E A S T C A R O L I N A U N I V E R S I T Y
GETTING THE SKINNY ON EXERCISE
Also in this issue: Staging a career,
Advances in aviation safety,
Reflections on the Tex-Mex border
r e s e a r c h a n d c r e a t i v e a c t i v i t y SPRING 2005
EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
Spring 2005
w w w . n e w s . e c u . e d u
PUBLISHER
Dr. John Lehman
Interim Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
John Durham
Director, Public Affairs
EDITORIAL BOARD
Dr. Alan A. Schreier
Director, Program Development and
Coordinator of Institutional Compliance
Marti Van Scott
Director, Office of Technology Transfer
EDITOR & SENIOR WRITER
Garnet Bass
DESIGNER
Linda Noble
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Cliff Hollis
Marc J. Kawanishi
edge is published by the Division of Research
and Graduate Studies at East Carolina University.
Any written portion of this publication may
be reprinted with appropriate credit.
COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS
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East Carolina University
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20
24
9
15
features
9 Rx: Exercise
Studies at the Human Performance Laboratory refine knowledge about the
benefits of exercise.
15 Rooted in Theater
After early ambitions as a farmer, John Shearin finds fertile ground in acting,
directing.
20 Decreasing Cloudiness
Forecasts of commercial feasibility help clear way for improvements to aviation
safety.
24 Chaos in South Texas
A sociologist who spent two years shadowing the U.S. Border Patrol reflects on
fear, frustration along the Rio Grande.
profile
28 Exposed
Could foods, chemicals, air pollution lie behind diseases associated with chronic
inflammation? A physician suggests itʼs time to find out.
on the cover
Jennifer McCartney, a study coordinator for the Human Performance
Laboratory, coaches study participant Marian Mills in a trial comparing
the health benefits of different exercise regimes: resistance training, aerobic
exercise, or a combination of the two. ECU and Duke University are
collaborating on the study. A previous collaboration found that even modest
amount of aerobic exercise can halt middle-age spread. Story begins on page 8.
edge t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s
edge • SPRING 2005 • 1
2 abstracts
• General Assembly funds
Cardiovascular Institute
• Music professor wins fellowship
• Maine scholar to lead research,
graduate studies
• From black holes to blocked
arteries — a unified theory
of a different sort
• Unschooled artist captures
imagination, dedication
• Surprise finding caps dive
on old shipwreck
• Art professor earns hall of fame
honor
• Getting down to basics with
swallowing disorders
31 explorations
• Two Sides of the Coin
Geographers ask how Latino
immigration affects communities in
rural N.C., Mexico.
• Direction Central
Unlocking protein synthesis holds key
to development, disease.
• En-Chanting
For musicologist, complex 15th-century
church music unsurpassed.
• Fugitive Slave/Best-selling
Author
Victorian specialist traces the North
Carolina connection.
35 in print
• A look at recent publications by
ECU faculty.
2 • SPRING 2005 • edge
General Assembly
funds Cardiovascular
Institute
The Eastern Carolina Cardiovascular
Institute took another step toward reality
March 8 when the North Carolina Council of
State approved issuing bonds to finance its
construction.
The General Assembly passed legislation
to fund a $60 million research center at ECU
in summer 2004 as part of larger package for
university projects statewide. The Council of
State vote was the last major hurdle in making
the money available.
The state funds will cover construction
of a 180,000-square-foot center for
cardiovascular clinical research, outpatient
programs and education programs and a
40,000-square-foot addition to the Warren
Life Sciences Building for a cardiovascular
basic science research center. As the other
component of the institute, Pitt County
Memorial Hospital is building a 120-bed tower
to consolidate its cardiovascular services under
one roof. All of the construction is expected to
be completed by late 2008.
“The population of individuals with
cardiovascular disease and those who are at-risk
are extremely important in the overall health
care equation,” Dr. W. Randolph Chitwood
said at the bill-signing last August. “We need
to make sure that they are properly served in
order to gain the advantage over the disease.”
Chitwood, who will serve as the institute’s
director, is an internationally recognized heart
surgeon and ECU’s senior associate vice
chancellor for health sciences.
North Carolina has one of the highest
rates of advanced cardiovascular disease
in the nation, accounting for one in four
deaths. Furthermore, eastern North Carolina
consistently leads the rest of the state in
mortality from heart and vascular disease.
Research at the new institute will leverage
the Brody School of Medicine’s existing
strengths, said Dr. Wayne Cascio, chief of
the division of cardiology, and Brody faculty
members already are applying for grants to
gear up their programs. Cascio named six areas
where research efforts are expected to intensify.
• Congestive heart failure and the
management of heart failure treatment.
Congress has earmarked $750,000 for
program looking at racial disparities in heart
failure occurrence and care, a cooperative
effort involving ECU and UNC-Chapel Hill. In
addition, Cascio said, ECU investigators will
try to learn more about the overall problem
of heart failure in eastern North Carolina and
assess treatments.
• Clinical trials. ECU has conducted
numerous trials of new drugs in conjunction
with pharmaceutical companies. Cascio expects
this effort to intensify “so we can give our
patients access to cutting-edge therapies.”
• Environmental cardiology. Cardiologists
and physiologist will combine to study the
effects of air pollution on heart disease. “We’ve
already submitted four grant proposals and
developed interesting data to support them,”
Cascio said.
• Minimally invasive surgery. Chitwood
is among the world’s leading figures in the
development of minimally invasive methods of
surgery. He and his surgical team were the first
in North America to use the da Vinci robot to
repair cardiac valves, and they later led the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration clinical trial of
the da Vinci robot for mitral valve operations.
Research will continue to further refine surgical
techniques and expand their utility to more types
of surgery.
• Stem cell therapy for heart disease.
Research in animals has shown that adult stem
cells inserted into the heart can be transformed
into new heart cells to repair damage from
disease. A new grant will fund research at ECU
to understand how this transformation takes
place and the best way to deliver stem cells to the
heart. This line of research could result in clinical
trials in humans within five to seven years, Cascio
said.
• Epidemiology. The institute will work with
personnel from ECU’s new program in public
health to understand what is unique about heart
and vascular disease in eastern North Carolina
and develop better methods of prevention and
treatment.
Cascio said the institute will encourage
collaborations with faculty from other disciplines
across the ECU campus and will increase
alliances with other research institutions, inside
and outside academia. “By virtue of having an
institute with a name, we’ll start to get attention
and we’ll take advantage of that,” he said. •
abstract r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
Randolph Chitwood, a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery, will serve as the Cardiovascular Institute’s director
She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology
and philosophy from Queen’s University
of Belfast, a master’s in sociology from the
University of York and a Ph.D. in geography
from The Open University in the United
Kingdom. At ECU, she will succeed Dr. Tom
Feldbush, who retired from
the vice chancellorship.
“I am very pleased
to be joining ECU and the
team Chancellor Ballard is
putting together,” Mageean
said. “I am excited about
the possibilities for research
and graduate studies, which
are already strong. I look
forward to helping them
advance and to seeing the
results translated for the
benefit of the state and the
local community.” •
edge • SPRING 2005 • 3
abstract r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
Maine scholar
to lead research,
graduate studies
Dr. Deirdre Mageean, associate
vice president for research and dean of the
graduate school at the University of Maine, has
been appointed ECU’s new vice chancellor for
research and graduate studies. She will begin
work at ECU on July 1.
In announcing the appointment,
Chancellor Steve Ballard said Mageean’s
experience at the University of Maine, a land
and sea grant institution, positions her well to
lead ECU to greatly expanded research activity.
“Dr. Mageean is an accomplished teacher,
researcher and administrator,” Ballard said.
“Her background with government agencies,
interdisciplinary centers, research centers
and graduate programs is exactly the right
experience to lead our move forward in the
research enterprise. I am delighted that she has
accepted this appointment, and I am eager for
her to get started at East Carolina.”
Mageean has been at the University of
Maine since 1987, first as an instructor and
researcher in the sociology department and
subsequently as director of
the Margaret Chase Smith
Center for Public Policy.
She has been in her current
position since 2002. Her own
research in demography,
socio-economic change
and social policy has been
supported by grants and
awards totaling more than
$3 million. She is a prolific
author of reports and
articles in scholarly journals
and a frequent presenter at
conferences and seminars.
Music professor wins fellowship
Dr. Edward Jacobs, an associate
professor of music, has won the $15,000
Charles Ives Fellowship from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters.
Founded in 1898, the academy annually
honors more than 50 composers, artists,
architects and writers with cash awards ranging
from $2,500 to $75,000.
“It’s a wonderful honor to be recognized
alongside so many distinct composers,” Jacobs
said. “I’m flattered to be included among such
a wonderful group.”
Jacobs teaches composition and
musicology. He is the director of the New Music
Festival at ECU, and his compositions have
been performed by trumpeter Britton Theurer,
choreographer Patricia Weeks and the Meridian
Arts Ensemble. His piece, al momento, for cello
and pre-recorded sound, was commissioned
and premiered by cellist Kelley Mikkelsen.
The academy awards were scheduled to
be presented in May at a ceremony in New York
City. The academy’s 250 members nominate
candidates for the music awards. The Charles Ives
Fellowship was created by Harmony Ives to honor
her husband, the Pulitzer Prize winning composer
Charles Ives. The award, which has been given
since 1970, is considered a distinct honor.
“The Charles Ives Fellowship is named
for an icon of American music,” said Wade
Hobgood, chancellor of the North Carolina
School of the Arts. “The American Academy of
Arts of Letters selection for the award represents
significant recognition of an individual’s past
and future achievement contributing to the
advancement of music in America. Ed Jacobs
and East Carolina University are to be
congratulated on this distinction.”
Jacobs studied at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, and earned his
master’s degree in composition from the
University of California, Berkeley. He earned
his doctorate of musical arts from Columbia
University. His composition teachers include
Mario Davidovsky, Andrew Imbrie, Chou Wen-
Chung and Olly Wilson. •
Composer Edward Jacobs
Deidre Mageean
4 • SPRING 2005 • edge
abstract r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
From black holes to
blocked arteries —
a unified theory of a
different sort
Once it falls in, nothing can
escape a black hole. Not matter, not even
light. These mysterious objects in space are so
dense that anything pulled into their core will
be stuck there forever. Nothing can muster
enough energy to escape.
Except an idea.
Over the past three years, physicist Dr.
Orville Day and mathematician Dr. David
Pravica have combined their expertise to
develop a theory that allows them to predict
the mass and size of black holes based on the
vibrations of energy swirling around them.
Now, in a leap of imagination they consider
only logical, they have found a new application
for their theory: early detection of coronary
artery disease.
Clinical trials beginning this spring
will help prove whether their theory can be
turned into a device that accurately detects
atherosclerosis, plaque formation and
aneurysms based on the vibrations caused
by blood moving past the arterial walls. If so,
primary care physicians, nurse practitioners
and others on the front lines of health care
may soon have a new, low-cost tool to guide
patient diagnosis and treatment.
Most black holes have a disk of matter
and energy swirling around them, somewhat
like the rings of Saturn. Gradually, the material
is pulled closer and closer to the black hole
until it reaches a point of no return and falls
into the black hole itself. Since black holes
cannot be measured directly, a number of
theories have been developed to predict
their size from indirect measures. Most of
those theories are based on the size of the
surrounding disk. The accuracy of these
theories is generally estimated at plus or minus
30 to 50 percent.
Day and Pravica have taken a different
approach. They combined the mathematical
field of complex equations with Einstein’s
theory of general relativity to come
up with estimates based on the
electromagnetic waves trapped in
the rings swirling closest the black
hole. “These signals go up and
down at certain low frequencies,
depending on the resonance of the
black hole,” Day said. The larger the
black hole, the slower the resonance,
he said, just as the thicker strings
on a musical instrument vibrate at
lower frequencies than lighter weight
strings. They believe their equations
are accurate within 2 to 3 percent.
Pravica had previously spent time in
Europe working with physicians interested
in interpreting bruits, the abnormal
cardiovascular sounds that can be heard
through a stethoscope. In May 2003, he
brought those physicians to ECU for a medical
mathematics conference, and with Day, he
began to see possibilities for connecting two
seemingly unconnected fields.
“We’ve been looking at so many waves
from black holes that it’s second nature to
look at wave forms and get a sense of what’s
causing what,” Pravica said. “In the same way
that a black hole will release sound waves or
flares, the body emits sound waves or bruits
for geometrical reasons.”
Healthy, elastic arteries will vibrate hardly
at all, producing little sound other than that
resulting from the heart beat. Arteries stiffened
by atherosclerosis will vibrate faster. Where
plaque has built up, a little whirlpool of blood
on the back side of the blockage will trigger
its own bruit, and so on. Day and Pravica
believe they can determine the condition of the
arteries based on such vibrations. “The math
is possible to reconstruct the whole arterial
system through sound,” Pravica said.
Their tools are a laptop computer and
physiology sensors somewhat like highly
tuned stethoscopes. The sensors, originally
developed by the Army Research Laboratory,
filter out external noise, convert the sounds into
electronic signals and feed the signals into the
computer programmed with their formulas.
In less than two minutes, doctor and patients
could have practical results — telling them,
for example, that the arteries are 30 percent
blocked by plaque.
Day said they expect the device, which
has a patent pending, to sell for a few hundred
dollars. It will not replace the detailed pictures
provided by more costly ultrasound and MRI
machines, but it may prove to be a valuable
tool for screening and early detection.
“If you can tell people earlier in their lives
they’re headed for trouble, you might be able
to delay the onset of serious disease 20 years,”
Day said. “Think of the difference that will
make. It’s like getting a blood pressure reading
once a year now. If your blood pressure starts
going up, you try to get it down. And if you
do, maybe you can stay away from serious
consequences for the rest of your life.”
This spring, the scientists have started
to work with faculty from the Brody School
of Medicine to compare their math-based
calculations against ultrasound and MRI
pictures. While they refine their techniques,
they’re concentrating on measurements of
the aorta, the main artery from the heart,
and carotid arteries on each side of the neck.
Eventually, they expect to add 10 other points
that physicians tell them are critical in picking
up potential problems, primarily where
branching arteries increase the likelihood of
plaque formation. •
ABOVE: Vibrations from black holes and from
arteries yield valuable information. Image courtesy
NASA/CXC/M. Weiss.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 5
abstract r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
Grieving over
the death of his wife, José
Expectación Navarro taught
himself to paint. Over the next
20 years, he created murals
covering his family’s life, Central
American history, Catholic and
Mayan religion — and every inch
of every wall of his modest home
in the remote village of Guarita,
Honduras.
The elaborate murals
represent an expression of
unrivaled visual imagination,
according to Gay Wilentz,
professor of English and director
of ethnic studies. She’s working
with photographer Henry Stindt,
a former ECU faculty member,
to honor Expectación’s work
and explain its context in a book
tentatively titled The Murals of
Don José Expectación: Familia, Patria y Religion.
Wilentz spent much of February in Honduras
investigating the events and culture depicted in
Expectación’s murals.
When it is published, the book may be
the only evidence left of the murals’ existence.
Expectación died in 2001, and despite efforts to
preserve his home, it and the artwork it contains
will likely be demolished soon to make way for a
new home for Expectación’s son.
A school principal for his village,
Expectación worked far outside the artistic
mainstream. Wilentz said the murals display
an eclectic style and were executed in natural
earthen pigments with handmade brushes.
He also wove into the art his own poetic
commentary written in archaic Spanish.
Stindt and Wilentz’s husband,
Agromedicine Institute director John Sabella,
first brought Wilentz’s attention to Expectación.
They had been visiting Honduras in connection
with recovery efforts following Hurricane Mitch.
Expectación was alive at the time, and local aid
workers introduced them. They later returned
with Wilentz and ECU graduate art student
Patricia Hayes, who is drawing on Expectación’s
work for her MFA thesis.
Wilentz also has a second book project
under way, an exploration of the friendship
between writers Fannie Hurst and Nora
Neale Hurston. Hurst was a friend of Eleanor
Roosevelt’s and the author of such popular
1930s tearjerkers as Imitation of Life. She was
Jewish but hid her ethnic identity. Hurston, a
black woman born in Florida, was a critically
acclaimed author of the Harlem Renaissance
movement. A made-for-TV movie of her most
famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was
shown on ABC in March.
Wilentz was a recipient of ECU’s 2004
Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in
Research and Creative Activity. •
ABOVE: Gay Wilentz, English professor and director
of ethnic studies, hopes to preserve the art of José
Expectación Navarro in a book. BELOW: Photog-rapher
Henry Stindt visited with Expectación before
the artist’s death in 2001 and captured the images
below, showing the artist and some of his murals. The
paintings, which cover the walls of Expectación’s home,
draw on religion, history and family life for inspiration.
Photographs courtesy of Henry Stindt
Unschooled artist captures
imagination, dedication
Henry Surprise finding caps
dive on old shipwreck
In the cold, dark waters off the coast
of Alaska, Frank Cantelas had a genuine
“Eureka!” moment last July, but he played it
cool.
The staff archaeologist with the marine
history program, he was on a research trip with
Dr. Timothy Runyan and others from ECU, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-istration
and Alaska agencies to investigate a
shipwreck 80 feet below the surface. On a dive
the day before, Runyan had spotted an object
buried in the sand that seemed worth a second
look. But dives are short when the water
temperature is 37 degrees. Runyan passed the
tip on to Cantelas for his dive.
“I just remember swimming up to it and
slowly fanning the sand away from one end,”
Cantelas said. “All of a sudden, I realized there
were letters there.”
What he read was big news. Still, he just
kept working. After dinner that evening, he
turned to Runyan and casually asked, “Did you
take a close look at that object?”
The Cyrillic letters, on what appeared to
be the brass cap of a wooden barrel, spelled
out Kad’yak. On only the third day of diving,
they had the evidence to identify the wreck as
that of the lost cargo ship Kad’yak.
“It is extraordinary for underwater
archaeologists to identify a 144-year-old
shipwreck this quickly,” Runyan said.
The Kad’yak is the oldest shipwreck
to be identified in Alaska and the first to
be investigated by professional underwater
archaeologists. The discovery made the front
page of the Anchorage Daily News and the
science section of The New York Times. National
Public Radio also featured it.
Shortly after returning from Alaska,
Runyan led another ECU contingent on a joint
operation by the Office of Naval Research
and NOAA trying to locate the remains of the
Navy’s first submarine. The USS Alligator sank
off the coast of Cape Hatteras during a storm
in 1863. The 2004 “Hunt for the Alligator”
failed in its quest, but Runyan said the
work will continue. “There’s a lot of
water out there,” he said.
The Kad’yak was a three-masted
vessel operated by the Russian-
American Company in the final years
before the United States bought
Alaska from Russia in 1867. It sank
in Icon Bay after hitting an uncharted
submerged rock. At the time, it was
hauling a load of ice to San Francisco.
The wreck site was discovered in
2003. The three-week ECU expedition
was intended primarily to map the site.
Others from ECU participating
in the dive were students Evguenia
Anichtchenki and Jason Rogers and
diving safety officer Steve Sellers. Anichtchenki
had spent the previous two years researching
the Kad’yak in the National Archives in
Washington, D.C.; the city archives of Lübeck,
Germany, where the ship was built; and the
Russian Naval Yards in St. Petersburg, her
hometown.
The lingering elation of the team’s
discovery was tempered by sad news in
January. Their host vessel for the expedition,
the 92-foot ship the Big Valley, sank in the
Bering Sea while crab fishing. Among those
lost was the captain, Gary Edwards. •
TOP: Jason Rogers maps wreckage of the Kad’yak,
a 19th century Russian cargo ship. BOTTOM: The
inscription on the brass cap allowed archaeologists to
identify the wreckage.
abstract r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
6 • SPRING 2005 • edge
Getting down to basics
with swallowing disorders
abstract r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
edge • SPRING 2005 • 7
ABOVE: Robert Ebendorf incorporates found
objects into his art.
Art professor earns
hall of fame honor
Art professor Robert Ebendorf
has been inducted into the National
Metalsmiths Hall of Fame. The professor
of metals was honored in the artist/arts
educator category.
Ebendorf is known for innovative
approaches to the fabrication of
jewelry, such as incorporating steel and
found objects with gold and silver. He
was honored last year with a 40-year
retrospective exhibition at the Renwick
Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art
Museum in Washington, D.C, and is slated
to receive a Master of the Medium award
from the Renwick this year. The award is
given to four artists every two years and is
considered capstone recognition.
Ebendorf holds the Carol Grotnes
Belk distinguished chair in the School of
Art and Design. He recently published the
book 1000 Rings, lectured at the Northwest
Jewelry/Metals Symposium at the Seattle
Asian Art Museum, and was included in
a Penland School retrospective exhibit at
the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in
Charlotte. •
As a
speech pathologist,
Teresa Lever found one
of the most frustrating
parts of her job was
trying to help patients
cope with chronic
swallowing disorders,
or dysphagia. Treatment options were
limited, especially for people with progressive
neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s. Now,
as a Ph.D. student in communication sciences
and disorders, she’s investigating both short-term
coping strategies and potential long-term
treatment.
Swallowing disorders typically fall under
the treatment of speech pathologists because
speaking and swallowing involve many of the
same muscles. Swallowing alone calls on more
than two dozen muscles from the lips to the
top of the stomach working in coordination.
When those muscles go awry, the result can
be malnutrition, dehydration or pneumonia,
if food takes a wrong turn and goes into the
trachea. As a result, 90 percent of Lever’s
hospital caseload involved trying to help people
learn new swallowing techniques.
What she taught them came primarily
from on-the-job training. “There’s not much
research out there to explain the most effective
treatments or why treatments work,” she said.
“Much of it is based on behavioral science, and
that doesn’t tell us why it works. I want
to get down to the basics, muscles and
nerves.”
She has begun by studying a
typical coping strategy, called effortful
swallowing, to see whether the
exaggerated swallowing technique
actually has an effect on the motion
of the esophagus. Collaborating with
the gastrointestinal department at
Pitt County Memorial Hospital, she’s
measuring the pressure of the squeezing
motion that results from normal
and effortful swallowing. She measures the
strength and endurance of the contractions
using sensors placed in the mouth and lining
a catheter inserted through the nose down the
throat to the stomach. If results from normal,
healthy volunteers look promising, she’ll move
on to see whether they hold up for people with
neurological swallowing disorders.
A more long-term investigation centers on
the nerves that order the swallowing response.
In some diseases, unwanted proteins produced
in the nerves interrupt their signaling processes.
Ultimately, this can impair muscle strength,
range of motion and coordination. Working
with Dr. Alexander Murashov of the Brody
School of Medicine physiology department,
Lever is beginning to investigate whether a
process called RNA interference can be used to
disrupt the production of those proteins.
Their first experiment, involving the sciatic
nerve in mice, yielded promising results. “In
our experiment, we were able to suppress the
protein we were interested in and the effects
traveled toward the spine,” she said. “So we
may be able to attack a central nervous system
disease by treating the peripheral nerves.” For
her dissertation, Lever plans to follow up on
that work with more specific application to
swallowing disorders. •
BELOW: Teresa Lever, at left, is studying whether
effortful swallowing affects the motion of the esophogus.
8 • SPRING 2005 • edge
Rx:
Exercise is beginning to sound like
the cure-all for half of what ails us. Need to lose
weight, strengthen the heart muscle or improve
cholesterol and blood pressure readings? Exercise.
Blood sugar getting a little high? Exercise will bring
it down. Depressed? Exercise releases mood-lifting
endorphins. Worried about Alzheimerʼs disease?
Exercise enhances mental acuity. It also builds bone
and muscle, to prevent fall-related injuries in the
elderly. Having trouble sleeping? Exercise can help
there, too. To top it all off, exercise is an all-natural,
non-pharmacological treatment with few adverse
side effects.
Studies at the Human
Performance Laboratory
refine knowledge about
the benefits of exercise
Yet, for all we know of the benefits of exercise,
thereʼs just as much we donʼt know. What kind of
exercise works best and how much? How does it
work, on the basic biochemical level? Does it work
equally well for everyone? And why is it that, as the
years creep along, our muscles shrink and stamina
decreases, no matter how hard we try to fight it?
In the Human Performance Laboratory (HPL),
researchers are unraveling the answers to these and
a host of other questions about health and fitness.
The lab is a longstanding partner with surgeons,
physiologists and biochemists in the Brody School
of Medicine on investigations into the causes and
treatment of obesity and diabetes. HPL researchers
also conduct independent inquiries, some spurred
by results of the obesity studies, others arising from
more general wellness questions. Hereʼs a look at a
few of those studies.
Taking exercise in STRRIDE
You know itʼs time to get serious about
exercise. Youʼve gotten soft around the middle,
the doctor says your cholesterol is too high, and
yesterday you had to rest midway up a flight of stairs.
But you want to do this right so you check to see
what the experts say about how much exercise you
should be getting.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 9
C o n t i n u e d
EXERCISE
10 • SPRING 2005 • edge
Until recently, recommendations varied
so widely that your query may have left
you more confused. Now, a long-running
collaboration between ECU and Duke
University is refining the answers. Dr. Joseph
A. Houmard, professor and director of the
Human Performance Laboratory, leads the
ECU portion of the project, called Studies
of Targeted Risk Reduction Interventions
through Defined Exercise, or STRRIDE.
STRRIDEʼs first, five-year trial tested
the effects of different levels of aerobic
exercise. It showed, among other findings,
that even modest amounts of exercise — the
equivalent of walking about 12 miles a week
— can stop the creeping weight gain that so
often comes with middle age.
Nearly 400 volunteers participated
in the study, all of them middle-aged,
overweight and, before the study, sedentary.
They were divided into four groups, three
testing different exercise regimens over a
nine-month period and one control group that
did not exercise. The exercise groups had no
opportunity to cheat: they worked out under
the watchful eyes of research assistants.
To prevent weight loss from
confounding the results, the exercisers were
forbidden from dieting during the study. In
fact, if they lost more than a few pounds, they
were encouraged to eat more. “I think some
people were more successful sticking with
the exercise program because they couldnʼt
diet,” said Jennifer McCartney, the study
coordinator. “Itʼs enough to get one thing
going at a time.”
Measuring results, though, required
more than stepping on the scales. Stress tests
had the volunteers running on a treadmill to
the point of exhaustion while hooked up to
machines that monitored how efficiently their
bodies used oxygen. Other tests measured
body fat, blood lipids such as cholesterol,
and glucose levels. Biopsies of thigh muscle
provided a chance to study gene regulation, to
understand the mechanisms behind glucose
uptake and fat burning.
For Houmard, one of the most important
lessons came from the
control group. “If you
donʼt do anything, you
get worse,” Houmard
said. “We shouldnʼt
have been surprised
at that, but we were
by the magnitude of
difference. A couple
of pounds made
a big difference,
especially with insulin
resistance.” Insulin
resistance is associated
with type 2 diabetes.
Seeing the results
of just a few months
of inactivity changes
the viewpoint about
exercise. “Everybody
thinks I have to lose
weight if exercise is
helping,” he said, “but
just staying the same is
not a bad goal.”
The really
good news is that
edge • SPRING 2005 • 11
training only or a combination of the two.
“We think resistance training and aerobics are
totally different in terms of the biochemical
pathways for improving fitness so weʼll see
an added effect,” Houmard said.
Overcoming an inherent
disadvantage
African-American women may be
among those with the most to benefit from
exercise.
Americans across the board are losing
the struggle to stay fit and slim, and African-
American women are putting on more pounds
than most. According to the U.S. Center
for Disease Control, three-quarters of adult
African-American women are overweight
or obese, compared with 58 percent of white
women. Being overweight places them at risk
of diabetes, hypertension, cancer and heart
disease. The higher prevalence of overweight
is often attributed to such factors as poverty,
low educational levels and poor diets, but
statistics show that African-American women
are more likely to be heavy no matter what
their socioeconomic status or lifestyle.
When studies by ECU colleagues
suggested a metabolic reason, associate
professor Dr. Ronald Cortright decided to
look further. He wanted to know whether it
was a disadvantage that could be overcome.
At the heart of his work is the bodyʼs
ability to oxidize or burn fatty acids. This
oxidation is what gives the body energy.
When it canʼt use up fatty acids, it stores them
in muscle and fat tissue, leading to excess
weight and obesity. Those added pounds,
in turn, can lead to insulin resistance and
diabetes.
Research in the Human Performance
Lab and elsewhere has shown that obese
individuals cannot burn fat as readily as
people of normal weight. This holds true even
when gastric bypass surgery has allowed
formerly obese individuals to lose their excess
weight. Their mitochondria, the organelles
responsible for oxidizing fat, appear to be
C o n t i n u e d
all levels of exercise resulted in
improvements. “We thought the
high-intensity, longer workout
would produce the most results,
but it didnʼt,” Houmard said. “The
lesson is that any exercise is good.
Our low-intensity workout wasnʼt
much more than walking the dog.”
Furthermore, it was the exercise
— rather than improvements in
conditioning or weight loss — that
resulted in better insulin and lipid
readings. So exercise in and of itself
is good for you.
Subtle differences emerged
across the levels of exercise,
though. “You can almost customize
an exercise program according to what you
need,” he said. Insulin sensitivity responded
to the time spent exercising more than to
the intensity of the exercise. High-intensity
workouts had more effect on lipid levels.
A second, five-year phase of the study
got under way in summer 2004. This time,
resistance or weight training is being added
to the mix. Volunteers ages 18 to 60 will be
assigned to aerobic training only, resistance
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Under-graduate
intern Cole Cash guides
Rick Hamilton through resistance
training. • Kelly Westbrook, another
undergraduate intern, monitors blood
pressure for Steve Duncan, a study
participant and ECU director of
military affairs. • NAME TO BE ADD-ED
LATER rides an exercise bike while
machines measure how efficiently
her body uses oxygen; watching is
study leader Ronald Cortright. •
Rick Hamilton hits the treadmill while
research technician Tamlyn Shields
keeps an eye on his vital signs.
12 • SPRING 2005 • edge
inherently smaller and fewer in number.
One of those studying the issue was
Cortrightʼs colleague, Dr. Robert Hickner.
Hickner documented that, in a single bout of
exercise, obese people burned half as much
fat as lean individuals did. He expected as
much, but the cross-sectional study allowed
him to compare across race and gender, and
there he found something totally unexpected.
In at least one respect, lean African-
American women looked obese. They burned
fat at only half the rate of their lean, white
counterparts during exercise. A study of
abdominal muscle, collected from women
undergoing gynecological surgery, confirmed
the finding.
Cortright decided to look further. Other
studies had shown that a sustained exercise
program could rev up the fat-burning engines
of non-obese individuals. Would it do the
same for obese women and, more specifically,
African-American women regardless of body
size?
He enrolled 10 white and 10 African-
American women in a study that had them
exercising an hour a day for 10 days. The
women were all non-smokers between the
ages of 20 and 45 who were not already
exercising. To account for as many variables
as possible, Cortrightʼs team also collected
details about diet and hormone cycles.
The results were encouraging. Tiny
biopsies of thigh muscle taken before and
after exercise training showed that exercise
doubled the womenʼs ability to burn fat across
the board. “This represents the mitochondriaʼs
capacity to use fat,” Cortright said. “So
youʼve taken low-capacity mitochondria and
made them more robust.”
But what exactly is changing? With
another group of volunteers, Cortright is
trying to pinpoint which genes activate the fat
burning.
Heʼs also gearing up another phase
of the project to learn how much exercise
is necessary to keep the body burning fat
more efficiently. “It might be that two times
a week for half an hour is enough,” he said.
“Maintenance costs
a lot less than getting
there in the first
place.”
Older and
weaker,
but is it
inevitable?
Like it or not,
your body knows
youʼre getting older.
With added years,
you tire faster, your
muscles start to
weaken, and your
cardiovascular risk
goes up, even if
youʼre doing your
best to stay in shape.
Part of the
reason may lie in
the ability of blood
to flow freely,
supplying vital
oxygen and nutrients
to muscles and other
tissues through
the capillaries, the
smallest blood
vessels. Associate
professor Dr.
Robert Hickner and
assistant professor
Dr. Timothy Gavin
are investigating
age-related changes
that affect blood flow
and whether exercise
can influence those
changes.
“Itʼs thought that capillaries play a role
in a number of different processes — in the
delivery of glucose and insulin, the delivery
of oxygen during exercise or any kind of
activity,” Gavin said. “They may play a role
in how you regulate blood flow. The more
you have, the better job you appear to be
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Study
coordinator Jennifer McCartney
coaches Marian Mills on resistance
training. • Researchers with the
Human Performance Laboratory
include Timothy Gavin, Robert Hickner
and lab director Joseph Houmard.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 13
doing in regulating blood flow. And better
blood flow may play a role in maintaining
muscle fiber size so itʼs all interrelated.”
For the elderly, at least part of the
problem may be one of number. Older adults
have fewer capillaries. Gavin wants to know
whether age decreases the bodyʼs ability to
make capillaries. A clue is offered by a protein
that is critical to capillary growth, called
vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF.
“What weʼve seen is that VEGF in
aged muscles is inherently lower,” he said.
“We see 25 percent lower VEGF in aged
individuals, and we see about 25 percent
fewer capillaries.”
actually produces three types of NOS. Hickner
is most interested in endothelial NOS, a helpful
form that increased with exercise in his trial,
and inducible NOS, a potentially harmful form
related to inflammation. The latter decreased
with endurance, or aerobic, exercise training.
To obtain their results, both Hickner and
Gavin employ muscle biopsies taken from
the thighs of their volunteers and a process
called microdialysis. For the latter technique,
a porous hair-thin tube is inserted into the
volunteersʼ muscle for as long as five hours.
While itʼs in place, fluids can be passed
through the probe to collect nutrients found in
the muscle and to monitor blood flow. Samples
are taken as often as every 10 minutes. While
working on his Ph.D. in Sweden, Hickner was
part of the team that developed microdialysis
for use in humans.
Moving forward, Hickner and Gavin
hope to determine whether resistance exercise
training results in improvements similar to
those from endurance training. Resistance
training focuses on muscle strength, which is
particularly important in light of the loss of
muscle mass that occurs with advanced age.
Everyone loves stories of 92-year-old
marathon runners. But learning about
the effects of aging may do more to help
seniors for whom a walk to the mailbox or a
trip around the mall constitutes a strenuous
workout. For them, many afflicted with
chronic disease, the goal is to maintain their
daily activities. What will it take to keep them
up and moving?
“There are a lot of positive adaptations
that happen with exercise training,” Gavin said.
“What we are starting to think as we integrate
our findings is that all of these changes have to
occur. There must be a coordinated adaptation
for them to be maximized. And if aging affects
one, it may affect others.”
And that, Hickner pointed out, is why
itʼs so difficult to develop effective drugs.
“Drugs often target an individual problem,” he
said, “while exercise induces this coordinated,
positive adaptation that seems unlikely to be
mimicked by drugs.” •
In younger
people, exercise is
known to stimulate
VEGF production
so Gavin is now
comparing the
response to exercise
of men and women
ages 18 to 40 with
that of older people,
age 60 and up.
“Acute exercise
should start the
process of VEGF
production, and we
see thatʼs lower in
aged individuals as
well,” he said. “That
makes us think this
is important, but
weʼre still working
to see if the long-term
results are
consistent.”
While Gavin
studies capillary
growth, Hickner
focuses on factors
that encourage
nutrients and
oxygen to be
exchanged through
those capillaries.
His special interest is nitric oxide, a blood
gas thought to have a number of functions,
including roles in metabolism and in the
dilation of blood vessels.
“The higher your nitric oxide levels, the
better your blood circulates,” Hickner said.
“But with aging, we found that they have a
lower level of nitric oxide synthase (NOS),
the enzyme that is responsible for producing
nitric oxide. So that might be one system
that is down with age and might be increased
with exercise training or physical activity.”
In a trial he conducted, an eight-week
training regimen did improve NOS levels in
older as well as younger volunteers. The body
Rooted in Theater
C o n t i n u e d
Had his maternal grandfather lived
longer, John Shearin figures heʼd have become
a farmer. Growing up, he spent several summers
working alongside “Capʼn Bob” and Sally
Jenkins on their farm just outside of Pinetops.
He loved the freedom, the open spaces, the fresh
air. But Capʼn Bob died when his grandson
was 12, and Shearinʼs life took a different path,
one that wound through television studios and
across theater stages on both coasts. Eventually,
though, the path led back to his North Carolina
roots.
Sixteen years ago, Shearin took a job just a
few miles down the road from his grandparentsʼ
farm. Heʼs been chair of the ECU department of
theater and dance ever since. Here, and at every
step of the way up to now, the legacy of Capʼn
Bob and Sally Jenkins lives on. “A huge portion
of my work ethic comes from them,” Shearin
says. “Itʼs the idea that no matter what you feel
like, the work still has to get done. The hogs
have to be fed. No excuses.”
None for himself, and none for anyone
else. “If you miss a rehearsal around here, you
better be dead or in the hospital,” he says, trying
to control the grin. “Youʼve got to be tough-minded
to succeed. There are no weenies in this
department.” The grin wins.
In more than work ethic, Shearin seems
every bit the farmer. He even looks the part. A
big man dressed in denim and a plaid shirt, he
could be reared back by the stove of a country
store instead of swiveling behind a desk. Instead
of crops and livestock, he nurtures students,
seeing the fruits of his labor in their growth and
maturity. As a producer and director, he plows
deep to find the meaning of a playwrightʼs
work.
14 • SPRING 2005 • edge
After early ambitions as a farmer, John Shearin finds fertile ground in acting, directing
For John Shearin, theater is serious business:
“There are no weenies in this department.”
edge • SPRING 2005 • 15
16 • SPRING 2005 • edge
Shearin also possesses a farmerʼs
versatility, according to friend and fellow actor
Jon Korkes of New York City. “Heʼs a jack
of all trades,” Korkes says. “If you gave him
enough time, he could build the theater for
you.”
The two met in 1983, when they
appeared in a theater tribute to the Beat
Generation. Korkes played a nightclub
operator. Shearin played Jack Kerouac.
Ten years later, after arriving in
Greenville, Shearin invited his buddy down
for a summer theater role in Our Countryʼs
Good, a play about the founding of Australia.
It was a challenging production: actors playing
multiple roles in different dialects, numerous
costume changes and only two weeks to
rehearse.
“You only can get that done satisfactorily
if you have someone you can trust, whoʼs
focused and understands the work, who can
get you there,” Korkes says. Shearin came
though. “It was an amazing production. Iʼve
been working in theater 30-some years so
when I say I was impressed by how John ran
the show down there, Iʼm not exaggerating.”
Theater and academia may not have
been Shearinʼs first chosen field, but he
clearly relishes the work. Besides teaching
and administration, he usually directs two
plays during the academic year and two more
for the summer season. “Itʼs never the same
two days in a row so my interest is always
being piqued,” he says. And he gets some of
everything he wants — the country life, work
with young people, theater. Especially the
theater.
For the first 14 years of his professional
career, Shearin shifted between acting and
directing, stage and television. When work
lagged, he supplemented his income by
applying his farming talents to running a
landscaping sideline in Los Angeles. By the
early ʻ80s, though, television roles paid the
bills. He had regular appearances on prime-time
shows like Hunter and featured roles in
the likes of Matlock, Remington Steele and
Designing Women.
He appeared in the final episode of
M*A*S*H, playing the helicopter pilot who
ferried Charles Emerson Winchester back
toward civilization. A short time before
shooting, fire had swept through the canyon
where the M*A*S*H exterior scenes were
shot. The set had to be rebuilt. During the
filming, Shearin glanced up at the surrounding
hills, then looked again. “They had spray-painted
the mountain green. All that burnt
shrubbery was painted green.”
Daytime TV roles included a short-lived
lead in the ABC drama Loving, which was
filmed in New York. A clash with the producer
ended the run at 13 weeks.
“He gave nasty acting notes over the
loudspeaker to young actors in their first
professional gigs,” Shearin remembers. “I
basically called him out one day and said I
wouldnʼt stand for that. It wasnʼt the smartest
thing I ever did. I knew there would be
consequences, but I didnʼt really care.”
He caught a plane to Los Angeles, where
his soon-to-be-wife Jennifer still lived. “I got
off the plane, saw her at the end of the tunnel
and said donʼt quit your job. Iʼm moving
back.”
All the while he was working in
television, he continued working in theater
— usually for little or no money. “Television
was pretty good to me financially, but what I
was doing was not gratifying to the soul,” he
says. “In my heart of hearts, I was a theater
guy.”
In theater, he says, the ideas are bigger.
“The theater embraces much more spiritual
and intellectual content than television and film
can. I find it moves one viscerally much more
so than television or film when I see it done
well. Thereʼs something about the magical
communication of a live performance, the
human component … the ephemeral nature of
it. Itʼs done and gone. It goes into memory. I
like that. But mostly, itʼs just working on stuff
that I find deeply, deeply meaningful, and I
didnʼt find any of that in TV.”
From the beginning, Shearin determined
he would act and direct. “The guy who was
my absolute idol was Laurence Olivier,” he
says. “Olivier was a consummate theater man.
He could act the pants off everybody and then
LEFT TO RIGHT:
Sally and Bob Jenkins, John Shearinʼs maternal
grandparents; John with his younger brother,
Robert; John during his Army service; John and
Jennifer on their wedding day; and the Shearin
children, Sarah, Kathleen and Daniel.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 17
direct the pants off them, too. He was a model
that you could do both and both well.”
The two roles offer very different
challenges. “With acting, youʼre
concentrating on one small aspect of a play.
If I choose to act now, itʼs because I think the
behavior of the character is intriguing or a lot
of fun, or the behavior and motivation of the
character is of a depth I really want to plumb
and experience for myself. Thatʼs always
been the case, but now even more so — as
long as it doesnʼt have many lines. The brutal
part of acting is all that memorization. I donʼt
want to do a lot of that any more.” The grin
returns. “I like small, rewarding parts now.”
More and more, he prefers directing,
the challenge of seeing the play as a whole
and making it as engaging for the audience
as possible. “One of the most rewarding parts
for me is the deep association with brilliant
playwrights,” he says. “I love the weeks and
months I spend alone with he playwright,
figuratively speaking, where I read and reread
the play, trying to get deeper and deeper into
it, doing all the parallel work to understand
the history and art and behavior, to really try
to get as deep into the play as possible and
realize its potential.”
He points with special satisfaction to an
ECU production of the Greek drama Bacchai
in 2003. He had first read Euripidesʼ play 25
years earlier. “It got me interested in Greek
drama for life, but I could never figure out
how to do it, so I ended up revising the text
and doing my own version.”
The Greeks, like most classics, call for
some interpretation. “Almost every time I do
a classic, I do at least some editing,” he says.
“Even with Shakespeare, I do a fair amount
of judicious editing to take out extended
metaphors and similes that are hard for young
people to sustain. It has to do more with style
than substance. I donʼt want to strip a play
of style or substance, but I also donʼt want
anybody to say thatʼs boring.”
Bacchai was anything but. The play
is about the female followers, played by the
chorus, of the god Dionysus. Shearin rewrote
the part of the chorus into a rhythmic verse
form. “Natalie Stewart, the voice coach, did
heroic work,” he says. “The chorus had 20
girls, maybe more, and they had to speak in
unison very articulately. The audience had to
understand every word or they wouldnʼt get
the play.”
Rehearsals transformed improvisation
into ritualistic dance. Costumes transformed
college students into Amazons. “The girls
were in patches and layers of animal skins
that supposedly they had slaughtered and put
on. And girls themselves performed in a way
that was so savage it was really kind of scary.
They had a great time. They scared a lot of
guys.” The grin consumes his face once more.
“I took my daughters and said, see, thatʼs the
way I want you to act.”
His children — two daughters and a
son — were a large part Shearinʼs reason
for leaving TV land. He and Jennifer were
just starting their family, and he wanted their
children to grow up with open space and small
schools. He also found himself less and less
satisfied with his career.
“I remember one day I went in to audition
for a part in the remake of Red River,” he says.
“There were half a dozen old TV stars, people
in their 60s and 70s auditioning for one- or
two-line parts. I thought if this is the future,
I donʼt want any part of it. Why would you
want to spend your whole life doing this kind
of empty material and you canʼt even count on
doing that?”
He didnʼt want to stay in L.A. He didnʼt
want to do television. He wanted theater, but
theater without long periods away from home
on roadtrips. And he wanted to work with
young people. He had begun teaching some,
as an associate director of The Playhouse West
School of Acting, where he also supervised the
building the theater and studios.
At just the right time, the chairmanship of
the ECU drama department came open. “One
of my teachers who was a Jungian said there
are no coincidences; there are convergences.”
Coming home, Shearin and his wife
Jennifer created their own mini-farm on four
acres in Grifton. At one point they had two
horses, three dogs, three cats, fish and an
C o n t i n u e d
18 • SPRING 2005 • edge
iguana, plenty to keep three growing kids
active. Any spare time, Dad kept filled. He
followed his childrenʼs age group up the
ladder, coaching t-ball, baseball and soccer.
Even though he knew nothing about soccer
beforehand, he says, “My team won the county
championships several times. We were feared
and despised.” Christmas break developed
its own tradition. Every year on the day after
Christmas, Dad and kids pack up the sleeping
bags and head for the woods for a winter
camping trip.
All three children started school in
Grifton, just as Shearin wanted. Large schools
pigeon-hole students too quickly, he says.
He hoped his children would have a broader
experience. “I wanted them to develop into
well-rounded, confident kids,” he says. Today
Daniel, a music major, is a chancellorʼs scholar
at Appalachian State. Kathleen is a senior
at the N.C. School of Math and Science in
Durham, and Sarah is finishing her junior
year as a full scholarship student at St. Maryʼs
School, a private high school in Raleigh.
He gloats only a little. “The proof is in the
pudding,” he says. “Theyʼre the kinds of kids I
hoped they would be, and theyʼve all started to
find the things they want to do.”
Jennifer Shearin has found a calling, too.
Although John handled kitchen duties early
in their marriage, she took over the pots and
pans when they decided she should stay home
with the children. Cooking suited her. She
now owns and operates The Daily Grind, a
Greenville restaurant.
The return to North Carolina brought
Shearin back into the heart of an extended
family, too. At Thanksgiving every year, he
and his cousin Powell Jenkins stage a turkey
cookoff. Shearin roasts his bird; Jenkins
swears by deep-frying. Shearin leads the after-dinner
sing-along.
“On his first visit for a holiday event, my
now son-in-law shook his head and said it was
like visiting the Waltons,” says Carolyn Patton,
who remembers cousin John teaching her to
shag in their grandmotherʼs front parlor. He
was four years older. “I worshipped the ground
he walked on, so he must have been patient.”
Now she must be forbearing, even if all
in fun. “John can assume a role very quickly
and disguise his voice,” she says. “Anytime
I get a strange phone call, I assume itʼs John.
Unfortunately, sometimes it isnʼt.”
The stability of the extended family may
have been part of the farmʼs early attraction
for Shearin. Aside from summers there, his
early life had little. He once counted 17 times
his family moved before he graduated from
high school. Early on, the moves followed
his fatherʼs career in opera and musical
theater. Even so, his father was often absent,
and before Shearin was 10, his parents had
divorced. Afterward, he seldom heard from
his father. His mother scrambled to make ends
meet, often working two jobs and frequently
moving, usually to a cheaper apartment.
During that period, Shearin took over
most of the household work — cooking,
cleaning and keeping an eye out for his
younger brother Bob. “He was always my
male figure,” Bob Shearin says now. “I derived
safety from having a big brother who would
make things OK, keep things safe and play
baseball with me. He didnʼt have that. It
probably gave him a little more sense that life
can be unpredictable.”
John Shearin gives it another spin. “We
were raised to be self-reliant,” he says. “The
positive part is weʼre very resilient. I donʼt
think thereʼs a situation in the world that is
scary to us.”
Later, after his motherʼs remarriage,
Shearin had a chance to shake off
responsibility. He played through his freshman
year of college, then hit the road for what
he calls his Jack Kerouac period. First he
hitchhiked to Florida, where he found work in
a hotel kitchen. Then it was on to New Orleans,
where he became an apprentice to a sculptor. In
his free time he wrote poetry, kept journals and
sang in coffee houses.
“I was a halfway folk singer, just sort of
following the muse,” he says. “It was about
as good as it gets for a 19 year old. I had just
enough money to get by. I got room and board
from the sculptor fellow and about $25 a week
on top of that. It was perfect.”
Perfect, but not leading anywhere. In
LEFT TO RIGHT:
John Shearin performs in ECU productions
of Biloxi Blues (1994), My Three Angels (2005)
and Inherit the Wind (2002) and directs students
in rehearsal. He chooses to act and direct,
like his theatrical idol, Laurence Olivier.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 19
Rooted in theater... continues
1965, with President Kennedyʼs inaugural
address still ringing in his ears, Shearin
decided that what he could do for his country
was to follow family tradition and enlist in the
Army. “I wanted to do my service in Vietnam,”
he says. “It was early in the war. At the time
it seemed we might have a real mission over
there. While I was there, it became clear
we were in the wrong place for the wrong
reasons.” Only years later, when he wrote a
trilogy of plays about emotional responses to
the war, could he shake the images of women
and children burned by napalm and the
evacuations of wounded and dead soldiers as
the Viet Cong overran outpost after outpost.
In Vietnam, he was stationed with
an advisory team near the Thai border. A
compound security specialist, he ran what
passed for an air strip. Stateside, he briefly took
charge of a rehabilitation training program at
the Fort Dix stockade in New Jersey before
spending his final months of duty on the
California coast.
“The Army was the best thing that
happened to me in terms of running an
academic department,” he says, “not in the
sense of giving orders because that doesnʼt
work very well, but in terms of being able to
work with a lot of different kinds of people and
understand them.”
After the Army, Shearin settled down for
serious academic life at the College of William
and Mary. He calls it the perfect environment,
intense and nurturing yet peaceful. He enrolled
as an English major. He planned to write
poetry and songs and one day teach English
in college. Theater was not a consideration.
The memories of his childhood, with his
father constantly pulled away from home,
were too strong. Then, like Saul on the road to
Damascus, he was struck by a blinding light.
“This very beautiful girl who sat next to
me in Shakespeare class had an extra ticket
to the William and Mary Theatre,” he recalls.
“I didnʼt care all that much about going to the
play, but since she was asking, I said OK. I was
sitting there on the first row of the mezzanine
and it was like a message from on high: ʻThis
is what you must do.ʼ The next day, I changed
my major.” Kiss Me Kate probably never had
as much effect on anyone before or since.
William and Mary gave him an academic
background that served him well as a future
director, but he recognized the need for more
technical training. “Very few undergraduate
programs have specific structured approach to
acting,” he says. Graduate school at Penn State
helped fill the gap for him. Further study fol-lowed
with professional workshops and classes
in New York and programs in the Sanford
Meisner Acting Technique in Los Angeles.
When he took the ECU job, he knew he
was he inheriting a department built on the
Meisner program. “The genius to me of Sandy
Meisner is his organization and progression of
exercises,” Shearin says. “He builds a step at a
time, so you get a progressive and cumulative
effect. Each exercise is directly connected to
the previous one, so itʼs growing as an organic
whole, not just linear. At the end, itʼs also
reasonably comprehensive.”
When students leave ECU with a BFA
in drama, he says, they should be able to
go out and compete effectively in a highly
competitive field. Just before they do, they
get one last lesson from John Shearin. His
capstone course covers the preparation of
audition material and the how-to steps of
building a career.
“I encourage them to make conscious
choices,” he says. “And I stress ethics a lot,
networking, helping your brothers and sisters.
I tell them itʼs better to be supportive than
combative.”
Itʼs part of what he learned from Capʼn
Bob and Sally Jenkins. “The golden rule came
very strongly from them: treat other people the
way youʼd like to be treated. Donʼt use them as
a means to an end.”
If only Capʼn Bob and Sally had lived a
few decades more, they no doubt would have
taken pleasure in how their careful lessons took
root in their grandson, the one who went off to
Hollywood and came home again. They would
have recognized what they surely already
knew, the simple and honest truth behind
another age-old lesson: Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap. •
20 • SPRING 2005 • edge
Decreasing Forecasts of commercial feasibility help clear way
for improvements to aviation safety
edge • SPRING 2005 • 21
C o n t i n u e d
Cloudiness
LEFT: The tropospheric airborne metereological
data and reporting system, now being tested, is
designed to provide better short-term weather
information. Image courtesy of Airdat.
Five years ago, John F. Kennedy Jr., his
wife and sister-in-law died when Kennedyʼs
Piper Saratoga crashed into the Atlantic
Ocean. The cause of the accident remains a
mystery, but a chief suspect is the dense haze
that hung over his route between New Jersey
and Massachusetts. The weather report before
Kennedyʼs takeoff had indicated good flying
conditions with visibility of six to eight miles.
“Thatʼs probably a case where better
information could have helped,” said Dr. Paul
J. Kauffmann, chairman of the department of
technology systems.
Better information may soon be on
the way. NASA, the Federal Aviation
Administration and other partners are testing
a new weather data collection system during
the first six months of 2005 — one that may
eventually lead to better short-term forecasts
and immediate reports of dangerous turbulence
and icing. The idea for the system originated
with NASA, but it was Kauffmann who
tested its commercial feasibility: calculating
the amount of data that would be needed to
improve forecasts, estimating the number of
airplanes needed to collect the data, and putting
dollars and cents to the costs and savings.
“He came in when nothing existed, which
is difficult,” said Jay Ladd, CEO of Airdat,
one of the partners in the project. “He took the
concept and said, this doesnʼt exist but if it did,
hereʼs what it would take. He did a really terrific
study thatʼs been a cornerstone of the project.”
Paul Stough, the aviation weather
information team leader at NASAʼs Langley
Research Center, concurred. “The work that
Paul has done has been applied by industry to
show the financial payoff, by NASA to help
guide our research and by the FAA to plan for
implementation,” he said.
The study is one of a series Kauffmann
has conducted since 1998 in connection
with NASAʼs Weather Accident Prevention
Project. The overall project was stimulated by
former President Clintonʼs goal of reducing
the rate of aviation accidents by 80 percent.
Weather is implicated in a third of those
accidents, whether they involve small private
planes like Kennedyʼs or large commercial
airliners.
The critical need, Kauffmann said, is for
better short-term forecasts to improve safety
and the efficiency of the air transportation
network.
“Weʼre looking at two to four hours
from now,” he said. “Thatʼs the interval that
impacts air transportation. If Iʼm flying an
airplane from Greenville to Washington, I
need to know whatʼs going to be happening
in the next hour and 45 minutes. Or if Iʼm
scheduling runways at OʼHare, I need to
know if that thunderstorm over Wisconsin
is moving this way. Itʼs a big deal if you
have to shut down a runway and change the
direction of landing or if youʼre leaving Los
Angeles and you have to load extra fuel to
allow for circling or diversion in case of bad
weather. Weʼre getting back to a pre-9/11
level of air traffic. One of the ways to enhance
productivity and minimize delays is to
provide better weather data.”
Current forecasts draw on information
from radar, satellites, weather balloons
and sensors mounted on large commercial
airliners. None of those sources provides
frequent, timely and widespread coverage
of the humidity, temperature, air pressure
and wind in the lower 15,000 feet of the
atmosphere, where thunderstorms and other
dangerous conditions form.
The system now being tested — called
TAMDAR, for tropospheric airborne
meteorological data and reporting system
— is designed to fill the gap. It will also, for
the first time, collect scientific data on two
other conditions that are critical for pilots:
turbulence and icing. In the current test,
sensors designed by Morrisville-based Airdat
have been mounted on 60 planes operated
by Mesaba, Northwest Airlinesʼ regional
feeder airline in the Great Lakes region.
Data collected throughout
a flight are transmitted at
regular intervals, such as
every 5 to 15 minutes, over
a satellite- and ground-based
communications network,
then assembled into a useful
format for weather forecasters,
aviation control centers and,
eventually, other users. The
sensors worked well on
hurricane trackers and other
research aircraft. This study
will show whether they prove
practical under real-world
conditions of commercial
aviation and whether the data
improve forecasting.
The cooperation of
regional airlines will be an important factor in
TAMDARʼs success. “For the data we want,
we need fairly low-flying planes and planes
that go short distances so theyʼre going up
and down often,” Kauffmann said. “Thereʼs
not a whole lot of short-term weather data that
youʼre interested in at 30,000 feet where the
big aircraft are.” Regional carriers fit the bill.
In addition, unlike private planes, they fly on
regular schedules, and unlike large carriers,
they fly to in and out of smaller airports,
providing more widespread coverage.
Kauffmannʼs feasibility study estimated
that nationwide implementation would require
sensors on about 1,500 planes. For Airdatʼs
Ladd, that was a critical piece of information.
“You have someone who is objective,
credible and knowledgeable saying thereʼs
economic value in developing and deploying
the system, and when you do deploy, the
TOP: Paul Kauffman, right, is credited with proving the
commercial feasibility of TAMDAR. With him is collaborator Erol
Ozan. BOTTOM: This prototype of a data-link cockpit weather
information display was developed by NASA in conjunction with
Honeywell Bendix and King Air. Photography courtesy of NASA.
22 • SPRING 2005 • edge
order of magnitude is
feasible — itʼs 1,500,
not 15,000 or 20,000,”
he said. “Paul helped
get this off the drawing
board.”
Kauffmann credits
two of his former
graduate students
for their work on the
TAMDAR assessments.
One, Dr. Erol Ozan,
is now an assistant
professor at ECU.
The other, Dr. Yesim
Sireli, is teaching at the
University of North
Carolina at Charlotte.
Ozan has contributed further by
developing a model for optimizing data
collection, to improve TAMDARʼs cost-effectiveness.
Itʼs not just deploying the
system that costs money; so do transmitting
and analyzing data. “When the weather is
calm, you can reduce sampling,” Ozan said.
“But if thereʼs a critical situation like a storm
or fog coming, you increase sampling to
collect more data, and the data you get will
be more valuable.” Ozanʼs model provides
guidance on which data to collect and when
and where to collect them.
Kauffmann began his NASA
collaboration when he was teaching at
Old Dominion University. His first study
examined whether it made good business
sense to install cockpit weather information
systems, to provide information directly to
pilots, and predicted the rate at which the
industry would adopt the newly developing
technology. Later, he led feasibility studies
for adopting particular types of technology —
improved radar systems at small airports and
turbulence sensors on airliners, for example.
Now heʼs going back to the first study to see
how his predictions compare with industry
trends: who has bought what and why.
“Back at the time of the original study,
we thought weʼd be looking at a cohesive
delivery system — an integrated multifunction
display that would go into new planes,” he
said. The rise of satellite radio, Palm Pilots
and wireless technologies has made it less
expensive to get the Weather Channel or its
equivalent in the cockpit. As a result, business
aircraft owners — always leading innovators
— have adopted cockpit weather systems
even faster than predicted. Recreational pilots
and the rest of the general aviation market are
right on track. The large transport airlines are
lagging behind.
“I thought issues that are difficult to
measure, like fuel savings, would be a bigger
motivation,” he said. “Iʼm still trying to get
into the factors, but I think what got in the
way of the original forecast was 9/11 and the
current financial bankruptcies. Theyʼre not
spending money right now.
“Thereʼs also a bit of chicken or egg
situation. Business and general aviation are
buying current weather information because
without it, no one is telling them anything
about the weather. On the other side, big
aircraft donʼt have that kind of problem. They
have central facilities collecting weather
information and feeding it to the pilots. The
bigger issue for them is does the weather
service have information for them to use?
They arenʼt making a move because the
improved weather data arenʼt available yet.”
That brings the question back around
to TAMDAR. The six-month trial is
scheduled to run through mid-July, and
NASAʼs Stough hopes to expand it to a full
year of data collection. “So far weʼre getting
some very good reports,” he said, “but itʼs
just starting.” •
TOP: Airdat employees, who helped design the
TAMDAR sensors, pose with a Northwest Airlines
commuter plane. Photography courtesy of
NASA. MIDDLE: Planes like the one above are
transmitting weather information throughout the
Great Lakes Region. Image courtesy of Airdat.
BOTTOM: A close-up shows the sensor mounted
on a Saab 340. Photograph courtesy of Airdat.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 23
Chiano s TSeoxuatsh
• • • • • • • • • • •
A sociologist
who spent
two years
with the
U.S. Border
Patrol
reflects
on fear,
frustration
along the
Rio Grande
Photograph courtesy Lee Maril
24 • SPRING 2005 • edge
C o n t i n u e d
edge • SPRING 2005 • 25
D r. Robert Lee Maril,
professor and chair
of sociology, has worked
alongside Gulf Coast
shrimpers, dwelled among Mexican-
Americans and immersed himself in
the daily struggles for existence of
Oklahomaʼs poor. In January 2000, while
teaching at the University of Texas-Pan
American, he set out to do what at first
seemed a similar project, an exploration of
the lives and work of U.S. Border Patrol
agents of the McAllen Station in southern
Texas. Over the next two years, he rode,
walked, tracked, ran and waited alongside
agents at every opportunity — spending
600 hours covering shifts with them,
plus hours more conducting interviews,
accompanying agents to court proceedings
and researching the history and policies of
the region and the Border Patrol.
Looking back, he recognizes that
this was anything but a normal research
project. It is not, he said recently,
something he would do again. “It
never occurred to me it would be that
dangerous,” he said. “Youʼre running
around in the dark in the middle of the
desert. You donʼt know who the good
guys are so youʼre trying to keep as close
as possible to the agent youʼre with. This
is not what a rational person does who
wants to live as long as possible.”
The product of Marilʼs labor,
Patrolling Chaos: the U.S. Border Patrol
in Deep South Texas, was published
in November 2004 by the Texas Tech
University Press. In it, he documents the
lives of a dozen agents as they combat
illegal immigration, drug smuggling and
stifling bureaucracy. Along the way, he
introduces a host of other characters.
They include “coyotes” who guide illegal
aliens across the border for pay and
would-be immigrants. Thereʼs Nature
Boy, the coyote who works in the nude,
and Fat Man, a coyote of ample girth
and growing wealth, who salutes agents
from the southern bank of the Rio Grande
with his ever-present can of beer. Thereʼs
Onion Girl, an 11-year-old captured with
her mother and sister trying to make
their way into the United States through
an onion field. She stands out from
the multitude of others at first because
of a blind right eye and thick knit cap
worn despite sweltering heat. When
the cap falls off, it reveals a bald head
and disfiguring tumor. And then thereʼs
Benny, an illegal alien of a different
sort. A three-ton elephant, Benny makes
his way across the border, appearing
in Houston one week and Mexico City
the next, without any documentation
to show for his trip. Finally, thereʼs a
much-respected supervisor arrested
on charges of accepting bribes. In a
situation as bizarre as Bennyʼs, none
of the agents mentions the supervisor
again, not at the station house, not
during long nights on patrol, not over
lunch at the agentsʼ favorite diner, not
under the tree where they gather to
unwind. Itʼs as if he never existed.
Maril fills his account with sweat,
stench, dust and pain. Fear rides shotgun
to boredom, the potential for violent
death as omnipresent as mosquitoes and
prickly pear cactus. Comic moments
— an agent hanging onto the legs of an
immigrant whoʼs trying to pull himself
back through a gap in a bridge, Nature
Boy misjudging the distance as he dives
toward the Rio Grande — quickly lose
their humor in the shadow of immense
human tragedy. As much as anything,
frustration rules. An entrenched
bureaucracy values procedure over
results, evident nowhere more than in
the policy of deterrence. The policy
requires agents to spend shifts sitting
in trucks, making themselves obvious
at official crossings, while miles of
border go unpatrolled. Maril concludes
his account with a call for a bipartisan,
binational task force to study the
issues of the southern border, reach
a consensus about border policy and
reform the Border Patrol.
edge sat down with Maril to talk
about his experience and perspective on
border issues.
26 • SPRING 2005 • edge
edge: Most of your previous work focused
on poverty. How did this topic entice you?
Maril: I had a few students in my class
who were Border Patrol agents. They were
coming back to get their degrees at night. I
started talking with them during break, and
they said you should come along and see what
we do. (Getting permission from their bosses
proved to be far more difficult, however.)
I also really believe that what happens in
the border area happens in the interior. Take
industrialization and the use of low-wage
workers. We started seeing twin plants, one
on each side of the border, the maquiladoras,
in early ʻ60s and ʻ70s. Now we call it out-sourcing.
Another thing, the area is a huge
human laboratory full of extremes. One of the
extremes is poverty. The region is far poorer
than Appalachia.
edge: You spent 600 hours on patrol with
these agents. Did the experience have a lasting
impact?
Maril: It was 600 hours on patrol,
plus a lot of time hanging around the station,
interviewing people around the Border Patrol.
Originally, I had planned to spend one year
going out on patrol, but I was there when 9/11
happened so I decided I should stay and see
how that evolved.
But in answer to your question, I came
away with a much better appreciation of what
they do. These are honest men and women,
most of them, trying to make a living the
best way they can, and they are doing their
job with integrity. I had done work with law
enforcement before, with police departments
and prosecuting attorneys, so I had some
comparison. I had great appreciation at the end
of it that they really do risk their lives and put
themselves in high-risk situations. At the same
time, they pay a cost. It is very difficult work.
So it has changed me in my admiration for
what they are trying to do.
I also had no in-person experience before
with the problems undocumented workers
face. I interviewed a number of them in doing
the book. Itʼs a tragic situation. Thatʼs why I
wrote about Onion Girl and several of the other
people. These are typical of the kind of people
trying to cross. Theyʼre putting their lives at risk
to look for a better job.
edge: You left a lot of those stories
unfinished.
Maril: I wanted to write this not as a
typical sociological tome. I wanted to give
people a flavor for the diversity of the agents
and the diversity of the people along the border.
I chose the word chaos (for the title) very
carefully. I really think it is a chaotic human
situation. By not finishing those stories, I was
trying to leave readers up in the air and give
them the sense of all these influences that I
was seeing, to give them a sense of the chaotic
nature of the whole enterprise. So I intentionally
didnʼt finish some of those stories, and of
course some I donʼt know how they finished.
The last I looked, Nature Boy was still thriving.
He didnʼt have a lot of overhead. The agent that
was accused of taking bribes as far as I know
was allowed to retire. As far as I know, Fat
Man is doing quite well. He lost his boat (in an
arrest), but his boat was a wreck anyway so it
was no loss to him. I had figured out that he was
making about $300,000 a year when he worked
in human smuggling. I tell my students now
that if youʼre going to engage in crime along the
border, donʼt waste your time with drugs, itʼs all
about human smuggling. Thatʼs really where a
lot of money is being made.
edge: Despite the valor of individual
agents, the picture is discouraging. When
you look at all the burdens placed on them
— stopping illegal immigrants and drugs,
serving as the first line of defense against
terrorism — is the charge too great?
Maril: I couldnʼt have made up Benny
the elephant. It happened right in the middle of
this. I only regret that I didnʼt get to talk to the
people involved personally. The argument is
that if Benny, a three-ton male elephant, can be
in Houston one day and Mexico City the next
with no paper trail, then really we do have an
open, porous border. We have in fact just kind
of a theatrical production of what itʼs supposed
to be like, and we have all these regulations,
all this barbed wire and this high technology
theyʼre talking about — the drones or pilot-less
aircraft that have been used successfully in
Afghanistan — as the next answer for this. The
reality is that it is chaotic and has been for some
time. Anyone who thinks itʼs different hasnʼt
been there or looked at it for any period of time.
edge: You make a good case that
deterrence isnʼt working. If not deterrence,
what?
Maril: Not only did it not work, but
every agent who did his job was discrediting his
supervisor because they were catching people
they werenʼt supposed to catch. That was the
absurdity of it. The better the agent, the more he
was going to be discouraged by his supervisor
because they wanted to see low apprehension
rates among illegal aliens. That whole logic that
I tried to explain was absurd, but thatʼs what
was there and what I found in the Congressional
Record. First (the Border Patrolʼs top officials)
justified needing more money from Congress
because they were catching more and more
people. Then in the early ʻ90s they totally turned
180 degrees and said now because of deterrence
we can show that weʼre doing a great job
because weʼre catching fewer and fewer people.
Since that really wasnʼt the case, they had to
increasingly clamp down on agents who were
being productive. And of course that meant that
some of the agents left or got frustrated. That to
me is almost at the level of absurdity in terms
of this federal bureaucracy, not only in handling
the situation but in creating problems for itself.
edge: So what do you do?
Maril: What theyʼre doing right now is
pretending that it does work. President Bush just
came out saying what they need is 2,000 more
agents. Tom Ridge, who just stepped down as
Homeland Security chief, said they could do it
with a thousand more agents and more reliance
on high technology. I would throw out numbers
like 30,000 more agents, or 50,000 more. Right
now we have 11,000. To really do what theyʼre
supposed to be doing, there has to be a massive
investment in border guards. Theyʼre not even
thinking in those terms.
The 2000 Census documents it quite well.
There are 9 million to 13 million undocumented
workers in this country, and there are more
coming every day. Where are they coming
from? Theyʼre coming predominantly across
our southern border.
So what can we do? One solution would
be more and more agents if we want to get
Lee Maril, author of Patrolling Chaos: the U.S. Border
Patrol in Deep South Texas
edge • SPRING 2005 • 27
serious about it. What I suggested was a
bipartisan task force that would make it a public
debate that everyone could weigh in on it, and
we could decide what kind of border we want,
in reality. Do we want a closed border? Do we
want to have an open border? Right now we
have a totally open border, but the public is
being told that it isnʼt.
edge: In the book, you note that drug
trafficking brings Mexico a billion dollars or
more in annual income, more than the country
earns from oil exports. Does this support
arguments that controlling narcotics from the
supply side is doomed?
Maril: I think it does, if Mexico is any
kind of example. It has corrupted their society
to a large degree. Itʼs a phenomenon that has
only happened in about the last 15 years, and
it has changed how their society functions. I
tried to point out through numerous examples
that the Border Patrol was up against a situation
in which they couldnʼt win. The drug cartels
have all the money, better equipment, more
highly paid men and women, more technology,
and theyʼre always one big step ahead. The
test — itʼs like the Census and the count of
undocumented workers. The test with drugs is
in terms of availability and price. Right now in
this country, drugs are very available and very
cheap. So thatʼs the proof that the Border Patrol
isnʼt able to do that part of its job.
edge: Knowing how the border functions,
does thinking about the potential for terrorists
coming in through there keep you awake at
night?
Maril: I just canʼt believe weʼre not
doing more. If I can take you there now and
show you 100 different places where you can
just walk across, then certainly people who
want to do us a lot of harm have found those
places and know how to do that. Remember
that, as a part of this, I mentioned the Mexican
armyʼs participation in this whole thing, in the
smuggling of humans and also illegal drugs. I
have no question that if there are terrorists who
want to come into this country, theyʼre already
here. And itʼs not just the southern border. The
northern border is open, too.
edge: Have their been any major changes
along the border since you finished the book?
Maril: Itʼs alarming. In the last six
months, violence related to narcotrafficking has
increased dramatically … such that the United
States issued a travelers alert to stay away
from the northern border area of Mexico.
edge: As you noted in the book, one
reform after 9/11 was to combine the Border
Patrol and Customs and bring both under the
umbrella of Homeland Security. Do you see
any reason for hope in that?
Maril: The positive I see is that theyʼre
now sharing information. The Border Patrol
is now getting information directly from the
FBI through their computer systems. If youʼre
an undocumented worker and they catch you
coming across the river, the first thing they
do is fingerprint you and take your name. If
it shows up on their computer that it matches
information from the FBI, youʼre going to
get nailed and youʼre not going to be set free,
which was previously the case. On the other
hand, I honestly can see no other change.
In fact, on the negative side, an Associated
Press story says that BORSTAR, which is the
Border Patrolʼs tactical squad, has sent Border
Patrol agents to Afghanistan and Iraq to help
the military with border situations there. Itʼs
draining the very few resources we have.
edge: I saw another story announcing
the opening of a new training facility,
bringing all the Border Patrol training into
one place.
Maril: Yes, but I havenʼt seen evidence
that what theyʼre training them in has
changed. I put this question to my students:
If you were going to hire people to patrol a
river and you were going to require them on a
regular basis to try to save someone who was
drowning, wouldnʼt it make sense to teach
them how to swim? Thatʼs not happening.
I credit all these problems the Border
Patrol has to the fact that itʼs very insular and
very 1950s militaristic. It hasnʼt and wonʼt
reform itself. Theyʼre going to keep doing
what theyʼve done until someone tells them
to do differently because itʼs a top-down
organization. What the agents think has no
bearing.
edge: Has your call for a task force had
any effect?
Maril: Not yet. Iʼm hoping that when
the book has been out six months to a year, it
will gain some momentum. I certainly intend
to participate in lobbying Congress about
these Border Patrol issues. The Border Patrol
really needs our help. •
Frustration runs high among agents patrolling the Rio
Grande. Photograph courtesy of Lee Maril
EXCERPT FROM
PATROLLING CHAOS
“The border in Deep South Texas
meant and was many things to many
different people. But maybe it could best
be understood by an agent in the middle
of a dark night along the banks of the Rio
Grande, tracking fresh sign along a hidden
trail. Agents — good or bad, strong or weak
— experienced similar epiphanies when they
realized that it was just them out there in
the vast darkness, when they recognized that
the only link with the McAllen Station was a
plastic radio pinned to the shoulder of their
shirt. That was when the sheer magnitude of
this human conundrum could perhaps best
be configured, when an image of the border
could be conjured based upon empirical data
interpreted within the context of real human
experience including fear.
“The border was at least in part
this: an enormous, dark brown, hairy
tarantula ten thousand times the size of
Agent Humberto Taylor’s specimen, a beast
moving at its own pace through time and
space, oblivious and amorphous, hideous yet
compelling, its sweaty infectious bite the front
edge of decay and death. It waited out there
along the banks of the stinking, toxic river,
or in among the fields of ten-foot-tall sugar
cane, or down at the bottom of the cesspool
of flowing waters where the hydrilla rooted,
or deep in the thick forests of prickly pear.
Although not human, this border creature
was a product of human society, a scumbag
nightmare from the Freudian deep.”
From Patrolling Chaos: The U.S.
Border Patrol in Deep South Texas
by Robert Lee Maril. Texas Tech
University Press, 2004
28 • SPRING 2005 • edge
Could foods, chemicals, air pollution lie behind
diseases associated with chronic inflammation?
A physician suggests it’s time to find out. Exposed
C o n t i n u e d
edge • SPRING 2005 • 29
Dr. William Joel Meggs ran
down the list of diseases associated with
inflammation.
Leading the list was the nation’s No. 1
killer, cardiovascular disease, including heart
attack and stroke. “If you put blood vessels
under a microscope, what you see is that the
cells involved in inflammation are there,” he
said. “These cells come from white blood cells
designed to destroy germs. They will not only
destroy germs, but will destroy or damage
epithelial cells (which line blood vessels).”
Next came the nation’s No. 2 killer,
cancer. “Cancer develops at sites of
inflammation.”
Then he added arthritis, asthma,
allergies, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis,
lupus and multiple sclerosis, all long known
to involve inflammatory response. Now,
researchers are linking inflammation with type
2 diabetes and obesity.
“The more we know about inflammation
and how it causes diseases and ways to block
it,” he said, “the healthier we’re going to be.”
That conviction lay behind Meggs’
decision to write The Inflammation Cure: How
to Combat the Hidden Factor Behind Heart
Disease, Arthritis, Asthma, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s
Disease, Osteoporosis and Other Diseases of
Aging, published in 2004 by McGraw Hill’s
Contemporary Books. In it Meggs, professor of
emergency medicine and chief of the division
of medical toxicology, and co-author Carol
Svec, a health writer based in Raleigh, describe
for a lay audience the growing scientific
evidence linking chronic inflammation and
potentially life-threatening disease. They also
outline evidence suggesting that in at least in
some cases the inflammation may be triggered
by diet, chemical exposure, air pollution and
other environmental factors.
Meggs hopes to take his campaign
further. As president of the newly created
Environmental Health Research Foundation,
he is leading a group of physicians and
scientists seeking to build a laboratory where
researchers can conduct experiments to
learn which environmental factors cause
or exacerbate disease. The group includes
physicians from North America and Europe.
“People are exposed to so many things
— chemicals that never existed before,
electromagnetic radiation, very monotonous
diets for many of us,” he said. “There’s a limit
to how much you can do (to understand the
consequences) with epidemiological studies.
The other approach is to look at individuals
who are suffering from these diseases, isolate
them from environmental factors and then
re-expose them to see if these factors modulate
disease.”
That, among other things, is what the
research facility would enable. Back in the
1950s, Meggs said, several hospitals around
the country established environmental
control units that allowed this type of
experimentation. Air purification systems
eliminated natural and manmade pollutants,
and food and other exposures could be
carefully monitored. Patients with severe
disease that didn’t respond to other types
of treatment could be sent to a unit for
treatment, sometimes with spectacular
success, sometimes with none. The
experiments, though, were never conducted
in a systematic way that allowed scientific
conclusions. Insurance companies stopped
providing coverage, and eventually every
environmental control unit in the United
States closed.
With growing evidence linking
inflammation to disease and environmental
factors to inflammation, Meggs said, it’s
time to re-evaluate environmental control
units. “Five expert panels assembled by the
federal government have recommended that
this technique be studied on a research level,
but funding has not been made available,”
he said. His group, which incorporated as
a non-profit organization earlier this year,
will try to raise private money to build the
research laboratory. The location has yet
to be determined, though Meggs considers
Greenville an ideal location.
While a conclusive case for an
environmental connection has yet to be built,
anecdotal evidence
is enticing. Meggs
gave examples.
A severe case
of rheumatoid
arthritis was sent
into remission
by eliminating a
single food from
the patient’s diet.
A case of Crohn’s
disease cleared up
when the patient
stopped smoking.
Population-based
LEFT: William Meggs receives an award from Dr. Cynda Johnson, dean of the Brody School of Medicine, on the publication of his book.
RIGHT: Meggs checks an x-ray with senior emergency medicine resident Chris Register.
30 • SPRING 2005 • edge
studies also show interesting correlations. The
incidence of lupus increases in areas where
industrial chemical exposure is high. Studies in
large cities have shown that when air pollution
spikes, the rate of heart attacks increases. And
overall, the heart attack rate in New York City and
Houston is twice the rate of the rest of the country.
“So we have all these anecdotal cases,”
he said. “What we want is to set up research
protocols so we can bring in a number of people
with Crohn’s disease, get rid of cigarette smoke
and exhaust fumes, simplify their diets and study
how those changes affect their inflammation.”
Identifying and eliminating triggers for
inflammation is especially critical because drug
treatments for inflammatory diseases can have
serious side effects. Some cause liver problems and
accelerated atherosclerosis. Others leave patients
more susceptible to a host of ailments because,
in reducing inflammation, they also reduce the
body’s ability to fight off infection.
“What I’d like to see is more research
into identifying the environmental causes of
inflammation so we can rationalize that approach
to medicine,” Meggs said. “Drug therapy has
been rationalized in the sense that we can tell you
specific indications for drugs, the side effects,
whether there’s more than one treatment, and we
can sit down and decide on a course of therapy.
But the environmental approach has not been
rationalized.”
Despite his optimism about environmental
therapy, Meggs acknowledged that it will not
prove beneficial in all inflammatory diseases. In
pure auto-immune disease, the body attacks itself
rather than an external trigger. Multiple sclerosis is
one example. In MS, the body mistakenly identifies
a protein on the nerve sheath as a foreign object
and attacks it.
“In that type of case, we have to find a way
to turn off the body’s response to that particular
protein,” Meggs said. “We have the technology to
turn on the body’s response to almost anything.
We can inject rats with this protein and a chemical
that will cause them to develop MS, but we don’t
have the chemical to turn off the reaction. If I
could make one contribution to medicine right
now, it would be to find that chemical.” •
Chronic inflammation:
a good response gone bad
If your doctor has said you need to watch your cholesterol level, you’ve
probably heard the lecture about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.
Cholesterol carried in the blood by high-density lipoprotein can keep blood
vessels clean. That’s the good form. The bad form rides along on low-density
lipoprotein and helps clog arteries.
Inflammation is a little bit the same way. Good inflammation results
from the body’s attempt to heal itself. Whether triggered by a cold or a
cut or pneumonia, it’s a short-term response that goes away as you heal.
Inflammation turns bad when it becomes a chronic condition.
That’s the inflammation Dr. William Meggs targets in his book The
Inflammation Cure. In his office recently, he pointed to asthma as an example
of how inflammation can go awry.
“If you have pneumonia, inflammation helps you fight off germs,”
he said. “With allergies, someone exposed to ragweed pollen will
inappropriately fight off the pollen as if it is a germ. If this continues over
time, changes occur. In asthma, which can be caused by allergies, you get a
remodeling of the tissue of the lungs. In the tissues that are damaged, you
actually see an increase in the nerve fibers that cause inflammation so you
get almost a positive feedback result. Smaller insults that would have been
tolerated before the damage occurred are now amplified. You also see a
migration of inflammatory cells from the blood stream into lungs, and this is
in the absence of infection. If the stimulus keeps on coming, chronic disease
develops.”
In The Inflammation Cure, Meggs and co-author Carol Svec describe the
growing body of evidence linking inflammation to a host of diseases, from
arthritis and Alzheimer’s to heart disease and stroke. They also provide
practical tips for reducing your risk of inflammatory response. Most of
those tips coincide with the good health practices you already know: Don’t
smoke. Eat right, including lots of fruit and vegetables. Exercise. Brush your
teeth and floss. (Though not fully understood, a connection has been found
between gum disease and heart disease.)
Adding fish oil supplements to your daily multivitamin regimen
also could be a good move. Meggs cited one study that showed fish oil
supplements, which are high in omega 3 fatty acids, cut the risk of dying of
heart disease in half. “That’s one simple and inexpensive intervention,” he
said.
Overall, he said, reduce your exposure to sources of combustion as
much as possible. That means staying away from cigarette smoke, car
exhaust, gas cook stove fumes and wood burning fireplaces. From a public
health standpoint, he said, one of the biggest improvements we can make
is to reduce air pollution. “Air pollution is bad for lungs, for airways, for the
cardiovascular system,” he said. “So when we move to all electric cars, the
heart attack rate will decrease in big cities.” •
explore e x p l o r a t i o n s
edge • SPRING 2005 • 31
San Lucas, an impoverished town
in a hot, dry region of south-central Mexico,
hardly ranks as a typical tourist destination.
So why did Dr. Jeff Popke, associate professor
of geography, spot three North Carolina
license plates there in a span of one week
last summer? It was, he said, evidence of a
deepening tie between rural North Carolina,
on the one hand, and San Lucas and its
surrounding Tierra Caliente region, on the
other.
Popke and Dr. Rebecca Torres, assistant
professor of geography, are exploring that
link as part of an ongoing study of rural
North Carolina’s new and growing Latino
population. “We’re interested not just in
what’s happening here, but in the linkages
back to Mexico and how these processes
(of immigration) restructure the political,
economic and social aspects of both the
sending and receiving regions,” Torres said.
San Lucas is a “sending” region: home to
a significant number of Latinos who’ve settled
in Greene County. This summer, working
with a Mexican Ph.D. student, Popke will
spend nine weeks in San Lucas conducting
T W O S I D E S O F T H E C O I N
Geographers ask how Latino immigration
affects communities in rural N.C., Mexico
door-to-door surveys of 300 households
and in-depth interviews with at least 30
individuals who have made one or more
trips to North Carolina. Torres will travel
to Mexico to help with the interviews. They
want to learn about the conditions that
have encouraged the northern migration,
Mexicans’ impressions of North Carolina
and the ongoing ties between Latinos
in North Carolina and Mexico. It goes
to the heart of what geographers call
transnationalism.
“People don’t live their lives on one
side of the border or another,” Popke said.
“In many ways, people have meaningful
social relationships that extend across all kinds
of political borders.”
The impetus for the study is the significant
increase in Latinos settling in North Carolina
over the past 10 to 15 years. Between 1990
and 2000, North Carolina experienced a 400
percent increase in its Latino population. In
many rural areas, including Greene County, the
impact was even greater. Greene doubled the
state rate of growth. Today, Latinos account for
8 percent of the county’s total population.
Popke, Torres and fellow geographer
Holly Hapke conducted earlier research to
learn, among other things, what draws Latinos
to Greene. While jobs, education and family
ties rank as the top draws, there appears to
be another underlying attraction. “People are
coming here because it’s rural,” Popke said.
“Partly that’s the nature of the rural economy
— they’re coming here for jobs — but people tell
us they want to live in a rural area. The word
tranquilo comes up constantly. Es tranquilo. It’s
peaceful here.”
Peace comes with a price. An
overwhelming portion of Greene County
Latinos are employed in low-skill jobs and live
on the edge of poverty. They live in relative
isolation, without the aid of Hispanic support
organizations found where there are larger
enclaves of Spanish speakers. But the crime rate
is low. They can grow small gardens. People are
friendly, and no one is constantly asking to seek
their documentation.
“We’ve started to think of this as a tacit
agreement whereby Latinos accept some of
the downside in exchange for tranquilo, this
feeling of being left alone,” Popke said. “From
the host community, people at the moment
seem willing to accept outsiders who are quite
different because they are providing useful labor
and helping the economy. How long that will
continue to last is an open question.”
One outgrowth of the geographers’
research has been the creation of a dual-language
immersion program in the Greene
County Schools. Dubbed Los Puentes, or Bridges,
the program is shrinking the language and
cultural gap for 80 elementary school students,
including native English and Spanish-speakers. It
features classes conducted all in English or all in
Spanish on alternate days.
The program also is giving ECU researchers
a rare opportunity. Linguists are studying how
children in the program learn new languages
and communicate with one another. Education
faculty are getting insight into the preparation
their students need for teaching in a culturally
diverse classroom. And the geographers used
their connection to the school system as an
introduction to Latino families in their survey.
Mostly, Torres said, she hopes the program
fulfills its name, bridging the divide between
people and cultures. “North Carolina is at a
crossroads,” she said. “We can look at this
(growing Latino population) as a potential asset
or as an entrenched kind of underclass. How this
is resolved will make a huge difference with what
you can do in the future in terms of economic
development. If you have tensions and a deep
divide, it will be hard to create a situation of
improving life for everybody. I see it as central to
the future development for rural communities to
address these issues head on.” •
ABOVE: Kindergarten students enrolled in the
Greene County dual-language immersion program.
Photograph courtesy of Rebecca Torres.
explore e x p l o r a t i o n s
32 • SPRING 2005 • edge
D I R E C T I O N C E N T R A L
Unlocking protein synthesis
holds key to development, disease
It’s the proteins, stupid.
Though far too polite to state his case so
bluntly, Dr. Brett D. Keiper quickly points out
the importance of proteins in living organisms.
“Up to now there’s been a lot of fervor about
the genome, genes and the expression of genes
and how they can lead to disease, including
cancer,” said Keiper, assistant professor of
biochemistry and molecular biology. “What
often gets overlooked is that none of these
things happens without making the proteins
in the cells. Genes don’t carry out function. It’s
proteins that carry out function.”
In other words, proteins direct the
chemical reactions in cells, telling them when
to multiply, whether to start up a new activity,
when to turn on a defensive mechanism. In a
developing embryo, they play a critical role in
differentiation, the process
that transforms an embryo
from a uniform mass of cells
into a complex individual
with distinctive parts, such
as heart, head and limbs
for a human being. Certain
proteins even direct cells to
make new proteins.
It’s that process
of manufacturing, or
synthesizing, new proteins
that holds Keiper’s attention.
He is particularly interested
in the regulation of protein
synthesis in developing
embryos and in cancer. His
research focuses on the role
of a small protein known
as translation initiation
factor eIF4E, which seems
to start the manufacturing
process of other proteins.
The eIF4E travels from the
main body of the cell (the
cytoplasm) into the nucleus
to seek out messenger RNA
(a copied portion of the
genetic blueprint DNA),
binds to it and transports
it back to the cytoplasm.
There, biochemical machines
called ribosomes read, or
translate, the message off
the RNA and build the new
protein it describes. Keiper
wants to decipher how the
new proteins that result
from this activity affect the
development of cells destined to become eggs
or sperm.
Keiper’s study subject is the nematode
worm Caenorabditis elegans. “We can mutate a
gene in the worm to knock out the function of
this translation factor, then very quickly look
at the next generation to see what difference it
makes to the process of oogenesis when that
protein is no longer there,” he said. “Do the
oocytes (the precursors of eggs) grow in size,
have normal morphology, become fertilized
and go through normal growth stages to
adulthood?”
The process turned out to be even more
complicated than Keiper first anticipated. The
worm, it seems, has five versions, or isoforms,
of the eIF4E protein, each encoded by its own
gene and each affecting a different type of
tissue.
“We found out early that if we knocked
out one isoform, it has only one effect,” Keiper
said. “For example, getting rid of isoform 1
prevents the fertility of the oocyte or sperm,
mostly sperm.”
Another eIF4E isoform is expressed only in
the nerve cells and muscles. “Worms deficient
in this initiation factor look normal and grow
normally at least in muscle structure, but their
behavior is messed up. They don’t sense food,
don’t use their muscles properly, don’t swim as
well. So a lot of functions that have to do with
nerves are either absent or very deficient.”
Two other isoforms are expressed in the
muscle and pharynx and in the gut, but their
precise functions remain unclear.
Only one version of eIF4E appears to
be essential for survival. “When we look at
embryos deficient in this protein, they will
begin to divide to some hundred cells and then
just stop,” Keiper said. “The cells no longer
divide or differentiate. They die.” They die at
the precise time that each cell would normally
start on the path to becoming a new tissue
type such as heart or nerve. “So isoform 3 is
absolutely essential for some developmental
step in going from a mass of undifferentiated
cells to differentiated tissue.”
In time, understanding the process
of protein synthesis may not only deepen
knowledge of how embryos develop, but
could also shed light on potential treatments
for cancer. The eIF4E translation initiation
factor that Keiper studies is more abundant
in embryonic cells than in adult cells. The only
other place it is found at those levels, some five
to 10 times the normal amount, is in cancer.
“At the cellular level, there’s a lot of
similarity between tumor development and
embryo development,” Keiper said. “Both
types of cells are growing and dividing, growing
and dividing, in a very rapid cycle, and they use
a lot of the same mechanisms to do that.” •
Proteins in cells hold the secret to development and disease, says Brett Keiper.
Let others proclaim the genius of
Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. To Dr.
Kevin Moll, those guys are mere johnny-come-latelys.
His musical paragons carry names like
Ockeghem, Regis and La Rue, who predate the
great Classic composers by about 300 years.
Moll, associate professor of musicology,
rates Johannes Ockeghem, who died in 1497,
as one of the top five composers in music
history. “He is as hip as Bach. He is as hip as
Beethoven,” Moll said. “He is as original and
deep as any of those composers, and that is why
I believe that over time, this music is going to get
its due.”
“This music” consists of European
liturgical compositions dating to the 14th and
15th centuries. Their hallmark: polyphony,
with multiple voices singing different notes
in different rhythms simultaneously. Think of
Gregorian chant, the plainsong revived and
made popular by the monks of Saint-Pierre de
Solesmes, and multiply it. “This is Gregorian
chant to the fourth power,” Moll said.
A classical and jazz bassist, Moll came to
early music almost by chance. Once introduced,
E N - C H A N T I N G
For musicologist,
complex 15th-century church music unsurpassed
he was hooked. The era of Dante,
Chaucer, da Vinci and Botticelli, of
mysticism and masses celebrated
in soaring cathedrals, of a fellow
named Copernicus who soon
would propose an absurd theory
that the sun, not the Earth, was the
center of the universe, this era had
also given rise to a magnificent,
complex musical traditional.
“Fifteenth-century music is
the first full maturity that Western
music ever achieved, when you can
say it really is at a place where it
needs to go,” he said. “In my view,
there are only a few peaks in music
history. This is one of them.” As
far as sacred music is concerned,
Moll said, this repertoire has
never been exceeded.
That Mozart, not Ockeghem, has been
celebrated through the ages has been due to
historical, not aesthetic factors, he said. Part
of it was that tastes simply shifted to favor
newer composers. The music of Ockeghem,
for example, was not performed regularly after
about 1520.
More fundamental changes occurred
around 1600. “With the polyphonic tradition,
all parts are basically equal,” Moll explained.
“Around 1600, the type of music changed
from a cappella polyphony to accompanied
homophony, putting great weight on the top
voice with a subordinate accompaniment.”
This stylistic change was fundamental in the
formation of so-called modern music. In
addition, standards for notation developed that
allowed a body of understood masterworks to
flourish. “So these (earlier) pieces were obscured
stylistically and then notationally,” Moll said.
By the 18th century, everybody could
play Mozart, but hardly anyone could translate
Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum. In this piece, the
composer’s idea is to write a four-part mass, but
only two parts are noted in the manuscript, Moll
said. “You only know it’s four parts because
one of the manuscripts in which it survives is in
four-part realization,” he said. “But how can
you have a four-part piece in which there are
only two parts — and it is so beautiful? You do
it by what’s called canon, two parts singing the
same piece at different times. Like Row, Row, Row
Your Boat. But that’s too easy for Ockeghem.
Ockeghem starts the voices at the same time.
The tenor will read the same note on a different
clef in a different time signature. The title
translates into the Mass of the Time Signatures.”
Little wonder that Moll suggests it
practically takes a Ph.D. in music to interpret
and perform the music adequately. “It takes
incredible intermediation,” he said. Even when
he’s working with modern transcription, he finds
it necessary to return to the original scores to
confirm and sometimes correct the notations.
Although a large amount of Renaissance
music has been transcribed into modern
notation, Moll’s mission has been to develop
the interpretive tools for performing the
Franco-Flemish music of the period and get it
performed. In his 1997 book Counterpoint and
Compositional Process in the Time of Dufay and in
other publications, he explains for the modern
performer such issues as the structure and
performance practices of early music. He also
leads two performance groups. The Early Music
Singers, comprising ECU students, faculty and
members of the community, perform an annual
concert series that recreates a period church
service. His professional vocal ensemble, Schola
Discantus (The Choir of Discant), has produced
six CDs of early music, most never before
recorded, on the Lyrichord label. For three of the
recordings, the group was joined by members of
Grammy-winning male chorus Chanticleer.
“These guys did it on their own time, for
very little money,” Moll said. “That tells you how
good the music is, that they want to perform the
music that much.” •
explore e x p l o r a t i o n s
edge • SPRING 2005 • 33
Kevin Moll calls early music “Gregorian chant to the fourth power.”
Moll directs the Early Music Singers in rehearsal.
Pardon Dr. Gregg Hecimovich while he
shakes off the dust. He’s been rooting around
in 19th century family papers, following the
clues in one of American literature’s more
intriguing mysteries. Hecimovich, assistant pro-fessor
of English, is hot on the trail of “Hannah
Crafts,” author of The New York Times best-sell-ing
novel The Bondswoman’s Narrative.
Although written a century and a half
earlier, The Bondswoman’s Narrative was first
published in 2002 after Harvard University
scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovered the
handwritten manuscript in an auction listing.
It is believed to be the first novel written by an
African-American woman. She also may have
been an escaped slave. On the manuscript’s
cover, she calls herself “a fugitive slave recently
escaped from North Carolina.”
Hannah Crafts is likely a pseudonym, but
the text provides tantalizing hints that Crafts’
story may have been as much autobiography
as fiction. So who was Hannah Crafts? And
what can be learned about and from her these
many years later?
Hecimovich, a Victorian specialist, is
taking a two-fold approach to answering those
questions. On the historical level, he’s trying
to clarify Crafts’ North Carolina connections.
From the literary perspective, he’s unraveling
the many ways in which Crafts borrowed from
popular fiction of her day, especially Charles
Dickens’ Bleak House. The result will be a book
he has tentatively titled Hannah Crafts and North
Carolina. Also in the works is a documentary
to be developed in collaboration with the
Museum of the Albemarle, a division of the
N.C. Museum of History, in Elizabeth City.
The novel tells the story of a slave
woman’s escape from John Hill Wheeler and
Ellen Wheeler of North Carolina and her
eventual life as the wife of a minister in New
Jersey. The Wheelers’ names also belong,
perhaps not coincidentally, to real land- and
slave-owners originally from Hertford County.
Ellen Wheeler is
cast in a particularly
unflattering light,
though one that
historical records
indicate may have
been close to the
mark.
“At first Crafts scratched out the Wheeler
name, as if she didn’t want to implicate
herself, but at some point, she wrote it back
in, perhaps after the Civil War, as if she were
clearly desirous of implicating her oppressor,”
Hecimovich said. “For historians and scholars,
it is a clear link to someone recognizable in
North Carolina and national history.”
Hecimovich began his research with
the papers of John Hill Wheeler’s niece, Kate
Wheeler Cooper, which are held in the Joyner
Library collection. Cooper’s papers include
correspondence with her uncle during the
period covered by the novel. He also has
followed the trail to the North Carolina
Collection of UNC-Chapel Hill, the N.C. State
Archives and the Library of Congress. His
examinations have encompassed unpublished
letters and diaries, wills and Census records.
He has identified two possible
candidates for the real-life Hannah Crafts.
One was a slave born into the household of
Lewis Bond of Bertie County. Hecimovich
speculates that on Bond’s death, she became
the property of Samuel Jordan Wheeler and
Lucinda Bond Wheeler, the parents of Kate
Wheeler Cooper and John Hill Wheeler’s
brother and sister-in-law. The second possible
Crafts was inherited by Ann Ward from her
father, James Ward of Bertie County. Ann
Ward married John Wheeler Moore, a nephew
and neighbor of Samuel Jordan Wheeler.
John Hill Wheeler and his wife had moved
to Washington, D.C., but maintained a
financial interest in the family’s Murfreesboro
plantation. They visited Hertford and Bertie
F U G I T I V E S L A V E /
B E S T - S E L L I N G A U T H O R
tracing the North Carolina connection
explore e x p l o r a t i o n s
34 • SPRING 2005 • edge
counties frequently. Hecimovich suggests that
John and Ellen Wheeler acquired Crafts either
from his brother or from the Moores during
one of those visits.
Additional evidence also bolsters the
authenticity of the Wheeler family connection.
The family had an extensive library, including
Bleak House and other works echoed by The
Bondswoman’s Narrative. They had other literate
slaves, and they were writers themselves. “A
literary atmosphere pervaded this family,”
Hecimovich said. “Their letters are filled with
beautiful descriptions.”
Uncertainties remain, however. Census
records did not list the names of slaves,
leaving only blanks where names should have
gone. Was the 15-year-old mulatto owned
by Lewis Bond in 1850 also the 25-year-old
mulatto owned by Samuel Jordan Wheeler
10 years later? Furthermore, Hecimovich has
not turned up a record that John Hill Wheeler
searched for an escaped slave who might
have been Crafts. Wheeler had been involved
in a notorious court case over the escape of
another slave, Jane Johnson. Would he have
let Crafts’ escape pass unremarked?
Scholars at least have ruled out Jane
Johnson as the author of The Bondswoman’s
Narrative. “This book encouraged scholars
to go back and find out what happened to
Jane Johnson,” Hecimovich said. “Finally, we
have the rest of her story. This project gives
more voice to all those little blank spots in the
Census record. History has effaced everything,
but it can’t ever fully erase the lives of these
people.” •
Gregg Hecimovich began his search for Hannah Crafts in the Joyner Library collection.
edge • SPRING 2005 • 35
in print i n p r i n t
• COMMAND AT SEA: NAVAL
COMMAND AND CONTROL SINCE
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (Harvard
University Press, 2005), by Michael A.
Palmer.
Whether using signal flags or satellite
communications, naval commanders are
challenged in efforts to communicate with
and direct subordinates in battle. Palmer,
professor and chair of history, explores the
results in five centuries of encounters. “A
feast for qualified readers,” Publishers Weekly
says. “A distinguished historian, Palmer
offers a valuable addition to naval history
with this study of the problems of how to lead
a fleet into battle, revising many previous
conclusions and offering superb battle
narratives.”
• CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF
MEXICO (Greenwood, 2004), by Peter
Standish and Steven M. Bell.
A nation of 90 million people, Mexico
holds a special place in Latin America,
particularly as a bridge between those
countries and the United States. But Mexico
and the United States have special ties
of their own — cultural, economic and
historical bonds that continue to evolve. This
book offers students and general readers an
understanding of Mexicoʼs dynamism: its
history, institutions, religion, culture, and
leisure and social customs. Standish is a
professor of foreign languages.
• THE ART OF ENAMELING:
TECHNIQUES, PROJECTS,
INSPIRATION (Lark Books, 2004), by
Linda Darty.
This book covers popular techniques
and the fundamentals of setting up a studio.
It also provides instruction for 14 projects
in enameling. The methods covered range
from traditional cloisonné to experimental
techniques such as firing enamel into mesh
forms. Darty is a professor of art and design.
• Angelo Polizianoʼs SYLVAE (Harvard
University Press, 2004), edited and
translated by Charles Fantazzi.
Poliziano was one of the great scholar-poets
of the Renaissance and a leading
figure of Lorenzo deʼMediciʼs circle in 15th
century Florence. His Sylvae, written in Latin
hexameters, are poetical introductions to his
university courses. They contain some of
the finest Latin poetry of the Renaissance
and give insight into Polizianoʼs views
of both his Greek and Latin predecessors
and contemporary poets writing in Italian.
Fantazzi is a visiting professor of classics.
• MENTAL HEALTH IN LITERATURE:
LITERACY LUNACY AND LUCIDITY
(Lyceum Books, 2005) by Glenn Rohrer.
Works of literature can be fascinating
and stimulating alternatives to case studies
when studying human behavior. In this
anthology, Rohrer uses the poetry, fiction,
drama, essays and autobiographies of literary
masters to depict the symptoms and realities
of a range of mental illnesses. Rohrer a
professor of social work.
• RE-ENVISIONING DANCE:
PERCEIVING THE AESTHETICS OF
DISABILITY (Kendall/Hunt, 2004) by Boni
Boswell and Jane Elin.
Who can and canʼt dance? This text
presents new ways of seeing both dance
and disability and suggests applications
for educational settings. Information about
individual differences covers physical,
sensory and cognitive distinctions. Boswell
is an associate professor of exercise and sport
science.
C o n t i n u e d
in print i n p r i n t
36 • SPRING 2005 • edge
• FROM IKARIA TO THE STARS:
CLASSICAL MYTHIFICATION,
ANCIENT AND MODERN (University of
Texas Press, 2005) by Peter Green.
Green has assembled 17 essays that
ground myth in reality but emphasize his
conviction that the myths are more impor-tant
than historical narrative. His book was
reviewed on the front page of the February
11 Times Literary Supplement. “As a clas-sicist,”
writes reviewer Edith Hall, “(Greenʼs)
most distinctive habit is the juxtaposition of
Graeco-Roman history with the events that
dominated the 20th century, creating between
the two cultures a dialogue which is always
arresting if archly contentious.” Green is the
King Charles II visiting distinguished profes-sor
of classical history.
• VOTE AND VOICE: WOMEN’S
ORGANIZATIONS AND POLITICAL
LITERACY, 1915-1930 (Southern Illinois
University Press, 2004) by Wendy Sharer.
• RHETORICAL EDUCATION IN
AMERICA (University of Alabama Press,
2004), edited by Cheryl Glenn, Margaret
Lyday and Wendy Sharer.
Vote and Voice is the first book-length
study to address the writing and teaching
practices of members of the womenʼs
political organizations in the time surrounding
suffrage. It explores how the League of
Women Voters and the Womenʼs International
League for Peace and Freedom, in particular,
challenge the conventions of male-dominated
political discourse and trained women to
speak and write successfully in various
political contexts. The essays in Rhetorical
Education in America orient scholars and
teachers in rhetoric and help set an agenda for
curriculum design. Since the time of Socrates
and Aristotle, education in rhetoric has been
regarded as the lynchpin of participatory
democracy. Sharer is an assistant professor of
English.
• WRITING PUBLIC POLICY:
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO
COMMUNICATING IN THE POLICY-MAKING
PROCESS (Oxford University
Press, 2005) by Catherine Smith.
This college-level textbook is a
hands-on, concise guide to writing and
communicating as part of the public policy
process, including communication to effect
change. Features include scenarios that
illustrate the complexity in policy processes
and highlight their diversity of contexts, the
variety of actors involved and the range of
communication types produced. Smith is a
professor of Englis