Notes from my Knapsack 12-9-21

Notes from my Knapsack 12-9-21
Jeff Gill

Denison celebrates 190 years
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In 1831, Ohio Baptists looked at their losses to competing religious groups in northeast Ohio, also known as the "Western Reserve", and in the southwestern part of the state around Cincinnati, and they took steps to create educational institutions to build up their tradition.

There weren't a great many Baptists in east central Ohio, but just enough, especially around Zanesville, to make a pitch for a proposed "Literary and Theological Institution" in their neck of the woods, in as yet uncontested ground by the competitors so common up around Kirtland and Mentor or down in Carthage and Mt. Healthy.

So it began, the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, formally launched December 13, 1831 by Ohio Baptists.

Obviously, the name was long and somewhat unwieldy, and even after they moved across Raccoon Creek through "miles of mud," from their former location to their new and lasting home atop Prospect Hill, it just wasn't a name to conjure with.

Financial struggles in the 1850s nearly closed down the relocated college, but a bachelor farmer who had cared for aging parents beyond the age of marriage and offspring offered, at the urging of his Muskingum County Baptist preacher, to fund a renewed university if they preserved his family name.

Ironically, William S. Denison at nearly 60 found a teenage bride willing to marry him and bless their union with children, and he fought paying off the full amount pledged right into the Civil War years, but the state Supreme Court agreed that he'd made a binding promise, and in the end his heritage didn't last through children, but Denison University did.

This puts Denison in an interesting category with Harvard and Vanderbilt as institutions of higher education named for people who never physically visited their campuses . . . but Denison is unique in having to sue in court to get their bequest.

Denison was a university well before the time when many private residential colleges have more recently looked to change their name to a more attractive "university" label. Doane Academy as a private secondary school, Granville Female Seminary, and Shepardson College for Women all were part of the collection of institutions that meant Denison truly was a university from the late 1800s on into the present day. Locally, residents and students alike refer to "the college" but the full name has been Denison University since the 1850s.

Brown University in Rhode Island was a template from Denison's earliest days, another Baptist school which became an independent and influential academic institution in their region. Preachers and teachers and leaders were the result of the curriculum, at Brown and at Denison, with the Twentieth century ushering in an era a further independence from sectarian ties, first from exclusively Baptist affiliations to a more general "Christian college" model, and to the private residential liberal arts undergraduate program of today.

A college which trained missionaries for places like Japan, China and Myanmar is today a university whose graduates are still catapulted around the world. The mission of today's Denison University is "to inspire and educate our students to become autonomous thinkers, discerning moral agents and active citizens of a democratic society." The program is more secular in nature, but the intention is still one of inspiration, rooted in "a firm belief in human dignity and compassion unlimited by cultural, racial, sexual, religious or economic barriers, and directed toward an engagement with the central issues of our time."

Happy 190th birthday, Denison University!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's learned much at the fair college on the hill, and even gotten to teach a little there. Tell him what you've learned about educational institutions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-4-21

Faith Works 12-4-21

Jeff Gill

A cup of sugar, a story for the season

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[In the Saturdays of Advent, a story will be told on the installment plan; this is part one of four.]

Melanie wanted her two children to have a lovely, memorable Christmas.

The last year had been memorable, but not in good ways. Melanie's mother had died after a long illness, and she wasn't sure the boys even remembered her when she was still up and around and making cookies in the kitchen. Their father had stopped calling even on their birthdays as he traveled with his work out of state. She was thankful for a promotion at work and a pay raise, but it meant longer hours and she covered shifts more than she wished.

So tonight she planned to make sugar cookies for Christmas. It was something her mother did when Melanie was a child, and she realized they hadn't ever done that in this home, and it was five years since the divorce and their move to this neighborhood.

She pulled up a simple sugar cookie recipe on her phone, and checked the canisters, dusty along the back of the kitchen counter, and was relieved to find a hardened container of baking powder in the back of the cabinets. There were eggs in the fridge, and she knew vanilla and flour were sufficient because she did make pancakes fairly often . . . well, often enough. (Make pancakes every Saturday this December, she thought to herself as she got out the big bowl.)

The butter was softening in a ceramic bowl, and she sifted together the flour and baking soda and baking powder which she'd chipped loose enough for a half teaspoon, with the oven heating up to 375. Melanie started thinking about having the boys come in and help put the dough on the cookie sheets.

For the next step, the two sticks of butter got mashed and mixed in with the cup and a half of sugar. She opened up the canister and reached in to scoop out the measuring cup's worth, but heard not a scoop but a scrape.

There was just enough sugar to cover the bottom; the while interior fooled her into thinking there was plenty, when there was nowhere near enough. Maybe a half cup at most, and she needed a cup and a half. And these were sugar cookies: it's not like there's a workaround.

She spent some time ransacking cupboards, thinking there might be an old bag of brown sugar she kept for oatmeal (when was the last time they had oatmeal for breakfast?), and maybe that could work? But it had either been eaten or thrown out. No sugar. She found an extra blue canister of salt, sighed and shrugged.

It was late, looked like rain on the forecast, and too near the boys' bedtime. So much was mixed and ready, but she just needed a cup of sugar. The butter could go back in the fridge, the bowl of flour and dry ingredients could go back in the cabinet and would probably be okay . . .

Or she could ask Mrs. Morley next door. Melanie remembered how when she was little, sometimes her mom and neighbors would call and borrow an egg or two, or a cup of buttermilk, but that was when people cooked and neighbors talked to each other. She'd never asked a neighbor for a cup of anything.

But Mrs. Morley looked like a lady who might bake occasionally. She could offer her half the batch, maybe? What would that be, two dozen cookies for her, still plenty for the three of them. Sighing again, she grabbed the measuring cup, shrugged on her coat, and stuck her head around the doorway into the living room to tell the boys she'd be right back. They barely nodded.

Out the front door, around on the walk since the grass was soggy and probably muddy, and up the neighbor's driveway. The lights were on, her car was in the carport behind the house, it didn't seem too late, but Melanie was nervous. It seemed odd, but then it came to her that she had never in these last few years come over to her neighbor's house. She'd always come over to her to offer a hand or to say hello. How odd, but that's how it had turned out.

Feeling uneasy enough she almost didn't, but then she thought about her mom, the boys, and those cookies she wanted them to have, and she knocked on the door.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's pretty sure he knows where this story will go, but you never know. Let him know what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.