Sherry Chandler

“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust…. When these basic principles of love form the basis of teacher-pupil interaction, the mutual pursuit of knowledge creates the conditions for optimal learning.” –bell hooks, Teaching Community

Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning and Berea College are sponsoring a four-day workshop, June 1-4, on the theme Writing for Reconciliation; bell hooks will be the featured workshop presenter.

This conference explores the role of writing in achieving reconciliation within ourselves, our institutions, and our communities. Writing and sharing our writing will help us probe the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of our work as educators. Exploring effective pedagogies will help us foster creative growth in our students and ourselves.

The complete program is still being assembled and a call for proposals has been sent out.

Registration with room and board: $420-$670, depending on accommodations selected. Commuter registration, including three dinners and two lunches: $270. $100 discount for fulltime students and part-time faculty.

For detailed information, contact Libby Falk Jones (libby_jones@berea. edu; 859-985-3757) .

To secure a space, send a check for $150 deposit (fully refundable until April 15) to Wilma Romatz, AEPL 2006 Conference Registration Chair, 1754 Brockway, Saginaw, MI 48602.

William Littell was born in New Jersey in 1768 and came to Kentucky in 1801. He practiced medicine in Mount Sterling for a little while, but he is best known as the man who first codified Kentucky’s laws. Beginning in 1805, he compiled, edited, and arranged the laws passed from 1792-1819 both chronologically and by subject. This was no mean task, apparently, requiring not only correction of errors in spelling and grammar but also clarification of laws that were not so very elegantly drafted to begin with. He was awarded an honorary LLD from Transylvania University in 1810. He died in 1824.

Mr. Littell wrote the satires in Festoons of Fancy, published in 1814, to break the tedium of his work with the laws. One is tempted to speculate that his experience of Kentucky legislators gave him much to satirize, but that is always so.

I think somewhere in fables old
A story apropos is told,
about a wolf—poor rustic creature!
Who tri’d to lay aside his nature;
Mimicking each politer art,
And learning compliments by heart,
With polish’d company would keep,
And offer’d to gallant a sheep.

The sheep was perfectly well bred
And quite politely bleating, said
“I own good sir you’re very kind,
And would no doubt amuse my mind,
But must inform you, with your leave,
You very much yourself deceive:
Your presence, sir can never please
Your absence, will at least give ease;
Your love I must by distance measure—
The farther off the more the pleasure.”

By this instructed, I’m aware
I’ve but one way to please the fair:
And will pursue that only way,
Which is to KEEP MYSELF AWAY.

— from William Littel, “The Author’s Account of Himself In Answer to and Invitation to Tea, Sent by Some Young Ladies” In Festoons of Fancy Consisting of Compositions Amatory, Sentimental, and Humorous in Verse and Prose (University of Kentucky Reprints #1, 1940)

Thomas D. Clark, in the Introduction to this 1940s reprint, was of the opinion that “this book is the beginning of the humorous and satirical writing of the American frontier, and it has not been improved upon to any revolutionary degree.” Tom Johnson of Danville was apparently lost from history’s view at that time. And I think Clark is mainly interested in Littell’s prose satires. There are only five poems in the 115-page book, unless you count a couple of pseudo-psalms.

By 1988 and the publication of William S. Ward’s A Literary History of Kentucky, Johnson has resurfaced and the tide has turned against Littell. According to Ward,

Most of the verses deal with love and the ladies, but unfortunately they lack the deftness, the light touch, the nicely turned phrases, and the bite of Thomas Johnson, Jr. …There is no evidence that Littell’s satires had much popularity or any measurable effect on public opinion, but they were noted and at least they provided some humor, though sometimes a bit embarrassing, in an age that was otherwise rather heavy-handed.