The following swim opportunities are being offered by Coach Max Obermiller. 

Registration ends at 11:59 p.m., Wednesday, April 10. Register at <https://sewaneetigersharks.com>.

Sessions start Monday, April 15 and end Thursday, May 16 (five weeks). There will be four lessons per week, Monday–Thursday.

Students that have not swum on either the TigerSharks or MAC teams will need to come to the pool from 3:15-4 p.m. either April 11 or 12 for evaluation for placement. If the student can’t meet the minimum requirements, they may sign-up for summer swim lessons, but will not be able to participate in pre-swim. Caps and goggles will also be on sale.

3:15–4 p.m., Rookie I—Must be able to swim to the backstroke flags (15 feet) on their own and swim freestyle and backstroke. This class is for beginning swimmers; this is not a learn-to-swim class. Primary ages 4–7 years. Instructors are in the water. Rookie II—Can swim half a length of pool easily doing freestyle and backstroke. Will be learning breaststroke and  butterfly. Primary ages 5–10 years. Instructors are in the water.

4–4:45 p.m., Junior I—Can swim a length of the pool easily. Teaching will focus on learning breaststroke and butterfly with conditioning to increase strength. Ages 5–10 years. Instructors are in the water on some days. Junior II: One or two seasons of the swim team. Will be refining stroke mechanics for all 4 strokes with some light training. Primary ages 6–11 years. Instructors are in the water on some days.

4:45–6 p.m., Pre-Senior—Have three to four strokes mastered and will work on establishing a training base. Primary ages 7–12 years.Senior—Focus will be on training and further stroke development. Primary ages 13–18 years There must be an enrollment of least 10 in the Pre-senior and senior group for the group to happen.

Cost is Rookies/Juniors, $200 and Seniors, $175. Payment is due the first day of classes. Please make checks payable to Max Obermiller. 

Both girls and boys must have a one-piece swimsuit, a swim cap (swimmers with long hair must have a swim cap), and a pair of good goggles. There will be swim caps and goggles for sale. 

The Jessie Ball duPont Library will celebrate the International Edible Books Festival with a contest on Monday, April 1.

Each entry should be edible—cake, bread, crackers, gelatin, fruit, vegetables, candy, etc.—and represent a book or something about a book. Entry categories this year include Punniest, Children’s Book, Banned Book, Classic Title, and Most Creative.

All Sewanee students, faculty, staff and community members are encouraged to enter this year’s Edible Books Festival. Register your entry by Friday, March 28, at <https://form.jotform.com/90583852800156>.  

For more information, please contact Penny Cowan at <pcowan@sewanee.edu> or (931) 598-1573.

Sociologist Karida Brown will give a public lecture on the history and lives of African-Americans who moved with the Great Migration of the 20th century to the coal-mining towns of Southern Appalachia.

The lecture will be at 7 p.m., Monday, March 25, in Gailor Auditorium. It is open to the public.

Brown’s book, “Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia,” was published by the University of North Carolina Press. 

“Gone Home” focuses on Harlan County, Kentucky, and in it Brown challenges and corrects our assumptions today that Southern Appalachia – where Sewanee is located – is and has always been a region populated exclusively by poor whites. 

In fact, Brown shows, thousands of African-Americans migrated from the deep south into areas of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky in the early 20th century and made their livings and established their homes in coal mining towns.

Brown’s grandparents were part of that initial migration, settling in Lynch, Ky., and her parents were born and raised there. When they reached adulthood, though, they followed other blacks in migrating to urban centers around the U.S. Brown’s parents moved to Long Island, N.Y., where she was born and raised. Those migrations and the decline of mining led to the disappearance of many of these black communities.

The recovery work that Brown has done has a special resonance for Sewanee because it parallels the history of African-Americans in this community. Before 1970, 200 or more African-Americans lived in Sewanee and worked for the university and for local white families. 

In the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and the opening of better opportunities for education and work elsewhere, younger generations moved away from the Mountain. The black neighborhoods here declined dramatically in population. 

As a result, more recent arrivals to Sewanee, including students, often do not realize that prior to 1980, Sewanee was a town of white and black residents and that blacks were vital to the life and prosperity of the university and the community. It is too easy to imagine mistakenly that Sewanee, like Appalachia, has always been a white community.

Brown’s lecture is sponsored by the Sewanee Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation, the six-year initiative undertaken by the University of the South to investigate its historic entanglements with slavery and slavery’s legacies.

Funding for the lecture is provided by a Common Heritage grant awarded to the Sewanee Project by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Project is using the NEH grant to sponsor two community archiving events this summer, May 27 (Memorial Day) and July 5, at the St. Mark’s Community Center. 

Planning begins for the best Fourth of July yet. The theme for 2019 is “Peace, Love, and Fireworks,” so get your tie-dye and peace signs ready for a groovy celebration. 

It takes many volunteers to pull off the day of festivities, and we have a few committee openings available. A parade committee member is needed to help the current committee members with planning and day-of hands-on assistance with organizing parade entrants. The second volunteer opportunity is to coordinate and run the children’s games, and this person will need many helpers. Both positions come with support and guidance from current and past committee members. Contact Jade Barry at <jademcbee@gmail.com> for more information or with questions. 

We volunteer to put together the Fourth of July event because we care about our community and want to promote unity. We hope you will join us in this mission as we come together as Americans to celebrate our nation’s freedom and independence. Please kindly recognize that these events are voluntary, and if we do not have the volunteers required to run a successful event, unfortunately, we may have to cancel certain aspects of the celebration and worst case scenario, cancel the event altogether.

The planning meetings take place on Mondays at 5:30 p.m., at the Sewanee Senior Citizens Center: April 29, May 13, June 3, 10, 17, and 24, and July 1. We hope you will help us plan the best day of the year in Sewanee.

Tennessee residents are invited to beautify their properties and their communities by planting trees on 250K Tree Day, March 23. Trees are available to order for a $1 donation per tree, while supplies last, through March 17, by visiting the event website at <www.tectn.org/250KTreeDay>. The event is organized by Tennessee Environmental Council in its effort to maintain a healthy tree canopy in communities across Tennessee. Tree species include Red Oak, Red Bud, Pine and Plum or similar fruit variety. All trees must be picked up on the dates and locations published on the event website. There are 150 volunteer-run local tree pickup locations set up across Tennessee.Continue reading→