SUNBURY – What do Mt. Carmel, Joseph Priestley and James Fennimore Cooper have in common? They are among the documentary subjects for a group of students at Bucknell University. Associate Professor of English Alf Siewers says his students are studying the rich cultural history of this part of the state, the local communities and the river.
Interviewing Dr. Siewers helped us launch this summer’s Boroughs to the Bay and Beyond series on WKOK.
Siewers explained how the team works to reveal the river’s culture, past, and future, “We’ve been working for awhile on the stories of the Susquehanna Valley project at Bucknell. One of the components of that is video documentary. We had our first student produced video broadcast on WVIA last month. It’s the first of a series of half hour video documentaries and the goal is to tell compelling stories of the heritage and the people of the river valley and to encourage a sense of being connected to the water shed and each other in this region.”
Siewers hopes Valley residents can more fully appreciate our environment, “I think that we all have all tendency to get caught up in our daily lives and in the bubbles that we live in. We can get some extra meaning in our lives by realizing how our bubbles, our daily lives, overlap with others and our shared environment. As we do that, hopefully we can develop a better connection with the environment, a deeper sense of meaning.”
Siewers discussed the importance of the Susquehanna River and what people need to do in order to keep the river in top condition for the future, “We have to develop a sustainable balance, a sustainable way of living. Part of that is figuring out how we can live meaningful lives with perhaps a reduced footprint of waste and exploitation of the river so we can have a better balanced and grounded life, especially for younger people because the new generations are coming up too.”
Dr. Siewers and student Sasha Weilbaker were on WKOK Sunrise today. You can hear more from Alf Siewers and Sasha Weilbaker online at wkok.com. (Alex Reichenbach)