Kudzu Twines Journal

By Nicholaos Jones, philosophy professor, University of Alabama-Huntsville
*Winner of the 2011 Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award

Glenn Dasher, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UA-Huntsville, asked me to write an essay for the civility forum in August 2010. I agreed, even though my only professional exposure to thinking about issues of politics and morality is an introduction to ethics course I teach every semester. The theme of that course is how to use ethical theories as guides for resolving conflicting (or potentially conflicting) desires. My essay is an attempt to develop this theme on a political level, where conflicts occur among people’s different values. The basic idea for the structure of the paper comes from Plato’s Republic, where an investigation of the nature of justice leads Socrates and his interlocutors to imagine different sociopolitical structures and, ultimately, to use their conclusions about the nature of justice in a city to draw conclusions about the nature of justice in the soul, a city in microcosm. Plato’s conclusion in the Republic is that a person is just when there is harmony among the three different parts of the soul—appetite, emotion, and reason. My analysis differs from Plato’s in three important ways: first, in focusing on the nature of civility rather than the nature of justice; second, in not following Plato’s rigid division of the soul into discrete parts, each with its own distinctive function; third, in striving to accommodate the democratic spirit of honoring even priorities that are, from certain evaluative perspectives, corrupt or misguided. But, despite these differences, I think the most interesting part of my essay leans heavily on Plato’s insight that political virtues, such as justice and civility, depend for their realization upon the existence of those virtues within individuals. Read more »

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When I list my sins on judgment day one will have to be my stops at Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs in downtown Birmingham. Oh, going there was not sinful, just the 1,000 times that I did. Stand with me at the scales and you can tell I loved the menu. The Special…now that was a hot dog.

The man behind the grill, Gus, didn’t really know my name, although he called it out occasionally. He did know that I wanted a Grapico and would hand me one as soon as I walked in. That personal touch, I sure liked that.

Others shared my admiration of Pete’s Famous. Recently I was talking to a retired businessman about the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy. “I was standing in Pete’s Famous eating a hot dog when I first heard about it” he said.

We lost Gus this week. Constantine Koutroulakis passed away at home at the age of 81. He was getting ready to go to work, which he did seven days a week. He had held court in his 7-foot wide dining hall since 1948. That’s only 63 years and a jillion hot dogs. A proud graduate of Phillips High School, Gus had a 1948 baseball team picture hanging in the grill. He knew all of the boys, of course. Robert Veitch, a fine business man in Fairfield and the first male cheerleader at Alabama, was on that team as was the Bragan brothers who went on to become major league stars. Gus loved to talk baseball, especially if it included Alex Grammas, Jimmy and Bobby Bragan.

How often do we say there will never be another like him. He was The Special.

“I will have two specials, please” I said as I swallowed a swig of Grapico.

Filed under: Alabamians, Conversation, Culture | 1 Comment »

Thought you’d missed your chance to sign up for this summer’s SUPER teacher institutes? Well, you haven’t! AHF is still accepting applications until all spaces are filled.

For the past 20 years, AHF has taken a leading role in the advancement of Alabama education with the SUPER (School and University Partners for Educational Renewal) teacher program. This program provides graduate-level, content-rich, professional development of the highest quality to outstanding 4th-12th grade public and private school teachers, school librarians and administrators who wish to expand and deepen their knowledge of a particular subject or theme within the humanities.

SUPER is provided to Alabama educators entirely free of charge. AHF serves annually an average of 300+ teachers of the humanities, social sciences, and arts, in turn, enriching the education of an estimated 45,000 Alabama students. In its 20-year history, SUPER has served more than 4,000 teachers and reached more than 500,000 students.

Spanish Immersion Institute
Mexico and Guatemala in Crisis: An Ethical and Literary Perspective
Led by: Leonor Vázquez-González, Ph.D., University of Montevallo
Site: University of Montevallo, Montevallo
Dates: June 6-8
Residential (Lodging and all meals provided.)
CEUs: 24 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

Vietnam, Vietnamese-Americans and Vietnam at War
Led by: Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., Ph.D., Troy University
Site: Troy University, Troy
Dates: June 19-24
Residential (Lodging and all meals provided.)
CEUs: 45 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

Transcendentalism Light and Dark: Strategies for Teaching the Writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Dickinson and Whitman
Led by: Gale Temple, Ph.D., University of Albama Birmingham
Site: Alabama Humanities Foundation, Birmingham
Dates: June 28-30
Three-day non-residential institute (Lodging, breakfast and dinner not provided)
CEUs: 24 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

The Alabama Coast: A Sense of Place
Led by: Frye Gaillard, writer-in-residence, University of South Alabama
Site: Spring Hill College, Mobile
Dates: July 10-15
Residential (Lodging and all meals provided.)
CEUs: 45 contact hours
For more information and forms for this institute, click here.

For more information, see the Programs section of our website.

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In the early 1980s I am interviewing a sophomore who has applied for admission to the teacher education program at the small college where I teach. His answer to the question “Why did you choose history as your teaching area?” intrigues me. He relates a story about several retired miners coming to his sixth grade class eight years ago to share their experiences working the now-closed coal mine in his community. Some of the men brought tools, hard hats, lanterns, and other artifacts to show the students, but what captured this student’s interest was the former commissary manager’s collection of substitute money in the form of clacker, script and googaloos. When the student tells his parents that evening about the mine’s “funny” money, his mother reveals that his grandfather owns such a collection. Without hesitation, the young man rushes out the door and up the street to his grandfather’s house to see this treasure trove for himself.

“For the first time, I saw my grandfather in a different light. He has actually lived the history I am trying to learn from books,” he goes on. “I would sit for hours listening to him tell the stories behind his clacker collection and viewing the photographs taken when our community was buzzing with coal mining activity.”

This prospective history teacher’s story had a familiar ring. The program he described was an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Humanities Foundation. A colleague in the history department and I collaborated to invite retired miners to the middle school for an hour once a month to speak with the students and engage them in discussions about the history of their community. History came alive for those sixth graders as a result of the project and motivated at least one student to pursue a career teaching the humanities—an investment that returned maximum dividends.

Filed under: Alabamians, Bob W., Education, History, Mission | No Comments »

AHF Recognizes Women’s History Month
During March, we will feature a series of blog posts focusing on Women’s History Month. Please join us in the discussion and comment with your own opinions and tales.

By Billie Jean Young, AHF board member

A woman is like a field of wild flowers growing inside of barbed wire.
Gated and locked in, flowers run wild,
grow in stature and seem to thrive.
Let the gate remind you, however:
Gates have gate keepers, seen and unseen protectors
of the status quo
who always exact a price above and beyond
what is called for.

When I look at the present-day exploitation of women in the culture, it is with dismay that I have to acknowledge that even with a women’s movement and 40 odd years of women’s activism, women seem to be relapsing. One painfully obvious way this shows up is in popular dress. Read more »

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The winner of the new Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award will present his paper at a forum on Friday, March 25. The forum, titled “Daring to Defend Our Rights: A Discussion of Civility in Alabama Public Life,” will be held at the Alabama Department of Archives and History (Alabama Power Auditorium) in Montgomery at 9:30 a.m. The forum is co-sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Foundation and the David Matthews Center for Civic Life.

The presentation by Nick Jones, philosophy professor at University of Alabama-Huntsville, of his paper “Civility, Sincerity and Ambiguity” will be followed by responses from five Alabamians, including noteworthy Alabama historian and Anniston Star columnist Dr. Harvey H. Jackson; media personality Tim Lennox; Birmingham entrepreneur and author Shelley Stewart; Central High School (Phenix City) gifted education teacher Barbara Romey; and David Mathews Center for Civic Life intern/Auburn University student Alexandria Smith. Christopher McCauley of the David Mathews Center will moderate discussion. Read more »

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AHF Recognizes Women’s History Month
During March, we will feature a series of blog posts focusing on Women’s History Month. Please join us in the discussion and comment with your own opinions and tales.

The woman came down from a field of red clay,
And her cohorts were teeming with cotton and hay;
And the gleam in their eyes was like stars in the sky,
To work for a wage was their victorious cry.

(With due respect to Lord Byron’s The Destruction of Sennacherib)

Sixteen-year-old Mary Frances Tapley defies her daddy’s wishes, deserts his scraggly field of cotton that has fought to break through the stubborn, red, Alabama clay. She turns her back on the sparse field of plump white bolls that have victoriously survived and leaves them unpicked to find work at a cotton mill in the nearby town of Alexander City. Though the Great Depression has not quite tightened its tortuous talons around the South, the boll weevil, the searing drought, and poor land management have already ravaged most of the cotton crops in East Alabama leaving most farmers desperate. Read more »

Filed under: Alabamians, Bob W., Education, Folk life, History, Literature | No Comments »

AHF Recognizes Women’s History Month
During March, we will feature a series of blog posts focusing on Women’s History Month. Please join us in the discussion and comment with your own opinions and tales.

As February—Black History Month—turns to March—Women’s History Month—it’s worth noting that three women played key roles in recording the African-American experience in rural Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through oral history, photography and art, they captured a way of life defined by deep poverty and Jim Crow segregation, but rich in stories, music, religion and strong family ties. Read more »

Filed under: Alabamians, Art, Art history, Bob S., Education, History | No Comments »

Written by William Gantt, director of the Southern Literary Trail

With the support of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Southern Literary Trail will soon begin three months of programs in Alabama to conclude with the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville on May 7. The Alabama programs are part of the Trail’s tri-state “Trailfest,” which is celebrated in Alabama along with events in partner states of Georgia and Mississippi. All events and programs, plus printable schedules for each state, are listed within the Trailfest section at southernliterarytrail.org.

The Southern Literary Trail is the country’s only literary trail to encompass three states. Trailfest officially began with the Carson McCullers Conference in Columbus, Georgia, on February 17, attracting hundreds of participants for a weekend of panels about McCullers and her use of the town and local settings in her novels such as “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” Suzanne Vega attended the conference and provided musical performances. Read more »

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AHF Recognizes Black History Month
During February, we will feature a series of blog posts focusing on Black History Month. Please join us in the discussion and comment with your own opinions and tales.

Written by Jennifer Dome, AHF’s public relations and publications manager

“I like to believe
that the negative extremes of Birmingham’s past
will resolve into the positive and Utopian extreme of her future;
that the sins of a dark yesterday will
be redeemed in the achievements of a bright tomorrow.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I moved to Birmingham four years ago not really knowing what to expect. I knew the Alabama from my history books—the Civil Rights Movement, the students blocked from enrolling at the University of Alabama, the four little girls killed at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

But those history books didn’t make me feel what really happened here during the years that African Americans, and some people of other races, fought for their freedom, their rights, what they as citizens of the United States deserved. What brought that to life for me was the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Read more »

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