Take a look at our winning Expressions! The contest has been an effort to give visibility to the learning, service, and relationships that develop within curricular and extracurricular partnerships between EMU and our local community. Submissions were judged based on: reflection and thoughtfulness, artistic creativity and competence, and personal community engagement.

First Place: A Drink at the Well Donovan Tann

Second Place: Adventures in Community Learning Melanie Pritchard

Third Place: LaPrisha and Me Heather Nyce

First Place:

A Drink at the Well

Donovan Tann

In a drought, to ask for a drink of water
may seem presumptuous. I came to this town
in a cloud of dust; dry sandal foot on parched
earth, three years barren. The sky waved wisps
and spare, sparse arcs of desert clouds that denied
three times, three years the fall of rain.

Kindling is rare where stunted trees stay small
in the shadow, burning shadow of relentless
sun overhead.
I interrupt--
I ask to hear her story drawn out in long, honest
tones--to taste it in cakes of bread, bananas, and
water.

When the widow gathered sticks at the well,
I had not known the span of so many years,
what it meant. When the widow gathered water
at the well, I could not know what the motion meant,
what swirled in the muddy water:
marah.

No words on my youth, my small-town ways, no shame,
but she treated me with every honor of her varied life
in all its combinations--
just simple bread of flour and oil, toasted evenly.
A generous hospitality.

She showed me her home, showed me where
she laughed with the girls during the war, cadet nurses,
where it was the First Air-Force boys bled.
They were married; it was
interrupted--a change of locale
at the last minute, but happy--a small ceremony, but happy.
A veil was lifted.

And there was water in the well to begin with, and there
was oil and flour--she had given me her flesh and blood,
saying, eat and drink: this is my history, told for you,
and I wondered what knowledge I had partaken of
but that I learned to love this land, this Sidon, these mountains,
this history that stretches toward Goshen, in the bread of the South.

Author's notes:

I have written primarily about my experiences recording oral history through interviews for the Honors Colloquium, “The History We Tell Ourselves.”

drought – Elijah in Sidon; also the Great Depression.
marah – Hebrew: “bitter”
ceremony – Interviewee’s wedding was moved by her husband’s Navy orders.
Goshen – Where the Israelite slaves lived in Egypt; Goshen, VA, her hometown

Second Place:

Adventures in Community Learning

Melanie Pritchard

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Third Place:

LaPrisha and Me

Heather Nyce

I'm five weeks into volunteering at Latin American Youth Center's Art & Media House in Columbia Heights. Every Friday at 3:30 I ride the H8 bus to 15th and Irving, get off and walk half a block, and climb the steps to the brightly painted house that serves as a media learning center for DC youth.

It's not the best neighborhood--I try to leave for the bus back before it gets dark--but nothing out of the ordinary has interrupted the normalcy of my end-of-the-week routine. Until today. The H8 turns down Columbia toward 15th, and stops. The homeless man across from me continues to jabber on about John Grisham; he noticed the book I was reading and suddenly had a lot to say. I'm half listening because this seems like more than the usual after-school traffic. It takes five full minutes to inch down the length of what is an average city block, and as I reach to pull the cord for my stop, I see the caution tape.

This incident in itself ends rather anti-climatically; about seven police cars blocked off 15th Street and I had to get off a bit farther from the A&MH. I say goodbye to my fellow Grisham lover and get off the bus, and I hear a "Hey!" from behind me. Turning around and looking down, I see LaPrisha, a kid from the Photoshop class I'm on my way to help out with. I ask him if he knew what happened. He says, without much surprise or concern, that someone probably got shot. That part of our discussion ends there--he gallantly hands me his umbrella as it starts to rain and we walk toward the A&MH, talking about what we'll do in class today and how that was his grandfather driving the bus we were on. I think that we must look like quite a pair, a short black 12 year old kid wearing a backwards hat and a college-age white girl trying to hold an umbrella over both of us. Once we enter the house and go up to the Photoshop room, Allison, the teacher, jokingly reprimands us for being late. LaPrisha tells her how there were police cars and caution tape back at the corner, and a kid across the room casually says, "Yeah, someone got a lil pop-pop-pop." As I put my stuff down and grab a seat next to LaPrisha, I don’t know whether to be more disturbed by what happened or by the kids' apparent jaded view of it.

I found out on my first day at the A&MH that these kids get exposed to the harsh side of city life early on, but it doesn't make things like this much easier to swallow. Growing up in rough neighborhoods means that kids of only 12 or 13 see crack dealers around the corner, friends getting killed, and dreams of better things that rarely get realized. They don't talk about the bad stuff that happens because they don't know what to say. They laugh because they don’t know how else to react. Yet the more I think about it, the more I can relate. It's a struggle every day in the city to not let the negative get me down, but I find that when I succeed in that I often react just the way that the kids at the A&MH house do--I don't talk about it, or I make light of it when I do. What I'm learning through my time in DC and more specifically through volunteering with these kids is that we must find a balance, a way to process the negative in a healthy, constructive manner. It is essential to find joy and learning in each day to even the emotional scales. And that is, I suppose, the greatest lesson I've learned from the youth at the A&MH--to find ways to smile in spite of the sadness. LaPrisha came into class from seeing a crime scene in the neighborhood where he goes to school, and proceeded to create some great work in Photoshop. That's not to say he wasn't thinking about what happened, and I don't know what he goes home to or if he has someone to talk to about it. But he could put it aside for two hours to focus on something he loves doing. He's a great kid who has a lot to offer, and I hope that he can continue down a good path.

Allison lets us out a little early, around 5:45 instead of 6:00. I'm happy because we're leaving at 7:00 for our WCSC house retreat and I've still got to pack. LaPrisha is going to stay and work a little more on this week's lesson on creating text with "bling." His says "Shorty 4Life." He picked that, he says, because he's always going to be short, and then expresses his dismay over the fact that his younger sister is already taller than he is. He gives me a high five and says, "See ya next week!" I smile and return the comment, and walk out of the A&MH wondering what, exactly, next week might hold.