- Our time, our place, our time, our place, our time is made possible in part by grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

And from the Arts Commission of the City of Newport News, - We'll watch an artist work in found objects and the latest technology.

We'll look at what hinder collegiate football will mean to Old Dominion University, and we'll listen to the coastal wind octet and to an interview with one of America's premier men of letters on this edition of our place our time.

Now here's your host, Vianne Webb, - A great poet, a great artist, and football are among the subjects on this edition of our place, our time For the past six years Old Dominion University has been studying and debating whether or not to field an intercollegiate football team.

Old Dominion University already has a fine and highly competitive athletic program for both women and men, but football is a different sport and a far more expensive one for a university to enter into, and thus the debate.

Tim Morton takes a look at both sides of the question that raises not just educational and athletic issues, but social and cultural ones as well.

We, - Last week, the board of visitors at ODU did continue to go for football.

The university rector is Richard F. Berry ii.

- The board as a group, thinks that football would be a good thing for the university.

It would draw students to the campus, it would draw alumni back to the campus.

It would draw members of the community to the campus, and that's all positive, but the board is very concerned about how to finance it.

Football is a very expensive sport, and we wanna make sure that if we launch it, that it is prudently and properly financed.

We've not passed on football for the last time.

You're correct.

We'll have to, we'll have to consider it again - In the newspaper.

The other day was a story about two universities having been offered five and a a half million dollars a piece if they would play football against each other on January 1st.

Football is big business and to its many fans.

University football can have the importance of a religion.

When the ODU Board of Visitors decides once and for all, whether or not it will field a football team, the decision will affect not just the athletic department here and not just the university's sense of mission.

The decision will affect how Tidewater thinks of itself.

- Okay?

So a lot of people out there say we can't do it.

Some say we don't even deserve the chance.

I say there are bunch of wimps.

You - Last spring to sell football to Hampton Roads, the university started a television advertising campaign.

- Now it's up to you to get your hands on those passes.

Reach that goal - Time coach.

- Let's do it.

Yeah.

- ODU football.

Buy a season ticket and make the team.

Dr. Don Smith is an associate professor of sociology at ODU.

- Somehow they've decided we're going to have football at any expense or any way we can get it.

And I'm afraid they're just, they violated a lot of ethical or, or certainly good taste issues.

And I I, I look at the advertisements, the football advertisements, the one where the coach is calling, basically calling everyone in Tidewater, who doesn't wanna support a football program, a wimp that would be very much like the opera hitting people over the head with a libretto and saying, if you don't come to the opera, you're an ignorant redneck.

And you know, this is a university where that kind of thing shouldn't be going on, even in humor, it shouldn't be going on.

- Dr. John Ramsey is a professor of political science.

- What many of us see right now is that football, which is the focal point at this moment of athletics, is driving the university.

I mean, we're talking about high rise parking decks and, and people don't understand.

I think that the reason for the high rise parking decks is that we want playing fields for athletics.

And that wouldn't really bother me too much, except that the only, you're talking about maybe 500 students who would ever take part in those things.

So we've got 14,500 students out there who come into this university as they always have, and take their courses and get a, a pretty good education.

But don't stay around here.

It's just they, they're not on campus.

They're the ones who are gonna have to pay for all this - Football already thrives on the Old Dominion University campus football played by Norfolk State University.

How might football at ODU affect Norfolk State's program Coach Willard Bailey?

- The spirit of my answer must rest with the fact that I've already worked for 20 years in a city with the school, the University of Richmond, that had a quality program, as did Virginia Union with a quality football program.

And I guess each of the universities received assistance from the greater Richmond community.

Each of the universities used the same stadiums.

It's a matter of scheduling, it's a matter of planning, it's a matter of working together.

It's a matter of coming together to realize the finest points of the all the publics that we have here in the Hampton Road area.

- ODU Athletic Director Jim Jarrett, used to be opposed to football.

I asked him what changed his mind.

- Well, basically it's a maturing of Old Dominion University and I think the Hampton Roads area.

When I came to Old Dominion as athletic director in 1970, our athletic budget was a hundred thousand dollars.

Today it approaches $4 million.

- We support football because we feel it's gonna bring the alumni back to the campus.

- Ronnie Howell is president of the ODU Alumni Association, - And I think they'll come back for football.

They'll be surprised at how large the university has grown since they attended college over here in a barracks.

They'll feel happier about donating money to the university and they'll feel they're part of it.

- What we've been able to accomplish with our ticket and marketing campaign is that we've created a tremendous awareness about the Old Dominion Football program, number one and number two, we have sold over 1900 season tickets right now, and we've generated in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollar commitment a year for a three year period.

So a total of almost three quarters of a million dollars for football.

I - Love football.

In fact, my, my only problem with football at ODU is that we obviously can't afford it.

It obviously is not gonna be supported at the point when the university was going to have or trying to raise 13 and a half million dollars.

I said, that's fine.

If they do that, they will have done it properly.

And they would've certainly had enough money to run a good program without it cannibalizing all of the other programs in the campus when they cut back to $2 million and cut back their goals significantly.

I really didn't feel too badly about that.

Had they been successful at getting the money, they obviously failed badly.

And now basically what we're talking about is having football at any cost.

And that's a horrible mistake.

- And it's the old story of is a glass half full or half empty?

If you're an optimist, you can make a case that you don't have a team, you don't have a division, you don't have a schedule yet.

You're two years away from a game and you've got 1900 people that have come to support it.

If you're a pessimist, you look at the other side of it and you say, well, you ought to have several thousand and, and fill up foreman and field.

We feel good about it.

- Dave Rosenfield is the general manager of the Tidewater Tides Baseball Club.

Former manager of professional football and basketball teams in the area.

- Well, I'm total disagreement with what they're doing.

I think one division or one AAA is way under what we ought to have.

I say to you the same that a I said to Dr. Jarrett several years ago, I think one AA is where they ought to be.

I am not in favor of the one aaa.

I think that this area will support one aa I don't know about one aaa.

I think a, a schedule involving William and Mary and Richmond and VMI and Madison would be a very popular thing.

- Realistically, we're looking at a mixture of division three schools currently, and some of those would be the types of Hampton, Sydney, and perhaps a Randolph Macon, a Bridgewater, those, those types of schools that you would know locally.

And then a mixture of the schools that we see playing one AAA football with us that are currently division three, but they're division one schools and the other sports.

And those would be schools like Georgetown and St. John's and Dayton.

- Dr. Al Rollins was president of ODU for nine years before 1985.

- During the time when I was president, I strongly opposed football basically for three reasons.

I didn't see the support system out there.

We did a couple of studies of football and, and believed on the basis of those studies that we just weren't gonna fill the stadium.

We just weren't gonna be able to get the money to do it.

A second reason was that, that I felt that our students couldn't afford it.

We're not a wealthy university.

Our mission, as Colgate Doden used to say, governor Doden used to say, our mission is to provide high quality educational opportunity at the lowest possible price, consistent with quality.

This, there's a third reason, and this is highly personal.

I just don't understand what providing a popular entertainment for the community like football has to do with the mission of a university.

- The earliest ODU could play football is in 1991.

The Board of Visitors is proceeding toward that goal, but there remain many unanswered questions.

The debates whether to play or not to play will continue.

That was number - 18.

Rodney Gold defending for Morgan State about our next subject.

It may interest you to know that she's from New England, though she's lived in Hampton Roads for more than 40 years.

She's an artist.

Her works have been exhibited and purchased by museums like the Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran, and our own Chrysler Museum.

And she holds the distinction of having been the first female artist in residence at Old Dominion University and still has the honor of being adjunct artist in residence for the school.

But I think all I really need to tell you is that her name is Faye Zeplin.

Her works say the rest.

And Kim Simon Fink filed this report.

- Refuse Time and Space, prehistoric cave carvings merged with voyage of views of galaxies, ancient stones with computer parts combined with water worn coral fragments found on island walks - Ancient stones and views from spacecraft voyager and exploratory artist Faye Zetland learns from the past, looks forward to the future and lives very much in the present time.

After all, for this 82-year-old is a mere fusion of experience with no beginning or end.

And her work reflects this philosophy in Zetlands Earliest works.

Ambiguous shapes extend beyond the canvas with few structural limitations.

They're simply brought to focus through fields of color, translating those dimensions of time and space into the language of art.

You can't put your - Finger on it.

It's not a clock, it's not a minute in, in a second.

I can go way back to my, when I was three years old, or I can think what might happen 10 years from now.

There is no, this is exactly what the riddle of the sinks is and what Einstein's concept of relativity is that time is an ever changing dimension.

- Zetlands more recent work is both a visit back and forward into time.

Fossils and stones take their place beside towering computer circuitry.

Prehistoric African cave drawings or petroglyphs, float timelessly amids, millions of stars, satellite photographs, which themselves seem to be petroglyphs manipulated.

Xerox scenes machine generated images, an unusual medium for such a contemplative message.

Artfully technology is applied again to achieve the soothing blend of earth tones and textures.

In this blurred microfiche series, - I sat at the microfiche printout machine in the old, old Dominion University Library and altered the focus completely so that instead of seeing all recorded data of mankind, which one finds in the microfiche, I, I diffused that and saw it for the interval.

- When I first met her, she was just doing pretty much painting on a flat surface.

And I've seen her work progress from canvas through natural elements of rocks and circuit boards through sculpture.

Xerox, I mean, she's always pushing the, the latest technology that she reads about or experiences.

- She chose painting when she studied with Charles Sib.

I think she was in her fifties at that time and she hadn't really painted before she'd written.

She wrote book reviews I know for the pilot.

And she was quite politically active in the community.

And when she got into painting it, I think it was a liberating experience for her.

It was finally, you know, it was something that she didn't have to have a a, a focus somewhere else for her energy.

You know, the energy could be focused inside of her - Until she discovered herself as an artist.

At age 49, Zetlands time was devoted to her late husband, Dr. Arnold Zetland, her two children and community causes.

- I offended friend of mine and the Lazar really nagged me to join a drawing class.

And I said, don't be ridiculous.

I, that's not what I do at all.

I was writing at the time, nothing very important.

But nevertheless, she pressured me and I did start in her drawing class.

And the minute I began, I knew that was exactly what I should be doing.

That this was what I was meant to be doing.

As I put the line on the paper, I felt a little line coming from my gut as if I were a spider spinning by a shape.

- I have known Faye Lin for quite a while and over the years I came to realize that she really was the grand old lady of the art department and the backbone, so to speak, of the art faculty.

- She's an activist, she's an energizer, and she just doesn't sit back and wait for things to happen.

She does them.

- For example, Zeitlin was the driving force behind the 1972 Digs Park project co-directed by art professor Ernest Mauer and design students.

The playground created a natural oasis amidst its harsh urban environment.

Zetland draws on experience using brushes, mechanical manipulations, and found objects.

Her palette is expressive as is her imagination.

She calls her current work tribal codes.

- They are all about of course, communication.

And I'm very much interested in communication, both verbal and visual.

And I've put these together with old stones to again, act as kind of in genes of history.

Might say we live in an age of science.

We do not live in an age of art, but science is in art as much as painting.

And more and more we read about Quas that have charm and particles that are blue.

And the language which is used is the language of poetry.

- At the age of 82, Zein continues to record the cyclical passage of time through the language of her art.

- All of the members of the Coastal Wind Dock Ted, are also members of the Virginia Symphony.

You know, there's a large and white beautiful repertoire of music for winds and the coastal musicians are going about town playing a lot of it these days.

They're going to play for us a wind arrangement of an aria from Mozarts opera, Don Giovanni, the seduction, aria Lache.

Ano Stanley Kuni, a great poet himself once remarked that in order to be successful as a poet, you had to live a long time.

Our next guest is a poet who, while he hasn't lived an unusually long time, has successfully made the transition from being a promising young poet to being a poet who has found his true voice and who has become a spokesman for our time.

Donald Hall is the author of eight books of Poetry, a collection of short stories, a play about Robert Frost and many essays from Wilmut, New Hampshire.

Donald Hall visited the campus at Old Dominion University recently.

It was the occasion of their literary festival.

And he spoke in our studios with two writers who are members of the Old Dominion University faculty, Wayne Udi and Liam Rector.

- Donald Hall gave a reading to benefit the ODU Fall Literary Festival, the festival, a cooperative effort of the ODU Department of English, the Center for the Arts.

And the Associated Writing Program is an annual event where writers meet to discuss craft and the creative process.

In a conversation with Wayne Udi, professor of English and Liam Rector, executive director of the Associated Writing Program, one of America's foremost men of letters discusses the making of his latest work the one day and the art of writing - The ground base.

The daily thing is sitting alone at the desk in the darkness of early morning addressing the problem of the language right in front of you.

And for me, for the most part, although there's much frustration working with joy, it was joy at the materials of language.

- You mentioned that the one day started 17 years ago.

Does that begin to get on the, did that begin to get on the edge of that time where you can't go back or - No, I don't think so because what came 17 years ago was raw and in coed material.

Notebooks full of jagged lines, written in tremendous haste, taking dictation as it seems.

And it was not poetry, it was in lines, but it wasn't poetry, it wasn't made, you know, poin to make.

It wasn't made, it was received.

I began to make it maybe 79, maybe 80.

So that's quite recently.

And mind you, there are lines or certainly phrases and images that are identical to what went into my notebook in 71.

But now they're part of something which is a shape and a form and a form on the local level of a line in stanza.

Then I hope a form on the larger level of individual section.

And then certainly, I mean on the, as it's part in, in the brickwork of the whole long poem, which means to be a single thing finally, - Which is kind of a single house, a built - Brick, a single house brick by brick.

Many, many, many rooms.

- Yeah.

Poets often talk about you just keep the words flowing, you free associate and, and later you'll see if there is something good there.

And fiction writers don't talk in that same way ever for fiction writers.

A a bad day at the typewriter isn't spent just putting words down.

It's spent staring at the blank sheet for two hours and you've put in your two hours.

But what you've talked about sounds like the same, the same sort of thing.

You don't stare at the blank sheet.

Even if you're a prose writer, you go find something that you can work on that day and get some something produced.

- Right.

An awful lot of what I do in the prose does not have to be done immediately.

I don't, I don't have to work every day on something so that if something isn't moving, if the book review isn't moving, I go and look at a children's book or I always have one or two long projects that I work on every day.

But some days that'll be half an hour and other days it'll be four or five hours.

You sort of, I can improvise my day a whole lot.

- You sort of move from pile to pile right.

In short - Bursts.

Yep.

- And have many things going on simultaneously.

Yeah.

- And you know, no way is right or wrong.

It's what you arrive at the way you can do it.

I love my way.

I'm happy with - It.

Would you read us a little bit of the one day?

- Yes, I will.

There is a we at the end here, which I would basically want to understand as spoken by the I, the middle aged man earlier at a happier time.

He is now a we among other things.

This morning we watched tall poppies light up in a field of grass at the town dump one styrofoam cup tours, 800 years under the barn.

Fat and ancient grandfather spider sleeps among old spoke wheels.

Our breathing shakes his web.

It is always this time, the time that we live by is this time together.

We walk in the high orchard at noon.

It is cool, although the sun poises upon us among old trees, the creek brickies slowly bordered by fern the toad at our feet.

Hold still, that's my coming to still point at the end there.

I have a Ty poem cup there in the last stanza, the styrofoam cup all the way through, which is mainly, you know, an instance of sort of Jerry built horror styrofoam cup.

And as I was finishing this poem, Liam said, why don't you say that at the town dump, there's one styrofoam cup that lives forever, lives a thousand years or so or so something.

So I wanna thank him for that line.

No thanks.

- Great.

Alright.

And thank you.

Thank you - Both.

- Next week on our place, our time, we're going to take a look at the early days of radio in Hampton Roads.

We'll have some nostalgic memories and a story I think that will delight and surprise you.

And we'll have a profile of the Man who founded the Williamsburg pottery and pottery is the least of the place.

I'm Vianne Webb.

Thanks for watching.