Infinity: A Play About Perception
One by one, a small crowd assembled in front of the Parkman Bandstand on the Boston Common. People sat on the grass, taking in the April afternoon sun while a guitarist draped in an American flag strummed and strolled among them.
Six girls in gray t-shirts and jeans, and another with a bullhorn, walked slowly to the ‘stage’ in front of the pavilion and stood in formation facing the audience. “America…land of infinite possibility,” they chorused. “This land is your land, this land is my land. This land was made for you AND me. There are people who are lonely, people who are in pain, people who need a vision, a perspective for their lives and our world which is purposeful and life changing…”
Guitarist Adam Gosselin plays "America the Beautiful" during the performance
The actors, students from the Suffolk University Theatre Department, call out their lines above the city soundscape of sirens, barking dogs, an unexpected bagpipe nearby and planes overhead. And Infinity, the play, has begun.
“We have to do this”
The vision and mission of the outdoor performance is drawn from a semester of community service work, a daily awareness of the homeless population in Boston, and a personal connection two ambitious students, Rachel Kelsey ’08 and Purnima Baldwin ’08, have to those in homeless circumstances, and they have something to say about it. Theatre major seniors and friends, they developed the idea for Infinity to co-produce a play about homeless and non-homeless people finding a common ground. Read more
Perfect Form: The Coach & Suffolk U
On Suffolk’s campus, Jim Nelson is “Coach.” It’s the name used by his assistant, the interns, the locksmith, and multitudes of athletes, colleagues, and staff. Though he retired from the head basketball coaching spot over a decade ago to take on the role of athletic director full time, the name sticks. It’s a familiar, welcoming title, earned by an engaging laugh, a self-deprecating wit, and an extended reach during Nelson’s more than four decades at the University.
Coach Jim Nelson, in the Suffolk gymnasium located underground in the Ridgeway building.
But he hasn’t always been Coach. In his corner office on the second floor of the Ridgeway Building, Nelson, 66, leans back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest, recalling a time when he went by another name: Dmitri Nestios. Nestios was Nelson’s alias, adopted six years after taking the assistant athletic director and assistant basketball coach jobs at Suffolk.
Nelson had been a standout guard at Boston College, and—after graduating and taking his first job at Suffolk—had been playing semi-professional basketball around Boston. When a friend brought a recruiter from a Greek league team to check out Nelson’s talents, Jim wowed the scout with his famous dribbling routine: Lying on his back, he dribbled with two hands, then with just one finger on each hand, then just the pinky, and then while doing situps. The team offered him a contract and renamed him Dmitri Nestios, which translated to “Jim from the Islands.” Because, as Nelson was told, you had to be Greek to play. Read more
Teaching & Mentoring: The 1-2 Punch
From the Civil War through the 1920s, Brockton, Massachusetts thrived as one of the world’s premier shoe manufacturing centers. By the 1950s, the hardscrabble city 30 miles south of Boston claimed bragging rights as the birthplace of undefeated heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano. Twenty years later, when Marvelous Marvin Hagler entered the ring, the city added a middleweight champion to its scorecard.
Today, though the fight motif is still in full swing around the “City of Champions,” Brockton’s greatest boast is probably its high school—the largest in New England. A beige colossus flanking the road behind the Rocky Marciano Stadium, Brockton High School houses 4,358 students and a faculty of 331 women and men. Among these educators is history teacher Gregory Hazelwood BA ‘98.
Brockton High School history teacher Greg Hazelwood leads students in a warm up for Black History Month presentations with the song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the "Negro National Anthem." "It's a very positive song. Some students know the first stanza, some know all the lyrics."
“I wish every kid in the school could have Mr. Hazelwood as a teacher during their career here,” says Brockton High School principal Dr. Susan Szachowicz. “He brings history to life. But the most important lessons he teaches are about character, how to treat other people. Greg uses every moment as a teachable moment.”
“Good afternoon!” Mr. Hazelwood greets the students heartily as they file into class. “Today we’re going to name stereotypes and we’re going to talk about how to counteract them.” Read more
Journey: Learning Beyond the Classroom in El Salvador
It’s hard to wrap your brain around El Salvador.
Even Lonely Planet, which has built an empire writing guides to less traveled roads, seems unsure what direction to take with this country. “Falcons and hawks fill the skies above fabulous food festivals and bomb craters,” the online guide states with awkward cheer. “Friendly locals like to chat, diverting your gaze from the gangs and refugees to beautiful broad valleys.”
On the way to work the last day in El Sitio. Pictured clockwise from left: Franciso Peguero, Jeff Pomponi (hidden), Luis Castillo, Yanitza Medina, Megan Cullen, Dean Grubb, Derek Lomba, Kaitlyn Winegardner, Valerie Gonzalez-Crisci.
Suffolk junior Jeff Pomponi wasn’t quite sure why he decided to go to El Salvador for S.O.U.L.S. Alternative Winter Break. “I just wanted to go somewhere different because I knew over the winter break there wouldn’t be anything to do, and I wanted a change,” he says. “Once I got to El Salvador, I realized I’m supposed to do this …. I had a reason to be there that I didn’t know going in.”
Inspired by a legacy
Over the first two weeks of 2008, Pomponi is one of a dozen Suffolk students and five faculty and staff members living and working in El Sitio, a poor rural town in El Salvador’s mountainous north, trading time at home between semesters for a service learning project far away. Their primary assignment is to complete construction of the Concha Acoustica (acoustic shell), an outdoor stage and arena for community gatherings, before El Sitio’s annual Festival for Peace and Social Justice. Read more
