"New Romans" and IJSA video

"New Romans" - final thoughts on the city and culture of Rome

Rome may not be the center of the world anymore, but try telling that to the eight million tourists milling around the Vatican. For the number of people here and for the diversity of language and race, it’s easy to forget that all roads no longer lead to Rome. But the bustle of the city also begs the question: Has Rome been too commercialized? Or does it still retain some of the ancient magic that made it a cultural hub years ago? I think the answer is, “both.”

I believe it’s important for people to come here and see the artifacts and sites. It provokes a connection and sense of reverence regarding history that can only be gained in a hands-on way. It’s mind-boggling to picture a group of people more or less like me erecting hundred-foot-tall stone columns at their public forums, or the thousand arches of the Coliseum, not out of aesthetic ambition but for practical use. Just as I walk to the dining hall, the chapel, and the library each day without a thought, the ancient Romans worked, ate, worshiped, played and studied in these majestic structures every day. Imagining a population for whom these sights were ordinary offers a moving peek into history that we are fortunate to have.

Beyond even that, structures such as the crumbling Coliseum remind us that no earthly empire is everlasting, no matter how vast or powerful. I am reminded of the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which tells of a traveler who found the ruins of a huge statue. An inscription reads, “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Ozymandias thought his kingdom would last forever. In the same way, people thought the Roman empire would never fall. Neither is with us anymore. It’s not hard to imagine tourists visiting the United States in a few millennia to see what’s left of the Pentagon or Mount Rushmore. It’s a sobering thought, but I think people need to grasp the transience of all we take for granted – not only so we can appreciate the good things we have, but also so we can learn to hold those things loosely, assigning greater value to the intangible qualities of culture.

Yet on the other hand, the commercialized aspect of the tourist scene is cringe-worthy, and it’s more than the pressing crowds that make me feel that way. It seems somehow wrong to “go see the Vatican,” a place that was built to be holy and honoring to God. It’s not a museum. It’s holy ground (or should be). At least the Pope still used it for his weekly message, and pilgrims still go there to worship. In this way, it is still being used for its original purpose.

On the other hand, I think the builders’ vision for other monuments has been lost. But we have progressed. Maybe it is too much to ask that a new culture in a new millennium cling to the values of a culture so old we can hardly understand it. To the ancient Romans, watching lions eat Christians was quality entertainment. It would turn our stomachs today. For us, it would be sick to reinstate gladiatorial fights in the Coliseum, yet I would argue it is a good thing to use that space as the public arena it was meant to be. There was a concert there shortly before I visited. Surely the designers did not intend for power chords to resonate through the stone arches, but at the same time, this use of the Coliseum holds true to a purpose the architects may not have intended, which is nonetheless as old as the structure itself: spectacle.

The real disrespect is the way vendors and con artists have turned the historical and religious sites into marketplaces and stages for robbery. Walking out of the Vatican, souvenir shop windows display tacky gold souvenirs plastered with the face of the Pope as if he were some flamboyant celebrity. It makes me think of the Bible story about Jesus overturning the tables in the sanctuary. It’s an even greater shame that portions of the city, including some of the most ancient sites, bear the artwork and tags of vandals.

All else aside, the fact that the new Rome reflects aspects of the greater global culture can hardly be pegged as a bad thing. Global culture values green space. One can see this in the city of Rome. As a matter of fact, the Italians have valued green space for centuries more than we have in America. In the center of the city you’ll find the gardens of the Borghese palace, a sprawling grassy space with paths for horseback riders and knolls for picnickers. Trees are scattered about and green and yellow birds fight scrawny brown squirrels for branch space. The gardens have been there for six hundred years, way before the rest of the world had even begun to create the pollution we are now desperate to counteract with our city parks and nature reservations. Rome does not just open a window on ancient cultures; it spotlights today’s in a manner that even the culturally semi-literate can comprehend as a good thing, in spite of what may have been lost in the sweep of time and tourism.

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International Journalism Seminar, Assisi - May 2010

Op-Ed: On Being a Loser

That does it for the Tartan updates. The last thing I have yet to post is the op-ed I wrote in light of the end of my junior year. You can also view it at the Gordon College News Service blog and on my personal blog, A Silvertongued Serenade.

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Every time I go home from college for the summer, I find myself excavating the closet under the eaves in search of something I’ve lost. This also happens at Christmastime, Easter, Thanksgiving, and on sundry weekends throughout the year. I can’t help it; I’m a loser.

My favorite pants went missing for more than half a year. I haven’t seen my hiking boots since high school. There is a tragic space between Mae and Muse on my CD shelf where Matchbox Twenty should be. Sometimes when I leave my dorm I don’t even know where I parked my car. For the record, I hardly ever lose the keys.

But these things are only misplaced. More regrettable are the things that promise to stay lost: the poem I wrote in fourth grade, the recording of my best friend singing about green tea, the plush bear my birth father gave me when I was born (one of the only mementos I had of him).

Are these important losses? I don’t know. For now, I still have the memories. The poem was less important than how nice it felt to see people smile when they read it. It’s not important that the recording got deleted as long as my friend and I can still scream “green tea!” to each other at random and confuse everybody else at parties. Knowing that my father wanted to be remembered is enough to remind me to remember him.

I think the greater losses are the ones we couldn’t hold to begin with. I lost a best friend once, and not knowing what happened to our friendship was volumes worse than not knowing what happened to the many books and CDs absent from my shelves.

I lost my childhood a few years back, and that was a shame, too. Finally realizing what a blessing I had in spite of stupid bullies at school, I’ve returned to my tree-climbing, Disney-watching days as best I can, but it’s not the same as having no obligations.

With the end of the school year looming, I realize I am about to lose something again. More friends are soon to graduate. In another year, I’ll be the one leaving school behind. Maybe then I will look back on these four years the way I look at childhood now.

But I don’t think we really lose the things we leave behind. I think we carry them forever. They carve themselves into the fleshy pink tissue of our brains and into the caverns of our hearts. We don’t lose them because they are us, and if we do lose them it’s because we meant to, or maybe they didn’t pierce us as sharply as we once thought.

My grandfather is losing his memory to Alzheimer’s. To me this seems the greatest loss of all. Everything I create, writing or otherwise, comes back to the friends who left and the ones who stayed, to the parents who loved me enough to give me up to a better life through adoption, to the songs that served as soundtracks through the high school gauntlet. To the things I carry in the compartments of my mind.

I know how to love because I’ve been hated. I know how to sacrifice because I’ve been shown more than selfishness. These are things I haven’t lost and will never lose, even if I can one day forget where they came from. I can tell that my grandfather still has them, and because of that, I can hope that wherever I may have left my car, there are some things I’ll never lose.

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I have been in Assisi, Italy since Sunday for a two-week journalism seminar. I, along with another student, am in charge of documenting the trip on video. I haven't used video as a journalism medium yet, so I'm excited to see where it goes. Be sure to check back at the end of next week!

Tartan update #6: Providia Studios Makes Pro Video

[Published 5/7/10]

For sophomores Anders Johnson and Jarin Foster, fathers of the rising Providia Studios, it all started in 2006 with a simple act of providence.

“I was searching Limewire for Usher’s ‘Yeah,’” said Johnson. “I came across this song called ‘Yeah Toast.’ Jarin was mad into toast at the time, like it was all he would eat, which is why he’s so skinny – so I showed it to him and we made a video.”

Ever since the “Yeah Toast” video started getting 2,000 hits a day on YouTube, Providia has been a creative outlet for Johnson and Foster. Now they want to expand it into something a little more like a real studio.

Although Providia is not Gordon’s film studio, nor is it officially tied to the school in any way, the Providia tag has appeared on several Gordon-related projects such as this year’s Gordon Globes entry “Like a Scot” and multiple Golden Goose videos.

“We enjoy producing videos a community can appreciate based on social means and inside jokes,” said Johnson.

The duo just finished a promotional video urging students to take advantage of Finish The Course. Without giving too much away, Johnson said Foster makes an appearance as an encouraging old man. Students will have to go to chapel to hear the punch line.

Johnson and Foster will also team up with the Gordon College Student Association next year. This has led them to consider which projects should get the Providia stamp.

Though they look forward to the partnership, Johnson and Foster are leaning toward selective branding. Only creative projects will come out of Providia; the rest will come out of the goodness of their hearts (and/or the pleas of their pockets).

What Foster calls “our most monumental project yet” falls squarely in the former category. “Reciprokative Contackt” is a 10-minute action/adventure/thriller about two companies that are fighting over a green energy device called the deluge reactor.

Johnson and Foster have always wanted to shoot an action movie like this. Dreaming it up was easy. “We see eye to eye in spite of the height difference,” said Johnson. “But Reciprokative Contackt is really Jarin’s brainchild.”

“But Anders is like the uncle that raised it,” added Foster.

Pulling it off was the hard part. There were more people and more props than the team is used to. They had to ask the Beverly police for permission to use air soft guns in town after the Gloucester police told them “no.” Reciprokative Contackt is the first movie they fully scripted and storyboarded before production, a process that lasted three weeks to a month.

“And we got a [high definition] camera from Laura [Davis, the newest Providia team member], so it’ll be sweet now!” said Foster.

Filming ran eight hours on Saturday the 17th and 15 hours on Sunday the 18th. Foster estimates it will take him 50 hours to edit the 2.5 hours of footage collected over the weekend but still hopes to release the movie the weekend before finals at a premiere event in Ken Olsen Science Center.

“Providia is educational for us,” said Foster. “It’s about building up our skills and our portfolio to get into the industry.”

Elements of that portfolio can be viewed on Providia’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/ProvidiaStudios. Also keep an eye on their new website, ProvidiaStudios.com, as they flesh it out with content.

Tartan update #5: "Punk Goes Classic Rock" can "Dream On"

[Published May 7, 2010]

A better title for the new Punk Goes Classic Rock compilation might have been “Illegitimate Child of the Genre Formerly Known as Punk Attempts Classic Rock (and Fails).” There are a few diamonds, but it’s mostly rough: an insult to both punk and classic rock.

As a general statement, this is a collection of classics for the computer age. One can practically taste the electronics sparking behind the music. Can you say, “hello auto tune?”

At best, Punk Goes Classic Rock is hyper music. Most of the tracks are sped up and played in major keys, which makes them sound way happier than most classic rock is supposed to sound. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you don’t have any emotional investment in the original songs, but since they are classics, most of us do.

At worst? Either the lyrics are obscured by screaming and whining geared toward angsty teenagers, or the artists tried to stick so close to the original that their shortcomings are eardrum-piercingly obvious.

There’s a steady downhill trend in the quality of these covers. Beyond the sixth track or so it’s easy to lose interest, and the album continues for another nine tracks after that. I am more inspired to purchase the original songs from iTunes than I am to purchase this CD with the exception of three or four tracks.

For instance, Hit the Lights fared well with Boston’s “More than a Feeling.” It is a very happy-making cover with soaring, spot-on harmonies and none of this wavering in search of the right note crap. Granted, Hit the Lights could have been one of the auto tuners (one can never tell these days), but at least it sounds good.

The Almost did some justice to “Free Fallin,” originally by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and We the Kings did well with .38 Special’s “Caught up in You.” The Maine also did a fair job with Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

But things got dicey when people decided to have a go at Queen. Serious attempts to cover Queen should not be made. No good can come of such attempts. Mayday Parade fared decently with “We are the Champions,” but Never Shout Never butchered “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

If these bands had covered these songs live, the reception would have been phenomenal. Everybody loves a sing-along, and everybody can sing along to these songs. Unfortunately, very few will want to if they buy this CD.

Tartan update #4: Godspell actors in the limelight, tech crew shines in the dark

[Published May 7, 2010]

Gordon’s rendition of Godspell took Jesus out of the clown suit and put him in a soccer jersey. But costumes weren’t the only thing to go through a time warp. While the original production took place in a junkyard, Gordon’s production is a spectacle of lights and video projections – a feat that took quite a tech crew to pull off.

“Usually we have one intense day of tech rehearsal,” said Amy Laing, a junior English/theater double major who has been involved with 16 other Gordon shows and done tech for 12 of them. “This time we had a whole week.”

They needed it. Godspell is Gordon’s first production to use video projections, and it also integrates a live band. Dawn Sarrouf, production manager and technical director, said there were a lot of problems with the projection surfaces because they were so reflective.

Laing, who works lights, added that it was hard to make sure there was enough light to see the actors but not so much that it washed out the videos. She also had to adjust to the faster pace of a musical and learn to synchronize her cues with music rather than actors’ lines.

Laing has more manual control over lights than in any other show she’s done. Usually most of the light show is pre-programmed, but not for Godspell. “There’s one scene where they show an old western film,” said Laing. “I have to keep pushing the button to flash the lights for about four minutes straight.”

Olivia King, a freshman English/theater double major, is responsible for 12 microphones, all of which are constantly on, and has to balance volumes for different actors, singers, and soloists as well as for the live band. Godspell is her first foray into working with sound.

“They gave me a mentor, but learning how to do it was still a really fast process,” she said.

Hannah Baker, a senior English/theater double major, has to keep all the cues in balance in her head because she calls the shots for the whole crew. Baker was stage manager for Gordon’s production of Our Town and assistant stage manager for Love’s Labours Lost and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, but she’s never done anything quite like this.

“Calling the show is hard because we have the video projections as well as the light and sound cues,” said Baker. “It’s a lot of buttons. The actors had three months to figure out their parts, but we only had three days.”

Sarrouf said she would like to do this production again because she already knows exactly what she’d change: the process would start in September rather than December, and the set would be partially complete before the artists started working on projections. Between the time crunch and the scale of the production, the crew had to jump right in.

“It’s ironic that there’s so much technology in the show,” said Laing. “It’s really sort of against technology.” The original production leveled with the audience by touching on the many ideologies of the time that tended to get in the way of people’s lives and relationships, especially to Jesus, but to the 21st century college student, that distraction comes from technology.

“When I first read the script, I was horrified,” said Baker. “I thought it was cheesy and going to be terrible. I didn’t really know what it had to say to the campus.” But she and the rest of the crew are more than thrilled with the final product.

“It’s much less cheesy than secular renditions I’ve seen,” said King. “I don’t think a secular school could do it as well as a Christian school because we have that extra drive to do it well.”

Baker added, “It makes the gospel very personal when you see your friend crucified as Jesus.”

Tartan update #3: Goodbye to Faculty Shepherds

[Published April 16, 2010]

It’s been a long and victorious run for women’s basketball team head coach, Jeannine Cavallaro, and for Gordon in Boston director, Craig McMullen, but next year both will be running new roads that lead away from Gordon.

“I have been able to coach some amazing young women and have been so blessed by them,” said Cavallaro, who just coached her tenth season with Gordon. “That's the part I will miss most for sure.”

Cavallaro has been coaching for 16 years and hopes one day to make her love for athletics into a Christian ministry. In the meantime she’ll be working with her brother’s company, World Championship Fighting, promoting mixed martial arts events in the New England region.

But she will never forget everything she and her teams accomplished at Gordon or the meaningful conversations she’s had with team members over the years. Cavallaro was more than a coach; she was a friend and a shepherd for her team. Gordon will be hard pressed to replace her, but they will soon conduct a national search for someone to fill her shoes.

McMullen was one of the founding fathers of Gordon in Boston and served as director for eight years. “The intent,” said McMullen, “is to have the program be not just an extension of Gordon but a meaningful presence in the city.”

McMullen has been involved in pastoral work for 30 years and now has an opportunity to reconnect with that calling at the Potters’ House church in Denver. “I was born to pastor,” he said. “I look forward to rejoining congregational life.”

As GIB director, McMullen created a place for students to participate in urban internships, established partnerships with Boston school so students could cross-register there, and brought Selected Topics classes to the GIB program.

This may be goodbye for McMullen, but GIB isn’t going anywhere. Cliff Hersey, Dean for Global Education, will take up McMullen’s mantle. McMullen said, “Urban studies is healthy and alive and open to all majors.”

Tartan update #2: Cuisine Competition

[Published April 9, 2010]

Rec-IM’s biggest (and yummiest) tournament yet went down on Friday. No, not chess. Not racquetball. Not Super Smash Brothers, either. Bigger than all of the above, and promising to become semi-annual, was the Iron Chef competition.

“I was trying to think of a tournament that non-athletic people could do,” said Alyssa Williamson, recreational coordinator for Rec-IM, who was the mastermind behind Gordon’s Iron Chef tourney. “Recreational things don’t have to be sports.”

Williamson was worried people wouldn’t think to compete because the event was too new, but 13 teams proved her wrong with surprising and scrumptious dishes featuring the secret ingredient, apples, which was announced Thursday night.

The table was laden with everything from salad to strudel to hand-spun sugar. Now the five judges – Austin Bentson (’11), Steven Myhren (’11), Alyssa Baxter (’11), Catherine Damiani (’10), and Williamson (’11) – were faced with the task of trying all the dishes and assigning them scores based on creativity, taste, presentation, and use of the secret ingredient.

“To make apples in a new way is not easy,” said Lydia Luse, ’10, who teamed up with her longtime summer cooking partner Caitlin Snyder, ’10, to make Graduation pie (apples, pears and blueberries). “I was hoping for cilantro, beets, ginger, anchovies – something unexpected and strange.” Luse’s team, Gourmet Graduates, scored second place in the presentation category with their five miniature Grad pies.

“It was fun to collaborate and improvise with what we had,” said Lindsay Locke, ’10, of The Gedney Girls (also Virginia Locke, ’12, and Jessica Kane, ‘11). “It’s scary for a minute not knowing how it will turn out,” said Locke. “But I’d do it again.” The Gedney Girls won best taste, second best use of the secret ingredient, and second place overall with their mountain of stuffed French toast.

Flay-Cora (Fred DiStefano, ‘10, Corrie Hopley, ‘11, and Courtney Prall, ‘11) took first prize with apple and butternut squash soup and turkey apple Brie paninis – comfort food for a fall-like spring day, as the team told judges when they delivered the dish.

Gedney Girls took second prize, and Vitamin E took third with apple chicken hash with won ton chips.

Williamson said to look forward to Iron Chef: round two next fall.

Tartan update

I've had several stories published in the Gordon College newspaper, the Tartan, this semester, but I've been forgetting to post them here. Now that the year is over it's time to play catch-up.

Dark and Stormy Night - and Day After, Too
February 26, 2010

Blurb: “It was a dark and stormy night” doesn’t even begin to cover it. 40-50-mile-per-hour winds lashed rain against the windows; students sitting nearby kept wary eyes on the glass. Then, around 11 p.m., a tree fell on Grapevine Road near the chapel, taking out some wires and cutting off electricity across campus.

“We’ll definitely be without power until at least the morning,” Gordon Police Officer Peter Cherry said at about 1 a.m. Friday . “National Grid hasn’t even responded because it looks like a bomb went off in Beverly.”

[More pictures on the Tartan website!]

This is the only article that appeared online, so I will be posting the rest of the stories in full as the week continues.

International graduate profile

Each of the four Gordon College News Service fellows produced a story about a graduating international student on the North Shore. The four stories appeared on the front page of the Boston Globe North on Thursday, May 13. My full story can be found on the Boston Globe website.

Blurb: When Vladislav Minev, 22, first started college, he had no idea how to use a dryer or open a checking account. Such plights are common for American freshmen, but at least they have the home turf advantage. Minev grew up in Bulgaria, where he learned English as a second language. The list of obstacles goes on.

In spite of such challenges, Minev will graduate from Gordon College on May 15 with a GPA of 3.55 and a bachelor’s degree in business with an international concentration. He will receive honors in his French minor and may also graduate with economics and business honors, depending on the faculty’s evaluation of his honors thesis two days before graduation.