Weasel Words:
Acknowledgements
When it came time to put The Sleepy Weasel together,
college relations director Steven Spearie took me down to the
SCI archives to find a picture of Sr. Loyola Power. I needed one
to run with English teacher Gary Vitale's remembrance of Sr. Loyola,
who died March 13 at the age of 90. But we found two. And with
them, a dilemma.
Any journalist will tell you how
to solve picture dilemmas -- go with the shot that tells the story.
One was an undated black-and-white, several years old by the looks
of it, that captured some of Sr. Loyola's warmth and sparkle.
The other showed her playing Uno in the faculty lounge with Gary
and Judi Anderson, her English Department colleagues for so many
years. Not only did the picture show the three of them together,
but it's a piece of SCI heritage in itself. That Uno game has
been going on for 20 years, it is a very real part of the collegiality
that makes SCI a community -- and Sr. Loyola played Uno with great
relish.
In the end, I flipped a coin. The b&w portrait shot accompanies
Gary's moving tribute to Sr. Loyola. The other, the picture of
the Uno game -- you see it in this space, on the opposite page.
When I started teaching at SCI a few years ago, I was in the
earlier stages of a career change that took me from newspapering
to, well, serving as faculty adviser to The Sleepy Weasel,
among other things. I'd been away from academic life for a long
time, I had stage fright every time I walked into a classroom
and there were times I wasn't at all sure I was doing the right
thing. But as soon as Sr. Loyola found out I was a new English
teacher, it was as if I had joined her own very special club.
Not an in-group, by any means, but something that endures over
the centuries and somehow included Shakespeare, Milton, Jane Austen,
all the literary giants and -- now -- me. Later on I learned it
was a gift of hers -- Sr. Loyola found something special in people
and established a common bond with them. Certainly when I was
at the most awkward stages of a career change, she made me feel
welcome.
Gary's article continues a Sleepy Weasel tradition of
being open to students, faculty, staff, alumni -- to everyone
alike in the SCI community. I like to think it furthers our sense
of a SCI community. Mostly, of course, we do that by publishing
good student writing. There's a lot of it in this issue.
And artwork. Sophomore art major Matt Mogle's drawings provided
cover art and -- well, we decided against a centerfold, but Matt's
work is ... words fail me ... let's just say it is quite remarkable.
Something called creative, or literary, non-fiction is on the
rise in academia these days. It's a combination of the traditional
essay -- the kind of thing we read so often for English 111 --
and what I still think of as good old-fashioned news reporting.
Several of our pieces qualify. Seth Thornley's story on the tornado
that riped though his home town of Ashland is a good example.
So is sophomore Ralph Knobloch's gripping and thoughtful piece
on the Holocaust, and what it came to mean to him growing up in
Poland and New York City. And Darryl Johnson's essay on several
kinds of Illinois wildlife shows the literary side of this new
genre.
But I don't want to single out contributions. They're all worthy
of publication, and some of the best student work in The Weasel
this year I haven't even mentioned.
In fact, some of the best student writing I've seen this year
isn't even in The Weasel. Yet. I'm making a point of the
issue because we want your stuff for the magazine. We hope
to start next year's issue, Weasel 2000 (W2K?), with a
backlog of copy we can start putting up on the Web in September.
This year's Weasel is Volume 4 (in case you're counting),
and the second issue we've put up on the World Wide Web. We hope
to make The Weasel more of a showcase for good writing
about SCI, and we're looking for stories about student activities
and athletics among other things. Check us out in the fall, by
following the link off of SCI's home page at www.sci.edu. So,
student athletes, club leaders, musicians, artists, everyone --
here's your opportunity to get in print!
As always, we are grateful to the help of the people mentioned
above, and to Sr. Suzanne Sims, college president' interim Student
Affairs Dean Mae Marie Noll; and Academic Affairs Dean Stan Werne,
who have been most supportive. Working above and beyond the call
of duty has been student editor Jason Gallagher, a freshman who
also has several poems in the issue. (No conflict of interest
there -- Jason's stuff would have been published even if he hadn't
lifted a finger.) Webmaster Scott McCullar is much more than just
the resident techie -- he is very much a co-editor of the magazine.
Thanks, also, to all the others who have quietly helped out when
help was needed -- you know who you are, and your efforts are
appreciated.
-- Peter Ellertsen, faculty adviser
(c) 1999 Sleepy Weasel