Here we go. In truth, one of the strongest reasons I wanted to engage you, my students, in research grounded in your lives is that I’m trying desperately to get you to care. Education has been forced into following a business model for decades. But colleges change slowly; they are large, slow institutions that cannot pivot quickly. That’s a feature, not a bug. We want colleges to be thoughtful, democratic, open. We want lots of people to be involved in decisions and shifts.

But between AI and the success of the PR campaign about how “college is a scam,” we are at long last in full-blown crisis. College is not a scam. It’s the single greatest factor in your lives that can change your material and intellectual lives. You can’t control the social class into which you were born, or your racial/ethnic/cultural identity and the ensuing discrimination that diminishes opportunity for you.

You can control your education.

You’re here at one of the top 20 community colleges in the country. Your classes are taught by highly specialized experts in the field. Everyone I know who teaches at Harper wants to change lives. We want you to care. We want you to engage in the process of transformation and challenge. We want you to value craftsmanship and effort. We do not want you to succumb to the dominant rhetoric: that grades alone matter, that a class being easy is the same as a class being good; that things like art, music, and writing are a waste of time; that “skills-only” education is the way to go. The result of these beliefs is nothing but an obedient worker who won’t challenge existing systems or hierarchies.

Think of who is being driven out of college these days, and ask yourselves who benefits from that. Think of how, ten years ago, we were closer than ever to true equity in education, and how the system kicked in to create backlash, leaving the wealthiest and most privileged to thrive at rigorous, Ivy League schools while other students bought into the lie that they are somehow victims of a “scam.”

There is alternative, and it’s about giving a damn, questioning authority, challenging existing norms. The most radical thing you can do as a student today is actively engage in true education. Reject the focus on rubrics (truly, these are made to trick you into thinking there’s an empirical system of measurement for creative work–“give students a grid and numbers so they think it’s legitimate data, not opinion”). Reject grade-mongering and extra credit for mercenary purposes. Reject the path of least resistance for its own sake. Follow your interests, passions, questions. Take chances. Upend the system.

To do that, you have to get in touch with your own voice. I want you to write original work that helps you understand yourself and the world around you. I don’t want you to think what I think. I want you to think on your own, based on actual facts and personal integrity. So what I’m trying to do now is engage you in your story. How do you connect to an essay, story, or poem? How can you ground that in peer-reviewed, solid information? I want you to write original work because you alone can offer insight into yourself and your story.

I still care passionately about what I do because I am still learning. Curiosity is a wonderful thing, a joy that carries people through, even when our material lives are hard. And the most radical, rebellious, punk thing I can do is continue to believe that the weapons of the mind are how we change the world.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to go to a retreat center for a few days, during which I also took a side trip to visit a library that promised to have primary records I hoped to use. Two important aspects of this:

First, I arrived at a very small local library in Coldwater, Michigan, where I met with a librarian I’d corresponded with about using their archives to research the Coldwater State Home. I can’t emphasize enough how important librarians are in the research process, far better than Google can ever be. Librarians know the sources and know other people who know more, and so on. So when I arrived in the archives room, the librarian met me with an arranged and sizable pile of materials she had pulled to help me out. I found some amazing images and documents, including coming to a much better understanding of what the population was really like when my grandmother was there. Disappointingly, I also learned that many things like rosters and ledgers had been sent to the official Michigan State Library and Archives in Lansing, the state capital. Then, as we were discussing this, a woman conducting her own research chimed in and asked me what I was researching. Turns out she not only had information about the hospital to share with me–anecdotal, admittedly–but also that she had attended school with my mom! From her, I heard stories about the impression my grandmother had made, and some hilarious stories about my mom. Small town life.

Second, the retreat center itself was nothing short of remarkable. I had a tiny cabin mostly taken up by a desk in front of a picture window overlooking the woods. I had no internet, no signal at all, just my mind and my research materials (and very good coffee). Though I completed much of my education way back before the internet, it’s been a long time since I had that kind of silence. It was uncomfortable and crucial. One day, I drafted nine or ten poems, the kind of work I can’t achieve in my daily life. My advice is to find times of NO interruption. Leave the phone, music, television, computer–just think and write. This obviously can’t happen in the research-gathering phase, but later it can be the key to figuring out your voice and angle. Think of it as being able to see from a new perspective.

Finding information is one part of this process. But another part is figuring out how to handle or present that information, especially when it’s messy.

For weeks, I’ve been trying to settle on a form and angle for a poem about my ancestor Samuel Miller (my 3rd great-grandfather). Here’s what I know about him: born in Maryland, went west to Ohio in 1830 or 1831 with his brother and elderly mother, established a farm. That farm became a stop on the Underground Railroad. So I have this amazing ancestor who became a conductor and risked imprisonment to help enslaved people get to freedom. Great story, right?

Samuel Miller is also a man who went west to Ohio to claim “free” land that had been violently and ruthlessly “cleared” of Native Americans who had lived there for centuries. Jackson’s soldiers forced the Seneca and Erie, among others, from their land and, at gunpoint, marched them to the utterly unfamiliar territory of Missouri. Later, they were pushed further west to Oklahoma. Historical accounts tell us that settlers like Samuel would have seen evidence of those who lived there–longhouses, clearings, even domesticated horses that had been left behind but lingered close to the land they’d known. He saw, but either he didn’t deeply see or he didn’t care. Oof.

Most of history is like this: the co-existence of what can loosely be termed good and evil. To make a narrative compelling, it’s easier to choose one. Are you seeing Jekyll or Hyde? But the truth of the amazing novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that no one can separate their worse and better natures. American history wants the righteous Samuel, the one who took risks to save lives and free people from slavery. And I feel a true pride that he lived his beliefs when it came to abolitionism. But. But he is also part of the problem when it comes to the horror of Native American massacre and land theft. Every generation since has benefited from that. It haunts me, truly, and I try to make amends.

What’s my responsibility as a writer? I think it’s to find a way to present both. And honestly there’s never been a more important time in our world–don’t worry, I won’t go too far off the dirt road here–to be able to understand how more than one story can be true at the same time. There is no moral purity.

I swear, I’ve rewritten the poem about Samuel at least 30 times. I’ve experimented with voice, space on the page, word choice, everything. It’s a hot mess, and if the poem makes it into the manuscript, it will be the result of bruising work. The work of the poem. But also the work of understanding that I, like Samuel, am most likely someone’s bad guy in ways I don’t fully understand now. We all are.

Research–as much as we hate to admit it–starts with an educated guess. The fancier word for this is hypothesis, but I don’t want to follow the scientific method metaphor too far in a field where outcomes are far less objective. I believed when I started my research that I would find answers, and from those answers I would develop poems.

What’s actually happening? I’m at a crossroads. I can focus on one of two directions. Down the first road is the continued, obsessive search for information. Down the second road is the acknowledgment that I already have a ton of information but no answers. The scholar in me wants to keep digging, hoping against hope that somewhere there’s documentation to fill in the events of lost decades or centuries. I get engrossed in finding clues and seeking sources. In grad school, as I researched a relatively obscure author, I went to the British Library to look at manuscripts in person, in a gloriously analog process I hope you can all experience someday. It was delightful. But there is no massive library keeping track of poor kids in the 1920s and 1930s, few records from the crowded immigrant neighborhoods of manufacturing towns in the Midwest, nothing explaining why a relative of mine ended up here or there.

So now I have to lean in to the questions. For my students, this is often overwhelming. Guess what? It’s overwhelming for me, even after degrees and decades. What will the manuscript look like if the hypothesis needs retooling? I can’t find all the answers I want. I can’t just “change topics.” Instead, I have to fall forward into the uncertainty.

Next time I write I’ll talk through a poem that does exactly that.

My maternal grandmother kept journals. It’s not unreasonable to expect these to be good sources for information, especially given what an outstanding writer she was. And I have so many questions I’m seeking answers to, especially about her childhood and young adulthood. I know she lost her parents within months of one another when she was 16. I know she did not move in with her older sister, who was married and living on a farm nearby. I know she was responsible for her younger brother, who was 10 at the time. And I know that at some point she was living at Coldwater State Home (aka Coldwater State School) which was a place for unwanted/orphaned/abandoned children. I have no idea if my great-uncle was with her. I don’t know if she was there as a ward of the state or as a young worker/nurse–her age puts her in a grey area when it comes to her role. Later she teaches at different schools, goes to college off and on, gets through the Great Depression, and more. It’s a lot. And she never, ever spoke of that. Of course, there are few historical records to corroborate anything she might have done, though I’ll head to Coldwater later this month to poke around the archives of their public library.

Back to the journals. They are intermittent and mostly cover years after 1950. Even though they were written long after the events I’m curious about, I’d hoped she would reflect on her memories. With the exception of a few precious insights that I’ll be examining elsewhere, what I’ve found is a meticulous record of daily tasks, weather, how my grandfather was feeling (she was obsessed with the idea that everyone she loved might die at any moment).

Cut away the boring filler and what struck me was the number of omissions and even lies. My grandmother was an unreliable narrator. Example: my mother suffered a serious trauma her freshman year in college that resulted in her hitch-hiking home and begging fruitlessly for help/comfort. That does not appear in the journals at all, just a mention that my mom might request a different dorm room. Although I absolutely believe my mom, as a researcher I have to admit that I have no witnesses or information to verify what really did happen that weekend when she said she was brutally turned away and silenced after something terrible had taken place. Next example: my grandmother records how my sister and I had a wonderful time with her, happily playing and visiting for a few days, when we stayed with her while my dad had surgery. But the thing is, I was there. I remember it. My sister remembers it. My mom remembers it. We were miserable. I cried non-stop, scared of being away from my mom and dad, terrified that my dad might die, unhappy around these people who seemed to do nothing but judge me on my manners, appearance, weight, the audacity of being barefoot in the front room. We were so unhappy that my mom drove four hours to pick us up early, brought us home, asked one of their friends to stay with us, and went right back to the hospital to be with my dad.

Methodology dilemma: What do I do with research when I know it’s not true? I find myself feeling more and more like I did when I was researching for my dissertation decades ago, not like someone learning about their own family. The skills I have to deploy are those of a literary scholar. Given the unreliable narrator, what can be learned? Bracket for a moment the possibility of an “answer.” Think instead of what the misinformation/obfuscation/omission means. What can I learn about my grandmother now that I know her own words are not accurate? Well, one thing I can look at is what she wanted to be true and what that represents. In her case, I have a hunch that her time as an “unwanted” child whose own sister wouldn’t take her in left her feeling like she had to constantly prove herself good enough to be part of a typical family. Problems with her daughter or granddaughter? Not at all!

The other thing one has to consider (as I run out of time for today) is the very core of journals as a genre. Some are indeed written only to be private–my own notebooks are a mix of poem drafts and thoughts never meant for an audience, and in fact I get rid of old ones. Others, like my grandmother’s, I expect, are written with the fear or hope of an audience peeking over the writer’s shoulder. She wasn’t being honest to begin with, not fully. She was writing herself into the life she thought she should have.

No answers, then, just moments of emotion and more confusion. Such is the unreliable narrator. I could really use a reliable one here and there.

I’m looking for facts, truth to flesh out what I have been told as well as what has been omitted. The complex history of generations past means that my sense of “family” was limited to the four-person household I grew up in: my parents, my sister, and me. That’s it. There were living relatives, but none that we could rely on–some had moved half-way around the world, some were geographically close but not people we could trust or, in at least one case, be safe with. I’ve wondered for a long time how we came to be this way, and that only accelerated after my father’s death in 2023. So what I’m trying to find is the truth of who/where/what we were.

To do that, a most obvious start is asking my mom for all the stories she knows about her own and my father’s family. Oral history is often vivid, personal, and remarkable. It’s also incredibly unreliable. We alter our memories, merge events, forget details. Sometimes the gravity of what happened contributes to that–my mom and I remember the day my dad died differently, and it was only last year. Oral history needs corroboration, or at least interrogation. If I can’t confirm a story, I have to look at it through the lens of my literary studies: What purpose does this story serve? What does it represent? What is being said, and what is missing?

Confirmation as well as revelation of entirely new information come from a variety of sources, both analog and cutting-edge. Sites like Ancestry can be very, very useful–that’s where I learned about the Irish ancestor I mentioned in my last post, for example. The work genealogists and archivists have done allows for instant access to their records. The downside of this is that it’s incredibly overwhelming for me, since my own family on my mom’s side just keeps going and going. But I should note that this specific overabundance of information is limited to some populations. Black Americans have a much more difficult time, though there are more and more people working to uncover family histories that were lost to slavery. Jewish genealogy is recorded differently, and the losses of the Holocaust present another obstacle. On my dad’s side, records of the Polish and Irish immigrants who came to the country are difficult if not impossible to find, because the fact is that there was minimal record-keeping of poor, largely unwanted immigrants. But on my mother’s very wasp-y line, ancestors are well-documented, nicely recorded, etc. Not a shock, I guess, given how history has worked.

Beyond that, I can go to Newspapers.com, an absolutely invaluable source for uncovering all the stuff no one talks about. It’s a revelation. It’s also a perfect demonstration of how search terms are so important. Take my Great Uncle Lee. His birth name was Leander Firestone Weldin. Or Weldon. And he went by Lee–sometimes. Or Lee F. Weldin/Weldon. Leander F. Weldin/Weldon. I mean, think of all the ways your name can be recorded, and add in some centuries-old uncertainty about spelling, and you have a LOT of terms to search. Geography can help narrow this, as well as time frame, but it’s still a tremendous amount of scrolling. If an ancestor has a common name, it’s drudgery. As I said, though, an excellent source. A family might skip something like an arrest, a divorce, a bankruptcy. Or the story of a death. Newspapers didn’t edit out the drama; they sold papers on it. The moment I find something unexpected is a little adrenaline rush.

I’ll be visiting some libraries in the next couple months to look at archived material that hasn’t been digitized, namely information and records related to the Coldwater State School, a home for unwanted, orphan, and disabled children where my maternal grandmother lived after her parents died; and the Grand Rapids Preventorium, a facility for underweight/malnourished children living in poverty who were deemed to be at risk for tuberculosis, where my paternal grandfather was housed for a year or so.

I also have my maternal grandmother’s journals, which she kept sporadically. From what I’ve looked at so far, she wrote with awareness that someone might read them, so I’ll be studying them more for omissions and allusions than for revelation.

In one case, I have sent (and paid) for a death certificate. In that case, the circumstances of the death were important and there was no obituary. But for the most part, I think the main investments in research are time and energy, not money.

Here’s the thing with research, and what makes it absolutely thrilling at times (really!): You know what you’re looking for. You have no idea what you’ll find.

Before I get going, I want to mention that I tend to revise and edit a lot. A lot lot. So in order for this blog to serve its purpose and not become a whole project in itself, I’m setting a timer for every post. Ideally, 15 minutes. 30 max. It won’t be my most carefully constructed work, in other words, and shouldn’t be seen as representative of the kind of prose I can produce with more time. I hope to blog twice a week, though it might vary!

Onward. The Book Blog Project is my effort to share the process of composing a book of poetry with my students in all the courses I teach: English 101, 102, Creative Writing, Poetry, Nineteenth Century British, whatever else comes my way. This book is a kind of docupoetry, which means it’s based on–and will probably integrate–primary source documents that I locate through research. I want readers to be able to see what in-depth research can uncover and how it can change the researcher. The documents in this case are primarily family and social/contextual history. I’ll share what I find and how I find it; what I just can’t find no matter what I try; the unexpected paths research revelations take me down; how it challenges both my craft and my self, such as it is. So while a lot of readers might not care much about the poetry, I hope they can see how engaging and rewarding research can be, especially when you connect yourself to the work in a personal way.

My book has a working title, but I’m not putting it out there until I see if it fits what I end up creating. In my vision–and in the work I’ve started over the spring/summer–the book is a sort of origin story, a way of looking in the mirror and asking the very same question I posed above: What the hell is this? Contemporary discussions of origin/history/ancestry often involve the concept of “the body keeps score”; in other words, our very genetics alter due to generational trauma. (Side note: I hate the overuse of the word “trauma” and generally avoid it, but I won’t digress on that now. Suffice it to say that I only employ that particular word when no alternative works.) Research about this assertion is sketchy (another digression I’ll avoid) and I approach it with the squinted eyes of a skeptic. Although I’m not convinced the Irish Potato Famine altered my family’s genetics, I’m absolutely sure that the experience of boarding a famine ship in 1848 and somehow ending up digging the I & M Canal affected my ancestor Laurence Walsh in a way that impacted his children, their children, etc. Somewhere, along one line, there’s a piece of me that came from a man who left all his family behind to dig ditches in Morris, Illinois. And that was supposed to be an upgrade, a better life.

Where is that piece? What has it given/taken/changed? What can I learn from it? Those questions inform the more creative element of crafting poetry. But for students who aren’t writing poetry, maybe learning something like that could lead into a deep dive into Illinois history, or a better understanding of how the Irish came to be such a force in the US, or a look at racial/ethnic exploitation in labor.

My clock has run out for today, and it’s off to the poems.