Education Department News,
Eastern Connecticut State University
Webb Hall Building Room 124, 83 Windham Street, Willimantic, CT 06226

please address questions or comments to David Stoloff, Ed. Department Chair
TEL: (860) 465-5501 email: mailto:stoloffd@easternct.edu

The 2002 collection appears as http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/news/words02.html .
The 2003 collection appears as http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/news/words03.html
The 2004 collection appears as http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/news/words04.html

The 2005 collection appears as http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/news/words05.html
The 2006 collection appears as http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/news/words06.html

The 2006 - 2007 collection appears as http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/news/words07.html

Introducing an occasional addition to this newsletter of selected words of inspiration which you might find helpful for reflection. Please consider sending in your own favorite selections as a contribution to an online resource of words which help one get through difficult times.

First Week of Fall 2007, August 27, 2007

This Island Earth

Calling all dreamers and optimistic fools Don't let go of your dream make it now make it all come true If you believe in a brighter day I know we can find our way

There is an island in a starry ocean poetry in motion This Island Earth Spins like a dancer gravity is the answer rendezvous in the blue This Island Earth

We don't know what's in store today,

We can spread our wings and we can soar away Or we could go like the dinosaurs they say The choice is ours to make It only seems like this to me that we could wake up one day and be history Or stick around and unravel the mystery of how we came to be

Here on this Island

In the starry ocean poetry in motion

This Island Earth

Beautiful oasis for all the human races, the only home we know This Island Earth

I know we can touch the stars one day,

And kick up the dust on Mars one day

Or trip like light through the Milky Way, we've got to find our way If you're looking for a miracle open your eyes There was one this morning just about sun rise Dawn came breaking like a wave on the sea and its there for you and me

Calling all dreamers and optimistic fools Don't let go of your dream make it now make it all come true If you believe in a brighter day I know we can find our way

There is an island in a starry ocean poetry in motion This Island Earth Spins like a dancer gravity is the answer rendezvous in the blue This Island Earth Beautiful oasis for all the human races, the only home we know This Island Earth

found at http://www.bearalley.com/index.php?page=lyrics

composed by Paul Cooper and sung by Jonathan Edwards at the concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Shaboo on August 18th, 2007 in Recreation Park in Willimantic

*****

Mindset List 2011 - http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/2011.php

BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST®
FOR THE CLASS OF 2011

Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

What Berlin wall?
Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
They never “rolled down” a car window.
Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
They have grown up with bottled water.
General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
Pete Rose has never played baseball.
Rap music has always been mainstream.
Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
“Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
Music has always been “unplugged.”
Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on.
Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
Eastern Airlines has never “earned their wings” in their lifetime.
No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN.
Katie Couric has always had screen cred.
Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan.”
They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages.
When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
They grew up in Wayne’s World.
U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.
Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
On Parents’ Day on campus, their folks could be mixing it up with Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zöe, or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford with son Cody.
Fox has always been a major network.
They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.
The “Blue Man Group” has always been everywhere.
Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
Most phone calls have never been private.
High definition television has always been available.
Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
Time has always worked with Warner.
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
The purchase of ivory has always been banned.
MTV has never featured music videos.
The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
They’re always texting 1 n other.
They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
They have no idea who Rusty Jones was or why he said “goodbye to rusty cars.”
Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.
Illinois has been trying to ban smoking since the year they were born.
The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.
Burma has always been Myanmar.
Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.
Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

***************

Second Week of Fall 2007 Classes, September 10, 2007

One of 54936 poems posted on

http://www.poetry.com/us_tragedy/searchgroup.asp

11th of September

So many people weep,
from this major tragedy.
so many people dead and injured,
and the have yet to find more deciesed.

Everyone, everywhere,
looks around in disbelief,
Noone can believe what happened,
All of the people pray for peace.

Noone thought that this could happen,
atleast never to us.
Noone saw it coming,
and now that it did we are woken up.

Many people cry and mourn,
for the loved ones they have lost.
Many peoples hearts have been torn,
for the tragedy that was yesterday born.

Krystal Denning

*****

Third Week of Fall 2007 Classes, September 19, 2007

15 Lessons of Leadership

1. A leadership position is one of the many stars in the galaxy but it is not the center of the
universe. Do not confuse your passion with the position.

2. Knowledge of the history and creation of an institution is imperative. An institution does
not begin with your appointment.

3. A leader’s goal of institutional change will occur if others feel some degree of ownership of
that change.

4. Leadership requires support of a smoothly functioning team to implement a vision the
leader feels important.

5. Leadership requires servitude.

6. Learn to listen with your eyes as well as your ears.

7. A reservoir of trust allows a leader to make “draw downs” when the occasion arises for
unilateral decisions to be made.

8. It is lonely at the top but mentors can help. Ask for help. Don’t let your ego interfere with
success.

9. Leaders are not perfect and need not pretend that they are.

10. To thine own self be true . . . and kind. Don’t sacrifice health, your name, integrity or relationships
for the position.

11. Focus attention on things that matter. Don’t micro-manage.

12. Give the credit to others.

13. Determine how to effectively get your message out.

14. You cannot ever solve ALL problems. Understand this.

15. Be human. Be humble. Maintain a sense of humor.

— David Carter, Ph. D.
Chancellor of the Connecticut State University System on the occasion of the May 2007 Phi Delta Kappa induction
ceremony in Storrs, CT.

*****

First Week of the Fall 2007 Season, September 27, 2007

Success*

He has achieved success who has lived well,
laughed often and loved much;
who has enjoyed the trust of pure women,
the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
who has left the world better than he found it,
whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty
or failed to express it;
who has always looked for the best in others
and given them the best he had;
whose life was an inspiration;
whose memory is a benediction.

*A prize-winning piece in a Modern Women competition by Bessie A. Stanley (1905) (cf. Anthony W. Shipps in Notes and Queries, July 1976), though it is often attributed to Stevenson as well as to Emerson. However, Bethanne Larson, who claims to be Bessie Anderson Stanley’s great-granddaughter, states that the above poem ‘was written as the winning entry in a contest run by Brown Book Magazine in 1904.’ (see http://www.robinsweb.com/truth_behind_success.html). Another great-granddaughter says that the piece was first printed in The Lincoln Sentinel, Nov. 30, 1905, the first prize for a brief 100-word essay on ‘What constitutes success?’. This information is from http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Sui-Generis/Emerson/success.htm. The Lincoln Sentinel publication is also attested at http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/lincoln/success.htm, where the words are printed out as prose.

posted at http://dinamico.unibg.it/rls/nonquotes.htm

quoted at the memorial service for Jeff Ossen, a community philanthropist and leader, who passed away last week. Our community misses him greatly. There will be a memorial service at Windham Hospital on Sunday, September 30 at 1 pm.

*****

Here's a new feature to the e-newsletter -

A song for the week -

When Fall Comes to New England - fall came a bit before 6 am on Sunday, September 23, 2007

Words And Music By: Cheryl Wheeler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_QaXZiLhro

lyrics - http://www.cherylwheeler.com/songs/wfctne.html

*****

Sixth Week of Fall 2007 Semester, October 9, 2007

Columbus Day
by John Kilgore

posted at http://www.maureenmullarkey.com/essays/columbus.html

What we love is the Hollywood version:
The King tired, mind elsewhere, drumming his figures,
The grandees clustered like skeptical buzzards,
A Capitan this and a Comisario that
And Don Diego Whatsisname who hates your guts;

And you:
Out-of-town hotshot with the fast pitch,
Pacing the terra cotta like you own it,
Talking India, talking Trade Routes, talking
Round Earth Theory;
All balls and brains, circumnavigation
In gold tights, with a cagey smile

For the second throne, where the Queen—
That Goya skin, those Reubens lips—
Listens, by God, leaning forward, her gown
Arching out from both hemispheres,
On purpose maybe, while those dark
Crucifying eyes say in perfect Italian,
Forget these stiffs, just sing to me, Baby.

So you talk sextants,
You talk colonies and gold and empire
Astrolabes, tea and spices,
Any damn thing you can think of—
Glories of the Faith, with a pitch
for Plymouth Rock between the lines—
While the King fidgets and looks for the major-domo
And Diego hawks in his pious beard
But the Queen cries
Stop! He can have my jewels!
And the room goes quiet
As a page of history.

So then you're off,
Already American as egg rolls,
Half-Baked, hell-bent, scared green,
Sailing at the moon.
Three fire-sale ships with corny names,
A crew of hard cases even the Navy didn't want,
And brother Bart's usual lousy directions.
The patron saint of everyone
Who misses the turnoff and winds up in Cleveland;
Who flunks Geography and makes a fortune
Selling globes to grade schools.

You'll lose ships, catch fevers; return goldless,
Tealess, spiceless, loaded
Mainly with new explanations:
"Navigational triumphs. Long-term potential."
The Queen turns bitchy and Inquisitorial, bad
As the dragons you took off her maps;
Takes Mass and cuts her losses
Sends out new governors in grey suits.

While you keep looking.
Wave and helm and horizon, crossings
So long even the talk runs out;
The hulls get wormier, the crews more sullen.
You keep finding islands,
Natives staring in fifty languages,
Shoals where the full-grown women stand
Nude as coral in the dreaming heat.
The shorebirds wheel, the noon sea glints like iron;
Voices call from the warm reefs,
But not with news of India, and even the name
Goes to Vespucci instead.

But still it's you who navigates
The memory, crossing somehow
The mistaken seas, the lapping centuries
Down to us.

Genius of our hopeful journeys,
After fifty decades green as ever,
Mapless, misinformed, and still looking;
Bless again our misadventures,
Past the missed exists, the wrong turns,
Closing in at last on Columbus:
Not what happened, but what always might:
Upstart sailor chasing the moon,
Immigrant hustler with nothing to lose,
Daring the world's edge, betting the farm,
Making India come to you, Mohammed style.

*****

Here's a new feature to the e-newsletter -

A song for the week -

A song for the season from the Byrds - “Turn Turn Turn”-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNopQq5lWqQ

lyrics - http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/byrds/turn+turn+turn_20026419.html

Pete Seeger tells how he came to write “Turn Turn Turn.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WT6-BIav2I

*****

MidTerm Week of Fall 2007 Semester, October 18, 2007

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots
may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on
the feelings, as now in October.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

posted at http://www.egreenway.com/months/monoct.htm

*****

Here's a new feature to the e-newsletter -

A song for the week -

Nat King Cole "Shine on Harvest Moon"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfa3qTZinPQ

lyrics - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfa3qTZinPQ

*****

Halloween, Fall 2007 Semester, October 31, 2007

Monster Mash

words and music by Bobby Pickett and Lenny Capizzi

Lyrics posted at http://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/Monster_Mash.shtml

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gZJSW_7YLVs

I was working in the lab late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster from his slab began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise

He did the mash
He did the monster mash
The monster mash
It was a graveyard smash
He did the mash
It caught on in a flash
He did the mash
He did the monster mash

From my laboratory in the castle east
To the master bedroom where the vampires feast
The ghouls all came from their humble abodes
To get a jolt from my electrodes

They did the mash
They did the monster mash
The monster mash
It was a graveyard smash
They did the mash
It caught on in a flash
They did the mash
They did the monster mash

The zombies were having fun
The party had just begun
The guests included Wolf Man
Dracula and his son

The scene was rockin', all were digging the sounds
Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds
The coffin-bangers were about to arrive
With their vocal group, "The Crypt-Kicker Five"

They played the mash
They played the monster mash
The monster mash
It was a graveyard smash
They played the mash
It caught on in a flash
They played the mash
They played the monster mash

Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring
Seems he was troubled by just one thing
He opened the lid and shook his fist
And said, "Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"

It's now the mash
It's now the monster mash
The monster mash
And it's a graveyard smash
It's now the mash
It's caught on in a flash
It's now the mash
It's now the monster mash

Now everything's cool, Drac's a part of the band
And my monster mash is the hit of the land
For you, the living, this mash was meant too
When you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you

Then you can mash
Then you can monster mash
The monster mash
And do my graveyard smash
Then you can mash
You'll catch on in a flash
Then you can mash
Then you can monster mash

*****

Here's a new feature to the e-newsletter -

A song (this week a video) -

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! 3/3

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bgFdCsFXoWA

*****

Tenth Week of the Fall Semester, November 8, 2007

*****

The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information— in the sense of raw data— is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.

Arthur C. Clarke - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

*****

Here's a new feature to the e-newsletter -

A song and video

The Times They Are A Changing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEeWsQ7LZqk

Lyrics at http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times.html

*****

Thanksgiving and Loy Krathong, November 22, 200

Loy Krathong is celebrated on the full moon of November in Thailand..

The full moon of the twelfth month,
As water fills the banks,
We, all men and women,
Have really good fun on Loy Krathong day,
Float, float the krathongs, (little rafts made from leaves with candles standing in them)
Float, float the krathongs,
And after we have floated our krathongs,
I invite you my dear,
To come out and dance,
Ramwong [traditional dance] on Loy Krathong Day,
Ramwong on Loy Krathong Day,
Good merit brings us happiness,
Good merit brings us happiness,

translation and more information at http://www.soppong.com/loykrathong.html

Loi Krathong Festival in Chiang Mai Thailand - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIWOk7SMQ0w&feature=related

the Loy Krathong song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J05U2oeANg8&feature=related

A song for Thanksgiving - Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo

BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2011

11th of September

Tenth Week of the Fall Semester, November 8, 2007

BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST®
FOR THE CLASS OF 2011