At NECC’s Haverhill campus Tech Building the 15th Annual Peace Poetry contest was held the night of May 4.
The contestants’ ages ranged from first graders to college students with three top place winners for each age category.
Brought together for the first. time in perso since the 2020 pandemic which had separated and isolated so many.
Judges included students in Northern Essex’s English Composition I and II a well as Children’s Literature course during this past spring semester of 2023.
Families were so excited to support their loved ones participating in this event as seating quickly filled up and eventually families stood around the room and out the door.
Sherri from Andover, mother of an eighth grader who had been a top three placewinner beams with excitement “I’m just really excited to be able to see my son find an outlet through writing and a ceremony like this just means the world for him he hadn’t expected to be a winner when turning in his poem….Im so very proud.”
These poems held a common theme of course, peace. Lines like Cameron Dove’s of 1st grade describing peace as “copper and dopper and my puppies heart.”
Participants wrote about topics ranging from what peace feels and smells like, connection and empathy to whether or not world peace is attainable in the society we live in today and the injustices suffered.
For example a moving line from first place winner of the College & Community category Fezonae Miller “can peace in this world be attained are we ever going to be unchained…serenity only lasts for a moment this world is truly missing so many components.”
Every poem was its own interpretation of peace and what it meant to the writers/participants of this contest.
“Writing is not always meant to be shared and we write for many personal and private purposes, but often we write for an audience, we write to be heard, and we need to know that our words matter,” said Professor Elle Yarborough of the English Department of Northern Essex.
Fifty-four-year-old Thomas Greene is the chair of the NECC English department and professor as well as a short-story writer, gamer and vampire history fanatic.
Greene also has an established a lengthy academic profile. Greene first obtained a bachelor’s degree from Trinity college in San Antonio
“My undergraduate school was a small liberal arts college…in my hometown..where I graduated with a BA in English and a teacher certification for high school English and History,” said Greene.
He went onto to earn a master’s of fine arts and a Ph.D. in creative writing and British literature from Umass Amherst. “UMass offered me money, so I moved to Amherst and earned an MFA in Fiction Writing from Umass Amherst, followed by a Ph.D. in British Literature, also from Umass Amherst. The MFA only took about 3 years, but the Ph.D. took 9 years, which was about average for my program at the time.” Greene said.
He describes the most difficult part of obtaining his degrees: “The most difficult part of my education was learning to understand what a Ph.D. dissertation was, and how it should be written. Because I went straight from undergraduate school, I was only about 25 when I enrolled as a Ph.D. student, so it took me many years — while I was also taking classes — to understand what the dissertation was supposed to be and what the standards and expectations were.”
Teaching hasn’t always been Greene’s profession, prior to teaching he had been a technical writer for a computer company
“While I was at UMass, I did the coursework necessary to earn a certificate in professional writing and technical communication in the program that was just taking off there. As part of the program, I worked a summer as a technical writer at Digital Equipment Corporation in Littleton, MA, and then they asked me to come back the following year (which was the last year before I graduated). That certificate and experience was enough to land me my first professional writing job at Kaplan Test Prep in New York, as well as qualifying me for short-term contracts for companies like Compaq, Oracle, Bedford-St. Martins Press, and some nonprofits associated,” he said.
After graduating with a Ph.D in 2001 from UMass Greene had soon moved to Brooklyn with his wife and worked for Kaplan Test Prep for about 18 months. After he taught at CUNY Kingsborough Community College. Greene lived in Brooklyn for about five years, from ‘03-‘07.
When asked. how it was to teach in New York post 9/11 Greene said “New York is a great place to work or study when you’re young, and there are some die-hard people who live there and make it work. But my wife and I were examples of a really widespread population of people who move to New York, live and work there for about 5 or 6 years, and then move away. The impossibility of ordinary people being able to own property there, and the inconvenience and chaos of living in a crowded city just isn’t doable, I think, for most people who aren’t actually from there. I go back and visit sometimes, and I enjoy it, and I’m glad I lived there, but I don’t want to go back,” he said. “When I lived there, the city was still recovering from 9/11 and a lot of the people I met had firsthand memories. Heard a lot of stories about people’s kids who had been traumatized. Also, every time you went to a stand-up comedy club or fiction reading, the stories were all about 9/11. I feel like it was the city processing the trauma, so that now it’s still remembered, but not as directly or as emotionally as it was back then.”
Greene eventually joined NECC in 2008 and settled into a small 19th century home inSalem, with his wife.
Teaching seems to be something that runs in his blood, when asked what brought him to teaching and what he likes about it,
Greene says, “My parents were public school teachers, and they always told me and my sister, ‘You can do whatever you want with your life, but don’t be a teacher,” he said. “My sister recently retired from her career as a math professor. But seriously, I always just liked explaining things and answering questions, so this is a job where I get paid to do what I enjoy. And also, even though the pay isn’t anywhere near what technical writers make, it’s a career where I can feel — at the end of each day — like maybe I’ve done something worthwhile that might make the world a little better.”
Writing is another passion of Greene’s. After submitting stories tregularly for decades, a magazine accepted and published his science-fiction, short story “Another Man’s Treasure,” in the May 2014 issue. Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine is the longest continuously published science fiction magazine in the country, and is considered one of the most influential in the field. It is one of only a handful of speculative fiction digests that still publishes print editions, with a circulation of about 27,000.
“Another Man’s Treasure” is a science fiction story set in a dystopian America of the near future.
The story is about Maggie Moreno, a widow and single mother who scratches out a living as a prospector in an abandoned 20th century mega-landfill. When the local thugs pressure her to risk her life to bring in better salvage, she’s forced to resort to desperate measures to save herself and her children.
“It’s a huge sense of validation when a magazine buys a story. Especially when you’ve spent (as I did) 27 years trying unsuccessfully to get published, with no particular feedback most of the time from the magazines rejecting your stories, it can be tough to keep going. So now, even though my stories are accepted more often than they’re rejected, it’s still as joyful and validating as that first successful piece was,” he said. “
Greene says “I wouldn’t call myself a novelist, because I’m still trying to make the transition from writing short stories to writing novels. Like with the dissertation, for me the hard part is to understand the scale and scope of a novel, as well as to get a clear idea of what readers are getting from what I’m writing.My first attempt at a novel I wrote for a contest when I was 16. It was bad, I didn’t win, and I don’t hardly consider that this attempt counts. My second attempt was when NECC gave me a sabbatical to draft a novel back around 2014. That novel got some interest from literary agents, but I hadn’t done a good enough job of creating the protagonist vividly, so that novel failed to sell. So far, my failed novel and all my published work is hard science fiction — that is, SF that has no fantasy or imaginary elements involved. But I have ideas for fantasy stories and more “soft” sf stories that I might get to in the future. I collect all my ideas in files that I store on the cloud and come back to them when I need something new to write. My process is that I try to write or revise something every day. Sometimes I miss a day or two, but writing even a little bit every day keeps me on track, and those little blocks of time really add up.”
When asked if he is actively writing he said “Right now I’m revising a draft of a novel I wrote during the lockdowns, a prequel to a novelette that I published in Analog magazine a few years ago. This time, I’m working with an online writers group of other pro and semi-pro writers, meeting monthly and getting feedback on each chapter as we go. I hope this will help me stay on track with what readers are getting from my novel, and I hope it will work out this time.”
“What is your fascination with the supernatural and what makes it easier to write it for you?” asks the reporter Greene replies
“For me, the supernatural in fiction is a metaphor for something in life that is otherwise difficult to describe. For example, a haunted house is a metaphor for a troubled family. A dragon is a metaphor for the greed and selfishness that all people experience sometimes. The metaphor is a lens that allows you to understand the thing it’s describing in a new way — in a way that you couldn’t understand it if it weren’t described by that metaphor, because the metaphor creates distance, emotionally, that entices you to allow the truth past your psychological defenses.I believe that I am drawn to supernatural fiction, fantasy, and folk tales because, as a person of mixed race, I always feel like an outsider to some extent. I’ve never had the experience of completely ‘belonging’ with a group of same-race people in that way. But this experience is really difficult to describe in real-world terms — and most people who have only a single race aren’t even aware of any issues around it. So supernatural and fantasy fiction gives me both a way to feel a sense of belonging, and a set of tools to express my experience in a way that might be understandable to others.”
Lastly is a fun fact about vampire history that Greene would like to share: “One fun fact about the original Dracula story that most people don’t know is that he’s not destroyed by sunlight. In the novel there are scenes of him walking around London in daylight with no problem. The whole thing about bursting into flame was added later by Hollywood — I suspect because fire looks cool on film. But my idea about vampires is that they represent particular fears that modern, urbanized, industrialized city-dwellers have that result from the way that we have to live around strangers (which is unprecedented in most of human history) and that therefore we need to trust that these strangers aren’t sometimes actually undead monsters, lurking around, waiting to drink our blood.”
The NECC Library is hosting a continuing series of workshops to help students define, identify and avoid plagiarism when completing assignments. One workshop was held on April 11.
Susan Leonardi, an Instruction and Research Librarian at Northern Essex hosted a zoom call and discussed the importance of the use of resources that NECC offers.
The main goals and purpose of the presentation on how to avoid plagiarism are to locate and use the links NECC offers, be able to define plagiarism and what it means in the United States, especially at NECC, learn how to work around plagiarism whether intentionally or unintentionally done, and identifying the departments on campus that can help you detect and avoid plagiarism.
What is plagiarism? Everyone has heard the term most of their educational careers and to be wary of it. The definition is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
Northern Essex’s definition is “the use of any other person’s research, images, words or ideas as though they were your own, without giving appropriate credit to the original source.”
Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty — completely disrespecting the integrity of someone’s work whether it be an essay, a photo, or art.
Instructors are required to provide students with a clearly written definition of plagiarism in their course syllabus. Students are responsible for understanding what plagiarism is in each of their classes.
Avoiding plagiarism takes time management, writing strategies and citing!
“Our library sources offer you the tools to source your essays without needing google,” says Leonardi.
More often than not students discover the tools NECC offers later finding regret in wishing they knew sooner they could have used them making writing an essay or research project much easier. These tools are closer than you think if you enter necc.mass.libguides.com. The NECC library offers various ways to help, down to even choosing an essay topic if you struggle with that. Essentially you are offered research. An example of some of the tools this site offers is a Citation Guide:Help with APA, MLA, Chicago, Integrating Sources Into Your Paper. Offering handouts and worksheets, citation managers too. You can even chat with a live NECC librarian helping you with how to maneuver the site and how you may look for certain information in regards to your research.
Making a visit to the tutoring and writing center is something that Leonardi also often recommends to students. You can make a visit on either campus, make an appointment and ask for the help you need.
NECC works tremendously hard on making sure their students have all the tools to succeed in their future, education, and careers. You can always book an appointment on Navigate as well.
In regards to plagiarism and questions students may be wondering, the reporter asked Leonardi’s thoughts on the future of education in regards to online sites available to students like chat.gpt, grammarly, and cliffnotes, quizlet, google and the internet in general, Leonardi soon dove into how it may be a structural problem within our education system for students to find the need to have to copy answers to their essays and research.
This could mean that it may not be the student’s fault, nor the teachers, but the curriculum.
With students finding the need to cheat there are many factors in place as to why. This could range from whether a culture of cheating is normalized after solely learning online or students being fundamentally dishonest or unmotivated, to students being under high pressure who are overwhelmed by their academic and outside life workload, to universities needing to reevaluate students’ academic work loads, etc.
Though the future of education will always be a discussion on how to work around our adapting society with adapting technology. Leonardi says “Our library offers great tools that copy and pasting from google can’t always do for students sometimes. When they need to cite their sources and doing so in the correct format …l like an encyclopedia it covers a vast amount of information, it can offer you ideas going into research topics if you are having trouble starting out…it is sort of the researcher starter kit for students.”
Skills like distinguishing between opinion and analysis and avoiding vague generalities as well as focusing on a core theme for your paper are all that Leonardi believes take practice through time as a developing student taking on assignments.
“I would say that there are so many places and people you can look to for help like the writing center, your professors, librarians, are always here to help. Don’t ever be afraid to ask questions,”
Northern Essex Community college is known for how proactive and engaging they are with their students and community.
Today I walked around campus to ask students about the extracurricular activities they take part in and are interested in.
When asking students if they’ve gone to any of the after class campus events for example the Stuff-A-Bear event that had taken place in the Haverhill Campus earlier this semester.
When interviewing students many had replied that they hadn’t gone to a campus event ever.
Brianna, a Human Services major at Northern Essex said “I would go to an event if it was something I was interested in. I just work a lot.”
I had asked about 10 students if they had gone to any of the campus events at all and they mostly replied “No. I just don’t really have the time.”
All but one. Balin, 19, a first year Psychology major at Northern Essex said
“I’ve only gone to one event and it was a seminar on growing cannabis,” Balin said He said he had only really gone to the event for an English paper he had to write on how Northern Essex had starting offering training courses for careers in the cannabis industry.
Sisters Gabby and Mikayla, fist year Liberal arts majors said they both hadn’t gone to a campus event before.
“We just don’t have the time and haven’t found anything interesting enough to take time away from my life or homework.”
From what I gathered one in 10 students attend campus events.
In a class body size of 3,822 that’s less than 400 students or in other words 9.9% of students participate in extracurriculars that the college offers.
This shouldn’t be the case! There are events happening every day that can peak just about anybody’s interest. Something I also found was that many students don’t particularly seek out events. They are reminded via email or text but otherwise it is word of mouth. Many students also really find events in the bathroom, with the Toilet Telegram that shows you the monthly schedule of campus events.
NECC works hard to engage with its students but I find that it should begin to be the other way around.
The opportunities these clubs can provide for students to meet others with similar interests and also jump out of their comfort zone.
Or even learn something new like the science behind music or growing cannabis. If you’re a student be sure to check the NECC events page or take a couple seconds to look at the bulletin boards in the halls before class to see events,
William Gleed, 60, is a NECC professor with a master’s degree in poetry from the University of New Hampshire.
He has also taught at Middlesex Community College, Hesser College and Franklin Pierce University.
Gleed initially came to NECC in 2008 and has been here since.
Gleed started working in composition studies in grad school at UNH when he worked with professors in the creation of the writing across curriculum program and as one of the consultants at the start for what is now the Connors Writing Center in Durham.
Gleed’s first initial teaching job began back in the fall of 1995 at Hesser College while being a consultant at UNH.
“My students are such hard workers, and they very often have responsibilities far beyond my classroom. I just really respect my students. I love hearing their stories, and I love playing a small part in helping them achieve their goals. That might sound corny, but it’s actually true.”
Teaching has been what Gleed has done for the last 22 years but long before that his first job was as a cemetery worker in the Linwood Cemetery in Haverhill.
He wasn’t digging graves or anything completely horrifying, his job consisted of mowing the lawn and weeding flower beds. Gleed’s father wanted him to understand what hard work was.
“I was…15 years old at the time and pretty resilient,” he said.
It would take a lot of resilience to be able to do that as your very first job.
Gleed has said throughout the years his most interesting job was managing the Robert Frost Homestead state historic site in Derry, N.H.
For 12 seasons Gleed hosted great writers and poets of poetry.
Gleed had even created the Hyla Brook writer’s workshop while there which took place on the farm.
Gleed throughout the years has met acclaimed writers and poets.
He finds that behind the fame they are all just like us of course .
“I remember Maxine Kumin, not too long before we lost her, came to read at the farm. She was very giving, and I had a number of friends to whom she had given time and attention. She was delightful, and as big a fan of Robert Frost and poetry as I was.
“We spent an hour in Frost’s kitchen really gossiping about the stories we’d heard, especially from his youth in Lawrence and Derry.
“When we finally went to the barn for the actual reading with the audience, I introduced her to the hundred or so folks present, and she read her first poem to applause.
“And then she looked over at me and said, “whew, they liked it!” I think that sums it up.”
This story reminds him that they are all very human and feel all the same things we feel at the end of the day.
Another acclaimed writer Gleed had the opportunity to meet was Mekeel McBride,
Gleed finds himself to still be amazed and lucky to have met and had her as his first mentor and academic adviser.
On top of teaching and running. museum Gleed was a correspondent for the Portsmouth Herald.
Gleed covered things like small town politics and government, local members of the statehouse and police/fire emergencies and the “very nuts and bolts news writing.”
To this day Gleed remembers his glory news story “my glory news feature story! I wrote a review of a show of Van Gogh’s early works which was at the MFA and my editor ran it above the fold in the Beachcomber on Hampton Beach and in the Sunday paper! Woohoo! There was also a story I did once about an intoxicated individual who wandered into a swamp and was located and rescued on a winter night by the use of a brand-new technology, the town of Newton New Hampshire’s first night vision scope.”
Gleed has a lot of knowledge of history and writing, that he is the perfect teacher to have at NECC.
He takes pride in what he does and he has a resume of life experiences to pass on the same wisdom he learned throughout the years to NECC students.
Families and friends often come together to grab a bite to eat at a restaurant to be able to sit down and enjoy each other‘s company, drinks and good food, as well as good service.
Many believe that tips should not be included in their overall bill when paying for their food.
Customers sometimes find that paying their bills should be enough and tipping shouldn’t be put on a customer who came for just food. Not everyone understands the effort, time and dedication it takes to provide good service. Some may think that when waiters and waitresses are upset about their tip when they thought they provided you with everything you needed and delivered excellent service that they have no place to be upset, they may think “find a better job with better pay so I don’t have to pay you myself.”
Here are some thoughts that servers themselves have when it comes to tipping culture and the restaurant industry.
Colby Manning, a 20 year old finance major at Merrimack College and part time waiter finds that tips are most certainly earned “if a waiter or waitress does not give the customer what they need then they have every right not to tip extra money,” Manning said. When working in the restaurant industry.
The writer shares two receipt examples. This has smiley face and “Excellent Service,” written on it. Shantely Aquino
When asked if Manning believes when people have worked in the restaurant industry they are more understanding and whether the industry is meant for everyone at some point in their livesManning says “People with experience in the restaurant industry have better multitasking skills and are better at dealing with people. However it is not for everyone… the industry is demanding physically and mentally some people are better off working with a job that suits their skills and personality more.”
Some servers believe that if everyone has worked in the industry at some point in their lives they grasp a better understanding of how much pressure and dedication it takes to clock in and get on your feet for hours, and some like Manning understand that just isn’t for everyone.
“I believe that when waiters take in the risk into this job they should understand that sometimes they will make significantly less than what they expect and many times they make significantly more. You can’t have that type of reward without risk.” Manning then mentions that when your tips don’t add up to minimum wage the restaurant should cover that shortfall. In Massachusetts due to the Fair Labor Standards Act an employer may credit. a portion of tips toward the employer’s obligation to pay minimum wage. When working as a waiter if you make “too much” you usually don’t receive a paycheck because tips are accounted as a form of income so therefore the hourly wage you do make goes into taxes due to Congress enacting the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) in 1982. At times when employees have worked and servers have a “slow day” they are paid minimum wage for their hours. The Massachusetts Fair Wage Law Tips requires employers to pay tipped employees at least $6.15 per hour for each hour worked in cash wages or otherwise known as a “service rate.”
The writer shares two receipt examples. This has smiley face and “Excellent Service,” written on it. Shantely Aquino, Features Editor
Lauren Mcrimmon, a 20 year old communications major at NECC, and waitress found that it does take a certain personality to work as a server. “It takes a unique person to work in the industry because sometimes it shows the worst parts of how people act and it can also be a toxic environment with both coworkers and customers.” Customers can sometimes be very cranky when they’re hungry or sometimes employees have bad days just like everyone else.
When asked her thoughts on people’s perspective of if waiters should find a better job or a job where you aren’t paid less than minimum wage and dependent on the tips of customers
Mcrimmon said “I would not be a server if it changed to minimum wage because it is a much harder job than any other minimum wage job and if I were to rely on minimum wage as well as less tips it would not be rewarding at all.”
A good amount of working in the restaurant industry takes a certain kind of patience, consistency, effort and even a little bit of a gamble because servers don’t always know what they will come home with at the end of the day but they do always know the work they will have to put in. Gziah Nunez, a 22 year old psychology major and criminal justice minor at UMass Lowell and parttime waiter, says “it’s not necessary for everyone to work in the restaurant industry because it simply isn’t for just any person, but I do think that everyone should at least grasp the understanding that employees are human beings and deserve to be treated with respect regardless of any error they have made.” Some days servers find themselves going home with the money they worked hard for to not be as rewarding when they have had customers talk down to them and felt treated as less than when circumstances don’t always go the customers’ way.
When asked about the slogan ‘’the customer is always right,” 18 year old Lisa Roscillo, a waitress says “I do believe in order to be professional ‘the customer is always right’ even when it hurts to be treated poorly. It is a part of the job to accomodate for customers.”
Yes, tips are usually earned but servers did not create the system in which they have to earn their money per table; they simply live in it. Tips are earned but respect doesn’t need to be.
Most people don’t know what a normal shift looks like for a server. There isn’t ever a normal shift, it isn’t the same as working a desk job and doing the same thing 9-5, you are always dealt a new hand everyday you come into work. The gamble of being a server takes a special kind of person and sometimes servers wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
NECC art student Ione poses with some artwork at the art gallery opening in the Fournier building on Amesbury Street in Lawrence on Nov. 15. Shantely Aquino, Features Editor
On the night of Nov. 15 at 4 p.m. the department of Art + Design held the grand opening for the very first art gallery on NECC’s Lawrence Campus.The new gallery is located in the Louise Haffner Fournier building on Amesbury Street, now where art classes are held for Lawrence NECC artists.
This event was brought together by Michelle Carter, the chair of the art program, and an art professor, as well as Dean Amy Callahan.
This event showcased art from students taking art at NECC, from various classes including Carter’s. Throughout the lobby of the building art from students was presented and encased beautifully.
The viewers of the gallery consisted of faculty, students and proud relatives. Drinks and delicious appetizers were displayed as well as a live piano which was playing delicately George Gershwin’s music.
Many guests were chatting softly amongst each other, visibly thrilled to be there.
Cassandra Kussad had her art featured as the cover of the flier for this event. The art was made in her art class.
Kussad was excited for this event and to be able to show her art to an audience.
Kussad said “what I like about my… art class is that it has no particular guidelines … I find it to be very free when it comes to my assignments,” she said.
Some of the student artwork on display at the art gallery opening in the Fournier building on the Lawrence campus on Nov. 15. Shantely Aquino, Features editor
Kussad’s relative mentioned how her grandfather was also an artist, stating how creativity is so magical in the way you can make something out of “thin air,” out of for example, a napkin and a pen, as Kussad’s grandfather would do.
Like many artists Kussad finds inspiration in everything when it comes to art. She used art to express herself.
Following a similar theme Ione, a student of Carter’s drawing I class, states that “you cannot teach art or really learn but somebody can guide you, Michelle is excellent at guiding us to places where we can be at our fullest potential.”
Ione is a first year NECC art and design major who does face painting when she is outside of school. She too, like Kussad, hopes to one day be able to pursue art as a career.
“It is terribly exciting to be able to give the opportunity to showcase students’ art here,” said Callahan.
Some of the student artwork on display at the art gallery opening in the Fournier building on the Lawrence campus on Nov. 15. Shantely Aquino, Features Editor
The conversation about how NECC can make art classes an easier commute as opposed to heading to the Haverhill campus for the art students who reside in Lawrence began with a challenge that Carter thought she should help solve, Carter and other faculty members thought of ways they could help.
Dr.Paul Beaudin, vice president of academic affairs and provost brought together a meeting with staff including Callahan who then proposed to make the building attainable for teaching art.
“Everyone was so proactive to solve this challenge,” says Carter. A blank slate was transformed by the maintenance crew who really brought together the perfect space for professors to to teach and for students to learn. Carter wishes to soon fill the area with even more art by the art students at NECC.
On Thursday Oct. 20, during STEM week, on the Haverhill Campus in the Technology Center building a talk was held on the Science of Music with physics
professor J. Oscar Azaret with NECC chemistry student Lindsey Fevry.
In this talk Azaret discusses how Art, Science and Craft combined creates the classical guitar, the predecessors of guitars, the kinds of woods and the harvesting of
the woods used to create the guitars we know today, how these woods affect the musical instrument artists use as their tool, and the science behind the guitar.
The talk began just a few minutes before 1pm with Azaret making sure his guitar was tuned right and strumming along. He quoted Pete Seeger, “‘you spend half the time
tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune.”
He soon began with his talk, discussing the origin back to the 8th century, to the creation of the classic guitar we all know today in the 1800’s, created by Antonio Torres Jurado. Next, Azaret spoke of the kinds of woods guitars are made of and how things are. Like, for example the fretboard, neck and soundboard when all brought together influence the overall sound
of a guitar if you listen closely. After, to demonstrate the difference he plucks Pedro Aguiar’s “Se ela perguntar” beautifully. With Azaret’s explanation you can find the key
note differences in the three examples he showed with three different guitar’s he had made himself.
With the help of Lindsey Fevry, NECC chemistry major student Azaret began exhibiting the science behind the classic guitar. With linear density, string tension, the
velocity of string vibration, and the resonant modes of string are some of the smaller pieces behind what makes your favorite guitar solo special. Music sounds different to everyone and speaks different volumes or tones to different individuals everywhere.
Azaret used a device called a sinusoidal flapper so you can see, visually how sound waves are affected by tension- like string tightening on a guitar, which brings up the frequency, vibration, and weight. To find the resonant modes of the frequencies you hear when listening to guitar takes three different equations.
To find the linear density it is the mass over the length of the string. To find the string tension with the mass found prior times gravity.
Next, to find the velocity of the string vibration takes the square root of the tension over the linear density-meaning the speed of the vibration of a string. Lastly, to find the resonant modes members of the audience had to figure out what frequency would come next and Azaret then demonstrated the Hz on the sinusoidal flapper made in his class.
“The whole point of this board is because we are trying to calculate the frequency of the resonant modes…the way that one person resonates well with another is because they fit together… with this board it explains what frequency works best or ‘gets’ each other well enough to find the mode” says Fevry, who was given the opportunity to present the math explained because of how well she had presented a similar topic in her physics class with Azaret. “
The way he (Azaret) presents this topic makes it interesting and important because it explains the ‘why’ and how this all connects to life in some manner, it makes you look at the grand scheme of things while learning.”
Not only is Azaret a physics and engineering professor but he is also a luthier and Executive Director of the Boston Classical Guitar Society.
Before teaching at NECC in 2012 Azarat was a mechanical engineer at Bell Laboratories for three decades in the Boston Area. His passion for
guitars began in ‘94 and now he makes them. If you would like to have a guitar handmade or to discover your voice you can get more information on this at www.azaretguitars.com .
When asked why he thought the topic of the science behind the sound of guitars are important Azaret said “I think it’s important because, it’s important to stretch your
thinking and look underneath the surface of things and try to integrate together the different contributing factors of things….if you see a guitar you look at it as it is but you don’t think about the history of guitar and how it has. evolved, you don’t think about what it takes to build a nice guitar…it’s important for people to look beneath the surface and see all the contributing factors’.”
Paint Night participants hold up their artwork in the Dimitry building on the Lawrence campus on Sept. 27. Photo courtesy by Owner of Collectva & Wellness, Elizabeth Delgado
Unidos Paint Night at NECC Lawrence Campus on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 27, brought together a group of women to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.
This wonderful group of all ages, and Hispanic demographics were brought together with a meditation guided by Elizabeth Delgado, owner of Colectiva Wellness & Healing, an employee wellbeing strategist and energy healing and resilience practitioner. As well there was a wonderful painting lesson taught by Nicole “Kiki” Garcia, an extremely talented multimedia artist and Lawrence native. The person who brought this all together was Analuz “Lulu” Garcia, NECC Director of Community Relations.
The night started off with introductions, stating names, ages, jobs, Hispanic heritages and stress levels. This group included women of all ages being students and faculty or even friends of faculty. Some stress levels ranged from one to one million. Soon after introductions we began breathing exercises taught by Delgado, everyone found one they gained relief from after practicing, hoping to take what they learned that night for when they need it. Then began a guided meditation where we envisioned our homelands, picturing colors and nature, being surrounded by our families, and the smell of our home cooked meals.
Katiashka Perez holding her painting. Photo by Shantely Aquino
After, a painting lesson with Garcia began, we all had to choose the colors of our countries flags. The group gathered and we listened to Spanish music, laughed and did our own versions of the same painting. Different shades of blues and different shades of hands and unique flowers were painted.
An NECC nursing student, Katiashka Perez said “I came out because when I saw the event on the NECC event page online it sounded like fun.”
She had mentioned how she hadn’t necessarily been a painter, more of a drawer and how she does yoga and mediation sometimes.
Her stress level began with three and when asked at the end of the night it was brought down to one. She is of Puerto Rican descent and she was excited about this way of celebrating her Hispanic Heritage in this intimate setting.
This event wasn’t just a relaxing event for the participants but also for the hosts. Artist Garcia mentioned how when she gives a painting lesson to adults and children it is more structured and this night provided a calming fluidity when putting our individual paintings together. There, each and every painting being similar but not the same to the next.
When asking both Delgado and Garcia how long they’ve been hosting these paint nights they said it was their fourth ever. They had met at a vendor sale called Solude Arte, an art and wellness market which features local artists and healers that come together annually during holidays. From there they connected to bring people together with art and meditation.
Garcia is the very definition of a multimedia artist. When asked how she started she says “I learned how to paint before I could even walk,” with her father being an artist himself she was born into art. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture but she also does commissions for digital and physical art alongside making jewelry, ceramics, sticker prints and writing. You can find her art on Instagram @kikididdat and shop on her site shopkikiarts.com.
An extremely talented and multi-faceted woman was the perfect person to guide the participants through this night with Delgado.
Delgado has been on a journey of spiritualism and event coordination for about 20 years. She is of Taino descent, she finds the term Puerto Rican to be colonized. She hates to label and box herself into a category but she labels what she does as employee wellbeing strategist, energy healing and resilience practitioner. With her H.R. and employee healing background along with her resilience work with PTSD and domestic volence victims she brought together her knowledge of these topics to create Collectiva Wellness & Healing.
With her words filled with the purpose of connecting and moving her audience she brought some women to tears.
Delgado says her journey began when she was helping a relative with a headache, she had the intention of simply taking away his pain and with enough thought he went away.
Soon she went on a spiritual journey and eventually found her way to energy healing which she now does as her career. She stated that one thing she wants everyone to know when reading this, Delgado states “I think it’s important to connect the intersections of art and healing into spaces because the two are so powerful. When you bring in art and wellness into a space it really transforms people and communities and the culture of places.”
After experiencing this night with the connection of art and healing everyone leaving that night could say their stress levels decreased.
