to pass in review a quick history of Western Philosophy, in which geocentric perspectives, innate ideas and absolutist thinking are denigrated and only John Locke’s philosophy is taken seriously.

Before leaving Earth, Micromégas promises to leave a book, written in very small print, that will reveal to humans the “answer to everything.”

Before leaving Earth, Micromégas promises to leave a book, written in very small print, that will reveal to humans the “answer to everything.” Indeed, this book arrives at the Paris Academy of Sciences, but when the Secretary opens it, there are—you guessed it— blank pages! And the Secretary of the Academy says, derisively, “Ah! I suspected as much!”

What does all this mean? Let me share with you my students’ ideas, some of your ideas, which I have collected over the years. First of all, the blank pages may mean just that: there is nothing and there are no answers in life. It’s all inexplicable. Well, say some students, there is a language problem here: a being with 1000 senses might have trouble explaining the truth to such limited people as human beings. Other students conclude that the blank pages suggest that science can tell us much about our perceptions and nature but cannot tell us about the meaning of life, how we should live and treat each other.

That is for each of us to figure out. A variation on this idea is a student who once said that the blank pages are a reminder of John Locke’s blank paper,

the image of our minds at birth. It is up to us to complete the blank pages, based on our own experience.

But not so fast. Other students ask, “How do we know that the pages are blank?” They point out that the Secretary of the Academy may have judged too quickly, like the Saturnian who thought there was no life on Earth because he didn’t see anyone or anything. Elaborating on this idea of judging too quickly, some students point out the Secretary’s reaction to the blank pages. After opening the book, he says “Ah! I suspected as much.” In other words, he saw what he expected to see and let his prejudices get in the way of true perception and understanding.

So there you have it. From blank pages we can learn a number of useful lessons about how to live: be mindful of our humble place in the universe, be aware we may not have all the answers, be sure to have accurate scientific observation and then accept verified scientific research, do not jump to conclusions, let’s be on guard against our own suppositions and prejudices, and, like Micromégas, let’s celebrate the diversity there is in nature and among us.

In conclusion, in order to congratulate you seniors once again and give you some suggestions for your “future plans,” I’ll return to Paul’s 4th chapter of Philippians, which he wrote at a time of transition for him.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Vigil for the Common Good

MAY 2015

by MIKE BLAIR, Campus Pastor

A

s we end our year in chapel with a vigil for the common good, I want to go back to our beginning. Not the beginning of the school year, but the beginning of Luther College. The story of how Luther College began is bound to questions on race and slavery. This founding story has been part of community conversation in chapel, among colleagues and in the Student Research Symposium this year.

This year has also included challenging dialogue and programs connecting with national stories from Ferguson, New York, Baltimore and more. The discussions have culminated in the moments of silence held at Bentdahl Commons over the past three weeks.

All of these things connect to our chapel today. I’ll keep it brief since we’re all standing.

We gather outside today as a sign of solidarity, not only with the losses this day represents and questions of justice raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, but also in solidarity with the faithful souls who had the vision and courage to start a new college in the face of great adversity and conflict.

Lutheran Higher Education in North America by Richard Solberg1 and Norwegian Migration to America by Theodore Christian Blegen2 tell the story of Luther’s beginnings. A book on Norwegian migration by a guy name Theodore hardly sounds exciting. Do we need more than 600 pages to tell us Ole and Lena came over on a boat and made some lefse? Think of Theodore Blegen’s book as Luther’s original Ted Talk. It’s a powerful story that we need to find more ways to tell.

Here’s the background for the story. In 1861 the Norwegians who settled in this area were part of the Norwegian Lutheran Synod. Solberg notes that Norwegian immigrants came to

America with strong commitment to freedom and human rights and were clearly opposed to slavery. Because they didn’t have a college or seminary, they sent Pastor Laur Larsen and students to study in St. Louis to prepare new pastors. The German Lutherans had a well-developed program with a classical curriculum Larsen hoped to emulate.

The questions we grapple with today about racial justice and the flood of stories of unarmed people of color who have died from violence of the state have a link to the beginnings of Luther College.

Remember these were the early days of the Civil War. The Lutheran pioneers learned that the St. Louis seminary accepted a Biblical defense of slavery.

When they had their synod assembly in 1861 the Lutheran potluck hit the fan.

The lay people came ready to oppose slavery without ambiguity. Wanting to hold the factions together, the synod leaders, including Prof. Larsen, offered a resolution that supported working against slavery in the U.S., but also contended that slavery could be supported by Scripture. This would allow recognition of the opposition to slavery with wiggle room for a continued relationship with St. Louis.

I’m not sure how you would say this in Norwegian, but the laypeople said, “That’s not how we roll.” In a stunning reversal, the lay delegates overruled the clergy and turned the assembly upside down. If you’ve ever been a delegate for a synod assembly, you know this is not

how synod assemblies are intended to go. The assembly did accept Pastor Ulrik Koren’s convincing proposal to purchase land in Decorah, Iowa for a new college.

Here we are. Thank you Pastor Koren!

With the agreement on location, the synod leaders assumed that there was plenty of time to start a new school and let Pastor Larsen and future students continue to study in St. Louis until there was enough money to begin building the new college. Surely this was a reasonable proposal. This motion was also soundly rejected. The lay people moved that a new school start post haste. That’s why Luther College started in a parsonage at Halfway Creek, Wisconsin before coming to Decorah.

Here’s how Solberg tells the story: After a spirited discussion of “what the Scriptures teach regarding slavery,” synod leaders drew up a declaration they hoped would win unanimous acceptance. Instead, it failed to win a majority of the lay vote and stimulated instead the issuance of a counter declaration by more vigorous lay opponents. At the conclusion of the discussion on slavery a motion to establish a school without delay was approved by a large majority.

Thus the institution that became Luther College came into being in the early days of the American Civil War. It emerged as the direct result of the conflicting views of clergy and laity in the Norwegian Synod on the subject of slavery, one of the most profound moral and political issues ever to face the American nation. In the process of creating an institution of higher learning the laity of the church reminded the clergy of the intimate relationship between Fall 2015/Agora

45

the Christian faith and public responsibility. 3 Wow! What’s remarkable is that the laypeople in this story could have ignored the issue of slavery. They were geographically isolated and didn’t even have the Internet to follow the story.

They read Scriptures in solidarity with those who suffered oppression and abuse under slavery rather than accept an argument about Scripture supporting slavery.

They took a leap of faith and decided to start a new college in the midst of great economic risks and political and moral challenges. In spite of these huge hurdles, faith guided their commitments to freedom, inclusion and human dignity. They cut ties with the educational advantages of St. Louis because their Gospel convictions wouldn’t allow them to support the injustice of slavery. That’s how Luther College started. The questions we grapple with today about racial justice and the flood of stories of unarmed people of color who have died from violence of the state have a link to the beginnings of Luther College. In 1861 and in 2015, there are many connections between Decorah and St. Louis. The moments of silence over these past weeks and today’s chapel are calling us to ask questions of faith and justice, similar to our forebears.

Today one of the posters being held bears an image of a black Christ on the cross, a reminder that Jesus was a person of color who died at the hands of the state. His death puts him in solidarity with all victims who suffer injustice and violence. The bold laypeople at the 1861 Norwegian Lutheran assembly were guided by Gospel values of inclusion, justice and solidarity that shaped their vision of a community of faith and learning. We need to tell this story more and draw from the faith, courage and wisdom of those who broke ground for this beloved community. There will also be an observance of the national Peace Officers Memorial at Noon in Bentdahl Commons. We hold many sorrows and joys in life together. Today we gather to remember our beginnings and, like our forebears, we pray for courage and wisdom to stand with those who cry out 46

Agora/Fall 2015

against systemic racism and strive for peace born of faithfulness and justice.

Together we say, AMEN. Notes 1. Richard Solberg, Lutheran Higher Education in North America, Lutheran Educational Conference in North America: Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1985.

2. Theodore Blegen, chapter XIV, “The Slavery Controversy and the Church,” from Norwegian Migration to America, vol. 2, Norwegian-American Historical Association, Northfield, 1940.

3. Solberg, 221.

The Body as a Temple of the Holy Spirit

OCTOBER 2015

by WANDA DEIFELT, Professor of Religion

I

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

n my encounters with this text, I have seen two different approaches.

One group uses this passage to justify what they deem to be morally acceptable to God: virginity and celibacy, no sex before marriage, sex only for the purpose of reproduction, opposition to same gender relations, in sum, moral and religious disapproval of what they perceive to be fornication.

The other constituency highlights the positive tone about the human body as a temple, an indwelling of the divine in the material world—similar to God’s incarnation. This group argues that the human body and sexuality are gifts to be used as long as this practice does no harm and is ethically consequent.

How can the same text lead to such opposing views? The reason is in the text itself. Biblical scholars have used adjectives ranging from “disjointed” to “incoherent” to describe this passage.

It contains many well-known lessons: we glorify God with our bodies (that is, with the way we act and carry ourselves), there are many things that are legal but not always good (just because something is allowed it shouldn’t necessarily be done), or that sin is a bodily affair: it can be committed against one’s own or against other people’s bodies (like violence, starvation, deprivation of health care or murder).

But besides the obvious points, the text also reveals an ambiguity that has

burdened us for almost two thousand years: How do Christians deal with embodiment, with their own bodies, and with the bodies of those around them?

Paul is torn. In the Jewish, Semitic tradition, the body is a good creation, made by God.…

In the Platonic view, to pay attention to the body is to yield to inferior desires.

This ambiguity—and why not be honest and say it—this struggle—is found in Paul himself. As a dual citizen, as somebody who espouses both the Jewish and the Greco-Roman way of thinking, Paul is torn. In the Jewish, Semitic tradition, the body is a good creation, made by God. This is stated in Genesis, when God creates male and female as divine image and gifts them with sexuality. There is no guilt or condemnation in the enjoyment of bodily pleasure if the body is treated with the respect that it requires, having been made by God. And what God has made is good. Bodies and sexuality are gifts to be enjoyed (albeit within certain limitations). On the other hand, Paul is also influenced by a GrecoRoman antagonism to the material and bodily world. In the Platonic view, to

pay attention to the body is to yield to inferior desires. It distracts from higher goals. In this perspective, the human body is but a carcass, a prison to the soul that yearns to be freed. The quicker one moves through this life, the quicker one achieves eternal bliss.

This tension is so obvious in Paul that he even employs two different words to describe physicality: when the body is a good creation, he uses the word soma.

If he wants to talk about the human predicament, the fallen body and all of its temptations, he uses the word sarx.

This is even better exemplified in one of the terms Paul employs in his letter: porneia—prostitute. It is said in biblical commentaries that “pagan temples were the restaurants of antiquity where prostitutes were frequently on offer” (Brian Rosner 1998)1. Although it is not clear whether Paul is debating secular or religious prostitution in this particular passage (most authors lean toward a more generic description due to the use of the term porneia, as opposed to the term ierodulos, which means cultic prostitution), Paul, nevertheless, makes use of theological language to engage it. Prostitution is a sin against God. It compromises the human body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. A sin against God’s creation, the body, is a sin against the creator. But what is the actual sin? What is at the receiving end of Paul’s vehement critique?

Is it sexual immorality in general, Fall 2015/Agora

47

incest, sacred or secular prostitution, idolatry, personal vices, adultery? Is he addressing particular men in the church of Corinth who are going to prostitutes? Are they using Stoic or Cynic philosophy to argue why they are immune to interference because they are legally permitted to do these things?

Is their misconduct happening during bacchanals and feasts at pagan temples, when sexual play was a regular part of the meal?

Honestly, nobody knows exactly.

We live in a culture of immediate rewards, of selfcenteredness, of objectification of others and self, where the measure of everything is personal indulgence, and satisfaction is measured by possessions and social status.

We live in a pornographic culture!

Perhaps, the most important point to take away from this text is not its critique of any specific sin, but of all sins that defile human and bodily integrity.

This requires a more complex reading of the text because it curbs the tendency to list particular vices or transgressions and deem them as sinful. Rather, this interpretation would require us to engage our ethical muscles. Instead of reducing the message to a list of does and don’ts, we are invited to think about the causes and consequences of our acts. For instance, if porne were not reduced to prostitution (paying money for sex) but extended to a larger context, that of a pornographic culture, we couldn’t dismiss it as a personal choice judged by moralistic values. Porne is at the root of the word pornography.

What is pornography? It is the use of the bodies of others for one’s own immediate gratification, it is a denial of the power of mutuality. In the words of Audre Lorde, “pornography emphasizes sensation without feelings.” It offers 48

Agora/Fall 2015

selfish pleasure without relationality or accountability. We live in a culture of immediate rewards, of self-centeredness, of objectification of others and self, where the measure of everything is personal indulgence, and satisfaction is measured by possessions and social status. We live in a pornographic culture! In this, bodies become objects.

We treat our bodies and the bodies of others as objects, for our benefit, entertainment, or profit. We might not pay for sex with money, but the way our culture perceives bodies—as exposed flesh for consumption in the way of advertisement, sports, cheap labor, sweat shops, human trafficking, makes a compelling argument that, yes, our culture is pornographic. Paul conceives of sins against the body as sins of religious allegiance—and these sins include everything that prevents human flourishing: hunger, illness, violence, destitution—in sum, everything that diminishes the body and robs it from its dignity.

flesh to live in our midst. The care for bodies, the welfare of the neighbor, and the concern for the wellbeing of God’s creation are overlooked and the Christian message reduced to a few moralistic rules.

Because Christianity often embraced a dualistic mentality, focusing more on the afterlife than the here and now, the kinds of sins described by Paul were reduced to a few moralizing teachings about sexuality. What many Christians have taken away from this passage is the verse “anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”

This spiritual connection with God is overemphasized so that membership in the body of Christ is a matter of the soul, not of the body. This blatant assumption is already present in the text itself, as Paul never thinks of the body of the prostitute as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Nobody asks about the circumstances or conditions of her life, the defamations, entrapments and abuses that prostitution affords. Paul’s silence reveals that some bodies are more valuable than others, and this double standard sets the stage for the violence carried out in the name of Christianity in the following centuries: crusades, genocide of indigenous populations, slavery, the rape of women, and holy wars. Christianity lost track of the key tenet that the body— including sexuality—is God’s good creation. It lost track of the centrality of incarnation, that God became

1. Brian Rosner, “Temple Prostitution in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20,” Novum Testamentum 40.4 (1998): 336-351.

Christianity lost track of the key tenet that the body— including sexuality—is God’s good creation.

Can you imagine what the world would look like if, in the past two thousand years, Christianity had taken its own message seriously? If it had been less concerned with saving souls and more concerned with saving bodies? Just imagine that!

Note

Plain Song (after Brooke Joyce’s “Prairie Etudes”)

by CAROL GILBERTSON, Professor emerita of English Carol wrote a version of this poem after first hearing Brooke’s composition, “Prairie Etudes” during a Music in the Shape of a Pear performance at Luther College in 2006. She has since revised the poem into its current form. An excerpt of Brooke’s piece can be heard and seen on his website brookejoyce.com.

I wear the plains.

The land lies long in my soul, opens a space inside.

Snow-trails limn the fields— empty fullness, dark light.

My eyes follow fine wires where birds light in rows.

Poles and fenceposts measure my longing.

In summer, I walk and wade the earth.

Sprouts slash the rich black, flesh into leaf, flower, grain.

The rows shine green— earthpaths in the heart.

Fall 2015/Agora

49

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Find the current issue and back issues of Agora online

Y

ou can read the current issue of Agora online and you can also find and search all back issues by first going to our webpage: search “Agora” on the Luther College homepage. The current issue can be viewed right on that page. For back issues, click on the link that takes you to the webpage titled “Luther College Publications Archive.” Enter and then “select publication,” to search either Agora or The College Chips—the complete files of both Agora and the campus newspaper are available. You can search using names, words or phrases, and dates. You can read online or download as a PDF.

Changing your address? Want to stop receiving Agora?

If you do, please email or write us. Contact Agora, c/o boesejud@luther. edu, or write Agora, Main 126, Luther College, 700 College Dr., Decorah, IA 52101.

The image above illustrated early issues of Agora. The journal was established by the Paideia Program, and paideia translates as education. The image shows a teacher with his tablet on his lap and stylus in his hand.