A Busy, Fruitful Spring for Community Outreach
By Adam Penna
Spring finally arrived, and with the promise of warmer weather, there also arrived, for the FA and the community outreach committee, a number of important spring events. By the time most of you read this, the COC will have hosted another “Housing 101” seminar by Kathie Rogers; accepted a donation from the South Asian Club on the Grant Campus of over $500; sponsored three Spring Plant Sales, one on each campus; funded another Day of Building for Habitat for Humanity; and, should we be able to get it together, participated in a 5K Walk/Run for HFH.
It will have been a busy, fruitful spring.
But the most significant of these spring events, for me, is not listed above. It is the dedication ceremony, held on March 24 th 2007, for the house we helped build last fall with Habitat.
Doing what we do – teaching, administrating, counseling, etc. – it is sometimes difficult to see the fruits of our labor. I know I am doing something and, usually, that something is good. I can say the same with relative certainty about my colleagues, too. But what I can also say with some certainty is that because our work is abstract, dealing with ideas, symbols and the murky places of human understanding (yes, this goes even for those of you in the sciences), it is, also, despite the great efforts to assess, difficult to measure our successes, when they come.
I sometimes envy the guys I grew up with, all of whom work in the trades. Most are roofers now. When their days are done, they look up, and what was before an empty ceiling, opening on the blue sky, is now a pitch, an angle, an arch, a shingled shelter, keeping wind and rain and snow at bay. If they fail, a roof caves in. A family gets wet, at best, and, at worst, is harmed. It is essential they do a solid job. Their efforts must be true.
So there I was at the dedication ceremony. It was a Saturday afternoon. It was a bit cool, but the sun was out. I had arrived early and waited for my colleagues to show before approaching the site. We approached together, talking, joking and looking at each other or at our feet. Then there it was. A house. The house. A few months before, on this lot stood the outline of a house. It was the impression of a house. Now there was a house in earnest. It was with us. It stood there, too, in the wind and the sun. It was the fruit of our collective labor. It was solid. It was there. I could put my hand on it. I could walk inside it. I could witness it, and there would be no doubt. If I rise, right now from my desk, and go and pass by again and again, from now until a hundred years, there it will be. There. And there can be no denying it. And yet…
Because I am a poet, everything I see reminds me of a poem. Sometimes this is helpful – certainly in class it is, especially when teaching poetry – and sometimes not so much. Now I am reminded of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke called “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” During a visit to a museum, Rilke is struck by the ruined sculpture of Apollo, the Greek god of sun and song. Meditating on the torso, he concludes that this inanimate object made of hard, polished, cool stone is more alive than he is. The poem ends with this revelation: “You must change your life.” His awe for the sculpture speaks, in general, to the poet’s envy of sculptors, whose work endures, if not in the consciousness of men and women, then, at least, in the world actually. My envy, mentioned above, for my tradesmen friends is similar.
Next spring, I will have to begin again the process of applying for promotion. Then, I will be asked to assess what I have done and, by implication, what there is still left to do before my next and final promotion. There will be observations included in the packet. There will be chronicles of committee work. Lists of publications, performances, appearances and readings. There will be A forms, B forms, C forms, an alphabet soup of forms. There will be, as Hamlet says: words, words, words. But what there won’t be is this. A house. Something to touch. Something in which to live. Something standing, like a man in the sun, saying, “I am here.”
*Note: The Community Outreach Committee is looking for dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers to help raise money for the Affordable Housing Fund, which aims to sponsor at least two Days of Building per year at local Habitat for Humanity sites. Interested members of the college community should contact Adam Penna (pennaa@sunysuffolk.edu) or Dan Linker (linkerd@sunysuffolk.edu) to get involved.
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