Morality and Rodgers and Hammerstein Musicals

Posted on 18 June 2012 by Carol

My childhood home was filled with the sounds of musicals.  My father loved them and they played  a central role in our entertainment world—especially when we lived in Turkey (1955-61).  Dad and I played the 33-1/3” records over and over again.  He’d bought a fancy German (Grundig) record player, on which we could stack up records and they’d fall, one by one, to the platter.  The needle would automatically move over to the edge of the revolving record and beautiful music would issue forth.  We loved that fancy record player; and we often played the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein.  We also watched all of the musicals, in movie form.  To this day, I can sing—badly—most of the words of most of those songs!

Last night, OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) played clips—visual and aural—from the movies and from the soundtracks, in a sort of documentary testimonial to the works of Oscar Hammerstein.  My enjoyment of these musicals had always been emotional, heartfelt, joyful—-but I had not realized or remembered the strong social messages that were contained therein.  I learned last night of Hammerstein’s active political work during the frightening McCarthy era in American politics—Hollywood actors had been strongly targeted as subversive, many blacklisted by government witch hunts, unable to work for long periods of time in the 1950s.  Hammerstein spoke out against the hate mongering ideas of McCarthy (whose actions were sparked by a fear of Communism); Hammerstein was a speech writer for politicians; he acted out his anti-racism beliefs in arenas beyond musicals.

As I watched the very familiar scenes from his movies and listened to the words of the songs, I was struck by how very powerfully these films brought across the evils of racism and other kinds of marginalization of human beings.  I was also struck by my own lifelong lack of conscious attention to the musicals’ connections to real social issues.  I had heard these songs, listened to them, sung them throughout my life; yet I do not remember ever thinking of them as social commentary.  I had thought of them as capturing the human spirit, as portraying human emotion, as appealing stories about the human condition—expressing joy joyfully, sorrow sadly, pleasing to watch.  But I had not thought consciously of the strong social messages embedded within. 

The clips shown brought forth strong memories of my father, my childhood, pleasures experienced watching and listening to the songs.  But they also struck me as strong morality plays.  In The Sound of Music, we see the contrast between the harsh treatment of children by their Austrian father, contrasted with the loving and joyful care given by the newly hired nursemaid/teacher.  In one scene in South Pacific, we see the initial shock of a regular (1940s) American woman confronted with her lover’s children from a previous inter-ethnic love affair, leading eventually to another scene showing her acceptance of the children and their father, the man she loves.  In Oklahoma, men and women in love make light of the conventions that prescribe their gendered interactions.  In the King and I, the English teacher sings of learning from the children as she teaches them; and the king, whose power is absolute, expresses his uncertainty in song when confronted with cultural difference.

These stories are not historically accurate, and they surely include elements we might find problematic if seen again now (I have not gone back and viewed the full films, though I’d like to!).  But I was touched, seeing the clips and learning about the man who’d produced them, by the degree to which the values expressed captured ethical issues I feel strongly about—and in a seamless, entertaining way that may in fact be far more powerful than the conventional modes of preaching from a pulpit or railing from a political platform.  I didn’t realize I was watching morality plays, but they probably have played a subconscious role in establishing and maintaining the value system that has guided my life!

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The Inexplicable Menace in a Seemingly Neutral Object

Posted on 20 May 2012 by Carol

Monica Wood’s suggestion (in The Pocket Muse:  Endless Inspiration), to write about an ‘inexplicable menace in a seemingly neutral object’ intrigued me.  It reminded me of my own rather extreme irritation—based on a sense of inequity, a kind of menace—with several, interconnected, academic studies I’ve been reading.  The studies and my response seemed to fit her suggestion nicely. 

The studies were conducted by a team of (mainly) economists from IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), who wanted to investigate the causal interactions among matrilineal systems, land tenure, efficiency of production, and population.  They selected sites in Ghana, Indonesia, and Malawi, among others, where they looked at matrilineal and patrilineal systems side by side.  They explained their conceptual framework, much of which seemed reasonable in the abstract.  It focused on the impacts of population and what they saw—as others have seen before them—as consequent intensification of agriculture, with various possible implications for efficiency and productivity.  They used complex and sophisticated regression analyses to look at the data they collected, and tried to tease out casual connections among these variables.  This does not seem a likely topic to inspire anyone’s ire or concern, a ‘seemingly neutral object’.

There are, in fact, a number of reasons I should have welcomed this study.  It included clear attention to women’s roles in production and land management; it acknowledged the significance of lineality [how people trace descent in many societies] and of ethnicity in social and economic relations; it examined differences in efficiency and profitability of different farming systems (agroforestry, food crops) across nations; and it acknowledged the importance of both land tenure and the adverse effects of many systems on women’s status around the world.

Instead my response is a surprising sense of menace and outrage, founded on my own contrasting understandings.  I too have a firm foundation of knowledge about the systems studied.  In the late 1990s, I heard the principal architect of the study speak about his research. He was studying a Sumatran site that I knew well—very well.  I’d worked quite near to his sites for three years, living in a Javanese transmigration community and working with nearby Minangkabau villages in the 1980s.  Then throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and much of the 2010s, I continued research involvement nearby—one step removed, as a supervisor of related research.  At the time of the researcher’s talk, early in the research process, I felt it was seriously flawed, and said so—gently, diplomatically, and fairly privately—explaining my views of the conceptual and empirical problems.  His thanks for my input seemed lukewarm at the time.  Subsequently I also learned more about life in Ghana and Malawi, by supervising field research and collaborating with researchers from both countries; and like all anthropologists, I’ve read about many other matrilineal and patrilineal systems.

As I read more and more of the related studies this past week, my sense of ‘menace’ intensified. There were assumptions underlying these analyses that rendered their results not only scientifically suspect, but also subtly dangerous, from policy and gender perspectives.  I knew that many of these assumptions and perceptions—reflected in these decade-old studies—remain powerful in contemporary scholarship.  The menace is an intellectual one, deriving from questionable basic assumptions and from ethnographic misinterpretations pervading these writings. Some impacts filter throughout the fields of development and conservation, as well as policy and gender studies; others cause more local damage in specific human systems.   

The first problematic assumption is the idea of a kind of unilineal evolution—an idea that was prevalent in the late 1800s and early 1900s within anthropology, but that has since been roundly rejected by most anthropologists.  Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) wrote extensively about human societal evolution, which he saw as comparable to biological evolution; many communist countries—among others—took up these ideas wholeheartedly.  The discredited notion remains powerful, for instance, in Vietnamese, Laotian and Chinese policies toward swidden agriculturalists, who are seen as at a ‘primitive stage of development’.  This is despite their active, centuries-long involvement in markets; their decades-long, routine use of modern technologies from chainsaws to outboard motors, and more recently cell phones; a variety of societal values and behaviors that are surely as (or more) inherently valuable than our own.  The 2001 studies in Indonesia, Ghana and Malawi have sections explicitly discussing ‘the evolution’ of this or that—but more troubling, in my view, is the underlying simplifying assumption that some societies, some systems are more ‘advanced’ (in totality) than others.  Particularly annoying is the assumption (consistent with Morgan’s original theory and conveniently ‘proven’ by these authors’ research; see below) that matrilineal societies are inferior to, less advanced than, patrilineal ones.

A second objectionable assumption is that the individualization of ownership is ‘better’, more ‘advanced’, than shared ownership.  Although the authors anticipate some criticism of this view, their own value on individual ownership comes through loud and clear, permeating their writings.  Then, while indicating their lack of understanding of how matrilineal systems actually operate, they explicitly conclude that patrilineal systems are more likely to evolve into individual ownership (what they seem to consider the apex of evolution) than matrilineal ones.

My third critique, rather than an assumption, applies to these researchers’ interpretation of matrilineal systems.  From my perspective, matrilineal and patrilineal systems are at least partially symmetrical.  In matrilineal systems, descent is traced through the mother’s line—so for instance, rather than taking our father’s name (as most do in the US), we would likely take our mother’s name (and we would definitely take her clan or other descent group membership).  In most matrilineal systems, significant goods (such as land) pass from a mother to her children, with the daughters’ rights being clearest.  The matrilineal group typically has a say in the disposition of group property.  Patrilineal systems are the reverse.  A man passes his group membership to his children, with his sons’ rights being strongest.  [In the US, we have a bilateral system, with a matrifocal emphasis—-our dominant system fits neither the matrilineal nor patrilineal model].

This symmetry falls apart, however, when we consider politics and decision-making about lands.  Men, in both systems, have more power and authority than women.  In the matrilineal case, it is traditionally the woman’s uncles and brothers who make land-related decisions and who bequeath some of their goods to her children, their matrilineal nieces and nephews.  There is often a kind of balancing act for men between the expectation that they bequeath to their nieces and nephews on the one hand, and their desire also to bequeath to their own children on the other.  In the patrilineal case, it is the husband (and often his brothers as well) who bequeath to the children of the patrilineage. 

The authors of this set of studies inaccurately describe matrilineages as inherently larger than patrilineages.  They conclude that one reason matrilineages’ days are numbered is that they are too large and unwieldy.  In fact, although both patrilineages and matrilineages come in various sizes, there are probably more large patrilineages than matrilineages (simply because patriliny is more common than matriliny).  It may be that the patrilineages in the areas investigated were smaller than nearby matrilineages, but size is not an essential characteristic of either system—so inefficiencies based on group size can not logically or legitimately be used to argue against matriliny in general.

Another problematic assumption in these studies is that the husband-wife link is fundamentally, universally the most important—as is probably true in their own cultural systems.  They assume that if a woman does not receive goods from her husband, she does not receive them from any man [what, one wonders, of a man’s rights to receive goods from his wife?  Never considered].  In their research in Ghana, for instance, they asked specific questions [only to male heads of household, incidentally] about what a woman received from her husband; and they lumped her maternal uncles (the most likely controller of much of her traditional wealth) and her brothers together with all other matrilineal kin.  The researchers concluded, because a woman’s husband did not traditionally have an obligation to provide much to her, that she and her children were in danger of being left with no sources of support at all, in case of divorce or desertion.   What women’s husbands lose in matrilineal systems in case of divorce is not addressed.  It’s quite possible that Ghanaian women are indeed often left without sources of support—-I don’t know, but it’s very hard to tell from this research, because of their inappropriate focus on husband-as-provider and their probably-incorrect assumption that the husband-wife relationship is the most fundamental.

In Sumatra, the same assumptions marred the research, which was divided into high-, mid- and low-lying regions, characterized by different cropping systems.  In this case, I focus on the low lying area (near and in western and central Jambi), which I know best.  The authors argue that the matrilineal system is changing to a patrilineal one, which they see as good news, since this indicates that the system is heading for the most desirable type of tenure:  individual ownership.  They build their case partially by drawing on 1980s ethnography from the highlands of West Sumatra (Kahn 1980; Errington 1984), which was quite a different system (and much more strongly matrilineal) than that existing in the lowland, rantau [or pioneer] area where this newer research was conducted.  These authors fail to mention the interplay of cultures between the strongly patrilineal Jambi ethnic group and the matrilineal Minangkabau of West Sumatra and western Jambi.  This local kinship context is further complicated from the 1980s onwards by the arrival of thousands of Javanese transmigrants with a bilateral kinship system, which in turn is reinforced by a national political system dominated by the Javanese.  A lot of change is definitely underway, but there are a number of interlocking ‘causes’ that are ignored in these studies.

The researchers attribute what they see as the changes in the kinship system to the effects of population increase (something that has definitely occurred), and to a ‘sensible’ (perhaps ‘inevitable’) evolution of systems from matrilineal to patrilineal to private ownership by male household heads.  Another important pressure—totally ignored in these analyses—has been from the Indonesian government, with its policies that recognize, encourage, and provide resources via husbands.  The Indonesian government assumption, as with these researchers’, has been that male household heads of nuclear families are the ‘normal’ way of things, that matrilineal systems are either an anachronism or an aberration (see Elmhirst 2011, for a good discussion of the pressures to shift to a male-headed, ‘conjugal partnership’ family model in Sumatra).

The menace of such analyses—though surely originally well-intentioned—is that they reinforce widespread assumptions that have done, and continue to do, so much damage to human well being around the world.  These include assumptions about:

  • the inherent goodness of uncontrolled capitalism;
  • the ‘equity-enhancing’ nature of the market (ignoring its blatant imperfections; one of these studies, for instance, praises tenancy systems for their role in enhancing tenure equity—something I find improbable);
  • the ‘naturalness’ of male domination;
  • an inherent primitiveness of women and systems that tend to give them higher status;
  • the elevated position of western countries (whose practices, incidentally, include both individual ownership and bilateral kinship), and
  • the ‘otherness’ (‘alterity’, implied inferiority) of systems that differ. 

These are the sources of my sense of menace and my abiding irritation with these studies.

 

References

Elmhirst, Rebecca 2011. Migrant pathways to resource access in Lampung’s political forest: Gender, citizenship and creative conjugality. Geoforum 42:173–183.

Errington, Frederick K. 1984. Manner and Meaning in West Sumatra:   The Social Context of Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kahn, Joel S. 1980. Minangkabau Social Formation:  Indonesian Peasants and the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Women (and Non-White Men) at the Top (or Not?)

Posted on 13 May 2012 by Carol

For two decades, I’ve been involved with the CG system—-that’s the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an umbrella body that supervises some 15 or so international agricultural research centers.  One of the Directors General (DGs) is about to leave; and the institution is seeking a replacement for her.  The fact that she is a woman is remarkable; there have been very few women DGs within that system.  At the moment there are two, but in a month’s time, there will most likely be one.  Rumour has it that neither women nor non-white males have reached the short list, thus far.

Hearing this rumour took me back some seven years, when a similar process was underway to find the current DG.  I was encouraged to apply; and I encouraged other qualified women to apply.  Very few took me up on the suggestions, and I too decided against it.  I struggled with my own realization that we cannot change the gender balance at the top, if women do not apply for such positions.  Yet, in the end I was unwilling to subject myself to the way of life that I saw among those technically ‘in charge’.

I don’t know all the reasons others declined the opportunity to apply.  But for myself, I imagined that the job would entail a number of features that I would not enjoy.  These included the following:

· the need to be responsive to the requests of others at any time of the day, night, month, year.  I predicted this would seriously affect both my professional autonomy and my personal life. 

· I would have to spend huge amounts of time fund-raising, something I neither enjoy nor am particularly good at.  This would mean correspondingly less time for research, writing, things I love.

· I would also have to spend inordinate amounts of time in tedious male-dominated meetings, the men anxiously exhibiting their strength and power—appropriately dressed in suit and tie—and often discussing irrelevancies or politics, rather than substance.  I remember my revulsion at the excessive cost and [to me] objectionable conduct of The World Bank’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, which I attended a time or two.  Politics and protocol trumped substance in formal meetings; informal ones tended to focus on fund-raising. Neither drew me into the context with any enthusiasm.

· I would need to be on ‘good behavior’ all the time. I’d have to be socially acceptable, diplomatic, well dressed, patient at all times—not really my style either.

· I believed that the position, though technically powerful, would hold less option to influence the things I wanted to accomplish than other modes of operation.  I had done ethnographic research on a US school system, and observed principals, superintendents, along with other apex jobs in numerous contexts.  The systems in which these people operated seriously constrained their options to make the improvements they sought (cf. Obama’s current situation).

I concluded basically that the job would entail serious reductions in my quality of life, while providing me with few options to make the kinds of changes I believe are needed.  The balance of good over bad, from the perspective of my own value system, was insufficient for me to apply—even though I was and remain committed to the goal of having more women in those apex jobs.  I genuinely believe that some of the changes I seek will require a more balanced gender situation at the top; there needs to be a critical mass, which we don’t yet have—and I was unwilling to make the sacrifices required.  I salute the female DGs for their willingness to accept these downsides—-some of which they surely also have felt.

We are enmeshed in a vicious cycle, in which ‘the top’ needs to change to attract women. Women have already done a lot of changing—getting educated, working full time, reducing their childbearing, etc. And there are a lot more of us professionally involved, approaching the needed critical mass. I heard a talk a few years back from a US forest Service employee (can’t remember her name), who made a good story of what had happened in that organization.  She felt that the USFS had been pretty successful changing the gender balance (and atmosphere) at all levels.  The US is probably making better progress on these issues than international organizations. My husband complains that at Cornell Institute for International Food, Agriculture and Development, where we both work part time, he’s the only man in many meetings.  He—atypically—laughs at my gender research focus this year.  What we see here fits neither with what I’m reading—about women’s globally genuinely disadvantaged position—nor with my own experience elsewhere.  The Cornell grad students we deal with are also mostly female.

The CG is also seeking to include more scientists from developing countries in the ranks of Director General.  However, few, women or men, apply. Surely some of the same barriers I’ve listed apply to many would-be applicants—including those from developing countries. I can well imagine additional constraints for those whose native language is not English.  The power of that constraint is rarely fully acknowledged.  A would-be applicant would anticipate the recurrent need to negotiate complex and far-reaching financial deals for their research center, not an easy task in a language in which one is not fully fluent; working through an interpreter is never truly satisfactory.  Struggling all day in a foreign language one has only partially mastered is utterly exhausting.  I remember vividly a Thursday afternoon of a weeklong, French language meeting in Gabon, in which my brain just literally shut down:  it refused to speak or understand another word of French until the next morning!

An even less widely acknowledged barrier for developing country scientists is psychological.  Being in international fora also means being subjected to often-inadvertent but still obnoxious stereotypes and assumptions about one’s incompetence, lack of intelligence/training, and general inferiority. A representative example:  I was in a small meeting room with several other scientists, being interviewed by a British visitor, who had some questions about GIS (geographical information systems).  Our GIS expert was an attractive young (and very competent) Indonesian woman.  Although we’d all introduced ourselves and our areas of expertise, he assumed that I (an anthropologist, but the only other westerner in the room) was the most qualified to answer his GIS questions.  He turned to me repeatedly (and totally inappropriately) with his technical questions, ignoring the young Indonesian woman who knew the answers far better than I.  This kind of scene recurs routinely in international contexts; any would-be developing country scientists is far too familiar with such social interactions.  Strong incentives would be required to make people willing to subject themselves to such recurrent putdowns, perhaps even more blatant and uncomfortable at the top.

In short, it’s now time for ‘the top’ to change.  But the questions remain:  How can we do that?  Where is the entry point?  Perhaps wider recognition of the (actually well established) value of diversity; perhaps stronger attention to justice and equity issues; perhaps broadening our development perspective beyond the ‘hegemonic world view’ of economics; perhaps altering domestic roles, so that men are more involved in child- and eldercare; perhaps more women and developing country scientists willing to make the sacrifices I considered but was ultimately unwilling to make.  The problems are systemic, and need systemic attention, from diverse perspectives and levels.  Not a very straightforward or satisfying ‘answer’.

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Spring has Sprung–at Last

Posted on 6 May 2012 by Carol

We had a lovely respite, beautiful blue skies, warm temperatures, for a week in late March.  Then the winter that had never truly come hit us in April.  This pseudo-winter is only now beginning to abate. Yesterday (and today) again we see blue skies, and the warmth of a possible spring.  We bought fresh strawberries and pineapples—on sale—at the store.  I’d hardly ever bought a pineapple myself, and certainly rarely (if ever) peeled one.  But still I had extensive experience with eating them in Indonesia: they routinely appeared on my plate, whether as in Java beautifully carved in spirals with no disfiguring ‘eyes’; in Kalimantan as chunks sprinkled with salt; or in Bali as part of a strange, spicy-hot-sweet fruit salad called rujak—said to be preferred by women at ‘that time of the month’ (amazingly, all delicious).  But I managed to remove the skin and most of the eyes from one of the pineapples we’d bought; and we sat out on our back porch, alternately munching on sweet fresh pineapple and imbibing the alcoholic drinks I’d made in  honor of Cinco de Mayo—the Mexican celebration that North Americans have adopted as a convenient yearly excuse to drink margaritas.

The strawberries too reminded me of my life in Indonesia.  I got out my recipe for the Australian/New Zealand dessert, pavlova, and started the process of making it—remembering the times in Bogor when our friends from ‘down under’ routinely brought this dish to community potlucks.  I never got enough of it there (being cognizant of the need to share); but now that I know how to make it (not so very difficult), I can fully  assuage my gluttony.  The meringue is in the oven now; the strawberries are cut into slices; and the cream is ready to be whipped.

One thought leads to another.  Strawberries have been one of my favorites since childhood.  My first memories are from my paternal great grandfather’s small house in the tiny village of Cyril, Oklahoma (circa 1948, definitely before I turned five!).  My parents were both in college at the University of Oklahoma, and we were quite poor.  We would go to the grandparental home in late summer to help collect and can the vegetables from Grampa’s garden.  They shared their produce to help feed us through the coming winter.  Grampa also grew strawberries, and—contrary to our usual practice—I could have all I wanted, delicious, fresh from his garden.  I can feel the leaves and stem in my hand, the bright red shape before my eyes, my teeth piercing the fruit, the taste on my tongue, the juice dripping down my childish chin.

My next vivid memory is from Turkey when I was 10 or 11 (1956 maybe).  My parents and I lived in Ankara, and we went on a cruise on the Black Sea up to the Russian border.  It was at the height of the Cold War, when Ankara was full of the American  military, ‘protecting’ us all from the ‘godless Communists’.  We routinely heard jets flying overhead, and in childhood, I worried whether they were ‘ours’ or ‘the Russians’’.  On our cruise, I felt a titillating fear/excitement when we reached the last Turkish town, Hopi, being so close to the border with ‘the enemy’.  My parents and I took a walk up the hill behind the port where our ship was docked.  Turks are exceedingly hospitable people, and the inhabitants of one of the houses we passed invited us in.  They fed us fresh strawberries, covered in powdered sugar—something I’d never thought to try before (nor had I had strawberries for quite a long time).  The wondrous sweet flavour comes to my mind clearly, even now.  Such things can hit us so powerfully when we are young.

When I began writing, I was thinking about my own garden though.  The warm weather drew me out into it and toward my flower garden (the fact that I’m inside writing on this lovely day is a testament to the neurotic depth of my inability to resist putting ‘pen to paper’).  The garden remains bereft of blossoms, but the poppies and the aquilegia are masses of healthy looking leaves; the strange reddish peony stalks are 1-2 feet high; lilies have popped out of the ground, rising a few inches off the ground (hopefully this year not to be eaten by marauding wildlife as soon as they bloom).  All suggest beauty to come.

My focus yesterday was eradication of weeds.  I have learned to distinguish several:

  • a furry leaved plant that is sometimes sold, but that proliferates so abundantly in my garden that I see it as a weed;
  • mugwort—I love that name—a small, but pretty plant that threatened to take over last year, becoming the bane of my gardening existence (so far it seems less ubiquitous this year);
  • goldenrod, which was the bane of 2010 (successfully controlled by my own vigilance). 

But there remain other plants in the garden that I can’t distinguish—-are they soon to develop lovely blossoms, fodder for my flower arranging mania?  Or are they simply large undesirables that I should yank out by the roots?  My cousin introduced me a couple of days ago to garlic mustard—a plant with pretty, tiny white flowers that the entire county is apparently striving to obliterate, as…[roll of drums]…an invasive.  Recognizing my civic responsibility, I obediently spent an hour or so removing such plants from the various garden beds around our house.  But there are thousands more clearly visible in the ‘back 40’ (actually considerably less than 40…we have maybe 2.5 acres back there)—-a nearly wild area of swamp, trees, and honeysuckle. Honeysuckle smells wonderful.  I like it, but everyone else here, including my husband, despises it—-rather like blackberries in Oregon. Yesterday’s anti-garlic mustard campaign hardly made a dent.

Now, having developed this unexpected enjoyment of gardening, I have another mutual interest to share with my daughter whose green thumb has long been evident.  My husband also encourages me in this new preoccupation, as he labours away in his vegetable garden.  We both enjoy his produce.  Unlike the gardens of my childhood, I’m sure his efforts save us no money.  Instead they provide a pleasant excuse to be outdoors, and very tasty fresh produce.  His tomatoes—for which I must wait til August—-are unsurpassed!   Peas, lettuce, radishes are more imminent.

The lure of the outdoors has become irresistible.  I go.

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The ‘Sandwich Generation’, Port William and Borneo

Posted on 29 April 2012 by Carol

That ‘times change’ is a truism.  It’s one that has been occupying my mind now for several months.  And some of these thoughts came back to me this morning, after reading a short article  about “late-forming families” in Anthropology News (May 2012, by Nancy Anne Konvalinka and Elena Hernandez Corrochano).  This research was conducted in Spain, where the authors studied the lives of families formed after the age of 35 or 40.  One of the authors’ points was the squeeze felt by such new—yet older—parents, as they strove to care for their own young offspring while often caring also for their aging parents.  The articles notes the strong pride within Mediterranean cultures in the important roles families play when their caregiving help is needed, and people’s commitment to fulfilling such roles, despite growing difficulties.   

Although my own ethnic background is varied, coming from all over Europe—and a bit of native American as well—I feel and see the same emphasis among my family members:  we want and expect to help each other with caregiving.  But in the US, I noted three dimensions not noted by Konvalinka and Corrochano:  extended age, greater mobility, and working grandparents. 

These authors write of three generations (children, parents, grandparents), from the perspective of the parents.  Yet in the US now four generations have become commonplace.  Konvalinka and Corrochano focus on the parental generation; I am fixated on the grandparental generation, where I sit, also looking up and down.  Here there are two ‘sandwich generations’.

Our mobility means that many of us live far from our children and from our parents.  We struggle to maintain these links, to provide the care that our values (and sentiments) require of us.  This year, in my own extended family, we’ve had example after example of elderly family members needing growing amounts of help, requiring balancing with the needs of our children and grandchildren….In some cases, the pressure on the squeezed generation becomes nearly unbearable.  I am lucky in that my eldest daughter, the mother of my three grandchildren, who lives all the way across the United States, has a vibrant local support network.  She is also a full time mother who loves her caretaking role and manages wonderfully with minimal help from me.  

But another close relative (nearing 70) works outside the home, lives near—and routinely helps—her children and grandchildren (whose mothers also work), has a husband with a heart condition, and until recently regularly flew back and forth across the country to attend to her own aged and failing mother.  Her schedule and the demands upon her have been, by any objective criterion, overwhelming.  Although she has yet to be truly overwhelmed, I worry for her.

Another close relative has a responsible and demanding job.  Until recently, she also had major responsibility for a much older husband and her own mother (who also lived across the country from her).   As the condition of her elderly relatives deteriorated, the strains under which she suffered—and still managed—became palpable.  It was a pace I knew she couldn’t keep up for long.  Even their eventual deaths did not bring immediate cessation of responsibility; she had to deal with complex, associated paperwork and financial arrangements.

Over the past few days I’ve been reading Wendell Berry’s book, Hannah Coulter—yet another of the residents of Port William about whom Berry has written so much (e.g., Jayber Crow, Andy Catlett).  I have found all these books touching, but this one portrayed these caretaking roles in a different light from what I’ve experienced in my own family, though still poignant, heart-rending.  The heroine, Hannah, is a rural woman from a poor family (like many of my paternal ancestors from Oklahoma).  In the book, Hannah looks back on her long life.  She has suffered losses—her first husband died in World War II not long after their love marriage, her children—externally defined as ‘successful’—moved away from Port William and from her, she saw the life she’d loved dwindling, disappearing as ‘times changed’.  The grief and pain of these losses comes through loud and clear, softened somewhat by her own gratitude for the meaningful life she’s lived—full of hard work and connection to others who loved her and whom she loved.  Where I see my own family suffering from the needs we want and struggle to fulfill but are often unable to, she suffers from the loss of those meaningful connections, to family members and to the land, to the way of life she’s loved.

The book also brought to mind my experience in Borneo.  Part of the community of Long Ampung had moved from the very remote Apo Kayan down to Long Segar, a less remote community where I lived for a year and to which I have returned from time to time.  In 1980, I visited Long Ampung, seeking to understand why some community members had opted to move, some to stay.  There were of course many reasons to leave (for schools, medical care, land, access to commerce, participation in the ‘modern world’), but for those who stayed, part of the reason seemed to be the kind of attachment to the land and to the environment that Hannah felt for her farm in rural Kentucky.  I wasn’t in Long Ampung long enough to be sure of all this, but my conversations there led me to suspect that the people who remained watched the changes underway in the world with some of the same dismay and loss portrayed for Hannah: 

  • the switch from routine day-to-day interdependence among friends and kin to dependence on cash and employment (and a resulting loss of freedom, autonomy, security);
  • the loss of daily, lifelong, intergenerational connectedness with one’s family;
  • the improbability that one’s children and grandchildren would, or even could, maintain and honor one’s values and traditions;
  • the growing alienation from the land and the forests themselves.

Many of the great grandchildren of Long Ampung—now living in Samarinda or elsewhere in East Kalimantan—now send me notes on Facebook; we can discuss the educational needs of their children, in turn, by phone.  My son visits and makes development plans with his relatives living in yet another daughter village, which split off from Long Segar—Lung Anai (still closer to Samarinda, still more involved in a cash economy, in the modern world).   Times change, the ties that bind now reach round the globe.  I wonder where it all leads…and how we can all adapt to these changes that seem to come at an ever-faster clip. 

But perhaps it just seems that way….time flies ever faster as we age.

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Songs and Gender

Posted on 15 April 2012 by Carol

A book arrived in the mail, from Duke University Press—unrequested, probably intended as a candidate for review in the journal Agriculture and Human Values, for which I am the book review editor.  The book, Unearthing Gender, is an ethnographic analysis of the songs sung in northern India.  My first thought was that it was unlikely to be relevant for either the journal or for my current work (which is focused on gender).  As is my custom, I opened it and glanced through it. But the more I perused it, the more interested I became in the potential of songs (and perhaps other similar cultural products) as a useful method for gender analysis.  One particularly appealing aspect is that these songs are sung by all castes, but particularly the lower caste women—perfect representatives of the most difficult perspectives to include in any kind of collaborative effort.  But perhaps even more appealing is the degree to which the words of the songs reflect serious emotions, power dynamics, ideal behaviors within the society.  These are all issues we find difficult to access, record, measure, perhaps use constructively. 

As I read, I thought of my own response to song throughout my life.  It has been visceral.   Songs describe feelings shared within our own cultural groups; they can catalyze desire, sadness, joy, laughter, grief.  Songs can recreate the emotions one has felt at the times associated with the song. They can bring back previous eras in a deep and powerful way; they ‘take you back’, touching cultural and personal chords within.  And they can bring groups together, strengthen feelings of communality.

Many of the American songs I remember best, that have touched me the most, are about men and women—desire, sexuality, the pain of separation, the joy of reunion.  I best remember those from my youth and young adulthood when I suppose my own gender notions were crystallizing.  I think of the young couple who elope to escape wider disapproval of their union (“Runnin’ Bear loved Little White Dove, With a love that couldn’t die”—in this case, both dying in the attempt).  The sympathy I felt for the man, injured in the war, whose woman abandons him seeking pleasures elsewhere (‘Ruby, don’t  take your love to town.’).  Other songs recognize the woman who stands up to her man, refusing to accept some of his behaviour (“These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what I’ll do; one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”).   Some celebrate a woman’s strength directly, “I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman…”.  Then there’s “Mata Hari”—“O what a wicked girl was she, that’s the kind of girl I want to be…”, which idealizes the adventure and illicit pleasures of being a female spy!  In Quilcene, Washington, a logging town when I lived in the 1970s, the songs of Buzz Martin were favorites among the men—his songs eulogized logging and the logger as a ‘real man’.  I remember a T-shirt I saw on a man descending from a huge log truck:  It said “If you aint a logger, you aint shit.” 

The cultural values that emerge from these American songs differ greatly from those described from northern India—where a woman’s adultery can result in her death, always in tragedy; where her submissiveness and maintenance of her husband’s family honor—no matter the cost to herself—-are lauded in song.  I have not gotten to the book’s chapter on men’s songs, but I doubt that the kind of hard physical labour admired in Quilcene will be considered a positive value in India.

I then turned my thoughts to the forest cultures of Indonesia about which I normally write.  I never investigated songs per se, but I did record some of the stories that the Uma’ Jalan Kenyah (Dayaks of Borneo) share with each other.  Perhaps they are comparable to songs—they often include rhymes in the main story, and choruses intoned together by the audience as chants.  Some tell wondrous stories of Kenyah culture heroes (like Balan Tempau, after whom my son is named).  Some include morality tales about the ideal (and undemocratic) relationships among the aristocracy, commoners, and slaves.  These same stories provide clear ideals for men (courage, strength, competition), for women (beauty, industriousness) and for both (cleverness).  Another type of song is sung during community work groups. The men and women sing as groups and playfully taunt each other about a variety of things, including courtship and sexuality, each charging the other with being the initiator in sexual encounters. 

One time the Kenyah made up one of these chanted performances for me as part of a good-by party.  The chants were a form of teasing—about the questions I had been asking  in my most recent survey—and elicited great hilarity.  The ‘singer’ had made up sexually explicit questions (e.g., about the ubiquity of men’s penis piercing) that I had not asked.  The associated group chant was “Koda’ kado’? Koda’ kado’?” (“How many/much? How many/much?”)—a somewhat tedious question I had in fact asked repeatedly about each kind of tree each family was growing.  Unlike traditional relations among the classes, Kenyah gender relations are comparatively equitable—differing by sex, but from a global perspective, equitable. These songs and performances display values far closer to American expectations about gender relations than to those in north India.

Anyway, I have been surprised to conclude that looking at songs and other cultural performances is certainly worth considering if one wants to understand gender relations.  Insofar as such cultural products exist, they may well be a treasure trove of information about the elusive research topic of gender dynamics.

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An Ongoing Saga – this time, dementia

Posted on 8 April 2012 by Carol

A year or so after my father died in 1994, my mother took up with a man whose wife had been her bosom pal prior to her death not long after my father’s.  My mother and her partner have been together in Portland, OR ever since.  Until two and a half years ago, they remained in their own homes (neither wanted to give up her/his houseful of memories, belongings, habits). 

A few years before they moved in together, we began to notice his forgetfulness, his difficulties doing some simple things.  He had a few minor traffic accidents, which convinced the two of them—with some additional encouragement from us, their children—that he should give up driving at night.  Gradually, they both did.  There was nothing too dramatic—just predictable increases in vulnerability as the elders progressed through their 80s (more aches and pains, more frequent falls, worsening arthritis in my mother’s case, worsening memory in his). 

Meanwhile, my husband’s mother (in her 90s) was in comparable condition, living in her own home, in a suburb of New York City.  Her arthritis, already causing her more problems than my mother’s, was worsening.  She had to move everything she needed down to chest level, because she could not raise her arms.  We convinced her to get a stair lift, so she could get up to her bedroom with less pain; but she was becoming less and less mobile, spending more and more time on her couch in the living room.  Her daughter urged her repeatedly to sell her house and move into a retirement home, to no avail.  But that’s another story.

Meanwhile, until 2009, my husband and I lived in Indonesia—too far away to be of help to either parent.  Eventually, we decided we needed to move back to the US, to be more available.  Deciding where to live was difficult, as our families were scattered all over the country, with those needing the most help on opposite coasts.  My husband preferred the East (where most of his family lived); I preferred the West (where most of mine lived ).  In the end, we settled on a compromise:   We’d move to the East, with the recognition that I would simply travel some three times a year to the West Coast (where my daughter and grandchildren also live).  I figured I would need to be there 1/4 to 1/3 of the time.  Not ideal, but…workable.

We came back to the US in the summer of 2009, about the time my mother’s partner was diagnosed with early stage dementia.  We (the adult children and grandchildren) had already begun to worry seriously.  He was gradually less and less able to take care of his own cooking, his own house, and we saw that my mother was taking up the slack.  A woman in her mid-80s taking care of two fairly large houses, doing the errands for herself and her partner, making the half hour drive to and from his house regularly and much more often than he…not a solution likely to last.

By 2010, he had begun having TIAs (Transient Ischemic Attacks, or mini-strokes);  and in the fall of 2010, he had a more major one that hospitalized him and rendered him initially unable to speak.    At that point, something had to be done.  My mother reiterated her preference for having him move in with her; and we (my mother and all five of us, their children) made that decision for him.  He was simply no longer able to manage on his own—plus he would need speech and physical therapy, many doctor’s appointments (requiring the related driving to and fro), someone sensible to monitor his meds.  We all (including his three daughters) recognized our elders’ love for each other and certainly wanted them to be able to remain together.  But we were all worried about straining my mother’s emotional and physical resources beyond the limit.  

Thankfully his daughters realized this dilemma and were as cooperative and helpful as it’s possible to be.  They agreed immediately that Mom would need additional paid help; and set about finding it for her and arranging for it to be paid from his resources.  In fact, they wanted to provide more help than she actually wanted—she didn’t like the constraints on her freedom of movement that came with the formal health care providers available [someone had to be there to receive them and to sign their time sheets when they left].  But she really had little choice; she was too old and weak herself to take on all the caretaking work his condition required.  Meals on Wheels entered the scene for lunch every day (another solution that was needed, but carries with it some serious disadvantages—eating pre-prepared meals from black, plastic mini-trays, no matter how appreciated, is hardly aesthetic and inevitably reduces one’s pleasure in eating).

There were advantages to this arrangement though.  My mother no longer had to maintain two houses or cook routinely, and she no longer had to drive back and forth across town so regularly (a real plus, since we all also worried about her fading driving ability).   Portland is not a town in which relying on public transport is an easy alternative.  Now, in 2012 (at age 88), she is investigating the options for handicap pickups and learning about using taxis.  She still drives, but has reduced it to the bare minimum.

I have been able to go three times a year and stay about a month each time.  In the beginning, the work on such visits was incessant, as we tried to do as many household projects as we could in the time available.  I would fall into bed every night totally exhausted, aching from unaccustomed levels of physical activity.  My son was living with her at the time, and helped her routinely insofar as his own work needs allowed, but she had not yet decided to hire any significant extra help.  She had gradually been able to do less and less around her own house, and there was quite a backlog of things that needed doing.  My daughter and my brother came from time to time, helping with these needs as well. 

Little by little we made sufficient progress, aided also by the ongoing paid help, so that now when I visit, most of my time is spent driving—catching up on errands that need doing—or helping her with bills, filing, and computer/phone issues (among her least favorite tasks).  Her hands have difficulty dealing with paper; the expectation that she respond quickly on the phone to unanticipated questions can unsettle her; answering menu-driven questions annoys her.

When my daughter comes, she cleans (she is not satisfied with the cleaning that the helpers provide).  My brother paints and fixes things.   My son has left (with mixed emotions), returning to Indonesia to pursue his life’s direction.  A handyman now normally comes once a week to do many of the things my son had done (caring for the yard, doing small house repairs, carrying heavy loads).  My pseudo-step-sisters also come and help out from time to time—keeping up their father’s house, doing whatever needs doing at both places. Now, the weekly hired help typically comes to 12 hours of nursing and domestic help, and 8 hours of house maintenance, gardening and ‘heavy lifting’ type help.

Although my mother’s partner’s speech improved somewhat, with the benefit of speech therapy in late 2010, it soon began deteriorating again and now has deteriorated further each time I visit.  His mind cannot hold a recent thought long enough to spit it out, even were his brain able to link his thoughts and his tongue reliably.   He is a kind man by nature, and remains so.  He is charmingly chivalrous of my mother, even now opening doors for her (ever so slowly!), taking her arm, helping her up.  He worries about us, though he is unable really to help (can’t even go get the milk, or put away a cereal box).  He sometimes mixes up the top and bottom of his pajamas.  He seems genuinely to be child-like—this man who was a successful, Harvard-educated lawyer, articulate and highly intelligent.  In the early years of his and my mother’s relationship, we were sometimes irritated by his insistence on his own views (referring, at such moments, to him privately as a ‘control freak’).  We disliked his political views (so far to the right of our own)—but all that has vanished with his dementia.  He accepts whatever comes, usually with what seems to be equanimity.  He still listens—all day, when he’s not asleep—to Foxx News, but we’re not sure he processes anything that is said.

He gets frustrated sometimes about his inability to say what is in his mind—as I imagine anyone would!  Occasionally he has hallucinations (probably coming from his drugs).  He can understand that this happens, even though the hallucinations seem real to him.  Once in a while he has moments of paranoia, wondering for instance if we daughters are ‘pulling a fast one’; or questioning if my mother is really herself.  Once he touched her cheek and said that the woman he touched had softer cheeks than my mother did, that she probably wasn’t real.  These moments are rare, but we worry that they could increase.

For my mother, she has, in an important way, lost the man she fell in love with. She seems to accept what remains of him, with love. She appreciates his concern about her and about us, his warmth, his existence. I can see that she tries not to dwell on what she’s lost.

There are funny moments too.  A month or so ago, when his doctor asked him who I was (after hearing of his hallucinations and paranoia), he said, “She’s a well-known….uh…ummm [he couldn’t recall or speak my profession]…and a servant”.  I do play the servant role in my mother’s home.  Other times he tells rather outlandish stories that bear no relation to the facts, or he confuses things in amusing ways—he, who was once incredibly geographically aware, has to be reminded where Rome is or Papua New Guinea, where he spent part of World War II.  We allow ourselves the luxury to laugh privately about these occurrences; it helps us cope with the sad reality.

For my mother, her mind is not as reliable as it was when she was younger, but she is still quite intellectually competent, alert.  We thought she was ‘losing it’ a few years ago, but the challenge of dealing with her partner’s deterioration seems to have sharpened her own intellect again.  Her body betrays her routinely though—she walks (and sometimes breathes) with difficulty, wakes in considerable arthritic pain, her hands have little strength and refuse to obey her mind’s commands.  She has changed her expectations: “If I only drop three things in a day, I’m proud of myself.”  She falls easily, is wobbly.

Amazing to me, throughout all these difficulties, her optimism and good humour shine through.  Her home is lively, full of activity (indeed, quite a bit more activity than my own!).  She accepts the difficulties with patience, laughter, a kind and giving heart.

There is no routine for those of us who come to help; and to some extent, our visits interrupt the routines that my mother and her partner develop.  We know that routine is helpful to those with dementia…We don’t know what would be best, though my mother assures me she wants me to come.   Each time I visit, I try to assess the situation (as do we all).  Each time, I conclude, ‘It’s ok now; it could change at any moment.’  No solutions are ideal; none is permanent. We simply have to ‘go with flow’.  And enjoy the good moments.  Seeing this good man’s deterioration makes me appreciate the time I have with my mother that much more.  She remains herself; I can still enjoy her liveliness, her positive attitude, her sense of humour; and I can appreciate her amazing ability to adapt graciously on a day to day basis to the changing reality in which she finds herself. When my turn comes, if it does in this way, I hope that I can be like her.

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The Last Few Months of a Life

Posted on 1 April 2012 by Carol

Two things prompted me to write about my father’s illness and death.  A friend suggested that I share my experience of eldercare, experiences that so many people are struggling with these days; and I saw a wonderful blog ( reviewed in the American Anthropologist) by Dana Walrath (http://danawalrath.wordpress.com/), which touchingly and even amusingly documents her experience with her mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s.  I imagined writing something more upbeat than what I have written, something about my wonderful and still-living mother and her demented partner, something with some lightness in it—they have wonderful attitudes as they cope with these changes.  But what came out was the much sadder story of my father’s cancer and death.  One cannot always tell what one’s mind will dictate.

In the summer of 1993 (when I was in my late 40s), my husband and I decided to return from Borneo to the US, thinking to let our son have some of his formative years in the US, but also concerned about my father’s health.  He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in the fall of 1992, and been operated on at that time—but there was significant question about how effective that operation may have been.  In residence at my parents’ home, while seeking stateside employment,  the continued progression of the disease became clear in November of 1993.  A second operation revealed his body riddled with cancer.  The prognosis was ‘two or three more months’.    

This meant making some difficult decisions.  The first, whether or not to seek additional treatment, was answered quickly and definitively by my father.  The chances were miniscule of any success treating stomach cancer,  and he  wanted to enjoy his last few months, insofar as possible.  There were to be no treatments.

The second, less dramatic but also important, decision was, would my parents prefer that we remain with them to help care for my father, or would they prefer to have their home, and some time, to themselves.  Our uncertain employment situation was such that we had unusual freedom to do either.  But my parents’ exceedingly hospitable natures made this a delicate proposition.  I knew how hard it would be for them to express a desire to be alone (they wouldn’t have wanted us to feel unwanted); and I also recognized the possibility that they would genuinely need the help.  My paternal grandmother, aged 92, also lived with us.  After several, very careful heart-to-hearts, it seemed that they did want us to stay.

Throughout the football season, my father and I sat together, watching the games he loved.  I realized at the time how precious were these moments with him.  He taught me more about the rules.  I learned the quarterbacks, coaches and players, particularly those of the San Francisco 49ers, his special love.  He taught me something of the strategies, the vocabulary; and told me stories of games he’d seen, players he admired.  He was particularly impressed with someone named Blanda, who continued to play into his mid-30s.  My father shared the ways football, manliness, sportsmanship, strength, honor all came together in his mind.  I had known this at some level, but it was interesting (and a bit alien) to realize how closely they fit together in his world view.  I imagine the poignancy he must have felt realizing he was seeing these games for the last time.

Sometime that fall, my husband received a job offer in Jakarta.  We had a ‘rule’ within our marriage not to be separated for more than six weeks; we knew we would need an income at some point; and our son was enrolled in school—we were reluctant to move him yet again (even though we were developing some serious concerns about the US educational system).  It had also become increasingly clear that we were needed in Portland. What to do!?  After some soul-searching, we decided that our 9 year old marriage was stable enough to bear making an exception to our rule.  Alan and I stayed; Dudley headed off to Jakarta alone in January of 1994.  I watched with pain as I realized that my husband and my father—two men I loved and who, I was sure, also loved each other—were saying goodbye, knowing they would never meet again.  I don’t know how they managed not to cry—it is one of the abilities American men learn early (or suffer awful consequences).

Meanwhile, we were all learning what happens when a loved member of the family begins the sad process of dying.  We watched, helpless, as my father declined.  His taste buds somehow went bad, and we searched, pretty much in vain, for foods he could enjoy.  One Sunday morning he developed a longing for crème caramel, imagining that might taste good.  We phoned all over Portland, finally finding it, buying it, bringing it home.  The failure of the attempt was immediately visible on his face, though he tried to pretend, for our sake…He lived primarily on those awful cans of a thick, pink, health drink, its name thankfully lost in the recesses of my brain.

As his strength waned, we realized all the things he’d done, work that we’d taken for granted.  We couldn’t keep up.  The cars got dirty and we didn’t have time to clean them.  We were unable to maintain the front yard to his high standards.  Once, he complained about these failures, special points of pride with him.  I had to explain to him, gently, that he had done so much around the house, that we were unable to keep up with the work—his as well as our own.  He took in this information fatalistically.  And we tried to do better.

My father and I had always loved Christmas, it had been our special time of the year.  As it approached, my mother and I found ourselves dreading it, knowing it was definitely his last.  We struggled trying to figure out what on earth we could give him.  Whatever it was had to be something immediately enjoyable.  He didn’t drink alcohol; he now couldn’t appreciate the candies he’d devoured so enthusiastically his whole life, or any other foods, for that matter.  What was left?  We bought flowers.  I gave him ‘hours of reading’.  But even that proved not to be a very good present—he didn’t much care for being read to, as it turned out.  He would lie on the couch in the living room, decked out in his fancy, satiny, black and gold, Asian lounging attire, as had been his wont for decades in moments of leisure, listening to music or watching us preparing for Christmas.  Usually I could carry on as though all was normal, but one day I remember kneeling beside him, falling across his chest and sobbing pitifully at the depth of my own imminent loss.  He patted me kindly.

When our two families lived together, as we had all done once before (1990-91), he and I would divide up the bills. I gradually took over this task. In retrospect, I should have done this with my mother, so that she could have learned how to do it. I was under the impression at that time—somehow—that my father and mother took care of the finances together (as it had been explained to me as a child). I don’t know if the practice changed, or if the story had always only been words. In any event, I later learned, after my father’s death, that my mother had been totally uninvolved in family finances, and indeed had no clue about how to take care of them. I could have helped her more, had I noticed, had I known…

As his situation deteriorated further, we began to have serious nursing duties. He would have terrible chills. We would run up and down the stairs to the dryer in the basement, heating up the blankets to throw over him to warm him. But…he could not really be warmed. He was on Hospice, and at one point a nurse began coming from time to time, bringing ever-stronger narcotics to blunt his discomfort, and eventually his pain. My father had always considered himself rather immune to pain (he proudly, only half joking, attributed this to his close kinship with Neanderthal), but he had also been afraid of it. I was so sorry that he was dying of cancer, an ailment that includes so much pain.

The many people he had helped throughout his life began coming to visit toward the end, knowing this was their last chance. I took a picture of one such visit, as some of his pseudo-children stood around him in his bedroom. When I took the picture to the small photo shop near our house for developing, the man behind the counter apologized. He said, “I can’t figure it out, I can’t seem to get your father’s face to be the right color.” My father had turned very yellow.

A few days before his death, we called my brother, who lived in Los Angeles, warning him that the end was near.  He’d never really accepted that my father was dying, insisting all along that Dad would pull through.  When he arrived, he went into our father’s room, and could no longer deny the reality of impending death—our father’s yellow, emaciated body before him.  I felt so sorry for him, as the sad sad truth hit home.  He also loved our father deeply.

As the end drew closer and closer, Dad needed more and more painkillers.  I guess it was codeine that I gave him, as he requested it.  No one worried about addiction at this point, and my only regret really is that I didn’t give him more sooner, so he might have had even less pain.  At the very end, my mother sat on one side of their bed, and I on the other, each touching him.  She remembers him looking at a stitchery she had on the wall before him—one that she also made for me and that also hangs on my wall here in Etna, NY.  It says “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.”  I remember him looking at me, with love in his eyes.  I always knew he loved me.  I suppose he was probably actually focused internally at that pivotal moment as he left us.

What did I take home from this experience?  That being there with him, and for my mother and grandmother, was well worth it.  I cherish the time, despite the difficulties and sadness.  We often laughed, shared our thoughts, fully appreciated our time together, never sure how much remained.  And my young son was also able to spend this same time with his grandfather, a man who loved him deeply and expressively.  That too I cherish.

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On Traffic, Corruption and the Law

Posted on 30 March 2012 by Carol

My father was a stickler for obeying the law, a trait he inherited from his equally law-abiding mother.  When she was in her 90s she railed against the impending law requiring the wearing of seat belts.  Yet when the law finally passed in Oregon, she immediately and routinely fastened her seat belt as the law required, without further complaint.  Similarly, my father consistently obeyed the speed limit, seeing obedience to the law as an important civic duty.  I follow in my father’s footsteps, partly out of respect and love for his memory, partly perhaps because I too am somehow inclined to be law-abiding.

Anyway, this inclination on my part leads to recurring and uncomfortable internal states of mind.  I routinely drive along at the maximum allowable speed.  But I realize that in so doing I am interfering seriously with the wishes of the many people inclined to drive faster.  As they zoom up behind me—sometimes tailgating—I imagine that they may be trying to get to work on time, rushing to some appointment, or just in the habit of driving faster than either the speed limit or my own inclination.  I am part of a minority that actually prefers a slower speed limit; that way I can drive with less total mental concentration. 

But I also know I am inconveniencing and irritating others: I am reminded of two men I saw on a big Harley motorcycle a few years ago, driving between Etna and Dryden, NY.  Dressed in black leather, they wielded a  huge American flag, rippling in the wind above them.  They sped around me and my comparatively slow-moving law-abiding vehicle, and aggressively ‘gave me the finger’ as they flew past.  Annoying my fellow citizens troubles me (even those as obnoxious as these Hells Angel types were).  Yet….not quite enough for me to speed up. 

Over and over again, I argue with myself.  On the one hand, I am being rude and thoughtless in inconveniencing others;  on the other, I see the importance and power of ‘setting a good example’, ‘tipping points’ likely to yield a generally safer driving culture, the sanctity of ‘the Law’ [all thoughts that come in a fairly straight line from my father’s and grandmother’s mouths]…and of course, my own personal inclinations.  Sometimes I can pull over and let the cars go by….but rarely.

I do not intend to quit obeying the speed limit.  So sadly I must accept that this mild, if persistent, internal conflict is likely to continue to trouble me for the rest of my life….

I can imagine many of those who resist engaging in petty (or grand) corruption in Indonesia or cheating on one’s taxes in the US, suffer similarly enduring, but more difficult dilemmas—-struggling internally between their desire to follow, and thereby reinforce, both the law and society’s smooth, equitable (or, in my own case, safe) functioning, on the one hand; and likely arguments from relatives and friends that ‘everyone else is doing it’, that it’s ‘stupid’ not to take advantage of an opportunity to profit, that one is unlikely to get caught.  Bad laws (unjust, inequitable, unenforceable) can further erode our interest in obeying them. I imagine the difficulty of continuing to resist, to obey the law, in a social setting that accepts, even encourages illegal action—the discomforts of my own niggling internal traffic dilemmas multiplied and surely intensified by the possibility of personal profit.  

These millions of personal decisions and the resulting societal balance—between obedience to and contravention of the Law—determine the degree to which one lives under the ‘Rule of Law’.  So many other practical advantages follow from living in a generally law-abiding world…at least when the laws make sense!

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Life in the DRC – An Inspiration

Posted on 2 February 2012 by Carol

Again, we watched Al-Jazeera over breakfast.  This time, there was a documentary on life in Kinshasa.  The Democratic Republic of Congo has not been a peaceful country of late; and Kinshasa is infamous—for crime, deteriorating (or non-existent) infrastructure, and poverty.  Yet this program, part of a series called Witness, wonderfully conveyed the power of the human spirit, even within the crushing realities of daily life there.  The centerpiece of the story was a shared attempt to create a symphony orchestra.  The conductor, an unemployed pilot, had no formal musical training.  One saxophone player was a single mother, abandoned by her lover, making her own way in the world and playing the saxophone in her ‘spare time’, with her young son at her side.  She hoped he would become a musician.  Another choir member lived in a crowded room with another woman who preferred watching television to listening to the singer practice.  Many of the stringed instruments were hand-made.  The craftsman had disassembled one of his prized instruments to learn how they were put together.  He found wood at the local lumber mill, had it sawed into reasonable sizes, and then created a cello, by whittling and planing, as needed.  Other instruments were also cannibalized or created from junk.

Kinshasa’s realities were the backdrop for these stories.  One scene showed the conductor selecting a place to perform:  a dusty soccer field, surrounded by dance parlours.  He spoke of the need to negotiate with the dance hall owners to lower the volume while the orchestra performed.  The saxophone player sought a more peaceful place to live with her son.  A dirty, two room house, with crumbling walls and no furniture, was offered, with apologies from the agent for its condition.  He explained that people were pouring into Kinshasa from all over the nation, all seeking housing.  The $40/month and one year’s rent in advance seemed prohibitive in that economy. 

There were street scenes, showing the dilapidated housing, the pot-holed streets with huge puddles, mini-floods, interfering with traffic.  Other scenes showed colorfully dressed women carrying even more colorful buckets of water, indicative of the lack of sewage or piped water.  The saxophone player bathed her son with a sponge, moistened from a bucket.  There were conversations in over-crowded public transport.  The faces of the orchestra members looked exhausted, as they listened to their conductor’s exhortations to practice more.

I have not been to DRC, but I have been to neighbouring Cameroon repeatedly, and seen the difficult lives of people living in cities there.  The lack of piped water, the poor condition of housing, the complications added to daily life by the crumbling infrastructure and poor transportation systems.  I marveled at the willingness, and the strength, of these people to come practice—over and over again—for an orchestral performance, after the frustrations and difficulties working and living in such an environment.  Two singers struggled over the German language in the songs they were to sing in the performance.  Tears came to my eyes as I heard the singer explain, with joy on her face, how she was transported to another place while she was singing, coming back to Kinshasa only when the song ended.

I also felt amazement at the ability of the conductor to persuade these people to sit quietly together and work on a shared effort in this way.  In Cameroon, I encountered what seemed to be a very individualistic approach to work and something of an unwillingness or disinterest in working together to accomplish a common goal (though I wonder too if this might have been that we were trying to work on my goal, not theirs!).  Other anthropologists, with longer experience there than I, have written of ‘acephalous societies’ (communities without effective leaders or heads) in Central Africa, and what I saw in Cameroon confirmed this characterization.  This kind of social structure would seem to render even more difficult such a complex endeavour as making a symphony orchestra work well—yet the conductor was determined, patient, persistent in his efforts and apparently somewhat successful.

The program was a wonderful testament to the human spirit, to the joys people can feel in their work and in beauty, to their willingness to strive even under such difficult conditions to create beauty and meaning.

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