{"id":1886,"date":"2019-06-24T12:52:54","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T16:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2019-06-24T12:52:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T16:52:54","slug":"monday-missive-june-24-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2019\/06\/24\/monday-missive-june-24-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – June 24, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Three Gardeners<\/strong>\u00a0— Given that our first summer session is nearly over, I have a sense that we are already half way through the summer of 2019, but this sense is nonsense.\u00a0 In reality, the summer of 2019 started on June 21, which was just last Friday.\u00a0 The start of summer, after all, is dictated by the summer solstice, not by the Registrar’s Office and its academic calendar.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arrival of summer reminds me of my early attempts at planting a garden after moving to Charlotte in the summer of 1984.\u00a0 My parents loved gardening, and I grew up helping them in our family’s various gardens. However, when I tried to replicate my parents’ approach to gardening here in Charlotte, I failed miserably.\u00a0 I remember, for example, planting snow peas in June, just like my parents always did, only to see them wither up and die in the intense heat of July without producing a single snow pea.\u00a0 I gradually realized that my parents’ approach to gardening worked perfectly in the cold climate and high altitude of my childhood home in the mountains of Colorado, but my parents’ approach was not at all suited to the growing conditions in Charlotte. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The person who attempted to teach me how to garden in the South was an English professor named James Hedges.\u00a0 Jim, as he was generally known, was an avid gardener, and he often brought home-grown vegetables to share with everybody in the department.\u00a0 Jim told me what plants grow best in our region.\u00a0 He also told me when to plant them and how to prepare our dense, clay soil to make it more conducive to cultivating plants.\u00a0 Jim was a linguist by training, but he also had an expertise in American folklore and occasionally taught courses on this topic.\u00a0 He knew all sorts of folktales and folklore related to plants. For example, when I mentioned to Jim that pokeweed grew in my backyard, he told me about several folk remedies related to the perceived medicinal qualities associated with pokeweed.\u00a0 He also told me that I could use the purple juice from the pokeweed berries as an ink, and I actually did this with my son when he was little.\u00a0 Jim died many years ago, but I still remember how he combined his love of gardening and his scholarly interest in American folklore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Jim Hedges, James Hathaway (the husband of Dean Nancy Gutierrez) has a passion for gardening. \u00a0 I always enjoy talking with James about his garden and his amazing successes at growing unusual plants, such as rare peppers and exotic flowers.\u00a0 James is also a poet, and he draws on his interest in gardening in his poetry.\u00a0 He often writes poems about the life cycle of plants.\u00a0 His poems usually include specific details that are grounded in botanical science, but they also can be read on a metaphorical level.\u00a0 His poems tend to be about the rhythms of nature and the interrelationship between life and death, growth and decay, summer and winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jen Munroe also has a passion for gardening.\u00a0 She has a large, organic garden, and she enjoys including the produce from her garden in the meals that she prepares.\u00a0 For Jen, gardening relates to her scholarship in the area of ecocriticism.\u00a0 She often writes about the cultural and historical significance of gardens.\u00a0 An example is her book\u00a0Gender and the Garden in Early Modern English Literature.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In this book, she not only examines practical gardening books published in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, but she also discusses how images of gardens figure in the literature from this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all three of these gardeners, their passion for growing plants has connections to their scholarship and writing. \u00a0 \u00a0As the examples of Jim, James and Jen demonstrate, gardening is about more than growing vegetables and flowers; it also relates to aesthetics, cultural history, and the living planet that we call Earth.\u00a0 As Voltaire once wrote, “We must take care of our garden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kudos<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 As you know, I like to use my\u00a0Monday\u00a0Missives\u00a0to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.\u00a0 Here is the latest news:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dina Massachi<\/strong>, a graduate of our M.A. program, recently presented a paper titled\u00a0“‘Things haven\u2019t been the same since that house fell on my sister’:\u00a0\u00a0MGM\u2019s Sister Witches, and the Post-MGM Ozs That Love Them” at\u00a0Oz, the National Convention, in Gray, Louisiana.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upcoming Events and Deadlines<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Here is information about upcoming events and deadlines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 1 \u2014 Final grades for the first summer session courses are\u00a0due by noon on Monday, July 1. \u00a0July 1 \u2014The first day of classes for the second summer session is Monday, July 1.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 What is the title of Voltaire’s famous work that includes the passage about caring for gardens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week’s answer: Alabama<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What state serves as the setting for\u00a0<\/em>To Kill a Mocking Bird? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three Gardeners\u00a0— Given that our first summer session is nearly over, I have a sense that we are already half way through the summer of 2019, but this sense is nonsense.\u00a0 In reality, the summer of 2019 started on June 21, which was just last Friday.\u00a0 The start of summer, after all, is dictated by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-missive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}