The Canadas

Spring 1996

News

Updated August 6, 2002
© Canadas 2002

Tests and Guests

While Lisa continued working in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina, I closed in on my Ph.D. in English. I had finished my master’s thesis a few years earlier and was busy turning it into my doctoral dissertation, Poe in His Right Mind, which explores the role that the right brain plays in the literature of Edgar Allan Poe. I was also teaching courses in composition at Carolina and meeting with some of my fellow graduate students in the Junto, a discussion group I formed about a year earlier. Named after a similar group founded by Benjamin Franklin back in the eighteenth century, the Junto provided an opportunity for me and others studying early American literature to learn from one another and just enjoy talking about books. It also helped me prepare for the biggest tests of my life: my written and oral Ph.D. exams, which I took this semester.

We still managed to find time to enjoy ourselves in and around the house we were renting in the countryside outside Chapel Hill. On weekday evenings, we drove or rode our bikes to a nearby school, where we walked and jogged on the track for 25 minutes. There we stumbled into an informal community gathering, where couples, singles, mothers, and children spent the hours around sunset jogging, walking, playing, and roller-blading around the track. More of an exercise nut than Lisa, I also worked out on my own: jumping rope, jogging, lifting weights, and--most grueling of all--mowing the lawn. While it was short on glamour, our rusty, 50-pound, old-fashioned reel mower provided a workout worthy of an infomercial. To cut about a third of an acre of grass, I spent about two hours grunting and sweating behind it. I must be an exercise nut because I kind of liked it. So did the motorists going by; Lisa caught one smiling and shaking his head as he rolled past me on a 90-degree afternoon.

We also entertained some guests. In March, Lisa’s niece Brenda Henry, a junior high school student in Fort Wayne, Indiana, came for a weeklong visit. Later, my parents came down from Indiana, and the four of us enjoyed some beautiful--if unseasonably warm--Carolina weather. Lisa and I especially enjoyed showing off our little house, which my mom and dad were seeing for the first time. Later, my dad prepared me for a lifetime of home ownership by helping me install my first screen. In honor of Mother's Day, we took Mom to Hillsborough, where she and Lisa admired a huge plantation home and colonial architecture, I took in the beautiful landscape, and Dad raced between patches of shade. We also played hosts to Lisa’s niece, Brenda Henry, also down from Indiana.

Finally, we took trips to Florida and Washington, D.C.

Florida

March 2-8, 1996: During my spring break at the University of North Carolina, we drove down to a beautiful condominium owned by Lisa's brother, Jerry Henry, Jr. We enjoyed a both relaxing and exhilirating time riding our bikes, playing tennis, walking, jogging, swimming, and reading in temperatures in the 70s and 80s. We also visited Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a wildlife preserve where the animals live in their natural habitats. If visitors aren't quiet and observant, they might not see any animals at all. However, we took great care and spotted several exotic and interesting animals, including an alligator, snake, frog, limkin, and heron. But our most exciting animal sighting took place back in the neighborhood around the condominium, where we happened across an adorable little armadillo, out early in the morning to root through the grass for its breakfast.

Deciding to make a vacation of our long drive back to North Carolina, we picked up Highway A near Daytona Beach and drove up to St. Augustine along the beach. After checking in at the Castle Garden, a bed and breakfast near the old part of town, we spent the afternoon visiting the fascinating Castillo de San Marcos, constructed in the late 16th century, as well as the former gates to the town, the cathedral, and several other buildings. Lisa found a beautiful clay window box, decorated in Spanish style, at a little shop in a reconstructed portion of the town. On the following morning, we rode our bikes through the grounds of a mission that has occupied the same spot for centuries.

Despite the obvious appeal of centuries-old stone masonry and signs of enduring faith, the most striking sight we encountered in and around St. Augustine was 40 years old, leather-bound, and hairy. Harley riders--hundreds or thousands of them--streamed all over Highway A, on the beach, over the walls of the Castillo, and through the old portion of St. Augustine. Unable to contain her curiosity, Lisa finally tiptoed up to one of these individuals--a towering bald man with a long goatee--at the Castillo and asked what brought him and 10,000 of his closest friends to the oldest European settlement in America. The answer, delivered quite politely, was National Bikers Week: an annual, informal convention of motorcyle riders at Daytona Beach. Of what this convention consists, we were not certain. All we can say is that, during our stay, we saw no bikers drinking tequila or raising hell, but saw scores of them strolling through a 16th century fort and reading exhibit signs alongside grade school children and retirees.

Driving back to Chapel Hill, we couldn't resist a stop in Charleston, our favorite city in the South and perhaps all of the United States. We splurged on a beautiful and elegant bed and breakfast, the Elliot House Inn, and enjoyed an outdoor jacuzzi in the courtyard, cheese in the afternoon, and a room Lisa called the mostbeautiful she had ever seen. We took a long stroll down the charming streets in the afternoon and spent part of the next morning at the Old Exchange, where the city's merchants paid duties on goods they imported before theAmerican Revolution. Perhaps the most historically important building in Charleston, the Old Exchange is also the place where citizens discussed colonial politics and protested British taxes on tea and where the British army imprisoned Christopher Gadsden and other patriots during its occupation of Charleston during the war.

Brenda Henry’s Visit

March: My niece Brenda, the eldest child of my terrific brother Kurt and his wife Lisa, came to visit us for a week this past March. She had been wanting to visit for a long time; but our two families' schedules wouldn't allow it until this year. Together we flew down to Chapel Hill from Indianapolis and immediately enjoyed the warmer weather. On our first night together, we found a stray puppy which we fed, bathed, and played with for hours until we took him to the animal shelter. A tiny nip on my ankle worried us about rabies, but nothing ever came of it. I had hoped to take Brenda to the ocean, the mountains, Kitty Hawk, and other memorable places within a couple hours drive of our house. Unfortunately, while she was here, I was under a deadline to write an enormous grant. Brendy handled the change of plans with grace, though, and instead of moping -- as kids her age are want to do -- she buckled down and helped me at the office: running errands, making photocopies, calculating expenses, sending faxes, and even doing data entry. She was a real life saver. She also showed herself to be an excellent scholar, laboring over the diary of her journey every day. We did get to do a few fun things: lots of meals out since I worked late every night, breakfast with Mark at the Carolina Club, tours of the campus with Mark, and a special high-brow evening with Beth Henley, author of Crimes of the Heart. At this fancy function, Brenda, Mark and I enjoyed hors d'oeuvres like caviar canapes, puff pastries, and chocolate covered strawberries -- mostly the chocolate covered strawberries.

By the way, the puppy we found was adopted a couple of days after we turned her in. Whew!

Washington, D.C.

April 13-15, 1996: We came here for the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology annual conference, which Lisa had to attend on behalf of the University of North Carolina's Department of Nutrition, where she works as public relations director and managing editor of The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. We also celebrated my success on the Ph.D. exams, which I had just passed the previous Friday.

Having visited Washington several times since we moved to North Carolina, we took this opportunity to visit a few new places, as well as some old favorites. On the first afternoon, for example, we saw ancient Asian art and James Whistler's Peacock Room at the Sackler and Freer galleries, heard a fantastic Chilean band under the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin, revisited the Jefferson Memorial, and stopped at the National Archives, where we saw not only the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, but a whimsical exhibit on gifts that Americans have sent to their presidents.

On Sunday morning, we bought muffins at the Old Post Office and ate them on the mall. After a brief visit to the Smithsonian Castle, we returned to one of my favorite sites, the Museum of American History, where we saw some quilts on display and strolled through "After the Revolution," an exhibit on the everday lives of several families in the decades after the American Revolution. Later, while Lisa rested at the hotel before a dinner with FASEB members, I visited the National Portrait Gallery and found one of the best exhibits I have seen in Washington. Part of the Smithsonian Institution's sesquicentennial celebration, "1846: Portrait of the Nation" recreates one of the most exciting times in American history with daguerreotypes, paintings by Thomas Cole and others, an 1846 edition of Herman Melville's Typee, the gear Francis Parkman carried on the Oregon Trail, a bust showing the phrenological regions, and many other items. Also on display are numerous portraits of political, social, and cultural leaders, including President James T. Polk, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Margaret Fuller, Brigham Young, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Webster, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. As I always feel when I visit the National Portait Gallery, I felt virtually transported to a different time. Before I left, I bought 1846: Portrait of the Nation, a book with photographs from the exhibit and more fascinating descriptions than curators could fit on the walls of the exhibit. That evening, while Lisa attended the FASEB dinner, I returned to the Museum of American History and heard a concert of Handel and Bach on period instruments.

A Taste of Teaching

Spring 1996: Thanks to an excellent program here in Chapel Hill, I have had the opportunity to design and teach several courses as a teaching assistant. Since receving my master's degree in 1994, I've taught six sections of English 12, a writing class for freshmen and a few upperclass students. I've had a wonderful time drawing on my own experience, first as a struggling writer and later as a reporter and editor, to help students discover and use their talents. Those students have provided me with a wealth of memories, many of them coming during my first semester, when I was at least as scared as they were. In one my favorite memories, a student showed up two minutes after a class had ended and pleaded with me to forgive her for her absence. She explained that she had had trouble getting a ride back home after the Rolling Stones concert the night before. Perhaps my first great test as a teacher was having to maintain a poker face and talk about the class she'd missed when I really wanted to explode with excitement and ask her things like, "What did Mick say to the crowd?" and "What did they play off Beggar's Banquet?"

This fall, I will have the chance to teach two new classes. Back in July, the director of Duke University's writing program called me and said my boss at UNC had recommended me to teach a course at Duke. As a result, I will be teaching two sections of English 4, a class required of all Duke freshmen. I'm excited about the opportunity to teach at a different college, as well as the chance to use classical rhetoric as a teaching tool. Meanwhile back here at UNC, I will teach my first literature course, Major American Authors. For this class, I have had the freedom to choose the authors and books, as well as to prepare the lectures and assignments. They don't know it yet, but about 25 UNC sophomores and juniors are in for an action-packed semester.

Ph.D. Exams; or, The Whale

April: Every Ph.D. student I know dreads the beast known simply as Exams. Of course, we've seen and passed so many small-fry midterms and finals that the words "Discuss" and "Compare and contrast" barely even faze us anymore. But Exams are a different breed. For one thing, they're big. Unlike a final exam for a course, which might cover five novels, a dozen short stories, and a handful of poems, Ph.D. exams cover everything--at least everything in the student's major and minor. In February 1996, I took a six-hour written exam on my major, American literature before 1900, in which I was asked to identify everything from a particular slave's pseudonym to the author of "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" and to write essays on critical readings of Puritan prose, uses of dialect in postbellum literature, autobiographical novels by Hawthorne and others, slave narratives, early humor writing, and literary treatments of nature. The three-hour exam on my minor, the English language, which I took two weeks later, roamed freely over an expanse stretching from Old English verb forms to transformational grammarians' assessments of Modern English syntax. The reward for successfully completing these exams was the privilege of proceeding to the oral exams in April. Here, I sat in front of five scholars, some of whom have read Moby-Dick more times than I've sung "Happy Birthday," and talk intelligently--or at least coherently--about Edward Taylor's metaphysical conceits and the features of Standard English.

A little more than an hour and a half later, I stepped out into the hall while my professors discussed my performance. Waiting for me in the hall were my two office mates, who had come for support. The committee chairwoman, Dr. Connie Eble, then invited me back into the room, where my professors congratulated me on passing the Ph.D. exams. After sharing the good news with my office mates, who were still waiting in the hall, I went to my office and sat for a while feeling the kind of surprise, relief, and ecstasy that first-time paratroopers must feel when their feet touch earth. I called Lisa and told her that we had some celebrating to do. Celebrate we did, first with a dinner at the New Orleans Cookery in Chapel Hill and then with a weekend trip to Washington, D.C., where Lisa had to attend a conference for her job. When I returned to campus on Monday, Dr. Eble gave me some more good news: I had passed with honors.

The stress was over. In fact, I noticed something interesting as I confronted this three-headed monster. Each time I actually saw it eye to eye, my stress subsided, and I entered a kind of trance, in which I calmly poured out the contents of my brain. The filling up--with authors, dates, characters, themes, and conjugations--had been hard, but the pouring out was easy.

I want to thank all of the people who helped me pass these exams. My fellow graduate students in the Junto--Brian Carpenter, Chris Goodson, Chad Kearsley, Judy Logan, and Christopher Smith--have been fabulous sources of knowledge and advice, as have been my professors, particularly Dr. Richard Rust, Dr. Joseph Flora, Dr. Philip Gura, Dr. Bob Johnstone, Dr. Connie Eble, and Dr. Patrick O'Neill. I have enjoyed wonderful support from many friends--including Sandy and Michael Roberts, Austin Guiles, Dr. Carol Binzer, and Dr. Cindy Wolf Johnson--and particularly from our parents, Alan and Mary Canada and Jerry and Marge Henry. Finally, I owe the most to Lisa, who not only endured my obsessive studying, but supported and inspired me all the way, as she has done with such grace as long as I have known her.