Hampdenfest

Paul DiPasqua

First Event Blog Post

Hampdenfest

            When I arrived at Hampdenfest this year, I knew I was going to have to write a blog post about it for English. What I didn’t know, however, is how many connections I would be able to draw from Hampdenfest to our assigned readings (even from the toilet bowl races). Being able to take everything I read from the authors and apply it to real life was an empowering feeling and I look forward to sharing my experience.

            One of the more distressful parts of the day, when a middle-aged man was run over by a vendor’s carriage, led to the starkest connection I made that day. When accidents such as that happen around large crowds of people, I am used to seeing people allow the victim to get help on their own or find another person to assist them. On this day, I was pleasantly surprised to see the attendees of Hampdenfest swarm to the man’s aid and quickly get him medical attention. What had unfolded immediately reminded me of the reading by Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach - “The Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice in Jesuit Higher Education”. In his writing, Kolvenbach stresses the importance of the Jesuit mission on college campuses, specifically helping those who need to be helped. After seeing the amount of people who dropped what they were doing to help the man to safety, I couldn’t help but think of what Fr. Kolvenbach had written in our reading.

            Perhaps as significant as the grace of the people who volunteered to help this injured man, is the grace of the man himself toward the owner of the cart that hit him. Before the ambulance arrived to take him away, the vendor approached the man and offered his apologies. Once again, I didn’t expect there to be an exchange of pleasantries and I was also kind of hoping to watch a shouting match while I ate my ice cream cone. On the contrary, the two men acted as if they had each done one another a favor and I was once again pleasantly surprised – people were being kind to each other. It wasn’t until I returned home that I drew the following connection to Jill McDonough’s “Accident, Mass. Ave.”: When the woman in the Buick backs her car up into the narrator, there is an initial outburst of expletives and insults that is followed by a warm embrace and a laugh upon inspecting the minimal damage inflicted on both cars. Although it appeared that the man who was hit by a cart at Hampdenfest wasn’t badly injured, I still would not have blamed him for swearing at the cart’s owner. Yet, both men were so nice to each other that I was genuinely taken aback by the peaceful resolution like the one in McDonough’s poem.

            If you would have asked me what someone is most likely to get injured by at Hampdenfest before I attended, I would have said the toilet bowl race rather than a cart. Even though I would’ve been wrong, I now know that the toilet bowl race does serve another purpose: inspiration. As odd as that may sound, which I can understand if you think is VERY odd, watching people race toilets made me think about what is possible when there are no feuds or hatred. There was a row of people speeding down the street who I don’t think had ever met before, but they were smiling and pointing at each other from start-to-finish. Upon reading Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”, I tried to think about what at Hampdenfest made me think of the poem’s quote “we do not need the wall” and all I could arrive at was the toilet bowl race because it fit so perfectly.

            To say the least, my day at Hampdenfest was eventful, but to say the most, my day at Hampdenfest was enlightening. I returned to Loyola that day feeling like I had learned a good amount about the cultures at Hampdenfest, but even more about the people there - and I prefer it that way.