An Interview with Nicholas Jones
|
Editor's Note: Nicholas Jones is a popular instructor for our OLLI program. He teaches the subjects of literature, poetry, and sometimes music. His specialty is English Literature, but he also has serious hobbies as a singer and musician. Here is an interview with Nicholas where he discusses his background and interests in his life. The interview was conducted by Mike Lambert, a member of the OLLI community since 2015. He is the Webmaster for Vistas & Byways.
|
Mike: Hello Nicholas. We have not talked since your "Shakespeare on Film Class" and your "Elizabethan Poets Class" in the fall of 2019. We could see each other in a classroom then at the downtown OLLI center. A lot of changes have occurred since then. One of your favorite writers had a line that may be relevant for us today: “Now is the winter of our discontent.” What do you think?
Nicholas: That's the first line of Shakespeare's Richard III, and what a perfect play for our times! Ironically, it's followed by ". . . made glorious summer by this sun of York" – Richard, the future dictator of England, planning his first coup, is gloating over his family's victory over the Lancastrians. What a lot Shakespeare packs in a line! (BTW, I'll be talking more about that line in my upcoming OLLI course on "Shakespeare's Greatest Speeches"). But back to your question: I think that in our country today there is a great deal of discontent, and appropriately so. We have so many inequities, poverty, sickness, marginalization.
Mike: I saw in Kathy Bruin’s list of recent OLLI classes that you have kept teaching with us, but with online courses. What inspires you to keep on going in this Age of Discontent?
Nicholas: Well, teaching always inspires me. Of course, I'd rather do it in-person than online. It was such a pleasure to be with you and others in the classroom on Market Street, and Zoom isn't at all the same. Today was the first day of an OLLI course I'm taking from Alexandra Amati on Beethoven string quartets, and seeing such a great teacher is another inspiration. Music always keeps me ticking, even in the lockdown days: I've been taking Zoom lessons on recorder, and singing Renaissance motets with my choir, Tactus SF, via software that makes it just barely possible to all sing at the same time. You can listen to some of our recordings on YouTube.
Nicholas: That's the first line of Shakespeare's Richard III, and what a perfect play for our times! Ironically, it's followed by ". . . made glorious summer by this sun of York" – Richard, the future dictator of England, planning his first coup, is gloating over his family's victory over the Lancastrians. What a lot Shakespeare packs in a line! (BTW, I'll be talking more about that line in my upcoming OLLI course on "Shakespeare's Greatest Speeches"). But back to your question: I think that in our country today there is a great deal of discontent, and appropriately so. We have so many inequities, poverty, sickness, marginalization.
Mike: I saw in Kathy Bruin’s list of recent OLLI classes that you have kept teaching with us, but with online courses. What inspires you to keep on going in this Age of Discontent?
Nicholas: Well, teaching always inspires me. Of course, I'd rather do it in-person than online. It was such a pleasure to be with you and others in the classroom on Market Street, and Zoom isn't at all the same. Today was the first day of an OLLI course I'm taking from Alexandra Amati on Beethoven string quartets, and seeing such a great teacher is another inspiration. Music always keeps me ticking, even in the lockdown days: I've been taking Zoom lessons on recorder, and singing Renaissance motets with my choir, Tactus SF, via software that makes it just barely possible to all sing at the same time. You can listen to some of our recordings on YouTube.
1
Mike: Tell us a little about your background. Where did you grow up and where did you go to school?
Nicholas: I'm a recent Bay Area transplant. I grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio, where my memories are of a lot of snow! I went to college and grad school at Harvard, where there was even more snow.
Mike: How did your interest in English literature develop?
Nicholas: I loved reading as a kid—tore through the works of Dickens and Tolkein, for example. But when I got to Harvard, I decided to major in chemistry, hoping, I guess, to save the world. But in my senior year, poetry won out (it was 1967, with all of its revolutionary romanticism), so I decided to go to grad school and become an English teacher, if I could. My dad, who was an English prof, thought I was crazy, but I managed to find a great job and haven't looked back.
Mike: What kind of teaching have you done prior to these classes at OLLI?
Nicholas: My first teaching job was at Kent State, three years after the shootings, and then I took a position at Oberlin College, teaching English. As you know, Oberlin has a wonderful Conservatory, as well as a great art museum, and I gradually developed a fascination with teaching and working across the humanities—with music, art, film, and creative writing. I taught there for 41 years. In the midst of all that, I took a stint as chair of the department, and then as Associate Dean—duties which I actually enjoyed a great deal.
Mike: What led you to move from Ohio to the Bay Area?
Nicholas: Retirement! the weather! and my wife's family—she grew up in Contra Costa County, and her mom, sister, and lots of cousins and nephews and nieces live here. I had a sabbatical for research here in 2001 and loved it.
Mike: You may have noticed that the OLLI members are senior citizens. Have you ever worked with a group like us before?
Nicholas: Yes, while I was still teaching at Oberlin, I gave several courses at Kendal at Oberlin, a retirement community with a great appetite for learning. It was fun, and gave me the idea of connecting with OLLI communities when I came west.
Nicholas: I'm a recent Bay Area transplant. I grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio, where my memories are of a lot of snow! I went to college and grad school at Harvard, where there was even more snow.
Mike: How did your interest in English literature develop?
Nicholas: I loved reading as a kid—tore through the works of Dickens and Tolkein, for example. But when I got to Harvard, I decided to major in chemistry, hoping, I guess, to save the world. But in my senior year, poetry won out (it was 1967, with all of its revolutionary romanticism), so I decided to go to grad school and become an English teacher, if I could. My dad, who was an English prof, thought I was crazy, but I managed to find a great job and haven't looked back.
Mike: What kind of teaching have you done prior to these classes at OLLI?
Nicholas: My first teaching job was at Kent State, three years after the shootings, and then I took a position at Oberlin College, teaching English. As you know, Oberlin has a wonderful Conservatory, as well as a great art museum, and I gradually developed a fascination with teaching and working across the humanities—with music, art, film, and creative writing. I taught there for 41 years. In the midst of all that, I took a stint as chair of the department, and then as Associate Dean—duties which I actually enjoyed a great deal.
Mike: What led you to move from Ohio to the Bay Area?
Nicholas: Retirement! the weather! and my wife's family—she grew up in Contra Costa County, and her mom, sister, and lots of cousins and nephews and nieces live here. I had a sabbatical for research here in 2001 and loved it.
Mike: You may have noticed that the OLLI members are senior citizens. Have you ever worked with a group like us before?
Nicholas: Yes, while I was still teaching at Oberlin, I gave several courses at Kendal at Oberlin, a retirement community with a great appetite for learning. It was fun, and gave me the idea of connecting with OLLI communities when I came west.
2
Mike: I spent a few years as an instructor at San Francisco State. Looking back, I was an old-fashioned Socratic style teacher. What changes have you made to your teaching methods to make them work on the Zoom screen?
Nicholas: Teaching at Oberlin was largely Socratic for me, too, since the classes were small and the students generally were really well prepared for class, full of their own questions and interests. Teaching at OLLI, I've been working more through lecture than I used to, but as you'll remember, the questions and discussions in the OLLI classroom were pretty fascinating—and I found that the concerns of folks of a certain age are way more grounded in reality than those of 18-22 year olds. Now, with Zoom, I found it's more difficult to get a free-flowing discussion going—my fall course on Jane Austen was mostly lecture (with a lot of visuals and clips from the movies, of course). For the Shakespeare course in April, I'm planning more interaction and discussion.
Mike: I looked at your website a few days ago to get prepared for our visit today. It is on the web at: www.nicholasrjones.com. I have one word to describe it: WOW! How did you decide what content to put into the website?
Nicholas: Since the first days of the internet, I've played around with the web as a way to "publish" some of my work. It doesn't replace writing books, I think, but it is more flexible and capacious, not to mention that you can spruce up your writing with great visuals! For some years I wrote a blog about cultural matters, "The World as Museum," and those writings are there on the website, but in more recent years I've been consumed with other writing projects that have taken precedence, particularly music reviewing (for some years in Cleveland, and now for San Francisco Classical Voice) and translating. I published a book of translations of 16th century Italian poems a few years ago, and I'm working on another Italian prose-poem work from the 1480s right now, which I hope to publish, too, if all works out. Otherwise, I've used the website as a place to distribute my poems—mostly written for friends—and some family history. I just finished a piece about my grandparents in southwest Georgia (US), whom I never knew, inspired by a box of letters from my grandmother to her family in Ohio.
Mike: Do you have anyone at home to help you keep your sanity thru these Strange Times?
Nicholas: I'm blessed to live in a lovely neighborhood in North Berkeley, with great neighbors. At home, I live with Miss Jane, our senior-citizen kitty, and my wife Sue—a retired artist who also loves playing music. Last year when I was prepping my Austen course, we (Sue and I, not Miss Jane) read Emma out loud to each other in the evenings. Mostly now we watch TV dramas in the evenings—I'd recommend A French Village (WW2 resistance) and Seaside Hotel (Danish historical drama, also about WW2, but funnier.
Thanks so much for interviewing me for Vistas & Byways.
Nicholas: Teaching at Oberlin was largely Socratic for me, too, since the classes were small and the students generally were really well prepared for class, full of their own questions and interests. Teaching at OLLI, I've been working more through lecture than I used to, but as you'll remember, the questions and discussions in the OLLI classroom were pretty fascinating—and I found that the concerns of folks of a certain age are way more grounded in reality than those of 18-22 year olds. Now, with Zoom, I found it's more difficult to get a free-flowing discussion going—my fall course on Jane Austen was mostly lecture (with a lot of visuals and clips from the movies, of course). For the Shakespeare course in April, I'm planning more interaction and discussion.
Mike: I looked at your website a few days ago to get prepared for our visit today. It is on the web at: www.nicholasrjones.com. I have one word to describe it: WOW! How did you decide what content to put into the website?
Nicholas: Since the first days of the internet, I've played around with the web as a way to "publish" some of my work. It doesn't replace writing books, I think, but it is more flexible and capacious, not to mention that you can spruce up your writing with great visuals! For some years I wrote a blog about cultural matters, "The World as Museum," and those writings are there on the website, but in more recent years I've been consumed with other writing projects that have taken precedence, particularly music reviewing (for some years in Cleveland, and now for San Francisco Classical Voice) and translating. I published a book of translations of 16th century Italian poems a few years ago, and I'm working on another Italian prose-poem work from the 1480s right now, which I hope to publish, too, if all works out. Otherwise, I've used the website as a place to distribute my poems—mostly written for friends—and some family history. I just finished a piece about my grandparents in southwest Georgia (US), whom I never knew, inspired by a box of letters from my grandmother to her family in Ohio.
Mike: Do you have anyone at home to help you keep your sanity thru these Strange Times?
Nicholas: I'm blessed to live in a lovely neighborhood in North Berkeley, with great neighbors. At home, I live with Miss Jane, our senior-citizen kitty, and my wife Sue—a retired artist who also loves playing music. Last year when I was prepping my Austen course, we (Sue and I, not Miss Jane) read Emma out loud to each other in the evenings. Mostly now we watch TV dramas in the evenings—I'd recommend A French Village (WW2 resistance) and Seaside Hotel (Danish historical drama, also about WW2, but funnier.
Thanks so much for interviewing me for Vistas & Byways.
3
|
We Welcome Comments |