Have you ever heard of golf-juggling? Clearly, I've been missing out!
Letterman's Bushisms are also enjoyed by my dad; an almost nightly routine.
Did you hear about the "classic" American inventor John Kanzius, who invented something he wasn't even looking for? This newsreel appears as fake as one can imagine and yet...could Saltwater into fire be possible? Meanwhile, he has applied for a patent for a cancer treatment.
I suppose stranger things are possible....
Keanu was online this morning; we have not had contact since an email query about how to characterize a lunch conversation we had during the first Dialogue under Occupation conference in Chicago last fall. Then, I was clarifying for the paper I'll present at the second DUO conference this fall, in Jerusalem. Today, I scoped out his plans. Those Hawaiians are up to exciting things!!!!
I missed the deadline to submit my own paper at the International Studies Association (political science). Darn. How close is my dissertation topic to the field of international relations? Wikipedia says it is "both an academic and public policy field, and can be either positive or normative." Given the choice of positivistic science or normative science, I definitely lean to the latter in the sense that I think whatever gets put into policy becomes normative (so we better be clear on what we want the norms to be!)
The ISA conference "Call for Papers" is broader, opening up the paradigmatic range to include "empirical and normative, conservative and liberal, systemic and individual, activist and academic, material and ideational, positivist and post-positivist." Sounds good, actually! I wonder which way the biases tend to lean, in terms of representation among these quite disparate views?) The goal of the 2008 conference is to "Bridge Multiple Divides...by creating dialogue and integrative research between scholars from different communities and viewpoints." Gee, if they really do it, that would be cool. To the extent they "fail" or "succeed," I may have another opportunity for interaction and reflection such as DUO provided?
I'll have to scope them out some more, perhaps after they begin to post papers. Did I also miss the poster deadline? They maintain an online archive (requires membership).
Preregistration ENDS November 30.
Something to think about!
"In Hawaiian," Keanu told me, "we say "a hui hou" which is 'until next time.'"
"Spiritual gateway to the soul." The Intuitive Acupuncturist volunteered the info as the name for the two "in-and-outs" she did on my back, one on either side of my heart.
I told her I was labile (which I always think of as the opposite of volatile) and disoganized. "You're changing," she said. "Sometimes we don't recognize ourselves."
We got onto the topic of our first meeting, and how that led to my so symbolically transparent (!) tattoo.
She gave me a series of "in-and-outs" - to two fingers on my left hand! Ouch! - explaining "the short, quick ones pack a lot of punch!" We were trying to stabilize me around the ambition/love intertwinement-thang I've got going on. "For whatever reason," I told her, "I've got a lot ambition. I have to channel it along the paths that are available." "Don't you mean you have a lot of love?" she asked. I paused before replying, "I think they are the same thing." She sat for a minute before speaking softly, "Of course."
Community Emergency and Disaster Preparedness video from the Department of Homeland Security with general info, applicable to everybody. Features at least one person I know! :-)
(I used to be "prepared"; uh oh, gotta get my act together, even better than before!)
Changes in the Land gives the best, most readable, sensible, and fair description of the ecology and economy of American Indians that I have ever read.
“… we must be careful about what we mean by ‘property,’ lest we fall into the traps English colonists have set for us” (1983:58). William Cronen carefully delineates the difference between ownership and sovereignity, detailing how “most English colonists displayed a remarkable indifference to what the Indians themselves thought about the matter [of property]” (58). “The struggle was over two ways of living and using the seasons of the year, and it expressed itself in how two peoples conceived of property, wealth, and boundaries on the landscape” (emphasis added, 53).
“Few Europeans, “ Cronen explains, “were willing to recognize that the ways Indians inhabited New England ecosystems were as legitimate as the ways Europeans intended to inhabit them”(57).
“The ecological relationships the English sought to reproduce in New England were no less cyclical than those of the Indians; they were only simpler and more concentrated” (53).
The Indians cultivated “a way of life to match the patchwork of the landscape” (53). The patchwork evolved through ecological succession over 12,500 years, aided prior to the arrival of colonists by “selective Indian burning [which] promoted the mosaic quality of New England ecosystems…promot[ing] …the ‘edge effect’ … creat[ing] ideal habitats for a host of wildlife species” (51). When Indians hunted, “they were harvesting a foodstuff they had consciously been instrumental in creating” (51).
“Liebig’s Law [of the Minimum] states that biological populations are limited not by the total annual resources available to them but by the minimum amount that can be found at the scarcest time of the year” (41). (See Haemig, Laws of Population Ecology.) New England Indians (typical hunter-gatherers divided by supplemental agriculture in the south and none in the north) developed their lifestyle to take advantage of the “periodicity” of the New England ecosystem: “tied to overlapping cycles of light and dark, high and low tides, waxing and waning moons, and especially the long and short days which mean hot and cold seasons” (37).
I like Cronen’s writing. His goal is big: “to locate a nature which is within rather than without history, for only by so doing can we find human communities which are inside rather than outside nature” (a reference to Thoreau, 15: his journals have been blogged!) The goal of constituting an “ecological approach to history”is cool (and by now well-established, Cronon’s work marks a paradigmatic pivot point). Some of the problems he names presupposed other contemporary dynamics, such as “the development of a world capitalist system … [bringing] more and more people into trade and market relations which lie well beyond the boundaries of their local ecosystem” (14). Not that he was the only one who knew this, but in the way he recognizes and draws out the complexity in terms plain enough for a non-historian, or non-environmental scientist to understand. “In an important sense, a distant world and its inhabitants gradually become part of another people’s ecosystem, so that it is increasingly difficult to know which ecosystem is interacting with which culture. The erasure of boundaries may itself be the most important issue of all” (14).
Get this: “All human groups consciously change their environments to some extent – one might even argue that this, in combination with language, is the crucial trait distinguishing people from other animals – and the best measure of a culture’s ecological stability may well be how successfully its environmental changes maintain its ability to reproduce” (emphasis added, 13). You know I’m making an organizational/institutional parallel! And – this is big Big BIG! – “If we assume a priori that cultures are systems which tend toward ecological stability, we may overlook the evidence from many cultures – even preindustrial ones – that human groups often have significantly unstable interactions with their environment” (italics in original, underlining added, 13). (I have always found instances of instability more instructive, rewarding, interesting, than (repetitive, unquestioned/able, monotonously predictable) stability.) {Can you say "bias"?!!}
Cronen continues: “if we avoid assumptions about environmental equilibrium, the instability of human relations with the environment can be used to explain both cultural and ecological transformations. An ecological history begins by assuming a dynamic and changing relationship between environment and culture, one as apt to produce contradictions as continuities. Moreover, it assumes that the interactions of the two are dialectical. Environment may initially shape the range of choices available to a people at a given moment, but then culture reshapes environment in responding to those choices. The reshaped environment presents a new set of possibilities for cultural reproduction, thus setting up a new cycle of mutual determination. Changes in the way people create and re-create their livelihood must be analyzed in terms of changes not only in their social relations but in their ecological ones as well” (italics in original, bold added, 13).
The climax concept that ecosystems grow to an ideal state of equilibrium where they would remain in perpetuity without the interference of human beings began to weaken sometime prior to Cronen’s writing, as he describes the shift in academic viewpoint where environmental or natural “change was less the result of ‘disturbance’ than of the ordinary processes whereby communities maintained and transformed themselves” (11). I particularly like his underflagged paradigm critique that the “functionalist emphasis on equilibrium and climax had important consequences, for it tended to remove ecological communities from history” (10).
Note: In the preface, Cronen quotes Marshall Sahlins’ description of “interdisciplinary research as ‘the process by which the unknowns of one’s own subject are multiplied by the uncertainties of some other science.’ Like Sahlins, I think the benefits of interdisciplinary work outweigh the dangers, but I share his sense of risk” (xvii). Oye!
Note 2: Another blogger's summary of Changes in the Land: Pacific Views.
My introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke was through a quote from a calendar years (decades!) ago.
I picked up In Praise of Mortality at the campus bookstore a week or two ago. Over the past two days, since attending a funeral service, I've read the introduction by the two translators. They quote from some of his letters, which I find as interesting and inspiring as his poetry.
Rilke writes (to his ex-wife), during the First World War (when he was unable to write poetry for over a decade), of the "inner will for the great changes that would be needed to save the world" (2005:2-3), and of the need to "submit to [his "indescribable"] suffering [rather] than make any concession in the essential" (3).
The translators, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, discuss their labor of translating his Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus as "work [that] soon took us where we needed to go, offering ways to dignify our pain for the world and deepen our capacity for gratitude" (5-6). Is it a social metonymy that Rilke's work spoke to them? "Like Rilke during the First World War, we at the beginning of the twenty-first century have felt refuted and weighted with dread as our nation mounts preemptive war and arms itself for domination of the world" (3).
“Rilke invites us to experience what mortality makes possible” (22) by “liv[ing] death at the heart of each moment” (21).
Not a criticism (as if we never vibrate at the pulse of life), rather – Rilke refers to embracing “the onceness of our lives [which] calls us to be more fully present” (19). Practicing such intensive presence can heighten “intuitive awareness of our oneness with nature and the ecological roots of consciousness” (14), preparing us for “a reciprocal transformation. To a real extent, we become each other. It is a sort of resurrection, in which our intrinsic belonging to each other is conscious and complete” (14).
“In the First Elegy, Rilke suggests that our very capacity to let go of attachments has an effect upon the world, allowing more spaciousness for other creatures to enjoy (13-14):
Three parts of the services for a colleague’s husband affected me the most: the sixties protest music before and after the actual ceremony, the spontaneous testimonials, and the missing poem. The description of the poem intrigued me, both for its theme of family resemblance and the imagery invoked about the hand as tool. This sensibility came back to me as I read these lines (II, 25) from Rilke’s first famous work, The Book of Hours:
It seemed to me that the missing poem is evidence of the “courage born of the … acceptance of mortality” (23), which does not shy away from “naming what is doomed to disappear” (23).
Listening to the testimonials, I was reminded of Sam. Combining that with the work of one’s own hands – literally and figuratively: the evidence of one’s use to others, to the Earth, to life. I was also reminded of Alec. And the music. Of all choices! How like “Orpheus, the singing god, who confronted and redeemed the realm of death” (20) through “his refusal to allow it to destroy the basic intention of his life” (8):
I'm still clarifying for myself the original linguistic context that metonymy describes, which is apparently synonymous or parallel with cognitive linguistics' use of it through (it seems?) the common conflation of linguistics and cognition.
My own conflation (!) is between language and action, recognizing in the definition (at least as I originally understood it) a label for the way certain social actions "stand in for" or "represent" or "invoke" or otherwise "call into being" other (larger?) social phenomena. I have conceived of social metonymy as a theoretical construct that names the linkage between microsocial behavior and socio-cultural behavior.
I found some online resources that use the phrase, "social metonymy" (which I think I have not actually searched for, previously. Go figure.)
Impersonal, General, and Social: The Use of Metonymy Versus Passive Voice in Medical Discourse (2007), which "shows that metonymy is another frequent strategy used to create anonymous authors/agents." (Gabriella Rundblad)
A Literature Network Forum on Joyce (07-03-2003, 06:23 AM): "The dinner (just like the Christmas dinner that would later occur in 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man') is a political and social metonymy of Ireland (metonymy because the whole of Irish culture is being symbolized by one portion of its society)." by AbdoRindbo who has since been banned. (!)
The 40th Summer School on 3U Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis by Dr Alejandro Groppo appeared on the google search with social metonymy in quotation marks. I didn't see the term on my quick scan, but obviously there is a high degree correspondence between my conception and the fantastic curriculum laid out here. (I'm jealous I will miss it - this August!) :-/
"A Bio-Critical Sourcebook" of Latin American Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes (1994): in a review/critique by Julio Ramon Ribeyro on "Reynoso's often frustratingly cliched and stereotyped view of sexual practices as deleterious social metonymy, for liberation within a social context that is displayed as racist, classist, and spiritually-alienated" (357).
Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes in Race, Work, and Desire by Michele Bimbaum (2003): "The white glove that Lincoln wore on his right hand during the ceremony following his second inauguration is a 'precious memento' (154) to Keckley precisely because of the social metonymy of clothing: the glove bears 'the marks of the thousands of hands that grasped the honest hand of Mr. Lincoln on that eventful night' (155)."
An archived (2006) edition of Film Matters on "Kurosawa, the Emperor of Cinema" by Brian McAsey from BeatRoute Magazine: "His oeuvre, besides screenplays, soundtracks, and production work, includes 32 films he wrote and directed. From nascent director, making propaganda film to film impresario and samurai culture revivalist and master of piquant social metonymy, Kurosawa’s resume is impressive."
From Creative Loafing Atlanta, Wakeful darkness: In search of duende at the Bienal de Flamenco in Sevilla, by Cliff Bostock (09.23.2000): "The commercial success of flamenco has influenced it in disconcerting ways. It originated as noncommercial and spontaneous performances in which there was a subtle and mainly male dance with the gypsy's pena negra ("black pain"). A series of stylized gestures developed over time -- including the zapateado (heel tapping) -- but these gestures, functioning as a kind of social metonymy, were nevertheless intimate and spontaneously expressed."
Only nine returns from a Google search, and two of them were mine:
One is nonsensical (too contextual to be apprehended): "Now, you know me and my penchant for social metonymy. I was just imagining all of a person's free radicals spinning harmoniously in the same direction (the state of being at peace with oneself?) and attracting someone else who's free radicals are also spinning harmoniously in the opposite direction. At least more, rather then less, of time spent together. Wouldn't this provide a different basis of attraction than pheromones? (Some are used in pest control.) Perhaps there is a correlation between electron spin and the production of pheromones?" (February 01, 2006)
More clearly (!), Powers of Ten: "I saw this short video on the powers of ten when I interpreted a science class some years back for upper elementary school students (possibly fifth-graders). I find it a useful metaphor for this notion of social metonymy that I keep trying to articulate as a means of linking the microsocial with the macrosocial and vice-versa." (March 26, 2006)
The Communication Department has a few excellent multimedia presentations available for online viewing, including Sut Jhally on television's exploitation of audience, Lisa Henderson on Queer Visibility and Social Class, and Mark Crispin Miller on electoral fraud and political manipulation.
What I had found before: European Parliament Procedural Rule 138.
Now, TITLE I : MEMBERS, PARLIAMENT BODIES AND POLITICAL GROUPS; CHAPTER 3 : BODIES AND DUTIES
Rule 22 : Duties of the Bureau
"8. The Bureau shall be the authority responsible for authorising meetings of committees away from the usual places of work, hearings and study and fact-finding journeys by rapporteurs.
Where such meetings are authorised, the language arrangements shall be determined on the basis of the official languages used and requested by the members and substitutes of the committee concerned."
TITLE VI : SESSIONS
CHAPTER 3 : GENERAL RULES FOR THE CONDUCT OF SITTINGS
1. All documents of Parliament shall be drawn up in the official languages.
2. All Members shall have the right to speak in Parliament in the official language of their choice. Speeches delivered in one of the official languages shall be simultaneously interpreted into the other official languages and into any other language the Bureau may consider necessary.
3. Interpretation shall be provided in committee and delegation meetings from and into the official languages used and requested by the members and substitutes of that committee or delegation.
4. At committee and delegation meetings away from the usual places of work interpretation shall be provided from and into the languages of those members who have confirmed that they will attend the meeting. These arrangements may exceptionally be made more flexible where the members of the committee or delegation so agree. In the event of disagreement, the Bureau shall decide.
Where it has been established after the result of a vote has been announced that there are discrepancies between different language versions, the President shall decide whether the result announced is valid pursuant to Rule 164(5). If he declares the result valid, he shall decide which version is to be regarded as having been adopted. However, the original version cannot be taken as the official text as a general rule, since a situation may arise in which all the other languages differ from the original text.
TITLE VI : SESSIONS
CHAPTER 3 : GENERAL RULES FOR THE CONDUCT OF SITTINGS
Rule 139 : Transitional arrangement
1. During a transitional period extending until the end of the sixth parliamentary term, derogations from the provisions of Rule 138 shall be permissible if and to the extent that, despite adequate precautions, interpreters or translators for an official language are not available in sufficient numbers.
2. The Bureau, on a proposal from the Secretary-General, shall ascertain with respect to each of the official languages concerned whether the conditions set out in paragraph 1 are fulfilled, and shall review its decision at six-monthly intervals on the basis of a progress report from the Secretary-General. The Bureau shall adopt the necessary implementing rules.
3. The temporary special arrangements adopted by the Council on the basis of the Treaties concerning the drafting of legal acts, with the exception of regulations adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council, shall apply.
4. On a reasoned recommendation from the Bureau, Parliament may decide at any time to repeal this Rule early or, at the end of the period indicated in paragraph 1, to extend it.
TITLE VI : SESSIONS
CHAPTER 3 : GENERAL RULES FOR THE CONDUCT OF SITTINGS
Rule 143 : List of speakers
2. The President shall call upon Members to speak, ensuring as far as possible that speakers of different political views and using different languages are heard in turn.
TITLE VII : COMMITTEES AND DELEGATIONS
CHAPTER 1 : COMMITTEES - SETTING UP AND POWERS
Rule 176 : Committees of inquiry
7. A committee of inquiry may contact the institutions or persons referred to in Article 3 of the Decision referred to in paragraph 2 with a view to holding a hearing or obtaining documents.
Travel and accommodation expenses of members and officials of Community institutions and bodies shall be borne by the latter. Travel and accommodation expenses of other persons who appear before a committee of inquiry shall be reimbursed by the European Parliament in accordance with the rules governing hearings of experts.
Any person called to give evidence before a committee of inquiry may claim the rights they would enjoy if acting as a witness before a tribunal in their country of origin. They must be informed of these rights before they make a statement to the committee.
With regard to the languages used, a committee of inquiry shall apply the provisions of Rule 138. However, the bureau of the committee:
- may restrict interpretation to the official languages of those who are to take part in the deliberations, if it deems this necessary for reasons of confidentiality,
- shall decide about translation of the documents received in such a way as to ensure that the committee can carry out its deliberations efficiently and rapidly and that the necessary secrecy and confidentiality are respected.
TITLE VIII : PETITIONS
Rule 191 : Right of petition
3. Petitions must be written in one of the official languages of the European Union.
Petitions written in any other language will be considered only where the petitioner has attached a translation or summary drawn up in an official language of the European Union. The translation or summary shall form the basis of Parliament's work. Parliament's correspondence with the petitioner shall employ the official language in which the translation or summary is drawn up.
ANNEX X : Performance of the Ombudsman's duties
A. Decision of the European Parliament on the regulations and general conditions governing the performance of the Ombudsman's duties (1)
B. Decision of the European Ombudsman adopting implementing provisions (2)
15.1 A complaint may be submitted to the Ombudsman in any of the Treaty languages. The Ombudsman is not required to deal with complaints submitted in other languages.
15.2 The language of proceedings conducted by the Ombudsman is one of the Treaty languages; in the case of a complaint, the language in which it is written.
15.3 The Ombudsman determines which documents are to be drawn up in the language of the proceedings.
15.4 Correspondence with the authorities of Member States is conducted in the official language of the state concerned.
15.5 The annual report, special reports and, where possible, other documents published by the Ombudsman are produced in all official languages.
Not the main one I want to make, but a corollary: what is a lingua franca?
"The term lingua franca comes from an Italian phrase for "Frankish language". The term harkens back to the traditional role of French as the "language of diplomacy". The underlying idea was that no matter what languages two diplomats might speak at home, they could always communicate if both had a command of French. Indeed, at one time it was not unusual for aristocrats and royalty in the courts of eastern Europe to speak French in lieu of the native tongues of their subjects. The term is something of an anachronism. At one time Latin and Greek played this role among scholars. These days, English has assumed the role of the lingua franca in many parts of the world, and is the language of choice for discourse among scientists and aviators."
Brian Foote and Don Roberts, Paper presented at Fifth Conference on Patterns Languages of Programs (PLoP '98)
Brian Foote foote@cs.uiuc.edu
Last Modified: 23 April 2004
What's up with the Lorenz Attractor?! :-)
is much more intriguing than a quantitative girl. At least that's what we decided on the way to The Shy Glassy-Eyed Indian's b'day party the other day. The highlight of the evening was the song competition, which was an outgrowth of the Bengali, Maharashtra, and Tamil intraIndian debate and cucumber war (mine was stolen). I (by the way), scored big points with "Y". Lest it be forgotten (gasp!), there was also an Oriya guy, who actually did quite well at this game.
The piece de resistance was the H(square) vanilla cake (frosted by She-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless) and quite tasty, actually. The dosa was yummy yummy yummy with and without the potato stuffing, and despite the experiment played on a certain naive american. There was no coconut curry (much to someone's chagrin?) however there was coconut rice, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The Rock Star had nothing left to share with me, "Steph! Sorry! You arrived late!" Yeah, right. (Like that would have made a difference. Ha!) One of the girls broke the corkscrew and one of the boys came to the rescue. Some people had recently been partying way too much, and more than half the group paid attention to one part or another of my lesson in string theory. Time to feed your mind!
Most of the conversations I've had with physicists involve cosmology: "Was there a String Bang before the Big Bang, or did the Universe simply unwind?" We started out with gravity this night, because that's the Rock Star's area of study (supergravity?) I was trying to get a grip on what is the part of gravity that hasn't been figured out yet. Newton's version works for anything we know how to observe, but gets tricky at the quantum level: is it because of that whole indeterminacy thang? (I forget.) I should mention, btw, that at about this time Ambu temporarily abandoned his chef duties in order to post a large yellow traffic sign (symbolizing warning), saying:
Now, my memory is sketchy, but I know gravity is actually a two-way force....yes, it pulls us down to the center of gravity but there is also another draw that orients to and/or positions us from the opposite direction. For whatever (crucial) reason that I cannot now reconstruct, the answer to my question about what is still unknown about gravity led to a minor tutorial on string theory, which is wicked elegant because it combines three other theories: Newton's (law of gravity? laws of motion?), Planck's h (a certain constant), and the speed of light into one dimension. Wow! Beautiful! Congruence! (One possible definition includes "agreement between trees." Go figure.)
Hmm. Does that elusive comprehension return? Is the unanswered question concerning gravity about the strong and weak nuclear forces? Yes....? (Maybe not, see four fundamental forces). Obviously, I am in need of follow-up instruction. I do recall (hopefully accurately), that string theory has a stronger restriction (allowing 11 dimensions in our universe) whereas supersymmetry has a weaker restriction (enabling an entire 26 dimensions). Something clicked a few neurons in my brain to imagine a parallel between symmetry (of any kind) and synchronicity. At this point, I was directed to geodesics.
{I cannot explain the next jotting in my notes: "coloring of cows." Must have been contextual.}
Stupersymmetry.
Seriously. Todd Hasak-Lowy.
Every short story in this collection is graduate school hilarious. This guy speaks the language, knows the culture, and is an astute social commentator in an-understated-while-laughing-at-himself way. I have laughed out loud several times. In this title story, The Task of This Translator" (a play on Walter Benjamin), Ted hires "our hero", Ben (151), to work for the translation business he establishes after a course on "'Transnationalism and Borders' or something like that" (150), because "Ted concluded that ... the future was about transnationalism, or something to that effect - and that a business, one day a giant corporation, was waiting to sprout from this trans moment in world history" (150-151).
Some of his phrases are sheer elegance:
"...the sheer beauty of the language, wanting to learn it in order to better understand the unrest that speaks this language..." (152)
In this phrase is all of postmodernism, eh?
by email. Posting delayed.
I assigned four new and one review article for the final paper for Interpersonal Communication Online. As I prepare to read the students' actual self-reflections, I hope they will make certain connections, and am eager to be surprised by the wisdoms I cannot anticipate.
Buber is definitely tough, dense language and dated, but brilliant. We read Elements of the Interhuman, which is from The Knowledge of Man (1965) [A summary is provided in this application piece on Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue and the Relationship between Self and Nature.]
I might hope students pick up on the distinction between I-It and I-Thou: "According to Buber, the individual always lives in the world of I-It; the person can enter the world of I-Thou" (Stewart, p. 664). Another important distinction is between being and seeming: "One must at times pay dearly for life lived from being; but it is never too dear" and "We see the forces of real life at work as they drive out the ghosts, till the semblance vanishes and the depths of personal life call to one another" (Buber, p. 672). Later, Buber refers to "the invasion of seeming, and the inadequacy of perception" as two examples of things that "impede the growth of life between [humans]" (675). A third distinction is between imposition and unfolding. Buber characterizes imposing as the act of propaganda, and unfolding as education "by meeting, by existential communication between someone that is an actual being and someone that is in a process of becoming" (675). Finally, they ought to pick up on some of what he says about genuine dialogue, "a turning of the being" (677) by "keeping nothing back" (687): "To keep nothing back is the exact opposite of unreserved speech. Everything depends on the legitimacy of 'what I have to say'" (678). Ideally, students will recognize "unreserved speech" in the section we discussed on the skill of disclosure (when, what, and why not).
A few points I don't expect students to follow up on but which intrigued me involved Buber's criticism that "An effort is being made today radically to destroy the mystery between man and man" (674). I waver on the edges of certain academic circles because I embrace the mystery! And I love Buber's phrase, "imagining the real" (674).
Concerning feedback, I love this book, What Did You Say? by a married couple and an professor I actually took a class from back in the days of earning the MA degree. They say, "the simple, straight interactions do not account for 99% of our time during the working day, because they just happen in a few seconds and then are forgotten. The most complex kind of interactions may account for less than 1% of our interactions during a typical working day. Yet, because we cannot untangle them, or untangle ourselves from them, we find ourselves spending half our time, or more, in such unproductive interactions" (1992, 20-21).
Students will hopefully grasp the definition: "Feedback can be defined as
~ information about past behavior
~ delivered in the present
~ which may influence future behavior."
The brief summaries of Freud's defense mechanisms, the particular defense mechanism of projection, and the concept of the unconscious are useful. We did not discuss them but students may make connections. (I'm a believer, btw, in this contemporary critique and 'rescue' of Freud's unconscious through dialogic repression by Michael Billig).
I often use an activity based on the Johari Window when I teach in the traditional classroom. (I hadn't yet considered how to use it online. Hmmmm.) I particularly like the way the model illustrates a region of ourselves which we might be unaware of, and also that there is a totally unknown zone, which I always explain as a quadrant of capacity (for growth, development, regression (!), etc).
Additionally, systems theory comes from cybernetics (Herbert Weiner), which students might recognize (as a bit of an intuitive leap) from our talk of structure (e.g., episodes) and patterns in what gets said - or even is able to be said. My experiential pedagogy stems directly from the work of Kurt Lewin's action research, "the use of real human learning groups as laboratories in which to study interaction" (p. 16). We did not openly discuss Carl Rogers (scroll down for two charts on positive regard and incongruence) or Virginia Satir's Interaction Model this time around, but both privilege the interactive, cyclical, interdependent and systematic nature of communicating and relating. I don't expect students to cover all of these, just to make connections if the models or ideas help to integrate whatever lessons are uppermost in the student's minds.
Tom Isgar's piece, On Responsibility, Or, "Who's Responsible Around Here Anyhow?" will probably resonate in reference to the small group projects, but I hope students grasp its application to the entire class. "...participants are first and foremost responsible for themselves" (p. 4) "...responsibility for learning and for conduct is shared by the participant and trainer" (p. 5). I wonder if anyone will note the example of an instrumental relationship and connect it to the conversation held during the presentation on Communicating with Friends and Family?
Isgar's piece is in Reading Book for Human Relations Training, Seventh Edition, along with another article by Ronald Lippit, The Circular Process of Social Interaction, which details how "individual's self-image and attitudes toward others condition what happens in any given interaction. In other words, people respond to someone largely on the basis of how he behaves toward them; and his behavior toward them is produced primarily by his attitudes toward them and his feelings about himself" (p. 75). Again, plenty of connections with structure.
Finally, the students were to review the introductory reading from W. Barnett Pearce on the differences between the transmission model of communication and the social constructionist model.
Finally, I hope students will return, somehow, to the definition of interpersonal communication given by our textbook's author, John Stewart:
I almost fell out of my seat when Ruth called and said her hubby, the Sears Catalog Man (a.k.a. "Frederick") wondered if I was close enough to come join them for a few days of their vacation in Maine. Well, yeah!
They were staying in the "Harry Potter House" in Bayside, replete with plants in the gutters and quite a view:
(although not quite as stunning as Frederick's plunge into the fifty-degree drink).
The cottages (to which I made my own interior decorating contribution) are just outside of Belfast (where there is no oating, wimming, or ishing). I arrived just as Jamie was preparing to trounce his dad in chess (third game out of four, 75% is a pretty durn good average). There were many memorable events, as there always are, including being toasted as an "old friend." Seventeen years we figger. I was shown one major prize of beach-combing: the (supposed?) half-inch hold-down to the center hatch of the Edmund Fitzgerald which was unlatched and ~ thus ~ the cause of its terrible demise. (in Lake Michigan? Not the Atlantic? Really? Minor detail.)
Another prize involves seaglass. I regret to report that I did not lay eyes on the (apparently whole) bottle in question, although I did witness negotiations for a trade involving a (full) bottle of port.
The closed bid negotiations occurred on the same evening as the announcement of the Lynch Theory of Boats, in which all boats on anchor face the same direction. (duh?)
Earlier that day, Frederick the Sears Man had overcome all gender stereotypes and convinced his wife to buy him some finger armor. (He does get points for being a seamstress.)
Dinner the first night was a bit charred (although still edible). The next night, we went out on the Good Return all the way to Castine, where we devoured a seafood medley of haddock, shrimp, and scallops in lobster cream sauce. We had a bit of anxiety prior to the return (!), as a thunderstorm swept by, just skirting us but leaving "a confused sea" with a lot of chop. It was just cold enough, with a fair amount of seaspray, that Captain Melissa invited us into the pilot's cabin (we were the only passengers). That was pretty awesome cool. :-) Sometime after we passed by Turtle Head (in Penobscot Bay) the waters started to calm; by the time we made dock the water was as smooth as glass. Mellow as heaven.
We drove down Route 1 this morning, taking in various shops and sights. There was one place that was simply too good to pass by. We also almost had a debate about the quantum indeterminacy of engineering (as compared with the potential fixity of communication) but the timing wasn't right. I did hear an NPR science story by David Kestenbaum as I finally headed home on the "Atomic Tune-Up: How the Body Rejuvenates Itself. Here we go, what new knowledge do I want to help create? How people can use the fact of "the atomic makeover" to recreate their being-in-the-world (through communication, of course). :-)
Meanwhile . . . there is something about being on the seashore. Perhaps it is the only place where the sun can be hot on your skin and the breeze cool enough to raise goosebumps. Besides, we had fun!
I met his widow, Tumbleweed, in Belgium two years ago. The man's art still speaks. Loudly. Strong.
He has a large piece called "The Interpreter" that I hope to have as the cover of a book (someday). :-)
I remember wishing I had my tape recorder on while Tumbleweed toured me through the hobbit house, explaining the backstory of all the paintings there.
There are a few limited edition books of some of his work; I hope more will become available. He deserves much wider viewing and recognition. Inspiring, poignant, real. I wish I'd met him in person.
No, not me. I'm skeptical of all those therapists whose main function is to build self-esteem and guarantee affirmation for whatever whacked out rationales people have for the crazy things they do in their lives.
Meanwhile, I had a great time at the d-vite. Dhara knows cool people. There was the guy with the unique hairstyle who seemed insistent on separating a countertop from the wall (and tried to warn me off being too critical of therapists. "You know everyone here is going to be a therapist?" Don't they know everything is social co-construction?!! Aw shucks, I still like 'em. :-) Jake (not a psychologist) even told me it was ok to get myself in trouble. I definitely like that (since skirting the edge of "being-in-trouble" - tends to be my usual mode of operation). ;-)
Besides the usual grad school kvetching, I learned that Romanian is closer to Latin than Italian (due to declension), that packs of dogs used to roam the streets of Bucharest (taking folk out, periodically), people in Communication "do literary analysis on people,' some people in the social sciences really can get internships, and not everyone thinks blogging is intuitive. Really? I get the criticism - what is it about the mundane details of my small life that is really all that interesting to anyone else? (Good question.) ;-)
The most entertaining part of the evening were the confessions about how we all knew each other. "Parties." And not just any parties, by the way. "Lava's Parties." Where is that sexy hunk of a guy, anyway? Ah, traveling. Out of town. Not available. Isn't that the way it goes?
Amanda made awesome food. Chocolate, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate, chocolate-covered pretzels, chocolate, raspberry "pie", chocolate, blueberry "pie," chocolate. There were several cheeses and crackers too. (The coolest people were invited early, btw, and the rest of us - ahem - later, for the leftovers?!??!!!) Surveillance cameras tracked who chose chocolate-covered strawberries over chocolate-and-peanut-butter-covered pretzels. (Data collection for a future dissertation?) Watch for those follow-up surveys . . .
Building off of the last batch of postings (so I can get this done in a timely manner), let me respond to your answers on the questions about standpoint theory, speech communities, and evidence of socialization in our discussion about gender and communicating with intimates.
Concerning Standpoint Theory, Geoff and Tim nail the transmission model implications of approaching communication challenges on the basis of gender. [Note: "As distinct from 'sex' (which is biological), gender usually refers to socially/culturally constructed (invented) characteristics which are then attributed to the different biological sexes. If sex is 'female and male'; then gender is 'femininity and masculinity'.] Geoff wrote, “The communication happens and the message is transmitted with an already implicated reason for that message and is not constructing new meaning but rather the meaning is in the message, it is stationed there.” This is important to realize, otherwise, the very fact of reading about so-called (!) feminine and masculine “standpoints” reinforces these distinctions: talking about the differences has a way of making the differences “more real.” In fact, Tim and David both show this, Tim by stating that he does believe in differences between women and men, and David by applying one model (transmission) to men and another model (social construction) to women. Now, try to follow me here, because this is an example of how the two models interact with each other:
Allison and Erin both recognize the social construction implications. Allison: “Men and women are often brought up and taught these standpoints from an early age,” and Erin: “Standpoints are formed by the environment you live/grow up in.” Exactly. And so the theory (standpoint) reinforces the message of gender difference, as David says, “I separated males and females by the standpoint theory,” and Tim asserts, “there is a major difference between how males and females communicate to one another.”
But hey, let’s check this out against our own reality! There are no patterns of gender differences identified in our class, nor in the stories of a heterosexual and gay couple having communication difficulties! So where is the support for gender standpoints? I think some of you named evidence of social change: the norms for your age group (mostly traditional college-aged) are different, and standpoint theory by itself only reinforces the old, transmission model. “You were socialized like this so you must communicate in these ways.” I am not discounting socialization (please!) but I am questioning the presence of an article based in a theory (standpoint) that is obviously a transmission model in a textbook that purports to support the new social construction model? It is evidence of how tough it is to bridge the “distance” from the familiar and traditional to the new and different even though the “new and different” is actually already operating in your own communication!
Where do I read this evidence? Several of you (Ajia, Geoff, and others) note that being of a common age might contribute to similarity in your analyses of the stories. Allison describes most of the responses being “somewhere in the middle,” a middle that David labels, “gender neutral.” Geoff also suggests that there are norms of communicating with each other here in this class that are similar because of this class, and therefore indicate our own small speech community. So, what are we going with this standpoint information? One thing that struck me, is that the Presentation Team chose different stories for the activity. I wonder how responses might have changed had the story been the same, and only the genders changed. Would this have brought more heteronormativity to the fore? I suspect so…
As to the concept of a Speech Community, the definitions I read were fine but there was trouble when people tried to apply the transmission and social construction models. This is a case of both/and. Speech communities exist because the same meanings are transmitted consistently across generations, speech communities continue because the repetition of the transmission creates social reality. Dawn quoted Erik’s definition: " The transmission model is the linear progression of communication, genders learn to communicate and interpret a message a certain way depending on their speech community." This is exactly what I want to problematize by analyzing the implications of reading standpoint theory in this class. Are we reinforcing gender messages against new social constructions that allow, recognize, and create new possibilities?
Meanwhile, as I work/write my way toward engagement (!) with the Engaging Communication Team (whose Presentation I messed up the most), I want everyone to notice how nonverbal communication has been present in all the topics this week, how gender worked it’s way into the nonverbal presentation (many examples of boyfriends, for instance), and how “engagement” may – perhaps? – have occurred in the topics where it was NOT the topic of conversation but nonetheless is (and will always be) the means of conversation.
[Note: The structure of the class has shifted by the time I write this. Now, instead of me (as teacher) presenting information for the students; the students are presenting information for each other - and me. Structurally, I tried to run three simultaneous "conversations" (three team presentations, each on a different topic). It might have worked, except that I got content mixed up between two presentations, confusing everyone (including myself!)]
Delivered to the class approximately June 26:
Ok folks, I haven’t decided what to do (or how to respond) to my huge botch-up by mixing the Engaging Communication and Communicating with Intimates Presentations. David had a creative solution, though, using the readings from Engaging Communication to analyze the intimate communication between partners in the story he read.
I need to write a bit about the Ahmed Khan reading selected by the Presenters for their Presentation on Nonverbal Communication and also will incorporate a few comments from those of you who just answered the Team’s question about why we misunderstand each other so often.
Khan’s very first sentence gives away the exact, “old” model that I have been (desperately!) trying to teach you to recognize (and ultimately figure out how to “move” away from toward the “new” model about which this entire course revolves. Can you guess, already, where I am going? I certainly hope so! If not, I do have to wonder – what are you inhaling? How are the nonverbals of communicating monitor-to-monitor coming across to you in such a way that you continue (?) to “miss” The Point?
I’m not quite as frustrated as I probably sound. Sure, I am a little bit – we all are. And this idea of interweaving three presentations clearly exceeded our collective capacity to manage it well (although I am so impressed that everyone has found ways to “hang in” and “get through”). So, what does Khan say? “Communication, one of the basic needs of human existence, can be defined as the transfer or exchange of information between entities.” Really, I want to fall out of my chair with the OBVIOUSNESS of the transmission model! I do actually know how it was possible for no one to catch this, or – if you did notice – to choose not to critique it. First, it was assigned. (That means it must be “good,”, eh? It must be “right”?) Second, it is written. There is a common bias (fostered by education all our lives), that anything written is somehow “more honest, more ‘true’” than things that are said. When you think of lying, do you think of someone writing lies, or of telling them? I am NOT, by the way, accusing Khan of lying! No no no! Only that his conception is rooted in a model of communication that in and of itself leads to most misunderstandings between and among people.
I know that many of you are actually “on” to this, but somehow the overt connection, or the writing of the connection with words that explicitly name the way that the assumptions of “transmission” are (shall I be blunt?) at fault (if we are going to assign blame – which is not actually my goal, nor my belief, but is a more simple way (?) to try and sink the point enough that it anchors in consciousness awareness).
Taking the last five posted comments (answers to the question about the reading), I will show you where/how you are getting it. Because even though I am concerned that after eight units this knowledge is still so elusive, I know the challenge of the task; you are not just learning “new” information, you are also being asked to unlearn what you have previously taken for granted. This is not easy. So, kudos and congratulations to everyone just for trying!
Natalie and Geoff both say misunderstanding occurs because we do not “correctly employ” or even “use” the methods we know. Of course, I am asking – what are these “methods”? Which are “the ones” that we could “use properly” that might actually reduce misunderstanding across differences?
If we accept the fact, as Brett writes, that language is not static, that “There are no definitive boundaries” between or among “language systems, whether verbal or nonverbal,” could we not then begin to believe, and – furthermore – to act on the belief that meaning cannot BE “in” you, or “in” me, or “in” what I say, or “in” whatever nonverbal signal you give off, would we not eliminate many of the sources of misunderstanding? Doesn’t misunderstanding usually come from the assumption that I know?
I started earlier to write about why it is so hard for you to notice and/or respond (write) in such a way that shows the “new” social construction way of thinking about communication. I want to encourage you all to revisit the early reading from Pearce, because he writes about the limitations of the English language, as a language, in trying to express where meaning comes from. Heather captured this notion, somewhat, in her discussion of the role of personality in communication with her boyfriend: “qualities which we have developed throughout our lives limit our abilities to resolve situations and communicate better.”
This course has brought “the limits” – of our language (English) and our habits (of assuming there exists “a right meaning” that can be simply “moved” from me to you, or you to me) into our faces. (Much more intensely than I ever imagined; I most certainly did not plan for or ever desire as much confusion and stress as has been generated.)
Ok, let me take one instance from Khan’s article and show you how the transmission way of thinking is expressed. He writes,
“For instance, if you nod by moving your head up and down, in India it means a concurrence, a "yes," whereas the same gesture in, say, Kuwait would mean the exact opposite, a dissent, a "no."
How can this not be true, not be “right” as a way of explaining a nonverbal mode of communication? Because Khan says “it means.” He writes that it is the head nod that “has” meaning. He shows that a head nod can mean different things in different places among different peoples (different cultures, different languages) but he does not say why or how, only that ”it is.” (If we were actually in a classroom I would probably be jumping up and down or rolling on the floor – literally – to emphasize this point: head nods ”have” NO inherent meaning! The “meaning” is not “in” the nod. The meaning is “in” the ways that people within certain cultural/linguistic groups have interacted with and interpreted “head nodding” in relation to whatever is being nodded about!
So, one the one hand, yes, it can be very simplistically said that a certain nonverbal gesture “means” something in a given context, but it is false to assume that just because a historically or traditionally generated meaning is characteristic, that this meaning is either always true or unchanging. This is the linguistic counterpart to stereotyping. Instead of assuming that a person of this or that “type” must be this or that way (a stereotype), we assume that this or that word or gesture must be this or that meaning.
We misunderstand because we refuse to believe, or to develop and use the skills based on the belief, that we are the ones creating meaning right here and now.
I saw Brazil last week.
Despite the ambience - a university classroom, bottles of beer, friends, the bootleg copy marred by occasional stops and that annoying cursor arrow in the middle of the screen . . . it sucked me in. Damn depressing.
Why? Because my dreams have sustained me for three years. You think I'm kidding? Not! My dreams consistently track a reconciliation process with a certain (no longer quiet so) short person that little evidence in real life supports. Brazil rips the potential belief factor of one's dreams ("phantoms in the brain"?) to the charade they most probably are. Granted, my dreams contain none of the fantastic images that pepper Sam Lowery's hallucinations - which also seem to occur during wake as well as sleep. Mine are quite mundane. A conversation, a look, a hug. the frequency and duration of mine vary, months sometimes pass with nothing, then I may have several in a row. Perhaps (probably) these dreams are simply indicative of my own emotional process, hopes and griefs re-ignited by current events.
Meanwhile, a few days ago I watched the youtube video of Paul Potts. One of the professors in my Department sent it around with these comments: "It centers on a humble fellow from Wales named Paul Potts. He recently appeared as a contestant on "Britain's Got Talent" and, well, I won't say what happened -- watch for yourself. Be sure to check out the judges' changing reactions while he sings. If you find him inspiring (as I did), you'll find lots of follow-up videos on YouTube."
Now - there's a person who has nurtured a talent for years . . .
Funny, yesterday I had a conversation about my "secret identity", the one I use on my business cards to play on my own delusions of grandeur and desire to be a superhero (click through to see "the best belated (by two years!) birthday present imaginable. The teasing continued yesterday, "What's your super/secret power?" The question was quickly retracted, "I don't want to know!" (If you're curious, these quotations approach what I think it might be, or - at least - that for which I strive.)
Increasingly, I've been watching my brain slide toward . . . insanity? Is that what it is? Such deep convictions, so far removed from what most people seem to believe, or - at least - how most people chose to act. Can we really make a difference? Is change truly possible? How can I believe, so passionately, in "YES!"? It must be the razor-thin edge between real life and fantasy, don't you think?
I mean, let's be real. Here we are, caught up in a dialectic world. Never mind that Hegel's original conception was a method of intellectual interrogation (not a neutral description of "how things are"). Discourses (nasty things) sweep us up such that nothing we say (or write) is unique, merely representative of thousands (if not millions) of similarly, supposedly-independently-conceived notions of sheer brilliance.
Is structure bigger than any/all of us? Quantum physics suggests possibly not, but hell, that shit is dealing with things either too big or too small to matter at the human scale (except, possibly, in consciousness, but who wants to go there?).
Ok, I admit, the movie (Brazil) freaked me out. And I'm seriously just beginning to write my prospectus. How the heck am I going to link the macro with the micro? Has anyone ever defined the meso-social? (Apparently not. A Google search shows the term used as if everyone knows what it means, but really all anyone is sure of is that it is somewhere in-between the microsocial and macrosocial. Does it matter from which direction one begins? From "the top" or from "the bottom"? Is it so obvious that "macro" is the top, and "micro" the bottom?) How does one aim to occupy a liminal space whose position and location can never be exactly fixed?
Frustrated? Who, me? Whatever gave you that idea? Only temporarily stymied.
I hope! Lest all my dreams, waking and non, dematerialize without a trace. :-/
Steve sent this a while back (I'm behind the times) about the cyberattack on Estonia, Digital Fears Emerge After Data Siege in Estonia.
Reading this now (six weeks after the event) coincides with a student-selected reading on Deception, Betrayal, and Aggression by John Stewart and Carole Logan, p 415-427 (8th Edition, Bridges Not Walls).
A recent story (ten days ago), relates how the EU is responding to the attack: Attack on Estonia puts cyber security on EU agenda. Interestingly, just over one year prior to the attacks, an initiative on internet security was announced: "Launch of CERT Estonia will increase internet security." Sometimes you gotta wonder if human relations just comes down to a game of chicken.
I got way behind on posting about the progress of the online course I'm teaching on interpersonal communication. Bummer. :-/ Anyway, for the first time of the term I am not putting most of my energy into putting out fires, but am actually able to participate constructively (at least in my own mind, ha!) with the conversation that the students themselves are actively co-creating. Yahoo!! :-)
The first assigned reading chosen by this Team is Taking Responsibility Without Blaming by Jeffrey Kottler. The Team asked students to describe a recent conflict, in accordance with the notion of "conflict" presented in this reading. I responded this morning:
Hey you all,
So, I'm hoping to get a bit more evidence that the information in the assigned reading is actually being applied to your conflicts. They are so varied! I have read introspective descriptions (self-reflection) ranging from some acknowledgement of mutuality to various forms of blaming (self or other). What I would like to see is more engagement with what Kottler describes as "the reciprocal nature of interpersonal difficulties" (p. 487).
Kottler does not use the labels of "transmission model" or "social construction", but he is writing about these mental constructs, arguing that humans do not follow linear causality (such as occurs in physics, where one action transmits (!) to another), instead,
"...human behavior is best described as being based on 'circular casuality.' What this means is that unlike the physical world, where it may be determined that one thing causes another, which in turn causes something else, human interactions are both causes and effects of what transpired previously" (italics in original, p. 487-488).
Doesn't this look like the social construction model? Of course it does! It is!
As the Team moves us into the next assigned reading, please consider what it means - in terms of how you communicate - to proactively accept responsibility.
The following is the text of a letter (written March 10, 2007) from John Anderson and David Corey concerning the Sam Achziger Memorial Endowment Fund.
"It was a year ago last month that Sam Achziger passed away. We are pleased to share with you the good news that an anonymous donor has started the Sam Achziger Memorial Endowment Fund at World Learning with a commitment of $25,000. The fund will provide scholarship support to motivated and deserving Experimenters starting this summer.
Sam was both a friend and mentor to both of us, and he touched the lives of generations of Experimenters, EIL Group Leaders, host families, SIT students, colleagues, friends and neighbors. He personified the spirit of The Experiment in International Living. This endowment fund will serve as a permanent memorial to Sam’s commitment to building a better world one friendship at a time. Like Sam, this fund will touch and change the lives of Experimenters and hosts around the world.
Please join us in making a gift and/or pledge to The Sam Achziger Memorial Endowment Fund. Do not hesitate to contact either one of us at the email addresses below or Tony Allen, Director The Experiment in International Living (eiltony at verizon.net - (973) 783-1965) with any questions. Thanks so much for your support."
jhnandrsn at aol.com (John Anderson)
jkgall at sover.net (David Corey)
A year ago today we scattered Sam's ashes in the Connecticut River. It was a Sunday that dawned grey and moist. Sure enough, as we waited for the captain to make the call, darker clouds rolled in, lightening flashed, thunder roared, and the rain came down. Twenty minutes later, it was over and the skies began to clear.
We embarked from The Marina, heading upriver, north toward Putney. Turning the corner where the West River meets the Connecticut, the vista of the valley opened wide before us and a heron glided to a gentle landing. Mist curled along the shoreline, the trees gleamed, the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire called us into the future. It might have been the beauty that pulled the first wave of grief out of us; how much Sam would have loved this day! Or it might have just been a sad song by Josh Groban. Whatever. :-) It was what it was: perfect.
Some of us chatted, pairs forming, breaking up, re-forming. Most of us took a turn at the front of the boat, almost leaning ahead to the site where we would pour Sam's ashes into the river, giving him back to the earth.
Lou explained that the Connecticut River marks the juncture of two tectonic plates, one that used to be part of Africa, and the one that is still North America. Somehow that struck me as a perfect analogy for Sam: someone who always sought to bridge the continents, who found ways to position himself at the juncture of cultures, languages, religions . . . any kind of socially-constructed difference imaginable. The mood of the previous day's hugely successful Celebration lingered, yet each of us was also swept in our own particular mourning.
I know I grieved for three that day, the sharpness of Sam's loss edged up to others. The near-dozen of us found comfort together, talking quietly, teasing, reminiscing, and just being in each other's presence. Those moments when it became too somber, someone would lighten us up. Jennifer, me, and Lee almost tipped overboard at one point, an occurrence we knew would have amused Sam immensely. What we all know is that Sam did not want to be remembered or memorialized on the basis of his death, but rather on the strength and legacy of his life. So we strove to live this particular voyage as we imagined he would have us do.
I do not know what kind of flowers we had with us - roses, probably. When we reached the point in the river more-or-less directly in line with Sam's Putney house, and the time felt right, we took turns with the urn, first by the handful and then with an all out upending. Next, we scattered the flowers. Everyone but Sam's sister Edith meditatively plucked the petals, tossing them into the stream of ashes, adding sparkle to the darkened current. Edith tossed hers whole - an act Sam would surely approve, and there was something about that intact rose which made the ritual perfect. I don't recall who said the spreading, drifting blossoms looked like the Ganges.
The ride back was quieter yet also somewhat lighter. We had accomplished Sam's wishes, carried out to the letter. Lee and Pat earn most of the credit for that, but everyone played the necessary parts. No one was in much of a rush to leave, and Lou and Tom did their best to keep us all as long as possible. The blessings of knowing all these people through Sam will stay with me forever.
Right before we headed up the river, while we were waiting for the storm to subside, Lee dug out a card that she had found among Sam's things in his room. Perhaps this is a figment of my imagination, but the card is addressed to no one in particular. I believe Sam left it for us, for all of us, everyone who knew him, whether or not they made it to any of the events or had not been in touch with him for howsoever long.
Thanks Sam. I still catch amazingly strong whiffs of you in the slow-shifting tides of presence and memory.
