“Mini-grant funds were used to bring Dr. David Kushner into music appreciation classes to present two, one-hour ‘Recitals in Schools’ programs. Dr. Kushner is an esteemed musicologist and pianist from the University of Florida who travels throughout the country performing music of ‘under-represented’ composers such as Ernest Bloch in both professional and educational venues. The lecture-recitals featured the music of Bloch, as well as suites by J.S. Bach from the Baroque period; Beethoven, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Rubinstein, and Grieg from the Romantic era; and Debussy from the contemporary epoch. Dr. Kushner supplemented his performances with insight into the formal structure, tonality, rhythm, melodie and intervallic traits, and programmatic ideology of each composition. The lecture-recitals were attended by music appreciation, theory, and humanities students and faculty members.”

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Joining us for the November 1 Super Saturday workshop were Debra Vazquez, Joan Luebbe, Barbara Anderson, Delores Hunt, Trish Glennon, Judy Haisten, Barbara Ashby, and Kay Fowler. Kathy Kilcrease, Joe Zimmerman, and Steve Hill were on hand to lend assistance. I kept the food coming and took pictures of the event much to Delores’ chagrin.

The workshops covered were: Excel Gradebook, WebCT, PowerPoint, and Digitizing Video Clips.

At the end of the day, we asked everyone to evaluate the strengths of the workshop. Here is a sample of the comments we received: “I love the atmosphere and that I can work at my own pace—I went fast today!” “Excellent help—tech support—at my fingertips.” “Having a block of time and the equipment to complete a project.”

When asked what could be improved, one participant stated, “Two Saturdays in a row to continue our creative thinking.” Not a bad idea!

As always, we enjoyed working with another wonderful group of faculty members. We hope that many of you will also join us for the March 5th Super Saturday. The deadline for submission of your proposals is February 13th, 2004.

Remember, your project is not limited to one of the topics covered in the proposed workshops for those days—your suggestions are welcome! We’re here to help you accomplish whatever you want or need to do.

Books, books, and more books…College Planning Day this term afforded faculty the time to review the collections in the CFCC Learning Resources Center associated with their various instructional areas as well as learn more about the many other resources and services available. The LRC Staff—Susan Bradshaw, Sheila Evans, Liz Minnerly and Joanne Bellovin—took us on a fast and furious ride through LINCC Web showing us the many things that are available to both faculty and students through this online site. We all came away with a better appreciation of all that the LRC staff does to help both faculty and students access the learning resources they need and some skills that will help us better utilize all that is available to us.

As half of the faculty spent time in the LRC, many of the other half took the opportunity to participate in one or more of the workshops that were offered that day. From the evaluations collected at the workshops it appears that all who participated appreciated the opportunity to learn new things, review some new teaching/learning tools, as well as have the time to interact with other faculty members from across the campus.

Of special interest was the morning workshop facilitated my Amy Mangan “The Courage to Teach…..A Time for Sharing and Problem Solving.” The discussion, based on Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach gave all involved an opportunity to share teaching experiences, both good and bad, and an opportunity to learn form each other in a relaxed and open setting. All indicated that it was great and were interested in having more informal exchanges in the future. We’ll see if Amy might be able to do another session next term.

Ron Cooper’s session on Academic Integrity/Plagiarism again provided a thought provoking discussion of some of the issues we are facing and a time for brainstorming as to how this problem might be addressed campus wide.

I attended the High Liability Trainers’ Conference offered by the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission August 26th through August 29th in Daytona Beach.

The conference provided a program of expert speakers on various topics. However, the highlight was being able to network with other instructors and to learn about and discuss issues that we all share as we try to train the next generation of correction and law enforcement officers.

Over the four days of the conference, attendees could choose from a list of twenty four topics in which to participate. I chose topics that pertained to my position as Academy Commander and Lead Driving Instructor for the Criminal Justice Institute.

Ms. Missy O’Linn, P. A. presented “Legal Issues in High Liability Training”. She emphasized the trend of the courts and attorneys through out the country on deadly and non-deadly use of force. I am relaying this information to my students.

Another area that was extremely interesting was “Advanced Vehicle Stops.” We discussed the various methods for stopping a fleeing vehicle i.e. the PIT maneuver and stop sticks. The latest method is to disable the electrical system of a fleeing vehicle by sending a small robot under the vehicle. There is a brand new system that utilizes a computer chip that is installed in vehicles that will disable the electrical system when hit by a laser beam trained on the vehicle. This will almost certainly end the high speed chase. California is in the process of passing legislation to mandate all new vehicles in California have this system installed.

As good as these presenters were, and they were excellent, Col. Danny McKnight was without a doubt the best presenter. I am sure some of you have seen the movie Blackhawk Down. Col. McKnight was the officer in charge of that mission in Somalia. His presentation was “Survival under Stressful Situations.” He told of his experience in Somalia and how it can relate to law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers must learn that no matter what happens to us or our surroundings, if you keep your head, your training will bring you through.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and I am looking forward to the next one in 2005.

The instructors who attended the Association of Surgical Technologists (AST) and Accreditation Review Committee on Surgical Technologists (ARC-ST) workshops in New Orleans on May 27th and 28th were given an update of all changes on evaluating student clinical performance and crisis prevention. Included in the update were specific directions and information on “Electronic Annual Reporting” which will begin in 2003-2004.

We were also provided with information on how to teach the new core curriculum, with a special focus on clinical case requirements for students on core cases, specialty cases and independent number of scrubs with a preceptor available in order to be a graduate of a CAAHEP accredited program.

As Program Facilitator/Professor of the surgical technology program, I gained valuable information about the new requirements and guidelines required to keep the program accredited as well as improve student learning. With this information, I developed clinical case levels for the program upon my return from the conference in preparation for the graduating class of 2003, who must do case leveling according to clinical case requirements.

Florida Association of Accounting Educators 2003 Conference
by Vern Allen, Business & Technology

A critical and unique aspect of the 2003 FAAE conference in West Palm Beach on October 9-11 was a dynamic discussion of the potential impact of UF’s mandate for all UF enrolled students to take their first two accounting and economics classes at UF. Such a mandate represents a direct threat to the articulation agreement and the common course numbering system. The jury remains out on this issue.

In another presentation, Dr. Earl Stice examined the unethical if not clearly illegal collusion between representatives of Arthur Anderson and one of its major clients. Details leading to the rapid and utter collapse of one of the “crown jewels” of the American economy, Enron, indicated the depravity of that nefarious relationship.
Finally, opportunity to share evolving instructional methodologies with friends from the university and college environments always proves among the most rewarding experience of any at these conferences. Several of these colleagues agreed to submit proposals to present in Cleveland in 2004 at the two-year colleges annual Teachers of Accounting conference.

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First stop: Lenox, MA The Berkshire Mountains—Melville’s Arrowhead Farm

I arrived late in the afternoon when the shadows were deep across the lawn and the old house seemed to be resting in shade. The farm sits on a knoll on Oliver Wendell Holmes Road, appropriately so for a man of letters, surrounded by eight story grand, aged elms and maples. Perhaps because it was a big night at the symphony in nearby Tanglewood, only two tourists shared the last tour of the day with me, both English teachers from Indiana.

Melville bought the as yet unnamed farm from his uncle and moved to this farm after his early years at sea, years that provided the knowledge and experience whereon he based his first novels; but those first novels, popular though they were, showed little evidence of the depth, complexity and symbolism of the novels to follow, most notably, one of four written in the upstairs bedroom here at Arrowhead, Moby Dick. The docent refused to allow any inside photographs to my dismay, but I took a mental picture of this great house, built in 1780 and owned by the Melvilles from 1816 to 1927, with its big square rooms and pine floors, with its leaded glass windows and its multiple hearths. The room I was most interested in was, of course, the room at the top of the stairs to the left from which Melville wrote, looking out from his surveyor’s table (used as his desk) across forty acres of farmed fields where, in the distance on a clear day, he could see rising the curious shaped mountain called Greylock, looking ironically like the massive gray whale that worked as symbol in the pages of his novel. Surely this view inspired Melville as much as Hawthorne’s company and his prose, for he turned his writing table towards the view so that his back was to the door and his view of the mountain unobstructed. Outside, Melville designed and had built “the piazza”—actually, a simple wooden porch—for which he named a collection of short fiction “The Piazza Tales.” The traditional New England bright red barn enclosed by climbing morning glory and surrounded by purple iris and tiger lilies looks precisely as it did in 1850 when the two great authors—both young (Melville about 30 to Hawthorne’s 46) and impressionable still—sat in the straw talking of philosophy, God, and writing. One can imagine them there: the powerfully introspective Hawthorne listening to the manic, dramatic Melville cursing at the universe, questioning everything.

Melville lived at Arrowhead—named by Herman Melville for the Indian artifacts found strewn on the property— for 13 years, and other than the sea, biographers concur no place ever affected him more. Here he composed four novels, many short stories including the enigmatic “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” ten magazine articles, and the beginnings of his poetry, which continued until his death. When he left it for the concrete sidewalks of NYC, where he would live until his obscure death thirty years later, he left with heavy heart. When I shot the photos featured here, the darkness and power of Melville suffused the grounds. It was a place worthy of a great artist, worthy of the creation of art.

Second stop: Derry, NH—The Robert Frost Farm

Although it was late July, the weather behaved like November, painting the low stratus sky lead-gray and pelting us with long heavy rains throughout the day and night. I stayed down the road in The Robert Frost Inn, close enough to return a half dozen times, trying to catch the few rays of light that shone through at any hour of the day. Cursing the rain, I shot the photographs, imagining the entire shoot a waste of time. But when the photographs were developed, I found that they expressed better than any innocuous summer day what Frost found on those grounds that so powered his poetry for the twelve years the Frost family lived there, from 1900 – 1912. Indeed, according to Frost’s own words in a letter to a friend dated March 4, 1952, the poet “wrote more than half” of his first published book and “much more than half of the second, and even quite a little of” his third, “though they were not published till [sic] later.” For through the lens I saw the farm, the fields, the gables of barn and house mingled in fog and New England want of color, a color no doubt more familiar to Frost than the sun. It is a small house with a big barn, a gothic board and batten white farmhouse with miniature rooms and dark halls. The barn, in Yankee fashion attached to house for winter convenience, towers above the house, and from the rear—a view we know Frost took in daily from his own words in his own journals—the three gables of house and barn sit steady and solemn on the land. It is a house just far enough from town that anyone of sensibility might find charming in daylight but eerie at night, and from the upstairs windows looking out and looking in, a visitor could feel the despair of the hill wife, or know the isolation and night quiet of Mary and her farmer husband in “Death of the Hired Man.”

The Frost place has a quietude that evokes whispers, and a sense of peace that, having left it for other states, stays always in the mind.

Stop three: Concord, MA—The Emerson House, The Old Manse, and Walden Pond

Concord today retains its 19th century charm and vestiges of the American past from the 17th century. But for the cars, the town itself has changed little, and the brick buildings of the “downtown” hum with history. For in Concord, visitors can visit sites from the American Revolution, like the Old North Bridge gracefully spanning the Concord River and the Minute Man Statue, arguably the location from where democracy fired its first shots at its oppressors.

In this singular setting, at mid-century a hundred and fifty years ago, a group of writers and intellectuals, philosophers and radicals, merged to discuss and to write, to create and to ponder. One group was the Transcendentalists, “fathered” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who seems to be—despite his being born only a year before Hawthorne in 1803—a father figure to Thoreau and to Hawthorne. Indeed, Concord is so rich in history and literary history that staying there and visiting its houses, churches, buildings, and great cemetery called Sleepy Hollow becomes an entire vacation.

The Emerson House

The houses as I came to know them differed dramatically in size, type, scope, and feeling, just as the three writers differed. Their houses befit them. The Emerson House—with its white classical lines and sturdy two story rectangular shape—seems sturdy as a church. It presents its classically formal face to the world behind a four-foot wall of stone and wrought iron, as if it knew its own prominent place in literary history. A man living in such a house would be a pillar of the community, and a literary man and philosopher would be taken seriously and take himself seriously as well. It is a confident house, smiling gracefully on its neighbors. One would guess that its owner lived a long and prosperous life, as indeed did Emerson, if not a life without personal tragedy and sorrow.

The Old Manse

Another Emerson house is the Old Manse, a dark-visaged, brown saltbox style from a century before. Emerson’s family built it in the late 18th century, but it looks like a Puritan abode, and it sits like a proud old fossil on its ten acres just out of town and adjacent to the Concord River and Old North Bridge. In fact, from the upstairs windows in the back of the house, one can see the long field and the river beyond, as if history itself keeps flowing by. Despite its formidable appearance, sitting far back from the road draped in six story trees and staring through its dark windows like an old

Puritan, it is a remarkably light and pleasant house inside, with two large and long windows to almost every room up and down, and a wide formal central hall that lends it a timeless grace. Emerson lived here as boy and later for a short time in the 1830’s after the death of his first wife, when, wild with grief, he composed his first published essay, “Nature.” Later, from 1842-46, the newly married Nathaniel Hawthorne brought his wife Sophia to live here, renting it from the Emersons. From the same upstairs window on the rear of the second floor, looking out through wavy leaded glass to the rear field and the Concord River, both Emerson and Hawthorne placed their writing desks, looking out upon that bucolic and historic view. Hawthorne and Sophia etched their names in the glass of the window above the desk, still visible today. This is a fine, warm shouldered house, embracing its occupants, offering them large and light rooms. Hawthorne wrote in his journals that he was perhaps happiest of all places there. Surely he was prolific there, composing his book of enigmatic short fiction Mosses from the Old Manse as he looked out that back window.

Walden Pond

Henry David Thoreau was the youngest of the Concord three, born in 1817. Emerson found a kindred spirit, of sorts, and mentored Thoreau, hiring him as a tutor for his sons, taking him to NYC, and finally providing for him the land on which the lifelong bachelor built his famous one room cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Walden Pond itself is cherished by the residents of Concord and Boston, providing an escape back to a time when life in America was rich with promise and so safe that crime was virtually unknown in this area. The pond is actually a mile-wide lake of spring-fed water, clear to the bottom. In July 1845, Thoreau moved into his one room cabin on the far edge of the pond, approximately an hour’s walk from Concord center. Here, alone and simply, he lived for just over two years in an experiment to make sure that when he “came to die” he would not find out that he had “never really lived.” His perspicacious observations of nature developed into complex symbols of human existence and behavior in the collection of essays published in 1855 as simply Walden. Today, the original cabin is gone, but the spot where it sat is marked by a wooden plaque bearing Thoreau’s own words about why he came to live in the woods. Nearby, visitors can see a reproduction of the original spare cabin, Yankee in every way: clean, economical, sparse. Thoreau’s view of the pond and the world through his cabin windows seemed an important photograph to take as did his view of the pond from the original cabin site and the three chairs he kept so that he would never have more than two visitors. This eccentric genius found his muse on the shores of this timeless lake that seems to calm the souls of city folk to this very day.

Conclusion
Did I capture at least a sense of the value of place in the lives of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Frost? For myself, I did. I came away from each writer’s setting brimful of the singular ambience of time and place. I glimpsed for a moment the magic of place and genius, the mystery of muse. I hope I captured a sense of it for my students and for my readers.

~ Bob DuMond

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Jan. 20
APPN 2 p.m. CFCC 7 p.m

Tues. John Sayles, the standard-bearer for American independent film, is near peak form with this richly textured portrait of a small Florida town and the conflicting interests that arise when land developers select it as the ideal spot for a new beach resort. Issues of economic divides, race, and vanishing traditions are addressed with shades of gray that respect the audience, while each character is vividly brought to life through Sayles’ superb writing and a top-notch cast that includes Angela Bassett, Edie Falco, Timothy Hutton, Mary Steenburgen, Jane Alexander, James McDaniel, Ralph Waite, Mary Alice, Alan King, and Miguel Ferrer. There will be a discussion after the film in connection with this year’s college wide theme of “Service

Feb. 3 Tues.
CFCC 2 p.m.
CFCC 7 p.m.

CHILDREN OF HEAVEN Iran, 1998, 89 min.

One day, while running errands for his mother, Ali loses his younger sister Zahra’s newly repaired–-and only—pair of shoes. The loss of something so basic as a pair of shoes could be a bitter financial setback for their family, so both agree to share Ali’s beat up sneakers. Ali plans to remedy this difficult situation by winning for his sister a new pair of shoes, third prize in a grueling running race. It's a lot harder than he imagined and a real test of love. Director: Majid Majidi (Baran).

Recommended for ages 7 to 10/Families. (Farsi with English sub-titles.)

Feb. 17
Tues.
APPN 2 p.m.
CFCC.7 p.m.

A WALK IN THE NIGHT South Africa, 1998, 78 min.

A Walk in the Night recounts a single terrible night when the fragile world of Mikey Adonis, a young steel worker, disintegrates. As the pressures on Mikey build, we see a decent man driven to an act of brutality by a racist society which humiliates him at every turn. The parallels with Richard Wright's seminal portrait of black rage in Native Son are unavoidable. A Walk in the Night is one of thefirst films from a new generation of talented young black South African filmmakers who have become active since the overthrow of apartheid in 1994. Director: Mickey Madoda Dube.

(English and Afrikaans with English subtitles.)

Mar. 2
Tues.
APPN 2 p.m.
CFCC 7 p.m.

THE SON / LE FILS Belgium, 2002, 103 min.

“Le Fils/The Son is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen. ...Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a Belgian carpenter, supervises a shop where teenage boys work... Everything that Olivier does is exemplary. Walk like this. Hold yourself just so. Measure exactly. Find out the truth before you tell the truth. Do not use words to discuss what cannot be explained. Be willing to say, ‘I don't know.’ Be willing to have a son and teach him a trade. Be willing to be a father.” -- Roger Ebert

(French with English sub-titles)

Mar. 16
Tues.
CFCC 2 p.m. CFCC 7 p.m.

CITY LIGHTS (Charlie Chaplin) USA, 1931, 90 min.

One of Chaplin’s most highly acclaimed films. The Little Tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl and sets out to raise money for an operation to cure her. A masterpiece of sentimentality that is consistently listed as one of the greatest films of all time.

April 6
Tues.
APPN 2 p.m.
CFCC 7 p.m.

THE FAST RUNNER Canada, 2001, 172 min.

This remarkable first feature by Zacharias Kunuk also has the distinction of being the first moviemade entirely in the Inuktitut language. Based on an Inuit legend more than a thousand years old, it vividly tells the story of a bloody feud sparked by a romantic rivalry. Made with a largely Inuit cast and crew, The Fast Runner is thrilling as a drama and a cultural event… “A film of epic beauty and pulse-racing adventure...a landmark movie that becomes a priceless entryway into a distant land and its people.” (Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune). Winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes and five of Canada's Genie Awards, including Best Picture.

(Inuktitut with English subtitles.)