#10 Canterbury Road

Still alive

Hey everyone! After much guilt and many, many experiences of reading the blog and getting so caught up in everyone else's posts that time ran out and I never got to do my own, I am finally venturing into the world of posting. I will try to do this with a reasonable amount of brevity and many hard returns, as to not annoy Chelsey.

There, I used one. Cool, huh? So. Chelsey, Missy, and Ana Maria, this was a terrific idea. I have stopped in so many times to check in on you guys, and as someone said a few weeks ago, done a bit of living vicariously through your experiences. You are all doing such worthwhile, important, stretching things with your lives that I have to admit feeling a little bit of jealousy and an overwhelming amount of admiration. As I'm currently feeling like I'm going through something of a vocation crisis, this comes up frequently and Brian, my boyfriend, turns a interesting shade of green when I begin any sentence with "My Oxford friends are really changing the world and here I am..."

Not that things are bad. Not at all. Since I've been so frightfully poor at keeping in touch with so many of you, I should go back a bit. Most of you knew that after Oxford, I spent several months in Philadelphia working for Independence National Historical Park and then left for Amherst, Massachusetts to begin an MA in American History. I finished my MA in 2003, having learned, as a real surprise to myself, that I actually wanted to get a Ph.D (I had thought that idea was dead.) Having been so pleased with my experience at UMass and found several professors who were real mentors, I applied to the Ph.D program, was accepted, and started Ph.D work in September 2004. This past May, I passed my comprehensive exams, a truly byzantine form of academic torture, and am now ABD, working on my dissertation. I specialize in African American history; 20th century U.S. social & political history; and public history (museums, historic sites, history that is for & by the public and gauges its importance by its relevance to living in the present), and my dissertation is on America's worst case of resistance to Brown v. Board. This happened in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where the white power structure abolished public education (entirely) for five years rather than desegregate. The case had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to strike down the county's actions. I'm focusing on the role of the American Friends Service Committee, a still active and truly visionary Quaker social justice organization, in aiding the black community throughout the crisis, lobbying in Washington for federal intervention, and working to build a pro-public schools coalition in the white community. I probably have 2-3 more years to go - I'm hoping for two.

Besides school, I've spent three years working with the National Park Service on creating a program that will link historical issues with their contemporary dimensions; make history more relevant; and activate engagement and civic involvement within the American public. This summer, I've branched away from the NPS a bit and am working for a nonprofit in Concord, the Walden Woods Project. As the name suggests, this is a land conservation/environmental organization that preserves and interprets Thoreau's Walden Woods. I'm supposedly creating a lecture series tying together Thoreau, conscience, and contemporary issues, but the project's kind of stalled at the moment. Obviously all of this stuff - my dissertation and my public history work - is very close to my passion of improving the present by cultivating a deeper, more complex understanding of the past that helps us approach current events/trends/problems with more sensitivity and deeper understanding. And as a theory, I still believe in it wholeheartedly, but in practice it's been a difficult road. Project after project has stalled or failed and we've really accomplished very little in terms of improving society. More and more I've felt impatient and frustrated and wondered whether maybe this isn't the niche for me, that maybe God is calling me to serve more directly after I finish my degree, like in a social service job or a social justice organization.

Outside of my professional life, I've gotten kind of politically active - I was a hardcore Deaniac and spent the Democratic primaries banging on doors and staying up till all hours of the night in New Hampshire. If you haven't seen it, New Hampshire during the primaries is like nothing you'll ever see before or since. I went to the Massachusetts State Democratic Convention as a delegate, which was interesting, and served as the History Department steward for the graduate employees union on campus. I've also been exploring my first real relationship (it certainly took long enough!) - I met Brian through the Dean campaign, and we've been together for about 10 months. He's an 8th grade social studies teacher and he's absolutely fantastic, although I'm probably a little prejudiced. I still stare at him sometimes and can't believe that we're actually together.

Well, that's more than enough about me. To report in on other members of Canterbury Road's significant others, I can say from firsthand experience that Carrie's Ryan is a wonderful human being and his presence in her life should be applauded by all members of the blog. Has anyone heard any news of Andrea or Sean?

Sorry for taking up so much space - I promise to post more often now and not run on forever when I do. So great to be having these cyber-conversations with all of you.

posted by Anonymous @ 7/13/2005 10:33:00 PM