“Bird by Bird” and Leaf by Leaf

Posted on 16 October 2014 by Carol

Two, only peripherally related topics come to mind.  The first is my own response to the book, Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions of Writing and Life (given to me for my 69th birthday); and the second are some observations of the parallels and differences between autumn and early old age.

Bird by Bird, written by Anne Lamott, begins with the story of how she came to be a writer, and then it launches into specific suggestions related to writing.  Although I have not yet finished the book, I am sufficiently taken with it to want to share its delights.  First of all it is humorous.  Amusing elements range from clever to silly to sarcastic, and are scattered hither and yon throughout the text, making for a very entertaining read.  The author’s self-deprecations are particularly endearing; one immediately likes her.

Her forte apparently is fiction, but I find her advisory gems to be quite relevant for my own, more fact-related writings.  She shares what my husband refers to as my ‘need to write’; she can’t help herself.  And like her, I am able to completely engross myself in whatever I’m writing, which can be liberating, satisfying, pleasurable, even joyful.   Early in the book, she explains the meaning of the title, Bird by Bird:  In grade school, her younger brother found himself having not begun a complicated report on birds (assigned some months before) that was due the next day.  He was beside himself with anxiety, unable to begin.  Their father, also a professional writer, advised his son to begin bird by bird—an approach that has much wider applicability. 

In my own writing, I can begin with a small element and expand from there (bird by bird); but more frequently I develop a broad framework which I populate with small elements, each of which can be addressed individually, in bite sized chunks.  Whichever direction one goes—from small to large or large to small—the advice holds:  one needs to take on small bits at a time, to avoid being overwhelmed.

In an early chapter, Lamott emphasizes the importance of doing multiple drafts, noting that first drafts (though key to beginning) are typically wretched and need to be revised.  Her own words are worth repeating:

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.  You need to start somewhere.  Start by getting something—anything—down on paper.  A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down.  The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up.  You try to say what you have to say more accurately.  And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy” (pp. 25-6).

In my own field, I find that actually there are more than three drafts.  One performs these three functions, and then sends the piece out for review.  This inevitably brings up additional comments and corrections and yet another, more refined draft (the microscopic draft?).  Finally one has to read it yet again when it’s time to check the proofs (often finding a few more viruses at that stage)—by which time I find myself completely tired of the piece!

Another key point that Lamott emphasizes is the dangers of perfectionism.  She begins this chapter with “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.”  She continues with “Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California).  Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up.  But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived” (p. 28).  I like this.

Her emphasis on being aware of the world around us, ready to describe it in our prose, led me to a deep awareness of the fall leaves around me.  I live in upstate New York, where autumn is a time of unimaginable beauty.  Returning from my yoga session, I drove along hilly, winding Ringwood Road, through trees of red, orange, yellow, and brown interspersed with evergreens.  I began to think about the analogy often made between the seasons of the year and the seasons of one’s life.  I reasoned that I am in the autumn of my life—still healthy and active enough to participate nearly fully; yet surely on a path toward wintertime and senescence.  I have no doubt that each season has its own beauty.  One can easily see springtime and the growing child; summer for the full blossoming of adulthood; and winter as a kind of ending, in preparation for the renewal of new birth (whether one’s own, if one believes in reincarnation, or that of others to follow).  But autumn…the time/place I felt myself to be…is a little more difficult to imagine in this analogic fashion.  The physical beauty of the leaves is certainly not replicated in human physical beauty (any that was there has long subsided).  Perhaps one can think of the potential beauty of one’s mind and its greater ability to synthesize and build on life’s experience.  Yet, contrariwise, one’s short term memory suggests loss as much as gain at this stage.  Perhaps we should be thinking of the habitat one provides for other beings and for the young, an intellectual and emotional ‘habitat’ that hopefully is marked by greater wisdom, patience and experience.  It would be reassuring to think that one’s aging mind were potentially as beautiful as the autumn leaves of upstate New York!  One might hope to go out in a comparable blaze of glory, a final culmination of every life well lived.  A nice thought.

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Our Perceptions of Gender Relations—Current and Potentially Future

Posted on 6 June 2014 by Carol

My colleague had read and reviewed my article on gender and governance in Sulawesi, and I could almost hear the irritation, though I was actually reading an email.  I was accused of bias, of making generalizations without evidence.  This response was stimulated by my statement that gender relations in Southeast Asia are more equitable than in most parts of the world.  Where had I got this idea? I hadn’t cited anyone.  This was because, within my own field, this conclusion is well established and accepted.  This colleague had assumed that I, like many others, was maligning Africa, though that had not been my intention.

But this response got me thinking.  We talked about the ways in which outsiders assess gender relations in any society.  Conclusions about this topic are always filtered through one gender or the other and through one’s own cultural assumptions and expectations—try as we might to avoid these.  I’d seen the invisibility of actual gender roles over and over again.  Foreigners or city people come and stand in a field in a developing country where women are harvesting a crop, with no men in sight; and the conversation will be about the ‘farmers’—assumed to be men even with the women farmers working there in plain sight; and the extension or the agricultural inputs will be destined for the men. 

But the problem goes beyond this kind of obvious blindness.  There are layers of ways in which actual practice is filtered as we interpret what is happening.  We listen to the words that even local people use to explain their own behavior, but these may be idealized versions of reality; or they may reflect an earlier practice that has changed, sometimes even unnoticed by the participants; or the explanations may be colored by people’s desire to appear in a good light (whether according to their own values or those of the powerful outsider), to curry favor or strengthen alliances.

Our particular interests also color what we see.  For decades now, gender specialists (including myself) have expended considerable energy proving that women are involved in productive activity.  In fact, that has by now been shown.  But so busy were we proving that, that we failed to notice what was happening in the domestic world, the world that many women prioritize and where many services or functions crucial to the reproduction of human society occur—an arena in which men could also benefit (gaining intimacy and nurturance).

In the mid-1970s, Peggy Sanday wrote an article in which she divided human energies into production, reproduction and defense.  For decades, we’ve at least recognized the existence of production and reproduction; but we somehow seem to have forgotten about the energies (and enculturation) devoted to defense.  As I’ve pondered the recent literature, some of which has claimed to be focused on the male gender, I’ve been shocked at the negative images that these studies portray—despite the obvious positive contributions men make to society.  Such analyses emphasize warfare, violence against women and sexually transmitted diseases! 

It has crossed my mind that perhaps these emphases are related to the truth of Sanday’s observation:  that part of human energy has been, and continues to be, devoted to defense.  Perhaps we need to look at those elements of gendered enculturation that prepare people, mostly men, for warfare too.  On the positive side, these include strength, courage, protectiveness, teamwork, discipline—qualities it could be good to strengthen in all people.  But there has been a negative side as well, that side highlighted by gender specialists;  strength can be used for good or ill.  And our expectations for men (‘providing’, ‘protecting’), particularly where economic conditions and/or political instability may preclude men from actually meeting these expectations, may transmute into the very problems so highlighted.  A man, frustrated in his ability to provide for his family, may turn that frustration onto his wife; a Veteran who has struggled with the moral dilemmas of a warrior, may seek oblivion in drugs, alcohol, or sexual excess.

Doesn’t it seem possible that we—as human beings—need to turn our attention to gender issues (production, reproduction and defense) and think through what we really want for men and women—and ultimately for our children—in this changing world?  Physical strength, though always a plus, will be less and less needed as we meet our needs for subsistence and production.  But some of the traits traditionally sought in warriors can be valuable in anyone—there is striving, leadership, cooperation in any human endeavour.  Men’s perceived monopoly on production has already begun to give way.  Some now call for more male involvement in ‘the care economy’ or ‘reproductive activity’.  Isn’t it time to think about fashioning a pan-human set of characteristics we would like to see, one that maximizes both men’s and women’s freedom to choose the activities and strengths that best fit with their own personality and preferences, rather than those dictated by rather arbitrary gender roles?

Our propensity for ‘culture’ means that we have a say in how things are structured; we are free to construct ‘narratives’ (guidelines for ourselves, based on what we think makes sense);  we need not be bound by what has come before.

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Remembered Images of Beauty

Posted on 15 April 2014 by Carol

“Imagine a beautiful scene”.  “Keep that image of beauty in your mind.”  “Stop the mind-chatter with the lovely scene”.  These were my cousin’s repeated admonitions, as she led us through our twice-weekly yoga class.  She knew I was struggling with some worrying health issues in my family; and I was pretty sure she was reminding us of this for my benefit.  I tried, but still wasn’t able to pick a single image and stick with it.  Instead, my mind filled with a whole stream of lovely images, each tied to fond memories:

I stood before a field of white daisies with my husband, in the foothills around Mount Saint Helens, a snow-covered, live volcano in the State of Washington that remains a significant backdrop of my life in Oregon.  I knew it before it blew its top in May of 1981—-at that time I heard the news on a radio, but was pretty incommunicado in the center of Borneo, worrying impotently about my parents in nearby Portland.  I still feel a shock when I see the shape of the mountain these days—half its former size and glory, but still candy for the eyes.  That day in the foothills, I could see this beloved mountain, smaller but still lovely, still active, behind the field of daisies blowing in the breeze.

My thoughts then turned to the image of these mountains from the city.  Driving around the Terwilliger curves in Southwest Portland on a clear day, both Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood come into view.  Brilliant white against a blue sky, St. Helens now has a curved, rounded appearance, Mt. Hood a pointy one; and there are other, smaller snow-covered peaks in between.  In the foreground is the Willamette River; it meanders through downtown Portland skyscrapers, under its many appealing bridges, on its way to join the majestic Columbia River, which flows to the Pacific Ocean.

I then remembered images of my mother and sister in law, both at younger ages, posing in a field of pink and purple dahlias at a farm south of Portland.  The dahlias formed a lush background, filling almost every part of the picture.  The contented faces of these beloved women peered out of the loveliness.  We’d taken a similar picture of my daughter, also at a younger age, posing in a garden of purple irises in Portland’s Japanese Garden.  Besides her pretty and happy face, I could see the purple in her shirt perfectly matching the flowers that surrounded her.  Then more recently, I’d taken another picture of my pseudo-step-sisters, as we took a break from our vigil at their father’s deathbed.  We went to see the tulips in bloom, again south of Portland, row upon row of lovely tulips, each row a different color.  Lovely lovely images all.

My thoughts then turned to Indonesia.  I remembered lying in a hammock, under a tamarind tree on the isle of Alor, alternating between reading my book, gazing at the leaves above, and out at the sea off to my left.  The tamarind tree shaded me from the tropical sun, and its leaves formed constantly changing patterns as the wind blew them softly back and forth, and as my hammock gently swayed.  I could see other small islands in the distance, including another volcano—we remained in the Earth’s Ring of Fire—and I could hear the sounds of the surf nearby.  Besides the beauty of my surroundings, I remember the welcome relaxation from the world of work. 

This brought me back to Bogor, where my office was for some 15 years.  I visualized the lovely row of tall heliconia that some kind gardener had planted in front of my wall-sized office windows (my office was called ‘the fishbowl’ by more privacy-seeking colleagues).  Tiny spider-hunters flitted around in the flowers all day, and I could see squirrels frolicking in the trees above.  Nearby lay the experimental forest adjacent to our office complex, the forest I drove through every morning.  The sunbeams filtered through the trees, soothing my spirit every morning, preparing me for my day of work.

And then I imagined my days in Long Segar, a village in eastern Borneo.  I saw myself sitting on a bench in a little hut, looking down at the brown and winding river below.  It moved slowly, bearing an occasional bit of driftwood or a log that had escaped the clutches of the timber company upstream.   The river’s steep banks varied in their length, depending on the water level.  When the water was low, we used two or three notched trees end to end, requiring considerable balancing ability, to descend through the mud and reach the water’s edge.  The little floating rafts that dotted the shoreline provided a place to wash clothes , access drinking water (and…they served as potties); pointed canoes jutted out downriver from each raft, in a fan-like pattern.  The rafts became objects of pleasure for me, as every evening, after a hot and sweaty day—Long Segar was right on the equator—I would shed my clothes, don my sarong, and join my Dayak family in a shared bath.  We could jump into the river to cool off, to rinse off; we did our laundry there, and we relaxed and exchanged news of the day with each other and with our neighbours who shared the raft.  In the mornings, there was often fog, lending a surreal aspect to the scene.  Other times clouds above warned of yet another tropical downpour.  The river provided a huge variety of images but was always a source of joy.  My son, an artist, painted me a picture, a watercolor, of this river; it hangs in my office, reminding me of this lovely place.

Something brought me back to the near-present, and I saw the linear park that runs along one side of Dryden Lake in the township (Dryden) of which my current home, Etna, is a part.  The park, now a path, follows an abandoned railway line.  In the fall it forms a tunnel of brilliant trees, sporting the foliage for which the US Northeast is famous.  The leaves are red and green, yellow and orange, brown and golden, casting their reflected light on the path below.  To each side is water, the lake on one side, and a string of small pools on the other.  Birds congregate there—red winged blackbirds, Baltimore orioles, Canada geese, purple herons, a whole variety of birdlife—and in the water, I see turtles basking on logs in the sun.

My cousin’s admonition soothed my spirit, and has stayed with me well beyond the yoga lesson.  Remembering beauty is a healthy pastime, I think. 

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Rough Roads and Smooth

Posted on 31 March 2014 by Carol

We took a road trip, my husband and I, driving from Ithaca, New York to Lovingston, Virginia.  It’s a 9 hour trip, driving through parts of five states:  New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia.  A pretty drive, the longest stretch—from the northern to southern borders of Pennsylvania—reminded me of a road trip I took as a very young child.  My parents were in graduate school at the University of Indiana.  We were headed for a Linguistics meeting, driving from Bloomington, where we lived at the time, to somewhere in upstate New York.  I was too little to remember that detail.  But one of my most vivid memories, oddly, about that trip is the sound of the tires going over the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  In those days, there were no ‘freeways’; you had to pay to drive on a good road; and I believe that all turnpikes were ‘toll roads’.  Anyway, the memory that has stuck with me for so many long years—at least six decades—is the rhythmic thump, silence, thump, silence, thump as we traversed the seams in the pavement.  This thumping went on for miles and miles (along with my father’s repeatedly expressed disgruntlement about the poor road condition on a turnpike!).  On this more recent trip, I am able to confirm that the state of Pennsylvania’s highways remains among the poorest—-certainly among states I know well.

Roads, or at least my response to them, intrigue me.  I was very surprised, when we returned to the US after living abroad for about half our lives, to discover some sort of deep appreciation deriving from the generally good condition of American highways.  Driving on them was and is a pleasure, when I compare it to driving in Indonesia.  We lived last in Bogor, a big city an hour or so from the capital, Jakarta.  In Bogor, the roads are extraordinarily well-travelled—meaning that bad traffic is a perpetual curse—and the roads are blessed with impressive potholes.  A major reason for the bad road conditions, of course, is the rainy weather.  Some consider Bogor one of the rainiest places on earth (approaching 4 meters/year).  But another important factor is the corruption that plagues the Indonesian Department of Public Works (certainly one of the most notorious government divisions for this ‘ailment’).  The funds intended for road maintenance make their way into the pockets of officials and construction company bosses.

During my life in Indonesia, I also spent a fair amount of time in the Outer Islands.  I remember a wild night ride from a remote village to Samarinda, East Kalimantan’s provincial capital.  Our field team had a driver, but he’d been driving for hours and hours on end—all day long and the day before that and the day before that.  I could see that he was exhausted, so I offered to drive.  My co-team members, all young Indonesians, were shocked and initially skeptical that I even knew how to drive.  We bickered a bit: my assurances that I’d been driving for almost half a century cut no ice.  Roads in Kalimantan were not like American roads, they reminded me.  My three years driving in Sumatra might have given me some relevant experience, in their minds.  I confess that my pride was also somewhat offended; childishly, I felt the need to demonstrate my driving skills, to prove myself capable.  I also wanted the young women in the car to recognize that women could also drive perfectly well.   So I took the wheel—I could do that, I was the boss—despite my team’s fearful demeanour (some were genuinely shivering with trepidation).  I proceeded to drive us back to the city, down treacherous hilly curves in the pitch black of Borneo’s rural night, on muddy logging roads that were as slippery as New York roads in an ice storm.  To top that off, the brakes were so bad I had to pump them on every downward slope!  It was a wild ride, but we did make it in one piece.

Another time, on the other side of Borneo, my husband, a couple of colleagues and I were trying to get back from our home in the remote wildlife reserve, Danau Sentarum, to the Provincial capital, Pontianak.  My nearly 11 year old son was waiting in the city with our tutor, and he was about to have his birthday—we didn’t want to miss it!  So, realizing that we were behind schedule and thinking a road trip would be faster, we got off our speedboat on the Kapuas River at the first likely opportunity.  Sure enough, where we’d dismounted, one of Indonesia’s ubiquitous vans was on standby, waiting for passengers to fill it up.  Having been the last one on, in numerous such vehicles in the city, I thought I would be smart and get in the front of the van, just behind the window into the cab.  No hanging onto the back for me this time!  Well, little by little the vehicle filled up with passengers and their baggage, and we set off on our trip.  It wasn’t long before I seriously regretted my seating choice.  The dirt roads, like the logging roads of East Kalimantan, were still wet from the night’s rainfall, and slippery as ice.  They’d been fairly newly made, joining up transmigration areas (to which Javanese farmers and others had been moved en masse), and meandered over hill and dale.  Our vehicle, however (typically), was not in particularly good shape.  The driver would gun the engine, despite the slippery conditions and the precipitous drops on either side of the road, to get a running start as we headed up the hill before us.  His helper hung out the open back of our small ‘coach’, waiting to see if we’d make it up.  When we began to slow and/or slide backwards, he would leap out, and stick wooden wedges under the back tires—the brakes being decidedly untrustworthy.  Then, back into low gear, we’d try again.  Seated in the very front, with a good view of what lay before me, I was paralyzed with fear as we crested the top of each hill and began our slippery descent, gaining speed again for the coming attempt to mount the next hill.  I was very aware of how absolutely impossible it would be for me to get out of that vehicle should disaster strike (as seemed both imminent and very likely).  Amazingly, again, we survived without serious incident.

Our three years in rural West Sumatra—near the border with Jambi, the adjacent province to the East—was indeed good practice for driving on Indonesia’s rural roads.  There, our project had its own [well maintained] Toyota Landcruisers, vehicles that are marvelous in the horrendous road conditions we dealt with daily.  I grew to love my dark blue, jeep-like Toyota Landcruiser.  This vehicle, assigned to me, became even more beloved after my driver, Sabar, added pink ‘eyelashes’ to its windshield wipers.  I liked the improbability of my having pink eyelashes on my car; but I also appreciated its ability to maneuver the awful dirt roads we confronted daily.  It got me out of many mud holes, traversed rivers where bridges had washed away, and mounted slippery hills with equanimity.

Anyway, I suppose years of this kind of experience gave me a somewhat different feeling about American roads than is usual (or than I would have had, had I lived a different life).  Despite living here in the US now for over four years, I still appreciate the roads and the ease with which I can drive my cute little red Prius—Jakarta car dealers would not even allow my Bogor-based employer, CIFOR, to test-drive a Prius, local road conditions were so bad!  In the midst of a New York winter, I borrow my husband’s grey 4 wheel drive Toyota Highlander, and activate my abundant and relevant tropical experience!

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On “The Will to Improve”

Posted on 9 January 2014 by Carol

Tania Li wrote a book, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (published in 2007, Durham University Press), which I have meant to read for some  time.  Her fieldwork was in Sulawesi, very relevant for my current tasks, so I nestled down last week with my Kindle and dove in.  It is an excellent book, documenting what has happened in several development/conservation projects in Central Sulawesi, and placing those findings in broader global and theoretical contexts.  Many of the experiences she relates, I have seen replicated in Kalimantan, Sumatra, and other parts of the world. 

Following a theoretical discussion, she traces the historical involvement of first the Netherlands and England in the colonial era in Indonesia, and then the continuation of similar governance approaches by the Indonesian government and its partners.  ‘The will to improve’ refers, not to the desire to improve oneself or a government’s own actions (as I’d imagined); but rather to the desire to improve others, particularly—in her indepth examples—the rural peoples living in Central Sulawesi.  But I write now, not to review the book per se, but to add to it from my own experience. 

I recall, from graduate school days in the 1970s, first a general disdain among anthropologists for ‘do-gooders’ (I wondered at the time if I was one); then as I studied Marx and his followers, there were those who railed against any attempt to improve people’s situations as ‘holding back the revolution’, ameliorating conditions that could lead the masses to rebel; then there were my own concerns not to be ‘paternalistic’ in my interactions with others.  The concerns Li voices, regarding the will to improve, seem to fall within this realm.  In her analysis, she tries very hard to provide a balanced view of the perspectives of rural peoples, NGO workers,  Indonesian government actors, and various workers with aid and research organizations.  By and large, she succeeds.  But, she has praise only for one NGO, Yayasan Tanah Merdeka (YTM) in Palu, Sulawesi, whose work she describes briefly as ‘exemplary’.  Specifically, she notes

‘Their [YTM’s] primary mode of engagement is political: asking questions, provoking debate, and conducting analysis that helps to expose unfair rules, greed, and destruction. They focus on issues of substantive injustice, the litmus they use for deciding when and where to intervene.’ (lines 3520-3523, Kindle edition)

This description resonates with my own attempts.  But I have spent my life in contexts where trying to ‘improve’ local folks was a common thread.  I’ve worked in a variety of jobs (as a researcher at CIFOR, a consultant for the international banks, an NGO worker, an independent academic, a professor).  Through this complex lens, I feel that Li’s analysis misses an important element:  the self-awareness of many of these actors in their (our) attempts to make the kind of difference Li calls for, within the constraining world she describes.  In one case, for instance, she talks about what she considers an ‘unintended consequence’ of political activism among the local population who have been ‘facilitated’ for conservation.  I know in my own experience, we have often facilitated groups, expressly hoping that they would indeed act politically (in situations where we, as outsiders, were unable to do so).  Indeed, she herself provides confirming evidence, describing one facilitator who later became a leader in the mini-rebellion that transpired in the area. Our whole ACM project (http://www.cifor.org/acm/), described briefly below, was intended to empower local folks, a goal we glossed over in written documents to maintain our freedom/capacity to act.  Similarly, Women in Development specialists in the 1980s urged action, in writing, in terms of production and economic benefits of involving women.  This was, we reasoned, a strategy that the donor community and other scientists would find appealing and that might get some attention to women’s lives.

Li’s reliance on written material to represent those concerned with conservation and development—also valuable in itself—still fails to capture the real motivations, informal strategies, and small successes that characterize some who operate within this world.  There is a need for a sympathetic ethnography of this world as well, one that captures the successes, as well as the failures, as people who share her goals strive to address raw power and inequitable structures. Perhaps such experiences—both positive and negative—can provide insights that would help us replicate the positive.

Here I recount five examples of such attempts within my own life:

1.  In 1979, Pete Vayda and I developed a proposal1 to examine the rationality of swidden agriculture in a context wherein both local Dayaks and their agriculture were nearly unanimously dismissed as ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’ (Dayaks were also categorized as orang terasing as described by Li).  We concluded that indeed their system was rational, even sustainable within small population densities; we found the people to be proactive, analytical and (not surprisingly today), as intelligent as any other population.  We wrote extensively about our findings.  I was dismayed, as time went by, and these findings were not—for years—seemingly incorporated into the policy narratives that dominated Indonesian politics.  Swidden agriculture as evil and Dayaks as unthinking traditionalists (very convenient scapegoats) continued to hold sway.  Li’s reported policy narratives about the people of Central Sulawesi resonated well with my own experience of comparable narratives in Kalimantan.  On the positive side, eventually though, our findings began to be taken up by NGOs and contributed to counter-narratives that have, I believe, influenced Indonesian policies and politics about local folks, local systems, resettlement and swidden agriculture.  It has all just taken a lot longer than I imagined it would (and, of course, the original narrative remains powerful).

2.  In 1983-86, I worked in Sumatra with a team of Farming Systems researchers, eventually leading the team.2  We were trying to improve agriculture and livelihoods, rather than people; but we thought working with the people would make the accomplishment of these goals both more directly useful and more successful.  We combined growing ethnographic understanding of local systems and local people’s desires with collaborative experimentation with ‘cooperator farmers’, first the transmigrants from Java as directed by our Indonesian partners. Later, we were able to prove the ecological and agronomic sense of the local Minangkabau systems in that context.  But meanwhile a crisis emerged:  my sense that we should also be looking at the local farming system was confirmed: inter-ethnic jealousies popped up in the form of false rumours that one of our team members was trying to proselytize Christianity in this very Muslim context.  Political actors at all levels (local to international) became involved.  Though losing one of our most valued (and loved) team members, our desire to add the local Minangkabau cooperator farmers to our mix was approved.  It became possible to listen (overtly) to local folks’  voices and incorporate their concerns as well in our work.  But, as Li points out for Central Sulawesi, the best we really had immediately to offer in that context was the sharing of the local system’s advantages with transmigrants!  This recognition, however, represented a) another chink in the world view that held these folks to be backward; and b) a new starting point for agronomic and agroforestry experimentation.  Those farmers involved with us also gained in self-confidence in dealing with outsiders; they learned scientific and analytical skills that they can continue to use as they fight the many battles that continue to confront them—skills that can strengthen their voices.  We also hoped our results might modify the national inclination to export Javanese and Western agricultural technologies willy nilly to areas of Indonesia where they were inappropriate.  Although again, I was disappointed in the level of direct uptake, the positive experience of our partner scientists—recognizing the inherent rationality of different systems, the differing cultural inclinations of different ethnic groups, important gender differences, etc.—has continued to influence their own work as they’ve gained power within various bureaucracies. 

3.  In the late 1990s, influenced by the positive elements of these two previous experiences, I worked with researchers at the Center for International Forestry in Bogor to develop an approach we called adaptive collaborative management (ACM).3 It built on the positive features of Farming Systems, particularly a strong voice for local folks, but also incorporated more attention to ecological sustainability.  In the first round of 11 countries, although we had varying results, many were encouraging enough:  people (both men and women) doing their own analyses of their problems, determining plans, implementing and assessing them in an iterative way, expanding their networks, gaining in confidence, and more—probably not unlike Yayasan Tanah Merdeka’s approach.  We felt our village partners were gaining in skills needed to empower themselves, to make their own voices heard.  We tried to get funding to continue our work; sometimes we succeeded, but not often enough.  Although we’d predicted that with this kind of approach we’d need 10-15 years to really assess its value,  we could only get a maximum of 3-4 years at a time.  Second-phase funding proved in most cases impossible.  The kinds of improvements we saw, we had not been able to predict or to measure quantitatively (the gold standard for donors).  Again, Li’s analysis fits well:  we had not been able to turn our approach into enough of a ‘technology’ to impress donors or governments.  But we had seen people (men, women; the marginalized; different ethnic groups/castes) take greater control of their lives; some local people organized and began confronting those mistreating them; some bureaucrats began to take notice of what local people were saying.  We had some successes.

By the mid-2000s, we’d managed to get funding for new ‘action research’ in several countries (though few in the sites where we’d been working—where indeed the funding proved most useful!).4   

4. In one case (to which I was recruited in the last year),5 funding was for only two years operating in 12 countries—an impossible task, given the nature of such cooperative work.  The teams tried to conduct what they called ‘action research’, but with the complexities of government approvals, site selection, rapport development, cross-site communications, little time was left for the truly time consuming task of working with (and listening to) local folks, even local elites! 

5.  In the second of these cases,6 the plan was to fully implement ACM.  Although we had three years for only five countries, and more funding, the team leader, the donor and many team members proved unwilling to trust local people; they could not bring themselves (and in many cases, were not trained) to pay sufficient attention to local desires/plans.  Too many had the attitude that Li identifies:  the will to improve, whether local folks themselves or their environments.  Too many team members felt ‘they knew best’ for the approach—which depended fundamentally on people’s freedom to analyze, plan, implement, assess their own process— to work.  As a less powerful, 2nd tier member of this latter team, I was unable to make my own vision, which was indeed to build directly on local wishes, reality.  Indeed, it wasn’t until the project was almost over that I realized the depth of our different assumptions about what ACM meant and local people’s autonomy within the team.

 

If we accept Li’s conclusions in their entirety, the implication is that in fact we are virtually impotent to remake our world into a more equitable, just place in which to raise children and to live peaceably with others.  I see the will to improve [ourselves] in a positive light.  The world needs to be improved—as Li also dramatically shows!  And I believe, as I imagine she does too, that local people’s views on how to do this are at least as valuable as our own ‘educated’ ones.  Her excellent analysis struck me overall though  as unduly pessimistic (it’s easy enough to feel that way). I prefer to believe that even elites,7 such as we are, can play a useful role (perhaps toward being defined out of existence in a utopian future we benefit from envisioning).  This is particularly the case if we take seriously the need to listen as much as to teach; and to work with local folks either to marry their wishes compatibly with broader concerns in mutually acceptable ways or, perhaps more common, to help them right the injustices they (and we) perceive.  My own experience tells me that positive outcomes can result.

———————————-

1 This project was funded in 1979 by the US Forest Service, as part of the UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Program, and involved collaboration between the East West Center’s Environment and Policy Institute (in Hawaii), Indonesia’s Lembaga Biologi Nasional, and Mulawarman University in Samarinda, East Kalimantan (see my 2009 collection, The Longhouse of the Tarsier, Borneo Research Council, Phillips, ME).

2 This project was funded by USAID, a part of the Collaborative Research Support Program on Soil Management, that linked the University of Hawaii (where I worked), North Carolina State University (from which the multi-country program was administered), and the Center for Soils Research (now the Center for Soils and Agroclimatic Research) in Bogor, Indonesia (see Toward Sustainable Agriculture in the Humid Tropics:  Building on the Tropsoils Experience in Indonesia, 1991, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina).

3 This name, ACM, was independently invented by many researchers roughly simultaneously.  Our CIFOR program operated initially in 11 countries, and was funded variously by the European Union, USAID, the British DFID, University of Florida, Asian Development Bank, with later versions funded by Swiss Intercooperation, Ford Foundation, Canada’s IDRC, and German GTZ (see my The Complex Forest and The Equitable Forest, both published in 2005, Resources for the Future, Washington, DC) .

4 The two year, Collective Action and Property Rights project in Jambi, Sumatra was able to build to some degree on the previous ACM work:  See Komarudin et al. 2008. Collective Action to Secure Property Rights for the Poor: A Case Study in Jambi Province, Indonesia, Collective Action and Property Rights Working Paper 90: 46.

5A collaborative project between CIFOR and the US-based Rights and Resources Initiative, funded by the Canadian IDRC and Ford Foundation.  See Larson et al. 2010. Forest for People:  Community Rights and Forest Tenure Reform. Earthscan and CIFOR, London—a set of analyses that make use of our extractive results, more than anything collaborative.

6 This was a project attempting to better manage landscapes, funded by Swiss Intercooperation.  See Colfer and Pfund 2011, Collaborative Governance of Tropical Landscapes.  Earthscan and CIFOR, London, for analyses that also report more extractive than collaborative research.

A comparative analysis of these projects and their shortcomings, from a less theoretical perspective than Li’s, is available in Colfer et al. 2011. Participatory Action Research for Catalyzing Adaptive Management:  Analysis of a ‘Fits and Starts’ Process. Journal of Environmental Science and Engineering 5: 28-43.   Another, more institutional analysis can be seen in Colfer 2013. The Ups and Downs of Institutional Learning:  Reflections on the Emergence and Conduct of Adaptive Collaborative Management at the Center for International Forestry Research. In Adaptive Collaborative Approaches in Natural Resource Governance:  Rethinking Participation, Learning and Innovation, eds. Ojha, Hall and Sulaiman, pp. 48-102. Earthscan/Routledge, London.

7 See Colfer 2013. Can Rural Women also Have it all? Voices of “Elite Women” Important for Truly Oppressed. Forest News (http://blog.cifor.org/15223/can-rural-women-also-have-it-all-voices-of-elite-women-important-for-truly-oppressed#.UtKl9vS1yM5).

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A New Year’s Resolution – 2014

Posted on 1 January 2014 by Carol

Waking up on the first day of a new year, I remembered a thought that came to me yesterday. I was thinking about the changes that have happened in terms of women’s options during my own lifetime. We (in the US at least) have had birth control, which has meant that we could reliably control our fertility, opening amazing possibility for alternative activities and accomplishments. We can drive and fly and travel long distances, expanding our geographical horizons. We can become more educated, expanding our minds. We have easy access to the internet, which expands our human connections (and possible collective action) as well as our knowledge. We have access to amazing technology that allows us to do things faster (though perhaps not better) and thereby expands our productivity. For women, I know from experience that even simple dishwashers and washing machines make a huge difference. We (or many of us) can now find answers instantly to any question human beings have an answer for (and purported answers for many they don’t, actually).

As I contemplated these life-altering changes, I wondered, if we women are making the kinds of difference this should imply. My husband just read off one of today’s New York Times headlines:  “Supreme Court Justice Blocks Health Law’s Contraception Mandate”.  This relates to the US federal requirement—designed to take effect  1 January 2014—that religiously-affiliated organizations, along with non-religious organizations, must still offer health insurance that includes birth control coverage, under the Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare).  And who blocked this legislation that would be a godsend for women who cannot afford contraception (with all the improved health and life chances—for the women themselves and for their children— such access implies)?  One of the three women on the US Supreme Court:  Justice Sonia Sotomayor (a Catholic herself, responding to an appeal from the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic nuns in Denver, Colorado).  Like so many elements of present-day American politics, I find such decisions difficult to comprehend—particularly so when it’s well-established that most American Catholic women use birth control of their own volition, despite the Church’s disapproval!

But, although I can lobby politicians about such decisions, I cannot directly affect them (being unwilling to stand for office myself).  So what have I done, what can I do, to contribute to a more just world?  Much of my lifelong professional emphasis has been on equity, fairness—trying to see (through research and analysis) if we can make these advantages/improvements that I so appreciate available to people (women and men) who remain in more difficult situations: where a woman’s ability to control her fertility is either out of her hands entirely or requires abstinence that most humans find both undesirable and unsustainable; where formal education or health services are minimal; where drudgery-reducing technology is unavailable.  Many are also hindered by social and economic systems that (while containing many admirable features worth protecting) denigrate women and fail to encourage children to fulfill their potential. These disadvantages are compounded by a global socio-economic framework that inflates the worth of some people (from ‘First World’ countries—like me) while denigrating that of others (from ‘Third World’ countries—like my family in Borneo).

The work and lives of Third World women are particularly invisible, simply not seen—our blindness to what is evident, before our very eyes, can be mind-boggling. This invisibility is again compounded by inattention to the vital unpaid functions women perform in the domestic sphere. Humanity could not persist without much of the work that is disproportionately performed by women—work for which societies typically provide no financial remuneration, little prestige, and oftentimes minimal simple appreciation: 

  • the enculturation of the young, the bearing, nursing and bringing up of children (produced in a usually cooperative act by both genders);
  • maintenance of livable and culturally appropriate, sometimes even aesthetically pleasing domestic environments;
  • edible foods, often grown, harvested, processed, and/or cooked by women, according to local tastes;
  • domestic hygiene, affection and informal health care for the sick and aged.

And for many women, these indispensible services are performed on top of active, economically productive work lives. 

My professional resolution for this year is to try to better understand the balance for women and men between what we anthropologists call productive and reproductive [domestic] work.  Both these spheres of work are crucial for human well being. I can imagine worlds in which the work is more equitably divided and the domestic sphere more highly valued, more consistent with its worth.  I can imagine that, besides the gender inequities scholars have already identified for women, we may also be under-valuing much domestic work done by men.  I would like to do analyses that help us better understand and value the contributions of both men and women—something I hope might lead ultimately to a world in which justice plays a bigger role.  I am comfortable with setting my goals high and being patient with the small steps I am able to make from day to day, year to year.  I take solace in many of the changes I have seen in the world, during my lifetime; and can only hope—recognizing that in complex systems we cannot fully predict the impacts of our actions—that my own small efforts contribute positively to a more just, sustainable, and gentle world.

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Memories of Beading

Posted on 26 December 2013 by Carol

Relaxing on Boxing Day, I see the snow falling softly outside and hear the sounds of some easy listening music.  I have almost finished a wide peyote stitch beaded bracelet for my future daughter in law.  The design is geometric, the beads are delicas, with three shades of turquoise plus silver and white.  Having worked on it for several months now, I eagerly await the arrival of a silver clasp that will, I hope, keep it from bunching up on her wrist—a common problem with wide beaded bracelets.  I saw the solution at a weekly craft fair a few days ago at Ithaca Mall, ordered the required 8 strand tube clasp, and anticipate figuring out how to attach it.  Being at leisure this Christmas week, the beading memories flooded in.

The art of the Kenyah Dayaks of Kalimantan, with whom I began working in 1979, featured, among other things, beaded hats, baby carriers, baskets and jewelry.  I was not attuned to beads at that time, focusing rather on local environmental practices.  By the time I left Long Segar in 1980 though, I had an inkling of the significance of beads to these folks.*  I managed to order large quantities for them, with some help from my father (also an anthropologist); he’d created a tongue-in-cheek file folder labeled ‘beads for the natives’ in which he kept relevant correspondence—chuckling to himself all the while.

My mother visited me in Jakarta in late 1994, a trip designed to distract her from my father’s then-recent death.  While there, on a tour organized by the American Women’s Club, she visited the home of an elite Indonesian woman—was it Bu Yani?—who sold and made (or rather, supervised the making of) beautiful beaded jewelry.  The loot my mother brought home piqued my interest further.

On a visit to the US, a year or so later, I took a beading class on a whim, and found myself totally hooked.  Since then, beading has been a recurrent pastime, spawning numerous pleasant memories.  It’s a superb hobby to occupy time on a flight—something I did a lot of during my full time work years.  I remember my husband worrying that I would stab him, or another passenger, with my needle in such close quarters.  Other passengers looked at me oddly when I held up my project to let the needle dangle so the thread could unwind every few minutes.  Stewardae stopped to examine and admire these productions.  I discovered later that the ‘beading case’ I had bought in Wilsonville, Oregon was actually a gun case (!), but it is wonderfully portable.

My daughter, Megan, has unusually beautiful, flowing, (typically) long hair.  It is curly, and its color changes with the seasons:  dark brown in winter, full of golden highlights in summer.  She quickly learned that I could custom-make her beaded barrettes, of different colors and designs, with fasteners large enough to accommodate her abundant hair.  I took as much pleasure in making them (and in seeing her wear them!) as she did in having them.  When I was ready to do another project, she’d tell me what color she lacked.  Sometimes we’d go shopping together near her home in Washington State, to find the cabochons that formed the center pieces of these barrettes.  And I’d seek out tinier stones and seed beads to complement these. 

In 2002-3, my husband and I lived in Lansing, New York.  It was our first stay in the Northeastern US for decades, and we took great pleasure in the dramatically different seasons—after years and years in the consistently green tropics.  I had learned how to make little flat pouches made of peyote stitch, and I designed necklaces to reflect the changing landscape, using colors of summer (greens, browns, pinks and specks of white) in one, and of winter (different whites, browns, greys and pale yellows) in another.  For the chains, I used Ndebele herringbone, a technique from southern Africa.

In 2004, I made a month-long work trip to Zimbabwe (where the Ndebele live).  I remember my utter delight, sitting on a veranda off my hotel room in a leisurely moment, beading a tubular, white, capped pouch— in another center of beading expertise.  I was particularly thrilled to be sitting, looking out at the Zambezi river, which seemed to epitomize exoticism and adventure.

In the mid-2000s, I was stuck in Dubai on a flight from Indonesia to Nairobi, and I entertained myself looking at real gold beads. In the end, spurred by a memory of a lovely creation of Bu Yani’s, which had a gold bead as a centerpiece, I bought three!  A few days ago, I finally turned one of them into a center bead in a necklace of interspersed solid balls and cut beads, both of amethyst—to give to my mother for her upcoming 90th birthday.  My mother has played a special role in this hobby of mine:  besides introducing me to it, in a way, she has promoted it by routinely giving me presents of ‘money to blow’.  I usually use that money on beading paraphernalia.

My daughter recently cut her hair, so I’ve had to come up with other reliable beading projects.  The bracelet I’m making for my future daughter in law, probably the first of many, represents one solution; and I’ve begun making necklaces with larger beads for other relatives.   A few months back, Megan and I found packets and packets of Venetian style small- and mid-sized beads of royal blue with internal cones of various colors for a dollar a pack at a bead store in Everett, Washington.  We divided each packet, of varying sizes and shapes, between us; mine have evolved into four or five necklaces, and I still have some left.  In October at a professional meeting in Washington DC, I discovered that my hotel  was right near a well known beading store, Beadazzled.  There, I found beautiful strands of jasper and of amethyst, as well as additional supplies of silver-plated findings**—all of which I brought home, and turned into necklaces for Christmas presents (I made one jasper one for me!).

Selecting colors, types, shapes of stones and of the beads themselves is complex and enjoyable.  I took to looking for cabochons, beads, findings, and other beading ‘necessities’ wherever I went.  Nepal and Indonesia were wondrous sources of beautifully crafted silver beads; Nairobi had large, multi-colored African trade beads (brought from Venice, centuries before); In Cameroon, I found blue and white chevrons; in Zimbabwe, beautiful green malachite; Portland, Oregon had excellent findings, needles, threads, and an occasional jewelry fair where one could find all sorts of delights from around the world (though Oregon’s economic woes have resulted in my favorite bead store closing); Wilsonville, Oregon had a source of beads coming from Czechoslovakia and from Japan, sources of excellent quality seed and delica beads, respectively; Lacey, Washington has the biggest beads store I’ve ever seen—reminiscent of Costco, this gargantuan store (Shipwreck Beads) has nothing in it but beads and beading supplies! 

There has proved to be much more to beading than I’d initially imagined.  And now I’m wondering where I’m going to be able to get the lovely goodies I was able to find as I travelled the world—now that I have a more sedentary existence.  Aaah well, now I have time to use these treasures I’ve accumulated over the years!

 

* See Colfer, Carol J. Pierce and Juk Along Pelibut 2001. Beadlore of the Uma’ Jalan Kenyah. The Sarawak Museum Journal 77 (new series): 29-35.

** Findings are things like clasps, bead spacers, wires, bare barrettes, cones…all the supplementary goodies needed to turn beads into jewelry.

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The Memories Assembled on a Christmas Tree

Posted on 19 December 2013 by Carol

Until I was 34 years old, I spent every Christmas at my parents’ home.  That year, 1979, I was in rural Borneo, experiencing a Kenyah Dayak Christmas, complete with American carols translated and taught by fundamentalist Christian missionaries and a single community Christmas tree, with lovely (and dangerous) lit candles casting shadows around their church.  In 1984, in rural Sumatra, I fashioned a tree out of a tall bar stool, covered with green cloth onto which we pinned newly-home-made, largely paper ornaments.  Driving from Padang in West Sumatra, back to my home in Riau in late 1991, I saw a woman by the roadside, and asked her if she would cut me a tree (from what was surely part of the National Forest).  I remember my triumphant return and the surprise and delight of my son and husband (despite my having joined the ranks of Indonesia’s ‘illegal loggers’).  Then, as we were packing to leave Jakarta in 1995, we cut out a big tree from green paper, drew ornaments on it, and pasted it on our living room wall.  One manages.

But in 2009, my husband and I moved into our very own  house.  We were able to assemble our respective, long-stored possessions, and for the first time, to satisfy fully our love of the holiday and of Christmas trees.  What a lifetime of associations are represented on our ‘fully loaded’ Christmas tree!  I sit before it, marveling at this wealth of memories.  My favorite ornament is a wooden, flying Santa Claus with detachable wings, bought in Jakarta’s American Women’s Club gift shop in the 1990s.  There are quite a variety of Indonesian ornaments on the tree:  a brown ball of star spice and cloves bought in a traditional market that had been transferred to a low-end Jakarta mall; a stuffed batik fish; several ornaments made of translucent goat skin shaped into a heart, a Javanese mountain, a fish, a peacock;  a translucent flat glass bell bought at one of Jakarta’s high end department stores. 

Two of my special favorites are white angels, crocheted by the Filipina mother of my son’s good friend from Jakarta International School (also the wife of a one-time colleague in Bogor).  There is a still-beautiful ball covered in white velvet, decorated with pink and matching printed ribbon, made and given to me by one of my best friends, Lorna, in Seattle, when I was in grad school in the 1970s.  She’s a true artist, as the Christmas ball attests.

There are a whole raft of beautiful ornaments made of papier mâché, decorated with Indian designs shaped into bells, stars, and balls—bought in a market in New Delhi a decade ago.  On that trip, my luggage was lost and I had spent the whole prior week in an isolated resort at a meeting, washing my underwear each night and switching between my two blouses, day to day. 

My husband brought many ornaments to our tree from his previous life:  He’d fashioned several flat, blue and maroon, origami fish (his field is fisheries). He and his previous wife had also made lovely elaborate balls covered in deep blue velvet, gold braid and pearl-headed pins.  His mother, Lola (now deceased), also provided us with decorations, some inherited from her parents, including some very large balls, for which special branches have to be sought—to accommodate their unusual leaded weight.  There are crazy, cat-shaped ones that his sister had sent to their childhood home in New York from California, to amuse their cat-loving mother in her dotage.  And there are scores of simple colored balls of red, green, blue, silver and gold in varying sizes (and a few odd shapes), as well as some strange, fuzzy red ‘apples’.  We also inherited a few lovely large balls from her—some opaque, some translucent—decorated with bright red cardinals.

My mother prepared for us a special box of ornaments she considered to have special meaning.  One of these is a flat cardboard Santa Claus that she enjoyed as a child in the 1920s and ‘30s.  There are several green balls with badly tarnished, decorative silver wire that I remember as extraordinarily beautiful when new, during my own childhood in Turkey, in the 1950s.  My parents had bought these once-festive, German creations in the military PX in Ankara.  She also gave me a variety of ornaments made of foil that she and my Dad had purchased when he had a Fulbright fellowship for a year in Singapore at the time ‘Vietnam fell’ (1975):  Some look like silver or gold tubes, until the ends are pushed toward the center, at which point they form a striped ball, under which foil rays gently curve down and out.   Other foil ornaments fall from a central hook, forming a burst of gold or silver rays.  Still others are spikey balls of red or blue.  Mother had also collected flat, gold colored commemorative circles.  One commemorates the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon, where I had my second paying job, in 1963—a flat replica of the building hanging within the circle.   Another is formed of criss-crossing flat stars, with a globe in the center—given in honor of our travels.  She included some from my paternal grandmother as well—odd plastic creations, a couple of trapezoids with stars inside, a star and a white angel, each fashioned of [fake] pearls.

And there are ornaments made by our children when they were young, reminders of our own younger lives and of their childhood beauty and innocence:  a red origami box, some small, flat, inexpertly-painted wooden children.   There are other decorations whose source I can’t remember:  A cute, three dimensional, stuffed granny face that looks a bit like an apple doll head.  No idea where I got that.  There are some flat Santa Clauses outlined in gilt, a small colorful and glittery coral fish, a strange unpainted flat wooden ‘tree’.  The most recent acquisition, I got from the Estate Sale at my mother’s partner’s house.  It’s a smooth top, made of several natural colored woods, with a metal circle on the top from which to hang it—reminding me of my life at the Center for International Forestry Research, as well as of my well loved, recently deceased pseudo-step-father.

Aaah, the pleasures of Christmastime!

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On Political Involvement in the US

Posted on 18 December 2013 by Carol

We’ve been invited to a political fund raiser tonight, one at which the organizers will probably want us to do something significant (beyond making the already requested financial donation).  The funds raised will contribute to the election campaign of a local Democrat running for US Congress (Martha Robertson).  I find myself reluctant to go, despite my approval of the candidate and my support for involving more women in formal politics.

The saying, “Think global, act local” is an admirable sentiment that I’ve spouted for decades.  Yet now that I have the option to do that, I find myself reluctant.  When I lived in Indonesia, I wrote and talked of much that had political implications.  But I always felt somewhat constrained; I recognized that this was not truly my own country, no matter how much I cared about the place.  Sometimes, having lived in several countries, I’ve felt like a ‘global citizen’.  But the conventional ‘rights of citizenship’ have also been in my mind, creating a certain unwillingness to impinge on the rights of others to determine their own destiny.

Now I’m in a situation (in my own country) where ‘acting local’ would really, fully make sense.  I no longer have the excuse that acting locally on any significant, formal political scale would be a form of neo-colonialism.  So, what is the source of my reluctance?  Part of course is the shyness I’ve fought all my life.  I don’t look forward to being at what will probably be a cocktail party without the cocktails, circulating and chatting with people I’ve never met before.  I know that some will be interesting, some boring.  Optimistically some discussions may be stimulating.  But I may also become trapped listening to someone spout an enthusiasm I do not share or seeking funds I do not have.  Political campaigns often involve making phone calls to lists of random people, disturbing them at their leisure, asking for money or sometimes urging them to vote—another task I abhor and could be asked to do.

A more fundamental part of my reluctance has to do with my disapproval of the way politics is conducted in the US (perhaps everywhere?).  That political success—the opportunity to shape policy—is built first on the candidate’s ability to secure the funds to run a costly campaign is simply wrong.  This opportunity to make policy, and the responsibility to do so, should be driven by the desire, the commitment, of the person concerned.  Money should have no role.  But here, access to money is the first decider.

Shouldn’t politics be closer to what Margaret Mead has, perhaps idealistically, maintained (“…[T]hat a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”)?  I had believed that American ‘democracy’ included important elements of this notion, and surely it does on a very local level.  But the impression I’ve gotten, living here for the past four years (and admittedly not yet having gotten very involved, beyond voting, sometimes reading countless political emails, signing an occasional petition, and making an even more occasional contribution), has been that on a national or even state scale, American politics is most fundamentally run by money. 

Are there other, better ways to scale up?  To what degree does the internet provide us with a tool that could allow us to dispense with this glaring need for huge sums of money to run campaigns?  The Republicans reportedly partially managed by mobilizing church groups at one point.  The Democrats are working through endless emails to already committed party members and other sympathetic citizens willing to subject themselves to this deluge (like myself).  Committed as I am to many of these latter causes, I now simply delete most—who has time to read all those emails?    Neither of these approaches brings the country together, anyway; neither involves shared problem-solving; each builds on communicating only with the like-minded.  The apparently most effective way to affect policymaking has been through the political donations of industry and the well to do—a mechanism that almost by definition encourages inequity and corrupt practices.  Unlike the current political practice (churches, emails), Facebook [and presumably Twitter] does, or can, provide access to different points of view—in truly democratic fashion.  My own family and circle of FB ‘friends’ include people of various mind-sets.  The FB ‘News Feed’ function exposes us to all sorts of perspectives—though admittedly when I’ve commented diplomatically on a right wing perspective based on inaccurate information, the antagonistic responses have not been conducive to either reaching a shared understanding or collaborative problem solving.  Still…social networking might be used effectively to improve the political process.

In any event, I will go to the Democratic fund raiser tonight, and see if my fears are realized.  Perhaps it will be that ‘small group of thoughtful, committed citizens’ I seek.

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Snow and Approaching Christmas

Posted on 14 December 2013 by Carol

My first glance out the window this morning revealed silently falling snow.  The colors of the landscape were muted, with the sheen of white dominating everywhere.  The pines, green yesterday, were fringed in white, the greyness of the sky turning the green to black.  The world now looks  black, white, and shades of grey.  A closer inspection reveals the browns and tans of nearby bare tree trunks and branches.  A spot of color pops up here or there:  the bright green of the [vertical] door into our shed, the red spot on the black and white woodpecker feeding on one of the suet blocks my husband has set out among the trees.   I can see the shape of a building out back on our neighbour’s property, one that is hidden much of the year by foliage.  Behind our house, the land is covered with a mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees and bushes through which we can see much further in winter.  The snow alternates, falling gently part of the time, angling at other times, whipped by the wind.  I can remember times when the snow has fallen horizontally, when the view was totally obliterated by the wild snowfall and driving was a menace.  But today, it’s steady, gentle.

When I was a young child, in Indiana, snow was a comparatively rare treat, even rarer in Oregon later in my life.  During my decades in the tropics, I missed seeing snow entirely.  There the lush greenery and wildly colorful birds and flowers present a different kind of beauty.  Here, even the birds’ colors are muted in winter.  The goldfinches lose their golden brilliance, becoming a rather drab brownish grey.  Still, the birds bring visual delights:   Juncos are adorable, little round birds, dark on top, white on the bottom, their yellow beaks providing another welcome spot of color.  Chickadees, also distinctly marked in black, white, and grey, abound. The small, grey, tufted titmice look regal with their pointy crowns.  All cluster on the tray outside our window, feeding on the seeds we routinely sprinkle there.  Bluejays, bright but raucous, come to our feeder for peanuts. Occasionally a brilliant red cardinal will appear against the white background, the contrast delighting the eye.  A little further away, three kinds of woodpeckers pop in for visits:  downy, hairy, and red bellied.  All are black and white, though the males have the aforementioned spots of red near or on their heads.

Yesterday we went out into the snow—shallower than it is today, but still hard to walk in—to cut our Christmas tree at a nearby tree farm.  We trudged through the snow, muscles straining to push heavy, booted feet through the resisting snow. It was like walking in sand.  But the sun was shining and the sky was a pure blue.  Sunbeams sparkled off the snow, blinding in their intensity, but intensely beautiful too.  Clouds would hide the sun for moments, then reveal again the sparkles on the ground.  The sunbeams shooting through the evergreens made yet another kind of stunning and ever-changing beauty.  On that day, we could still see the green of the branches; the snow was not as deep as it is today, the sky brighter.

I remember longing, in Indiana and also in Turkey, for a ‘white Christmas’, the Bing Crosby song reminding us of this hope every year.  Here in upstate New York, white Christmases come almost every year; I get to realize this youthful longing regularly.  The snow continues to fall. 

Remembering Christmas always brings memories of my father, who was deeply in love with Christmas.  He delighted in everything connected with the holiday:  sharing presents, surprises, decorating the tree, putting up lights.  He loved the idea that Christmas is a time for families to come together, to share a traditional meal.  He even loved shopping for presents, wandering the brightly decorated malls and stores.  Like me, he enjoyed looking out at the cold cold snow more than wandering around in it.  My husband, who doesn’t even mind the cold, is bringing in the Christmas tree.  He too appreciates Christmas. 

Christmas also brings sad and disturbing memories;  the human capacity to remember often fails to filter out the painful.  I remember with pain the loss of that well loved father.  I remember clashes among family members, clashes that rippled out to affect all assembled, and then continue to ripple on down through the years as each remembers the hurtful things said (sometimes even inadvertently), the pains that loved ones experienced.  Our human connections bring us both joy and pain. 

The snow can also be a pain.  I think of the unsightly muddy mush that can cover boots, sometimes slushed up against our clothing by passing vehicles; the icy sidewalks on which particularly the elderly fall, breaking bones; the salted roads that eat away at our vehicles; or the drudgery of having to shovel snow to get to work.  These are the less happy elements of snow.

But now, the sun is coming out, revealing some of the previously muted colors.  I can see the yellow of the willow tree out back, and the evergreens look greener than they did only an hour or so ago.  The green trim on doors and window sills looks greener than it did, the snow more brilliant.  The landscape’s pristine beauty overwhelms, soothing recurrent pains.  What beauties—and what different beauties— surround us!

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