{"id":4577,"date":"2017-01-17T09:49:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T14:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=4577"},"modified":"2025-08-13T19:36:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:36:42","slug":"notes-from-a-mad-english-professor-holiday-postlude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2017\/01\/17\/notes-from-a-mad-english-professor-holiday-postlude\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from a Mad English Professor: Holiday Postlude"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nMy strongest memories of holiday season are invariably ones of traditions or their interruptions. \u00a0My brother and I looked forward to Christmas Eve service, held in a gigantic, Cathedral-like Congregationalist church built of brick and stone with a steeple more like a Gothic tower than a New England spire, as much for the fact that it signaled presents would soon be opened as it was the one time a year we could hold a lit candle and not get in trouble. \u00a0Years later, when I would travel south with my own family to my parents\u2019 home for the holidays, and returned to the Christmas Eve service for the first time in over a decade, I could remember the program almost item for item. \u00a0\u00a0It was almost as if I were returned to childhood, to my son\u2019s age, only with a forward-looking memory leap-frogging through time, past high school and college and my first teaching jobs and marriage and a family of my own in which I now became my own parent, nervously allowing my own child to hold and light a candle against the darkness of that great, vaulted ceiling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were other traditions as well, both good and not so good. \u00a0Watching the 1951 Alastair Sim version of <\/span>A Christmas Carol<\/span><\/i> with my dad (to suggest any other was apostasy!) before going to bed, long after my mother and brother had surrendered to sleep; the holiday dinner that grew smaller each year as adulthood approached and the older generations grew fewer and more frail; my brother and I sneaking (or so it seemed to us) from our bedroom before the first hint of morning light to sift through our stockings and wonder at what lay wrapped in the boxes that had miraculously appeared during those fleeting moments of sleep as well as why Kris Kringle seemed to enjoy spritz cookies more than celery sticks. \u00a0<\/span>And<\/span><\/i> the years of playing it close to the vest, as my dad would say, when the small manufacturing firms and mills he worked for fell prey to the recessions of the 1970s, a \u201cthin\u201d holiday that we hoped would be followed by \u201cfat\u201d ones the next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Holidays, whether they be defined by Christmas or Eid Milad ul-Nabi or Chanukah or the Solstice, are shaped by traditions of thankfulness for bounty received or daily life survived as well as the hope for renewal and future comfort and safekeeping. \u00a0They are repositories of who we are while also providing visions of who we might be. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As we enter this holiday season this year, my thoughts thus turn to ones of thankfulness\u2014thankfulness for what each and every one of you, as members of this university community, contributes to our educational life and mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Looking back over this past year, we have much to be thankful for. \u00a0We received numerous awards and recognitions as an institution for our majors and programs, our affordability, and the overall value of our educational experience and its preparation for future careers and continuing studies. \u00a0Faculty and students alike have received a multitude of recognitions, from Fulbrights (Dr. Kevin McCartney), to First Team All-Independent Honors in Women\u2019s Basketball (Amanda Hotham), to the Maine State Merit Award in Higher Education Excellence in recognition of our Personalized Learning initiatives, which was made possible only by the hard work of <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> faculty, staff and students. \u00a0I\u2019m also, admittedly, extremely thankful for the Starbucks that is now open in the Owl\u2019s Nest!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Along with such thankfulness comes the recognition of our need to continue to grow and improve, to ensure that this is not only a university of strong academic and athletic programming, but a place that is inclusive and welcoming to <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> of its students and faculty, where we all feel we have a voice that can be heard. \u00a0For this reason, my thanks to everyone who has filled out all our surveys this fall and agreed to serve on committees and task forces and answered our questions about what can make UMPI a better institution\u2014whether it be about your residential life experiences, the dining hall, what is happening (or not happening) in your classrooms or simply\u2014but so very importantly\u2014how welcoming and receptive this has been as a community for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This is not to say that we have not had our share of challenges, both as individuals, perhaps, and as a community. \u00a0And yet, I find myself just as thankful for the opportunity to work together through such moments of challenge, perhaps because it is through such moments that we create new and stronger traditions for ourselves. \u00a0\u00a0As we continue to work together respectfully and engage and dialogue with one another openly with a shared desire to move forward, our campus community will only grow stronger. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I hope this holiday season affords you some time both to reflect upon and rejoice with your families, friends and their traditions, both new and old. \u00a0\u00a0Thank you again for your commitment to the University of Maine at Presque Isle\u2014for this truly is <\/span>your<\/span><\/i> university. I look forward to seeing you again in the new year.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My strongest memories of holiday season are invariably ones of traditions or their interruptions. \u00a0My brother and I looked forward to Christmas Eve service, held in a gigantic, Cathedral-like Congregationalist church built of brick and stone with a steeple more like a Gothic tower than a New England spire, as much for the fact that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8913,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577\/revisions\/8913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}