tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78941740642409259872024-03-04T22:07:31.194-08:00Work and PlayAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-76019254457374934322013-07-25T13:18:00.001-07:002013-07-25T13:21:25.963-07:00too many ducks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1eBWAABAcV51UTvOPzvOsrj2gKecbF5Mp9FAiPOjVLdWPig8Vjf_gv7_f58qnk4HDRiYtkKITXECYjE4cRQqowVePPAYPxLy0GkipmgN_MgIgTLtbfCCUaWdnL-C55cLTxDkAzWe11Qo/s1600/DSC_0062.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1eBWAABAcV51UTvOPzvOsrj2gKecbF5Mp9FAiPOjVLdWPig8Vjf_gv7_f58qnk4HDRiYtkKITXECYjE4cRQqowVePPAYPxLy0GkipmgN_MgIgTLtbfCCUaWdnL-C55cLTxDkAzWe11Qo/s320/DSC_0062.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
How many projects can I take on at one time? If you've found your way to this, welcome. One more project to visit is the work-in-progress documentary on older women marathoners. Maybe older than you? Or maybe younger. The point is, women in middle age who run marathons and are redefining what aging means or, more specifically, how women in developed countries given a baseline of health and well-being are aging. <a href="http://vimeo.com/67559777.">http://vimeo.com/67559777.</a> </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-16025276368416428122010-04-09T13:42:00.000-07:002010-04-09T13:52:30.601-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQfflvCZ4stms7vCwyeRR-jrj22DFzRNoWbVbUL7q_rfijGaEfEZVazuHJLEcO5QueUliFYZGP5qXBbWqTf1hz_AicE2cRDqXY74YjJYZsMJKUYkkKwrP1_mnN8W7mPViJxlsproQecU/s1600/berlin+day1+(176+of+176).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQfflvCZ4stms7vCwyeRR-jrj22DFzRNoWbVbUL7q_rfijGaEfEZVazuHJLEcO5QueUliFYZGP5qXBbWqTf1hz_AicE2cRDqXY74YjJYZsMJKUYkkKwrP1_mnN8W7mPViJxlsproQecU/s320/berlin+day1+(176+of+176).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458242215590419170" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOKvFgIhmlMNmss6rCFgFpN7bY81XJMaJ0JG22GpxPGDHV7LGnMaMQZaYzF7tEZLtHm3gzG8NYiH6Cc_-2lhvIoZ7Pi2Ku-nbYYuYlPES-rKHcCzsWAOe0zseqMoHdeS-6cWcZZdzpJA/s1600/berlin+day1+(132+of+176).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOKvFgIhmlMNmss6rCFgFpN7bY81XJMaJ0JG22GpxPGDHV7LGnMaMQZaYzF7tEZLtHm3gzG8NYiH6Cc_-2lhvIoZ7Pi2Ku-nbYYuYlPES-rKHcCzsWAOe0zseqMoHdeS-6cWcZZdzpJA/s320/berlin+day1+(132+of+176).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458242212008782578" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS7Jteh24xtPS-ClnS944IB6jI6bzayYfWF4BSD1xLrnoHNWGFNAioBusFZjGTrWePKzFSQCrpzemku47aCJc_HjbrNPUvDK3s-KBWHI1Ar3zBkHlSeYv4T3uknSzfoexamTuX3bR7vY0/s1600/berlin+day1+(74+of+176).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS7Jteh24xtPS-ClnS944IB6jI6bzayYfWF4BSD1xLrnoHNWGFNAioBusFZjGTrWePKzFSQCrpzemku47aCJc_HjbrNPUvDK3s-KBWHI1Ar3zBkHlSeYv4T3uknSzfoexamTuX3bR7vY0/s320/berlin+day1+(74+of+176).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458242205727487138" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnqtWHnSBpk5czhnq9uowYQB4rpSHuVJZGeJkK2Rq7LAIYxC-XuOo_uUSpBcrl6Ys1-E4-H9IuglTKxq-vwBOTzvQOdMD7X2BgVzWJg8Fwczv1YScYV-UGGaRu6r1Q2EePoTBlnHO2LHc/s1600/berlin+day1+(20+of+176).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnqtWHnSBpk5czhnq9uowYQB4rpSHuVJZGeJkK2Rq7LAIYxC-XuOo_uUSpBcrl6Ys1-E4-H9IuglTKxq-vwBOTzvQOdMD7X2BgVzWJg8Fwczv1YScYV-UGGaRu6r1Q2EePoTBlnHO2LHc/s320/berlin+day1+(20+of+176).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458242196702595538" /></a><br />The flight over to Berlin wasn't that long, really. Or that bad, for an 8 hour flight. Great row mates. Arrived at the airport and was very thankful to be able to speak the language enough to find my way to the right bus, and then to the wrong U-bahn station, but with help of strangers find my way to my hotel from the Siegessäule. You know, that mysterious angel-topped monument featured in Wim Wenders' film <span style="font-style:italic;">Wings of Desire</span>. Oh. you haven't seen it? I need to see it again. It might help explain my massive disorientation after I dropped off my luggage at the hotel to explore the city while my room was being prepared. The worst part about those trans-Atlantic flights is arriving in the morning and not being able to check in for another 6 hours. The time in between is true limbo. At 10 am my body was still in motion: 500 mile an hour, a few miles up in the air.<br /><br />Armed with a week's transit pass, I hopped on an S-bahn train headed East and trolled a newly-fashionable, previously-East Berlin neighborhood for a cafe to sit, read, draw. I wandered in and out of packed bistros, too chilly to want to settle in at a table outside, although others sitting in the cool April morning were wrapped in red blankets. Across the neighborhood, chilly patrons at bistros and cafes were wrapped in red blankeys. Did the restaurant association get together and purchase these blankets in bulk? <br /><br />I found a bakery with high bar stools and little tables, and settled in with my book, a beautifully strong black Cafe Americano, and a tasty smoked salmon sandwich. I ate and drank well but began to feel faint and jumped down to get some fresh air to wake up. I headed out into the cool afternoon, still faint. My legs felt weightless. My breath was shallow. I started down the street to a park with a memorial to The Wall but felt increasingly disoriented. I could speak and understand the language and yet it was foreign. Another part of my brain. Another part of my life. I was feely disturbingly disconnected, and verging on panic. That cycle of disturbance now disturbing. I scurried back to the S-bahn station and onto a train heading back to the stop outside my hotel. I felt hot. Was it the warm sweater? Was the train heated? Was I beginning to come unglued? Jet lag is not just a physical experience. As a mother of young child, it is some profound almost instinctive sense of drastic disconnection from my life, my family, the life I created with my family, my child. While at the same time by brain is reconnecting to some dormant segment that can speak and understand this foreign language and recognizes the landmarks of this distant city, which I've visited twice in my other life as a single independent person—when nobody really "needed" me. If I disappeared, what would the implications have been? A dozen years ago? This morning?<br /><br />Nobody knew where I was. Nobody knew where I belonged. What if something were to suddenly happen? That's what was spinning in my head as theh S-bahn traveled West from Hauptbahnhof. I pulled out my i-pod and turned on some familiar fiddle tunes: Billy in the Lowground Instantly, I could feel my breathing deepen. My mind settle down. By the time I made it back to my hotel, my room was ready. I checked in, called Don and Henry through my Skype number and the pieces reconciled. Does that make any sense? It does to me. It's a werid case of jet lag.<br /><br />After a nap, I took the train back to the Museum Insel. Spent a splendid few hours in the Neue Museum, studying Neanderthal tools, visiting the eerie bust of Nefertiti, racing through Scythian bronze and copper reliquaries. Carrying on long conversations with strangers. The image with this posts was taken by a couple whose photo I had just taken. In the background is the Alte National Gallerie. I'll go back tomorrow, perhaps.<br /><br />I'll go back to Alain Botton's Art of Travel. What a comfort to me today.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-81362667181167392862010-04-09T12:13:00.000-07:002010-04-09T12:18:51.238-07:00lost post<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAaj7aVxNK4MI9vsK_5-8ueOn0QAq7RA-S1dg2xEDHw7-tQDE41t1CbyFUH3348hg9EsK-5NyP3RNIvPsGbJZUIJ8TAAGW3qyvIF4pzAri4FCyWQGaHWzOCMQ9aPQ9YWFcL3BDQCGqf8A/s1600/mumbai+2.6+(200+of+258)-Edit.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAaj7aVxNK4MI9vsK_5-8ueOn0QAq7RA-S1dg2xEDHw7-tQDE41t1CbyFUH3348hg9EsK-5NyP3RNIvPsGbJZUIJ8TAAGW3qyvIF4pzAri4FCyWQGaHWzOCMQ9aPQ9YWFcL3BDQCGqf8A/s320/mumbai+2.6+(200+of+258)-Edit.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458218762669792994" /></a><br />Someday this day will be updated. The second part of the bike tour. Stopping at a school for lunch. A visit inside. An english lesson. A fantasy of returning to work in the schools. Avasara? Can we make that happen?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-40401949787068325832010-02-19T09:47:00.000-08:002010-02-19T09:50:20.917-08:00Out of Mumbai Part 1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIEEfyYZUmkfvxV4hBhUxtMOVRmh7Z3C9dAsSMYLaC-H-nOVNSz8x30PwF0_3cDNavagDh3AIMxYnMaostISVCxXORZL4B0jiIXbSZJPYpGf8z2YrYBADzX-P-hRmOoD_tT58ZQendzMw/s1600-h/biking+trip+(4+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIEEfyYZUmkfvxV4hBhUxtMOVRmh7Z3C9dAsSMYLaC-H-nOVNSz8x30PwF0_3cDNavagDh3AIMxYnMaostISVCxXORZL4B0jiIXbSZJPYpGf8z2YrYBADzX-P-hRmOoD_tT58ZQendzMw/s320/biking+trip+(4+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440013220243347586" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLek3S-ZyclAB0b9TqTVdASAu8GGzU93Gbs0Hl9gsF9Zd0UHYGp2MI85Q_JtRGlSTNVzHnXCV-s2dTZH5yN3k4ekDZupOn8BCqUsI7Wh4OqTEmxsGxH_CwA9ENJainImIy05P8pIcv24o/s1600-h/biking+trip+(3+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLek3S-ZyclAB0b9TqTVdASAu8GGzU93Gbs0Hl9gsF9Zd0UHYGp2MI85Q_JtRGlSTNVzHnXCV-s2dTZH5yN3k4ekDZupOn8BCqUsI7Wh4OqTEmxsGxH_CwA9ENJainImIy05P8pIcv24o/s320/biking+trip+(3+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440013213938013890" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKu-ZtQVkJgA9utY9OB_1teGCa-KioJXukMvsvCbzxRuKgPxK5LcBAW4b7EWxfmbXAwoMp7T6HbOpLYSNSPSGqDRiornPDsnAKMLzETMo2kGXJ6Il-_1_8_befNuoDXNrG4txYuHgILw/s1600-h/biking+trip+(1+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKu-ZtQVkJgA9utY9OB_1teGCa-KioJXukMvsvCbzxRuKgPxK5LcBAW4b7EWxfmbXAwoMp7T6HbOpLYSNSPSGqDRiornPDsnAKMLzETMo2kGXJ6Il-_1_8_befNuoDXNrG4txYuHgILw/s320/biking+trip+(1+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440013213377966866" /></a><br />I begin by collecting the images with my camera, then later I write --- trying to from a narrative of the images. They’re up on my flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurachessin/sets/72157623389649004/). The following is part one of a post about one day’s adventure. Even this has been heavily edited.<br /><br />Jayesh the owner of an “outdoor adventure” outfit and I connected early Friday morning to plan our trip on Saturday, agreeing to meet at 7 am for a two hour drive outside the city, a 20k (which is really just a made up figure to suggest “casual” bike ride out into the country) then a drive into the mountains and perhaps a hike, if time. After a full breakfast at my hotel, Jaresh drove us out a wide highway busy with commercial traffic, and an occasional bull-driven cart through dry, dusty fields lined with piles of rubble and a massive water conduit. A twenty foot high geyser exploded from a significant break in the pipe. I wondered when/how would they be able to stop the leak. <br /><br />The highway narrowed onto a bridge over a shallow river along dry mud banks. I noticed women kneeling by the water, doing a washing as we sped by at 50 miles an hour. Jaresh pointed out an ancient Hindu fort on the far side of the river. As the road narrowed to two lanes. We entered a congested settlement: cars, autorickshaws, motorcyles, and pedestrians crowding the road and vendors clustered along the side of the road. Wooden-construction carts and tables in shacks, with plastic or corrugated metal roofs offered for sale mounds of bananas and grapes, household goods, and clothing as we sped through the city. As we drove out of the city into the dusty landscape, the acrid smell of smoke and diesel fumes irritated my eyes. Jaresh explained that slash and burn agriculture was common there. The air receding into the distance was hazy from smog or smoke, or both.<br /><br />As we climbed into the hills, Jayesh provided some explanation of the development of Hinduism, Janism and Buddhism. The earth we were traveling over was certainly not any older than the earth in Virginia but in my imagination the human history made the land seem ancient. In the US we have almost been successful at severing a connection to the history of our ancient cultural heritage. The colonists may have built up Bombay, (now renamed with the Hindu word, Mumbai), but it’s hard to imagine how much influence they had in these rural regions. <br /><br />We pulled into the parking lot at a roadside restaurant. Jaresh wanted a bite to eat but I preferred to walk, explore, photograph. The image of the boy inside the tire ( I think he was cleaning it out) was taken at a small repair shop beside the restaurant. Behind the restaurant stood an unpainted concrete temple. I was reminded to remove my shoes before entering. A dog sat on the cold stone floor and regarded me placidly. It stood up and walked closer to me for inspection, then posed regally. As I photographed to record the many statues and icons, Jaresh joined me in the temple after his meal and explained some of the basic story lines of Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu, Ganesha, and the Monkey God. <br /><br />We drove on for another hour or so, comfortably chatting, past dry fields and an occasional small temple— a single room maybe ten feet square— painted in bright pinks, yellows, greens…etc. Often a distinctive dark pink mottled patina faded by scorching suns and driving monsoons. The air cleared some and I could make out on the horizon the outline of a rugged mountain range. Late morning Jayesh pulled off the road and parked beside a concrete structure where we would begin our bike ride. We started out down a narrow paved country room, through fields rollig through small settlements. A few individuals passed on local bikes, motorcycles, small trucks, and women in saris on foot often with a pail balanced on their head. We stopped to escape the midday sun in the shade of an intersection. Before we long we had attracted a small crowd of children, women, a family the father neatly dressed as if to go to work in the city. I’m sorry I didn’t ask Jayesh about this but my attention was drawn to the figure of a man wearing a white t-shirt, turban, and a wrap to cover his groin, making his way toward us on bamboo-thin legs, collecting sticks piled on the side of the road. I couldn’t imagine his response to the my presence: a figure with pale skin in t-shirt and pants holding a camera. I couldn’t say whether I even registered him with at all, much less as a woman. I’d seen such images in books, movies, in the news. I tried not to point my camera, indiscreet as it is, at him. I wanted to record, and tell and understand but I was afraid of violating basic respect. <br /><br />Now that we’d covered some distance on our bikes, I was more eager to stop and explore. “What’s that?” I asked as we passed a gated chicken farm. I asked to stop. Jayesh led the way inside the courtyard as a young man came out to inspect our bikes leaning against the sign. A bright orange bag hung from the gate. “A coconut”, they explained, “for good fortune”. I recalled the gesture of the worshiper at the Jain temple: cracking a coconut in half and providing an offering to the deity he was honoring. Jayesh reached into a basket of dried roots, and snapped one open a to reveal the a brilliant orange flesh of tumeric. The color appeared everywhere: the clothing of the worshipers in the Jane temple, marigolds and fabrics draped around the statues, dotting the feet of the statues inside the temple, and in the secular world, painted on the door to the upper school building where we would later have lunch.<br /><br />Back on the road, we were passed by an ox-drawn cart carrying two men in white garments, with white head coverings. Women in saris walked alongside. A truck passed in the opposite direction packed with men, spilling out the back, dressed in work clothes.<br /><br />A hundred or so yards down a dirt road I noted a structure that looked like a haystack on stilts. “Jayesh”, I called out again, “can we stop?” We parked our bikes along wide path leading to a pink-paint washed concrete home. On either side of the path stood what looked to be a stand of tree trunks, bark removed, limbed out evenly at about eight feet, with an open space below a gumdrop-shaped mound of hay. “For the cattle”, I was told, both the store of hay and the space below for them to gather. Two women in bright saris stood outside under a shade roof observing us. One came forward and invited us into the barn a hundred yards down the path. Inside a man was bringing water to a calf tethered to a smooth tree trunk stretched a couple feet off the ground and lashed between two trunks. The trunk and the supports it rested on were stripped of bark and polished to a smooth sheen, perhaps from decades (or centuries?) of use. “Cow” the woman said. I smiled. This area saw an occasional English-speaking treker. After an animated conversation in Marathi with laughs and gestures to the distant ridgeline, Jayesh turned to me to explain the memorable story of trekers getting lost and somehow eventually finding their way down through this farm.<br /><br />Through the barn I could see a pile of bricks with smoke pouring out around it. I asked if we could explore and Jayesh agreed to walk over to investigate, relaying an invitation into the home on our way back. We walked over past the smoking stack of drying bricks and watched as one man scooped clay up and smoothed it into a double mold, as another man emptied the bricks to dry in the sun, returning the empty mold to the be filled and picking up a newly-filled one. Like my instinct—when I’m near a body of clean water on a hot day—to be inside water, I picked up a chunk from some discarded clumps and formed a marble-sized ball in my hand, explaining to Jayesh it was for my boy. He translated this and one of the young men standing around reached down and pulled out a large handful of wet clay, formed a grapefruit-sized ball and handed that to me.<br /><br />We headed back across the field where and gathered with our hosts and a few children curiously observing us on a patio constructed of bamboo supports and hay roof. Over the main entry way hung a knitted “welcome” sign. They brought us cucumbers just off the vine, tasting much like a slightly more subtle and tangy version of our own. Jeyesh obligingly peeled the skin off when I expressed my concerns about eating anything that may have been washed with water. The woman who had initially greeted us gestured for us to enter. The room was clean and cool with narrow bands of light providing enough sunlight to see clearly the ornate carving on the teak entryway into the next room. I can’t remember for sure now: was there a television inside this first room? I’m not sure I read it correctly: was that a poster of kittens affixed to the wall in the corner. I wish I had asked for the name of the woman in a bright green sari who was so kind and proud to show me her home. <br /><br />She took us through each room, explaining that each of three brothers had both a bedroom and kitchen. In her kitchen what looked like dahl was simmering in a small cast iron pot. She pulled wood chips from a basket and presented these to me, demonstrating how she would drop them in a shallow pit and place the pot over that. Both she and Jayesh lit small kerosense lamps to show me what the had to used for light after sundown. We went through each room and out into the back garden. I didn’t know how to express gratitude for such generosity. We smiled at each other a lot. She allowed me to take her photograph. I wish I had thought to bring something to leave. But my guide didn’t seem to think that necessary. Was it a gift to be a visitor? This is where I felt a significant cultural difference: in the attitude toward strangers and the privacy of ones home. It would be unthinkable to invite a stranger into my home and give a tour of my pantry, my stove, my bedroom and bathroom. Her sharing her life with me, and now ofcourse with you, raises all sorts of questions about privacy and open-ness: what she shared with me, what I share with you.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-50306796577888244572010-02-05T09:18:00.000-08:002010-02-05T15:59:44.222-08:00Caves and Monkeys<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPVKxYDX2OU3CVeGjP-OdH5g4KbQMAbOwNkw8HCYuzsv5WBhUwvZqgqiw8bilzgLw-iXz803wp5n7s8XiWRxvqamd0P1ziU3sJJ7nmv3TVFvFzsHFDJ8AdMe6VAN0wggUj9LyQZDWZuX8/s1600-h/monkeys+(9+of+69).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPVKxYDX2OU3CVeGjP-OdH5g4KbQMAbOwNkw8HCYuzsv5WBhUwvZqgqiw8bilzgLw-iXz803wp5n7s8XiWRxvqamd0P1ziU3sJJ7nmv3TVFvFzsHFDJ8AdMe6VAN0wggUj9LyQZDWZuX8/s320/monkeys+(9+of+69).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434811173089337842" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0D7yS8KYrX5J5tIBkia62TWrWfKMwhzFFfgZONYwmpzg08IN38-nQ5VjdUB8KTtrN-fx0S81-bFFtSWTSJYIsc-CNRVw0wXtZAhIEE1rKCQoZ9sm77UJdzs9OdPAbvO-1N-FrXAD0hY/s1600-h/monkeys+(22+of+69).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0D7yS8KYrX5J5tIBkia62TWrWfKMwhzFFfgZONYwmpzg08IN38-nQ5VjdUB8KTtrN-fx0S81-bFFtSWTSJYIsc-CNRVw0wXtZAhIEE1rKCQoZ9sm77UJdzs9OdPAbvO-1N-FrXAD0hY/s320/monkeys+(22+of+69).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434810932437518226" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_9eyLug_crfFYwem213MiHS4A8yBrMV7s6z2Bl6isUWNfu63-Upl4LlOXurPPivvBhJnXQHr7YypQLZfpXsUQ2HE3GdPZSAqXE_V8dEUtdOPttSiOKyR0UEbEbxq1PPU3sSuHD6ZahvQ/s1600-h/monkeys+(40+of+69).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_9eyLug_crfFYwem213MiHS4A8yBrMV7s6z2Bl6isUWNfu63-Upl4LlOXurPPivvBhJnXQHr7YypQLZfpXsUQ2HE3GdPZSAqXE_V8dEUtdOPttSiOKyR0UEbEbxq1PPU3sSuHD6ZahvQ/s320/monkeys+(40+of+69).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434811429907982418" /></a><br />It’s very hard for me to find the language to talk about today’s pilgrimage to the Kanheri Caves carved high up into the cliffs by Buddhist monks three thousand years ago as a resting, dwelling, and meditation space. “Viharas”, they are called. Abodes. I hope to return with my son Henry when he is old enough. He asked me if I would some day take him to India. I was stunned --- awe-stunned?---by the profound and sublime experience of sitting on a rock bed in a cell carved by monks three thousand years ago. I lay down on the cools rock in the dark recess and thought, “Somebody slept here two thousand years ago”. What a gift it would be to bring him here and share this. <br /><br />I was accompanied by a sensitive, kind and wise a professional guide suggested to me by a young woman I met at the conference. Thank you Hema for negotiating the complicated arrangements of transportation into the Sanjay Gandhi Park. They take security seriously here, restricting automobile access to only approved drivers and vehicles. Our driver brought us to the gate and handed us over to the driver inside the gates who drove us a short way to the gates of a Jain temple. After removing shoes we climbed the cool marble steps to a plaza leading to three towering figures central to Jain worship. We sat for a bit on a stone bench lining the plaza (is that the right term?) I need to research the religion and practices and terminology to understand more of what I saw. I didn’t want to take notes as Hema was talking to me. First, because I knew I wouldn’t let her get past a sentence without me breaking in to ask her repeat a term, spell and explaining it. Second, I enjoyed sitting next to her and just listening and trying to comprehend. She provided some basic orientation to the religion, which sparked me to understand more about this tradition which shares many fundamental aspects (although perhaps with varying attitudes) with Buddhism: the precepts, non-harming, samsara, karma, non-harming. I warmed to her subtlety (and wit) when she offered both historical and personal perspective. She led us through the loggia (what else would you call an open hallway?) lining the courtyard, past a couple of worshipers decorating a shrine at the entrance with marigold petals and a coconut the man cracked open with a vigorous slam on the edge of a step.<br /><br />We rejoined our driver and continued a few km past small clusters of homes: aboriginal tribes were allowed to maintain their existence inside the boundaries of the park. On the way out I stopped to take pictures of the paintings on the exterior of one home. This is posted on my flickr page along with images of the caves.<br />The Indian government moved to protect the caves—109 in all—placing the site under the jurisdiction of the Archaeological Survey of India. This protects the site but it also allowed them to install such tourist accommodations as a paved walkway, entrance fee both, concession stand, toilets, benches…etc. Monkeys picked bugs off of each other on the low wall lining the paved path up to the gate, looking at me menacing if I got too close with me camera. Hema and I marveled at the newborn suckling its mother. Then another female jumped up and put her arms over the baby, nibbling on the little pink almost-hairless belly. Hema thought it might be a grandma. I thought another nurturing woman for this newborn. I thought of my own baby. Maybe another reason why I felt a strong desire to return some day with Henry.<br /><br />We climbed the steps up into the first cave. Buddha statues lined the walls surrounding a round structure, the name of which I need to research. Hema used this term several times, but I didn’t write it down. On one side a pattern of carved Buddhas told the story of samsara (the endless cycle of birth and re-birth). I climbed up the ramp under an overhang from a recess carved perhaps 15 feet deep and forty feet wide. Inside this recess were several rooms, maybe ten by five feet, with a stone platform bed just wide enough for me to lie comfortably, with a little extra room at my head and feet. Hema patiently waited for me outside. I heard her phone ring. “Oh good,” I thought, “She won’t mind if I stay here a few minutes more. I would have stayed as long as I could until my bones hurt if I weren’t self-conscious about someone waiting outside for me, as much as she seemed comfortable with whatever I needed to do. I would say I fret needlessly about how I’m impacting others. <br /><br />We climbed up to other caves. I left Hema to climb up to another level of caves. The carved stair just kept climbing from one small cluster or caves to another. I didn’t want to stray to far. The rock was slippery. We continued on to a huge cavernous meditation chamber with a barrel vaulted ceiling thirty feet over our heads. We tried to chant into the space to hear the powerful acoustics but couldn’t compete with boisterous groups of kids, posing for pictures and shouting. We had one quick opportunity. Hema led, I followed her chant as out two voices echoed. “There needs to be many more” she noted. I tired to imagine the space filled with voices chanting in unison. Two thousand years ago. What did they look like? What did they wear?<br />Who were these people? Are they somehow with us now?<br /><br />I’m like to post this and get a good night sleep and outside my window the raucous fair outside my window continues. Were the monks this exuberant? This vibrant?<br /><br />Vibrations. A lot of today has been about that. When I called home, Henry played some cello for me over the phone. Then we listened to YoYo Ma playing a Bach piece together. Music on Don's laptop. My calling from Skype to the other side of the planet. Isn't that bizarre?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-36684252806779744142010-02-03T09:20:00.000-08:002010-02-03T17:31:38.151-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7eNSxWNICHTpry7jv9He5RI-ozCt4_3H299Ikq-ggx0HHp-AHY2te8PHyG0OYPA-maGGcF0lI_WzYxwi_jdja_brsTRBEppiacopU-UTuRCIcynu0ubCup3yyHyGgq6tWbxgtTxWO1y8/s1600-h/blog1+(29+of+42).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7eNSxWNICHTpry7jv9He5RI-ozCt4_3H299Ikq-ggx0HHp-AHY2te8PHyG0OYPA-maGGcF0lI_WzYxwi_jdja_brsTRBEppiacopU-UTuRCIcynu0ubCup3yyHyGgq6tWbxgtTxWO1y8/s320/blog1+(29+of+42).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434069081061917954" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHupMI5xHoCQUZmoI4t5aGF6rIEuWSWW7Gn7Dgt_pP4s3FcMZmhsuE3GpAFVjIsK_b-gcywHLGA9N82FusZU_5BzAwpXq0oBLbDNjc9PJfxZ2B4ow7LoEYpl5BLk2TbcHL0Q6WBNBr3ZM/s1600-h/blog1+(28+of+42).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHupMI5xHoCQUZmoI4t5aGF6rIEuWSWW7Gn7Dgt_pP4s3FcMZmhsuE3GpAFVjIsK_b-gcywHLGA9N82FusZU_5BzAwpXq0oBLbDNjc9PJfxZ2B4ow7LoEYpl5BLk2TbcHL0Q6WBNBr3ZM/s320/blog1+(28+of+42).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434069073356029218" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUg4XWjYTm5Z4E809HHU2eky95SbiQmrHw-uUJ8YaJiGblUIM3w-tweGRo1DwtGZVANuAmMVwKur37-8zzk6dS3bFqGRtUHoebePHSrPyH-ZyE1603nBYyCqOWfEx8ximBEijA547jggM/s1600-h/blog1+(2+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUg4XWjYTm5Z4E809HHU2eky95SbiQmrHw-uUJ8YaJiGblUIM3w-tweGRo1DwtGZVANuAmMVwKur37-8zzk6dS3bFqGRtUHoebePHSrPyH-ZyE1603nBYyCqOWfEx8ximBEijA547jggM/s320/blog1+(2+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434069063174767954" /></a><br /><br />Many many images. A lot on flickr.<br />Call to prayer outside my hotel before the sun. Then another. A swim in a pool with no right angles that I could see, other than the tiles. 40m? something unexpected after a thousands of 25m/25ft laps. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">About Getting There</span><br />A cab ride to the IIT, (India Institute of Technology), inching along with the traffic around the perimeter road. Horns honking continuously from all directions, and all sorts of vehicles. A 3k trip (I thought I could walk it: it’s good I didn’t.) locked in a chain with buses, trucks: auto-rickshaws and motorcycles weaving boldly in and out of any perceived hesitation or gap. A few pedestrians (a woman in a sari, a young very slender man in work clothes) crossing in front/behind my cab. Lots of horns. And the part that made me laugh (beyond just the hilarious blend of sounds) was that the horns clearly weren’t signaling for anyone to watch out, or to gain any ground. It seemed more just habit, like taking your shoes off before entering a temple, or nodding to a stranger. My driver laughed too. <br /><br />We turned off into the gates of the Institute and stopped at the security checkpoint. The guard wanted to know if I had with me any electronics—camera… (he gestured “and so forth”). I presented my Leica but that didn’t interest him. I have no idea why: either his interest or his lack of interest. He was so pleasant about this exchange. That too delighted me. (Tight security at the hotel as well: sniffing dogs, and guards opening doors and peering under the hood at the entry gate, bags run through a screener, and the wand scan (women have a discreet curtained area just inside the first set of doors).<br /><br />At the introductory session, our host cited the chaos of Mumbai. I don't really see the chaos but I have the very rare position of not needing to, really, be anywhere or do anything. What for locals can be chaotic and difficult is to me today fascinating, unique, and hilarious. Will I feel this way tomorrow? After a week? Like that pool where I thought I was swimming straight ahead but with the undulating outer walls, and the patterns on the tile bottom, I ended up someplace different at the end of every lap. It entertainment: sitting in traffic and watching and listening. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">About the Conference</span><br />Lovely. Relaxed. Inspired. Kind. Warm. Inspiring. Did I say “lovely”? My students can tell you if I use that word too much. But honestly, the people I’ve met have been generous and open and the presenters have been, by and large, inspired and inspiring. <br /><br />The name of the conference—Designing For Children—led me to expect primarily the point of view of doing something FOR children. Designing projects, or spaces, or tools. None of the presentations took this point of view. With one exception (not surprisingly, from Sesame Street India) each presentation showed some aspect of co-construction. Without exception, each presenter demonstrated some aspect of the enormous power children display: for narrative; for drawing as a highly flexible tool (for imagination, communication, illustration); for a desire to work through social conflicts; for ingenuity, resourcefulness, and courage. The message, as I see it, is that we as adults are learning about our own potential and limitations (constructed over decades of life experiences and our own now-outdated education) just as children are engaged in what comes naturally to them: Growing and learning. <br /><br />Some os the Presenters<br />The Engine Room, a project through the London College of Printing seems to have successfully taken on a city-wide initiative to introduce some of the core ideas of Reggio Emilia that I will speak about: dialogic process, building good citizenry, engaging multiple languages, listening deeply to the narrative of each child for patterns and symbols. Jinan Kumbham, a self-titled design activist seemed to despair at our ability to recognize the exceptional power of children, yet each presentation before and after him did just that. I hope he recognizes that it is time to reconsider what he perceives to be he prevailing view. He showed some remarkable images of the activities of children in rural areas—in his words “indigenous” children—with very limited resources, and no access to formal education. Children displaying extraordinary (even by the standards of this group) ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness. “If your aesthetic sense is not yours”, he announced, “You are no longer you”.<br /><br />Others to mention: D. McCannon and her projects ith children constructing “allegorical narratives” and “spacial metaphors”, exploring narrative and symbolic language through drawings. Nina Sabnani linking narrative work with children to her study of the art of the traveling storyteller indigenous to Rajasthan, who carries with him an elaborately constructed and illustrated “portable shrine”. She cited storytelling as a tool to work out social relationships, something we see as primary with young children. As if they are profoundly inclined to seek connection. And Kevin Todd’s work with a group of teenagers to design a mural for an exterior wall of their school. He claims he was dismayed at a certain point in the process when he perceived it to be stalled. Yet I when asked him more about this, he noted that negotiation was perhaps even more significant than the actual designed thing for the mural itself was an expression of the students’ shared vision. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Common Themes, which I’ll Cite Tomorrow</span>:<br />Dialogue, narrative as social negotiation; design as negotiation; design and civics, flexibility of roles and outcomes; multiple languages; children creating their own frameworks and boundaries; adults as co-constructors: learning, documenting, interpreting, and “making sense” along side the children who are also “making sense”. <br /><br />One more note: the images above are of women separating out the petals of marigolds to make a design on the pavement. The woman drawing is marking out the borders of each color of petal.<br /><br />That’s all for tonight about that. One more thing which defies words. My Flip cannot record the sound of what sounds like the driving beat of a dozen drums, which may be drums or it may be the amusement park rides of a festival in the shanty neighborhood 34 floors below. Imagine a never-ending drum solo by Keith Moon punctuated by car horns and the lights of a ferris wheel,tilta-whirl, and the fairway. Imagine looking down 250 feet to the spectacle below with crowds moving about in large clusters. Then amplify that. That is an image of Mumbai I cannot capture.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-288780453748388802010-01-31T06:31:00.000-08:002010-01-31T06:45:29.385-08:00preparing for travel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ_69mfqp5Jg4ksGsU206XswClQH-0igiqRIOSKgHb7LpWq6jLNL2KFtMFmHy688k9QZd9l1KA4bmNdFmYovkQrlp7LID5d4-TSWl12LRaqX2Y44ng4ya3n_BQTpE2ltBdnVA465jeTsM/s1600-h/P1060303-Edit.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ_69mfqp5Jg4ksGsU206XswClQH-0igiqRIOSKgHb7LpWq6jLNL2KFtMFmHy688k9QZd9l1KA4bmNdFmYovkQrlp7LID5d4-TSWl12LRaqX2Y44ng4ya3n_BQTpE2ltBdnVA465jeTsM/s400/P1060303-Edit.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432915108003874370" /></a><br />Last day before I take off. Hoping my flight out of Richmond makes it to Laguardia in time for my flight to Mumbai. I downloaded a few dharma talks from the dharmaseed library. (http://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/) Primarily on the practice of equanimity/balance. Henry and I both work on this. I've asked him to remind of balance when I am loosing it and I remind him when it seems appropriate. From a foot of snow to 90 degrees. And how many hours of flight in between. And in between, I'll listen to Myoshin Kelly's teaching on equanimity.<br /><br />I was talking with a friend about jetlag. It reminds me of how extreme this world is and how quickly we can shift our own states of being. I don't mind it. I mind shoes, and stories of travelers returning ill and the desire to return home safely to my family. Jetlag is far from on my mind. Re-mind. Minding. A very busy mind right now.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-20901900212867851452009-10-29T08:18:00.000-07:002009-10-29T08:24:45.106-07:00Pay Day Lending (continued)When a project takes on a life of it’s own, or even more to the point when design takes on a life of its own, the challenge is to recognize opportunity and embrace. It can hinge on disaster or true learning opportunity. It takes an ability and willingness for everyone to be open to new ideas. This happened with the an issue raised in my Fall 2009 Senior Seminar class in the Graphic Design department at VCU. My initial contact with The Virginia Poverty Law Center was an informative meeting with two individuals deeply committed to bringing about legislation to put restrictions on the practice of pay day lending in the commonwealth of Virginia. Pay day lending is a highly controversial issue in Virginia and other states in the US, a practice that the VPLC refers to as predatory lending: a practice that sucks individuals with fixed or limited incomes trying to meet daily expenses such as food, and rent and utilities (phone, heat) into a web of increased debt. Advocates of the industry claim it to be a legitimate business practice. <br /><br />After my initial meeting with Jay Speer and Dana Wiggens at the VPLC I sympathized with their outrage and was motivated to see how my students might be able to translate this into a visual communication. Mistake one was that I assumed my response would be universal. I brought to the class a selection of taped interviews with individuals ended up with spiraling debt and victim of deceitful threats and harassment from lenders. In contrast I presented an ad from a lender offering the message that getting a pay day loan was easy, not invasive, and much more human that a “lending institution”. Jay and Dana were invited to the class to present to the group much of what they had presented to me. Jay showed one ad, presenting a lender with menacing teeth, suggesting that “these guys were nothing but sinister loan sharks”. <br /><br />A common description of a loan shark is “a certain type of predatory lender. The lenders to whom these epithets were applied charged high rates of interest and designed their credit products in such a way as to make orderly retirement of the debt difficult. Borrowers became trapped by their loans and were unable to pay off the principal. The interest payments dragged on and many borrowers became virtual debt peons. As Cobleigh explains, "The real aim of loan sharks is to keep their customers eternally in debt so that interest (for the sharks) becomes almost an annuity.“ <br /><br />The first challenge to the case Jay and Dana presented arose when one student spoke with me after class about his discomfort with the project. He confessed he wasn’t sure he agreed with Jay and Dana’s view of the industry. I suggested that he might try another project as he found this morally objectionable. But it soon became apparent that he wasn’t the only with conflicts opinions about the issue. Several students began to do some research and question the responsibility of the borrowers. Were they spending money on luxuries and living beyond their means? Were they not educating themselves as to their options? “Why hadn’t Dana and Jay told us more about options, when we asked”, they wondered, with some suspicion. As the class discussions evolved there were varying opinions. Some were concerned that they were being pushed into conveying a message about the industry that wasn’t their own view. The discussion became emotional, many of these students were working jobs outside of school to pay for their own education and had little sympathy for folks in dire financial situations. At this point I recognized that larger issues were at stake. Issues of politics and economics and demographics. None of the students in the class had a direct experience with a single parent home, where when a kid comes home from school and says there’s “nothing to eat” they don’t mean there’s nothing yummy for a snack, they mean there is literally nothing in the refrigerator or cabinet.<br /><br />At this point I had to reevaluate the direction I had envisioned. And listen to the group. We stepped back and began to exam our points of view. I introduced the concept of meta-cognition. We went through an exercise from my documentary studies classes that asks students to step back and examine their point of view, their assumptions and some of the assumptions of the group. We looked at an assumption that questioned a lot of our views of poverty and as we looked closer at the purpose served by such assumptions as, “people who are poor live beyond their means,” the issue of blame came up. This was a turning point for the project.<br /><br />It no longer became an issue of “demonizing the industry”, as many students felt they were being led to do, and more an issue of problem solving. Blaming the lenders and blaming the borrowers was seen as “unproductive” and the class turned instead to looking at how to educate, inform and most importantly promote a discussion. <br /><br />The critical piece of this was to bring this view back to VPLC and covey the discomfort and concerns of the class and to recognize the significance of this development. The students were looking at design in the way I had envisioned, but in a much deeper and richer way. They wanted to step back and look at the problem in a larger, more balanced way and in the end their view led us to a place of discourse rather than rhetoric.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-53815903166755983292009-09-11T06:48:00.001-07:002009-09-11T07:29:49.760-07:00sharks and sea birds<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTfu4veH2ycrsCaLpFfsq5J8hhgBxTBJRNVP8Pz-4lHwshMqnBuxp-jOZYRF1JWpT1UhnRem0owS0vsq1eKToiKyd8WYAtVHRKoJjUS2Bk-l3zNcU4Nvj9s2AtTi-rdiQSCkJuDT9o434/s1600-h/cleaning-oil-spill-2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 136px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTfu4veH2ycrsCaLpFfsq5J8hhgBxTBJRNVP8Pz-4lHwshMqnBuxp-jOZYRF1JWpT1UhnRem0owS0vsq1eKToiKyd8WYAtVHRKoJjUS2Bk-l3zNcU4Nvj9s2AtTi-rdiQSCkJuDT9o434/s200/cleaning-oil-spill-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380213344474832738" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMHgCft2m6ZKcUdXB6z02kNaQUP02fVJQ0SGF4ZitP99_0gYj8kXAmNJ7FEias6T0aJQlf39Ihj7TGtrX3blPDZZp63-fYivxujZYHq43NFffyhI6mxzYn2RG9uYewdtFFP3VTOt-CS8/s1600-h/Payday_loanstruck.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMHgCft2m6ZKcUdXB6z02kNaQUP02fVJQ0SGF4ZitP99_0gYj8kXAmNJ7FEias6T0aJQlf39Ihj7TGtrX3blPDZZp63-fYivxujZYHq43NFffyhI6mxzYn2RG9uYewdtFFP3VTOt-CS8/s200/Payday_loanstruck.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380211718627803714" border="0" /></a><br />As I write, I can clearly hear the roar of the NASCAR trials for the Richmond Raceway, at least five miles away as the crow flies: across the river, over the highway, through many neighborhoods. We're heading out of town to the Rockbridge Appalachian old time music festival.<br /><br />I wanted to make note of an issue raised in my Senior Seminar class this semester. We just completed the third week. I was a juror for a student art and writing competition for children in foster care, sponsored by the Virginia Poverty Law Center. During lunch we talked about possible collaborations for my Seminar class and the issue of payday lending came up as currently a lightning rod for both the press and the upcoming Virginia legislative session. Jay Speer and Dana Wiggens from the VPLC have been ardently fighting for laws to protect the consumer from this practice that can impose up to 400% interest on loans, and entrap borrowers for years in an endless cycle of increasing debt. The met with the class and presented their case. Students were asked to define and research the problem and create a poster that addresses the problem.<br /><br />Here is the issue. One student stayed after class and asked to speak with me in private. He explained that he didn't agree with Speer and Wiggens' demonizing of payday lenders and was having real difficult doing the project. He also commented on how he was not interested in social issues. I let that last comment go, and address his discomfort allowing him the option of choosing another controversial issue with which he felt less conflicted. He proposed to do a project about Arctic Drilling. By this time I had presented several readings and as a group we had researched the issue of payday lending, including issues of culture and economics, and demographics and psychology. The student presented privately to me his preliminary concept for a poster about the the negative impact of arctic drilling. He had a stock photo of oilsoaked bird, a few paragraphs of dummy text and a tag line.<br /><br />“Oh dear”, I thought. “Hmmm”, I said aloud. “Hmmmm. I'm not sure this is going to work,” I commented. He looked nervous and throughout the next few minutes he held that nervous/frightened expression. If he had done some substantive research, I might have been more generous but his poster was more a spin on some ad for Canon or National Geographic, or something like that. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it’s okay for this student to be uncomfortable. So I told him that. I told him that it probably isn’t okay for a college-educated person to be ignorant about social issues. I reiterated that several ways: that to award him a college degree I would hope that he be able to engage with an issue, learn, research and have an educated opinion rather than just an emotional one. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about the health care reform debate and how so much effort to derail President Obama’s agenda banks on misinformation and fear. I was quickly reaching the opinion that it was at the very least a civic responsibility, if not a moral and professional and ethical one, as an educator to deliver the message to this student that ignorance and apathy is not okay for an educated person. I told him he didn’t have to agree with Jay and Dana but he did have to come up with an educated position on the issue. He didn’t argue. This student is not the argumentative sort, unlike the 7th graders my friend Susan has spoken about. I hope this is an experience that opens him up. It’s my response to many blatant demonstrations of disrespect ( our own congressman Eric Cantor from Virginia on his Blackberry during Obama's address to Congress) for the President's effort to bring dignity to young people, and to his office.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-12085395727083945572009-03-12T07:25:00.000-07:002009-03-12T09:21:28.865-07:00Boundaries<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEykY9KXIdxLn7GJzCH-hpixisBSmyjZtcjYooQa6T2PE18ugINjc8aBCgpPrEfZopjLUUrm76vd6sfY8niRj6pPensDTtxGy0fv7VTPUJ8CPFAShm4dxD2oa3ApyWv6OH1dax8HFOnKQ/s1600-h/upholstery+blog+post+(2+of+3).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEykY9KXIdxLn7GJzCH-hpixisBSmyjZtcjYooQa6T2PE18ugINjc8aBCgpPrEfZopjLUUrm76vd6sfY8niRj6pPensDTtxGy0fv7VTPUJ8CPFAShm4dxD2oa3ApyWv6OH1dax8HFOnKQ/s320/upholstery+blog+post+(2+of+3).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312310184404245842" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMfhtiex00rG71WDwzeq905MlAhPieoXrj44JzzcjeoooZvX_s8G8ci5iXBxi6r1LvRJpNWNaas198fbFut4UQKajWpsm4a7B_QaBnKHfJmNYQWHOU5DWlT-Y6ELWgz_HOo2OELLjUafA/s1600-h/upholstery+blog+post+(1+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMfhtiex00rG71WDwzeq905MlAhPieoXrj44JzzcjeoooZvX_s8G8ci5iXBxi6r1LvRJpNWNaas198fbFut4UQKajWpsm4a7B_QaBnKHfJmNYQWHOU5DWlT-Y6ELWgz_HOo2OELLjUafA/s320/upholstery+blog+post+(1+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312310178303824450" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-coCyaFNikxTnijN-drRQCnjhm70W_oni293wGaCSFOTziqICL7-YOJeHoEN3EM52euF6pdsgYHvgGAfvmpewSYl76fyguDTwlExooOFTaq-Du8tv0fzPsWTvEHJVi3auYCZ8v2qaOM/s1600-h/upholstery+blog+post+(4+of+3).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-coCyaFNikxTnijN-drRQCnjhm70W_oni293wGaCSFOTziqICL7-YOJeHoEN3EM52euF6pdsgYHvgGAfvmpewSYl76fyguDTwlExooOFTaq-Du8tv0fzPsWTvEHJVi3auYCZ8v2qaOM/s320/upholstery+blog+post+(4+of+3).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312310190803993586" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH1D4h2H4QaU-kLLoXAtz3945AmED_kHeHiLte_cuhPJv6lToXT5Y7JbJgzyOo8TuIhdCBEm7RXYPV9h4IYqGxk56aCNOcIUg1By_TEOLkgmSw0pH2Rqu9moFuXRF-UpABUGL8pj0v-ZU/s1600-h/upholstery+blog+post+(3+of+3).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH1D4h2H4QaU-kLLoXAtz3945AmED_kHeHiLte_cuhPJv6lToXT5Y7JbJgzyOo8TuIhdCBEm7RXYPV9h4IYqGxk56aCNOcIUg1By_TEOLkgmSw0pH2Rqu9moFuXRF-UpABUGL8pj0v-ZU/s320/upholstery+blog+post+(3+of+3).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312310187195060914" /></a><br /><br />Still trying to record stories. This needs recording so that I can move on. It also needs revising, but here’s the first draft. Comments welcome. <br /><br />After 6 days of steady engagement and constant interaction I took the second day of the conference off to write and walk and photograph. In dark jeans, converse all stars, and a dark long sleeved shirt I set out from the hotel with my black Leica to explore. The area around the hotel is a mix of commercial establishments with residential neighborhood. I saw no other women the times I wandered around the alleys across from the hotel. Closer to the souq just a few blocks away I would see local women in abayas and tourists in western dress, but in the area surrounding the hotel it would be very unusual see women among the service and construction workers, laborers and shop owners and employees primarily from the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangledesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal). Men in Qatar as guest workers aren’t allowed to bring female family members with them. My presence may have been conspicuous. I wasn’t conscious of it. <br /><br />I headed left outside the hotel, away from the souq. I recorded a lot of stray cats, some eating off dishes beside rows of shoes lined up just inside doorways, others scrounging through trash piles or napping in the dust. I peeked into dark hallways to see bikes resting against the wall, towels and varying lengths of cloths hanging up to dry. At one doorway I heard what sounded very much like a nail gun and air compressor. Afraid of getting lost inside the maze of narrow streets I headed back out to the main road, stopping to photograph a pile of generators outside a storefront. I walked in a little closer to record the men standing around outside the shop. I continued down the road past an upholstery shop. I stepped inside and gestured to take a photograph. The man behind the counter gestured back in what I took as an invitation. (On my previous visit to Doha I had photographed the construction sites near VCUQ campus and after taking a photograph close enough to be a portrait, I would then show the recorded image in the preview mode of my digital camera. Often, others nearby would come over to see the tiny image and ask to be photographed. The men would smile or laugh and return to work, or their break.) Another man in the shop motioned for me to photograph him as well. I said what I thought was “thank you” and “goodbye” in Arabic (the few words I tried to learn) and continued on. <br /><br />I grew bolder as I continued. In the next shop several men sat behind sewing machines. One man, who I guessed to be the owner stood talking with a younger employee cutting strips of red fabric with scissors. I walked in and asked to photograph. The owner spoke to me in English, invited me in, asked where I was from then offered me a cup of tea. I hesitated then accepted his offer, afraid of insulting him --- and also curious. (My hotel reception desk welcomed quests with a complementary bowl of dates and sweet Arabic coffee with cardamom.) He handed a bill to an employee and sent him off with instructions in a language I couldn’t understand. As I photographed one worker behind a Singer sewing machine, I remarked that I had a Singer as well and glanced at the unlabeled machine next to it. The shop owner claimed that machine could sew through rugs and pulled out a piece of leather and demonstrated by stitching together two then four layers. I commented to my host that his English was very good. He disagreed then listed for me the many languages he spoke: English, Arabic, Banglali (explaining he was from Bangledesh), Urdu, and Farsi. He then pointed to each employee and introduced where he was from and what languages he knew. Each spoke at least two and most spoke three or more languages. <br /><br />I enter into someone else’s space and take a photograph, always aware of an ethical conflict. Especially when I’m in a foreign culture and don’t speak the language. Am I recording for others— or myself—that I was here --- displaying some place or some one very different and exotic? Does it make my experience, and me, remarkable? Is it a way of distancing or connecting? I know this is part of a much larger dilemma of the ethnographic gaze, but on a personal level I am aware of the boldness I assume using my camera as a way to explore and cross barriers. <br /><br />The tea was sweet, milky and spicy. Grateful for the generosity of their time and friendship, I wanted to give something of myself back and was suddenly inspired to run back to my hotel, get my fiddle and play a tune. I asked if that would be okay, it seemed so and I left promising to return shortly. As I was returning with my fiddle on my back, a woman — obviously a westerner — with grey hair and white slacks approached in my direction. We stopped, greeted each other. Immediately recognizing each other as American. She asked what I was up to with my fiddle and when I told her she looked dismayed and maybe a little shocked. She warned me that I would be committing a “cultural violation”. As “a woman in their shop”, “a woman in pants”, and “a woman paying them so much attention”. She claimed they would be “terribly uncomfortable”. My heart sunk and then I was embarrassed by my naivety. But I wasn’t completely convinced she was right. I was weighing something my friend Halim, originally from Lebanon living in Doha, remarked during my previous visit: that Americans are so afraid of connecting—afraid even to make eye contact— that they treat the locals rudely. I tried to get more information. Was she a trustworthy source? She told me she lived in a gated community with her husband who was “in construction”, and that she had low regard for Doha (a “cow town”, compared with Kuwait where she had lived previously.) I wasn’t sure if she really was an authority on cultural violations or whether she was expressing her own discomfort. The more I spoke with her, the less I was willing to accept her assessment. I declined her offer to join her for a cup of tea and decided to return to the shop as I had promised, feeling the pull to do doing something I had said I was going to do.<br /><br />I returned to play a tune then offered the fiddle to both the shop owner and the younger man cutting strips of fabric, who I had learned was his son. The son helped his father hold the fiddle correctly under his chin. I left shortly after both had a chance to make some sounds with the violin and bow. I was unsure whether I had done something deeply inappropriate, whether I had gone too far.<br /><br />I’ve told this story to several friends, including Halim who I met later in the week for lunch, and friends who live there now or have in the past when there was even less traffic from westerners. None seemed to think that what I did was odd or inappropriate. This story is less about my photographing and more about the barriers we cross to engage, connect, and take risks. My son asks me why I speak to strangers even in Richmond. I tell him that we share the same space, and that makes them a friend. Not a friend like the next door neighbor whose comings and goings we are intimately familiar with. But some one who shares our life – our space and place in time. Halim thinks I should bring this back home and take on a project he called, “A Tourist in My Own Town.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-11850757636046730062009-03-03T14:29:00.000-08:002009-03-03T15:01:05.757-08:00Doha/Mousharaka Charette: Day 2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWIlehq4MIYzWLNqbrtLPUCSB5jO7mvDng7tF5JfMNVks5jy8kCsErUaOp5NtGJAaEao3Hv6EDaYy4CbdhvgtgrCwr3bEucA9g3pqkcWqXYwOoW_ZFpcUHstHMZe_5HgVAfyobpVM5xVg/s1600-h/whiteboard.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 90px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWIlehq4MIYzWLNqbrtLPUCSB5jO7mvDng7tF5JfMNVks5jy8kCsErUaOp5NtGJAaEao3Hv6EDaYy4CbdhvgtgrCwr3bEucA9g3pqkcWqXYwOoW_ZFpcUHstHMZe_5HgVAfyobpVM5xVg/s320/whiteboard.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309098596856256786" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbPENG3RZEh9dAkpi5X7t5LdB4p3q_ExAQeF6I90Wm17ZlTbhwp2Mm_PiApvvHi6FVO4xOMfEY2iA8if58yLAPjNQR2PG7d9vNqQVhyphenhyphenb4nMFVBSXsnOZjpAzijxQgbkg3DvnQIGfihRs/s1600-h/qatar2.28.09-2.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbPENG3RZEh9dAkpi5X7t5LdB4p3q_ExAQeF6I90Wm17ZlTbhwp2Mm_PiApvvHi6FVO4xOMfEY2iA8if58yLAPjNQR2PG7d9vNqQVhyphenhyphenb4nMFVBSXsnOZjpAzijxQgbkg3DvnQIGfihRs/s320/qatar2.28.09-2.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309098597422118834" /></a><br /><br />Picking up where I left on with the post from a few days back: Reflections From The Gondola. On the second day of the charette Barbara, Frank and I met briefly at lunch to sketch out a plan for the afternoon. They had generously encouraged me to take a primary role in the conception and planning. I learned later that this wasn’t true for the other groups. Most of the other workshops were clearly led by the invited speaker, with the VCU faculty more as support than collaborators. With only three hours to finish what we began the previous day at mall, we drafted a loose plan to somehow compile whatever documentation the students brought in: written notes, drawings, photographs. Barbara said she was interested in what patterns might emerge. My interest was in identifying where impressions and interpretations converged, and where they diverged. (A simple framework I learned from Sharon Poggenpohl in grad school two decades ago, although I can’t remember the context or application.)<br /><br />On the bus ride out to the mall, I had suggested to the students that they begin by jotting down notes about their expectations. I thought this would be necessary for building a frame of reference: to evaluate their impressions, to make a critical assessment. I thought it would provide some direction for drawing conclusions about the experience, and for finding meaning in the place, something we had discussed the previous day in the briefing. This is something I bring from doing documentary work in preparation for fieldwork: carefully addressing assumptions and expectations as a way to be conscious of my reactions and to distinguish preconceptions from fresh perceptions. I thought about this as I began to examine my own responses to the experience: if I went into the place believing I would hate it, would I be able to stay open to what I was experiencing in the moment? If I was able to recognize that this was less a fixed reality and more an expectation or assumption, would that allow me to be open-minded? Hard work, being open minded in a mall.<br /><br />I digress.<br />I suggested to Barbara that to begin the session we would ask the students to bring their chairs out from behind the tables, and form a circle. She replied that she often did this as well but always felt a little silly, like something children are asked to do kindergarten. I laughed and agreed. But now as I write this I’m wondering what’s so silly about that? Maybe what’s silly is that we feel adults no longer should be asked to listen and engage fully and personally with the group, and that building a sense of community in the classroom is not among a facilitator/teacher’s highest priorities. <br /><br />I’m eager to hear Barbara’s impression but I felt this circle time the most successful aspect of the workshop, with students’ radically different experiences (from Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Brazil, and the U.S.) sharing their impressions of a place. <br /><br />I began taking notes on a white board with the heading S L O W K N O W L E D G E, a primary issue in the presentation Barbara and Frank gave earlier in the day. One student talked about safety, how he felt “safe” from the elements —the harsh Qatar climate (sand storms, for example and the very reason we switched our plans from the outside souq to the mall). Another student responded by saying that rather than feeling safe he experienced confusion. I commented on this “divergence of experience”. Others agreed and gave concrete examples: the acoustics in the food court made it hard to discriminate voices and other sounds. Another student agreed and described the sounds as contradictions. Others nodded their heads. I listed the terms “reverberation” and “distraction”. Someone described it as “sound absorption“. Another student described feeling “irritated” by the lack of silence. I asked if silence was desirable. She nodded. I remarked how some find silence frightening. <br /><br />Someone mentioned the term “artificiality” and when I asked if this was a positive or negative quality, the answers were mixed. Some equated this with the safety of a controlled environment, others saw this as undesirable. One of the Qatari women had told me the day before that she went to the mall every day. When I asked her how this visit was different, she very articulately reported how she was able to “concentrate” and “focus”. Where she would normally be thinking about purchases, and looking at the mall as a consumer, she transformed into a designer: observing colors and patterns.<br /><br />The next step was to try to assemble materials on a 60” x 76” (or close to that) canvas consisting of four sheets of white paper taped together. Somehow the process broke down at this point. At this point, it became less of a collaboration and more of a separation of ideas. It was decided that each student or group of students would assemble their images; these would be photographed separately, compiled on one digital file ( in In Design) and then printed out on one surface. The final result looked polished, but I find it disappointing that the designers (Barbara and Frank, and Don and I) took over the charette, working well into the night to complete the digital files while the students were welcome to take off early.<br /><br />Charettes are fast and intense. It is ironic to try to convey something about slow knowledge—about wisdom and knowledge and observations accumulated over a long period time—through a charette. I’m not sure if we were able to succeed with our intention, but I’m hoping we can do this again. I’m hoping Barbara and I, or I, or Barbara can continue this work. Maybe the work is for us to build up knowledge about this process. Or for there to be a follow up. Or for someone else to take on this project and report back to us and for there to be an accumulation of experiences.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-82048735166849586412009-03-03T03:26:00.000-08:002009-03-03T03:38:30.622-08:00quick update/notes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0E8DOJiPiOM-hWiuM5dgjSLKWBpwfJ4OO-zH7n9gP1b5RGbWZUR2swtmeMBwJqk1FGO_FmTjwfjR6_r10DxtTq4boZeQA3ERa0TWNwYi77QmSg5P6buTLe8AtHNdSRGxTH7Yi2wNO60/s1600-h/falcon+(1+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0E8DOJiPiOM-hWiuM5dgjSLKWBpwfJ4OO-zH7n9gP1b5RGbWZUR2swtmeMBwJqk1FGO_FmTjwfjR6_r10DxtTq4boZeQA3ERa0TWNwYi77QmSg5P6buTLe8AtHNdSRGxTH7Yi2wNO60/s320/falcon+(1+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308923543134002210" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4JYxEOU5Ft31FKHmV53VNkgeDY7QqU4lcvmCBjPlH28p2ORu9E8FnxyuAdQt6BITc3CJh4I3xf0WAMg2jaCglcgLXoT2CMrLpzeC5ajtw0BANa3TjQmtt5ksZCDtHiW7ITe3dAz1Y76E/s1600-h/upholster+shop+(1+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4JYxEOU5Ft31FKHmV53VNkgeDY7QqU4lcvmCBjPlH28p2ORu9E8FnxyuAdQt6BITc3CJh4I3xf0WAMg2jaCglcgLXoT2CMrLpzeC5ajtw0BANa3TjQmtt5ksZCDtHiW7ITe3dAz1Y76E/s320/upholster+shop+(1+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308923540092664114" /></a><br />Didn't have time/space to write last night. Completed the charette, concluded conference, trip to the I.M. Pei Islamic Art Museum (even more extraordinary than you thought). Back to the hotel. Needed time/space to let it disperse, filter, sink in. All of that. I have copious notes and promise to write later about the conclusion of charette. What I thought worked. What didn't.<br /><br />Took the day off to write, think, explore. Wash off the air from the Villagio with local Doha dust. I'll take a shower shortly.<br /><br />Notes about today to be written up later.<br />- images of stuff, junk, dust, upholstery shops, air compressors + generators jumbled outside the generator shop.<br />- a cup of tea with an upholsterer<br />- an encounter with an American ex-pat<br />- the falcon souq<br /><br />Will write later.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-69983832253543492672009-02-28T10:38:00.000-08:002009-02-28T13:37:29.754-08:00Reflections from the Gondola<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvVBgDsy1K0mJZjMkmllEZboY_T3VJgjyLrLtC-N5zHeipCg3nuu-cRcjeF7xO2isM5GendHsiA1i3wVqMpH_bte6db_15-LZNJ2LLlBwYjdOcFl4peM3-mRov3b_7117CBQcujxvZMUc/s1600-h/image3+for+blog+(26+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvVBgDsy1K0mJZjMkmllEZboY_T3VJgjyLrLtC-N5zHeipCg3nuu-cRcjeF7xO2isM5GendHsiA1i3wVqMpH_bte6db_15-LZNJ2LLlBwYjdOcFl4peM3-mRov3b_7117CBQcujxvZMUc/s320/image3+for+blog+(26+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307962869961945602" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2AL4EeltbHHrSIA8-Avd37LxkgMrj9hxdQNwN7ynK3k-kgG-VtAYOzvtjpVY2YpqZx4mHh7oX_z8j5Q1-o7p6jTJF8z-lUk0dMBO4bLvZegAo7PEF0In_Is-47BbYPI85Q7hciOFGkg/s1600-h/Untitled-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2AL4EeltbHHrSIA8-Avd37LxkgMrj9hxdQNwN7ynK3k-kgG-VtAYOzvtjpVY2YpqZx4mHh7oX_z8j5Q1-o7p6jTJF8z-lUk0dMBO4bLvZegAo7PEF0In_Is-47BbYPI85Q7hciOFGkg/s320/Untitled-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307962867630706642" /></a><br /><br />The plan was to go to the (new) old souq (second two images): a labyrinth of narrow stone hallways under a traditional woven-bamboo ceiling. Vendors in crowded shops (some not much larger than a small bus) sell cloth, spices, housewares, tools, clothing. The souk was one of the oldest market places in Doha and much of it was torn down and later rebuilt to resemble the original structure. I saw this as an opportunity for them to observe and experience intimacy with each other, with the materials. Where the space is much like a retreat from the city outside and there might be hightened awareness of sound, color, light, and texture. An invitation to sensitivity. I think of what it feels like when you've been on a silent spiritual retreat and the world seems amplified when you reenter. Birds screech, the sun is blindingly brilliant, people shout. All the senses are re-sensitized, retuned to a sharper awareness.<br /><br />But as we began to gathered in our classroom after lunch, Don and Barbara were concerned about the sand storm raging outside. It came up suddenly while we were at lunch and some were concerned about breathing the sand, especially those with breathing problems. Some argued that the project we proposed, to build slow knowledge about a specific place by carefully isolating the senses and recording our perceptions, could be conducted anywhere. I argued for the souq but eventually it was somehow decided --- I could see it was time to give up my attachment to the souk --- to go instead to the indoor luxury mall, the Villagio. It left me with dread, aversion, a little anxiety, regret, apprehension. I had been excited about the possibility of bringing the students into a quiet, dark, intimate space. The mall was anything but. I thought about the controlled recirculated air, enclosed vaulted caverns of shiny marble surfaces, seductive window displays. My opposition was less a moral issue about conspicuous consumption, more of a sensuous issue. Arguing that designers exist so much in the analytical part of their minds that how could we possibly learn to reconnect with a more visceral, tactile, and sensitive awareness of our environment, from such a sterile, artificial environment.<br /><br />As much as I entered the mall with a sense of disdain, I was struck by Barbara’s obvious delight and excitement to open up to the space. Explore the faux painted clouds in the sky. The ersatz village shop facades. I complained about the acoustics. Don Crow said he loved them. Rick wandered across the bridge over the canal (over the replicated mini Venice canal complete with gondolas for hire), seemingly lost in a peaceful escape from the hectic conference. On our second pass under the bridge a student waves cheerfully. It was marvelous to see my friends transformed in this space, and so I was forced to confront my own fears and aversions, to reconcile my wish to control the situation and present an environment that was comfortable and soothing for me. I thought about the project I am working on with Sabot pre-school and the way Marty Gravett writes about one of the objectives of the school: <br />REFLECTION:<br />thought and the disequilibrium brought on by new ideas and familiar ideas made unfamiliar <br />are given time and importance.<br />In the presence of these values deeper understandings develop.<br /><br />The first image is of the gondolier taping a video of Barbara and me, Barbara photographing the gondolier, me documenting the both of them.<br /><br /><br />I learned about reflection today. This is just the beginning. Tomorrow the project continues.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-8569444564698025462009-02-28T00:34:00.000-08:002009-02-28T01:24:31.907-08:00Mousharaka<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyR_U2h28bAFMaaFPdPxfORIM-m3-xiwx3C48lPlAY50-1S9kfhcpUKqWXrXDhnVdsWJhEi2-3vQrk7PskUsE71LwKYM-Xs2yUwhpgU4GhXfGyplh5lUoYtBxuyeGoJUdi6oSX20_81O4/s1600-h/image2+for+blog+(26+of+1).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyR_U2h28bAFMaaFPdPxfORIM-m3-xiwx3C48lPlAY50-1S9kfhcpUKqWXrXDhnVdsWJhEi2-3vQrk7PskUsE71LwKYM-Xs2yUwhpgU4GhXfGyplh5lUoYtBxuyeGoJUdi6oSX20_81O4/s320/image2+for+blog+(26+of+1).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307776028559731394" /></a><br /><br />Doha, Qatar February 2009<br />http://www.mousharaka.com<br />Mousharaka is translated as collaboration. Yesterday Barbara Sudick + Frank Armstrong, Don Crow and I joined minds as we formulated our workshop for this weekend. BS and FA are invited presenters and set the foundation for this workshop based on their own presentation (tomorrow). The issue explored circles around Fast Knowledge and Slow Knowledge. This is fast knowledge. Slow knowledge evolves over time. What I write now will be slightly more integrated than what I may have written last night after several hours of engagement, questioning, dialogue. “Fast knowledge Frank writes in the brief,“is often acquired quickly and amplified by technology.” I would qualify this as expressly modern technology. He notes that, “Slow knowledge is a primary component of indigenous knowledge (systematic information preserved in oral tradition)” Does this include fiddle styles? weaving techniques? dance? Yes.It is the continuation of a deeply integrated knowledge that goes beyond the sort of mental processes that connect us to our laptop. Like right now. You use a very different part of your brain right now than you do when you’re swinging a hammer (for Jon and Don), or playing a tune, or drawing (which might include everyone else). There is deeply integrated knowledge that we draw upn when we are physically engaged with the making or creating of sound, mark, gesture. I write this as I think about playing music last night. It ground me after a jet-lagged day of connecting, responding, transformation. What happens when we come together for these intense few days (new connections, old connections). It's hard to sustain it, and I am grateful to all who encouraged me to pack my fiddle (and Don for that very nice lightweight case).<br /><br />This workshop is an effort to engage. To invite the students to more fully engage their sense in the design process. Design can be rigorous, analytical, prescriptive. (as Keven Wooley just said when he sat down to chat) Especially graphic design which is so abstract. Especially as a print designer, we deal with a fixed object. As I sit in this space (I just stood up to take a photo. Image is uploading now as I write.) the light changes, color shifts. We respond to a physical space with our sense in a way that we cannot with implied or abstract space - a page. <br /><br />That's nothing so new. You always want to ask, “What is new about this? what are we doing that integrates ideas, concepts, experience?“ In keeping with the thems of teh conference we are hoping students will first, com to a different way of knowing the souq (the market which will be the location for our study today). Asking them to concentrate on a sense: sound, smell, texture, sensation. To draw, notate, photograph, record WITH their senses if they can. And then to compile these (which we'll do tomorrow) ideally with a view to building knowledge as a shared activity. (Something I saw ALOT about documentary work).<br /><br />More later. It's lunch time.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-13179805814523520842009-02-27T02:16:00.000-08:002009-02-27T13:24:54.607-08:00Brief Report<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOc-aoOQGZaEwHDecGlMfJye17-hgYNi9y_KSs5GIawyBz-kTvZGweOpmIoOSTnQS2EzoE7Wh9GT0x4BoyC0YrNCvHmLB0qHPaZrcbmFABls7Er1UnFXHDOpZuJJBG35YAg-FGpK7ZH_Q/s1600-h/day1blog.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 215px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOc-aoOQGZaEwHDecGlMfJye17-hgYNi9y_KSs5GIawyBz-kTvZGweOpmIoOSTnQS2EzoE7Wh9GT0x4BoyC0YrNCvHmLB0qHPaZrcbmFABls7Er1UnFXHDOpZuJJBG35YAg-FGpK7ZH_Q/s320/day1blog.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307589904300759298" /></a><br /><br />First day in Doha. Arrived last night and could not sleep after Skyping with Don and Henry. Took my fiddle and sat outside the hotel and played tunes for an hour. On a white plastic chair not more than fifteen yards from the sidewalk and the street. Little foot traffic but a few men in dishdashas (the long garment worn by Arab men) of varying colors and styles. Most white, the local color. Of cars. Or dust and sand. More dust on the streets, on the leaves of the date palms, the limestone and stucco buildings. Some stopped to listen. One man held up his phone and recorded the odd circumstance of a woman in pants playing a fiddle outside a hotel after midnight on a Thursday night. <br /><br />Asleep by 2 am, but awake again at ten minutes before 5 am to the chanting of the first call to prayer of the day. Later, after breakfast, Stephen Vitello and I went out to walk and explore. I recorded/documented images, he recorded/documented sound. Men in robes and head scarves, some wearing sarongs, many in western clothing. Stray cats. A lot of them. No women out, especially in this area of the city of predominantly guest worker housing. I can see from my hotel window into the courtyard and perimeter structure where the men live communally. Men in sarongs and towels washing up, preparing for the day. <br /><br />After winding through the narrow streets in the nrighborhood across from the hotel we found our way to the souq and sat at a cafe drinking something with green tea and ice, listening to the calls echoing off buildings, a muezzin chorus from loudspeakers mounted on minaretes. Across the way someone is sorting silverware, preparing for the swelling crowds later, after sun down. The souq is closed today, Friday their holy day, but will reopen at 4. Just a few tourists, wait staff at the restaurants, a couple locals in their shops. The image above is at a mosque on the way back to the hotel. Men gathered outside the mosque. Some rushing in even after the prayer had started, dropping shoes, washing feet, and standing beside the others, or tossing down a prayer rug.<br /><br />Back at the hotel. A another change of shirt. Images are just now being uploaded to Flickr.<br /><br />We gathered together again and drove out to VCUQ to meet the speakers with whom we will be conducting a charette workshop. I met Barbara Sudek and Frank Armstrong, and Don Crow. We began to strategize about the charette and took the meeting out to dinner.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-2372824770155326522009-01-23T09:28:00.000-08:002009-01-23T10:11:52.732-08:00images and the imagination<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdi-UJ-e1GnhqBAK7AtQc5zhMozzZALIKrhTzOyyLAH06Vu-KqDyRapE_YDhLp7vojXzFuSSwzcsf5vkJrwYw-EUTJhl_htH_HfmOlkkMEjFiPwRO-2_fQb32PuPng81KTIGdvhHWYk1o/s1600-h/270906jfk.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdi-UJ-e1GnhqBAK7AtQc5zhMozzZALIKrhTzOyyLAH06Vu-KqDyRapE_YDhLp7vojXzFuSSwzcsf5vkJrwYw-EUTJhl_htH_HfmOlkkMEjFiPwRO-2_fQb32PuPng81KTIGdvhHWYk1o/s400/270906jfk.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294552366692021426" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYWiUNkfyxHXvUe8viVZUu7xDRX0Zfy6EVpm1LIkxjbjlNNoqWOlHCy7gbqOJDHZN1wc4hL2ZHsCFMbSWqwR4QbbjNL_V4bJ6O-Ipq90qiFmbP34c0chRBa4Mrcym0haa_8Fa2frh91uY/s1600-h/44617928.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 284px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYWiUNkfyxHXvUe8viVZUu7xDRX0Zfy6EVpm1LIkxjbjlNNoqWOlHCy7gbqOJDHZN1wc4hL2ZHsCFMbSWqwR4QbbjNL_V4bJ6O-Ipq90qiFmbP34c0chRBa4Mrcym0haa_8Fa2frh91uY/s400/44617928.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294552363404728770" /></a><br />My neighbor (a teacher and someone I respect for her political savvy) and I were sharing our experiences of the day, on Inauguration Day. Henry was home from school. Her five year old had kindergarten as usual that day and the little ones watched on TV the ceremony and the speech following. The self-aware five year old confessed to her mom she didn't understand a word of the speech, and her mom questioned the value of her having seen it. I reported to my neighbor that when Obama stood up to take his oath I urged Henry — woozy with the flu, lying down with his head cuddled up in a blanket — to sit up and SEE the event.<br />I repeated this story to my Documentary Studies class the next day. <br /><br />There are certain events that define a generation. So much is written about the Vietnam War as one of those. More significant to me is the knowledge of JFK's assassination. I often call this “my first memory”. I would have been just three at the time. I have an image of myself sitting on the stairs leading to the second floor of our house in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I can see the door just in front of me and the banister to my right, and the living room beyond that. The is some discussion of who shot Kennedy. This may be a conflating of several events. Maybe I was sitting on the steps getting ready to go to the Pittsburgh Zoo with the water fountain in the whale's mouth. (Do I really remember being there or is this a memory recreated from photographs?) What is significant to me is that I have an image—a visual picture—that allows me to verify that I WAS THERE. The chronology speaks for itself, so clearly this event happened during my life time and that it was a defining moment for our generation. The loss of a hero. The loss of safety. I could write at length about any number of interpretations. On Tuesday afternoon I am sitting on the guestroom bed where we hide our TV and I am juxtaposing the image of JFK slumped over in the blue convertible next to the image of Barack and Michele Obama out of their armored vehicle walking down Pennsylvania Avenue---("is he really doing this NOW? Am I really watching live coverage?" I am stunned by the message it sends to us: that he is safe in his country and that we are too. More than that, I am very anxious and notice I am holding my breath.<br /><br />It may be that the girl next door and all the kids in her class listened to Obama's speech with no comprehension of such things as "petty grievances", but they did SEE Obama looking out onto the Mall packed with a crowd that stretched back to the Washington Monument. Living as close as we do to D.C., many of these kids have probably been to the Mall (and they know how long a distance it is even from the obelisk to the dinosaur museum) but never looking as it did that day. And as we know that we are visual before we are verbal, I am confident that they will store some image<br />that will afford them the privilege of owing this event as their. As belonging to their generation. I am so happy for our children to be part of this.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-40799824412533921862009-01-20T15:30:00.001-08:002009-03-03T11:56:17.394-08:00The Intelligence of Boys<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir7WWms4GZqAqq_PkOmUpFOsTYWK8j9us-s4V4Lqlh6khA2TX7Gd6k77AnVw_rSKgSCFe2QrpRwS6xUZe8Q18OwyysC8kabJrKn6V3hq537crTjwElm6ROwFSiFeHXvEfrEdGM6xLG9VQ/s1600-h/h+caldr1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 324px; height: 243px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir7WWms4GZqAqq_PkOmUpFOsTYWK8j9us-s4V4Lqlh6khA2TX7Gd6k77AnVw_rSKgSCFe2QrpRwS6xUZe8Q18OwyysC8kabJrKn6V3hq537crTjwElm6ROwFSiFeHXvEfrEdGM6xLG9VQ/s400/h+caldr1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5293522554391828706" /></a><br /><br />Shortly before the Christmas break there was a parent’s forum at my five-year-old son Henry’s (he’s the one not in camo’ making shooting noises) school, Sabot at Stony Point, a Reggio-based program. There’s a decent description of the Reggio Approach at http://www.brainy-child.com/article/reggioemilia.html and some reference points of departure at http://zerosei.comune.re.it/inter/100exhibit.htm. I realize now as I write this entry that I haven’t written here about how fundamentally my exposure to the Reggio approach has shifted my views of my role as a teacher and the culture of the classroom. I’ve published papers on this but have neglected to write more informally here. I’ll put that aside for the moment to talk about an issue raised in the community that opened up a difficult and very important conversation about weapon play initiated by the children in school. Some schools have an outright ban on guns. By this I don’t mean real guns—of course—for these preschoolers, but the use of sticks and the construction of guns and weapons from legos and toilet paper rolls, or any other materials that inspired an imaginary gun. One parent was adamant that allowing this sort of play at all was entirely unacceptable. For the rest of us, there was a grey area with most of the parents (maybe even all the parents of boys) accepting this as a stage that needed to be guided and allowed so that children, in keeping (I believe) with school philosophy were able to work through issues of power and aggression in a safe and supportive way. The teachers at this meeting cited a lot of current research suggesting that an outright ban of guns only increases a child’s fascination and fear and confusion, creating a deeper impulse toward this forbidden avenue for play. <br /><br />I was disheartened when Henry began to fixate on camouflage last year. I envisioned a boy glorifying the military, with visions of his choosing this as his career goal. It embarrasses me to write that now, but it may be the first confrontation I had with the possibility that my child might choose paths I don’t approve of and that conflict with my own commitment to such values as kindness, generosity, and an opposition to military action as the solution to a dispute. My way of dealing with his pleas to buy a camo' shirt or pants was to say that I didn’t feel comfortable and that when he was older and could buy his own clothes he could choose to wear whatever he wished. This issue became a moot point when I came home from school one day and saw him in a pair of camo' shorts his dad had bought him at Target. They both seemed happy, Henry especially and I didn’t want to chip away at his delight so I smiled and said they were great. He knew I didn’t really like them and was trying to figure out why I would say that and I honestly explained that it wouldn’t be my choice to buy them but that it was between him and Don, his dad, and that was okay. Other moms suggested it really was not about an extension to the military but really about just what it was: camouflage. I realized this when I gave in and bought him a camo’ shirt and was surprised how innocently he believed he could hide by backing against a tree. I began to recognize that my reading of camo' was wrong and my projections were silly. <br /><br />He was aware of my position on guns (“Some people like them, but I don’t” and the military “It wouldn’t be my choice but it is no doubt a good choice for others.”) He would question me often about this when he picked up a stick on our walk and point as if to shoot --- at a rock or a tree. He began to ask me what I thought about guns and we would repeat parts of the script, about how I didn’t like them but that I understand that some people did. Not outright saying they were bad but that I didn’t like guns. Sticks and guns didn’t hold much interest for him eventually. Drawing in the gravel and collecting trash in the alleys was more engaging. I did make him a bow and arrow from a stick and string and acquiring the skill of making the arrow fly a long distance was exciting to him. He would eagerly show off.<br /><br />I forgot about this casual interest in weapons until the community forum that evening a couple months back. Dialogue, and co-construction are critical components to the Sabot philosophy and this extends from the classroom to the conversations at pick-up and in the playground and at birthday parties on weekends. Every parent I spoke with seemed to believe that there were certain stages children needed to go through and the best way for them to do so was in an environment that supported the intelligence of the child, and that gave very close attention to guiding and supporting the ways children learn to interact and respect each other.<br /><br />I’m writing this now in response to an event last weekend. My friend and neighbor Melissa has a son Calder a year older than Henry. Henry and Calder have known each other for several years and they have rarely connected amiably. Henry tends to get extremely territorial around Calder and it has rarely been enjoyable to hang out with my friend and let the boys play together. Recently they’ve been less combative with each other and on that day last weekend Calder followed Henry in the house after a walk around the neighborhood. They were amiably engaged and Melissa snuck off to get ready for a Buddhist meeting at her house. I was in the kitchen when Henry ran in and had behind the door jam holding like a gun some Lego construction. Calder appeared with some large construction (as you can see) that he called his bazooka. The kids ran around the house and pretended to shoot and hide and then retreated back to the playroom where they had built a fort. It was the most cooperative play I’ve seen with these two. I didn’t see the predicted behavior when Henry acts out with Calder seemingly aware of how easily he can push the younger boy’s buttons. I’m not a psychologist but this is how there previous relationship appeared to me.<br />In a while, they finished their peanut butter sandwiches and we dropped Calder off at home on our way to deliver diapers for one drive and canned food for another. I explained to Henry about Obama’s call for a day (or weekend) or service. I think he understood.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-45722445283647453752009-01-11T19:05:00.000-08:002009-01-11T19:26:17.548-08:00writingI’m looking for some hook, some way to introduce the first assignment in my Print class. I just want them to remember how to think visually. To reenter the semester feeling open and inspired. So I scan the shelves in my work space upstairs and don’t see what I’m looking for, even through I don’t know what I’m looking for. I scan the bookshelves downstairs in the livingroom. James Hillman’s “The Soul’s Code” catches my attention. Then Natalie Goldberg’s “Long Quiet Highway”. She writes so vividly about waking up: about writing and Zen practice (“Writing Down the Bones”, if you”re not familiar with her). I was prodded and reminded that there is something underneath why I teach. Something beyond making graphic design or teaching young people how to do graphic design. But I don’t know what that is. Or, I can’t say. Or, I’m afraid that I won’t be believed if I write it. Or, that I shouldn’t be so open, so exposed. Or all of the above. To wake up and engage with something so deeply that it changes you. <br /><br />A run this morning around the swamp in Forest Hill Park. Cool damp air, blue sky, hear nobody else but robins and a kingfisher.<br /> <br />A visit this weekend from a niece in whom I see myself, my sister, my son and herself all in one. <br /> <br />Waking up from so much that clouds the mind. I want that for myself and to draw that out in my students. It’s not that complicated.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-92036164303271409822009-01-08T08:16:00.000-08:002009-01-08T08:19:35.747-08:00questionMy colleague John DeMao just wrote he is “working on a paper on the intersection of creative thinking and design thinking - Can you tell me in about 30 words or less -<br />When you get what you think is a creative idea, what is usually the primary spark for it?“<br /><br />My response: a visceral response of joy. inspired by deep connection to person, or nature. elevates, humbles and dissolves self. leading to an impulse to make something, to share that initial visceral experience.<br /><br />thank you for asking.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-84051478038869603892009-01-07T09:36:00.001-08:002009-01-07T12:05:54.931-08:00The Dance ContinuesI take a break from writing to engage. In the end of the semester, in preparations for my birthday party - the square dance ( we play music, we all danced: kids families, lots of dancing, swirling bodies filling the dance hall)<br />- christmas, new years. Friends and family visiting. Writing is a stepping back and observing and naming. To name is to know and understand and Becky (Becky Heaver, sister-in-law)and I were considering last night at diner. I think about the start of the semester and the exciting possibilities. How to engage my students in a way that excites them as much as music, or dance, or my connection to the river excites me and feeds me. I am about to fax to my sister (for use, maybe, in a project she is giving her students at Ole Miss) a few pages form Rufuge, by Terry Tempest Williams. She writes about her observations of egrets at the Great Salt Lake. "we have lost track of time in a birdwatcher's trance," she writes. "Egret plumes like French lace billow in the breeze and underscore their amorous play. One egret rises, the other follows. ... The egrets stagger their leaps—one lifts, one lands, one lifts, one lands—and the dance continues.” <br /><br />Another writer Ester de Waal (I will check on this later but I write quickly while my guests are in the kitchen. Voices float up through the floor boards.) speaks of walking as a dangerous practice. We pick up our foot and momentarily are balanced on the other. We reach forward and are momentarily out of balance. Then in balance again as we transfer out weight. Gracefully we remain upright. Grace keeps us from falling. Then we begin this whole precarious process again. And repeat it again and again. In balance then out of balance. In balance. Out of balance. In balance...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-50270640649924095292008-11-21T20:30:00.000-08:002008-11-22T05:50:49.861-08:00Notes from a Juror<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPTX59HtKs2iRvg35sCUZksOjVvWGWweczI-AMUriG372VLOIqcrEzz7JAmV7N16RUeoeECdsAlLKpF_Cn_pLHU-MI4gcRueOCyqXoADIpAm5YoXnoHogPxf4uHUXtMxJ-XCkGr7WWbls/s1600-h/MBW+juryedited+(3+of+4).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: undefinedpx; height: undefinedpx;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPTX59HtKs2iRvg35sCUZksOjVvWGWweczI-AMUriG372VLOIqcrEzz7JAmV7N16RUeoeECdsAlLKpF_Cn_pLHU-MI4gcRueOCyqXoADIpAm5YoXnoHogPxf4uHUXtMxJ-XCkGr7WWbls/s320/MBW+juryedited+(3+of+4).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271337034594888882" /></a><br />I was invited to Ithaca to be a juror for the Margaret Bourke White award, offered as a prize for an exceptional portfolio of work by a curently-enrolled Cornell student. As I write, I am reminded of my Cornellcentrism. Ithaca, for me is code for Cornell even though I did for a short while live and work in town, and had a life very separte from The Hill after graduating with a BFA in photography in 1981. It is to Cornell that I am returning. In many senses. The other jurors were Shirley Sammuels, Chair of the Department of the History of Art and Visual Studies, and Andrea Inselmann, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Ary at the Herbert F. Johson Museum of Art. (Shirley, Andrea I hope I have the title correct. This might show up on a google search.) <br />We formed a group of varied backgrounds but are asessments were pretty closely aligned. The winner of the award was aclear choice to all of us. The work had all we could ask for: profound concept, emotionally subtle and ambiguous, very refines visual language and craft, and clarity of vision. I can't write about the work in case the winner has yet to be notified. <br /><br />A note about process. In the morning we worked separately to review the work and present our preliminary judging, then broke for lunch, and met as a team to reivew the 17 or 18 or 16 finalists. I was heartened to hear Shirley announce as she turned over the number tag for one body of work, "I hate this." ( Heartened? I am self-conscious of my tendency for being blunt, if not a little harsh with my students, and with my colleagues. For several reasons I often say what I think, before I think to shape my words. It seems so raw. I am afriad of my own directness I feel exposed for days. It's delightful to see it someone else. It becomes Shirley.) She then looked up genially at me and Andrea and invited disent. We nodded. We both deferred and agreed. Things we generally agreed on: craft and printing issue. <br /><br />I took down a few notes regarding issues that consituted grounds for rejection. My biases:<br />1) photographs of "exotic" children. Effective image-making (of any sort: photograph, painting, drawing) connects with the viewer. Children, other than the very ill or damaged, are so open and vulnerable. Especially to a stranger with a camera. The child looks inquistively at this intruder, and in a fraction of a second the desire for connection is recorded. I'm not talking about images where children are actively engaged in an activity, or actively engaged with the photographer. It's too easy and (maybe even lazy?) connection. I ask for more of an image and I ask for a little more thought from the photographer. Children are not pretty examples of the innocence of the world, to be collected and displayed.<br /><br />2) nature. The color, textures, patterns...etc of landscape are alluring and soothing. The light can be any range of colors we think reserved only for irridescent inks. That doesn't mean nature photography can't be moving. I just ask for something more than a proficient ability with one's equipment. Nature and optics do all the work. Again, I ask a lot of the photographer: not just aesthetic sensitivity and intelligence but conceptual maturity as well. William Henry Jackson and his mule pack went to a lot of trouble hauling his darkroom up through Yellowstone. Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston and the f/64 group from Point Reyes created impeccable "things" -photographs - physical objects. 30 years ago when I was an art student here we were exploring how to merge concept-building and complex visual story telling with the process of making photographs. Pretty images are enjoyable. I want the photographer to think, to observe and understand something new and I want her to share that with me.<br /><br />3) The last category that turned me off was images of the "exotic". Moms in bright saris holding their babies, old men with dark skin and ragged beards, dirty children in the street, rows of brightly colored things in boxes and sacks, unusual practices with food… etc. The tourist with a nice camera can't resist making pretty images of coloring things. As a visitor from Richmond, I was keenly aware of the environment of Ithaca/Cornell on a snowy winter afternoon. Cool blue light filtered through the one north-facing window in the room. The color, the feeling --- something about this was deeply familiar. Like the smell of the old stair well left intact after the renovation of the building after my departure. We'd gone to lunch, all of us in black overcoats. I remembered the familiar dress code: dark, heavy and layered. Dark, by comparison to Richmond. Cornell students travel. Some for research. Some as adventure tourists. Others travel from other continents to study there. I wanted more than something that reminded me of how colorful the clothes and spices are in India. Maybe it's the Cornell foundation in me, where the cold long winters inspire students to stay in and work hard, but I'd like an image to work harder for me. I'd like to see that the one snapping the shutter has something to say beyond, "Look at this!". It's very hard, as a tourist, to go below the surface. Even as Annie Leibovitz said in her recently-aired interview (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97103150) the surface can be a rich theme, but then she knows why that is and has thought a lot about this.<br />Shirley had succinct way of evoking "the gaze". I stay away from referring to this. It's such a huge, never ending idea. I wander off on tangents. I need to write next, before I go to far (and from here I'm off to San Diego for the NCA convention) about my visits with the Cornell photo students.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-90954551817317880762008-11-20T19:28:00.000-08:002008-11-20T20:52:09.108-08:00Election DayQuick notes. I hope I can return to this. Two weeks late or two weeks later this has lost urgency.<br /><br />On Monday night Don set the coffee maker up for me to just turn on when I woke up at 4:30 am. My bag was packed with camera, advil, pens, notebook and snacks for a long day. I have not been taking pictures. I haven't wanted to step outside and survey critically the activity around me - Obama headquarters. Canvassing in neighborhoods where I was a visitor, a representative of the Obama campaign. I'm sorry I didn't take pictures but it takes a leap of self to step outside what I'm doing and be an observer. I wanted to be right inside this. But I was still closely to jumping out of my skin. I kept leaping ahead to Wednesday when it would be decided but I wanted to be present in Tuesday, the day when millions of Americans would be casting their votes.<br /><br />I packed extra chairs in the car with a vision of sitting quietly behind the election officials signing in voters. A large empty gymnasium with a line outside in the hall. I drove around the corner in the pre-dawn drizzle and picked up Marty Gravett, a friend, mentor and fellow musician: today my poll watch partner. We followed the Mapqest directions south down Broad Rock Blvd, looking for the turn to Snead Road and J.L. Francis Elementary School. (The night before Marty and I and the other poll watches squeezed into the already overcrowded back room ---the now-familiar sight of folks talking into cell phones referencing clipboards and laptops sitting anywhere possible. The poll watchers were the ones crowded around Sean, the area coordinator, who was handing out lists of registered voters in each precinct for us to track who had voted and who had not as the day progressed.) We overshot our turn off. Both of us hoping the cold rain wouldn't be scaring off voters. By the time we got to the school, we could see the parking lot was full and the over flow continues down the road for several tenths of a mile. It was the first indication that something very big was happening. <br /><br />We made our way past the long line that had formed way before the polls were due to open. It was just 5:45. Officials held us back at the door to the cafeteria then let us pass when we presented our letters from the Democratic Party. Marty and I glanced at each other. The chairs were unnecessary. Small cafeteria chairs were stacked against the wall. We unpacked our bags and took our places behind the pairs of poll workers. When Sean handed me our assignment he said, "Oh, you have a good one. It's one of the largest in Richmond." Now I saw the implications of that. Normally there would be two pairs of workers signing in voters. (A-K, L-Z). Here there were four sets: (A-E, F-K, L-R, S-Z) which meant that Marty and I would be trying to listen simultaneously to two pairs at work. <br /><br />At 6 am, somewhere declared the poll open and the stream began. At first it was difficult to figure out where to station ourselves to hear and see the names of voters as they were checked off and handed tickets to take to the machine. They were supposed to call their name out, but most mumbled or spoke quickly. I was frantically trying to hear a name, peek over a shoulder at a tiny 8' type name on a photo id, at first one table than another. One set, two women were trying hard to help me out. They would look at me and make sure I heard the name, if I looked unsure. The other couple, a pair of men seemed mildly annoyed (and at times plainly so) at my presence. Within minutes of the polls opening, the small cafeteria was packed. Each table had a line snaking around to the doors to the hallways. There was a steady din of conversation and voter intake. The vast majority of the voters were African American. Many dressed for work in blue-collar jobs (many with blue collars). A lot of young men exercising their right to vote. Older couples. Moms and grandmas with kids. Women in high heels. Women in sweats. <br /><br /><br />If I could only record the varieties of expression: harried, calm and very confident, happy, strong, excited, tired...The man with his wife who when asked if he was going to vote replied with some sadness, "No". The men checking off his wife’s name nodded understandingly, sympathetically. It took me a moment to catch on to what I wasn't privy to and then realized that he very likely was a convicted felon who lost the right to vote. Something very familiar to the families in this community. A small window into a world I can't imagine. One --- only one --- woman complained about the 2-hour wait in line. An overweight white woman maybe in her 40's, in a sweatshirt and sneakers. Hard to speculate about her story. But I did. I would see an elderly conventional-looking white couple (the entire day I saw out of a more than 1,800 voters maybe five or six such couples). "They won't be on my list of canvassed Obama supporters," I would say to myself to protect against the disappointment of a vote for M/P. Several times they were. It seemed like a wonderful victory. The polling numbers showed African Americans were favoring Obama by a huge margin so I made some assumptions about voters even if they weren't on my list. But what excited me was the guy in line who I easily cast as a skinny redneck, whose name was on my list. It was a game and often I was surprised to folks I would have targeted otherwise to be Obama supporters. I made some guesses about the young large white mom pulling at her kids who wasn’t on my list. A Christian homeschooler?<br /><br />I dearly wish I could have counted the number of times I heard, "I've never voted before." "This is my first time voting". I would look over and try to get a look at a birth date. 1950's. 1940's. One poll worker told me about the 88-year-old African American woman who was voting for the first time in her life. Finally by 11:30 am the lines dissolved into one or two folks, maybe a few more in line. Sometimes nobody at a desk for a few minutes. Mid-day when the cafeteria was filled mainly with poll workers a woman (I soon learned she was in her early 50's) came rushing in. I recall something about boots and skinny jeans and curly hair dyed yellow. An impression of something fancy and flashy. "I couldn't sleep last night," she announced paces away from the table. She was so excited to vote for the first time in her life.<br /><br />As I was calling totals in to headquarters Sean responded that they were great numbers. I could only guess what that meant. Maybe, knowing the make-up of this precinct that high numbers were high numbers for Obama. I am pretty sure that the campaign knew just what sorts of projected numbers for turn out in key regions could mean for an Obama win. I think they knew when the vote was close to even between M + O but Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads were still being counted that the scales would tip securely.<br /><br />Marty and I packed up sometime around 4, although I didn't want to leave. It made no sense to take photos at that point. But I could have. I just could not bring myself to violate this precious event by documenting it for myself. As we said our goodbyes to the poll workers who had been friendly but by training very neutral, several hugged us and thank us and I did the same. One of the women (whose name I forgot) said, as I was packing up to leave, “Tell Sean I said ‘hi’ Tell him I'm the one with all the signs in my yard. I had tears in my eyes to see how close we were to that same feeling of hope and excitement but she hadn't been able to say anything except this all day.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-50563912319473123042008-11-20T18:45:00.000-08:002008-11-20T19:23:49.473-08:00More About CanvassingA note about canvassing. Back and forth.<br />Memory and narrative shifts from present to past, ahead and back. I just realized that I needn't care so much about the linear order of this narrative.<br /><br />Canvassing:<br />We were sent in pairs out into the neighborhoods adjacent to Woodland Heights. If you don't know this neighborhood in Richmond, you should understand that in this small, contained neighborhood bounded by city parks on the east and west, the river on the north, and Semmes Avenue to the south the majority of homes have Obama signs in their yards. The campaign clearly recognizes the voting patterns of this precinct and is not concerned about either voter turn out or allegiance to the democratic ticket. But just 1/2 mile or a mile south, and a mile west the neighborhood is predominantly newly registered working class, and predominantly African American. These neighborhoods were especially critical for gaining voter involvement. <br />Several times during a route when I engaged a resident who answered the door, I found myself welling up with tears (of relief, of gratitude, for the connection to this other neighbor on the other side of the door or the threshold, in response to the sheer enormity of the prospect and the depth of my hope). My experience of Richmond is of a divided city. I cringe to say this. White and black. I cringe to see how simplistic and damaging this is. Before I continue, how do I change that? Please write me if you have any thoughts. Is it true for them? The folks I was canvassing? Another part of my tears: for that division in my own mind. As I write, I think that may be the thing that triggers the intensity of emotion. The sense of division within myself. The sadness in response to that.<br /><br />One day my partner (friend and neighbor, Cathy Nelson) and I walked up to a house on our list of voters to canvass, with a woman sitting on the porch on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. A few men were walking out of the house, one with a can of beer. We identified ourselves as with the Obama campaign, making sure that folks knew where to vote and asking them if we could count on their vote. One man laughed and thanked us and then with a very thick slurry speech, called out something like "next a Chinese American, or a Mexican American!" On several occasions, I had been self-conscious about my pronunciation of words. Did I sound like a Northerner (even worse, a New Yorker?)? A very white person? A white, privileged person? A person for whom the right to vote and the security of a good education is assumed? <br /><br />A note about now, and today. As I write this post, I recognize things about me that surprise and sadden me. My own divisiveness. But recognizing this as my frame of reference at least awards some connection to self. (“Oh, so that’s how it is”.) Facing myself, facing oneself. I am posting from Ithaca, New York where I am a guest critic for the Photography classes. I met with the seniors today and was unnerved by the very dense opacity in their verbal presentations. I heard fragments, and ideas, and references to readings. They talked about irritations and frustrations and attempts and desires but the motivation behind their work escaped them. It is so painfully familiar this stage in the creative process. Of desperately plumbing for some connection to self with very few tools to excavate. I’ll write about this another time, I hope. But the point I wish to make is that revealing parts of the self is so incredibly difficult and laborious. But we all try so hard. How noble.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-69821991029671397882008-11-19T21:42:00.001-08:002008-11-20T04:37:31.660-08:00Late October<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgNdhcMRj6XqFMy-B-2vlRRFmx3AbkHvlNF_lmPe5lUenPWFxyKZXCLmoHLRr95_fBdZZzdIRQBCx55-Sdp6yVWwXnOia3Ipz3EGtPJffYuR3HlpsbvVDfViJk9bCwHp3ze_xRE4EHsQg/s1600-h/canvas1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: undefinedpx; height: undefinedpx;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgNdhcMRj6XqFMy-B-2vlRRFmx3AbkHvlNF_lmPe5lUenPWFxyKZXCLmoHLRr95_fBdZZzdIRQBCx55-Sdp6yVWwXnOia3Ipz3EGtPJffYuR3HlpsbvVDfViJk9bCwHp3ze_xRE4EHsQg/s320/canvas1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270717789097997090" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKNw7Lrzsz8RUAIoByqWYt2LQ_UD9G65kGZKmHw5sgf0tc0Xplh6oP6zIGB-P8EKFDRF_Q0QcjQ6qJZiNvv2dkwG6ozJqwBNJiveAtXCw9oUvkQdtTTjlf3TeV6-OLaKjmQknSAt0zQD8/s1600-h/canvas2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: undefinedpx; height: undefinedpx;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKNw7Lrzsz8RUAIoByqWYt2LQ_UD9G65kGZKmHw5sgf0tc0Xplh6oP6zIGB-P8EKFDRF_Q0QcjQ6qJZiNvv2dkwG6ozJqwBNJiveAtXCw9oUvkQdtTTjlf3TeV6-OLaKjmQknSAt0zQD8/s320/canvas2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270717709438698562" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwK6YM_tEOTrGsdjgrc6f1fEKNwPY_16-KtW-RJ3obY9X2-WaDazsWwlzhro2-91q9Yk9qW2F6vy0D_uXkGHOQu5nN-i3UtFmGFeJwvDHSqQslDgfx-FisDvSLNx4rj6AjYwd0qCDBsyk/s1600-h/canvas3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: undefinedpx; height: undefinedpx;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwK6YM_tEOTrGsdjgrc6f1fEKNwPY_16-KtW-RJ3obY9X2-WaDazsWwlzhro2-91q9Yk9qW2F6vy0D_uXkGHOQu5nN-i3UtFmGFeJwvDHSqQslDgfx-FisDvSLNx4rj6AjYwd0qCDBsyk/s320/canvas3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270714457604617314" /></a><br /><br />I loose entire weeks. There is no consistency from one day to the other. I think about writing. But that's not at all the same as writing. With a family, and work and any spare time for friends... or for the past month on The Campaign. Any time I could find away form work or family, I tried to take a canvassing shift. I felt so deeply that Obama could win and wanted to do anything I could to be a part of making that happen. I brought Henry to vote at city hall (early absentee). He was uncharacteristically patient and even. We waited a half hour, listening to folks describe how they had been in line earlier only to be evacuated by a fire alarm. We were a few minutes away from voting when the alarm went off again. We waited outside for another half hour before a voting officer summoned those of us still waiting around to another municipal building. There we waited another half hour for them to haul the machines over and set up for us. It was almost 5 when I cast my ballot. We'd been in line since 2:30. I let Henry vote for the local offices. Later we went to Obama headquarters. I wanted Henry to be in the midst of it: see the rooms packed with folks on the phone, entering date on laptops, scurrying around, conferring, sharing stories..., and for him to feel the excitement.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7894174064240925987.post-88140235224814682342008-09-16T21:04:00.000-07:002008-09-16T21:06:29.118-07:00More About The Visit to The Upper Mattaponi: Context<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Background</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This is turning into a three-part, maybe four- or five- part entry. But before I get into my statement about materiality and material culture, I’ll sketch out some context.</span><br /><br />Our visit with Chief Ken Adams was inspired by a call from the INDIGO Design Network out of Australia, Mix08 project (visit the “project” at http://www.indigodesignnetwork.org to review the brief). I received an e-mail notice about the project and was briefly at a loss for connection. Indigenous people in the US? Indigenous isn't commonly a term we use for the Native American, or American Indian population. The term indigenous conjured up something exotic and foreign, like the Maori of New Zealand or the Aboriginal People of Australia. This summer I was in Canada and had read in the news about current efforts to provide restitution to generations of children forcibly relocated to residential schools, isolated from family and community and prohibited from speaking their native language. The personal stories are unbelievably sad.<br /><br />I read the call from Australia and felt a responsibility to bring this into my Senior Seminar class. I have a tendency to approach projects outside my area of comfort. I tend to see Seminar as a place for all of us to engage in a topic, or concept, and explore it together. This has both exciting and dismal possibilities.<br /><br />I made a connection with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Kareen</span> Wood, director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (see links) and tireless advocate for the rights and recognition of Indians in Virginia. She arranged the visit with Chief Adams.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Impressions</span><br />This is really what I wanted to write about. I tried to provide some contextual readings, about colonialism and “reading culture” (things like an annotated reading to the class of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Babar</span> the Elephant, Edward T. Hall, Edward Said, and Barthes) and specifically, about the Upper <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Mattaponi</span> Tribe, also referred to in the 18<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">th</span> and 19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">th</span> centuries as The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Adamstown</span> Band, a so many had the last name Adams. Prior to the field trip (about 45 minutes drive northwest of Richmond) the students gathered in groups to compile questions. Things as commonplace as what did they eat and where did they work, and harder questions about the Baptist Church that now forms the centerpiece of religious life. The list touched on history, present and future; and on the issues of living on a reservation, and not living on a reservation (the Upper <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Mattaponi</span> own their land. It is not a reservation, which would be owned by the US government).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Expectations</span><br />They asked me what I expected. I told them I really had no idea, and then amended that. I expected Chief Adams would talk with us and tell us about his experience. I expected to be able to walk around on the land and get some sense of what it sounded like, and smelled like, and looked like. I still miss the textures, and smells and sounds, and colors of the hills about Amherst, Massachusetts. As much as I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">ve</span> lived in Richmond (longer now than I lived in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Shutesbury</span> as a single person up in the hills), I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">ve</span> not been able to connect to the landscape. I expected to be visiting someplace that for thousands of years was home to the same lineage of people.<br /><br />I need to ask them to write about their own expectations.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15471078537221336693noreply@blogger.com0