More About Canvassing

A note about canvassing. Back and forth.
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.

Canvassing:
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.
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.

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?

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.

Late October

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.

More About The Visit to The Upper Mattaponi: Context

Background
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.

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.

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.

I made a connection with Kareen 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.

Impressions
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 Babar the Elephant, Edward T. Hall, Edward Said, and Barthes) and specifically, about the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, also referred to in the 18th and 19th centuries as The Adamstown 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 Mattaponi own their land. It is not a reservation, which would be owned by the US government).

Expectations
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’ve lived in Richmond (longer now than I lived in Shutesbury as a single person up in the hills), I’ve 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.

I need to ask them to write about their own expectations.

A Visit to the Upper Mattaponi tribal land

Last Monday my Senior Seminar class at VCU and I piled into a few cars and drove out to the tribal lands of the Upper Mattaponi Tribe of Virginia. I drove up with Kareen Wood, director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. During the 45 minute drive (x2 for the carload that got lost but eventually found their way) Kareen spoke with me about the issues of ownership, and how the conflict between the native Americans and the Colonists created a deep clash that continues today. The Upper Mattaponi own their land outright, unlike a reservation where the land is "managed" by the resident tribe but owned by the US government. We met with Chief Ken Adams in the parking lot, where a weathered hand-painted sign marked the Sharon Indian School, Home of the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, est. 1919. Most carloads of students flew right past the gravel parking lot beside the small brick building. In fact, that signage and the Baptist church next door fit in neatly with the surrounding material culture: this might have been just another few buildings on the side of a busy rural highway ---which, in fact, they were. More about this later...

On or About Photography

I'm assembling readings for a Sophomore class titled IMAGING. I'm treating it like a Photography class. I am drawn back to, and repelled by, the discredited eponymous discourse on photography by Susan Sontag. One critic suggests it might be better titled “Against Photography” (Sorensen, Sue, “Against Photography”, in Afterimage , Vol. 31, Issue 6) A Wikipedia writer writes, “reviews from the world of art photography that followed On Photography’s publication were skeptical and often hostile.” I would add that they continue to be. But there is something to her polemic that questions ideas about creativity that we hold to be sacred. I’m not saying I would defend her positions but I am forced to consider that there is for me some aspect worth consideration in many of her arguments. I’m considering her statement “The final reason for the need to photography everything lies in the very logic of consumption itself.” Certainly, this can’t be the final reason. And she might be right: there is no thing left unphotographed. But the idea of consumption deserves a little more attention especially given the way her critics dismiss the text as now lacking all credibility. What if she is partly right? Can that be allowed? Aren’t we in some way consuming images --- consuming media --- with an automatic mode of processing given the shear quantity those of us on line are exposed to, and the distractions? To what are we responding? Is there a dialogue? Can this be a dialogue?

setting intentions

Setting Intentions: back to this idea.

I was asked to help coordinate the preparation of the preschool facility for the return of the children for the 08-09 school year at Sabot at Stony Point School
(http://www.sabotatstonypoint.org/).

Two significant connections:

1) it is from Sabot and the reggio-inspired philosophy that I have developed this focus of intentionality as hub for motivation and action.
2) assuming this role of coordinating folks to get work done has led to many unexpected connections: a neighborhood community center for at risk youths was the first to call to claim the free stove and fridge we needed taken away so that we can convert the kitchen to a utility/diaper changing area (somehow disconnecting the stove and building a changing table on top of that chafed against my aesthetics). Building a community center is an enormous undertaking that creates a call to action for an ever-expanding set of skills and talents. Sabot is now a part of this.
Another call came from a theater group : The Conciliation Project (http://www.theconciliationproject.org/) whose mission states, “We believe that there is hope through constructive dialogue and active listening. We believe we must be willing to listen to one another and address our past if we are going to be allowed to have a future.” I couldn’t offer a stove but I did ask how my students can contribute their creative energies.
We’ll meet to consider collaborative possibilities.

What if I established an intention for my semester, or even my entire school year, drawing on the theme of the ICOGRADA design week in Doha, Qatar in March of 2009 (http://www.mousharaka.com/)? Collaboration.

The first time I began to consider the necessity of Intentionality came after a retreat at IMS, the Insight Meditation Center in Barre Massachusetts. Insight, or Vipassana is a Buddhist meditation practice. The associations of intentionality and Buddhism are too vast to describe here. A longer essay for another day.

report from Clifftop

How to reconcile the various fractions or facets of our life into one comprehensive whole as "designer", or is designer just one piece of something else? Do they battle each other? Is being a parent in battle with being a tenured member of the faculty of a university design department? Is playing classical music from written pages in conflict with trying to understand (well enough to play) old time fiddle styles? Is writing a blog just one more facet, or is it the agent tying it all together. Writing about what is being attended to (like laundry or better, the garden) at present. And crafting some sort of public text/image persona that evolves and shifts. In some sense this blog is as comprehensive a story as anything a single incident or image could represent. A journal that is both public and private, both a private statement and a request for some resonance in the internet universe.

I've loaded this single image from Clifftop, the Appalachian Stinrg Band Festival in Clifftop West Virginia. For those wanting more, please check out the wealth of video offerings on youtube. This year's videos of both informal campground jams and competitions are just starting to appear. Clifftop is about music and dancing, and the renewal and continuation of friendships who share a love of old time music and dance. I rarely photograph jams. Either I am playing in one, or I'm more interested in listening. An image of folks playing music doesn't do what this one image of dancers does to explain the cross-generational and gender-equal (this is debatable, of course but note that four of the five finalists in the fiddle competition this year were young women) view of the culture at Clifftop --- here, flat-foot dancing. A man —who could be my father if he were still alive, a woman close to my age, and a girl just about the age of my son Henry dance together. Watch each other, study and learn, and relate in a way that only music can create unspeakable bonds.