Today was what we call a formal day of official visits--a suit and tie day. As an official delegation we toured Jordan University. 
It is impressive how Jordan University is going forward into the 21st century of cyber technology in their libraries and classes while maintaining the humanity of a gentler age. Students still meet students under trees to study, to share a cup of coffee, and to talk. The lap top and iPod introversion of students absorbed in their own cyber reality that is so common in Shoreline/Seattle is seen only near the part of the university where American and European students are studying. Students talk, laugh, and study together without the distractions of individual songs and individual computer time.
Jordan University is a bit larger than the University of Washington in both size and student population (about 40,000 students). It would be interesting to compare the two university more thoroughly...perhaps one of the 200 or so foreign exchange students could do so as a research project! We even saw a student who will be entering the U.W. next month as a freshmen. In one of the language classrooms we walked in on a Jordanian student who was giving a presentation on Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night. While I would argue that the poem is more about the desire for life, a plea for life than a fear of death--it is comforting that students in Jordan are reading and sharing Dylan Thomas' poetry.
Literature, poetry and the arts (including iPod music) can bring out the humanity in all of us. In reconnecting us with our humanity and the human condition of love, life, loss, death, family, perseverance, et cetera we our connected with all people. The English words of Dylan's poem are less important than the fact that the poem expresses a human desire to keep alive those we love. It is a poem that resonates deep inside of me as a person just as it can resonate deep inside of any person who gets underneath the language to the emotions and meanings of the poem.DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
