Thursday, December 1, 2011

11:00 AM Keynote Address by Dr. Wilbert Smith, Writer & Producer

7:00 PM Film Screening and Question & Answer with Dr. Smith

Red Skelton Performing Arts Center, Vincennes University

This feature length documentary tells the story of Vertus Hardiman and nine other young children, attending the same elementary school in Lyles Station Indiana who, in 1927 were severely irradiated during a medical experiment conducted at the local county hospital. The experiment was misrepresented as a newly developed cure for the scalp fungus known as ringworm. In reality the ringworm fungus was merely the lure used to gain access to innocent children whose unsuspecting parents blindly signed permission slips for the treatment.

Vertus was five years old and the youngest. Now after 20 years of friendship with writer/producer Wilbert Smith, through their church choir, Vertus unburdens himself to Wilbert with an incredible story, finally exposing the severe physical complication caused by this shocking medical crime. This crime had severe physical complications for Vertus – namely a harshly irradiated and malformed head, with an actual hole in his skull.

Remarkably, not one person in his community had ever been aware of Vertus’ suffering because he always wore a wig and woolen beanie to cover the shame. During filming Vertus reveals his secret stating, “For over 80 years, only four individuals outside a few medical specialists have ever seen my condition; I hide it because I look like some monster.” Over his life Vertus was criticized, teased and scorned by acquaintances that had no idea what the wig had been hiding for 80 years.

Wilbert’s in-depth research led to his discovering four additional survivors of this horrific event. Their collective accounts add breadth and lend credence to this incredible story. Other surviving victims had astonishing similarities, but none as painful or shocking as Vertus.

This documentary reveals that the Lyles Station experiments were not an isolated event. One such example involves radiation experiments performed in Israel in 1951 against one hundred thousand darker-skinned immigrant children, a tragedy financed by the United States Army. Amazingly, many of these victims arrived on U.S. soil in cages for further study, in an attempt to determine human reaction to over-exposure to radiation.

As remarkable and shocking as the story may appear, this film is not an indictment of inhumane government-sanctioned medical experimentation. Rather Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed reflects the incredible strength of one man who survived the harshest imaginable circumstances through the power of the human spirit. His simplicity and life philosophy always lifted the spirits of all he touched.

Over 1200 viewers have taken part in the initial private screenings of this film. Their reactions suggest that it not only encouraged them to more willingly accept the differences of others, but also to accept these differences without undue challenge or debate. Many vowed to think of Vertus and the lessons he modeled whenever they felt the urge to complain.

Enter the story with Wilbert and witness firsthand how Vertus carved his way to happiness, using his huge capacity to love and forgive, perhaps a timely message needed by our world today.

Narrated By: Dennis Haysbert
Directed By: Brett Leonard
Written By: Wilbert Smith Ph.D. & Brett Leonard
Produced By: Wilbert Smith Ph.D.

Break out the plans and the scaffolding. We’re about to engage in the largest building project in the history of this semester, bigger than the Duke Energy power plant going up in Edwardsport, Indiana or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Okay, maybe the project will not be that big, but the project will be just as intense… for you anyway.

In this writing assignment, you will constuct a full scale argument, researching and assembling evidence and appeals to support a proposition you select. I’ll walk you through the steps to ensure that, in the end, you have a solid argument that doesn’t collapse due to faulty logic or weak appeals. 

So, don’t worry.

But first, you’ll need to read the introduction to chapter 11, Argumentation, in the Longman Reader. Some of you have already completed that reading. Next, we will read and critique a couple argumentative essays, including Gerry Garibaldi’s “How The Schools Shortchange Boys” and Michael Kimmel’s “A War Against Boys.” We’ll examine the structure of each argument to determine if it holds water.  

Then, you are on your own.

Don’t panic. We’ll spend time discussing research strategies to help you collect and evaluate evidence for your argument. We’ll also discuss how to document those sources.   

I’ll present a detailed time line to you during our next class.

Defining your terms is important. We explored the possible problems of working “fast and loose” with words during our class discussion. During that discussion, we quickly learned how differently we all see and understand term like dating, middle class, and the American Dream.

Our next assignment requires us to examine a key term, exploring and even expanding its definition.

Here’s an interesting blog post exploring the evolving definition of wealth.

http://www.wisdom-works.com/lead-perform-sustain/wealth-stop-meaning-well-being/

Here’s a student essay exploring the definition of success. Interesting perspective.

http://www.apstudynotes.org/english/sample-essays/definition-success/

(For another discussion about writing a definition, click on the image at the top of this page.)

Students lose papers all the time.  Their  Flash Drive-Jump Drive- USB Drive (Whatever we call it today) isn’t working  and the document that is due, right now, is lost in space, or the essay that is due  in class today, right now,  resides on a laptop, which is back in some dorm room, resting, quietly. The days of “my dog ate my homework” are gone. These days the computer is the culprit. I’ve been there.  I’ve lost important documents. We all have.

But there is hope. Enter the Dropbox.

Imagine dropping your documents, pictures, or other files into one box – or location – and having access to those precious items from any computer in the world. Sounds good. It is. Check out the video below and see if this new tool is for you. It might be helpful for this class or any other of your filing needs.

Everyone has a writing process. Some of us write straight from the hip – drawing, really, from a well of experiences and time honored practices. Others take their time, planning, outlining, writing and rewriting until the perfect sentence, paragraph or text emerges from a hurricane of ideas. Even some would-be-writers  get snagged in their own process, always starting, but never really producing anything worth reading.

We might do it differently, but we all have a process.

How do you do it?

Check out the process of these professional writers.

Well, I am not sure. I assigned Paul Roberts’ essay “How To Say Nothing in 500 Words” to my Comp I students last week – the first reading assignment of the semester. And guess what? Over 3/4 of the students did not read the entire essay. Most probably didn’t read beyond the first 500 words. What’s really going on? Have students given up on reading? Or, is Roberts’ essay just that boring? I don’t thinks so. Students read all day – and all night, facebooking, texting and googling. In fact, students probably read more today than I did when all I had was a pager and a telephone booth.  Is Roberts’ essay really that boring? Maybe to a youngster who reads in intervals of 140 characters. War and Peace was a little long for me when I almost read it as a high school-er.

We’ll have to think this reading thing through.

Check out this video that explores the issue further.  (Don’t worry, you wont’ have to read that much to understand this one.)

Kathryn Stockett’s first novel, The Help, is a moving tale of three women: two black, one white, who dare to cross of the lines of race and southern sensibility in 1963 Jackson, Mississippi. The courage and fortitude they exhibit against the backdrop of Mississippi violence is the subject of a book that each of us should read- if only to help us focus our attention on what’s most important: the humanity of us all.

Beautifully written, the story weaves the voices of the three women through a page-turning adventure that reveals the often treacherous and surprisingly loving dynamics between black maids and their white families.

Like most black domestic servants during the early 1960s, Aibileen Clark, a humble and obliging servant, and Minnie, a not so humble and obliging servant, live in the shadows of white families. While integral parts of the household – spending their days cooking the meals, cleaning the homes and loving and raising the children of white women, Aibileen and Minnie and others like them are invisible, so much so that they are often barred from using the very spaces they clean and often separated from the very children they have raised.

This is life in Jackson in 1963.

That is until Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young, white, privileged, aspiring writer, sets out to find herself and the truth. Raised by a black maid who suddenly disappears, Ms. Sheelter crosses the color line to hear the truth about the one black woman she loves. In doing so, Eugenia, Aibileen and Minnie unite to give voice to a side of Jackson, Mississippi that threatens to disrupt the social order. The adventure is dangerous, exciting and heartbreaking. But in the end, hope prevails.

The structure and the language of the narrative are unique and engaging. Each main character shares her view on unfolding events in alternating sections of the book, providing the reader with a rich and full reading experience.  In addition, the reader gets a clear sense of the history that is unfolding around the story. Readers hear the characters reaction to the murder of Medgar Evers, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the march on Washington D.C., events that most of us know, pulling us further into the story and confirming our connection with the characters and the history they live.

The novel is a lesson in history as much as it is a lesson in humanity.

While The Help is significant for a number of reasons, the most compelling reason is that it opens space for us to recognize and talk about the lines that we create to separate ourselves from one another. In the story, race – and, to some extent, class – determines who occupies what positions in society, who has what kinds of relationship with whom, and who is invisible and who is popular.

These same issues exist in our own time, and in own lives. In many cases, those who help us are still invisible.

Stockett notes through her character Ms. Skeeter that the point of the book is “… for women to realize, we are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

To this end, the point of The Help resonates through our history – all of our histories, and across all lines. For it reveals just how much power we give to our differences and just how much they have come to inform who we are.

Reading The Help might help us start to recognize those who serve and help us – at the restaurant, in our workplace, in our home. Even more, we might seek out ways that we can serve and help others, for as the novel so eloquently illustrates, a unique power exists in the simplest act of helping -  even one as simple as serving a piece of pie.

The Help, the movie, premieres this August, but I highly recommend you read the book first.