Welcome to my sabbatical project!

The author, not a genius, at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. Photo by Sydney Duncan. Birmingham (Ala.) Black Barons T-shirt from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. 

 

Welcome to my Fall 2021 sabbatical project!

My home institution, Frostburg State University, has granted me time off from teaching and administration to pursue one of my favorite topics more or less full time until mid-January 2022. Below is the complete one-page summary of my project, the one approved this past winter by my (in sequence) department faculty, department chair, dean, university faculty, provost and president. I thank all of them for their support.

==

“One-page summary of the purpose, goals, and objectives of the Sabbatical/Professional Leave.” Submitted by Andy Duncan in Fall 2020 for a Fall 2021 Sabbatical.

I propose to use my sabbatical to start turning my 14 years of habitual note-taking into a readable, comprehensive guide to what, for lack of a better term, I think of as Western Maryland Weirdness – everything from ghost stories and Bigfoot sightings to lost treasures and abandoned towns; from local eccentrics and fringe politics to geographic anomalies and odd place names; from legends and superstitions to roadside attractions and brushes with greatness. It also would include a spattering of historic disasters, scandals and murders.

In other words, the project would address all the regional material that interests my students but isn’t reflected in U.S. Census figures, traditional histories, and Chamber of Commerce reports. I have shared pieces of my researches with my students through the years, and they always have been both intrigued and enthusiastic, often volunteering information of their own.

So far, however, the bulk of this research is accessible only to me, in the form of hundreds of pages of notes, links, bibliographies, correspondence and downloaded articles residing in my laptop and my OneDrive. I would like to turn this trove into a publicly available online community resource that students could explore, use, and contribute to. Updating it and adding to it could provide byline-generating opportunities to students for years to come.

The project also could be of interest beyond the classroom, to visitors, newcomers and longtime residents. It could benefit OrtLibrary’s Special Collections as well as community libraries, historical and genealogical societies, museums, festivals, non-profits and tourism agencies. In the long term, one could imagine walking and driving tours organized around this information. But first it needs to be organized, polished and published, which will require months of work.

My lifelong interest in the paranormal, in scientific anomalies, in historical legends and the “weird mystery” subgenre of publishing began in childhood, when I ordered Loch Ness Monster titles from ScholasticBook Services. As a kid, I believed in all of this stuff, as I believed in rocks and rain. As a grown-up, I’m a lot more skeptical, but I still believe all these traditions are ever-valuable, ever-surprising windows into how we think, what we value, and who we are. Sometimes they invite explorations of science, history, politics and social justice. I try to convey to my students both skepticism and enthusiasm, the need for both research and storytelling skills.

I began seriously researching and writing about these topics during my 12 years as a full-time journalist. Since then, my ongoing interest crops up everywhere on my c.v., for example in the two editions of my non-fiction book Alabama Curiosities and in my Nebula Award-winning novelette “Close Encounters.” Given my track record and my contacts, it’s a safe bet that some of this sabbatical research eventually will lead to nationally published articles and stories, but its primary goal and immediate focus are local, to benefit our students and our community.

Many years ago, when I expressed an interest in ghost stories, a local historian said, “Why bother to write about such nonsense as that?” I hope the Sabbatical/Professional Leave Subcommittee agrees with me that such things are worth researching and writing about, worth sharing with our students, and worth taking some time off to work on. Thank you for your time and consideration.