50 Questions with KSB

with KSB by: JOIE BALDYGA & MARIA LINCK content editors All Photos: M. Linck and J. Baldyga

In the BGQ’s first ever 50 Questions With feature, we put the spotlight on Central’s very own Kathryn Shelley-Barnes, aka KSB. Shelley-Barnes, a passionate English teacher, who is very popular for the energy and personal experience she brings to her classroom. Here we reveal the more personal side of KSB through questions ranging from her favorite eating utensil to her biggest fear.

All Graphics: M. Linck

BGQ-What is your favorite music genre? KSB-I would say rock and roll. BGQ-What is your favorite color? KSB-Black. BGQ-What’s your secret talent? KSB-I’m a pretty good chef. BGQ-What was your first car? KSB-A VW 1963 bug, I called her the Gray Ghost. I always name everything. That’s my secret talent: naming stuff. BGQ-What has been your favorite vacation that you have taken? KSB-My husband and I, in 2013, during Christmas and New Years, went to London and Dublin. That was a great trip. BGQ-What is your favorite book? KSB-Well right now, it’s Mary Oliver’s Upstream, it’s a collection of essays. She talks about other poets that I just love. Whitman, Walt Whitman . . . *sigh* . . . As a student I would say Catcher in the Rye had a real influence on me. I was a sophomore when the English Department Chair, Ms. Louise Guery, said that I had to read The Catcher in the Rye or else I couldn’t graduate. And I believed her. I was very naive. But I really liked it, and when I read it again in 12th grade I got more out of it because I was a little bit older. Also in a poetry elective course, taught by the same teacher in my junior year, I was introduced to the poet Sylvia Plath. I was so surprised by the candidness of her poetry. I read her memoir The Bell Jar, which chronicled her experiences in a mental hospital when she was sixteen. This book resonated with me for a long time. I was fascinated by her, so I studied her in college as well. BGQ-What is your favorite eating utensil? KSB-Fork.

BGQ-How do you take your coffee? KSB-Black. BGQ-What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? KSB-There’s so many new flavors. I would say my favorite flavor is Meditteranean Mint Chocolate Chip. It’s really gelato, but any mint chocolate chip. It has to be green, it can’t be white, and it has to have those little black flecks in it. BGQ-What is your favorite article of clothing? KSB-I’m into jackets now. BGQ-Where is your ultimate retirement destination? KSB-Traverse City. BGQ-If you could teach any subject other than English, what would you teach? KSB-Probably history or psychology. BGQ-What is your favorite way to work out? KSB-I like to lift weights, and I like cardio. I like

any cardio: cycling, elliptical. I do a bootcamp on Saturday mornings which is all kinds of stuff: running around and jumping on ladders, doing steps, and running up and down hills. BGQ-What time do you wake up in the morning? KSB-3:00am BGQ-What time do you go to bed? KSB-9:00pm BGQ-What is your most prized possession? KSB-I have a necklace, which I have on and never take off, and a pair of earrings that match, which my husband gave me for my birthday before he died. BGQ-What’s your lucky number? KSB-5 BGQ-What is your favorite room in your house? KSB-My living room. BGQ-If you could have any other job what would you be? KSB-I’d like to be an FBI or CIA agent. BGQ-What is your favorite poem? KSB-Tennessee Williams “We have not long to love” BGQ-Describe your perfect day. KSB-Saturdays are always my perfect day. Saturday is my day off. I get up early, I grade papers, you know, my day off! I do laundry… I get up early, not as early as 3:00, maybe 4:00 maybe 5:00. And I do some chores and get those out of the way. Then I go cycle from 9:00-10:00, then I go to boot camp from 10:30-12:00. Then the rest of the day is mine for free. I shop, I have lunch, whatever happens. I don’t schedule anything, I love Saturdays. BGQ-What is your favorite quote from a former student? KSB-My favorite quote from a former student is one that sticks in my mind. Her name was Rebecca. She was very exotic-looking, very beautiful. She said, “Ms. Shelley-Barnes you’re making this stuff up. These stories you’re telling us, you’re just making them up.” To which I replied, “If I could make these up they’d be in a book somewhere and I’d be famous.” BGQ-If you could take any vacation, where would you go? KSB-I want to bicycle. Instead of making resolutions, I have five rules that I’m trying to live by in the next five years. One of them is that I want to bicycle across Italy, and eat as many carbohydrates as I possibly can. As much pasta and so forth, I’m not a big pizza fan. I would like to go to northern Italy and ride for a little while, have lunch, ride some more. And yeah. I would like to bicycle in Italy especially, just because I haven’t seen Italy, but I would pretty much go anywhere. BGQ-What is your favorite time of day? KSB-My least favorite time of day is 5:00pm. It’s that 5 o’clock depression, kind of you know, it’s not quite dark and it’s not quite light, and it’s after work, and you’re tired, and you’re like uhhhhh. That’s when I go to the gym. My favorite time of day is between 3:00 am and 6:00 am. BGQ-What famous person would you most want to have dinner with? KSB-Maya Angelou BGQ-What is your dream car? KSB-Well, I sort of have one. I have a Mazda Miada, 1991 red convertible. BGQ-What do you put on your pizza? KSB-I haven’t had pizza in three years, but I would want to try pizza from Pleasanton Bakery. They put goat cheese and duck on the pizza. Weird stuff, but I’d really like to try it sometime. But really I like mushrooms, onions, and green peppers, sort of a veggie pizza. And I also like thin crust. I don’t like that thick doughy stuff. BGQ-What is your favorite kind of shoe?

KSB-I like boots, but I like all shoes really. BGQ-What is your biggest pet peeve? KSB-In life, I think that most people are good, but I think that sometimes, people don’t really pay attention very well to people around them and don’t say excuse me or don’t hold the door, you know just don’t engage with each other and that’s something that I am disappointed by. BGQ-What is your favorite meal? KSB-Anything with lobster, crab meat - I like seafood. There’s a pasta called bucatini and it’s long but its got a little hole in the middle of it and I don’t know why that makes a difference but it sucks in all the sauce. So, a Bucatini pasta with mussels, clams, lobster - I’d be in heaven BGQ-What is your dream pet? KSB-I think my dream pet would be one of those vacuum cleaners that roams around and cleans your house for you - that would be my dream pet because I wouldn’t have to feed it, I wouldn’t have to take it for a walk. I had pets when I was a kid and now, I like other people’s pets but I don’t want a pet. I don’t want to take care of anything but myself. BGQ-If you had a movie made about your life who would play you? KSB-Sandra Bullock. She’s quirky, and she’s tall. She’d have to dye her hair, but definitely her. BGQ-What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done? KSB-That I can tell you about? My first year of teaching, I and three other teachers took kids backpacking to Big Bend National park. We were there for seven days. It was long. We backpacked through the desert. We had to carry everything out with us, including our toilet paper. No tents. Tarantulas! I threw up the first few days because as much water as you think you need to drink, you’re not drinking enough because it was 95 degrees. We climbed the Chisos Mountains and our backpacks got lighter and lighter the further we went because the more food we ate, the less stuff

we had to carry around. I was with Johnathan and his wife was with another Johnathan, a history teacher. It was the four of us, and we each had seven kids. I didn’t know any of them because at the time, I only taught freshmen and this was the spring break trip for upperclassmen. There were a few different trips that you could have taken. There was one to Italy, and a few others including this one. The other group got cliffed out. They got lost, basically. Everywhere they went, there was a cliff. We were supposed to meet up halfway, switch groups so that we could get to know all the kids and have fun, but they (the other group) never showed up. Before the trip, you cache your water where you need it to be. It is a national park, so they will help you with all of that stuff. They didn’t meet us at the halfway point so we started to get really worried and Johnathan was really worried because it was his wife with the other group. Those two had done the trip before, maybe not in Big Bend, but with other groups, so I was the neophyte. This was adventurous for me because I had never done anything like this before. I had camped, but never hiked 50 miles up mountains and stuff, especially not with teenagers. I was almost a teenager myself. I was only 22 - right out of college, this was my first teaching job. So anyway, they got cliffed out, so we found a Park ranger and he said that if they didn’t find them in a half hour, they would get the helicopters out. What had happened is that when they realized they were cliffed out, Johnathan and Dotty left the kids - the kids stayed up all night waiting for them. The adults went to see if they could find a way to get back but they couldn’t. They almost got hypothermia because the desert is cold at night. People don’t realize this but the desert gets really cold. Those kids who waited for them, hooked on to them, so there was no way we were going to switch kids. We had all been scared, so our kids hooked on to us. We let the kids decide whether or not they really wanted to switch. They met, and they decided they did not want to change leaders. So we got up to the top of the Chisos Mountains and you could see all of them. It was just amazing. I mean we saw eagles, It was just breathtaking. Not having showered or shampooed my hair for seven days, it was amazing how nice my hair was. I was amazed. It gave you a whole different impression . . . yeah. The other part of the adventure was climbing down the Chisos Mountains and then we waded across the river - the Rio Grande River. So a lot of these Mexicans wanted us to take a canoe or a horse or something, but we didn’t have any money. Dotty was keeping track of all of the money. She had enough money for us to have lunch in Mexico, so we all had passports, and then to also come back to El Paso and take showers and get regrouped and then get on an airplane. El Paso is really interesting, very interesting. There was one block of these American high rise buildings and all around it was a lot of poverty. So yeah, that was an adventure. I had never done anything like that and I haven’t done anything like it since. I have taken kids on field trips but never to this degree again. But it also gave me a love of national parks and doing that kind of stuff. BGQ-If you could have any superpower what would it be? KSB-It would be to convince people to not wage war and not to hurt children and to end all of the strife we have around the world - I would want to stop that. Let other people figure out global warming. I would want the power to stop people from killing each other. BGQ-What is your spirit animal? KSB-Giraffe BGQ-Who is your idol? KSB-The Obamas - I look up to them a lot. I used to send emails to them in the White House telling them things I thought they were doing well and some suggestions I had. But then I started to worry that the secret service thought I was a wacko, so I backed off a bit, just in case. I mean I wasn’t threatening or anything - I was always positive. In my personal life, there was a woman in New Jersey who was a really great mentor for me. Her name was Catherine Fine. She was from France and she was a sports car driver. She already had a degree from France but when she came to the U.S. she had to re-do med school. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. She merged the two so that she could get two different sides of medical knowledge. I really admired her moxy and audacity to be able to do that and she was a great mentor to me. I also admire Dr. Leathars, my English professor and advisor at Ohio Wesleyan. I also admire Dr. Frye, an anatomy and physiology professor whose teaching acumen I try to emulate still. BGQ-What’s your favorite restaurant? KSB-The Boathouse BGQ-What is your biggest fear? KSB-It’s not a biggest fear, but I worry sometimes what I’m going to do with myself after I retire. I want to have a plan. I worry that I am not going to be as happy retired as I am working. That’s a fear of mine - that I am not going to find something that enriches me as much as teaching. BGQ-What kind of phone do you have? KSB-I have an iPhone. Some techy girl at Target talked me into it. She said, “well if you’re gonna pay that kind of money for an Android then you might as well just buy an iPhone. They’re much easier and here’s what you do.” I said, “well can you set it up for me?” and she agreed, so I bought an iPhone. BGQ-Who is your favorite musician or band? KSB-Bruce Springsteen and his band E Street

Band BGQ-What is your favorite thing about teaching? KSB-Despite what other people think, I really like teenagers. When I say despite what other people think, I mean other people will say to me “you work with teenagers?!” like they are something to be feared. I like teenagers. I like that sense of when students get inspired and their curiosity and when students realize that they are improving. I like to see that. I want kids to succeed. I want them to be really good citizens, and I want to be a part of that. BGQ-What is your favorite Shakespearean play? KSB-The Taming of the Shrew (she later changed to Richard III) BGQ-What’s something you want people to know about you? KSB-Some people have the impression that I’m really mean and scary, but not really. I have that reputation, but when students meet me and are in my class, they realize that I am really friendly but intense. I do sometimes have an RBF. BGQ-What is your favorite movie? KSB-Bambi from when I was a kid. But a movie that had a great effect on me was Scindler’s List or Gahndi. BGQ-Who is your celebrity crush? KSB-My new boyfriend is Ed Sheeran. Yeah, I like him a lot. BGQ-Have you ever had a near-death experience? KSB-Yes several. I hit black ice - I was listening to NPR and didn’t hear anything about road conditions. I was on an overpass right outside of Philadelphia and I hit black ice and my car went around and around and I started to head towards the edge of the overpass. There was a barrier but I thought I was going to go right over. I just let go of the steering wheel and thought okay, well this must be God’s plan so I’m just gonna let it go and the car stopped. These guys in a pickup truck stopped and sat with me. I wasn’t hysterical, I was just a bit shaken up. They said it was scary because they were watching but couldn’t do anything. That is the time where I can remember most seeing the white light kind of thing and thinking, this is it. BGQ-Where was your childhood hangout spot? KSB-I don’t know the name of it, but it was a little diner on Main Street and we used to get up and meet early and get coffee together. We would chat about school, and we all played sports together and stuff. It was a small diner, and then I ended up working there just briefly one year when I had like three jobs. So it was just a little diner on the main street that we used to hang out in. BGQ-What was the most trouble you got in growing up? KSB-That I can tell you? I didn’t really get into a lot of trouble. I guess, in 10th grade, I left campus without permission. I was seen by one of the Physical Education teachers. It was a school right on mainstreet, I was probably up to no good. I didn’t get suspended from school, I got detention. My parents - my mother gave me two weeks where I couldn’t go anywhere because I had embarrassed my father because he taught there. They sent a letter home and my father said, “she didn’t embarrass me, she embarrassed herself.” My mother was not happy with that response. She wanted me to feel really terrible and I did. It never happened again. That is really the only trouble I got into. The other trouble I got into was 8th grade, I was playing varsity basketball. I mean I was playing varsity in the 8th grade and I just got so full of myself and just was not really doing my schoolwork and was being itchy, and everyday, I just couldn’t wait until 3:00pm. One of my teachers, my English/French teacher, pulled me out in the hall. We had to have a parent teacher conference and so my father did not like that very much and was worried about what they were going to do with me. So I got the message - I needed to shape up. And that was the last time that the sports organization allowed any 8th grader to play on the varsity team. We didn’t have a freshmen team, so it was either JV or varsity in high school. There was still 8th grade basketball though. That was hard on my father, so I cleaned up my act. And that was pretty much it. I was a pretty good kid and didn’t do much to get in trouble - just small stuff. BGQ-What are three things you can’t live without? KSB-Cast Iron frying pans, my closet (with everything in it), and my study with all of my books.

BGQ-What is a prediction you have for the next century? KSB-The next Century - things are going to be just terrible. Climate problems and wars in the Middle East. But I try not to think that way. I think that your generation will help to fix things and will try to make things better - I really do. I predict there is going to be a woman president of the U.S. and I hope that comes true. And I also think that women will take over the world. As soon as enough get sick of men and what they do and what they don’t do. Mother knows best. I predict that there will continue to be fewer and fewer men going to college and grad school because they’re lazy. I don’t know what they are doing. At least in this country but also in Europe too. I think that women will take over. Not just this country. I think that if they want it, they could take over the world. //