The Allendale Cultural Center has expanded its arts program to include classes for young adults. Director Leah Martin announced Monday that beginning in September, three new classes will be offered to the Allendale community. The course titles will be Yoga for Teenagers; Hip Hop Dance: Learning the Latest Moves; and Creative Journaling for Teens: Discovering the Writer Within. The latter course will not be held at the Allendale Cultural Center but instead will meet at the Allendale Public Library.

Staff member Tricia Cousins will teach the yoga and hip hop classes. Ms. Cousins is an accomplished choreographer as well as an experienced dance educator. She has an MA in dance education from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she wrote a thesis on the pedagogical effectiveness of dance education. The journaling class will be taught by Betsy Milford. Ms. Milford is the head librarian at the Allendale Public Library as well as a columnist for the professional journal Library Focus.

The courses are part of the Allendale Cultural Center’s Project Teen, which was initiated by Leah Martin, Director of the Cultural Center. According to Martin, this project is a direct result of her efforts to make the center a more integral part of the Allendale community. Over the last several years, the number of people who have visited the cultural center for classes or events has steadily declined. Project Teen is primarily funded by a munificent grant from The McGee Arts Foundation, an organization devoted to bringing arts programs to young adults. Martin oversees the Project Teen board, which consists of five board members. Two board members are students at Allendale’s Brookdale High School; the other three are adults with backgrounds in education and the arts.

The creative journaling class will be cosponsored by Brookdale High School, and students who complete the class will be given the opportunity to publish one of their journal entries in Pulse, Brookdale’s student literary magazine. Students who complete the hip hop class will be eligible to participate in the Allendale Review, an annual concert sponsored by the cultural center that features local actors, musicians, and dancers.

All classes are scheduled to begin immediately following school dismissal, and transportation will be available from Brookdale High School to the Allendale Cultural Center and the Allendale Public Library. For more information about Project Teen, contact the cultural center’s programming office at 988-0099 or drop by the office after June 1 to pick up a fall course catalog. The office is located on the third floor of the Allendale Town Hall.

(excerpt from the opening of an untitled essay)

John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, was followed ten years later by A.B. Guthrie’s The Way West. Both books chronicle a migration, though that of Guthrie’s pioneers is considerably less bleak in origin. What strikes one at first glance, however, are the commonalities. Both Steinbeck’s and Guthrie’s characters are primarily farmers. They look to their destinations with nearly religious enthusiasm, imagining their “promised” land the way the Biblical Israelites envisioned Canaan. Both undergo great hardship to make the trek. But the two sagas differ distinctly in origin. Steinbeck’s Oklahomans are forced off their land by the banks who own their mortgages, and they follow a false promise—that jobs await them as seasonal laborers in California. Guthrie’s farmers willingly remove themselves, selling their land and trading their old dreams for their new hope in Oregon. The pioneers’ decision to leave their farms in Missouri and the East is frivolous and ill-founded in comparison with the Oklahomans’ unwilling response to displacement. Yet, it is they, the pioneers, whom our history books declare the heroes.

Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Address
(excerpt from the opening)

When George Washington first took the oath I have just sworn to uphold, news traveled slowly across the land by horseback and across the ocean by boat. Now the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneously to billions around the world. Communications and commerce are global. Investment is mobile. Technology is almost magical, and ambition for a better life is now universal.

We earn our livelihood in America today in peaceful competition with people all across the Earth. Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy. This new world has already enriched the lives of millions of Americans who are able to compete and win in it. But when most people are working harder for less; when others cannot work at all; when the cost of healthcare devastates families and threatens to bankrupt our enterprises, great and small; when the fear of crime robs law-abiding citizens of their freedom; and when millions of poor children cannot even imagine the lives we are calling them to lead, we have not made change our friend.

The Crossing
Chapter I: The Blue Wall
(excerpt from the opening of a novel by Winston Churchill)

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters. There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province of North Carolina.

The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone chimney was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake kettle; and over it great buckhorns held my father’s rifle when it was not in use. On other horns hung jerked bear’s meat and venison hams, and gourds for drinking cups, and bags of seed, and my father’s best hunting shirt; also, in a neglected corner, several articles of woman’s attire from pegs. These once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine, faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool and huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he would give me no answers.

My father was—how shall I say what he was? To this day I can only surmise many things of him. He was a Scotchman born, and I know now that he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his hunting shirt and leggins and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save when he drank too many “horns,” as they were called in that country. These lapses of my father’s were a perpetual source of wonder to me—and, I must say, of delight. They occurred only when a passing traveler who hit his fancy chanced that way, or, what was almost as rare, a neighbor. Many a winter night I have lain awake under the skins, listening to a flow of language that held me spellbound, though I understood scarce a word of it.

“Virtuous and vicious every man must be, Few in the extreme, but all in a degree.”

The chance neighbor or traveler was no less struck with wonder. And many the time have I heard the query, at the Cross-Roads and elsewhere, “Whar Alec Trimble got his larnin’?”

(excerpt from a letter to a pet-sitter)
Dear Lee,

As I told you, I’ll be gone until Wednesday morning. Thank you so much for taking on my “children” while I’m away. Like real children, they can be kind of irritating sometimes, but I’m going to enjoy myself so much more knowing they’re getting some kind human attention. Remember that Regina (the “queen” in Latin, and she acts like one) is teething. If you don’t watch her, she’ll chew anything, including her sister, the cat. There are plenty of chew toys around the house. Whenever she starts gnawing on anything illegal, just divert her with one of those. She generally settles right down to a good hour-long chew. Then you’ll see her wandering around whimpering with the remains of the toy in her mouth. She gets really frustrated because what she wants is to bury the thing. She’ll try to dig a hole between the cushions of the couch. Finding that unsatisfactory, she’ll wander some more, discontent, until you solve her problem for her. I usually show her the laundry basket, moving a few clothes so she can bury her toy beneath them. I do sound like a parent, don’t I? You have to understand, my own son is practically grown up.

Regina’s food is the Puppy Chow in the utility room, where the other pet food is stored. Give her a bowl once in the morning and once in the evening. No more than that, no matter how much she begs. Beagles are notorious overeaters, according to her breeder, and I don’t want her to lose her girlish figure. She can share Rex (the King’s) water, but be sure it’s changed daily. She needs to go out several times a day, especially last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Let her stay out for about ten minutes each time, so she can do all her business. She also needs a walk in the afternoon, after which it’s important to romp with her for awhile in the yard. The game she loves most is fetch, but be sure to make her drop the ball. She’d rather play tug of war with it. Tell her, “Sit!” Then, when she does, say, “Drop it!” Be sure to tell her “good girl,” and then throw the ball for her. I hope you’ll enjoy these sessions as much as I do.

Now, for the other two, Rex and Paws… (letter continues)

(excerpt from a pro-voting essay)

Voting is the privilege for which wars have been fought, protests have been organized, and editorials have been written. “No taxation without representation” was a battle cry of the American Revolution. Women struggled for suffrage as did all minorities. Eighteen-year-olds clamored for the right to vote, saying that if they were old enough to go to war, they should be allowed to vote. Yet Americans have a deplorable voting history.

Interviewing people about their voting habits is revealing. There are individuals who state that they have never voted. Often, they claim that their individual vote doesn’t matter. Some people blame their absence from the voting booth on the fact that they do not know enough about the issues. In a democracy, we can express our opinions to our elected leaders, but more than half of us sometimes avoid choosing the people who make the policies that affect our lives.

Improving Streamside Wildlife Habitats
(excerpt from Habitat Extension Bulletin distributed by the
Wyoming Game and Fish Department)

Riparian vegetation [the green band of vegetation along a watercourse] can help stabilize stream banks; filter sediment from surface runoff; and provide wildlife habitat, livestock forage, and scenic value. Well-developed vegetation also allows bank soils to absorb extra water during spring runoff, releasing it later during drier months, thus improving late-summer stream flows.

In many parts of the arid West, trees and shrubs are found only in riparian areas. Woody plants are very important as winter cover for many wildlife species, including upland game birds such as pheasants and turkeys. Often this winter cover is the greatest single factor limiting game bird populations. Woody vegetation also provides hiding cover and browse for many other species of birds and mammals, both game and nongame.

Dead trees (“snags”) are an integral part of streamside habitats and should be left standing whenever possible. Woodpeckers, nuthatches, brown creepers, and other birds eat the insects that decompose the wood. These insects usually pose no threat to nearby living trees. Occasionally a disease organism or misuse of pesticides will weaken or kill a stand of trees. If several trees in a small area begin to die, contact your local extension agent immediately.

(excerpt from “First,” a short story)

First, you ought to know that I’m “only” fourteen. My mother points this out frequently. I can make decisions for myself when I’m old enough to vote, she says. Second, I should tell you that she’s right—I’m not always responsible. I sometimes take the prize for a grade-A dork. Last weekend, for instance, when I was staying at Dad’s, I decided it was time I learned to drive. It was Sunday morning, 7 a.m. to be exact, and I hadn’t slept well thinking about this argument I’ll be telling you about in a minute. Nobody was up yet in the neighborhood, and I thought there would be no harm in backing the car out of the garage and cruising around the block. But Dad has a clutch car, and the “R” on the shift handle was up on the left side, awful close to first gear, and I guess you can guess the rest.

Dad’s always been understanding. He didn’t say, like Mom would, “Okay, little Miss Know-It-All, you can just spend the rest of the year paying this off.” He worried about what might have happened to me—to me, you see, and that made me feel more guilty than anything. Overall, I just think he’d be a better number-one caregiver, if you get my drift. Of course I can’t say things like that to Mom.

To her, I have to say, “But Mom, Dad’s place is closer to school. I could ride my bike.”

She replies, “Jennifer Lynn, you don’t own a bike, because you left it in the yard and it was stolen, and you haven’t got the perseverance it takes to do a little work and earn the money to replace it.”