Listen Between the Lines

It's been almost a month since I wrote this and saved it as a draft. Where has the time gone?! Essentially, I wrote so much during the last few weeks of school (final papers) that, even being the obsessive communicator that I am, I just needed a break. These next few entries will be post-dated. Today, in real time, is May 21st.

Sometimes I feel like my student ID is a magic key. There are so many events that I can get into simply by showing that little card. Even at non-school events, it amazes me what identifying as a student does to the way people perceive me. And no, the school did not pay me to say this.

With all of these events constantly happening, I sometimes wish that I had a little less homework so I could go to all of these lectures. I'm also really glad that I carry the dialogue journal with me at all times; if I didn't, I would never have notes from the lectures I drop into last minute.

This Monday, after my Myths class, I headed uptown (a little) to Baruch College. To commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the college had a ceremony with candle-lighting and Yiddish songs. I went with my Oral Histories class because the second half of the ceremony featured two guest lecturers. The first was David Gerwitzman,a holocaust survivor. The second was Jacqueline Murekatate, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Mr. Gerwitzman began with a story about his melamed who had addressed his class one day and said that if any of them survived they would have an obligation to "tell the world what happened here." This was in Losice, Poland. Right before the soldiers came, his cousin had come to the town and warned them about the slaughter taking place in other towns. Mr. Gerwitzman was only eleven when this all happened; his parents decided to build a hiding place in their house. When the soldiers ordered everyone out into the square, his family didn't go "because of the warning of my cousin...and because it was extremely hot." Which was one of those 'God is in the details' moments: what if it hadn't been extremely hot and they decided to go? What if the cousin hadn't warned them until a week later? Anyway. Most of those who did go into the square were sent to labor camps, but the elderly, sick, and women with very young children were all shot. Mr. Gerwitzman's presentation included pictures of around his town, and he had some of this massacre because a pharmacist in the town was a member of the Polish resistance and had been hiding there as well. The Gerwitzman parents sent the children out to escape once the soldiers had gone. He and his sister ended up in a Polish prison for a bit, but a confused guard executed the wrong prisoners and let them back out. Eventually he talks about how the family reunited and hid in a pigsty where they "existed" when they once had lived. He was about 16 when he was liberated by the Russian Army. Someone in the auditorium asked at the Q & A how the Russian soldiers had treated him and he said they were some of the kindest people he had ever met. Interestingly, he also talked about being in a displaced person's camp for a time before his American relatives helped him emigrate. I don't know that any of the books I've read ever mentioned what happened when survivors turned to go home and realized there was nothing left.

Jacqueline Murekatate spoke next. She explains how the genocide officially only lasted 100 days, but that the country had been heading towards it for a long time. The Belgian colonists required everyone to have identification cards with 'ethnicity' listed alongside 'name' and 'age.' They started drumming up competition between the Hutus and Tutsis to 'divide and conquer' more easily. Ms. Murekatate said that when colonialism ended and the country was free, the new government kept the practice for the same reason. Tutsi killings started occurring more frequently in 1959 and through the 60's and 70's. She talked about how her family ran to police and neighbors when the killings started in their area: "We told ourselves that they would protect us." She had been visiting her grandmother when they started, and she wasn't able to go home to her parents. After the dust settled, an uncle informed her that her parents had been killed in their village when they attempted to hide with their neighbors. She was dumbfounded: "I couldn't understand how people who used to come to our house for lunch or dinner would refuse to hide my family." Her grandmother was also killed, but Jacqueline was able to survive hidden at an orphanage run by two Italian priests. Her uncle found her after the war, and she came to America as soon as they could arrange it. Mr. Gerwitzman had been invited to speak at her English class when she was in; she introduced herself after class and they began a friendship that inspired them to start lecturing together about the horrors of genocide.

That was the 19th. The next day, I started the morning watching two films in anthropology. From there, I got a coffee (trying to spend those 40 meals I have left. Thank you, Aramark, for mandating freshman year meal plans. What a waste.) and then went to sociology of ed where we talked about New York's board of Regents (which I'll explain sometime in the future), alternative certification routes, and the Texas textbook controversy (which I'll post an article about once all my finals are done and I have time to relocate it). On the way to meet up with Hillary for our weekly Tuesday lunch, I decided to walk through the park. Back home, 4/20 meant that people joked about brownies. Isolated for the morning in the world of academia, I didn't even have a brownie-joke to alert me to the "holiday." Let me just say, I've never walked in and out of the park so quickly. And just in time; I was walking out as the NYPD cars pulled up. What a mess! Anyway, I had a lovely lunch and then went uptown to Jean's art show again so that I could walk though slowly and really look at everything. She and Maria were there with some of their friends, and we hung out until it was time for classes. Then they went back to school. I didn't have evening classes, but I did have my pre-departure study-abroad meeting. Guess I should start applying for that visa...

Wednesday I went with Hillary and Alex to an Earth Day Banquet. Hooray for free vegan food!!! The first speaker was Amanda Park Taylor who writes about food waste and the virtues of vegetarianism. Her information was interesting, but I wondered whether she was addressing the proper audience. Not to generalize, but the kind of people who find a vegan dinner and eco-aware banquet of environmentalist speakers among all the events at school--and who decide to make time right before finals to go to this event--probably already know about how going veggie reduces a person's carbon footprint and how NYC just cut composting from next year's budget. I could be wrong, but I was wondering...

The next speaker was Karen Washington, an urban farmer from the Bronx. She talked about getting foods into poorer neighborhoods, "what food has become," how mono-cropping means that the consumer does not pick what he or she buys in the market because "the choosing has been done for you by the corporate farmers," the innovations in urban gardening developed in Cuba, the value of water, and how food "crosses all boundaries" as a world-wide unifier. She had a very dynamic speaking style, introducing herself as "Mother Earth." I thought of a friend who has mentioned wanting to be an urban bee-keeper. It's now legal in Manhattan, and I wonder if Ms. Washington would have advice for her.

The third speaker was Andrew Revkin from the New York Times...sort of. He now writes for Dot Earth, and independent affiliated blog. His theory is that this is our environmental puberty stage. He explained that he saw this in the public's previous resistance to change wearing away as the danger becomes more critical. He characterized the scientists and journalists as parents who we have been avoiding but who we must soon grow up and listen to. I'm not sure I buy that theory, but if one looks at puberty as a rite of passage (yay anthropology! This one is care of Victor Turner), then the departure from our previous state would be the realization that our choices are altering the conditions on the planet. The liminal state--where Revkin places us now--is this place where the data tells us there is a Texas-sized Styrofoam island in the pacific and more grain produced for cattle than people, yet we hear it all without listening. The goal then is to move on to the new state of hearing, understanding, and reacting appropriately...all before it's too late. An interesting concept. He talked about my generation as "generation E" and he explained that the field most rapidly gaining public interest is global health or "one health." I was intrigued when he mentioned that he moved to blogging from paper journalism because he feels that there is no future for paper journalism. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a journalist. I like people, education, and writing so it seemed to fit. Then I realized that I'm not pushy enough for that line of work. I'm also not enough of a sensationalist, which was something he acknowledged. He was really pushing that environmentalists need to resist the temptation to exaggerate their case. I really appreciated that he acknowledged that, particularly since he was speaking to a room of eager, passionate, college students.

The three did a Q&A session afterward, but I didn't take too many notes. The rest of the week slipped past all to quickly. With my last day in the city fast approaching, I feel as if I'm straining to tip-toe through each remaining hour with much more care than I've yet put into such a thing. Once when I was little, I remember the sun throwing a rainbow on my wall as the light shone through a stained glass decoration I had on my window. As the decoration moved, the rainbow moved. I was delighted watching it flit across my wall, and suddenly I decided that I wanted it for a pet. Why not? How delightful it would be to have a rainbow for my own! So I took a plastic cup I had for catching ladybugs and I ran to the wall...where my attempts to capture the rainbow were frustrated by its intangibility. Wishing for more time here is like trying to catch a rainbow: it's impossible not to want to but just as impossible to realize that desire. For now at least.

Anyway, Friday came rather quickly and today Cindy called about a "Tactical Culture Workshop" that was being run on account of the Gallatin Arts Festival. The panel discussion was facilitated by Stephen Duncombe, who is reputed to be one of Gallatin's best professors and who is leaving for MIT before I have the chance to take a class with him. I was expecting to listen to a presentation about the role of art in social movements...but I should really know better by now. When they advertise Gallatin as the interdisciplinary and interactive program, they mean it. The workshop had several purposes. They declared that the topic we would focus on was the cost of college. They talked through explicating the nature of the topic, possible solutions, what a movement to draw attention to this issue would look like, and how to begin such a movement. The audience--composed of students, teachers (including one of my first semester professors, Laurin Raiken, who constantly awes me with his seemingly infinite knowledge), and guests--participated in the discussion as it developed. Because of this, the workshop allowed for a group of veteran activists to design the skeleton of a movement, initiated dialogues about both the issue of college cost and ways to prompt social change, presented to audience members an example of what the brainstorming process looks like, and showcased effective leadership in the form of an excellent facilitator guiding collaborators firmly but respectfully. The workshop also gathered eager minds into a shared space where they could network after the program, and I think Rhoen is planning a tutorial next semester in which he hopes to continue the discussion begun at the workshop.

Personally, I'll be abroad taking History of Czech Architecture and wishing them the best of luck from afar. I felt that the discussion focused more on how to convince NYU to publish their budget plans and generally be more transparent in their spending. Which would be lovely...if the majority of my tuition were going to paying my professors (which I suspect it isn't as Duncombe's voice took on a slightly bitter edge when we touched on this subject... and the edge softened when he reminded us all that he's leaving next year) then I would be more content paying it than if it were going to something like knocking down a neighborhood church to make space for a new dorm (Founder's Hall anyone?). That said, students who attend NYU chose to attend a private university. One trait of a private university is that it has the right to be private. It would be nice if they published their numbers, but they don't have to and students should be aware of such things when applying. If you want a transparent school, go state school. The cost of college is ridiculous anyway. If I weren't both completely in love with my concentration and a born student, I really don't think I would choose to go to college at all. Sure, it might not sound so great on a job application to list that I have no undergraduate degree...But if I took the tuition money that I was saving and put it towards starting a bi-lingual pen-pals program or developing programs to teach financial literacy to youth or rounding out Howard Zinn's People's History and turning it into an interactive museum then maybe, just maybe, some crazy person would recognize the value of life experiences outside the structure of a degree program and hire me anyway. Or I'd just end up self-employed...