Loving Life in All Its Forms

Interview by Jennifer Kulier
Photos by Brad Armstrong

Welcome to the home of Miro Kummel, assistant professor of environmental science, Emily Chan, assistant professor of psychology, and their daughters, Misha and Koko. Within walking distance of campus, their family home and yard also include seven chickens (Brownie, Braveroo, and Jade are pictured), a rabbit, a beehive, quail, a hissing cockroach, and a friendly dog named Daisy. When the professors aren’t at home or in the classroom, they can often be found at the student garden behind Stewart House.

 

You two have a long and interesting history, right? How did you meet?

Miro: Yeah, we met in high school. Both of us went to high school in Britain, and we met in biology class.

Emily: That was when we were 17. The school was called the United World College of the Atlantic. Miro: The school was founded by Kurt Hahn, who also founded Outward Bound. The idea was to start an international school where they would bring in people from across different nations, but also from across different socio-economic backgrounds and have them experience living with each other. (Read more about the CC-UWC connection in the next issue of the Bulletin.) We had kids from 75 different countries. And then, the school itself is very rigorous academically; we had I.B. (International Baccalaureate) curriculum. And all of the free time is surrounded by what we call “services,” and these services were to bring groups of students together around meeting an external goal. We had a farm, which was something that Emily was involved in. Our farm had a minimum of 100 sheep and 24 cows. So when the lambs were there the students would take turns spending time with the sheep and helping with difficult births.

Emily: The farm was part of the way we managed the property because we had a lot of farmland.

Miro: We did a good prank on our biology teacher. We blocked his door with bales of hay, and then we sat on top of his garage. He thought it was funny; he invited us in for breakfast.

Emily: That was April Fool’s day morning. That was the same morning that, after doing the prank, we went to the mailbox and found out that we both got admitted to Princeton, where we attended as undergrads.

Obviously, you both come from different places in the world. Where did you each come from and how did you end up at UWC-Atlantic?

Emily: I grew up in Hong Kong and went to an Anglican girls’ school. Many students from my school had always gone on to apply for scholarships to go to this United World College, and my friends were applying and I thought, ‘I’ll apply too.’ It was something that I was interested in even at that age because, even as a young person, justice and peace were important to me.

Miro: I grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia in a small town on the border between Czech and Austria, about 10 miles from the Iron Curtain. We were a town of 30,000 people, including about 12,000 soldiers. Before the government changed, I got involved in the underground church. We were a small cell of four people; we were printing books for underground monasteries, so we printed “The Confessions of Augustine” as the last book. And that was at the crazy age of 15, getting myself into trouble. And I was also heading towards a Carmelite monastery. But things were getting too fast too soon for me. You know, being 17, seeing yourself going to a monastery right away wasn’t necessarily the thing I was wanting to do. So I was looking for a way to gain some time to think about things, and so I applied to the school. And the school was a very good match with me because I was very interested in social justice and environmental issues also.

After going to grad school together at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, you came to Colorado College. When you came here Emily was the first one to get a position, so, Miro, you were a stay-at-home dad for awhile?

Miro: Yes, for two years. It was quite an important time for me. Most parents who are educated through grad school don’t have that chance to stay at home with their kids. I treasured it and look at it very fondly.

I know from your history that you’re both into organic agriculture and raising animals. Do you want to talk about that?

Emily: I guess you can probably tell by now that we both love life forms and relationships between life forms very, very much. If you think about similarities, Miro studies mutualisms between species, collaboration between different organisms. And I, as a social psychologist, study how people form impressions and understand relationships. In my research life, I find myself studying on some level mutualisms between individuals. And then we kind of live in these mutualisms with all the animals and plants and people.

Miro: If you think about interaction with nature, the most intimate interaction that you can have with nature is that of eating. You’re building your body and your life out of the life of the others. And yet, when you go to the supermarket, it’s very anonymous. Even just acknowledging that the steak was a cow is not there. And at the same time, the life of that cow is taken so that one can live, so it’s a very, if you will, sacred thing, eating. And so this is a way for us to cultivate that kind of relationship between the people and the nature.

I grew up in a tradition where nature was something that you were very personally involved with. The landscapes I grew up in are people landscapes and have been for maybe 2,000 years. And so, you know, I just can’t help it. I have to grow into the place that I am in and into the soil that I am in. And there is also being able to give that to the kids. As I learn how to plant and how to eat and how to take care of the animals, and how to build things, in some sense I have the obligation to pass it on so it doesn’t go away.

Are your kids involved in the garden and animal care?

Miro: Oh yeah, they love to do it. They go and pick the eggs every day. We have one chicken that lays blue eggs, and Misha’s favorite color is blue. And with the bees, I have a little bee suit for them, and Koko really likes bees. She likes everything sweet. She loves being among bees. When we take the honey out, we spin it in the spinner and it comes out of it as a big stream of honey. And she sits there with a big spoon, and it goes from there into her mouth. And we are raising a couple quails for food, so they get the chance to see the animal life as part of the food, too. We had a pair of quails, and the girls hatched the eggs in an incubator that turned the eggs every day. They’ve seen the eggs hatch and the little chicks grow, and in about two months’ time they’ll see them on their plate.