Pregled posta

Marketing

Thirty-Six/ Fifty-Two 9.3.10 - 9.9.10

Julia Anich Hull, wife, mother, Professor Emeritus, and force of nature, died Sunday, September 5th, 2010.

She was born in Akron to Nick and Mary Anich September 2nd, 1923, their second oldest. She spoke Serbo-Croatian until she began public school where she learned English, as children will, given a chance. Because of her experiences, especially with her first and eighth grade teachers, she determined to join their ranks as an educator.

She graduated from East High in 1941. Despite her grandmother’s derision, with the moral support of her father she enrolled at the University of Akron and began taking education classes. It was with a heavy heart that she determined that there was no way in hell she could stick out that course of study, basket weaving being her particular bane, and so she became an English major, abandoning all hopes of teaching.

After graduation she cast about as the job market for English majors then was about as bleak as it remains. Then she did what all English majors do: applied to Graduate school. Whilst retrieving her transcript one spring day in 1947, she bumped into the English Department Head. He inquired with a straight face whether she had found employment and told her of his dire need for bodies to throw before the flood of returning veterans attending college under the GI bill.

She took up the task of teaching men older than she who had seen the ravages of war (and the actual buildings they would read about). She bunked in an office with her former professors which was intimidating in the extreme. As the end of the term approached, she asked her mentor, Ruth Putman, whether she thought that they would keep her on. Ruth replied, in her Alabama drawl, “Oh, Joo’ya, you just stay until they tell you to leave.” And so she did for the next 43 years.

Having already applied to Western Reserve University for graduate work, and in spite of the fact that she had actually managed to land a job, she began taking classes. A part timer in the English department, John Hull, offered to drive her to Cleveland since he was studying there as well. After the first trip she returned home and told her older sister “I’m going to marry him.” John evidently did not get that memo.

They worked together, rode together, and socialized together for years while she finished her MA but it was only after a drunken party at the home of Leonard and Nellie Bertsch that he got up the nerve to propose. She said yes. He threw up on the way home. She cried herself to sleep. However, with her father’s blessing they wed and their marriage was a match for the ages, still remarked upon. They brought out the best in each other. “Cut off in the flower of his youth,” John died October 2, 1971 after a prolonged illness leaving Julia alone as the single mother of their only child, Jane Alexandra, nearly thirteen.

Julia had a great ability to communicate her enthusiasm for literature and the arts. She coached the debate team, helped start The Johnson Club, an academic social club, advised Alpha Lambda Delta, Freshman scholastic honorary, performed in faculty plays, taught literature, drama, poetry, and Western Culture, and almost always got stuck with at least one Freshman Comp class until she was so old that they felt sorry for her and stopped assigning it to her.

She had an extraordinary combination of kindness and sardonic wit, yet a sharp eye for the ridiculous and the despicable. She loathed faculty meetings although she enjoyed her colleagues--many as friends and some as cannon fodder. As her niece put it, “When she comes at you with open arms you are never sure whether you are walking into a hug or a propeller.” She enjoyed argument, that which weaker personalities call “fighting.” She loved art and cooking and was happily making French food after that other Julia’s book came out. She enjoyed music and was very grateful that her husband faithfully supported the nascent Akron Symphony since she found it painful to listen to in the early years and didn’t want to go. She loved to travel and had an unerring sense of direction: she was always exactly wrong, which, if you consider, is as good as being always exactly right. She enjoyed torturing her daughter with art and architecture lessons whenever they traveled (Clerestory, mom. Flying buttresses. Barrel vault...)

She was lucky enough to find a neighborhood of loving and fun friends and she lived there from 1956 until she died. She was an avid gardener, antique hunter, and fixer-upper. The parties with the Slocums and Gentners were some of her fondest times. There was the Momus Club, a monthly gathering of faculty for the purpose of food, merriment, and argument (fighting). All in all, not a bad life for a girl from east Akron whose funny name kept her from rushing any of the sororities at Akron U.

Dr. Johnson wrote, “While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates

Venturing deeper into the volatile seas off the coast of Yemen towards Somalia and Djibouti, fishermen like Abdalla Abrahem must spend more time and travel further into these troubled waters to find fish and support his family. Earning at best $10 a day, Abrahem and the rest of the people in the small village of 600 called Dobaba, along the hot arid Red Sea coastline, are one of the communities that are in dire need of food assistance.

Heading off the coast of Yemen in Bab al Mandeb, a narrow strip of sea only 12 miles across where the Middle East and Africa are there closest, Abrahem and I and a few others head out for a day of fishing.

I arrived in this area after a three-hour drive from Taiz. Descending down more than 4,000 feet through a lush oasis-like winding canyon with palm trees and camels everywhere, the temperature must have increased 30 degrees or more.
I arrived at the village of Dobaba and was shocked to see a series of villages in the middle of this unforgiving landscape and families trying to scrape by on the wind-swept plane. It’s one thing to not have enough to eat, but another thing all together to have to by your water.
Yemen isn’t just food insecure, it’s also facing a water crisis. Yemenis consume 2.8 billion cubic meters of water while renewed water in the aquifers does not exceed 2.1 billion cubic meters. Estimates indicate that the Western part of the country, where nearly 90 percent of Yemen’s population lives, will run out of water in the aquifer in ten years. Drilling in this region requires going to the expensive depth of 1,000 meters. Compared to only 40 meters 25 years ago. Nothing about this village is sustainable and yet they cannot afford to travel the long distance to Taiz let alone afford to live in such a city. Furthermore, their dependency and skill sets revolve around the sea.
Yemen’s food problems stem from multiple sources going back many years. During the Gulf War in 1991, Yemen supported Iraq politically, but not militarily. In retaliation, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait expelled as many as one million Yemenis. The Yemenis and their families relied heavily upon remittances. As a result, unemployment skyrocketed and inflation has run rampant.
Recently, rebel activity and border conflicts with Saudi Arabia have prevented Yemen’s ability to develop oil reserves in the North. Yemen’s oil refining industry relied on crude from Iraq and Kuwait, which dried up during the war and meanwhile, the US slashed its economic aid by nearly 90%, further fueling the fires of discontent and sparking the growth of the Fundamentalist Islamic movement.
Back in the village, Abrahem's daughter Shema attends a government-run girls school. “We are thankful that our children can receive a good education, but we still need food.” “What good is education when you can’t eat?”

After returning from the Sea and we give our fish to a local cook and we enjoy the best meal I’ve had on this trip. Relaxing and taking in the much-needed shade, I see a group of people walking towards the building. It’s a group of completely exhausted Somali refugees that just landed on the beach.

As I spend my last day in Yemen, hundreds continue to flee civil conflict in Somalia by making this hazardous journey across the sea I was just on all arriving on the beach I’m enjoying my lunch. Nearby is a makeshift graveyard that the UNHCR has buried over 500 bodies recovered on the beaches around Bab al Mandeb.

These exhausted new arrivals, who are given automatic political asylum, will soon be picked up and driven to the camp that I was at last week.

Another full day; convicting to use the word exhausted. I have no idea what that word means.