Endurance Symposium Shoots for Interdisciplinary Goal

Author: Abbie Beane

Each year the College finds an increasing number of ways to explore what a liberal arts education is all about - comparing and contrasting a variety of subject areas to create interdisciplinary programs, projects, performances and symposiums. Most recently the arts and history departments did just that, collaborating to piece together "St. Peter's Dream" for the annual R. Clifford Symposium, and on Oct. 30 the sports program and the arts departments will do it again, joining forces to present the first symposium on "Inspiration and Perspiration."

Scholar-in-Residence in environmental studies Bill McKibben will convene a group of experts to discuss the theme of endurance, where an eclectic group of athletes, scholars and artists will offer their varied perspectives. Not only will the symposium feature the American record holder in the 100-mile run, a reason in and of itself to attend, but also a couple of renowned biographers and authors and the College's Dance Company of Middlebury. According to McKibben, who also serves as faculty advisor of the college's Nordic ski team, he wants to more tightly weave together the College's "high-caliber athletics and world-class academic program." McKibben told The Middlebury Campus, "The idea came to me because, as a relative newcomer to Middlebury, I was struck by how seriously people took both their studies and their athletics and also by how little those two worlds seemed to overlap. When people went down the hill to the gym they left one part of them behind, and vice versa when they walked back up to the classrooms."

When asked about the most trying experience personally on his endurance, McKibben remembers skiing the Norwegian Birkebeiner one March a few years ago. "It was perhaps the toughest big ski race in the world, 45 miles or so with immense uphills. But 10,000 people ski it and some of them are in their 80s or 90s. I remember skiing alongside them thinking that many of these people were skiing in these woods as a part of the Resistance in World War II and they've kept at it, year after year - not because they're going to win the race, but because we're all finding out things about ourselves, cataloguing our strengths and weaknesses more thoroughly than we've done before. It's this process of self-discovery that's so interesting to me."

It's particularly interesting to talk with McKibben about the nordic ski team, an extremely serious bunch of athletes, which frequently triumph over numerous schools with Division I programs that recruit from overseas. McKibben boasts that they are also "some of the most reflective people I know, perhaps in part because they spend many hours every week out in the most beautiful world I can imagine, the world of Addison County in its winter glory."

The symposium will also feature a talk by Jay Parini, professor of English at the College and renowned biographer, on "Endurance and the Writing Life." Parini has just recently finished a biography of William Faulkner and is also known for his biographies of Robert Frost and John Steinbeck, who, according to Parini raise fascinating questions about endurance and how writers pace themselves through a lifetime of hours at work with the pen and typewriter. "I think the idea of endurance is fascinating," Parini says, "How did Faulkner, for example, manage to write so well for so long, to produce so many masterworks. To go back to the desk day after day, in good and bad emotional weather?" Parini also mentions his admiration for author Charles Dickens, who had a capacity to keep inventing and transforming his vision throughout his entire life, and poet William Butler Yeats, who "never stopped thinking and working, writing and rewriting."

This is not to say that Parini is any stranger to athletics either. Being an avid basketball fan and author of an essay titled, "No Tenure in the Gym at Noon," Parini claims that he has always loved athletes who overcame some sort of obstacle - "the Lance Armstrongs." He mentions Michael Jordan in particular, a man who has the "ability to create shots on the court, even when double or triple-teamed," and a man who played in "that big game (the finals) in 1997 when he was sick with the flu, scoring at crucial moments. That is somehow heartening." Parini played quite a bit of basketball himself, and though he admits to being a terrible player, he keeps at it, knowing that no one cares if he's good or not in his prime. "I think athletes have a lot to teach us about how to conduct our lives (on the court that is). If we're talking about NBA players, they often show no restraint off the court," he wittingly reminds us.

One other important Middlebury representative who will be getting in on this game is Associate Professor of English at the College Gary Margolis, who will read one of his works out of his collection of "American Sports Poems." Many may not know that Margolis is also a Middlebury alumni who played football, basketball and lacrosse back in his day as well, while at the same time allowing poetry writing to creep into the mix. "The language and drama, as well as the body-centered aspect of athletics, has always felt of one fabric to me. So I have a number of poems where football, basketball, lacrosse, golf and swimming are the central themes and metaphors."

One of Margolis's works, an ode to Michael Jordan, was even lauded by the former Bulls star himself. "The Burning Bush of Basketball" tucked into his new book, "Fire in the Orchard," focuses on the playoff game between the Celtics and the Bulls during which Jordan broke the all-time play-off record by scoring 63 points. Margolis told The Campus that the poem was published in Middlebury Magazine where a Chicago Midd alum discovered it and carted it back to her health club where Jordan received whirlpool treatments. "She took him the poem, he read it and said that he liked it," said Margolis, so he then "signed the poem and asked her to bring to me. I have it in my office here in Centeno and it is one of my treasures."

Personally, I would reserve courtside seats for this symposium, which will not only feature these talented athletes, but a score of others, lending themselves to one of the most interesting interdisciplinary symposiums of the semester. Besides, wouldn't want to get in on a little discussion about stamina?