Friday, October 29, 2010

In the Archives

I’m not a historian, but for my job I get to visit some of our region’s archives, and want to recommend the experience to anyone eager to know more about history. I’ve looked at manufacturing blueprints and sales records in the Studebaker archive. With the able assistance of staff at the Center for History and at Notre Dame, I’ve helped authors locate pictures of leaders in our area’s civil rights struggles. I’ve looked on in admiration at the beehive of research residents carry out in the local history collection of the St. Joseph County Public Library, nimbly aided by that facility’s supportive staff. And most recently the team at the Archives of Indiana University South Bend opened before me some of the most interesting of more than ninety sturdy boxes of records and photographs that document the creation and growth of the campus.

You never have a clue what you will discover when you raise the lid of an archive box or run a strip of microfilm through the viewer. In one IUSB folder, there was a memo from before the days of email asking who might have left behind that brown coffee cup at a recent campus meeting. In another folder, a photograph of seven IU South Bend professors strolling across campus, each one the winner of a statewide Indiana University teaching excellence award. But, for me, the dazzler was the folder that held a letter from the campus’s chancellor to the president of the United States along with that president’s reply. The two letters have a story to tell.

In the spring of 1970 the news was out. American B-52 bombers had been secretly attacking North Vietnamese military positions in Cambodia, extending the air war into that neutral country. Back home, protests erupted, including one at Kent State University in which four college students were killed by National Guard troops. One day after the Kent State deaths, IUSB’s chancellor, Lester M. Wolfson, sent a message to President Nixon. In three formal sentences of fewer than 85 words, preserved in a carbon copy in the Archives, Wolfson confessed his grief and called for the president to change course in two ways: to stop the bombing of Cambodia and to restrain the political language that inflamed the already fevered American public.

Six weeks later, President Nixon wrote back. His letter, on two pieces of White House stationary, was folded into a small envelope bearing a single six-cent stamp. On the stamp, a large American flag flies in a brisk wind over the Executive Mansion. Richard Nixon signed the typewritten letter in a clear, firm hand. In three substantial paragraphs the president acknowledged the country’s turmoil and grief. He argued in favor of the wider bombing campaign and condemned the most extreme of the protestors back home. “No violence is justifiable,” Nixon wrote.

Reading those words, seeing that signature, suddenly the terrible conflicts and contradictions of that very human time come alive. The chancellor, the educator, the citizen, asking for and modeling civility as he called for the president to change; the president, the man of action, both drawn to and repulsed by violence.  These few old sheets of paper, carefully preserved in the campus Archives, overflow with drama and human frailty and striving. And they hint at the past riches and fresh insights that await anyone who walks into an historical archive with a question.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on October 29, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Community • Education • Peace & War • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, October 15, 2010

A Test of Character in Asia

Since I’ve been back from Asia, every few days someone asks me what I did there. I tell them about my work with Hong Kong universities and about the peculiar East-West culture of Hong Kong. And I talk about the new Asian cities – places that make New York and Chicago seem dilapidated, quaint, and dangerous. But I know I’m only skimming the surface. The deeper lessons of my travels in Asia are about self-knowledge. Especially in the poorer countries, numerous events tested me, and they usually proved just exactly how soft-headed and self-deluding I am.

In America, my dreamy brain doesn’t harm me much. Here I don’t have to fight hard for the things I need. But in many places in Asia, to get something as simple as a bag of apples or a souvenir refrigerator magnet of the Great Wall of China, you first have to run a gauntlet of competing vendors who look to grab your arm the moment you slow down or make eye contact. Then, once you do choose a booth, you find yourself face to face with a battle-hardened haggler. Although smiling sweetly, this person is apparently as soulless as a champion poker player and has the power to peer into your soul to see the moral weakling in there twiddling his thumbs and humming a song from nursery school.

Always with me, the seller begins by quoting a ridiculously high price. I say, “No, that’s too much.” But the next step is difficult, because she then asks me to name my own price. I’m always influenced by the initial high quote. When I cut the figure by two-thirds, the woman’s face darkens, as if she’s deeply insulted. But when the real haggling begins, I can tell that I’ve set the bottom too high – well above the price she hoped to get from a tourist.

My wife can tell you that I always walk away saying, “I think I got cheated.” I brood over it, my mood sinks, and I begin to be the sort of person you don’t want to be on vacation with. Finally my wife asks, “How much do you think you overpaid?” “Twenty thousand rupiahs,” I tell her. “Joe, that’s only two dollars,” she says. “Forget about it.” She doesn’t understand that it isn’t about the money; it’s the fact that I lost again. In my struggle to get a good price, in the test of my ability to survive on the streets of Asia, I once again got manhandled.

A trip to Asia reminds you that there was a time, even here in America, when businessman and housewife alike, child and servant, regularly tried their mettle in the art of street bargaining. In many other ways, too, people lived by their wits. In places like Indonesia and Cambodia, at every turn you encounter someone whose primary goal is to get money from you. They are not bad people. In fact, you could find yourself walking away from such a situation, saying to your companion, “That was a really nice man back there who cheated us out of ten dollars.”

Whenever I got myself worked up about some over-charging under-qualified tour guide, I’d think, “I should harden myself. I should make myself as tough as they are.” But the fact is that every cent matters much more to them.

And I don’t want to be the sort of person who is a tough haggler. I enjoy the American luxury of being nice. Even so, I did discover that I could rise to a high level of ferocity in a different kind of situation, at the Chengdu airport. Having arrived at night, we had gone to the taxi stand only to have one driver after another ignore us, taking Chinese passengers instead. People began to cut in front of us, working their way up the line of taxis ahead of us. We moved forward, but the drivers continued to pass us by. Finally, because we had to get into town – we were tired and needed to sleep – I rushed out in front of an unclaimed taxi with my bag, forcing the driver to stop, and also risking an accident. But I had won. This isn’t to say that he didn’t overcharge us a little for the ride, but it was worth every penny.

Broadcast by Joe Chaney on October 15, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Customs & Rituals • Education • Travel • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, October 08, 2010

Narratives of Discontent

The word “narrative” has sure caught fire these days, hasn’t it?  For English majors like me, who began typing “narrative” into college papers with actual typewriters, it’s a plot twist worthy of “Revenge of the Nerds” to have other folks realize that stories matter.  Right now, competing national narratives are twisting in the autumn wind, like scarlet-tipped leaves, like discarded plastic bags, like, well, like the devices they are, helping us shape and name who we are.

I want to disentangle some current narratives, starting with the blockbuster movie, “The Social Network,” the fictionalized creation story of the men who gave birth to Facebook – a monster, like Dr. Frankenstein’s, stitched together with mathematics and hubris.

While it was a pleasure to be back in the world of Aaron Sorkin’s rapid-fire repartee, my teenage daughter’s first response was illuminating: “’The Social Network?” she huffed: “They should have called it ‘The Sexist Network!’”

Now, there’s plenty of debate about the factual accuracy of the film, but we can still analyze the significance of the text before us, as English majors say.  It’s significant that millions of folks are eating up a zeitgeist story that mostly reduces women to partying sex toys.  Without stooping to spoilers, I’ll say that with three exceptions, female characters are shown to be little more than disposable eye-candy, whether they’re being limo-ed in for Harvard parties, or giggling through bong-hits while the boys work out computer coding that will change the world.  As in politics, it doesn’t matter if the story is true; the story has traction.  Gazillions of people will see it, the film will win awards and make rich people richer, and every person leaving the movie theater will have bathed in two hours of storytelling that reinforces ugly stereotypes about women as objects to be used, and men as users.

Is this really the story of a generation?  Whose stories count?  On feminist media blogs, female programmers and some critics are starting to speak back to Sorkin’s film and to the real culture of programming, and I hope those voices reach a wider audience.

Last week, I heard a galvanizing talk by Spelman College President Dr. Beverly Tatum, who argued that every college class—and every conversation about a public issue – should ask three critical questions: What? So what? and Now what?

Here are some top entries in my “What?” category for national narratives:  What does it mean that we heard more about Hillary Rodham Clinton during Chelsea’s wedding than when she was negotiating the Middle-East peace talks?  What does it mean that standup comic Sara Sliverman is the only person I’ve heard connecting the homophobic national “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to the personal tragedies of gay teen suicides?  What does it tell us that in the movie “The Social Network,” the using men aren’t any happier than the women who are used?

The “So, what?” question asks who benefits from stories that rationalize the status quo. When workplace revolutionary Ellen Bravo spoke in South Bend this week, she pointed out that these stories serve those in power, by trying to normalize practices that hurt most of us in some way—like the popular story about the wage gap that says many women are simply “opting out” of better-paying jobs because they don’t want to share the joys and challenges of parenting and housekeeping with another human being. Uh, right.

But let’s get to that final question that both Beverly Tatum and Ellen Bravo ask: “Now, what?” – because responding is crucial.  Who offers alternative narratives?  Here’s my short list of winners you can Google right up:

There’s: The Trevor Project, which is countering the tragedies of gay teen suicides with encouraging videos of GLBT celebrities and allies from Dan Savage to Ke$ha telling alternative stories of life beyond adolescence under the title: “It Gets Better.”

There’s also the SPARK project – S*P*A*R*K, all capital letters – which offers ways to critique and counter the media sexualization of girls and young women, starting with Halloween costumes.  Their site has terrific links and videos for tweens and adults.

Finally, there’s Ellen Bravo’s website, EllenBravo.com, featuring her new book about workplace reform with its telling title: Taking on the Big Boys: Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation.  She challenged the crowd this week: “What kind of nation do you want to be?” She has ideas and numbers that show a different story is possible – a story in which workplaces value family life and flexibility, in a culture that supports the full human potential of all of us.

What story do you want to tell about who we are?  If you are appalled by the narratives out there, it’s up to you to write new ones.  I’m lifting a hopeful glass to you, listeners: Author, author!

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on October 08, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Books & Films • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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April Lidinsky -- Narratives of Discontent / More essays by April

Joe Chaney -- A Test of Character in Asia / More essays by Joe

Ken Smith -- In the Archives / More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Loser / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- More essays by Heather

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Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth

Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff

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