And Then Some…

This photo was taken of my great-grandmother, Olive McCorkle, in the 1920s in one of the Denison dorms (or perhaps one of the Shepardson College dorms). It wasn’t until I had enrolled at Denison, four years ago now, that my grandpa shared this photo with me and told me his mother had gone to school here, too. Even though I never knew my great-grandmother, I feel a sense of pride in having shared this place with her.  —Emily Hopcian ’12, editorial intern

Traipsing around in a buzzard costume is harder than it looks. Believe me, I know. I wore the thing for like, 15 whole minutes. When I heard there was a reunion planning meeting coming up, I thought it might be a fun idea to crash the party—as the buzzard.

It’s a thing I had—this want of being a mascot. It stems, I think, from one summer day back in college when I subbed for the bodyguard of Kenny Kangaroo at Kennywood Park (where Bob Henninger ’64 worked as director of group sales until his retirement in 2009, and where his son, Rob Henninger ’88 currently works as director of construction and maintenance). The role required me to walk around with Kenny and make sure that he did not (a) pass out from the heat inside the costume on a July day, and (b) take a kick to the shin by some excitable 10-year-old. Aside from all of that, Kenny had quite a glorious life. He had a private dressing room, where an actor could step into his new Kangaroo persona before heading out into the park, or where he could find a cool retreat when the heat—and those crazy 10-year-olds—got to be a little too much.

Years after I left Kennywood, I worked at Penn State where the Nittany Lion mascot is an icon. To land the suit, students have to try out. They have to do one-armed push-ups, and run around a field with 100,000 fans in the stands carrying a giant flag that may or may not be heavier than the guy or gal inside.

So secretly, I’ve always wanted to get inside a costume. Where some might see humiliation, I saw fame. Or at least a couple of laughs.

I’m over all of that now. Fifteen minutes in the Buzzard costume can teach someone a thing or two. One: I now know I’m claustrophobic. Two: Getting your point across without talking and while wearing a giant bird head can be tricky. Three: It is, indeed, terribly hot in there.

So next time you see a mascot running around on the sidelines or walking through an amusement park or attending a Reunion Planning meeting. Just know: It takes a special kind of person to make that job look easy. As for me, I’ll stick to editing magazines.

Occasionally we hear from one of Denison Magazine’s former interns, Alison Beth Waldman ’10. She wrote an essay in the last issue of the magazine telling readers all about the trials and tribulations of the job hunt. Even so, she seems to have landed a pretty good gig as an editorial assistant at sparkaction.org, a journalism and youth advocacy site. Last month she had a big news story to cover—at the White House. We asked her to tell us about it.

Last month, I went on the coolest expedition of my job in Washington, D.C., so far—a trip to the White House to cover an event as a member of the press.

The event was the National Medal of the Arts and the National Humanities Medal ceremony. Along the same lines as the Kennedy Center Honors (though on a much smaller scale), this short medal ceremony honors people who have done extraordinary things for the arts and humanities in the United States.

I work for a nonprofit journalism and advocacy site that covers a number of issues regarding children and youth, including the arts. So, with camera and notebook in hand, I was off to hang out at the Obamas’ digs in search of some fodder.

If you’ve ever stood outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., you’re likely familiar with the remarkably unassuming (but sturdy) iron gate that separates pedestrians, tourists, and the daily protesters from the grandeur of the White House. To my surprise, my temporary press pass got me through that gate—after several steps of security, of course—up the famous elliptical driveway, and through the front door behind those famous white columns facing North.

Along with the rest of the press, I was ushered into the East Room—a large, warmly lit room decorated with shimmering gold curtains, portraits of George and Martha Washington, and elegant chandeliers. With only the slightest bit of aggression (note to self: be in the front of the line next time), I wriggled myself into a pretty good spot behind an ornate rope (Red Carpet-style) in the back of the room.
Soon, the guests and awardees took their seats and a few notable faces including John Lithgow, Sarah Jessica Parker, and awardee Al Pacino caused little uproars of shutter clicks. Lastly, President Obama entered with First Lady Michelle Obama on his arm. The President gave a short speech highlighting the importance of the arts and humanities, and then presented each awardee with their medal.

When the ceremony was over, I exited right back out the front door with one big checkmark off my D.C .bucket list.

Want to see what it was like? Here’s a video of the event, courtesy of the White House.

Curious about the awardees? Here’s more about them, courtesy of SparkAction.org.

Last summer, Jonathan Green ’10, a Spanish and journalism teacher at Seaside High School in Seaside, California, asked me to send a few copies of Denison Magazine to him so that he might use them as a reference in his technical writing class. We were, of course, happy to ship them out to the West Coast. Today I received another email from Green with a link to Seaside’s new student publication, The Spartan Chronicles. In the forward to the inaugural issue, Green writes about trying to devise a class project: “As I retired to go to bed that night, I reached to pick up my alma mater’s alumni publication, Denison Magazine. I realized that this could be the class’ project: a magazine about Seaside’s current, past, and future students; a magazine about the whole Seaside community from students to staff to city officials. Instead of a school newspaper that is bogged down by a tight deadlines and plagued by paltry headlines, a magazine has the ability to slow down and take more in-depth looks at the various corners of our school’s surroundings. With that goal in mind, we began marching toward our first issue.”

That first issue is astounding. Not only has the class given voice to the students and staff in their school, but they’ve tackled very real–and often difficult—issues that high school students face all over the nation. In that first issue, student writers talk about what it’s like to be the new kid in class, to be black at Seaside, to be gay. One former student writes about her addiction to alcohol. Another about his success with a new academic program at the school. They explore graffiti and delve into the controversial discussion of whether it is art or vandalism. One writer takes on depression.

In Green’s email to me this morning, he writes: “I want to thank you for providing us with those materials—they have helped us immensely with both our writing and our design… thank you so much for providing us with a source of inspiration.”

Now, Denison Magazine has won a number of awards in its time, and we’re very proud of those. But I have to say, I’m more proud of the fact that Denison Magazine could have had anything to do with the remarkable work of these students.

Professional writer and photographer, Lisa Waterman Gray ’77, spent two years researching and writing An Explorer’s Guide: Kansas, released in June 2011 and featured in the recent print edition of Denison Magazine. She drove more than 13,000 miles, and spent more than 100 days traveling and taking more than 4,000 photographs. A hundred buffalo followed a pickup truck that Gray rode in in southwestern Kansas. She drove the last 13 miles of Route 66 in the southeastern corner, viewed Colorado from Kansas’s highest elevation in the northwest, and walked a Yellow Brick Road in south central Kansas. We asked her to show us a snippet of her research for the book, so here she documents her trip through tornado alley.

I awoke on May 10, 2010 in a casually elegant room full of rustic antiques. Broad windows framed country quiet, and chilly, dreary weather cloaked the landscape. Forecasters in south central Kansas anticipated severe storms and, despite living in the state for 25 years, the thought of driving alone through unfamiliar territory and unsettled weather had my stomach doing flip flops.

Breakfast provided a brief respite inside the beautifully renovated barn of a Winfield B & B. After savoring light-as-air crepes, plenty of coffee, and pleasant conversation, I hurriedly filled my water bottle and re-packed the car. Cool spring rain spit and sputtered as I checked my itinerary and returned to the road.

I briefly toured an 1885 mansion-turned-B & B, decorated in period finery, and then headed towards a rural B & B, beneath an ashen sky. After touring the sprawling home I left hastily, looking upwards again as my stomach tightened. Gravel gave way to paved road, and I relaxed a bit.

Then a high-pitched, screech arose from the passenger wheel well and I pulled over, hoping it would stop. After several quiet minutes the screeching returned and I prayed to reach town safely. Rain fell harder as roadside assistance towed my car to a local repair shop. They found nothing wrong and the noise stopped, but I gladly paid for peace of mind.

After briefly touring a handful of businesses in Winfield’s downtown area, I set my GPS for tiny Sedan. Along the way, I hurried through restaurants, shops and a museum, in Arkansas City.

Severe weather warnings kept my stomach in knots and hands glued to the wheel as I entered open countryside. Years earlier, our family had driven directly beneath a tornado as it skipped across sunset-drenched prairie, after tornadic activity had devastated the nearby small town of Andover. But, this time, I was alone. If I got into trouble, would my cell phone work? How would anyone know where to find me? I gulped down my fear, breathed deeply, and kept driving, eyes riveted to the landscape.

‘Popcorn’ clouds had turned green-gray. An eerie inversion between cool and warm air filled an isolated valley where no other cars were visible, and I constantly scanned the horizon for tornadoes. No birds or animals appeared and the world was oddly silent.

I finally met Sedan’s town ‘ambassador’ in mid-afternoon and followed her car to a beautiful cabin at a private ranch, but none of the lights worked. A text message told my host that all power had also gone out downtown. “Do we have an alternative for lodging?” I asked, knowing that severe weather still permeated the area. “I can’t imagine staying alone, in an isolated cabin, without any power.”

Within minutes, we were headed towards a new hunting lodge with concrete reinforced walls, owners who lived next door, and a backup generator. I had Internet access, a cooler full of snacks, some unopened wine, and cable television. An F-1 tornado had traveled through one highway intersection less than an hour after I passed by, and the weather system I’d fled for the better part of the day had wreaked havoc around Oklahoma City.

But I’d come through okay and slept well that night. A bright and beautiful morning followed – the silver lining behind tumultuous weather in tornado alley. If I could handle the previous 24 hours of Kansas travel, I could handle anything.

Mark Naymik of The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently spoke with Jim Petro ’70 about his evolving thoughts on the death penalty and his book False Justice, which he co-authored with his wife, Nancy Bero Petro ’70. Jim, who currently serves as the Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, is a former Attorney General of Ohio and former Ohio Auditor of State. For more on the Petros, their book, and the role they play in seeking justice for the wrongly convicted, check out Denison Magazine’s story, “The Case on Inmate No. A246292.”

Oftentimes as we research stories for Denison Magazine, we stumble upon treasure troves of information. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s wonderful to have so much good material to create stories for our readers, but at the same time, we often have to make tough decisions about what material makes it into our print magazine and what material we have to file away for future reference. As we worked with writer Sally Ann Flecker to pull together an article called “Minister of Peace” for the issue in mailboxes now, we exchanged emails with Gus Parajón’s (’59) widow, Joan Morgan Parajón ’58, who lives in Nicaragua. Through our research, we learned many more things about Gus than we could manage to include in the print version of his story. Things like the fact that Gus had been born in Nicaragua in 1935 and grew up in contact with a Baptist Missionary in Managua by the name of Lloyd E. Wyse, who was from Granville. It turns out that Wyse was the director of the Baptist School in Managua and offered scholarships to graduating students to attend Denison University. Parajón was among the first four students to receive such a scholarship and this, writes his family, “forever changed the course of his life.”

Parajón met Joan during a Bible study, and only hours after his Denison graduation, they married at the First Baptist Church of Granville. The couple, of course, returned to Nicaragua, where Parajón took the lessons learned from Wyse and passed them on by personally mentoring members of the younger generation and helping them make contacts to secure scholarships for high school and colleges in Nicaragua and the United States. Parajón received many awards for his life work, which you can read about in the current issue, and he helped found many organizations to make the world a better place—organizations like Prestanic, a Nicaraguan microfinance non-profit organization aimed at helping families overcome poverty, CONAR (Nicaraguan Committee for Assistance to Refugees) in cooperation with the United Nations, and different projects associated with the First Baptist Church of Managua during his tenure as pastor (1984-2010).

Many thanks to the Parajón family for sharing such wonderful stories about Gus. It’s clear he made a difference in this world and will be greatly missed.

With less than two weeks until the end of the semester, students around campus have started counting down. And they’re not necessarily keeping track of the number of days until break. No, these days, students tend to countdown to breaks—and the weekend—by the number of exams to take, papers to write, and presentations to give. My Facebook newsfeed is flooded with such countdowns and the occasional update that Megan is on her ninth cup of coffee for the day or that Tim has only gotten five hours of sleep in the past 36 hours. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but you get the point.

So what’s on my to-do list?  Academically, I have an 8-10-page final paper and a final exam for Psychology of Sport; in Warring Masculinities, an English senior seminar, I have a 4- to 5-page group presentation evaluation to write and a final paper on The Forever War, a book about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by journalist Dexter Filkins. In addition to that, I have to keep up on my year-long senior writing project for English, a memoir about my family’s resort on Crystal Lake in northern Michigan.

A week from now, that list will be garbage, but until then, it’s time to log off Facebook and hit the books!

“Hunger is the worst enemy you can have,” says Abdi Ali ’13.

This summer Abdi Ali, was interning at Mass General Hospital in Boston when he heard about the famine that has engulfed the Horn of Africa including his birthplace, Somalia. Ali knows first hand about the trials of hunger and the special circumstances that render Somalia particularly vulnerable to this menace. And so, in typical Ali fashion, he decided to do something about it.

“Here in the United States, we know that a meal is secured for us no matter what – but there are children out there who don’t have an ensured meal.” So Ali skipped breakfasts and lunches and sent the money to the World Food Program—a group whose integrity and effectiveness he attests to.

But pretty quickly Ali realized that he needed to do something more. “We are the voice for those who suffer,” he said. So he began reaching out to other Denisonians—Lauren Tyger ’14 had read Ali’s facebook posts about the famine and called to offer her help. He contacted Prof. Anita Waters, whose research connects her to the Somali population in Columbus, and asked her to join him a humanitarian effort to help raise awareness and funds for famine victims. Then he assembled more Denisonians—Emily Bucher ’12, Jenni Reyes ’15, Melanie Stolp ’13, Haley Hudler ’13, Marissa Lease ’13, members of staff Mark Anthony Arceno, Laurie MacKenzie-Crane, and Professor Lyn Robertson. Together they decided to hold a benefit concert.

“The Concert for Somalia” will take place at 7 p.m., tonight at Swasey. If you come you’ll see lots of a cappella singing by DUWop, Hilltoppers, Tehillah, and Granville High School Choir group. You’ll also bask in the sounds of the Bluegrass Ensemble and Seed City. Donations are accepted, but not required, because Ali thinks it’s important for people to give because they want to—not because they have to.

“This famine is a wake-up call for all of us, to renew our faith and hope for Somalia,” says Ali. “This shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century.”

—Ginny Sharkey ’83

Denison Provost Bradley Bateman’s new book, Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes, isn’t set to hit bookstores until mid-November, but it’s already creating a buzz. New Yorker columnist John Cassidy mentioned it in his Oct. 10 article on Keynes, calling the book, a “timely and provocative reappraisal” of the economist. The book, co-authored with Roger E. Backhouse, an economic historian at the University of Birmingham, is Bateman’s sixth publication on Keynes and Keynesian theory. It guides readers through the misinformation and caricatures that have led to Keynes’s repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946—some of the very things Bateman addressed in our feature, “Don’t Call It a Comeback,” which we published back in the summer of 2010.

Capitalist Revolutionary, a new book co-authored by Denison Provost Brad Bateman, will hit bookstores in November.