Hit By A Truck

www.jlpowers.net

2007-03-31T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hi, everybody,

my website, www.jlpowers.net, is now finally up and running. It's a work in process and I'll be adding things to it over the next few weeks, but it can be viewed now and it's basically in the form it'll be in. It's powered by blogging technology, so it's also a blog. I don't know if I'll continue this one, as a personal blog, or if I'll just do all my blogging from there from now on. We'll see. Time is of the essence.

But I hope you'll check out my author website. Thanks everybody!

New Cover

2007-03-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know, my novel now has a new cover, due to Barnes & Noble saying they would triple their buy if it got a new cover. (They actually quadrupled their buy.)

Here's the new cover, in all it's glory. Reminds me of the X-Files.

Malcolm X

2007-03-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

To contrast the MLK quotes, here's Malcolm X, quoted from his "Message to the Grass Roots."

"So I cite these various revolutions, brothers and sisters, to show you -- you don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of revolution that's nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That's no revolution....

...A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, "I'm going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me." No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing "We Shall Overcome"? Just tell me. You don't do that in a revolution. You don't do any singing; you're too busy swinging."

And here's my favorite quote from the speech:

"There's nothing in our book, the Quran -- you call it "Ko-ran" -- that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion. In fact, that's that old-time religion. That's the one that Ma and Pa used to talk about: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life: That's a good religion. And doesn't nobody resent that kind of religion being taught but a wolf, who intends to make you his meal."

Although as a pacifist, I dislike the sentiment, I love the quote, "...but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery." This is strong rhetoric.

Curtis Mayfield, "People Get Ready"

2007-03-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

The song I've been listening to over and over and over again, Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready," a spiritual he wrote while participating in the civil rights marches in Washington in the 1960s. The link below takes you to a video of Mayfield singing the song live sometime in the 1980s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXwdjF0qvkM

MLK

2007-03-06T07:59:00.001-08:00

I was reading Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail" last night. He had a lot of really great things to say about the reasoning behind non-violent resistance to evil. He is addressing white Protestant ministers, who were uneasy that a minister might have done things that would lead him to be imprisoned. (These days, the idea of civil disobedience is much more widespread and acceptable but not so in the late 1950s and early 1960s.)

Here were a few quotes I thought interesting. Full text can be found at the following web address: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/letter.html. If you don't have time to read the long paragraphs I've included here, it is the last paragraph that really went UMPH to me....

"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro the wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating that absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. "

"I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relations to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in the generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

"Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrations. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. "

Standing up for Good Books

2007-03-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

This kid rocks....

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/186441.

And I might add that Deborah Ellis is one of Canada's best children's authors.

New Anthem wakes Afrikaner Pride

2007-02-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/world/africa/27safrica.html?ex=1330232400&en=3cc83f93615bee58&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

How Portugal left Mozambique

2007-02-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

I'm at this moment in the Hoover Archives, working on the paper I'm writing about how the South African apartheid government spent 16 years trying to destabalize the newly independent Mozambique. I always knew the Portuguese were bastards and the worst out of all the colonizers (although that should not be interpreted as saying anything good about the British or the French, who were also bastards in Africa) but I just read something that I thought I'd quote here. I already knew that there were only a handful of Mozambicans who had received a college education but I couldn't remember the specifics. So here they are, here's what Portugal left Mozambique with at independence:

"Frelimo was left to run an effectively bankrupt country with virtually no trained people. The illiteracy rate was over ninety per cent. There were six economists, two agronomists, not a single geologist, and fewer than a thousand black high-school graduates in all of Mozambique. Of three hundred and fifty railroad engineers working in 1975, just one was black (and he was an agent of the Portuguese secret police.)”

William Finnegan, “A Reporter at Large: The Emergency-1,” The New Yorker (May 22, 1989): 43-76. Vic Ulmer Collection, Hoover Archives, Box 2, Folder 3.

The Last King of Scotland

2007-02-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

IDI AMIN

Chris and I recently saw The Last King of Scotland, a historical portrait of Idi Amin seen through the eyes of a fictional personal physician (played by the same guy that played Tumnus in Chronicles of Narnia). Forest Whitaker did a tremendous job portraying this paranoid, power-hungry, compelling African dictator, who was responsible for up to 300,000 Ugandan deaths. Definitely recommended.

Albie Sachs

2007-02-01T07:41:00.000-08:00

Albie Sachs is giving talks this week to the Stanford Law School. He was one of the lawyers in the resistance movement in South Africa and he helped write South Africa's new constitution a decade ago. During the apartheid era, he spent time in prison and then went into exile. One morning in 1988 in Maputo, Mozambique--where he was living--he went to his car to go to the beach for a job. Turned out, the South African government had planted a bomb in his car and he was blown up. Lost an arm and an eye. (Ruth First, another anti-apartheid activist, was actually killed by the letter bomb the apartheid government sent to her in Maputo.)

About twenty of us met him in the African Studies Department on Tuesday afternoon and he talked to us about how S. Africa under apartheid was a paradox--ruled by the "rule of law" but the "law" was invidious. Under a "Terrorist Act," the government could detain people up to 90 days without charging them, without giving them legal counsel, and without informing their families that they were, in fact, in custody. After 90 days, they had to release people but frequently the police would re-arrest them as soon as they stepped out of the prison and onto the street. This is what happened to Albie Sachs.

He described the first month in solitary confinement and explained that to keep himself from being broken, he sang songs, a song for each letter of the alphabet. (He rewrote the song "Always" as a freedom song and that became his song while in solitary confinement, and he sang it for us because, as he said, "You're unlikely to ever again hear a justice sing.") He also said the only reading material he was given was a Bible and he got used to reading in columns. When they brought a court order that he was allowed reading material other than the Bible, he had trouble focusing on the non-column writing. But he said that was the most important thing people on the outside did for him. It was the law that allowed him to be detained and placed in solitary confinement (because he is white, he was not subjected to electric shocks through his genitals like so many other detainees) but it was also the law that required police officers to go to the library to fetch books that he requested.

I wrote down a couple of things he said because I thought they were such important concepts:

"When you're deprived of all books, you begin to understand just how precious they are. Book deprivation is like sleep deprivation or human deprivation. Without those books, I proably wouldn't be here today: my spirit would have been so utterly crushed."

I couldn't help but contrast that with Jose Padilla. If you believe his lawyers, his spirit has in fact been crushed by his treatment in prison under our governmental war-time policy that allowed him to be detained for two years without access to legal counsel and three years without being charged with a crime. His lawyers claim he is so traumatized that he is mentally ill. Regardless of whether Padilla is in fact guilty of being connected to al-Qaeda, his treatment certainly violates the spirit of our legal system, if not the letter of the law. (It does seem clear that he has a history of gang-related violence http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2037444.stm). This type of policy reminds me of South African-style laws during apartheid, as well as what happened in Zimbabwe when the white-minority government was trying to suppress the liberation movement. My favorite nun was also detained without being charged, something that led to great outcry on the part of the U.S. and the U.N. She was accused of being a terrorist without having had any connection to the liberation soldiers at all, though she did commit treason during her hearing when she refused to use the word "terrorist" for the guerrilla soldiers. (It was treasonous to use any other word.) (She's the subject of my master's thesis finished in 2001, if anybody wants to know more about her.)

I wish I could go to his talk today because he will be discussing South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which was headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was an amazing act of grace in this country, which could so easily have devolved into civil war after the dismantling of apartheid. (http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/). The thing I find most amazing about the TRC is that it recognized that regardless of your reason for participating in violence (even if it's to liberate a country trapped by racism, oppression, and debilitating violence), it will damage you as an individual.

Blogging the Bible

2007-01-28T17:52:00.000-08:00

I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today about David Plotz, a "not-very-observant Jew," who always tried to avoid the Bible but picked it up one day because he was bored at his cousins' bat mitzvah. He discovered, to his surprise, a graphic tale of woe, vengeance, violence, illicit sex. In his words, as quoted in the Chronicle, the Old Testament is "a bawdy, violent, sexy, jokey, sarcastic, Quentin Tarantino of a book."

In addition to his observations about what he reads, he is finding his faith deepened and, well, actually existing as a result of his reading. He has been asked to do the New Testament and the Qu'ran, but has declined, suggesting that somebody of those faith traditions should do that project.

His blog is at the following web address: http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/

Church Uniforms

2007-01-23T07:55:00.000-08:00

This summer, I noticed all the different uniforms women would wear on their way to church. Not everybody could afford a uniform, but when I went to mass, for example, there were women in these long white dresses (more fitted than a choir robe) with purple and gold sashes and head pieces. My sister Nomkhosi explained that that was their church uniform. You'd see women in blue or green or red uniforms, each associated with a different denomination. Here, for example, is a women who is a member of the Shembe church. (I bought two Shembe belts, one for my mother and one for me, which are similar in design to the headpiece she's wearing.)

Anyway, last night, I was reading Terence Ranger's classic piece on the invention of tradition in Africa and in a roundabout way, it explained the reason why church members would have a uniform. Because the colonial rulers were obsessed with defending their right to rule over the territories they had decided were theirs, and because settlers wanted to be seen as "gentleman farmers" or of the gentleman class, they became equally obsessed with inventing traditions and rituals. These rituals of political and military organizations were a show of power, a way of demonstrating superiority through ritual, a way of indicating class. And Africans caught on in their own way. They were excluded from many of these colonial rituals but they invented their own. Creating your own uniform for the church you belonged to was one method of including these rituals of power into your life.

The A-Bomb

2007-01-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

I'm T.A.-ing for a class on U.S. political policy post-1945, so we've spent the last agonizing weeks talking about the A-bomb. I say agonizing because how many lectures do you really need on the A-bomb? We've now had seven, plus readings for two weeks. Interesting fact that though there was very little opposition to the use of the A-bomb,. conservatives were the ones who overwhelmingly were horrified that it was used. Statistics cited by the prof:

Loss of life

In WWII, Americans 1:100,000; Japanese 1:1000
In Iraq war, Iraqis 1:500, Americans 1:100,000

I can't vouch for the accuracy of these statistics though, like most historians, he should be very concerned with facts being correct. He might have a weird interpretation of those facts but the facts themselves shouldn't be in dispute.

Back in the Saddle Again

2007-01-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

I'm back in physical therapy--for my back this time. And going to an acupuncturist, too. The p.t. assistant, Chris--who has seen a LOT of me this past year--laughed when I admitted that I felt the stretches he showed me in my back, not my neck. Nobody is THAT stressed, he said. Except me. "You're weird," he announced.

This is something my family has known for some time. But I guess it's good to have it confirmed by the world.

Little Miss Sunshine

2007-01-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

Last night, we watched what I suspect is one of the funniest movies of last year--Little Miss Sunshine, a satire that spoofs family vacations and beauty pageants. Although the themes could be distilled to trite sayings--"be true to thyself" or "love yourself" or "blood is thicker than water" etc.--the movie is ultimately a powerful affirmation of familial solidarity, love, and the importance of individuality. The dysfunctional family in the film is made up of a heroin-snorting grandpa kicked out of his retirement home for bad behavior, a nerdy 9-year-old who will compete against Jon Bonet-Ramsay look-alikes to try to win the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, a teen who reads Nietzche and hasn't spoken in 9 months, a husband who has started a wildly unsuccessful business of inspirational speaking about success, a wife at the end of her patience, and an uncle who happens to be the #1 Proust scholar in the U.S. but is fresh out of the hospital after a suicide attempt when his male lover left him for the #2 Proust scholar in the U.S. They are on their way to California for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant and a host of hilarious events accompany them. Unlike movies like Vacation where most of the action and comedy is based on external events that happen to the characters, Little Miss Sunshine is centered entirely around things that happen because of the characters' interactions with each other. But the family, as an entity but also as individuals, changes in both subtle and dramatic ways, as each discovers the truth about themselves and each other.

I felt a bit like I was watching a spoof of my own family, especially when the VW van they were driving broke down just enough that the entire family would have to get out and push it when they needed to start on an uphill slope, then run and jump in while the van was moving. Who, among VW van owners, hasn't had to do that at some point?

Hairstyles of the Damned

2006-12-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

I'm re-reading Joe Meno's punk-metal inspiried young adult novel Hairstyles of the Damned. Anybody can relate to the themes here, regardless of their musical tastes and lack of knowledge about the bands mentioned. That's because this novel is about belonging--or not belonging--and desperately wanting to find a way to fit in, something most of us struggle with long past adolescence. It's also about seeing parental relationships fall apart and wondering whether anybody is happy. Like everybody, Brian seeks belonging through friendships. Like many teens, his parents are among the most and least important influences in his life--we learn this because his mom is virtually non-existent in the story and yet Brian is most vulnerable (and endearing) when he interacts with his father, who is sleeping on the couch in the basement next to Brian's bedroom, or other adults.

During his teen years, Brian seeks belonging through music. During my teen years, I sought acceptance and belonging via religion. Music seems like a better vehicle for Brian than religion was for me. At least, it ultimately doesn't reject him nor does he reject it. For me, religion became untenable/impossible at the same time it became most desirable, leaving me in limboland. For Brian, music is always within his reach, just at the other end of his fingertips. But relationships are consistently fragile things, never quite within his reach.

Like always when I read good books, I wish I'd written it. But as Chris is always reminding me, I don't know enough about music to have written a book exactly like this one. It's true, I will spend the next ten years trying to fill in the missing places, the information that everybody else my age takes for granted. I don't feel bad about it--but the effects of homeschooling and growing up without a TV are consistently revealed in my utter lack of knowledge about anything pop culture whatsoever. Not only my lack of knowledge but also my inability to retain said information about pop culture. I can't tell you how many times Chris has mentioned groups like the Misfits or Jane's Addiction when we're listening to one of their songs and God help me if I remember who it is next time we hear it, no matter how much I like it when I hear it. Anyway, 70% of the time, I don't give a damn about my lack of pop culture knowledge. 30% of the time, that knowledge would truly come in handy--as a writer, a person, and a scholar. Oh, well.

Widow Basquiat, Gnarls Barkley, & Utter Utter Madness

2006-12-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading "Widow Basquiat" by Jennifer Clement, a weird memoir-poetry-novel-thingie about the artist Jean Michel Basquiat's muse and lover, Suzanne Mallouk. It's a fascinating descent into the world of madness, money, heroin, and utter sexual abandon of the 1980s New York art scene. I didn't know a whole lot about Basquiat's artwork before (still don't, to be honest), but it's a tragedy that he made art for only a few short years before he died of a heroin overdose. One passage in the book depicted Basquiat as constantly living in symbol--everything he did, thought, or saw was not simply "symbolic" but carried, assumed, breathed, and embodied symbol: "Everything was symbolic to him. How he dressed, how he spoke, how he thought, who he associated with. Everything had to be prolific or why do it and his attitude was always tongue-in-cheek....He tried to make people notice him, wake them up, by using a symbol out of context. This occurred in his paintings and in his actions. He never took anything as it was" (p. 75). This is exemplified in a moment when he takes Suzanne to the Museum of Modern Art and sprinkles water all over the place to exorcise it because "there are no black men in museums" (p. 38): "It was really quite funny watching him sprinkle water everywhere, making sure the guards weren't watching....He did not think it was funny, though. Jean did it with great seriousness like a priest" (p. 40).

Suzanne cleaned up her act and became a doctor, specializing in substance abuse, especially heroin addiction. (I'm sure her 1980s self would be horrified). Here's a picture of the two of them together in the 1980s: http://www.brink.com/content/2031. And here's one of Basquiat's pieces: http://www.blackrobin.co.nz/ARCHIVE/vol1.2/SELLING/basquiat.jpg. I admit, when I read memoirs like this one, I confess to feeling like I'm too tame to be a true artist! Perhaps I'm just too tame to be a true artiste. ...

Speaking of "artistes" and madness: like everybody else, I'm truly in love with Gnarls Barkley's release "St. Elsewhere" and not just their song "Crazy." (Although if you check out the video for "Crazy" on YouTube, it is far more creative than anything I've seen out there in freaking forever. Oh, and "Crazy" was the first song I heard by Gnarls Barkley, this summer when I was in South Africa. I fell in love with it instantly.) But on the subject of madness, many of Gnarls's songs depict it in terms that you might ironically call poetic justice:

"I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind, There was something so pleasant about that place... Even your emotions had an echo in so much space. And when you're out there,without care, Yeah, I was out of touch. But it wasn't because I didn't know enough: I just knew too much ..." ("Crazy")

I love the indecision in these lyrics: "I prefer peace. Wouldn't have to have one worldly possession. But essentially I'm an animal. So just what do I do with all the aggression? ....Life is a one-way street. If you could paint it, I'd paint myself going in the right direction...But the truth is, I'm only guessing... It's even dark in the daytime. It's not just good, it's great depression. When I was lost I even found myself looking in the gun's direction. And so I've tried everything but suicide... but yes, it's crossed my mind. But I'm fine." ("Just a Thought")

St. Elsewhere depicts the isolation and beauty in madness: "Anywhere you sit you can see the sun. Unfortunately on this island I'm the only one. And same rules apply on a rainy day. Then it's not such a pretty place to be. It just rains and rains and rains on me....Way over yonder there's a new frontier. Would it be so hard for you to come and visit me here? I understand. Well, just send me a message in a bottle then, baby." ("St. Elsewhere")

My favorite song is probably Feng Shui : "And you're welcome to stay. But even your company must complement the Feng Shui....You see, I do not play. Forgive me Father, I was forced out of Feng Shui. A flow as subtle as a summer breeze. Like the whispering winds and the talking trees. Too big to be boxed in, it bobs and weaves. It evolves, it solves, it gives and receives. And everything I say is calculated, appropriated, written, and arranged in Feng Shui."

Okay, so it's not as if Gnarls Barkley isn't getting a whole shitload of attention lately, especially for a first release. But I can't help it. They appeal on all sorts of sensory levels.

Chris and I are going to see "Blood Diamond" tonight. Talk about madness. I'm hoping it's more than Hollywood hype. We were very careful not to purchase conflict diamonds for my engagement ring and our wedding bands...I hope this movie, rather than simply being a misrepresentation of Africa as so much of western media is, provokes people to action, the kind that cripples the diamond industry to the point of taking its own action.

Oprah Winfrey & South Africa

2006-12-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

Oprah Winfrey has just announced the opening of a 40-million dollar school for girls in South Africa that she is sponsoring (and under-writing). She says she tried to help girls in the United States but failed because "I took them on ski trips, we had etiquette classes...you'd teach them how to do their makeup, we'd read and talk about books. And when they went home, they were criticized and beat up because their families said, 'Who do you think you are?'" (See USA Weekend, Dec. 17th, 2006).

Now, I'm thrilled personally that Oprah Winfrey is doing something for young women in South Africa. God knows, they need it. Thank you thank you thank you, Oprah! But if she thinks that it's going to be different for these young women she's helping in South Africa than the young women she tried to help in the U.S., she's got another think coming. Femaleness and blackness are still not treasured qualities, and South Africa is an extremely violent society. Young women are the victims of that violence more often than not, exposed to violence from their families and their boyfriends. She's got her work cut out for her.

The Devil is a Gentleman

2006-12-12T17:29:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I finished J.C. Hallman's new book, The Devil is a Gentleman: Exploring America's Religious Fringe (Random House, 2006). Loved it. Hallman started the book when, out of curiosity, he attended a Vietnamese mass commemorating those who had died during the Vietnam war. A long-lost cradle Catholic, Hallman had gone partly because he found the church's statue of Christ compelling. The eyes were gouged out and replaced with glass replicas. "...they gave the statue an eerie presence..." Much later, he said, he learned that people who come back from war or exile or other bad things "turned their backs on abstract conceptions of God...They resurrected a personal God, brought him back to life. They gave him eyes that looked real" (p. xiii). Hallman soon embarks on a very personal, very historical, very odd exploration of America's "religious fringe." He seeks out a UFO cult in southern California, checks out Scientology, goes to a druid rite and a witches' convention, travels along with fundamentalist Christian professional wrestlers who "wrestle for God," and even attends a Satanic mass, among other groups he visits.

What I found really interesting about the book was the respect Hallman offers for each and every religious variety, regardless of how kooky it seems to outsiders. EarthGoat interviewed him and asked him about how he managed to do this. Hallman had this to say:

" Some of these groups are pretty odd, you can't get around that. But there's something about the world, and about these belief systems, that makes them attractive to people -- they have adherents. I wanted to get at that, to portray these people in such a way that you began to get a sense of what was potentially attractive about them. Partly, too, it was a technical problem: Can you describe a Christian wrestling match in such a way that a sophisticated, skeptical reader came to care about the outcome?" (http://earthgoat.blogspot.com/2006/06/j-c-hallman-interview-devil-is.html)

As it turns out, this was a deliberate choice, one made out of respect to Hallman's mentor, the very dead William James, who wrote a book in the late 19th century called Varieties of Religious Experience. James held strictly to a doctrine of "pluralism," which meant that he believed it was necessary to respect everybody's religious experience. James evidently deeply wanted a mystical experience, perhaps one of the reasons he became a psychologist. Oh, and the other thing about The Devil is a Gentleman--it is also a biography of William James. So if you ever wanted to learn something about the brother of Henry James....

Bookslut also interviewed Hallman. You can access it at the following link:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2006_07_009358.php

An exercise in self-aggrandizement

2006-12-11T19:25:00.000-08:00

I was talking with Dennis Loy Johnson tonight, the publisher of Melville House (www.mhpbooks.com) and MobyLives (www.mobylives.com). I don't want to share too much of what he said, because it will eventually appear on New Pages (www.newpages.com) as part of a series of interviews I've been doing on the publishing business. But I asked him about literary blogs, and what he thought about them, and whether there were too many of them, and what somebody should do if they wanted to write a literary blog that was actually useful and stood out from the crowd and was something that people "in da bid-ness" read. I was struck by his response. He said most literary blogs are dull because the people who write them follow this kind of format: "I went to a literary reading last night and this is how it went and afterwards this is how much I had to drink at the local pub and then this is what I heard on the radio on the way home from the bar." And his response to that is, "I don't know you, and I don't care, so why are you writing about this?"

I think he's right about so-called literary blogs. But in my writerly mode, I sometimes like to read strangers' blogs because I feel like I'm spying on them. By spying on them, I do not mean in any icky, stalker-ish sort of way, although maybe there really is no difference. I don't know--I'm the one doing the spying. What I mean by spying is that I like to read these things in the same way that I like to eavesdrop on people when I happen to be sitting one table over from them in a crowded cafe and I hear one of them say to somebody on his cellphone, "I swear, Ed, he is trying to kill me, I am not making this up!" or "It's my job to count the bodies before they got out." And yes, both of those are things I've actually heard real people say when I just happened to be near enough to hear their conversations. Blogs, MySpace, even Facebook are great ways to get material for books. What are people like? What will they reveal to perfect strangers? And anyway, what did her mother say to her when she brought home the local homeless dude for dinner?

wealth in people

2006-12-09T16:58:00.000-08:00

One of the more confusing concepts to understand about Africa is how power and authority were structured before the coming of Europeans and the imposing of western-style state power over the continent. The explanation for how Africans ruled is suggested by the phrase "wealth in people." What does this mean? And how did "wealth in people" work?

In pre-colonial African society, acquiring vast amounts of material goods was not the way to wealth OR power. This could be explained in part by the fact that Africans did not have very good ways to store surpluses. You could grow extra yams--but what good would it do you when those yams rotted in your storehouse? So rather than putting stock in acquiring things, or basing an individual's worth or power based on his accumulation of material wealth, a man (and it was usually a man, folks, I'm sorry to say) acquired influence, prestige, and authority by acquiring a range of what could be called "dependents." Dependents could be wives or children, but they might also be relatives, neighbors, or slaves. You could acquire "dependents" in any numbers of ways, but once a person was obligated to you (whether because you had given an individual food when s/he was starving, or because you had married a woman, etc.), you could call on their labor at any time. It was the acquisition, then, of these "obligations" that gave a person power. Power was access to labor, vast amounts of labor.

One political theory suggests that the construction of different types of power is based on "scarce resources." In land-hungry Europe, power became linked to territories because this was the scarce resource. Of course, Europeans still needed access to labor, but power was exercised by controlling land itself. Labor was controlled in a particular space; the space was what was critical. In land-plentiful Africa, labor was scarce and much needed. In vast tropical forests, men needed lots of workers to clear land in order to build huts and cultivate crops. Hence, a very different kind of "wealth" emerged, and a very different kind of power was exercised over people.

State power and authority in precolonial Africa was thus very loose, kind of weak, and not territorally based--something very difficult for westerners in 2006 to grasp. How could you possibly rule if territory was not your basis for rule? But pre-colonial kings did, in fact, do just that. Their power was based on a set of reciprocal obligations. They bestowed gifts and favors so that people would be obligated to them. If people were obligated to them, they could call on their labor when needed. If you called on a person's labor, you were obligated to continue bestowing gifts upon them--often, as your dependent, it meant that you fed and sheltered them.

This is a very simplified version of state power in precolonial Africa but I find it compelling. I think it would be very difficult for people in today's world to move to an alternative structure of authority because we are so obsessed with possessions; yet I'm also convinced that our obsession with territorial divisions (i.e., national boundaries) will either fade away or be violently undone some day. Perhaps not within my lifetime, though....

New Car

2006-12-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

On Monday night, Chris called from De Anza College, where he teaches, to tell me he might not make it home in his car--a 1995 Honda Civic which had 10,000 miles when he bought it and is 3,000 miles shy of 200,000 now. It had started declerating on the highway and shaking badly. I told him to drive down Camino Real from San Jose to San Francisco. That way, if the car broke down, he could just take the CalTrain for four bucks instead of a taxi or a tow for $100-500.

Ah, the joys of car shopping. We have found a used Nissan Sentra, which we are buying this morning. I really hate having to make car payments on a car that I know we're going to have to sell in a year and a half when we move to Africa. But you do what you gotta do.

Israel-Palestine

2006-11-30T19:21:00.000-08:00

An astute reader [well, okay, my editor Casey at New Pages, who better be an astute reader since he seems to think the stuff I write is okay :-)] pointed out that Archbishop Tutu thinks "apartheid" is an appropriate term to use for the Israel-Palestine situation. And I would agree that that situation can be seen as analogous, historically, to the kind of barriers and spatial segregation that the South African government erected--with similar religious, political, and ethnic justification going on. And I'm not sure that Palestinians are less bloody in their reaction than South Africans were. After all, Nelson Mandela led an armed revolt. The difference was that Umkhonto we Sizwe (the armed wing of the ANC) targeted military and government infrastructure--never ordinary citizens or government officials, that is, never people.

"Global apartheid", Chris's alarms, and Islamic medicinal amulets

2006-11-28T22:54:00.000-08:00

My apologies that it has taken so long to post this. I promise to be more faithful from now on.

I was talking to one of my former Cathedral students last night, who is now a very politically active student at Vassar. He brought up his belief that the U.S. is now participating in a "global apartheid." I thought about that for a while and realized that despite my strong disagreement with the U.S.'s foreign trade policies (which I think cripple other nations economically and politically), I don't agree. "Apartheid" has very specific historical connotations. To use it as a metaphor for another system that does not meet the criteria of that historic term weakens the political credibility of the people who use it.

Apartheid was a specific historic situation that occurred when the Dutch Reformed Church and the white-only government colluded to create a political theology for rule in South Africa. The political theology stated that God intended for the races to develop separately and to live in separate spheres. Thus, the government could religiously and politically justify the removal of "black spots" from "white areas," thus forcibly removing 1/5 of its African population (the equivalent of 57 million Americans to our population today) and dumping them in the middle of nowhere, with no homes, no water, and no method for survival. It could justify the creation of "Bantu homelands" within its borders--supposedly "independent" nations which were granted no political power and no means of livelihood but where Africans were required to stay unless they wished to be tortured, beaten, or killed within the vast prison system that developed in order to regulate the political system. Lacking South African passports; unrecognized as citizens of any "nation" anywhere in the world; denied basic human rights to work, live with spouses, and provide for their families; and without means of economic survival within the homelands or adequate means within the cities, millions of Africans suffered hunger, disease, and deprivation based solely on their race. Those Africans who were allowed to work within urban "white areas" (granted they left the whites-only areas by 5 p.m. and were safely back in their own ethnically-designated townships) were also systematically brutalized by the system.

As I stated earlier, I believe the U.S.'s foreign trade policies, combined with corrupt governments elsewhere, are unjust--detrimental physically to people in other countries and detrimental to Americans spiritually and morally. But the problem with calling it a "global apartheid" is that it waters down our understanding of injustice--not only under apartheid but also under the U.S.'s system as well. If the shoe fits, wear it. But if the shoe doesn't fit, quit trying to shove the foot in it. To make the word "apartheid" (like Nazism) coterminous with evil and apply it indiscriminately to other problematic political and economic systems, without recognizing that terms have specific definitions and connotations, makes these terms lose their meaning. And they make the people who use them lose their credibility. (Rush Limbaugh's specious coining of the term "feminazi" is likewise an unforgiveably brutal attempt to co-opt a specific historic term that ultimately undermines his credibility and also desensitizes us to the memory of Nazi atrocities. It is simply not funny to suggest that even the most radical feminist in the U.S. is systematically gassing millions of American men to death in concentration camps, then disposing of the bodies in incinerators.)

Thinking about all of this kept me awake for a good portion of the night--that combined with Chris's habit of procrastination. He had to grade papers last night. For some reason I can't fathem, Chris likes to grade in the middle of the night. He'll go to sleep at 10 and set the alarm for midnight. But he won't get up at midnight. Instead, he'll re-set the alarm for 12:30. But he won't get up at 12:30 either. No. He'll reset the alarm for 12:45. This will go on until about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning, at which point he'll get up and grade for several hours and then come back to bed for half an hour, or until I say, "Either you get up and start grading now--or go sleep on the couch until you do get up because I need to sleep!" Chris blames me because he says it's so tempting to cuddle for just "five more minutes." But in his own words "finger never say look yah, finger always say look dey." Given that last night was one of Chris's nights to set the alarm over and over again, I was more restless and wakeful than normal. Instead of kicking him onto the couch, I lay there and thought about stuff instead.

Tonight, I'm reading The Collected Works of Nana Asma'u in English. Nana Asma'u was a Hausa woman, a Muslim, the brother of the Caliph of the Sokoto Caliphate. Because she was a woman, she was not a Sufi, but her brother instructed her in Sufi ways. She became very influential in Muslim Hausa communities and her poetry and hadith (sayings of the Prophet) survived. The chapter I found most interesting was on Islamic amulets. I don't know if amulets developed in the rest of the Muslim world, but in W. Africa, it is a common practice to use the words of the Qu'ran as medicine. For example, you could write a Qu'ranic verse on a piece of paper, then swallow the piece of paper. Depending on the verse, this could have different effects, of course--but the idea that you are ingesting the holy words of God is a powerful one. Often, it is used to ward against evil. Here are a couple of Asma'u's injunctions for the use of the Qu'ran as a medicinal amulet (Suras refer to chapters or sections of the Qu'ran):

"Sura 69: He (may God bless and protect him) said: 'Whoever reads Surat al-Haqqa will be judged leniently by God. If it is worn by a pregnant woman, then she will be protected from all ailments.'"

"Sura 76: It was related by Abu Ubayy ibn Ka'b (may God be pleased with him) that 'whoever reads Suratu Hal Ata 'ala al-Insan will have a reward of Paradise and silk from God. Whoever reads it will have peace of mind and heart. And if he is unable to read it, then he should have it copied, rub it off into water, and drink it. Whoever persists in reading it will have self-confidence, and words of wisdom will emanate from his mouth.'"

Sura 85, if hung on a weaned child, makes the weaning process easier to bear.

Sura 85 is also useful if you need protection at night. If you read it while in bed, you will be under God's protection until the next morning.

I find these things endlessly fascinating--the idea of this very physical use of scripture for both spiritual and physical purposes.

More photos from various trips

2006-10-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

Here's Michael (U. of Illionois) trying valiantly to stick-fight with a Zulu man. He was definitely out-matched. This picture is from Eczabini Homestead, which you can read about in an earlier posting.

Another Shembe baptism picture. This guy is about to go down--that is, under the water.

I accidentally deleted this picture just before posting. It belongs in the virginity testing block of pictures. These were 3 young women walking through the grass just before the virginity testing ceremony.

Shembe baptism photos

2006-10-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

A second one is coming. I mentioned that we probably saw a hundred people get baptized in the 20 minutes we were inside the Shembe baptismal. It was an incredible sight. As mentioned previously, many of the people baptized seemed afraid of the water, of being dunked under, and one of them tried to strangle the deacon who baptized her. I have no idea why they were fearful of the water, though I know that swimming is not a large part of African culture in South Africa.

Virginity testing photos

2006-10-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Singing and dancing pre-ceremony. I unfortunately do not have any pictures of the ceremony, which included different groups of young women competing using traditional Zulu dancing. I am not flexible enough to do traditional Zulu dancing, which involves lifting your leg straight up in front of you until it's level with the ear and then bringing it down to a sudden stomp on the ground, in rhythm or in unison with clapping that's going on. I can demonstrate a very poor version of it, if anybody asks.

Prior to giving performances as a testimony to their decision to abstain until marriage, the young women marched around singing. The two men in the middle are the upcoming Zulu king (son of Goodwill Zwelethini)--he's to the right--and one of his councillors (to the left). You can see that some of these girls are definitely not 16 or older--currently, it is illegal for girls to be tested if they are under 16.

Porto de Oro, Mozambique

2006-09-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

This is just a house I like in Porto de Oro, Mozambique....See below for more comments on Porto de Oro and how I hope we end up living there.....

A bombed out, burned out house in Porto de Oro, reminders of the civil war (which South Africa played a big role in, of course). I'm hoping this is the community on the Mozambique side that Chris and I will spend the majority of our time in. On the South African side, it's Manguzi--but I'd rather live here and travel to South Africa once a week. Since I will be writing about this border community that's formed regardless of war and because one side of the border offers ammenities that the other does not, I imainge this will be a good place to conduct a lot of oral interviews. People will remember what it was like during the war.

Another bombed out house from the civil war...

And a local bar in Mozambique....I love the little "drink local beer" sign...

Here's a local grocery story near Porto de Oro, Mozambique. You'll notice that the building structures are quite different than the Zulu round hut below.

This is a rather spectacular example of a traditional Zulu hut. A local teacher in Manguzi built it and evidently knew what he/she was doing.

Landscape

2006-09-19T20:20:00.000-07:00

Mozambique again. This is Jerel. He's a senior at Yale this year and the best darn Zulu speaker we had in class. He can also be kind of silly. I miss listening to Jerel and Abby bicker.

Mozambique

You can see the fishing traps here in Kosi Bay Lakes. Land is passed down in families, as are these fishing traps, but land is not owned by individuals or families--it is owned by the government and leased (for I think 99 years) to individuals/families. This was the traditional Zulu form of parceling out land and has been continued by the government.

Jerel playing basketball with some kids at the local high school. Zulu Hoops was a program started by an American teacher who taught there for one year as part of a Fulbright exchange program. He hoped basketball would provide the relationship between teacher and students that he needed to actually teach them something in the classroom. I hear it worked.

Mozambique/South Africa border

2006-09-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Here's the sand roads in Mozambique leading away from the South African border. We didn't want to stray off the road because there are still land mines from the civil war all over the country, including in this region. You'll note in the picture below that coming TO Mozambique in South Africa, the road is paved and the road IN Mozambique is sand. Obvious indication of this fact: South Africa is a much richer country. But more interesting, the road in South Africa wasn't actually built until late 80s and early 90s, when the South African government was funding and supplying troops to RENAMO, a paramilitary group intended to destabilize Mozambique. That was all part of the civil war. What's interesting to me is that the road got built only because South Africa was afraid of the commies in Mozambique. Otherwise, they would have left that region pretty much to rot.

Here's the road on the South African side, to the Mozambique border.

Another interesting thing about the border: Africans from all over the continent manage to get into S. Africa from this border point. When we walked down the main street of Manguzi, there were Nigerians and Tanzanians galore hawking their wares.

Also interesting about the border: The Catholic church doesn't recognize it. The diocese of Star of the Sea Mission extends to both sides of the fence. I spent an afternoon talking with the head priest at the Mission and he told me many interesting stories about the community during the Mozambican civil war of 80s/early 90s. The hospital on the South African side is also the only hospital--so Mozambicans cross both legally and illegally for medical care.

And sadly, the HIV rate is extraordinarily high--among pregnant women ages 15-34, the rate is 39.9%.

Abby and Jerel and I saw a really interesting scene in Manguzi, which helped us to understand some of the sexual dynamics going on that might lead to such a high rate. We were trying to get into a particular road, which led to the house where we were staying, but it was blocked by a bread truck. Jerel got out and asked the bread guy to move the truck a little so we could get onto the road, but he had no interest in complying. Slowly, he kept gathering bread receptacles and stacking them in the back of his truck. And then he just started hanging out at the back of his truck, like he had all the time in the world. Another truck was parked between his truck and the store, and the sidewalk ran in between. As he lazily waited at the back of his truck (I'm sure enjoying every moment of making the two abelungus (white people) and one umuntu (black person) wait), a girl started walking down that sidewalk to pass between the two trucks. He leaned across so that he was blocking the sidewalk. She kept her eyes down and tried to move to the side to get around him. He held out his arm to keep her from going. She tried moving under his arm and he wouldn't let her. I was beginning to feel horrible, watching this harrassment of this young girl (probably 16 or 17). She wouldn't look at him. He kept moving so she couldn't pass him. Finally, some other people came and he let them pass and she was able to get around him and keep moving. But I knew I had just witnessed the kind of dynamics that led to a) South Africa's having the highest rape rate in the world and b) South Africa's having some of the highest HIV statistics in the world. It was horrifying to watch but fortunately, it didn't get any more dramatic than that because I don't know what we would have done. I don't know what we could have done. It's a violent society.

A couple more animals I saw

2006-09-02T00:23:00.000-07:00

A few animals I saw at Tembe & Hluhluwe

2006-09-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

Isibongo

2006-08-30T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is my praise name in Zulu:

Izibongo zikaJessica
UNozimanga owafika exhuga
Owayoqhubeka
Noma kunzima noma kubuhlungu
Owashiya udondolo kwaShembe
Emva kwesimangaliso.

She arrived limping
And yet she continued
She kept trying despite the pain
She left behind her walking stick at Shembe
It is a miracle!

This can be added to at any time but this first praise name will always remain for me....

quick post

2006-08-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

I'm back from iMaqongqo (which we called Maclickclick because of the two clicks in it--it's really hard to say) and back from St. Lucia's Bay, where we went for the last two days of the program. Now I'm off to Pietermaritzburg and then to the north coast. If you look on the map where Mozambique and South Africa meet at the Indian Ocean (near Tembe Elephant Reserve), that's where I'll be. So not a lot of posts.

However, if you wanted to see more photos of Shembe or of the Virginity Testing Ceremony, or of St. Lucia's Bay, or of Maclickclick, or Imbali, or any of the other things I've done/been to/etc. you can go to Jessica Horn's flickr website. Jessica Horn is in a lot of the photos, and I'm not in many, but she took a lot more photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessicahorn/

Shembe Part 3

2006-07-23T02:27:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the break. Here's more.

The Shembe church is known for several things.

*worshipping in clearings on top of a hill or mountain, enclosed by a circle of white stones

*a particular style uniform, which you can see in the pictures of the first posting, but I'll include more as unmarried girls wear a different uniform than married women. The women in the picture you see are the unmarried girls. Also, interesting to note, in South Africa, most churches have uniforms. If you are Baptist, you wear one uniform; if you are Catholic, another; Zionists wear yet another uniform etc. and so on (in Zulu, etc. is "njalo njalo"). I don't know enough about the different colors to identify which color is which, but on Sundays (or sometimes Thursdays) you will see many groups of women all dressed alike on their way to church. (Thursday was the traditional day off for women who worked as housekeepers; thus, it is also still a worship day in much of Africa.)

*following traditional customs, such as polygamy

*belief in miraculous healings (on the way up the hill, we saw many jars of vaseline, which were "holy jars" because they had been blessed by Shembe himself and are supposed to impart healing powers on the body)

*casting out of spirits

*they consider themselves Christians, although in a hundred years, they have departed radically from Isaiah Shembe's original vision and most mainline denominations would probably not recognize them as theologically orthodox

*the head of the church has been passed down through four successive generations of Shembe, so they are currently on the 5th Shembe, the great-great-grandson of Isaiah Shembe. His power has accumulated so that he is now referred to as Nkosi. The word for "king" is inkosi so Nkosi without the initial 'i"would be directly addressing someone as "King" if that makes sense. This appellation is also frequently used by Christians to refer to God. I've noticed a lot of bumper stickers around that state "Shembe is the Way."

*njalo, njalo

We did get to see the Baptisms. They have a large pool, and there were several hundred people singing as they lined up to get baptized. The line extended outside the building and down the hill. Inside, the lined up in the pool, going up to the two deacons who were baptizing. Many seemed really afraid of being dunked. One girl leapt out of the water and started trying to choke the deacon who had pushed her under. It would have been funny if her fear hadn't been so tragic and palpable.

Shembe Part 2

2006-07-22T05:20:00.000-07:00

OK, this information is gained second hand, so I'm not going to verify all of its accuracy. Well, my overall information about African Christianity is not second-hand, since that happens to be one of my areas of specialty but Shembe is brand new to me. (Well, not entirely. The Shembe church is also in Zimbabwe, and appears in one of my all time favorite children's novels, A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer.)

An overview of information first. In the 19th century, Christian missionaries were not very successful in their efforts to convert Africans. This had a lot to do with the perception (often times true, sometimes not) that their efforts went hand-in-hand with the colonists. David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, called the Christian mission to Africa as needing to bring 3 things: Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce. Because Africans were perceived as inferior by Europeans in general, and by many of the missionaries who came specifically, the detrimental policies that colonialism perpetrated were often defended by missionaries. This certainly was not always the case. Bishop Colenso, who plays an important role in some of my research, appears to have been cut from a different cloth and worked as an advocate for Africans against unjust policies. I'm being pretty vague here but I'll try to send some links in another posting. You can look him up on the web but most of the links only gives basic information.

OK, I'm running out of time here at the internet cafe, so let me explain what happened to Christianity to make it the fastest growing religion on the African continent in the 20th Century. IN the late 19th century, Africans began to leave the mission churches in growing numbers. They started their own churches, which they called Ethiopian churches, taking the Bible verse, "God will stretch his hand to Ethiopia," as their impetus. Ethiopia, by the way, often symbolically stands in for the entire continent. As soon as Africans started leading their own churches, following a kind of Christianity that made sense with their own customs, and opposing colonialism vocally and dramatically, surprise, surprise, the churches started to grow like crazy, not without sometimes violent conflict with the colonial state.

Isaiah Shembe was one of those men. He started his church in the late 19th century in South Africa, encouraging Africans to keep many of their customs but to follow the teachings of Jesus. Currently, the church has passed down through 5 generations of Shembes as the head, and it seems like the power of each successive Shembe has grown exponentially. I have a lot more to say about that but will save it since I have 3 minutes of time left on my timecard and must go.

Shembe

2006-07-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Long overdue, this is my post about going to Shembe. The month of July is the "holy" month for Shembe, so they were having special celebrations each Sunday during the month. The pictures you see here are dances that different congragations are doing. I wish I could have had pictures of the baptism. Instead, here are some young girls, and below are pictures of the men and of one young man in particular. Shembe is known for encouraging African traditions as well as the teachings of Jesus and the Torah, but I think now there is a Shembe Bible which may contain writings from the different Shembes. More about that in the next post. I want to get this one up without making it too large. I will be writing more in a minute.

Getting Carried Up Stairs

2006-07-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

I still need to post about Shembe, including pictures, but I wanted to include these photos of two of my closest friends on the trip, Holly and Vaughn. The first picture shows Holly carrying me up stairs, which she does when my leg is really hurting or it's the third flight of stairs. I am continuously amazed at this, at how much she helps me. The second picture shows me with Holly (in the middle) and Vaughn, all decked out for Holly's 29th birthday last week. We went to the Golden Horse, a local casino/restaurant, and watched the final World Cup match.

quick post

2006-07-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

I will post a lot more tomorrow, including pictures, but this has been an interesting week.

First interesting thing: I went to a part of Pietermaritzburg that I haven't been to before (and probably should not go back to again). Let's put it this way--I ended up in a sangoma shop. You can look up sangoma if you want to know more but I was just scared to see all the muthi available for me at an asking price and the man at the counter asking me if I "wanted to be a sangoma." NO THANKS.

Second interesting thing: Today, we went to Isaiah Shembe's church, one of the many branches of African Christianity. Like most of the other versions of African-led Christian churches, it broke away from mission churches in the late 19th century because it perceived mission Christianity (not without cause but not 100% true either) as racist, hand-in-hand with colonialism, and out-for-a-profit. And also like the other African-led churches, it has grown like wildfire in the 20th century. I have pictures that I will post tomorrow, along with a lot more information.

other clicks

2006-07-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

For those who are dying to know (maybe Kim would want to know?) the clicks are signified by these letters:

By the way, these sound quite different from each other.

q already described in previous post
c tongue at front of teeth, like "tsk" except you suck backwards instead of forwards
x tongue to the side of your mouth

qh aspirated
ch
xh

nq nasalized
nc
nx

gq voiced
gc
gx

ngq nasalized AND voiced
ngc
ngx

Tongue Twisters in Zulu

2006-07-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

This one is for Erik to try with Laura (and for Chris when he's bored or on the phone with Madison.)

Zulu is a language with 15 different kinds of clicks (really, there are just 3 clicks, but those clicks can be nasalized or aspirated or voiced or voiced AND nasalized). The easiest click for English-speakers to manage is signified by the letter "q." This is the click that we frequently made as kids. If you put your tongue at the roof of your mouth and then "cluck" or "click" it, so that there is a sudden popping sound, you are making the "q" sound. If you make the popping sound but follow it immediately with a strong breath (or air), you are aspirating it and making the "qh" sound.

I learned this tongue twister in class today. It has a lot of the "q" and "qh" clicks in it, so it's kind of fun. We could all do it but we failed miserably when it came to repeating it 5 times in succession quickly although our teacher, uBab'Nthangase, had a lot of fun doing it for us as quickly as possible. Oh, also, you should know that the second to last syllable is stressed in Zulu, so that when you are speaking, your tone comes down on the last syllable. For example, if you were to say the word "shivering," you would say it like this: "shivERing" or "baby" would be "BAby." The other letters may be pronounced slightly differently than we pronounce them in English, but don't worry about it. I can correct pronunciation when I return, if you've actually tried it.

So here's the tongue twister:

Iqaqa liqhaqhazela uqhoqhoqho.

If translated for its meaning, it means "the cat is purring" but literally translated word for word, it says "the cat shivers in the throat."

Don't forget, all those "q" letters MUST BE CLICKED. :-)

If anybody tries it, let me know how it goes.

Picture of some of the women on this trip

2006-07-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

Here I am with some of the other female students in the Fulbright-Hayes Group Project Abroad program. From left to right, they are: Nikki (from U. of Chicago); Abigail (from Johns Hopkins); me (from Stanford); Holly (from U. of Wisconsin); and Abby (from U. of Wisconsin).

Abby is answering her cell phone in this picture. It happened to be Chris, calling for me (a really nice July 7th present, since we had had some trouble getting in contact with each other that week). Of course, I couldn't hear a word he said because the connection was so bad, but I think he could hear me just fine.

I wish Dad could meet Abby (the one answering the cell phone). She often says she should have been a geologist and it's true. She's always thinking about soils and rocks and when we're driving along the road, she's always got a running commentary going on the landscape. She doesn't care if anybody is listening or not but she's talking about it. By the way, she's an environmental historian and is studying how the colonial government conceived and constructed space for blacks in the 20th century, which facilitated the spread of tuberculosis. She's the one I'm traveling with after the program is over--her and Alex, who is not pictured here. We're going to the Mozambique border, near the Tembe Elephant Reserve, and we will be staying with a husband and wife who call themselves Rhodesians (Rhodesia has not existed since 1980 and if you know a little bit about the history in this area, you will know that they are white simply by this fact) and who also speak fluent Zulu. Abby says they're a really interesting and kind couple but a little strange to boot.

Women of Eczabini

2006-07-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

I didn't include this photo before but these are the women at Eczabini Homestead. The woman on the far left is making a grass mat for sleeping and the other two women are making the ropes that hold the grass roof of the hut together.

2006-07-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

A traditional Zulu grass hut. This one is in the position (and size) to belong to the Great Wife, the first wife or the favorite wife.

Holly spreading cow dung on the floor of a traditional Zulu grass hut. We're inside the hut pictured just above this.

Jessica drinking utshwala, traditional sorghum beer.

Eczabini Homestead with Pix following

2006-07-10T07:35:00.001-07:00

Eczabini was actually a really really interesting trip in a surreal kind of way. The man who greeted us in full Zulu costume at the homestead was white but I think he grew up around here and he speaks Zulu fluently. He was extremely knowledgeable but he's also clearly embracing a very New Age lifestyle, picking and choosing from different cultures as he sees fit, because although we saw the sort of "pure Zulu" homestead which they keep as an educational center, we also saw his personal hut, with the Hindu prayers. BUT, in his defense, KwaZulu Natal has the largest population of Indians outside of India, so it actually is a part of the local flavor and culture--however, I would venture to say that Zulus don't adopt it, whereas as a South African white who is living like Zulus in the rural areas, he probably feels more free to include whatever he wants.

However, the actual homestead that is used as an educational center seemed pretty spot on, from what I've read and how our teachers grew up.

He showed us around and told us a lot of really interesting things about how Zulus lived traditionally and how they live in the rural areas now. First, we were shown the cattle kraal, which occupies the central part of a homestead. Nguni cattle were and are extremely important to Zulu culture for a number of reasons.

First of all, they are a sign of wealth. Like many African cultures, wealth was carried in cattle, not in money or other acquisitions.

Second, they are an important source of food, especially milk.

Thirdly, cows are used for making muthi--medicine. Traditional healers frequently use Nguni cows (and they can't be the ordinary European cows imported here in the 19th century by colonialists) for healing rites. The slaughtering of a cow is an important connection to ancesters, and can be a request for help. The use of other cow parts, such as urine or bile, may be used to break curses laid on an individual by other sangomas. (For example, if a young woman is jealous of another woman, she may lay a curse on the other woman. In order to break the curse, the young woman who was so cursed will undergo an important ceremony, involving not only teh slaughtering of an Nguni cow, but also perhaps drinking the bile until the regurgitates and the spirits that are plaguing her leave.) (I have a lot more to say about cattle in Zulu culture historically. When the British colonized Natal, and later Zululand, during the 19th century, they broke the backs of the amaXhosa and amaZulu by destroying their cattle and robbing them of this wealth. It's actually a very very interesting historical study, which you may read more about if you read any of the papers I write in the next year. :-)

Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, since they form the basis of lobola, they are important in making and keeping connections between family. Marriage in many African cultures is a relationship between clans and families. The exchange of cattle from the husband's familiy to the wife's family is a gift so that the children she bears belong to the husband's family. If there is no exchange of cattle (and other gifts), then the children belong to the wife's family. The exchange of cattle is called lobola. In today's South Africa, lobola is a real problem. In the mid 19th century, the British colonial official in charge of Native Affairs, Theophilus Shepstone (who is very important in my research, by the way) set the number of cattle at 11 for ordinary girls and 15 for the daughters of chiefs. That is the minimum number of cattle you can offer BY LAW (though a parent could ask for more.) You CANNOT get married without exchanging lobola. Currently, there is a lot of talk and negotiation to try and change this law but it is complicated. In the meantime, it takes a very long time for people to acquire the money to pay the lobola. (Under the apartheid system, it was virtually impossible. In addition, apartheid laws were designed to keep men as migrant workers living separately from their families so that mining corporations etc. did not have to pay a man a living wage that could maintain a family as well.) Thus, many many many men and women start having their families long before they are married; rarely do they live together--they simply start their families and after ten or twenty years, the man completes the lobola payment and then they get married. I have a lot more to say about this but not now.

OK. So I already knew all of that that I wrote above but at the homestead, we learned why kraals are circular. There are no corners in Zulu culture, according to this man, because corners are where spirits linger. It is also were snakes and other creatures can hide but if a homestead is built in a circular manner, they are less likely to find places where they can curl up. Interesting--I'd like to find out more about that. We learned how the Zulu spread a thin layer of cow dung on the floor (which has a lot of antiseptic properties, by the way), and we saw how the women made the bed mats, and how they thatched the grass roofs, and a typical altar to the ancestors. We got to taste utshwala, which is traditional sorghum beer (has about 1-2% alcohol content, by the way, so Utah state has nothing on traditional Zulu alcohols). (If you're interested in alcohol in history and in African culture, I wrote a paper about this last May, so I also have a lot to say about it historically, as it was used as a means by government to control African labor in the late 19th century all the way through the apartheid era. Thus, protests and riots that centered around alcohol--especially traditional sorghum beer brewed by Zulu women--were part of the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid protests of the 20th century.) Anyway, it tasted kind of like a thick and sort of sour wine. I could really like it if I had enough time to get used to it.

All-right, pictures follow.

Eczabini Homestead with Pix following

2006-07-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

Washerwoman

2006-07-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

This photo is sideways (sorry!!!!). This man was playing Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry" during the entire time I was at the waterfall (see below), which is one of my favorite Bob Marley songs. I gave him a couple of rands before I left. He has a strange little do-dad-guy attached to his guitar or his legs that moves its arms up and down while he plays (you can see it in front). This little girl was really fascinated.

We were visiting local attractions and this is a waterfall just outside of Pietermaritzburg. If you look closely, you'll see that just above the waterfall, a lot of women are washing their clothes. This is something that would probably not be allowed in the U.S. but added a lot of local flavor to the waterfall.

2006-07-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

Here's Holly McGee, locked out of her room and trying to pick the lock with a nail file. It didn't work and she spent the night on the hard floor in my room, with only a blanket and no pillow. Poor Holly. Oh, for reasons my family will understand, I called Holly McGee MOLLY for the first week I knew her.

Some belated photos--here I am in London with Vaughn Love, one of my buddies on this trip. She goes to the University of Indiana. I've been hanging out mostly with her and Holly.

Another 4th of July post on July 7th

2006-07-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

We went to Durban today to attend a VIP party that had something to do with the U.S. Embassy. Everyone there was some sort of diplomat. Don't ask me anymore than that because I don't know. The Director or Ambassador or whatever his title was gave a moving speech in Zulu, which he clearly read, but he was still better than all of us because there wasn't a 15-second pause inbetween each word while he figured out what to say next....

Tomorrow we're going to Ecazabini Homestead (http://www.aatravel.co.za/viewaccom.jsp?code=058148) (http://pmb-midlands.kzn.org.za/pmb-midlands/about/96.xml). I'll try to post pictures from today's party etc tomorrow.

Finally got to talk to Chris today. It's been hit and miss. We had different times, bad phone cards, and, evidently, the wrong phone number. Whoops. He's moving to San Bruno today. Safe travelling, Chris.

Zulu Mass & Virginity Testing

2006-07-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

JULY 3rd

I will try to get more pictures up on the web soon because I wanted to tell everybody about the virginity testing ceremony that I went to last week (the day after my birthday) but I don't have the pictures for it available yet. (Just so that nobody gets nervous, yes, there is some nudity involving breasts but there are no pictures of the actual testing. Besides, I wasn't there for the testing anyway.)

VIRGINITY-TESTING CEREMONY

Just so it's clear to everybody who reads this post--I do not have an opinion on these ceremonies. I am neither horrified nor am I jubilant. I don't know what I think and even if I did know what I think I would refrain from expressing it.

A brief infobite about the mass virginity testing that occurs annually in KwaZulu-Natal: The virginity testing ceremonies began in 1996 as a way to prevent the spread of HIV by encouraging young women to remain virgins until they marry. The 3-day ceremony involves dancing, singing, feasting, and the testing of the virgins, who are then awarded certificates of virginity. The families of the young women who are not found to be virgins are often fined, and other repercussions may occur but I don't know what they are so I can't tell you. Testing starts at puberty. Certainly, I can attest that many of the young women looked like little boys to me--i.e., they had no breasts to speak of. The feasting and singing is a testimony/prayer/promise to the Zulu god of fertility, and it is widely believed that the Zulu are resurrecting an ancient rite. From what I understand, documents from about 300 years ago do not record such a rite--so the tradition appears to be manufactured rather than resurrected.

This testing is voluntary, not mandatory. But it is controversial, partly because of the fine, partly because of the concept, partly because the girls are so young. It is now illegal to test girls who are younger than sixteen--but they certainly did it last weekend from what I observed. I might add that the girls who participate are frequently from Christian families so the controversy doesn't appear to be religious. I saw crosses on several of the girls as well as rosary beads and my professor told me that most Christians who send their girls to be tested do not see a contradiction between their Christian faith and this rite that is dedicated to the Zulu goddess of fertility.

We arrived on Saturday morning--the other Zulu students and my professors here at the university. In addition to the future Zulu king and his brother, we were the only observers there. My professors have been coming to this for years because it is their former student who created/resurrected the tradition. We sat at a long table in a tent in front of the young women and ate fruit and some root vegetables that I can't identify but were potato-like. Evidently in past years, there were several thousand young women there but this year, because of recent controversies over the testing, there were only about 300. But I can say that the 300 who were there--some from as far as Swaziland and Cape Town--were overwhelming enough. I asked the guys who were with us later how they felt about it and they said that within ten minutes, they were saturated with breasts and they didn't even notice them anymore and it become simply normal. Most of the young women wore only a very short white beaded skirt that came to about the middle of their buttocks. Some wore underwear and some wore thongs (I'm guessing they weren't completely naked). Many also wore a necklace of some sort. They looked beautiful. And they didn't appear ashamed even though there were the four men of our group with us. I wonder if it's partly safety in numbers? It was funny to see cell phones tucked in the waists of some girls' skirts.

For several hours, the girls danced and sang in front of us. They gave speeches about how great it was to be a virgin (all in isiZulu or amaXhosa.) They sang about the women who would have sex for twenty cents or less. One group did a competition where they lifted their right leg above their head while standing on their left leg and then stomped their right leg on the ground in rhythm. I can't describe it but I could never in a million years do it. It was beautiful.

At some point, we were introduced one by one. By the way, there are thirteen of us. Those girls went wild over the four men in our midst, especially Jarell, a young African-American man who is admittedly very tall and handsome. They stomped and screamed for him until the young woman who was m.c.-ing the dance/singing competition cut them short. But then she said she wanted to marry him and she ran over to if he would say yes. Jarell was saved by another young women shouting that she wanted to marry him, too, and the second young woman ran up and put a bead necklace around his neck. So he didn't have to answer. It was kind of crazy. Jarell says it was the highlight of his life, when he had three hundred naked women stomping and going crazy over him. Ironic that this would happen at a ceremony celebrating virginity. :-)

CATHOLIC MASS

I went to mass yesterday with my Zulu family. I don't have a lot to say except it was 3 hours long, the singing was incredible!, and everybody noticed I was there because I was the only white face in the crowd. The priest welcomed me specifically in Zulu but my Zulu ain't that great yet because I wondered why three hundred people were staring out the window just behind my head and turned to look myself until my sister Khosi whispered, "He's saying to you, 'Thank you for coming.'"

My Zulu is getting better but the only reason I recognized what was going on was because it followed the same basic order of mass everywhere else, only we sang a lot more. I told my family they would be disappointed if they came to a U.S. mass. They would miss the five-part-harmony.

I'll try to post pictures tomorrow.

Teen Girls in the New South Africa

2006-06-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

June 27, 2006

Tomorrow, I'm doing a presentation in Zulu on the two teenage girls I lived with last week. They're pictured here, getting ready for church. I'm including the presentation here in both English and the Zulu translation. The Zulu translation is not complete--I left out the part about the cell phones.

TWO TEENAGE GIRLS IN SOUTH AFRICA--ENGLISH VERSION
I really like teenagers so I decided to do my presentation on the two fourteen-year-old cousins who live together in my Imbali family, the Nene family.

When I first arrived, the two girls were busy in the kitchen, making dinner. Throughout the next two days, I was impressed because it seemed like every time I saw them, they were doing work of some sort—sweeping the floor, making food, helping uGogo. In talking to other students, I found out that they were similarly impressed by the teenage women in their houses. So I decided to find out what daily life was like for teenage women in Imbali, whether these young women were really as responsible as they seemed or if there was more going on under the surface. I also was curious what they thought about men, and what their thoughts were on the noticeable absence of men in the community.

NomKhosi is fourteen years old. She has lived with her aunt’s family since Kresh, nursery school. She says she lived with her mom when she was little but her mother brought her here to live when she went back to school. She visits her mom on the weekends. Her father is with another woman and has two other children. uZinzile is thirteen, almost fourteen. She lives with her mother and grandmother, although her mother, Elizabeth, is only home on the weekends. During the week, uMama uhlala e-Msinga, where she works.

Nomkhosi: “I hate growing up sometimes. The changes in my body—periods, I really hated. I just started last year. It is not always regular. This month, I was really surprised.”

uZinzile: “Sometimes I think I might be pregnant but how can I get pregnant when I don’t do anything wrong?”

I pressed them on this issue and asked them about “boys.” They both started to giggle and blush and then they started to tell me about the parties they go to where they are VIPs—nomKhosi said, “It’s nice to be pretty,”—and their boyfriends, who are much older than they are but have “stacks of money,” according to nomKhosi, “but it’s not about the money.” The parties they go to are with lots of their friends, but a lot of older people—especially older men. Both of them have “boyfriends” who are twenty years or more older than them.

This is consistent with the epidemiology of HIV in Africa—older men with younger women, often twenty or more years younger than them. The girls call these men “sugar daddies.”

“There’s these guys worrying us all the time,” says NomKhosi. “They’re very irritating. And they don’t ever give up.”

Neither one of them wants to get pregnant right now. “If I got pregnant now,” says NomKhosi, “my whole future is stopping.” They claim that none of their friends are pregnant but they know girls their age who are pregnant.

They both say growing up is stressful. They have homework and exams and they’re helping out Grammy. Life for boys is easier, they say. “We have to be inside the house and they can come back at eleven at night and they don’t get in as much trouble. I guess it’s because our parents are worried about us,” says Khosi.
But Zi chimes in. “It’s because they don’t trust us.”

As an example, they talk about cell phones. They both want cell phones badly because their boyfriends can’t call them at the house. Their parents do not know about the boyfriends. Their parents tell them that friends can call them at the house, so why do they need cell phones? Cell phones are for secrets.

But Zi says they get in trouble when friends who happen to be boys call them at the house. “So you do what they say and you still get in trouble.”

Zi says if she had a cell phone, she’d learn a new language and write everything in the new language so her parents could not read the messages she sends.

They feel their parents are way too strict and do not let them do enough. They spend a lot of time in the house. Khosi says, “You mustn’t always be good—but that’s bad because then when you’re bad you’re really bad.”

IZINTOMBI ZAKWANENE

Ngithanda abantu abasha. Ngakho ngafuna ukwenza i-project yami ngabantu abasha. Ngakhuluma nezintombi zakwaNene, izintombi zomndeni wami Imbali. Izintombi ezimbili uNomkhosi noZinzile baneminyaka engu-14.

Uma ngafika izintombi zasebenza kakhulu. Zageza izitsha, zawasha izingubo, zashanela phansi, zapheka ukudla. Njalo ngazibona zisebenza. Izinsuku ezimbili zasebenza. Abafundi abanye bathi izintombi zemindeni yabo nazo zasebenza kakhulu. Sabuza, “Amadoda namabhungu ayephi?” Ngazibuza imibuzo inzintombi ngelanga lesithathu. Saya ekamelweni lami ngazibuza ngezimpilo zabo. Bafunisisa ukukhuluma ngamadoda kakhulu.

uNomkhosi wahlala nomdeni ka-anti kusukela efunda enkulisa. Phambili kwalokho wahlala nomama kodwa umama wakhe wabuyela esikoleni bese uNomkhosi wafika ekhaya ka-anti. Uvakashela umama ngempelisonto. Ubaba wakhe unenkosikazi futhi izingane ezimbili. uZinzile uhlala nomama nogogo nodadewabo noNomkhosi. Umama wakhe, uElizabeth, usebenza kude ekhaya eMsinga futhi umvakashela ngempelisonto.

uNomkhosi wathi, “Ngizonda ukukhula. Ngizonda kakhulu ukushintsha komzimba. Ngakuqala ngonyaka odlule kodwa akubuyi njalo bese ngikhathazekile.”

uZinzile wathi, “Ngicabanga ukuthi ngikhulelwe kodwa ngingakhulelwa kanjani uma angilenzi icala?”

Ngazibuza zakhuluma kakhulu. uNomkhosi noZinzile banamadoda amadala. Amadoda la anemali kakhulu kodwa Khosi wathi, “Asiwathandi amadoda ngoba enemali.” Ngobani? Abayazi imphendulo. Izintombi eziningi zinamadoda amadala nemali. Bawabiza “sugar daddies.” Kodwa uNomkhosi noZinzile abakhulumi nomama no-anti nogogo nobaba ngamadoda noma nge-HIV noma ngokukhulelwa. Bathi izintombi eziningi azingakhulumi ngamadoda nobaba. Abafunanga ukukhuluma nge-HIV kodwa bayazi ngokukhulelwa. Banabangane abakhulelwe. uNomkhosi noZinzile abafuni ukukhulelwa manje. “Uma nginegane manje,” kwasho uNomkhosi, “impilo yami ingama.”

Second Try Birthday Picture

2006-06-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

June 23, 2006

Here's the picture that didn't post earlier. Hope this time it goes through. For those of you who notice, the cake is chocolate. But fortunately, they had a non-chocolate cake as well.

Another birthday picture

2006-06-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Birthday In South Africa

2006-06-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Friday, June 23

I'm here in South Africa for ten weeks, learning Zulu and doing research on 19th century Zulu history.

I spent my 32nd birthday in a township named Imbali in South Africa, trying to learn Zulu. For the entire week, I lived with my Zulu family--a family of women, pictured here. Families headed by women, or consisting mostly of women, is quite common in South Africa. Most of the other students were similarly struck by the lack of men in or around the township or in their families.

The four girls you see in the picture on the right--my sisters (odadewethu)-- woke me up at 6:30 by singing Happy Birthday in Zulu. I took this picture on Friday evening, just before most of us went to a braai (a barbecue) for all the Zulu students and their host families. There, around 80 Africans and American students gathered in the living room and sang happy birthday to me in English, isiZulu, and amaXhosa.

My Zulu mama--uElizabeth wakwaNene, pictured on the left--works in a town far from her home. She is gone Monday through Friday, so the four girls (two daughters and two nieces) stay with uGogo (Grandmother). I was amazed at how responsible the two oldest girls were and how much work they had. Gogo is old and like many women her age (72) spends a lot of her time in bed, especially in the winter, when it is cold. (In these unheated houses and buildings, it is very cold!!!!). Gogo is a lovely lady and we had a lot of funny moments--like the time I gave her a piece of candy and she accidentally chewed it with the paper on, not realizing it had paper on it. She finally spat it out, mumbling that it had no taste, and the girls (udadewethu, my sisters) just laughed and laughed and laughed.

My friend Bukhosi (who Matt introduced me to) gave me my Zulu name, which is uBuhle. It means Beauty or Goodness. Names are given to signify what parents (or in this case, friends) hope for the person. My family called me noBuhle, which actually means Queen of Beauty. They called me this because I usually introduced myself as "igama lami nguJessica kodwa igama eliZulu nguBuhle", which, when shortened, becomes uJessica noBuhle (Jessica and Buhle). But noBuhle has a special meaning as well.

My teachers call me Buhle as well.

Thanks, Bukhosi! I'm enjoying my name.

Exploring San Francisco

2006-05-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

My little brother Matt and his fiancee Annie visited me this weekend. I dragged them all over the city and then some, exhausting myself and them in the bargain. But I guess I surprised myself that, only a few short months after moving here, I can already play tour guide. Maybe San Francisco is an eminently tour-able city. Here's a few pix of the three of us.

Back in the Saddle Again

2006-04-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

3 1/2 months after getting hit by the truck, I'm beginning to hobble around a bit, assisted by crutches. Of course, beginning to walk means more expectations placed on me as an independent, intelligent, hard-working person....PANIC. It's amazing how much dependence you gain in just a few short months, when there are so few expectations placed on you as an individual.

This and That about Academics

2006-01-23T23:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had a visit from Simon. Since I can't get around very easily these days--somebody has to drive me, get the wheelchair out, push me around, etc.--it's nice to have visitors instead.

Incidentally, Simon is in my "cohort." When I was visiting various graduate schools last Spring to decide which one I would attend, they all made a big deal about the "cohort." Basically, your cohort consists of other people who enter your Ph.D. program at the same time. Most of the universities talked about how they gave the same funding to all students so there was no competition among the grad students and they could instead help each other achieve greatness. But regardless of why they emphasized it, they talked about it a lot, like we would all be best friends, inseparable, bonded for life.

As a sidenote, I hate that word, cohort. I hate it because everybody used it everywhere I went, from coast to coast. It frustrated me because I wanted to see difference, not sameness, in the programs to which I had applied. I wanted to choose a place that was best for me--but if they were all alike, why did it matter where I should go?

I think I came to Stanford because it was the only place that didn't emphasize the word "cohort" over and over again during the visit.

As another side note, since coming to Stanford, I have realized that I will take a total of two classes with my "cohort." Then I will never see these people again until we are writing our disserations, at which point a few of us might choose to form disseration-writing groups to help each other sound alike by using "in" words, like "subaltern" or "teleology."

So. Simon came to visit. It was a lovely visit. Anyway, Simon and I talked a little bit about this graduate school experience. Like most people, Simon assured me that my desire to have a life outside of graduate school is, well, dramatically unrealistic. But I'm going to cling to my dream, no matter how many hours of sleep that dream deprives me of. By "having a life," I don't mean that I want to go out drinking and carousing around San Francisco four or five nights a week. I just want to keep my art alive: that is, I want to be able to write a couple hours a day without drowning in my other work.

We discussed the German system of tertiary education, which evidently works on a lottery system. You earn your Ph.D. and write a junior dissertation, and then you write a senior disseration, and once you've published 2 or 3 books, if you're really lucky, you'll be that one person out of two or three hundred who gets a full professorship. If you're not lucky--maybe because the person who was your advocate died--you find yourself 40, educated beyond unemployablity, and on the state dole. "The state is beginning to see that this system is not the most advantageous one for them," Simon said. So recently, the state insistuted a system of "junior professorships," in which a person could teach for three years, and then teach for another three years. But at the end of that six years, what did they find? They found that those "junior professors" still faced the same expectations and lottery that all other professors faced, only they hadn't had the time to write their senior dissertation or get books published, so they were--out of a job.

I'm not sure I like our system in the U.S. but the great thing about it is that there are non-academic jobs for folks with Ph.D.s.

First Week Back At Graduate School

2006-01-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

The day after Christmas, while I was crossing a street in central El Paso, an F-150 truck took me out. I don't remember anything for about ten minutes previous to the accident but a witness told me that I broke the truck's headlight, tumbled up onto the hood, then flew forward 15-20 feet. "You looked like a ragdoll in the air," she said. The guy in the car kept going and by the time he stopped, she said, he had hit me again with his bumper and my head was under his wheel. I probably wouldn't be alive if he hadn't stopped, and it's not clear if he stopped only because two witnesses blocked him in with their cars, believing he was about to keep right on going.

I woke up in the ambulance, strapped to a board. I asked, "What happened?" and the paramedic explained, "You were hit by a truck." I said, "I think my leg is broken," and she said, "Yes, yes, it's OK, we're taking you to the hospital." "Has someone called my dad?" "Yes, your family is already there." OK.

I have never drunk myself into such a stupor that I don't remember things, nor have I ever used the kind of drugs that involve memory loss or provoke surreal experiences. But I think I now have a good idea of what doing so might be like the morning after.

This is about the time when I should probably insert that I am currently enrolled at Stanford for the first year of a Ph.D. program in History, African History to be precise. There were times during the fall quarter when I felt like I had been hit by a truck, intellectually speaking, but I never in my life dreamed I would have a conversation with my advisor that included joking about my Vicodin-enhanced study sessions over the assigned readings for the week.