A blog on the first 30 days after college graduation said this: “You have a lot on your plate, from searching for a job to figuring out your living arrangements to plotting your finances. With all of these variables, this can be an incredibly confusing time.” Thank you for fishing out the most obvious response master google. But could google offer me any advice on how to sacrifice my sanity amid this thirty-day crisis? Google’s response was this: “Remember, however, that you’ve achieved a lot and reached the point where you can finally live life on your own terms.” Well at least I still have my keen ability to bullshit, a skill I honed successfully throughout my pursuit of an undergraduate degree in useless theories on real life. With that I can at least feign sanity until the whole situation blows over.
I did return to the job search again this morning, not much else to do on a cloudy memorial day. But my search was quickly interrupted by Internet disconnect when my roommate decided to use the house phone to make a call. For the past few months, none of us have bothered to call the phone company to fix the fact that our Internet and phone line can’t be used at the same time. Today, I was just glad it gave me a good excuse to find some other way to occupy my time.
I headed down to the kitchen to put together meal numero uno for the day. I first thought of making spaghetti, but then decided to get a little more ambitious. I make this black bean stew that everybody really loves and today I noticed that I had all the fresh ingredients to make it from scratch. Giddy at the thought of spending the next hour or so cleaning, dicing, peeling and spicing, I dove into the project whole-heartedly. I roasted corn, peeled carrots, and chopped onions all morning to my heart’s content. I’m still amazed at how sharply my attitude towards cooking has shifted in the past few years. I used to despise it. Maybe I saw cooking as a fulfillment of some debilitating female stereotype. But now, politics aside, I find it so relaxing. It’s a fun little project to create something really tasty and original. Plus, I find most prepared food I buy either too bland, or shamelessly flavored with too much salt. Finding my own savory blend of spices has turned cooking into a fun little adventure.
After finishing up with my bean stew prep work and getting the mixture on the oven to simmer, I decided to tend to my new vegetable garden on the balcony. I just planted spinach and cucumber seeds and bought tomato and jalapeño plants from the nursery yesterday. I’ve got quite the little botanical oasis started on my perch. I’m pretty excited about the garden, because as soon as the fun of gardening has paid off, I’ll be able to cook with the crop. I love how the two hobbies complement each other.
Life after graduation is still in the beginning stage of course, but I believe I’m in the midst of the hardest part of the transition. My drive to accomplish tasks each day has lost the majority of its momentum. I’m staggering to complete anything and dragging along from one day to the next. I woke up at one in the afternoon today thinking it was still nine in the morning. I unknowingly slept half the day away when only a month ago I was never able to sleep past eight in the morning.
The hardest part of all of it is the vast amount of options that lay before me. I realize now that I never considered life without the structure that school provides. The concept totally blindsided me. I’m looking out at a vast gray area of competing options. If I think too much about the future, I’ll never get anywhere in the interim, if focus too much on the now, I may lose sight of my long-term goals. I feel the heavy weight of adulthood responsibility lowering down on top of me. My childhood vigor and curiosity have escaped my recollection.
I don’t really expect anyone to read about my struggle and see it as unique or intriguing. I suppose it’s more just to spell out my struggle in a more tangible way. I think getting over the hump involves a great deal of self-exploration and re-connecting with one’s old hobbies. But also I think one can find serenity by connecting with others in the same stage of life, reaching out to each other even if only to help occupy the time on the more fruitless days; when you find someone else to join in your struggle, at least you can distribute some of the weight.
It has been thirty years since Teatro de la Jeune Lune (Theater of the New Moon in French) began its journey in 1979। In that year, Co-founder Barbara Berlovitz and three of her fellow classmates of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq School of movement-based theater in Paris, France were burning with fresh inspiration. The company spent the first several years switching back and forth between Paris and Minneapolis, but after the first five years, the company finally settled in Minneapolis.
“Paris is like New York City, it’s difficult to find space…any little hole in the wall is a goldmine। “In Minneapolis we were supported,” said Berlovitz, “we [knew] Minneapolis somewhat…so if we [wanted] to rent a theater or if we [wanted] to see if we could get funding we [knew] some of the people.”
The Echo asked Berlovitz when she and her co-founders knew it was the right time to pursue the creation of Jeune Lune। “The four of us decided in our own different ways that the theater that we were seeing …was not what we wanted to be doing,” said Berlovitz, “it basically came out of discontent. We wanted to open a new path.”
Berlovitz quoted her teacher and mentor Jacques Lacoq as saying, “I’ve given you the tools to create a theater that doesn’t exist, now go out and do it।” Lacoq was experimenting with the idea of theater that originated from moving the body. Movement theater, Berlovitz explains “is an approach to acting with the idea that everything starts with movement and the voice comes after.”
This physical element became the signature trait for all Jeune Lune productions। Exaggerated and grotesque characters have adorned their stage, telling their personalities without words.
Like many smaller, experimental theater companies, Jeune Lune was not immune to financial instability। The Echo asked Berlovitz what got the company through the rough patches they experienced before the ultimate closing last summer.
“I would say it was a total commitment to our vision,” said Berlovitz, “anything that we did, we knew that we had this goal in supporting this vision that we would eventually reach।” Berlovitz mentioned that when times were rough financially, all the company members lived together or with family to save on housing costs.
The vision Berlovitz mentions was of a “theater that was for an audience of today; we were never interested in doing plays just because they were good play,” said Berlovitz. “If [they] had to change some of the text or [the setting],” that was acceptable as long as they were sharing a new experience with their audience. “Most of our shows were visually beautiful,” said Berlovitz, “I wanted [the audience] to see something they had never seen before.”
Juene Lune was nationally recognized for their regional theater efforts with a Tony in 2005 and the company has toured their work on the west coast for years in addition to their productions in Minneapolis।
Unfortunately for Berlovitz and the many loyal fans, Juene Lune had to close its doors early this summer due to surmounting debt and declining theater attendance.
“In the theater, we certainly walk the line,” Berlovitz noted, “we were never able to have a safety net of cash।”
This past weekend the company held a rummage sale at their old theater building to liquidate their assets. Tables of posters listed for $5 a piece were the only tangible remnants of the body of work that was realized in the old warehouse building. Their chandeliers still hung above boxes of old hats and dusty plywood. Buyers carried out chairs, dresses and other set pieces that they purchased for bargain prices while still carrying a look of disappointment on their faces.
The Echo asked for a comment from the workers that day, but with a stern reply were told “There is no story here…if you’re not here to buy, you should leave।”
Berlovitz looked on the verge of tears at the mention of the sale, but we quickly moved on to what this new chapter of her life has in store। Berlovitz is now working with the Augsburg theater department; she directed her first Augsburg production, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in 2007. She is currently directing Samuel Beckett’s Eleutheria, set to open in late January in the Tjornhom-Nelson Theater.
“It’s a great place to come to try ideas and to give experiences to the students that come out of a conceit that is very specific to a specific group of people,” Berlovitz explains, “What I can do is I can bring my understanding of the theater experience to the students here।”
Berlovitz has many projects aligned post-Eleutheria, including an all female production of King Lear at the University of Minnesota। She also mentioned that she will be working on her own original show with the help of a grant she received from the Fox Foundation.
“The thing I think about Jeune Lune, something I’ve thought about in the last few years…I think that we did things that said to people that certain things were possible, that it was possible to make a change, it’s possible to take a risk and it’s possible to believe in your own self and what you have to say. It doesn’t have to be earthshaking, as long as it’s what you have to say.”
The Augsburg Theater Department will be presenting Samuel Beckett’s Eleutheria for this year’s winter main stage production. The production will feature guest director, Barbara Berlovitz, of the Tony-Award winning Theater de la Jeune Lune. Berlovitz and the rest of the creative team have worked to create a grotesque interpretation reminiscent of the Jeune Lune theatrical auteur. Fat-suits, white exaggerated faces and gender-bending extreme characterizations breathe a bold new life into the Beckett piece.
Eleutheria was originally written in French in 1947 and was the first dramatic play that Samuel Beckett ever completed. However, because Beckett completed his existential masterpiece Waiting for Godot very shortly after, Eleutheria received little notice or mention. The play was finally published in English in the mid 1990s was first staged in 2005 at the City Theater of Tehran in Tehran, Iran.
The plot is centered on the action, or inaction rather, of Victor Krap (Brandon Ewald). At the start of the play, Victor has been in a state of self-inflicted exile for about two years. Throughout the play, Victor’s parents (Melissa Warner, Alex Hapka), his fiancé (Ali Fitzpatrick) and several other eccentric characters attempt to bring him out of his alternative state of being. This production makes some rather sharp statements, facilitated by an energetic cast, about what it takes to be “normal” and “happy.” Eleutheria (Greek for a state of liberation) questions the meaning and purpose of societal values, relationships and personal fulfillment.
The preview did not feature costumes, but the set is a clever embodiment of the plot themes. Constructed mostly of windows with opaque glass and doors that do not open, the set (design by Michael Burden), forms a symbolic representation of Victor’s state of mind.
This production is being called a “workshop” production, for which Berlovitz and Jeune Lune have been famous. A workshop in this sense means that the final product comes together through the collaborative and creative ability of the whole cast throughout the rehearsal process. The characters are studded with creative facial work, over-the-top physical expression and clever use of props.
The play will open Friday, January 30 in the Tjornhom-Nelson Theater located in Foss Center. The show will run through Sunday, February 9. Admission is free with a donation of a non-perishable food item. For information on how to get tickets for Eleutheria visit www.augsburg.edu/theater or call 612-330-1257.
The Augsburg College Women’s Resource Center recently teamed up with the Minnesota Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (MN-RCRC) to host a screening of the film Sacred Choices: Ten new things to consider. This screening took place last Friday, February 20 in the Women’s Resource Center.
The MN-RCRC promotes that “every woman should be free to make decisions about having children according to her own conscience and religious beliefs” and that “people’s reproductive choices are broader when they understand how their bodies function and when they have opportunities to practice decision-making in a safe environment with adults who care about their well-being.”
The documentary Sacred Choices reveals ten new issues for people to consider if they believe abortion goes against their religion. Images of women at pro-life rallies flood the introduction of the film. “Not the Church, not the state, women must decide our fate,” is one of the many slogans chanted by seas of pro-life protesters. Among the notable demonstrators in the film, is Whoopi Goldberg, an avid supporter of the Roe vs. Wade decision.
The topics of consideration range from general religious freedom to the obscure case of a 9-year-old rape victim in Nicaragua whose life is threatened by her country’s religious opposition to abortion.
The film offers a plethora of reluctant testimony from Islamic spiritual leaders, rabbis, Catholic and protestant priests, and nuns. Islamic scholars site verses in the Quran that suggest that a fetus does not have a sole until it is 120 days old, which is significant considering the film also states that 91 percent of all abortions take place in the first trimester. Christian Scholars also defend similar verses in the Bible, but do not site them specifically.
These pro-choice supporting clergy men and women assert that women should be able to choose how they want to participate in their own religion. They also stress that women should be able to make reproductive choices without fear that their church will cast them out. They encourage viewers to think beyond the parameters of pro-choice and pro-life and really examine why they believe what they do about reproductive freedoms.
The film juxtaposes mothers happily holding their babies at morning mass with voice-overs of the Rabbi saying that there are in fact “physical and psychological reasons to justify abortions.” The images encompass the dissonance that many feel when attempting to prioritize religious teachings, parental duty and women’s rights reproductive autonomy.
The audience was all female and many stayed afterwards to discuss personal concerns about the issues mentioned in the film. One point that was stressed in the discussion but not in the film was to education women as a form of prevention. The women felt that if more young girls were taught earlier (like they are in Europe) about sexual responsibility and reproductive responsibility that the number of women seeking abortions would significantly decrease. More literature on this topic can be found in the Women’s Resource Center located in Sverdrup Hall or at www.mnrcrc.org.
This week Augsburg’s Center for Counseling and Health Promotion presented a series of body image related programs for Body Peace week including a special night devoted to rediscovering healthy eating habits. A group of about 20 students met in the Marshall Room where Special guest Sarah Johnson of the Park Nicollet Eating Disorders Institute led the discussion on how Americans can develop a more healthy relationship with food.
Johnson mentioned a 2008 study suggesting that almost 75 percent of women in America report distorted eating, which is not synonymous with eating disorders, but is a habit that can lead to their development. In addition to bad habits, Johnson says 67 percent of women say they are trying to lose weight. She purported that men’s statistics were similar to women’s, but noted that men’s cases are often under-reported.
The nature of the dietary advice was mostly preventative. Johnson warned that ignoring physical and psychological signs of hunger (such as stomach growling, fatigue and mood change) can lead to obesity, but that developing conscious moderate eating habits will allow you to eat whatever you like with little to no impact on your weight. This is because the human body has an innate eating schedule that everyday culture systems teach us to ignore, says Johnson. She suggests that as babies we know when we are hungry or full, but as we enter daily schedules at school and work, we teach our bodies to ignore those natural cues.
The answer to solving this dilemma, Johnson suggests, is to eat consciously every time. Habits such as eating while doing homework can interfere with our ability to notice our stomach is full. If we keep track of what, when and how much we eat, Johnson says we can re-program our natural hunger cues and steer our body in a more healthy direction. She mentioned that jumpstarting this process may involve making yourself eat in the morning if you normally skip breakfast.
The major culprit for these rising eating disorder statistics, Johnson says, is the commercial media that creates mixed messages about proper eating habits. Growing serving sizes at restaurants were also blamed for over-eating trends. The Eating Disorders Institute advice is to ignore “left-over guilt” and quit eating when your body tells you it’s full.
Lastly, Johnson concluded that, contrary to popular media headlines, “There’s no food that is always bad.” She emphasized the importance of a well-rounded diet because the body needs a variety of nutrients to function, including fats and sugars. She presented statistics showing that when people restrict their diet to limit “bad” foods, it increases anxiety and preoccupation with those specific foods. By telling yourself not to eat certain foods, you can increase your chances of binge eating when you finally do eat them.
Park Nicollet’s number one principle of intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality. They suggest that you throw out the diet books and eat whenever you want in moderation in order to achieve your body’s natural weight. They also suggest that you “make peace with food” by stopping the dissonance between what you want to eat and what you think you should eat. And of course, supplementing your food habits with exercise is also recommended.
Other Body Peace programs included a Monday night screening of the documentary “Killing Us Softly,” which deals with the portrayal of women in commercial media. Also, showing today, Mar. 6, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Century Room, is the documentary “Starved”, which shows the journey of 5 women in recovery from their eating disorders.
Making peace with your body can take longer than a week. The Center for Counseling and Health promotions offers counseling on these and other issues throughout the year. For more information about CCHP or to make an appointment with a counselor visit their website at www.augsburg.edu/cchp.
Because Augsburg prides itself on its community engagement, leadership and vocation, it is gratifying to see Auggies who have long since graduated doing their part to spread Augsburg’s mission in their professional careers around the country and the globe.
Recently the Echo received a message from a retired Augsburg Professor, Lyla Anderegg, telling us about one Augsburg Alum in particular who is faithfully representing Augsburg’s mission in much warmer part of the country. His name is John Ennen and he is running a small chain of coffee shops in McKinney, Texas. In an interview with the Echo, Ennen tells about his experience at Augsburg, what brought him to Texas and his hopes for the future of his family business.
Ennen is a Minnesota native who grew up in Minneapolis. His family owned and operated the Ennen Supermarket formerly located where the Target Center now stands in downtown Minneapolis. Ennen attended what is now Totino Grace High School and started his college career at the University of Minnesota.
Turned off by the extremely large class sizes at the University, Ennen transferred to Augsburg in 1981 where his younger brother Bill Ennen was also studying. He mentioned that he and his brother often engaged in friendly competitions to see who could earn the highest grades. Ennen specifically recalled a course they both took at Hamline through the ACTC program in which they each strived to score the higher grade. “We both got A’s,” Ennen said.
Ennen studied business at Augsburg at a time when the business program was just starting out. In 1981, the business degree was possible largely in part to the consortium program (ACTC) which allowed him to take many of his business courses at other schools while still getting the Liberal Arts Foundation at Augsburg. Ennen also received minors in Psychology and Economics. Ennen attributes his psychology interests to his respect for Professor Anderegg, with whom he took five courses to receive his minor.
“[Anderegg was] one of my favorite professors and the reason I hung around and got my minor in psychology…she had a great perspective on involvement in social causes,” Ennen said. “A lot of what she taught became a part of me.” Ennen mentioned that he and Anderegg still keep in touch and that she recently attended a surprise party of his in Minnesota.
Ennen finished his degree at Augsburg in 1984 and took a job in Canon Falls for almost two years. He then sought an MBA in Texas which eventually brought him to the Historic town of McKinney. After receiving his Master’s degree Ennen entered the corporate world working for several Fortune 100 companies. He met his wife Mary while they were both working for the Four Seasons Hotel Corporation.
With the help of Mary’s background in Architecture, the Ennens developed and launched their first coffee shop in McKinney called Coffee N Cream. This coffee shop features high end coffee served fresh or in take-home bags as well as Blue Bell tm brand ice cream, a flagship brand of Texas. Coffee N Cream is also a friendly place to sit and enjoy free Wi-Fi internet access.
Ennen says this whole coffee shop idea started because “ [he] could never get sweets in the afternoons” at his job downtown. “The concept grew and took hold [from there],” he said.
The Ennen’s now have two Coffee N Cream locations, one in McKinney and one in Allen, TX. They are also in the process of opening a second shop in Allen.
“We want to prove the concept with this new [Allen] store,” says Ennen, “in the hopes of breaking out of corporate America.” Ennen’s concept for Coffee N Cream is to create an environment “where neighbors and friends meet,” this is also their store motto.
The Echo asked Ennen if Augsburg has influenced him in his business career and his mission for Coffee N Cream.
“Undoubtedly,” Ennen said. “Augsburg’s always been important to me.” Ennen says that Augsburg has really stuck with him over the past twenty years. He and his wife are dedicated to serving their community through their faith and their involvement in charities. They see Coffee N Cream as a way to give back to the community while becoming an important part of the community.
Ennen looks to his father and grandfather’s example when running his business and wants to really bring the “family into [his] family owned business.” The Ennen’s have been married for nineteen years now and have four sons, Zachary, Jacob and twins Tanner and Garrett. Ennen’s Brother Bill, is now in the commercial real-estate development business in Naples, Florida.
Coffee N Cream features the work of local artists and musicians in their shops and also started a Beans for Troops program last holiday season where customers could purchase one-pound bags of their premium coffee to be shipped to the troops in Iraq.
The Echo asked Ennen if he had any advice for Augsburg’s graduating class this year.
Ennen replied, “[Don’t] be afraid to really pursue something that inspires you…[don’t] listen to nay-sayers,” and “step out and take that risk for reasons only you understand.”
