Winter 2003

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I learnt to dream of Sicily

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Feature

I learnt to dream of Sicily – William Wordsworth The Prelude

Karen Skolfield

RECORDING THE MOMENT: Catherine Hunter ’03 in the cloisters of Monreale Cathedral. Photo by Rick Newton THERE IS THAT MOMENT OF travel when jet lag and beautiful landscape balance, equalize, as if you were falling into a strong wind and hanging, briefly, without momentum. We cluster around the bus at Palermo’s airport as the rest of our weary journalism class straggles toward us. Student Katy Loconte points and says: “Oh, look.” Behind us, one of the flat-topped, impossibly angled hills created by the island’s frequent seismic activity. Our heads slowly lift, and we begin to notice all the green; the salted air of the Mediterranean; il vento greco, the wind blowing from Greece. We are in Sicily. Somebody smiles. It’s March 2002, day one of the trip and the learning epicenter of Journalism 391R, travel writing and photojournalism. Our 21 students have 10 days in this country that lends itself perfectly to the artistic eye and mind. The UMass course, supported by the International Programs Office, is open to all majors from the five colleges and we’re quite the mix – journalism, political science, management, even one lone engineering student who gently explains the Bernoulli effect and how our airplane flies. Rick Newton ’76, ’81G, he of all things photographic (as well as adjunct member of the journalism department and information technology manager at the Environmental Institute), leads the trip and the course, this year with me and Elizabeth Luciano of the UMass News Office as writing instructors. The course began in 1991 when Newton led a group of five students to Yucatán, Mexico. It has evolved to include both photography and writing, and a guided tour packaged by Durgan Travel Service in Stoneham. In 1998 Newton switched the travel component to Sicily after he took a vacation there. It was cheaper to travel to Sicily in March, and “I just fell – I just ….” Newton stumbles. What he won’t quite say is that he fell in love with the island. It’s likely that there are few islands unworthy of love, but Sicily begets a certain passion. We’re treated to moment after moment of the exquisite: the cobbled streets of hilltop Erice, cannoli, the sweeping Arabic arches of Monreale Cathedral, the smell of wild fennel, the rightly named blood oranges, the sweetness of every Sicilian we meet. Beauty is coupled with responsibility – each student must take photos and enough notes to produce a photo portfolio and a 10-page travel article. Some students shoot upwards of 18 rolls of film, which we’ll pore over as a class, choosing the stunning, almost crying over remembered faces, a particular doorway, the scoop of an arch. They record other moments in their journals and articles: standing at the lip of one of Mount Etna’s craters, the sound of the Mediterranean booming through pipes of hardened lava, the shopkeepers who patiently taught us the Italian for “red” and “very good.” The moment when, on first glimpsing Mount Etna, one student deadpanned: “It looks like every other active volcano I’ve seen,” and we burst out laughing. After the trip, followed by the unending swath of New England gray, the final two months of the course focus on writing and refining their photographs. They earn their three credits. They walk away. This is where a course might end, but months and years later, Newton still receives updates. From our 2002 class alone, we have students in England and Spain, and others with upcoming trips to Ghana, Thailand and Singapore – and those are just the ones who have remembered to check in. “The writing and photography is a vehicle for them to connect with the culture,” Newton says, and for so many, travel becomes an essential, continued experience. “They get a cosmopolitan world view, and it completely changes their perspective. That’s such a thrill for me. I teach to plant those seeds. “I end up with this extended family. I’ll get a random postcard from some place in Europe.” For just a moment, Newton drops his patented gruffness. “I love getting that stuff.”

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I learnt to dream of Sicily

SICILY: More images

SICILY: Excerpts from student journals