Several months ago, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, enjoying my first cup of morning coffee, when University of the Cumberlands’ English Department reminded me that my student days were forty plus years behind me. “How is it possible” I thought, “that the first issue of Pensworth was published 40 years ago?”
I don’t know what time-bending magic occurs as one ages, but at some point in life, everything in one’s younger years is lumped into “twenty years ago.” When did I graduate from college? About twenty years ago. When was the OJ Simpson trial? About twenty years ago, and so on. So yes, even though it may seem like only twenty years ago, 1985 was in fact 40 years ago (predating OJ by a full decade).
I had a double major in English and Psychology as part of my education concentration at what was then known as Cumberland College. I was part of Mountain Outreach and Bread for the World. I admit that I’m petty enough to still be irked that the ’85 Lamp staff used the Bread for the World “Hike for Hunger” to do a two-page spread on the new Clowns for Christ ministry using the Hike as a backdrop. Is my dislike of clowns really due to Stephen King’s It or does it have more to do with this perceived slight? The jury is still out, but I digress.
By 1985, I was also part of the Writers’ Roundtable. It provided aspiring writers a forum to share their work outside of the classroom. Pensworth was the medium to share selected writings with the wider campus. Student artwork was also included. Those first issues were printed on plain copy paper with cardboard stock. As I remember, work-study students (or maybe the department secretary) typed all the submissions as very few students had typewriters or word processors, and certainly no one had a personal computer on campus (The first Apple Macintosh was released in January 1984.).
If I recall, I submitted free-form poems for both the first and the second issues. I don’t recall either of those poems. What I do remember was how excited we all were to be “in-print.” It was heady and exciting that we had an audience (no matter how small that audience might be).
I no longer write poetry, which is probably for the best since after college I’ve used what writing skill I do have on non-poetic bureaucratic documents such as operational manuals, quarterly reports, and pages and pages of meeting minutes as a government employee in states as diverse as Colorado and New Jersey.
This evening, I’m again enjoying a cup of coffee and the evening breeze off the bay outside our home in Hawaii. Looking back, it truly seems just a few short years since I and my friends were putting out the first Pensworth. That was what? About twenty years ago… ◆
Pensworth 