Login
After yesterdays's expulsion of two Tennessee state lawmakers — Rep. Justin Jones (D) and Rep. Justin Pearson (D) — for leading gun control rallies following the Nashville shooting, a third lawmaker involved in the demonstrations explains why she was spared the axe. — Read the rest
How does a parent answer a child’s questions about school shootings? For instance: Why does this keep happening? Will it happen to me? If it does, will I be OK? Writer Meg Conley, a mother of three, describes the agony of not having all the answers:
After the second shooting at East High School, we started talking about homeschooling. It’s not the first time we’ve had the conversation. But my kids love lunchtime, talking in the halls, learning new things from new teachers, school plays and after-school clubs. Being separated from those things during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic affected them in ways I still find frightening to contemplate. Forming community with people who are not part of their household is a vital part of their lives. There are just some things that can’t be replicated in the home.
One night in New York City, I sat in between my two oldest daughters as they watched their first Broadway play, Funny Girl. The play opened with Fanny Brice, played by Julie Benko, sitting in front of a mirror, looking at herself before she says, “Hello, gorgeous.” When she said those words, most of the audience knew what was coming, so they cheered. But my girls didn’t, so they politely clapped. I watched them watch the play, with wide eyes. By the end of the show, they loved Brice. They loved Benko. When she started to sing the reprise of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” the girls understood what had been and what was coming. They cheered with everyone else. They became part of the community in that room.
We were wandering through the Met museum when my daughter got a text from another friend. It was just a link to a news story. Her middle school principal had gone to the media. There is a child at her school that was recently charged with attempted first-degree murder and illegal discharge of a firearm. That child doesn’t need incarceration; the child needs help. But teachers are not trained to give that help. The district rejected the school’s request that the student be moved to online schooling. Instead, the child goes to school every day and receives a daily pat down from untrained school staff before going to class. This student is on the same safety plan as the student who shot two deans before spring break. My daughter showed me the text and asked again, “What are we going to do?”
My two oldest girls went to see a preview of the new musical New York, New York with their dad that night. I stayed behind with their youngest sister. She’s too young for Broadway, but nearly old enough to be killed at school.
Greg Hart has been named chief technology officer at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently, he has been vice president of corporate engineering for Faith Technologies Inc. of Lenexa, Kansas. Prior to that, he served for four years as vice president of enterprise project management and performance improvement for Mosaic Life Care, a four-hospital health system in Kansas City.
Dr. Hart earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and technology from California University of Pennsylvania. He holds an MBA from Ashland University in Ohio and a Ph.D. in information technology management from Capella University.
Brenda Murrell is the new associate vice chancellor for research in the Office of Sponsored Programs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. She has served in the role on an interim basis for the past year. She has been on the staff at the university for 17 years.
Murrell holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Memphis and a bachelor’s degree in management from Lemoyne-Owen College in Memphis. She earned an MBA in finance from Christian Brothers University in Memphis.
Todd Misener was appointed assistant vice president in the Division of Student Affairs at Oklahoma State University. Since 2016, he has been the chief wellness officer at the university. Earlier, Dr. Misener was assistant director of wealth and fitness at Western Kentucky University.
Dr. Misener is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, where he majored in kinesiology. He holds a master of public health degree from Western Kentucky University and a Ph.D. in health promotion from the University of Louisville.
D’Andra Mull will be the next vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder, effective June 1. Dr. Mull most recently served as vice president for student life at the University of Florida. Prior to her position at the University of Florida, she held leadership positions at Ohio State University.
Dr. Mull is a graduate of Kent State University in Ohio. She holds a master’s degree in adult education and human resource management from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in educational policy and leadership from Ohio State University.
Khala Granville is the new director of undergraduate admission and recruitment at Morgan State University in Baltimore. She is the former dean of admissions at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and a senior associate director of admissions, diversity recruitment, and outreach at Indiana University.
Granville holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Louisville. She earned a master of divinity degree from the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.
Illustration by Na Kim.
As I was going to enter college that fall my parents felt that I should build myself up at a summer camp of some sort. They sent me down to a place in the Ozarks on a beautiful lake. It was called a camp but it was not just for boys. It was for both sexes and all ages. It was a rustic, comfortable place. But I was disappointed to find that most of the young people went to another camp several miles down the lake toward the dam. I spent a great deal of time by myself that summer, which is hardly good for a boy of seventeen.
It was a dry summer. There were very few days of rain. But the Ozark country with its gentle green hills and clear lakes and rivers did not turn ugly and brown as most countries do in seasons of drought. The willows along the lake remained translucently green, while the hillside forests, toward the end of July, began to look as though they had been splashed with purple, red, and amber wine. Their deepening colors did not suggest dryness nor stoppage of life. They looked, rather, like a flaming excess, a bursting opulence of life. And the air, when you drove through the country in an open car, was faintly flavored with wine, for the grapes grew plentifully that season. While the cornfields yellowed and languished, the purple grapes fairly swarmed from their vines, as though they had formed some secret treaty with nature or dug into some hidden reservoir of subterranean life, and the lean hill-folk piled them into large white baskets and stood along the sunny roads and highways crying, “Grapes, grapes, grapes,” so that your ears as well as your eyes and nostrils and mouth were filled with them, until it seemed that the whole body and soul of the country was somehow translated into this vast efflorescence of sweet purple fruit.
Perhaps it was the intoxicating effect of the wine-flavored air, perhaps it was only the novelty of being so much by myself, but I fell that summer into a sort of enchantment, a sort of moody drunkenness, that troubled and frightened me more than a little.
I had led an active boy’s life. I had always been the typical young extrovert, delighting in games and the companionship of other boys, having little time for reading and abstract thinking, having little time for looking inward upon the mystery of myself, and so this dry summer on the beautiful lake, as I fell slowly into the habit of deep introspection, brooding and dreaming about myself and life and the meaning of things, I felt as though I were waking up from a long dream or sinking into one. I was lonely and frightened and curiously content.
It became my custom that summer to go down to the lake by myself right after breakfast, unmoor a rowboat or a canoe from the rickety grey wharf, and row or paddle out to the center of the lake and then lie down in the boat’s bottom, take off all clothes but my swimming trunks, and let the slow current carry me along under the golden-burning sun while my consciousness surrendered itself, like the boat, to a leisurely tide of reveries and dreams.
Sometimes I would fall asleep while I drifted. I would awake to find myself in an unfamiliar country. I had drifted several miles from the camp, perhaps, and the sun had climbed to its zenith while I slept. The lake had narrowed or widened, or perhaps I had drifted in close to shore and directly beside me was a wet wall of grey rock from which obtruded strange ferns and flowers, or over my head was a fantastic, green-gold, feathery dome of willow branches, overshadowing myself and my stranded vessel with barely a motion, barely a whisper, in the windless noon.
Always beyond me, further down the lake, were the open fields of grapes, and however still the air was, it always held faintly the flavor of wine.
I would lie there in the bottom of the boat and continue to stare at what my eyes had opened upon, never turning my head or moving my body for fear of breaking the spell. I would imagine that I had actually drifted into some unknown place while I slept, some mythical kingdom, an Avalon or something, in which all kinds of things could happen and usually did.
It was hard to shake myself out of these dreams. It was hard to turn my eyes—staring as though hypnotized at the wet wall of grey rock or the dazzling dome of sunlit willows—back to the olive-green expanse of the lake. I would feel strangely dull inside and fagged out when I finally roused myself. It was not merely the drowsiness that you feel after a long midday sleep. It was more like the aftereffects of a powerful drug. Sometimes I would feel so weak that it would be hard for me to row or paddle back against the current. Still I would never know exactly what had gone on inside me during the dream or how long it had lasted, or why, in heaven’s name, I behaved like this! Was I losing my mind?
As summer slipped by the population of the little camp increased. Each weekend a new crowd or two would drive down from Saint Louis or Kansas City or still further away. When I first arrived, early in June, the place had seemed deserted and I had felt bitterly lonely and wished that some people, any kind of people, would come. But now I had changed. I no longer felt a thrill of anticipation when a new group or family arrived at the camp, wondering each time how this bunch would turn out, observing with pleasure their equipment for sports, but disappointed, usually, because most of them were either too young or too old. Now the sight of a dust-covered car rolling up the camp drive with tennis racquets and fishing rods, and eager faces protruding from the windows, faces smiling and begging to be accepted into this place and its life, gave me no pleasure, but filled me instead with a vague annoyance. I was becoming like a grumpy old man who wanted nothing so much as a quiet place to sleep, only it was not to sleep that I wanted, but to dream.
Then I began to be really frightened of myself. I quit going out alone on the lake. I made friends with a young professor who was spending his vacation at the camp. I played tennis and learned contract bridge with some young married couples. I tried not to think of the sun on the lake and on my naked skin and the faint, delicious fragrance of the purple grapes.
Toward the end of the summer I met a young girl. I did not think her especially attractive. She did not seem either pretty or homely. Perhaps she was really beautiful but I was then too young to find beauty in anything but the outlines of a woman’s face and figure. She was considerably older than I, she was about twenty-five, and I could see that she was lonely, terribly lonely, and was wanting with all her heart to get close to somebody, just as I was wanting to slip away, to float alone on the lake.
The young professor had loaned me some books. He had loaned me a book by Nietzsche which I found especially disturbing.
Was it possible, I asked myself, that all things could be so useless and indefinite as Nietzsche made them look? I shrugged my shoulders, after a while, remembering the sunlight on my body and on the lake, and the mysteriously suggestive fragrance of the grapes. Such colossal doubt, I thought to myself, was more or less irrelevant to life after all!
I was reading this book one evening on the porch of the main cabin, overlooking the lake, and I was feeling particularly rebellious against its doctrines, when the girl came onto the porch and seated herself in the wicker chair next to mine. Without turning my eyes from the book I knew she was looking at me, maybe wondering whether to speak. She had looked at me before. She had been down at the camp for about two weeks. I had only been vaguely aware of her presence, since she was not attractive to my unawakened senses and was easily seven or eight years older than I. But I looked old for my age that summer. I was tall and had acquired a small mustache along with my unusually serious and reflective manner.
When the light became too dim for reading I laid the book across my knees and glanced cautiously at the girl’s profile. I was suddenly stabbed with pity. A look of hopelessness had settled over her face. She was not looking at the sunset or the lake or anything visible from the cabin porch, but her eyes were wide open.
She is a little stenographer from Saint Louis or Kansas City who has come down here to meet some young people and have a good time, maybe fall in love and get married at last, and she has found only two young men, myself and the goggle-eyed professor who hates the sight of a skirt, and here I sit reading Nietzsche and considering the abstract problems of life and wishing only to be left by myself …
It was only a minute or two since I had laid down my book but I had considered the girl since then with such intentness and such a feeling of peculiar clairvoyance that it seemed to me I had known her already for quite a long time. I started talking to her. I was pleased to see the hopeless look drop away from her face. It became quite animated. She started rocking in the chair, then pulled it closer to mine, and soon we were chattering together like intimate friends.
“There’s a dance at Branson tonight,” the girl suddenly remarked, “would you like to take me?”
Surely if I had thought twice I would have refused. Before I went to college my legs behaved like stilts whenever I started to dance and I hadn’t the faintest notion of how to move myself around to music.
But my head was light from reading too much and the girl’s manner was peculiarly importunate. Before I knew it I had accepted the suggestion and we had started to Branson. This little hill town was the location of a popular summer resort; it was a mile or two down the lake from our camp. We walked over, along by the lake and hills, and all the way we talked with a strange excitement. Maybe I had been terribly lonely, too, without knowing it, and had only wanted someone to break the ice. Anyway, in the twilight along by the lake, the girl no longer seemed rather too old for me or too heavy. I noticed something Gypsy-like in her appearance, something wise and significant in her dark eyes and large, aquiline nose, and full, over-red lips. I noticed the deep swell of her breasts, and when she walked a little ahead, the swaying strength of her hips. I had a dizzy feeling of wanting to get close against her and be enveloped in that warmth which she seemed to possess.
“Do you like wine?” she asked me as we started across the bridge.
I admitted that I had never tried it. The summer before, when my grandfather took me to Europe, I had drunk some crème de menthe as soon as the bar opened, a few miles out at sea, and had become violently seasick immediately afterwards. I had disliked the smell of alcohol ever since.
“But this will be different,” she said. “Do you smell those grapes?”
We paused in the middle of the bridge and sure enough the wind from down the lake carried to us the grapes’ elusive fragrances.
“It’s delicious!” I cried.
“I know a place, an old hillbilly’s cabin near the town, where we can stop and get some swell grape wine,” she went on, “and it will make us feel like dancing our feet off!”
Laughing, she caught hold of my arm and we started running along the road. Her black hair blew back from her face and in her running figure, throat arched and deep bosom swaying, there was something excitingly pagan.
“You are beautiful,” I heard myself saying in a husky voice. “You’re like an ancient goddess, or a nymph, or a …”
She squeezed my arm. “You’re funny!” she said.
The hillbilly’s cabin was a little frame house on the road to town. In the yard a white goat was munching the grass. An old woman sat on the wooden steps with her hands folded in her lap. She got up slowly as we approached. Wordlessly she held the door open and we slipped in. These were the days before repeal. I felt quite adventurous, sitting down at the rickety old table with its worn checkered oilcloth and kerosene lamp, while the old man in overalls and the witch-like old woman pulled bottles out of a hidden barrel, opened them with a loud popping sound, and poured the sparkling purple stuff into cold tin cups for us to drink.
At first it seemed rather bitter. But there was not the alcoholic taste that I had feared. So I ordered a second cup and a third. The girl across from me drank slowly. She kept glancing at me in a calculating way, as though she were trying to surmise my age or other potentialities, as she had looked at me on the porch and several times before that, but I found myself no longer annoyed by that look. It pleased me, in fact, more than a little. Here was I, drinking wine with what was obviously a woman of the world, a Gypsy-like girl no longer very young, with a look of strange wisdom in the back of her eyes.
Who knows what may happen tonight? The possibilities began to frighten me a little.
I leaned far back in my chair, tilting against the stovepipe, and returned her smile in a manner that was supposed to be replete with sophisticated suggestion. We looked at each other for some time that way, as though with an understanding too deep for words. Slowly the girl lifted her eyebrows, then narrowed her eyes till they were two slits of luminous black. Her heavy, painted lips fell slightly open, and she, too, relaxed in her chair, as though a question had been asked and a satisfactory answer been given. It almost seemed that I could hear her purring under her breath, contentedly, like a cat.
“I have been so lonely at the camp,” she murmured, “that it hasn’t seemed like a real vacation until tonight.”
She lifted the cup with both hands but instead of drinking she breathed its fragrance deeply. She smiled slightly over the brim of the cup:
“It’s sort of bittersweet, isn’t it?” she said softly. “It always makes me feel like laughing or crying or something.”
When we left the cabin the white goat in the yard looked to me like a fantastic horned monster. The dusty road rocked under my feet. Everything seemed quite unreasonably amusing. Laughing loudly, I caught the girl’s arm, and she, more than returning my pressure, laughed with me, but all the while kept glancing speculatively up at my face.
“Are you sure you aren’t too tight to dance?” she asked. Her voice seemed absurdly serious.
“Too tight!” I screamed. “Why, I’ve never been so loose in all my life!”
I was startled by the hysterical sound of my voice, almost like a girl’s. I staggered against the dark young woman and she put a sustaining arm around my back. It seemed awfully silly. She was nearly a foot shorter than I, and here she was holding me up.
“Leave me alone,” I told her severely. “I can walk all right by myself!”
She laughed a little. “How old are you?” she asked abruptly.
“Nineteen,” I lied.
“Really? I didn’t know you were quite so young as that,” she said. For a while afterwards she seemed quieter and more distant. Then we came into Branson. There were clusters of glazed lamps along the street. There were bright drugstores and restaurants and a picture show with a shiny tin portico and gaudy placards. Everywhere there were gay holiday crowds in white linens and flannels and colorful sweaters. Down by the lake the band was playing noisily and everyone was flocking in that direction.
Then she seemed to come alive again. She caught my arm.
“I’m crazy to dance!” she said. “It seems like my vacation is just beginning!”
The dance hall was a long log building, open except for screens, and lighted by Japanese lanterns that swayed constantly in the wind. My physical drunkenness left as soon as we stepped on the floor. For the first time I found that I could move myself to music. My feet slid effortlessly along the wax floor and the girl’s body was suppliant to mine. It was more than suppliant. I caught her tighter and tighter against me. The warmth of her body surged through my linen suit. Her breath was damp against my throat. Her fingers caught at my shoulder. She seemed to be asking for an even closer embrace than I could give. Then I experienced something that I had never before experienced with a girl. I felt ashamed and tried to loosen my hold. But to my amazement she only clung tighter. She pressed her lips against my throat and clung as though she were drunk, drunker than I had been on the moonlit road. Her feet became tangled with mine, her body drooped, and I seemed to be dragging her along the floor. My warm feeling passed. I looked around at the strange faces surrounding the floor. It seemed that everyone was staring at us. I stopped abruptly at the edge of the floor.
“Let’s go out for a while,” I said, without looking at her.
She must have misunderstood my averted face, the strained quality of my voice. She repeated the words like an echo, “Let’s go out for a while.”
We went down the wooden steps from the dance hall and down the wooden walk to the beach.
Here it was all smooth sand, a pale silver in the moonlight, stretching for a mile or two up and down the lake. The wind was blowing with a new coolness that hinted of rain, although the clouds were still scattered.
The girl caught my arm and stopped for a moment at the end of the wooden walk.
“Do you smell the grapes?” she asked.
I shuddered slightly. I had drunk too much of the wine. The intoxication was passing and the taste in my mouth was cloyingly sweet.
“Where are you going?” I called to the girl.
Laughing wildly, she had started running along the sand.
After a while we both looked around. We discovered that the amusement resort and even the lights of the town had disappeared. There was only the moon and the stars and the wide silence of the lake and the sand crunching under our feet. I felt like an inexperienced swimmer who finds himself suddenly beyond his depth. But the girl’s face was fairly shining with some inner violence. She fell down on the sand and pressed her hands against it and swept them out like a swimmer, again and again. It seemed to me that she was moaning a little, deep in her throat, or purring again like a cat. I was tempted to slip away from her. All my lightness and exuberance were gone. I didn’t feel like awaiting the development of that which seemed to be possessing the girl. I was no longer flattered or stirred. She didn’t seem to be aware of me, for the moment, but only of something inside of herself, a drunken feeling, that made her rub her hands over the sand in a gesture that seemed to me vaguely obscene.
It may have been that I was fascinated, it may have been that I was frightened or repelled. My emotions were cloaked in a dullness that made them for a long time afterwards hard to describe. At any rate, I found it impossible to leave her there. My feet were rooted in the silver sand. I stood above her, breathing the cloying sweetness of grapes on the wind, and waiting for the girl’s private ecstasy to pass.
At length she lifted her head, from where she was stooping low upon the sand, swept her hair back with one hand and extended toward me the other. Dizzily I fell down beside her and somehow or other we were kissing and her tongue had slid between my lips. All the while, though my actions were those of a male possessed by passion, my mind was standing above her with a dull revulsion. Her Gypsy-like darkness, the heaviness of her form, the black wisdom of her eyes were now laid bare of secrets. I knew why she was lonely, why she said she had been so terribly lonely until tonight. For all my manly aspirations, I couldn’t help fearing the girl. Catching at my shoulders, she fell back on the sand. She was breathing heavily and her breath smelled of wine.
“Let’s go back to the dance,” I muttered.
“No, I’m tired of the dance,” she said. “Why do you act so funny? Don’t you like me? Am I ugly or something?”
Good God, what is wrong with you? I said to myself. You know what she wants! You aren’t a kid anymore!
But I couldn’t endure the winey sweetness of her breath. I turned my face away and got up from the sand.
“Let’s go swimming!” I suggested wildly.
“All right!” she agreed.
Too late I realized that we had no suits for swimming. The girl was already tearing the clothes from her body. She plunged quite naked into the lake. I could only do likewise. Numbly I removed my clothes and followed her. The cool of the lake broke through the dream-like numbness of my body and mind. I felt chilled and awakened. For a while my exuberance of the earlier evening returned. We swam and played in the water like children. I didn’t think of her nakedness nor of mine. I swam far out and then swam in again. When I climbed out on the sand I was exhausted and lay down and looked at the starry sky, almost forgetting the girl and what had happened between us a few minutes before.
The wind from the lake turned colder. I began to shake uncontrollably. The girl was still splashing and swimming in the water, crying out as though she had gone quite mad. I rose from the beach and started to get my clothes. But then she dashed out of the water.
“You’re still wet!” she cried. “Why do you act so funny?”
Weakly I sank down again on the sand. The girl was laughing at me. She ran over to the willow where she had hung her clothes. She came back with the little white coat that she had carried to the dance.
“Here!” she said. “This will keep us both warm!”
Staring up at this garment that whipped above me like a white ghost in the wind from the lake, observing its length and its breadth and even its thickness, I slowly understood her words, what they meant, what they could only mean. I saw that she was smiling in the moonlight. Her black hair blew away from her face. She stood between me and the wind and I breathed the warmth of her body mingled with the cloying sweetness of the grapes. With a sudden fury I caught at her white legs. I pulled her down in the sand. The coat was forgotten, and the cold wind and the lake, and I scarcely knew whether I hated or loved.
It rained the next morning, starting quite early, before breakfast, and continuing till noon. I didn’t get up. I lay all morning on my bed in the small log cabin, feeling exhausted and rather ill. I looked out at the grey rain and listened to the grey sound of it on the roof. When I finally came out I found that the Springfield bus had come and gone. The girl’s vacation was over and for several hours she had been on her way back to her job in a Kansas City life insurance office. I was relieved.
By noon the rain had dwindled away. The wind rose up again, the clouds were scattered like foam. The grey lake was turning green beneath a blazing sun. But in the rain-freshened air there was already the tonic coolness of the coming fall.
After dinner I stood facing the lake, breathing deep, and suddenly there rushed in upon me the old longing to escape from the camp and the restless gaiety of its population and to be by myself on the lake. I ran back to the cabin and put on my swimming trunks. I took a pair of oars from the manager’s office and sprinted down to the rickety wharf. I felt the eyes of the porch loungers following me down, the eyes of new young girls and young men who had arrived at the camp that morning, and I felt proud of myself, proud of my deeply bronzed skin and my well-conditioned body, but most of all, proud of my freedom, my loneliness that asked only to be left alone. It seemed to me that only I and the lake belonged here; I and the lake and the sun. The others were presumptuous intruders. These weekenders with their pale skins and slow muscles and feverish friendliness could never belong in this country, could never share in my mystical companionship with the lake and the hills and the sun.
The girl was gone. They would go, too.
Without glancing back I loosened one of the boats from the wharf and rowed out to the center of the lake. I lay down in the bottom of the boat and surrendered myself to the leisurely tide of dreams.
But there was something wrong. Maybe it was the unusual coolness of the wind, the lightness of the rain-freshened air, the barely perceptible decline of summer. But I was restless. I turned from one side to the other. The hard ridges in the bottom of the boat irritated my skin. The sun wasn’t warm enough, the wind was too cool.
Swiftly the boat moved down between the hills. The rain-swell on creeks had made the current strong that morning. The wind was bearing from up the lake. The boat moved swiftly, easily, as if carried by sails. The hills dwindled, the bare cliffs fell away, the lake widened and widened till finally I found myself in an open country. On either side were the vast fields of grapes, grapes, grapes! And though the boat drifted now in the very center of the wide lake, their odor came toward me stronger and sweeter every moment till it seemed that my mouth was filled with their purple wine and my whole body suffused with their warmth.
I lay in the bottom of the boat, twisting and groaning aloud, crying with the terrible loneliness of the flesh, remembering the lips of the girl against my lips, remembering the warmth of her body, remembering the Gypsy-darkness of her face, the wildness of her hair and eyes, and most of all, the passionate sweetness of her embrace, dark and sweet, almost cloyingly sweet, like the rich, purple fragrance of the grapes.
In a sort of terror I grasped the oars and started rowing furiously back to the camp. I no longer wanted to be alone. I had never drifted so far as the grape fields nor breathed their purple haunting sweetness so deeply before. Now I wanted to return to the camp and its people. I wanted to feel them moving closely and warmly around me. I wanted to hear their loud voices and feel the strong pressure of their hands. I wanted to lose myself among them.
The story will be published in Williams’s collection The Caterpillar Dogs and Other Early Stories, forthcoming from New Directions in April.
There is a moral panic about transgender issues sweeping America. While it is raging most viciously in the Republican Party — see: the odious speeches at CPAC last week; Tennessee banning drag shows and gender-affirming health care for minors; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis requesting information from public colleges about students who have sought hormone treatment and reassignment surgeries — the panic’s tentacles extend much further. There is no better moment, then, to read historian Brandy Schillace’s piece about the Institute for Sexual Research, a groundbreaking facility in interwar Germany that heralded a just, humane future for gay, trans, and non-binary individuals, until fascism arrived. Schillace is at work on a book about the institute, and you can also listen to her talk about it on a recent edition of NPR’s All Things Considered:
That such an institute existed as early as 1919, recognizing the plurality of gender identity and offering support, comes as a surprise to many. It should have been the bedrock on which to build a bolder future. But as the institute celebrated its first decade, the Nazi party was already on the rise. By 1932 it was the largest political party in Germany, growing its numbers through a nationalism that targeted the immigrant, the disabled and the “genetically unfit.” Weakened by economic crisis and without a majority, the Weimar Republic collapsed.
Adolf Hitler was named chancellor on January 30, 1933, and enacted policies to rid Germany of Lebensunwertes Leben, or “lives unworthy of living.” What began as a sterilization program ultimately led to the extermination of millions of Jews, Roma, Soviet and Polish citizens — and homosexuals and transgender people.
When the Nazis came for the institute on May 6, 1933, Hirschfeld was out of the country. Giese fled with what little he could. Troops swarmed the building, carrying off a bronze bust of Hirschfeld and all his precious books, which they piled in the street. Soon a towerlike bonfire engulfed more than 20,000 books, some of them rare copies that had helped provide a historiography for nonconforming people.
The carnage flickered over German newsreels. It was among the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings. Nazi youth, students and soldiers participated in the destruction, while voiceovers of the footage declared that the German state had committed “the intellectual garbage of the past” to the flames. The collection was irreplaceable.
It looks like imposter George Santos might have competition in the House when it comes to creative resume writing. As it turns out, Rep. Andy Ogles (R–TN) also has quite the colorful bio, but it's almost entirely embellished or fabricated, according to an investigation by Nashville's News Channel5. — Read the rest
Michelle Garfield Cook has been named the next vice president for student affairs at the University of Georgia. She has been serving as senior vice provost, where she oversaw strategic initiatives and programs spanning the University of Georgia while also leading the Office of Institutional Diversity.
Dr. Cook joined the staff at the university in 1998. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Tasha A. Carson has been appointed assistant vice president for first-year students in the Division of Enrollment Management at Tennessee State University. She was the executive director of new student programs and retention at the university. She joined the staff at Tennessee State in 2018.
Dr. Carson holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and human science and a master’s degree in counselor education from North Carolina Central University. She earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Anthony D. Henderson, Sr. was appointed director of athletics at Hampton University in Virginia, effective February 27. Henderson comes to Hampton from Yale University where he served as deputy director of athletics. Earlier, he was the senior associate athletics director and executive director of athletics advancement at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Henderson is a graduate of Hampton University, where he majored in marketing and played football. He holds a master’s degree in sports leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Brenda Tindal is the first chief campus curator for Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She has been serving as the executive director of Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Earlier, she was the founding director of education and engagement for the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
Tindal earned a bachelor’s degree in history and Africana studies from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a master’s degree in American Studies from Emory University in Atlanta.
Anna Ponder was appointed vice president for alumni, development, and communications at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dr. Ponder was vice chancellor for advancement at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
Dr. Ponder earned a bachelor’s degree in French language and European history from Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a master’s degree in international economics and African studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
The Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands made history recently when it became the first collegiate band in the history of the Grammy Awards to receive a nomination for their 10-track album The Urban Hymnal in the Best Roots Gospel Album category. They made further history by winning the award, beating out Willie Nelson and three other nominees.
Professor Larry Jenkins, assistant band director for the Aristocrat of Bands, said that this accomplishment will change the trajectory of Nashville’s Music City reputation. “You have an HBCU band doing an album, which is something that has never been done to this capacity,” Jenkins said, noting that this opportunity was a cultural shift. “I hope this sparks another resurgence of the impact and importance of music. Not just Nashville, but north Nashville and Jefferson Street and how legendary this air is here.”
Reginald McDonald, the director of the Aristocrat of Bands and a co-executive producer for the album, added that “there is more to the city of Nashville and the state of Tennessee than country music. For Tennessee State University’s AOB to have produced an album to tie together two of the biggest music genres within the African American community, (gospel and HBCU marching bands) is extremely significant.”
Historically Black Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee is partnering with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. Under the agreement, Lane graduates can gain admission to bachelor’s degree programs in nursing at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
Executive Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at UT Health Science Center Charleen McNeill explained the various routes available within the pathway partnership, each varying in length and rigor depending on the academic needs of a student. “The first pathway is the accelerated pathway, the accelerated baccalaureate degree in nursing. It’s one year, it’s pretty intensive as you can imagine, and it’s for students who already have a degree,” Dr. McNeill said. “The other is the traditional BSN, which is the same degree, it’s just at a little bit slower pace, so it takes two years to complete that degree.”
The third pathway entails one of two pipelines a student can follow: BSN to a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) or the BSN to Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) option.
“It’s important for nursing to be representative of the populations that we serve, and so partnering with an HBCU like Lane provides an avenue for students that we really need in nursing to serve the public,” Dr. McNeill added.
Melanie Van Stry, chair of the Division of Natural and Physical Sciences and professor of biology at Lane College, stated that “I’m really super excited because we have so many students that are interested in a career in nursing and before we didn’t have a direct admission process so we would have to try to find programs they would fit in. This is going to be great because they will have opportunities at Lane, and also to meet and work with UT Health Science Center faculty before they get there so they’ll have an easier transition.”
Dr. Van Stry holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Boston College. She earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Boston University School of Medicine.
In 2021, a joint committee of the Tennessee State Legislature found that historically Black Tennessee State University had been shortchanged on budget allocations dating back to the 1950s. In 1913, the legislature stipulated that Tennessee State should receive 25 percent of the federal land grant funds allocated to the state. But from 1957 to 2007, the historically Black university did not receive land grant allocations. The legislative committee said that Tennessee State was entitled to between $150 million and $544 million.
An agreement was reached to grant the university $250 million. The university recently announced what it plans to do with the money.
The funds will be used for capital improvement projects for six structures on campus. Many of the campus structures have gone without improvements for decades. The funds will provide for building renovations and upgrades to electrical and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.
State Rep. Harold Love, Jr. was instrumental in securing funds that had been withheld for decades. Love, who is also a university alumnus, believes the enhancements will play a greater role in attracting world-class students and faculty.
“This is a start of a multi-year project to make sure we invest in facilities at Tennessee State University. If we are providing a high-quality education, we must provide the facilities that are state of the art,” Love said. “These upgrades and improvements will help to sure that all of our students are equipped with all they need to be able to be great scholars and our faculty to be able to be great instructors.”
Dr. Learotha Williams, noted historian and TSU history professor, says President Glenda Glover and state lawmakers are to be commended for working together to right a wrong. He contends, most importantly, the funds are available now instead of being embroiled in a lengthy legal battle like in Mississippi and Maryland with its HBCUs. “While I believe there are several factors that led to the state reaching an understanding and common ground with TSU, the efforts of President Glover and Rep. Love as the drum majors of justice to make this happen, can’t be underscored, said Dr. Williams.
Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Historically Black Tennessee State University has received a grant of nearly $5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for sustainable hemp fiber research that will promote market development of industrial hemp supply as a climate-smart commodity through incentives to underserved Tennessee growers enrolled in the program. The funds will be used to provide support and incentives to historically underserved farmers owning up to 500 acres to grow fiber hemp. The fiber hemp will then be processed and supplied to the motor vehicle industry as raw materials for manufacturing critical motor vehicle parts such as fabrics and bioplastics The project is being led by Emmanuel Omondi, assistant professor of agronomy at Tennessee State. Dr. Omondi is a graduate of the University of Nairobi in Kenya. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in agronomy from the University of Wyoming.
African Americans are more likely to be living with HIV than other racial and ethnic groups. One of the significant factors related to HIV disease management is smoking status, as smoking negatively impacts HIV treatment, and people with HIV are more likely to smoke relative to the general population. The University of Houston received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for the development of a mobile intervention for Black American smokers who are infected with HIV.
The Quantum Biology Laboratory at historically Black Howard University in Washington, D.C., received a $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Researchers in the lab will use the funding to build upon its previous work in modeling and measuring how quantum optical effects in cytoskeletal networks enable living matter to process information in ultrafast communication channels. The lab seeks answers to questions such as: How do living systems arise from nonliving matter? How does life organize from biomolecular building blocks? What is the role that light plays in the origins of life itself? The lab is under the direction of Philip Kurian, who holds a Ph.D.from Howard University.
Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has received a $399,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a three-year applied learning research curricular project on voting rights. Bard College is collaborating on the project with three historically Black universities — North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Tuskegee University, and Prairie View A&M University – and the Andrew Goodman Foundation. The crux of the project will study how the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 and outlawed age-based voter discrimination, impacted voter disenfranchisement while also focusing on the role of college communities in the fight for voting rights.
FreshRSS