College of the Liberal Arts Electronic Magazine, Issue 20, October, 2004

Issue 20, 10/12/04

Contents:

English 495: Life Experience

Of Tents, Backpacks and . . .

The Dark Side of Cute

The Many Forms of Helping Others

Do you Know?

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Penn State

College of the Liberal Arts

Alumni Relations and Development

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL READ

   When she first saw the empty shelves in the bare room, it seemed overwhelming. But Madelyn Hawk '04 English soon realized that building a library was doable.
   Hawk’s considerable undertaking began when she went to see Liz Jenkins, senior lecturer in English (see story below), about an internship. Enjoying her part-time job at Schlow Memorial Library, State College’s public library, Hawk was hoping for library work. She got a bit more than she bargained for.
   “Liz told me that the residents at the Village at Penn State wanted a library,” Hawk explained. “They had an open room with shelves but nothing else in it.”
   When Hawk arrived at the Village, she learned that residents were eager to help with the project. Wanting to involve them as much as possible, Hawk posted flyers for volunteers and quickly created a library committee. Together they put out the word for all residents: please donate any books for the new library. The first delivery was quite large and she worked with the committee to discard any books that were dated or otherwise not usable.
   For the daunting task of cataloging and organization, Hawk picked the brains of librarians she worked with at Schlow.
   “I hadn’t had any experience with cataloging,” she recalls. “So I asked lots of questions. The librarians at Schlow were all tremendously helpful. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
   Deciding that a Dewey Decimal System was overly complicated for what would essentially be a browsing library, Hawk devised a color-coded system by genre with corresponding stickers on the book’s spine. Next, she and the committee sat down to do the nitty gritty: writing out and pasting lending cards for each book. It was then that Hawk discovered an unexpected pleasure that made the project even more valuable.
   “Much of the work was menial, and the committee members would start to chat amongst themselves,” says Hawk. “Soon I was hearing the most wonderful stories—people would reminisce about the war, their experiences at Penn State, their grandchildren, things they had in common. It was a great treat.”
   The experience was so positive that Hawk plans to attend graduate school in library science and hopes to work in archives or special collections. She says she owes a lot to Jenkins, who steered her toward this project and recommended that all English majors seek out an internship.
   “It seems that Liz is able to find a project in the area you want to pursue,” says Hawk. “Whether it’s editing a department journal or working at Penn State Press, she makes it happen.”
   Maintaining and improving the library at the Village will now be an ongoing internship opportunity due to the project’s great success.

ENGLISH 495: LIFE EXPERIENCE

   “I was just up at the Village library and it’s amazing,” gushes Liz Jenkins. “The shelves are all full—some are even bulging.”
   Although Madelyn Hawk and Village residents developed the library, those shelves would not be full without Liz Jenkins. Each semester, approximately fifty to sixty students, the majority of whom are not going on to graduate school, seek out Jenkins to help arrange an internship.
   In other words, she finds valuable, real-life work experience for English majors.
   “I try to match student’s interests with appropriate placements,” says Jenkins, who’s been in charge of the innovative program for over ten years. “So it’s pretty wide-ranging.”
   A fair amount of English majors want to go to law school and Jenkins has arranged internships in the Penn State Office of Intellectual Property and Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office of Consumer Education. There, students work on consumer fraud and complaints, and often accompany their superiors to court. A student interested in publishing may be assigned to help a faculty member bring out a new book (and get duly noted in the acknowledgements), or put themselves in the running for the most competitive internships at Penn State Press, or the publications Research Penn State or The Penn Stater.
   Frequently contacted to help establish similar programs at universities around the country, Jenkins is particularly proud of one Penn State opportunity she’s been able to provide.
   “Each year, I place about six students with Dr. Sandra Spanier’s project to edit the thousands of unpublished letters of Ernest Hemingway,” she says. “I’ve since learned it’s very unusual for undergraduates to help on a major editorial project of that caliber.”
   Jenkins would advise all students to do an internship, stressing that it is invaluable experience in whatever a student wants to pursue after graduation.
   “Besides enhancing a resume and having something to talk about in a job interview, an internship is an incredibly useful tool for career exploration.”

Editor’s note: Liberal Arts works very hard to cultivate out-of-classroom experiences—including internships—for our students. Some endowments currently exist to underwrite such experiences; in fact, many students in English 495 receive some support from an endowment established in the College. But we are also on the lookout for alumni who can make substantial internship experiences available to Liberal Arts students in a variety of fields. If you have an interest in working with us toward such an experience, e-mail the LAzine editors and we will put you in touch with the right people.

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OF TENTS, BACKPACKS AND . . . EPEES?

   His company, Campmor, has over 800,000 yearly customers, receives 20-30,000 daily visitors, and carries more than 5,000 products. But the reason Dan Jarashow came to Penn State had little to do with camping.
   “I came to Penn State in 1976 because of the fencing team,” Jarashow says. “We had a great time.”
   Although Jarashow majored in General Arts and Sciences, he always knew he’d be going into the family business—a business that started unintentionally, to say the least. In the 1940s, Jarashow’s grandfather had a small paint store. Someone had given him some surplus camping gear. Jarashow’s father, a lawyer at the time, managed to sell it easily and saw a market niche. He opened a one-store mail-order catalog operation in 1947 in Long Island City.
   With its black and white drawings printed on recycled newspaper, the catalog continues to be the backbone of the business, as the highest volume of orders occurs after the catalog is mailed out. But Jarashow says 60 percent of the 850,000 annual orders come through the Web site, which first appeared in 1996. The back end of the site is handled by a company in Pittsburgh, Tachyon Solutions.
   “I discovered that Jeanette Thomas, one of the partners in Tachyon, is also a Penn State alum,” says Jarashow. “We never knew each other in school but her company plays an integral role in the success of Campmor.”
   Besides the catalog and Web site, Campmor also boasts a 37,000 square-foot retail store in Paramus, New Jersey. There, customers who are tent shopping may be waited on by Jarashow’s 83-year-old father who’s in charge of the tent buying and familiar with every type they carry.
   Camping enthusiasts range from novices to experts, and enthusiasm for the pastime shows no sign of abating. Jarashow maintains that it’s impossible to categorize people who enjoy camping.
   “People have been enjoying camping for a long time in this country,” he says. “And they come from every demographic, and all walks of life.”

THE DARK SIDE OF CUTE

   The pure, limitless, and unadulterated joy we take in our children knows no bounds. And that, says historian Gary Cross, is exactly the problem.
   What problem? That as children get older they must have boundaries and that imposition causes strife and often, alienation. Cross maps out how and why this happens in his latest book, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern America.
   “To really understand this contradiction,” says Cross, Distinguished Professor of Modern History, “you need to go back to the turn of the century when people’s image of the child changed radically.”
   Cross studies twentieth-century culture in Western Europe and the United States. He notes that as the twentieth century evolved and society became more affluent, children were no longer put to work. With other factors such as the rise in childhood mortality and families becoming smaller, children were increasingly seen as valuable and soon, priceless. This led, says Cross, to the rise of the notion of ‘cute.’
   “Children became adored as the embodiment of wondrous innocence and naivete,” he points out. “With a consumer culture such as ours, children were soon not to be deprived of anything.”
   Nostalgia also motivated adults to start doting on their children, says Cross. A modern concept, nostalgia occurs when change takes place so rapidly that people feel they’re out of touch with their past. Children, therefore, become the repositories of that lost time, embodying innocent values that adults long for. Nostalgia becomes especially acute around holidays and at “rites of passage” rituals.
   This idealized image becomes much harder to maintain as children get older. Antics that were once so cute, charming and worthy of any toy, become . . . well, not cute. And it’s not really our children’s fault.
   “We envelop our kids in the culture of cute,” Cross points out. “And when cuteness is over, it’s suddenly a culture of responsibility and achievement.”
   And, as any parent knows, kids bristle with this new development and soon, they try to find ways to shock us. Currently, this takes the form of gangsta rap, pubescent vixens, and saturating violence in movies and video games. But this behavior is nothing new, assures Cross. In earlier times, rebellion took the form of serial movies and comic books.
   “Kids historically associate the underclass with ‘cool,’ says Cross. “The more contrary to what parents want them to be, the better.”
   How can we break out of this vicious cycle? Start setting boundaries earlier. Instead of creating unrealistic life expectations that evaporate when a child becomes 10 or 11, impose more stringent rules and the culture of achievement early on.
   The author of four other books on cultural trends among children and parents, Cross, a father himself, admits this is far easier said than done.
   “You may not believe this,” he laughs. “But recently, my 15-year-old son actually thanked me for not getting him a Game Boy when he desperately wanted one several years ago.”
   Cross is currently working on a new book, The Playful Crowd, which focuses on the boisterous, plebeian attractions of Coney Island and Blackpool (England) at the turn of the century that evolved into the child-friendly world of Disneyland and other fantasy types of entertainment.

THE MANY FORMS OF HELPING OTHERS

   What do the state of the world’s oceans and the state of a student’s finances have in common? Polin Cohanne, and her commitment to helping others.
   When Cohanne took a new job as executive assistant to the director of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, she signed on to a daunting task. Created for the purpose of compiling a comprehensive review of the country's oceans and coasts, the Commission spent three years amassing their report, knowing the recommendations would have vast and profound consequences.
   Solely in terms of the nation’s economy, the country’s oceans have an enormous impact: U.S ports handle more than $700 billion each year; the cruise industry is valued at $11 billion; the commercial fishing industry is worth $28 billion; and the offshore oil and gas industry’s annual production is valued at $25-40 billion. A thorough examination of the health of the oceans was imperative.
   “We knew that there were complex and difficult problems that had not been addressed in a very long time,” explains Cohanne.
   Indeed, it had been thirty-five years since the last report on the state of the oceans. Since then more than 37 million people, 19 million homes, and countless businesses have been added to coastal areas.
   Involving all of the ocean communities, or stakeholders, was essential to ensure an accurate picture. “Over 400 experts came to testify on behalf of their particular ‘ocean community,’” says Cohanne. “We heard from scientists, environmentalists, Native American tribal leaders, businesspeople, recreational enthusiasts and many, many more.”
   As expected, the report was not encouraging: development from oil and gas operations, marine transportation, and coastal recreation have depleted ocean resources, lost habitat, and polluted waters. Living ocean and coastal resources that had been assumed to be unlimited are not. An estimated 50 to 60 percent of coral reefs may be lost during the next thirty years and 12 billion tons of ballast water is shipped around the world each year, spreading alien and invasive species. The Commission will present their report to the President and Congress later this month.
   But Cohanne is not discouraged. "We now have a terrific opportunity to create a managed and interrelated ecosystem for all involved.”
   Cohanne herself is involved in another opportunity on a more personal scale. In 1990, she established a Penn State scholarship fund for Liberal Arts students in American Studies. She hopes that she can help a student have the type of Penn State experience that she had.
   “Penn State was so tremendous for me,” Cohanne recalls. “I took advantage of so many things. If I can help give student have that kind of opportunity, I’ll feel very gratified.”
   Cohanne was motivated to create her fund after reading stories of families squeezed by tuition costs and students graduating with thousands of dollars of debt. Although college cost far less when she graduated in 1972, she feels fortunate that her family could afford the tuition. Even in this day and age of specialization, Cohanne firmly believes that a liberal arts education still provides the widest range of career opportunities—and she’s living proof.
   After earning a law degree from Villanova and a stint in the marines, Cohanne moved to Los Angeles and got a job in entertainment law at ABC. After fifteen years at a law firm, she’d had her fill of stars, contracts, and the West coast, and spent a year with the Clinton/Gore campaign. She then worked in the second Clinton Administration but had to resign when President Bush was elected. Three months after the Ocean Commission report is presented, her job will end. But Cohanne hopes to garner a place in a future Kerry Administration and has other plans.
   “I want to encourage all Penn State Liberal Arts alums to give their support. You don’t have to establish a scholarship but start somewhere,” she emphasizes. “Five to ten dollars a month is great for young alums and those who can give more should think about annual giving and endowed funds.”

Editor’s Note: Polin Cohanne is one of scores of alumni who have established student scholarships in Liberal Arts. Many other individuals support student scholarships and opportunities by giving to the College of the Liberal Arts through payroll deduction or yearly contributions. We would like to remind individuals sending checks to Penn State that if they want their contribution to help students and programs in Liberal Arts, they must designate their intention. It can be as simple as making a note in the memo line on their check or denoting Liberal Arts on any forms they return to the University.

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NEWSWEEK’S STEVEN LEVY ON EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, HACKERS, THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES, AND LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

   On his Web page, Steven Levy ’74 M.A. English lists his occupations as “Journalist. Author. Aficionado of high tech goodies. Interviewer of scientists, hackers, suits, and wonks.”
   He found Einstein’s brain, wrote the first in-depth account of hackers, rhapsodized about Apple computers, and has risen to national prominence as one of the most nimble chroniclers of the Information Age.
   But while he was at Penn State, earning his master’s after earning an undergraduate degree at Temple, he had no inkling he would influence our understanding of the hi-tech industry, nor that he would become one of Newsweek’s senior editors on the subject. In fact, he knew a number of people petitioning to take the computer programming language FORTRAN to satisfy their second language requirement for their degree and thought their tactic a travesty.
   “I wasn’t interested in computers, even appalled at what I saw as their anti-human quality,” he says. Like a number of English majors, Levy had set his sites on being a writer. He had gone to graduate school thinking a scholarly career might support the muse, but decided the best thing for him would not be the academy. Working with the much-beloved English professor and novelist Philip Klass, Levy focused instead on laying foundations for his writing career.
   “I did something not done then,” he says. “I interned at the Centre Daily Times for credit.” It ended up springboarding the young writer to a job at an independent newspaper in Philadelphia. While in the city, he freelanced for the Inquirer and Philadelphia Magazine, and by the late 1970s, launched his own paper. While working for the regional New Jersey Monthly, he met his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Teresa Carpenter, and the couple moved to New York.
   While he made a living as a journalist and freelance writer, he wrote pieces for a variety of outlets, on topics ranging from baseball to music. While he is now known for his writing on technology, his early career shows he had a wide range of interests. One early book, Unicorn’s Secret, merged hippie culture and crime writing in its examination of the Ira Einhorn murder case.
   But in 1981, Levy published his first article on the hi-tech industry—in Rolling Stone. “Hackers in Paradise” probed geeks at Stanford, staying close to the characters driving the nascent virtual world. It was prototypical of Levy’s later work—the common ground of the Einhorn book, "Hackers in Paradise," and other early articles was people.
   Levy’s abiding interest in hi-tech has been the inventors, the scientists, the entrepreneurs—as he says, the wonks, hackers, suits. When he encountered the people that led him to write his book Hackers, he pursued the topic because he “wanted to do more on this world.” The work led him to books on the minds behind Apple computers, artificial life and robotics, and, most recently, cryptography. Each time, the people’s stories brought to life worlds within and beyond machines.
   His reputation has provided him access to parts of a generally secretive culture, and he has grown to become one of the most trusted authors on the subject. He is frank as well; his recent Newsweek article on blogging caused a furor among practitioners, both attacking and defending him. But he has a following of readers because of his ability to transform the arcane into the understandable, and to keep those of us still using dial-up aware of what else is out there.
   His books let him range around in a larger arena. And since Levy works at a general interest magazine, he does converse and contribute on many topics. He helps put together “Conventional Wisdom,” Newsweek’s arrow-driven barometer of cultural phenomena—“that’s fun to do,” he says. He writes for other outlets, from Wired to The New York Times. He collects sixties-era lunchboxes. In short, like so many writers, the mass of culture interests him—how it is made, run, produced, and undone.
   And like most writers, he relishes the focus that enables him to turn fascination into prose. His description for that phenomenon, despite his hi-tech expertise, is decidedly low-tech: “I like deadlines,” he says. “They are like a hangman’s noose, they give you focus.”

DO YOU KNOW?

   In our last issue, we asked two questions, one a re-issue, and the other a new one. First, we asked how many faculty in Liberal Arts have earned NEH support this year (2003-2004)? We gave a few hints, and the correct answer emerged. Scott Mansfield ’85 psychology, of Evans City, provided the answer: Emily Grosholz and Janina Safran received NEH fellowships last year. Grosholz’s work was featured in an earlier issue of LAzine.
   We also asked an easier question: one of Liberal Arts' core departments has changed locations. Do you know which one? Allison Kuchta ’04 English, of State College, answered correctly that Political Science is now housed in Pond Lab.
   Scott and Allison will each receive prizes.
   For this issue, we want to ask a question to draw attention to a major initiative the Rock Ethics Institute is undertaking this year. For its “War and Ethics” speaker series, the Institute is inviting (and has already hosted) a number of nationally distinguished speakers on the topic. One of those speakers attended Penn State. We would like to know which one, and when that person graduated.
   Along with the answer in our next issue, we will likely feature some writings by this person. We await your answers.