Ephesians 4:1-6 (NIV)

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Reflection:

Tahir Iqbal was a Pakistani Muslim by birth who received a Bible from a friend and was subsequently converted to Christianity as he read it. After his conversion, he began to joyfully reach out and witness to others, especially the children in his village. On December 1990, Iqbal, a paraplegic, was arrested for his faith, where he remained imprisoned until his death. Aware that he could be executed by hanging, Iqbal said, “I’ll kiss my rope but I will never deny my faith.” As a prisoner who saw life beyond the threats in his own life, his life has become a testimony of a life worthy of the calling.
The Apostle Paul was arrested several times throughout his ministry and wrote many letters from prison. So from this perspective as a “prisoner for the Lord” he urges us to also passionately live out the calling we have received; a calling to be lived out jointly with fellow believers in the church. Through the Spirit’s empowering, we can experience the beauty of growing together in unity with humility, gentleness, patience and love for one another. Yes, as fellow “prisoners” for the Lord we have been called to one hope, one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all!

Response:

Spend time in prayer today thanking God for this wonderful calling that you have received. Ask the Lord to open up your eyes to the reality of this life so that you too may experience the joy of serving together as part of His church in advancing His Kingdom!

At his San Francisco museum, UMBC alumnus Jerry Cimino ’76 makes sure the world is still hep to one of America’s greatest literary movements.

By Jenny O’Grady
Photos by Mirissa Neff and Brittany Powell

The Beat Generation was a uniquely American movement – producing pockets of poetry and art across the land. You could find them in 1950s New York City in their early days clustered around Columbia University – or down in the cafes and jazz clubs of Greenwich Village. Some of them found refuge at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. And they drank and declaimed in juke joints across the Midwest and the Southwest.

That restless urge to explore great spaces is at the heart of Beat verse and prose. But if you had to pick an epicenter of the movement, you’d likely choose San Francisco’s North Beach – and specifically the crossroads of Broadway and Columbus Avenue.

That’s where you’ll find one of America’s great literary meccas: the checkerboard-floored City Lights Books, which was founded by poet/ publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953. Right next to it is the Vesuvio Café, a popular watering hole of poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. And just up the street, at 1562 Grant Avenue, young writers spent hours smoking dope on a crooked stairwell called “Poet’s Corner” – and then headed to the press next door to check galleys of the latest chapbook.

North Beach is also where you’ll find Jerry Cimino ’76, history. From the book-lined open air porch of the Beat Museum, which he founded in 2003 at 540 Broadway to pay homage to a generation of writers and artists who continue to inspire him, he takes in the rich history of this historic section of the city. He savors it. And he can’t help but share it with anyone who will listen.

“What we like to say is: ‘Welcome to the center of the universe,’” enthuses Cimino, with the flair of a modern day P.T. Barnum. “Because you’re at Broadway and Columbus right now – and everything that happened with the Beat Generation happened right here at this intersection.”

The museum’s walls reflect this, exploding with colorful posters, books, author photographs, drawings and videos covering every surface. One wall is devoted completely to editions of Kerouac’s On the Road from around the world. Another shows an early version of Ginsberg’s “Howl,” complete with scrawling edits by the author – enough to make even the biggest bookworm giddy.

More than 60 years after the Beats’ heyday, the culture has found a true evangelist in Cimino, a determined man driven by respect for the inclusive, nonconformist ideals the Beat authors represented. With a little elbow grease – and some recent attention from Hollywood – he’s on the road to making a lasting tribute to his heroes.

“IT KNOCKED ME OUT”

Cimino grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, the son of a WWII vet-turned-postal clerk. His first encounter with the music and movement of the Beat writers came when a teacher read poems from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s classic collection A Coney Island of the Mind to his eighth-grade class.

“That whole book of poetry literally changed my life…it knocked me out,” says Cimino, who to this day can recite the book’s fifth poem, “Sometimes During Eternity,” from memory.

“You know, 1968 is when it all happened,” Cimino recalls. “Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. Martin Luther King was shot and killed. The Vietnam War was raging, and all of us kids were looking at each other and saying, ‘What in the hell are we inheriting?’”

When Cimino arrived at UMBC in 1972, he was among the few students actually living on campus at the time, splitting time between what were then called “Dorms 1, 2, and 3.” He says that many of the bonds that he formed in that era at UMBC – including friendships with older students freshly scarred from serving in Vietnam, and with closeted gays who trusted him with their secret – would forever change his own way of thinking. He also enjoyed some time on stage with the theatre club, sharing the bill (but, sadly, never the stage) with one-time UMBC student Kathleen Turner in a 1975 campus production of Antigone.

“For the first time in my life, I was interacting with a lot of people who weren’t like me,” says Cimino. “And that’s what the Beats were all about – coming together and really celebrating your differences… they were about tolerance and compassion and having the courage to live the most authentic life you can.”

Jonathan M. Cooperman, who roomed with Cimino at UMBC before finishing a degree in physical therapy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, recalls a thoughtful, passionate friend who also had more hair back then.

“He is very much the same guy to me now as he was then,” says Cooperman, who is now a member of the Beat Museum’s board. “If you walked into his room at three in the morning, the door would be cracked open with light pouring out into the hall. If you walked inside, Jer would be sipping tea and reading a book – usually Kerouac.”

Although he loved history and other subjects he’d studied at UMBC, Cimino graduated without a clear career path to follow. So he went with the flow in which he found himself, relocating to California and forging a successful career in sales for both IBM and American Express.

VOICES THAT SPAN GENERATIONS

Over the years, however, Cimino and his wife, Estelle, started craving something more than a career in business. His continuing affection for the Beat literature he had read as a young man led him to befriend John Cassady – the son of Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady, who is immortalized in the character of “Dean Moriarty” in On the Road.

Cimino also began building a collection of Beat generation memorabilia which eventually became “The Beat Museum on Wheels” in 2003. And just as Dean Moriarty took off across the country with Sal Paradise (the character representing Kerouac himself in On the Road), Cimino and Cassady drove “the mighty beatmobile” across America’s highways in October 2005 – even parking it overnight in Commons Circle at UMBC.

Cimino says he reveled in the chance to share his growing collection with UMBC students and see his old campus. And faculty members were happy to have a bit of the Beats in Catonsville.

“The students enjoyed visiting the museum on wheels, with all kinds of interesting, hard-to-get publications and memorabilia, and just hanging out with Jerry and John,” says UMBC associate professor of English Piotr Gwiazda, who helped organize the appearance.

The Beats cast a spell over today’s students now just as much as ever, Gwiazda says.

“Whenever I teach ‘Howl,’ students respond with interest,” he says. “There still seems to be something magnetic about the work of Beat Generation writers: the idea of community it embodied, its counter-cultural aspects, its philosophical dimensions, and of course its sheer verbal power and vitality.”

STAR POWER

Of course, interest in the Beats has never been limited to college students reading in circles on the grass. A new Hollywood treatment of Kerouac’s On the Road – which features Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame and Viggo Mortensen from the Lord of the Rings films – is traveling the festival circuit now and scheduled for general release later this year.

Cimino couldn’t be happier about what the new film means for the legacy of the Beats – and for the future of his own museum.

“It’s just great, have you seen it?” he says, cueing up the movie trailer on a screen above the museum’s entrance. Since filming began in 2010 under director Walter Salles, Cimino says members of the film’s cast have visited the museum and asked questions about their characters.

The cast and crew even dropped off a surprise prop from the film at the museum. Just to the right of the museum’s check-in desk sits a dusty maroon 1949 Hudson Hornet used during filming and driven to its resting spot in North Beach by none other than the movie’s star Garrett Hedlund (“a really delightful young man,” says Cimino), who portrays the everrestless Dean Moriarty.

Beside it stands a sign: “Walter’s only request of us was that the dust and grime – accumulated on the car during the 5,000 miles he and Garrett spent traveling the country making the film – remain undisturbed. Walter considers this ‘the Holy Dirt of America.’”

“You know, every fingerprint has a story,” says Cimino. “It’s important to keep that history intact.”

That’s a major part of Cimino’s job as curator: making the story of the Beats accessible and fun for anyone who might wander in. He loves every second of his evangelism for the movement and its great writers.

“The museum is successful because it represents a significant part of American culture and American literary history,” says Cooperman. “The opening of the movie On the Road demonstrates how this literature is still relevant.

“Of course, the fact that Jerry is probably as knowledgeable of the Beats as any academic doesn’t hurt either,” he adds. “He’ll ultimately be successful because he has a passion for what he does.”

NOW AND LATER

Passion is one thing. But, if you’re wondering how a start-up museum makes it in such difficult economic times, here’s your answer: It ain’t easy.

But the Beat Museum now survives and thrives thanks to Cimino’s magnetic business sense and a lot of hard work.

Just above Cimino’s desk hangs a complicated organizational chart showing a collage of boxes representing duties spanning everything from marketing to merchandising to fixing the guest toilet. One line connects them all.

“And every one of those boxes has my damn name on it,” he jokes. “That’s just how it is.”

The museum’s collection has grown as fans discover it. Cimino admits that “most people who love the Beats don’t have a lot of money,” but as fans of certain writers have discovered his museum, the memorabilia contributions have flowed in steadily. There’s a plaid jacket once worn by Kerouac, and a creaky pipe organ owned by Allen Ginsberg. There’s even an original “Can YOU pass the acid test?” card from the days when Neal Cassady drove Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters across the country in a psychedelic bus – a trip immortalized by author Tom Wolfe in his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. (There’s also a film version of that book in works, to be directed by Gus Van Sant.)

Over the years, Cimino also found mentors to advise him as his plans for the museum have grown. He singles out the late Kim Greer, who was president of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, until his death in 2006.

“I have people come in every day telling me what I should be doing,” he says. “But I only take advice from people who have successfully done what they’re telling me I ought to do. It’s easy to guess…but that’s not going to get you anywhere.”

Right now, the Beat Museum is just as Cimino would like it to be: full, eclectic, engaging. Not too smooth, or too uniform: that wouldn’t fit well with the artists that it celebrates. Mismatched shelves offer hand assembled chapbooks by local poets. A claw-footed bathtub filled with dime store novels invites visitors to try something new. There’s a definite flavor to the place – a sort of San Francisco sourdough bite.

Cimino would enjoy having someone else fix the toilet from time to time. More important, however, is growing the Beat Museum so that it can stand strong for generations to come. That’s his next step.

“I started this place the only way I know how. I built it from nothing,” he says. “Now we’ve built a track record, we’ve made it succeed with the blood and sweat of a lot of people. If this thing’s going to outlive me…I’m going to have to think big.”

• VIDEO: Interview with Jerry Cimino ’76, founder of The Beat Museum
• Read Jerry’s blog from his 2005 visit to UMBC
• Read Jerry’s review of Walter Salles’s new movie, On the Road

Image From the Guardian

“I.D. Please !?!’

That question is normally heard at a college bar rather than a polling place.

But last year has seen a wave of efforts to require voters to show ID before casting their ballots at the poll.

We’ve written about this in the past, but in case you missed it, here’s the gist.

Republican state legislators across the country are proposing voter ID laws in order to combat election fraud and prevent people who are eligible to vote from voting.

Click here for an overview of voter ID laws by state and here for an update on legislative action in 2012 on the issue (I just love the National Conference of State Legislatures, don’t you??).

Opponents find two big problems with this logic – first, this kind of voter fraud is rare.  Second, these laws discriminate against a lot of different people – most notably college students, transgender people, African-Americans, and the 11 percent of eligible voters who lack ID.

The debate on this issue is heated. Supporters argue  they’re trying to protect the integrity of the election process. Democrats assert  the Republicans are trying to stop traditionally Democratic voters from getting to the polls.

But while this debate over voter fraud and voter ID continues, it’s interesting to remember that a lot of fishy business goes on during elections.  Here are just a couple examples from recent news.

The day before the recall election in Wisconsin reports of robocalls intending to suppress the anti-Walker vote surfaced.  The calls advised voters that

If you signed the recall petition, your job is done and you don’t need to vote on Tuesday.

The source of the calls has yet to be confirmed (though State Senator Lena Taylor has her suspicions) and there’s no way to determine how many voters were deterred.

In the 2010 Maryland gubernatorial race, a series of robocalls went out the night of the election to heavily black neighborhoods.  The calls told voters to relax, Democrats had already won, and that there was no need to vote.  Just last month, consultant Julius Henson and campaign manager Paul Schurick for the Bob Ehrlich – the Republican challenger – were convicted for conspiracy.  The calls are reported to have reached over 50,000 voters.

And just last week, Florida finally halted a purge of their voter rolls.  The review was supposed to remove ineligible voters but in fact was disenfranchising thousands of voters – the majority of whom were people of color.

Check out the Rolling Stone’s coverage of the purge for more info.

…And let us know how you vote on the issue of voter I.D.

We love the internet and we love politicians, which is why we really love seeing those two things together. @ScottKWalker on Twitter, or Wisconsin’s governor as you may know him, posted this gem today just in time for his recall vote.

President Reagan died on June 5, 2004. Let’s win one for the Gipper!

We get the spirit and the energy, but something just seems kind of weird about this. A little exploitative, even?

Clicking the image above will give you a chance to see the original post in all its glory, along with the responses its still garnering. As @TheNewDeal points out:

RT @ScottKWalker Let’s win one for the Gipper! / “Where free unions & collective bargaining are forbidden, Freedom is Lost” -Reagan #WIunion

Regardless of what happens in today’s Wisconsin recall vote, we’re always really happy to see how politicians express themselves in 140 characters or less.

The never-ending battle between advocates of the prescriptive and descriptive schools of language was touched off in the last few weeks, starting with a May 14 article in The New Yorker titled “The English Wars”, written by the magazine’s dance critic Joan Acocella. Weighing in with Acocella on the side of the prescriptive approach was lecturer Ryan Bloom,  English, who in a May 29 blog post on The New Yorker‘s website noted one contradiction in particular on the part of many descriptivists:

“When it comes time for them to write their books and articles and give their speeches about the evil, élitist, racist, wrongheadedness of forcing the ‘rules’ on the masses, they always do so in flawless, prescriptive English. Ensconced behind a mask of noble ends, something obscenely disingenuous is happening here. How easy it is for a person who is already part of the linguistic élite to tell others who are not that they don’t need to be,” he wrote.

The response from many on the opposing side was swift, with Harvard psychologist/linguist Steven Pinker writing in to the online magazine Slate that “most writers who have given serious thought to language are neither kind of iptivist”, while also stating that “[t]he fact that many prescriptive rules are worth keeping does not imply that every pet peeve, bit of grammatical folklore, or dimly remembered lesson from Miss Grundy’s classroom is worth keeping. Many prescriptive rules originated for screwball reasons, impede clear and graceful prose, and have been flouted by English’s greatest writers for centuries.”

Each year, the Alumni Association Scholarship program helps amazing students succeed at UMBC. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some of their stories with you. This week, meet Melanie Dell ’12, the recipient of this year’s Alumni Association Legacy Scholarship.
Name: Melanie Dell
Major: English
Grad Year: May 2012
Hometown: Catonsville, Maryland
What are you involved in on campus? I have been an editor of the UMBC Review: Journal of Undergraduate Research for the past two years.
Please share one of your favorite memories of your time at UMBC. There are two memories of my experience at UMBC that particularly stand out. The first one was reading the New Student Book Experience autobiography The Glass Castle for my English 100 class during my freshman year and attending a book talk at UMBC given by the author, Jeannette Walls. Reading and discussing the book in class, then hearing the author speak in person about her book was just one of the many interesting and unique learning experiences I had during my time at UMBC. My other fond memory was of a Shakespeare course (English 351) I took during my sophomore year. During the last class period of the semester, all of the students had to take part in performing an act from the play King Lear outside of the Fine Arts recital hall. We had to decide who played which parts, what act we were going to perform, and what costumes we were going to wear. Engaging this closely with the play allowed me to form a new appreciation for the Shakespeare plays that we had discussed and analyzed all semester.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned here? I’ve learned the value of diverse opinions and the importance of actively pursuing subjects that interest me. UMBC has cultivated my desires to increase my knowledge.
What are your plans for after graduation (if you know them)? Or, at least, what are you hoping to do? I will pursue a Master of Library Science degree at Clarion University in fall 2012. This is an entirely online program, which will allow me to concurrently work full-time at a public library.
What’s it like having a parent who is also an alum of UMBC? Did that factor into your decision to come here? When I was younger, my father would always tell me how invaluable his education was at UMBC. Although I applied to other universities, UMBC was my top choice because of the positive comments I heard from my dad about how this university provides the best resources, professors, and environment for its students.
How has the scholarship helped you? (And, do you have others?) I have funded my own education since I started at UMBC. I was awarded the President’s Fellows merit scholarship, but since that only covered a portion of UMBC’s tuition, I still had to make up the difference each semester. I would often work many hours during the week at a nearby public library to make sure that I did not have to take out loans or graduate with debts. Because of the Alumni Association Legacy scholarship, I was able to spend less time working in my senior year and more time focusing on school.
What would you say to the alumni who helped fund your scholarship? I want to express my sincerest gratitude and thanks to the alumni who helped fund my scholarship.It was an honor to receive this award.
Meet more members of the Class of 2012 here.

Each year, the Alumni Association Scholarship program helps amazing students succeed at UMBC. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some of their stories with you. This week, meet Melanie Dell ’12, the recipient of this year’s Alumni Association Legacy Scholarship.

Name: Melanie Dell
Major: English
Grad Year: May 2012
Hometown: Catonsville, Maryland

What are you involved in on campus? I have been an editor of the UMBC Review: Journal of Undergraduate Research for the past two years.

Please share one of your favorite memories of your time at UMBC. There are two memories of my experience at UMBC that particularly stand out. The first one was reading the New Student Book Experience autobiography The Glass Castle for my English 100 class during my freshman year and attending a book talk at UMBC given by the author, Jeannette Walls. Reading and discussing the book in class, then hearing the author speak in person about her book was just one of the many interesting and unique learning experiences I had during my time at UMBC. My other fond memory was of a Shakespeare course (English 351) I took during my sophomore year. During the last class period of the semester, all of the students had to take part in performing an act from the play King Lear outside of the Fine Arts recital hall. We had to decide who played which parts, what act we were going to perform, and what costumes we were going to wear. Engaging this closely with the play allowed me to form a new appreciation for the Shakespeare plays that we had discussed and analyzed all semester.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned here? I’ve learned the value of diverse opinions and the importance of actively pursuing subjects that interest me. UMBC has cultivated my desires to increase my knowledge.

What are your plans for after graduation (if you know them)? Or, at least, what are you hoping to do? I will pursue a Master of Library Science degree at Clarion University in fall 2012. This is an entirely online program, which will allow me to concurrently work full-time at a public library.

What’s it like having a parent who is also an alum of UMBC? Did that factor into your decision to come here? When I was younger, my father would always tell me how invaluable his education was at UMBC. Although I applied to other universities, UMBC was my top choice because of the positive comments I heard from my dad about how this university provides the best resources, professors, and environment for its students.

How has the scholarship helped you? (And, do you have others?) I have funded my own education since I started at UMBC. I was awarded the President’s Fellows merit scholarship, but since that only covered a portion of UMBC’s tuition, I still had to make up the difference each semester. I would often work many hours during the week at a nearby public library to make sure that I did not have to take out loans or graduate with debts. Because of the Alumni Association Legacy scholarship, I was able to spend less time working in my senior year and more time focusing on school.

What would you say to the alumni who helped fund your scholarship? I want to express my sincerest gratitude and thanks to the alumni who helped fund my scholarship.It was an honor to receive this award.

Meet more members of the Class of 2012 here.