Voice of AmeriPlayers

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Karen Mathieson

Workers often arrive in groups for Volunteer Ventures at Metro’s Native Plant Center, ready for a hands-on experience in natural area restoration. Some are families imprinting kids with the habit of helping, others simply gardening friends. Some represent a formal company program, or are students fulfilling a class requirement. One recent Saturday, however, brought a cadre of three women and two men as unusual as a five-petalled trillium.

This group interacted with both the casual camaraderie of longtime pals and the intense communication style of a family as they transplanted seedlings in the NPC greenhouse under the direction of Metro volunteer coordinator Bonnie Shoffner. All were volunteers new to the facility, and three of them were simply visitors to Oregon, but they pitched in as if they had a personal stake in the growth of every rootlet. They were, in fact, doing what comes most naturally. They were members of the AmeriPlayers.

It was in 2003 that Melissa Blackall wrote a collection of theatrical vignettes inspired by her first ten months in the National Civilian Community Corps. The NCCC is a branch of AmeriCorps, which since 1993 has given more than a half-million Americans ages 18 to 24 a way to put their ideals into action. In line to become an NCCC team leader for 2004, Melissa had a question for the powers-that-be: Could she audition a special team, one that would still meet the required individual service commitments of 1,700 hours but also stage her play as they served their country? Faster than you can say “what a great recruiting idea,” Melissa was assembling a troupe.

Among their tasks in four rounds of postings, the AmeriPlayers hoisted hammers with Habitat for Humanity in Austin, responded to a hurricane disaster in Washington, D.C. and coached a kids soccer team in Denver. Through it all, the team formed, stormed and performed like workgroups everywhere, or at least workgroups in which participants are jammed together 24/7 in rapidly changing, generally exhausting circumstances. Starting in the second round, they presented Melissa’s assemble-to-suit vignettes, which led to a third-round road tour of community centers, schools and NCCC campuses across America.

When it was all over, eight of the eleven AmeriPlayers decided that while the show had closed, their ensemble had a life of its own. They committed to an annual reunion, and the ensuing years have brought them together in Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Ohio as well as Oregon. AmeriPlayers Maria Campbell, Nicole Dunn and Faith Whitacre couldn’t make it to Portland this year. Those who did later shared email reflections on the value of their far-flung relationships, how their collaboration in AmeriCorps affected their lives, and why they spend part of every reunion weekend volunteering in their host community—in places such as Metro’s Native Plant Center.

Melissa Blackall, Boston, Massachusetts: Relationships are my number one priority in my life and my AmeriCorps friends are what I call Soul Friends. Friends that enrich and feed my soul. . . . Life in AmeriCorps was my ideal. Traveling in a group while giving back to a community and with the creation of AmeriPlay I was also able to be creative and be a storyteller. Since I completed my two terms, I have been consistently trying to recreate this lifestyle. While it’s been challenging, I have managed to do it. I’m now a professional photographer / filmmaker focusing on exploration of relationships and environmental issues. . . . Volunteering is a great to reconnect to our roots as a group. It’s also a valuable experience to share and a way to connect to the local community that we are visiting.

Jordan Davis, Portland, Oregon: We all have come to love each other so much that we fulfill many roles in each other’s lives. Kimi and I have the added benefit of both being in Portland, and our friendship has grown because of that. . . . My current career may not be a direct result of AmeriCorps, but the experiences there donated to the will, flexibility, and confidence that put me here today. (Currently serving as 2nd Mate on a Large Passenger Vessel in SE Alaska and Baja. Not bad for a kid from Indiana.) . . . We volunteer as a remembrance and homage to what brought us all together in the first place. . . . Plus, it’s nice to have some structure around an event like a reunion. Otherwise we may just sit around in pajamas all weekend and never leave the house!

Jeanna GunderKline Breza, Yellow Spring, Ohio: It’s amazing how we’ve grown together. I liken it to being akin to a marriage as we continually adapt, change, and grow in our own personal lives and we don’t carry the expectation that each person stay the same as they were in 2004. Reunions seem to consist of a balanced amount of reminiscing, wistfulness of years past, but also where we are now and our future goals. We ask about each other’s families, relationships, and jobs. . . . Deciding to apply to AmeriCorps was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I made life-long friendships and gained perspective about myself and what’s most important in life. . . . A service project brings out a different side of a person, rather than just talking with them in a living room. We like to keep the spirit of AmeriCorps going by continuing to volunteer.

Kimi Fey Powers, Portland, Oregon: Over the course of 10 months, we were together 24 hours a day. This is a rare dynamic that lends itself to a unique intimacy. . . . (The nature of AmeriPlayers relationships is) dynamic, supportive, challenging, fun, silly, serious, golden, lifelong. . . . . My year in AmeriCorps changed my life. My world is bigger, broader. ‘Community’ isn’t just a buzz word anymore, it’s all around me, it’s in me. Before AmeriCorps I had friends and family. Now, I have a community of service-minded kindred spirits both here in Portland, and all across the country. I’m more invested in my surroundings. And I have more confidence to take initiative in projects that strike my fancy. . . . Whoever hosts the reunion finds a service project for the team. It brings us back. It’s fun. It’s renewing.

Mike Tager, Baltimore, Maryland: We’ve gotten together every year because it’s easy to lose touch with people, even people you love, because time and circumstance dulls everything. If there’s something you care especially much about, you make sure to keep bonds tight. . . . I can trace the path of my life directly to encountering (AmeriCorps in) my senior year of college in Alabama during Alternative Spring Break. The career that I’m in, the way I look at life and service and the relationships I’ve built since then—all of those aspects touch upon my experience in AmeriCorps. . . . I like to think we do service projects because that’s just what we do. I know I still volunteer (Habitat for Humanity and the Ronald McDonald House) here in Baltimore. My volunteerism is just kind of a part of me now.

 

 

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The Experience of Wisdom

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Karen Mathieson

Human wisdom cannot be gauged with the answer to a story problem. Assessing it is more like reading a lifelong take-home exam.

Over the past three decades, the very definition of wisdom has been hotly debated among sociologists and other people who study people. One prominent contemporary theory holds that wisdom is expert knowledge, downloaded over time like culturally appropriate software to be dispersed in the service of life planning, management and review.

Other theories make a distinction between practical wisdom—through which qualities such as leadership, empathy and social initiative make the world a better place—with that of transcendental wisdom, which draws on gifts such as intuition, occupational creativity and flexibility while moving beyond a subjective, ego-based view of reality.

Monika Ardelt, a professor of sociology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, has built upon a theoretical framework from the early 1980s to form her own, three-part model. Ardelt maintains that, “The moment one tries to preserve wisdom (e.g. by writing it down), it loses its connection to a concrete person and transforms into intellectual (theoretical) knowledge.”

Ardelt takes her cue from the way lay people in cultures all over the world have always been able to figure who among them has the best grasp on living well. “Wisdom,” Ardelt maintains, “is in fact a property of individuals.” Wisdom must be realized—fully experienced—in order for it to move beyond being simply an excellent idea.

Sociologists on the pragmatic expert knowledge tack quantify wisdom skills by analyzing solutions to hypothetical situations. Ardelt assesses the presence of wisdom in her subjects across three dimensions—the cognitive, the reflective, and the affective.

Combine a desire to know the truth with a deep understanding of life. Add to this an ability to explore different perspectives on events, along with a capacity for self-awareness and other interior work. Stir these gently into a heart filled with compassion. (See Ardelt’s wisdom page for a chart of the model, and get a sense of yourself on the wisdom spectrum with an online survey.)

When in need of sage counsel, we may hold questions similar to those in “My Funny Valentine,” as posed by Lorenz Hart: “Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you wise?” Setting physiognomy aside, we can draw on Ardelt’s work when deciding whether to trust the advice so freely offered by friends, family and co-workers. Does the person:

• Guide you to explore the meaning of your quandary?

• Suggest you step back and look at things from other viewpoints?

• Seem to genuinely care about you and your particular needs?

One need not be 40 or older to be wise, but it helps. As decades pass, myriad opportunities arise to develop the cognitive, reflective and affective abilities Ardelt finds in people who reach old age with equanimity, perspective, kindness, selflessness and self-understanding intact.

“Wisdom teaches us the art of living,” Ardelt has written. Like art, wisdom is a human capacity that can be described in writing yet never truly learned there. But then, we knew that all along, didn’t we?

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Pumping Good Advice

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Karen Mathieson

In the midst of a dank February, Victorinox developed a catarrh. Whenever my little red wagon rolled to a stop—think of a Swiss Army knife on wheels—I heard a troubling catch in its breath. On a long errand run, I acquired the prescription in a long-necked bottle, then drove through pounding rain to decant the automotive wonder drug at a service station.

Now, Oregon is a place where one may not pump one’s own gas. As I stepped out to administer the dose, an attendant was already unfastening the cap of the tank. “I need to put this in first,” I said, and then observed with puzzlement that the inner foil seal on the container had already been pierced. Wet, cold, tired and ravenously hungry as I was, for a moment all common sense departed. I moved toward the open gas hatch.

The attendant didn’t shout, “Lady, you’re out of your mind!” He simply lifted his hand from the pumping hose and took two long, sidling steps away.

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll just stand over here.”

I started to laugh. “You’re right,” I responded. “Who knows what’s in here now?” Then I handed him my credit card and got back in the car.

The vexation of fetching another bottle to banish moisture from the fuel system quickly faded, helped along by a good meal. What keeps replaying on my internal video cam is the highly effective body language and vocal tone that young man used to make his point. He moved slowly, gracefully, maintaining eye contact and keeping his expression pleasant. He spoke gently, as one would to a child toying with a potentially poisonous snake. With a slight tilt of his head, he let me in on the joke.

Clearly, this is a person likely to go through life with eyebrows unsinged either literally or metaphorically. I would be grateful to have even half that level of Jedi master movement and tone at my command.

In a culture of dissing and dissent, where did he gain such skill with interpersonal communication, a hallmark of high emotional intelligence? Were there parents or teachers who modeled respectful and direct interactions? Did he hang out with a group of friends who brooked no bullying, and who found ways to express humor other than brutal sarcasm? Is he just naturally a kind and funny guy?

Maybe he’ll be there the next time Victorinox needs a fill-up. I’d like to learn his name.

 

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Decisions, Decisions

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Karen Mathieson

The Sorting Hat has trouble placing Harry Potter. In the Hogwarts home of valor and chivalry, Gryffindor? Or should it be Slytherin House, a place of serpentine cunning and ambition? Harry asks for Gryffindor, and that settles things—until he shows an unnerving gift for speaking with forked tongue. The very young wizard consults headmaster Albus Dumbledore, who tells him, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Thereby hangs J.K. Rowling’s marvelous tale, and much of what social psychologist Sheena Iyengar addresses in The Art of Choosing. Iyengar makes clear that our choices in life are conditioned not only by natural endowment, but by forces pervasive as the air we breathe: culture, environment, and lest we forget, the related art of salesmanship.

Among their many studies, Iyengar and her colleagues have researched how a culture such as Japan’s guides one toward choices on behalf of the collective. This produces societies in which people receive the benefits of “freedom from” various challenges while also experiencing limitation of personal choice to some degree. Cultures like that of the United States, where the rugged individual is a primary role model, stress “freedom to.” At an extreme, such a culture can encourage profound suspicion of anything that would tamper with unlimited choice, even if there are clear benefits to one’s own community.

As a professor at the Columbia Business School, Iyengar does have a certain interest in understanding the way choice affects the bottom line. Heard of the jam study? Iyengar designed that one, which showed people will buy six times more from a yummy product line after selecting tastes from just six jars than after choosing from an array of two dozen.

Wonder why that company 401K retirement account languished? It’s likely an employer offered too many mutual funds, rather than too few, so that sorting the welter of investment options became a task permanently deferred. An approach to dealing with such paradox, Iyengar suggests in The Art of Choosing, is to consult the trusted expertise of others when and where we need it, and to focus on fully understanding what interests us most. After all, even Harry outsourced the repair of his glasses to Hermione.

At times, one’s freedom to choose dwindles with a toss of the genetic dice. Completely blind since her early teens, Sheena Iyengar writes movingly about people in constrained situations seeking ways to exercise the agency of choice. Iyengar’s book also makes fine use of visual metaphor and of images she has never seen, because many years ago she chose to learn the language and culture of sighted people in order to become a better communicator. That it works so well is a tribute not only to Iyengar, but to the collective of friends, family and colleagues who have helped her engage personally and professionally with everything from her home décor to research on the origin of fashion trends.

When Harry Potter hears slithering in the walls of Hogwarts, he is scared but resolute. Thousands of pages (and many movie hours) later he faces the greatest choice of all, but the whole time he’s been making decisions based on what he believes to be right and true. The book of our own lives can be just as coiled and complicated a narrative of choice. We don’t have Dumbledore around, but we can still hear Sheena Iyengar talk about being “choosy about choosing” in our mere muggle’s world.

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Message and Medium

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Karen Mathieson

The phrase grated the moment I heard it. “Digital immigrant,” the IT expert said, dropping its companion “digital native” in the next breath. I absorbed my characterization as sadly deprived of thumbs born to text, and accepted that to some extent he was right. A woman who learned her way around a qwerty keyboard with a manual typewriter was never a girl with a cell phone tucked beneath her pillow instead of a baby tooth. In the broader sense of a stereotyping metaphor, however, the guy was dead wrong.

“But how can you remember phone numbers when they takes so long to dial,” said the Ma Bell representative, urging me to upgrade to Touch-Tone nirvana. “I don’t have any trouble with that,” I responded, “but when it’s free, I’ll sign up.” At 25, I was already a skeptical tech consumer. If there’s a clear personal or professional benefit, if it suits my style, and if the price is right, I will cheerfully incorporate new tools and skills into my daily life. Otherwise, thanks but not interested.

And that’s why I don’t identify myself as a digital immigrant. What I am is a digital adopter. I’ve been living here all along as my writer and reader’s world has shifted from hot type to cold, and then to dancing pixels. It’s been fascinating to watch the evolution of communication media—and to sense my brain adapting to the ones I choose to use. So when I acquire not one but two digital habits in the span of a few weeks, it seems worthy of a blog post.

The first choice was to cancel the daily newspaper. That came with a pang reminiscent of ubi sunt poetry on the transience of life, namely mine as a former print journalist and loyal hometown reader. Where are the joys of hearing a paper thump the front door of an afternoon, and retrieving it to read the previous night’s work under that precious byline? Whither the pleasure of clipping recipes, and travel guides, and intriguing reports on science, history or the arts?

While the subscription to The Oregonian was still running, I started cozying up with coffee, laptop and OregonLive in a predawn December hour. Then I’d unwrap the day’s paper and cross-check to see what I’d missed. Virtually nothing it turned out, and much had been gained: A reduction of negative input from headlines about the latest bloody, random sniping. Freedom from remorse about the environmental cost of newsprint, no matter how faithfully recycled. The ability to scan several days’ worth of articles on a topical tab. Enhanced proficiency with Sudoku, thanks to interactive game features. When OregonLive starts charging, I’ll pay. Until then, I’ll read on for free.

Digital choice number two was a subscription to Ojolie animated online greetings created by a Danish artist and her IT whiz husband. Soon I was blithely dispatching e-cards with get well, bon voyage, thank you and birthday sentiments, as well as holiday wishes. Each spoke to the personality of the recipient and evoked the nature of the relationship or the memory of a shared experience. I used the space for personalizing to write more than I ever used to scribble in cards. While spending far less money (sorry, USPS and Hallmark), I gladly invested time to consider the music vibe as well as text and graphic content. Soon, delighted emails flashed back from friends. The Energetic Commodity Meter now reads: Warm fuzzies, priceless.

So, does this happy tale of Electronica mean I might suspend the pen-and-paper personal journal I’ve kept since 1978, in favor of an electronic version? The virtue of being a longtime digital adopter lies in knowing when message and medium are a timeless good fit for oneself. Glancing through worn, spiral-bound notebooks, I see how the very look of entries by the earlier Karen reveals the distress, hopefulness or delight that prompted her to write. I never want to lose that, and besides—I still love the feeling of making words by hand. When I create a journal entry, I practice an ancient reflective art along with everybody who has learned the value of the old notice “Inquire Within”. Perhaps they’re keying away, or printing because they’ve never learned cursive, but that’s fine too. Autres temps, autres moeurs whispers quaint, inter-generational inclusiveness.

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A Slip Twixt Cup and Lip

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Karen Mathieson

What is the difference between proper etiquette and good manners? Not much, judging by how interchangeably those phrases are used on the Internet and beyond. That’s at the cost of an important distinction. Etiquette prescribes established behavior in social situations and entails the use of various implements, rites and rules. Manners are another kettle of fish—or pot of tea.

Picture a genteel American tea party circa 1785, where one partook of the costly, fragrant beverage from a deep saucer. The cup, of course, was set neatly apart on a small plate. Etiquette guided the hostess to pour the cup, and the guest to transfer the hot liquid to the saucer before drinking. Being mindful of manners, one would then sip rather than slurp.

The ritual is long passé, along with the saucer by and large, but most Americans still mind their manners when eating and drinking at any formal gathering. It’s not just about which pieces of porcelain to use and how. It’s about respecting other people and bringing honor to a shared occasion.

Respect. Honor. What quaint notions these may seem in the era of grab-it-and-go. Still, it is often in the small things that one may sense the ethical well-being of a people. When we act from guiding values that demonstrate commitment to others, the result is palpable warm feelings. And when we do not, the absence makes a powerful statement of its own.

Let’s get down to cases, with two examples of missing-in-action values from the cultural setting of Portland, Oregon circa 2011. Each relates to the same cup-and-lip social phenomenon—the slip between an expressed intention and an actual behavior. Each is also about how well we honor and respect our relationships.

First, we have the curious matter of the business networking luncheon. The hostess books a private space in a good restaurant, reserves time on her calendar, arrives early, and has handouts ready for her facilitation of the event. The restaurant delegates two servers, and is prepared to handle a large onset of orders that will offset the cost of providing the room.

People sign up at an online site for the micro-entrepreneur community, through a system that allows easy cancellation. It’s a popular venue, so the limit of 16 guests is reached more than a week ahead of time. Nine people including the hostess attend.

Second, we have the even more curious case of the annual holiday-season gathering to  celebrate the contributions of a large group of dedicated volunteers. Staff members of the organization set aside a weekend day they might otherwise spend with their families, organize all the gear and decorations for the festivities, and when the confirmed guest list surpasses a hundred contact the caterer to substantially increase the original food order. Sixty-five guests actually appear.

Are the no-shows in these case studies exhibiting a failure of etiquette, or of manners? Etiquette books stretching back to the time of Gutenberg would concur that when unable to enjoy hospitality that has been proffered and accepted, the right thing to do is to let the giver know if you will not be there.

Perhaps, though, the etiquette of the age of print is now as passé as sipping tea from a saucer. People are so busy, and things just come up, don’t they? Leaving a voice mail, sending an apologetic email or going online to click “cancel” takes time, and who has enough of that anymore?

Certainly, there’s not a moment to spare for thinking of the cost to a restaurant and the personal investment of a hostess, much less to consider how someone else would gladly have taken that seat at the networking event. And who would pause to imagine how many pounds of jerked pork will return to the catering truck, or how subdued the staff members will be as they clear away the detritus of what was, after all, a beautiful party.

In the end, good manners come down to how well people treat other people. Respect. Honor. Perhaps that’s too weighty a pair of words when merely our relationships are at stake. Let’s try these: Common courtesy.

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In the Presence of Laughter

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Karen Mathieson

“What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter; present mirth hath present laughter,” sings Feste in Twelfth Night. Designed to amuse Elizabethans in a holiday season, Shakespeare’s tale of wooing gone wrong plays well four centuries later. Yet, the ribald hijinks of Toby Belch are no emotional match for Viola’s faithful love in disguise, nor for the genuine suffering of a certain prig named Malvolio. There’s more to the comedy than meets the eye—just as there’s far more to laughter in relationship than a tickle of epiglottis upon larynx.

As the calendar glows with red-letter days, perhaps this is a good time to consider ways that shared humor can be a positive force in our lives. Unfortunately, many favorite anecdotes at family gatherings are acutely unamusing to at least one person in the room. Think of a clan in which every feast that includes cranberry sauce comes with a dollop of sarcasm about one family member. The klutzy boy of 13 may now be a poised 45-year-old, but an ancient pratfall trumps present reality every time.

Let’s leave that kind of laughter offstage, as we consider five of the many ways genuine merriment can enhance life now and for seasons to come.

  • Experience wholesome entertainment in company. “Present mirth” arises not only in plays but via media Shakespeare never knew, and it’s healthy for self and the social soul alike. Download a movie to watch at home, attend a comic opera, sit at a small, round table for an evening of improv. The setting matters less than the experience of putting aside everything dark and dire for the pleasure of a communal laugh.
  • Find the humorous aspect when things go wrong. Today’s preternaturally long holiday season has a huge impact on everyday American life. It’s tempting to make the worst of things when the culture insists on ho-ho jollity. Still, in the workplace and beyond, step back to see if there’s another way to look at a mini-disaster. Find a spot of irony, a touch of the ridiculous in the scene? Share it.
  • Revisit a common history for healing humor. In retrospect, many tension-filled moments can be hilariously funny. Your dad forgot his dress trousers when he packed to attend your wedding. On the day, it was a hair-tearing frustration. Now it’s a bonding memory. When tempers flare or sorrow enters the picture, humor can help you stay connected to one another.
  • Convey a funny solo experience. “You just had to be there.” Well, not always. Tell a good story about an occurrence—let’s say a Canada goose that came in for a landing and flailed across unanticipated ice—and others will laugh. If the joke was on you, then so much the better. People tend to like and trust those who show a capacity to laugh with ease at themselves.
  • Stay present to joy—together. Feste warbled on behalf of a would-be seducer, but he was right about one thing: In love and mirth, there’s no substitute for the fleeting moment shared. The catch is, a person must actually be paying attention. Will a television blare during the meal? Will every well-polished place setting reflect the glow of a cell phone? If so, we may miss the point of more than a joke.
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Next Steps in a Natural Friendship

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Karen Mathieson

A month ago I wrapped up a project to hike all 80 miles of pathways in Forest Park, the jewel in the leafy crown that is Portland, Oregon’s canopy of trees. A week ago, on a five-mile ramble along trails I’d logged in late summer, something suddenly struck home. I felt a marked difference in how I experienced the place than the previous time.

It wasn’t just that the air was cooler and the evening light now slanting from the south, nor that trees on the ridgeline creaked in an autumn wind from the east familiar to those living near the Columbia River Gorge. My relationship with the park had also changed. The trails were no longer part of a goal to be reached in diligently charted segments stretching from an urban arboretum setting near the Oregon Zoo to the farthest reaches where a herd of wild elk convenes in winter. I was more relaxed as I walked now, more inclined to stoop and study a trundling black ground beetle.

It had been a worthy accomplishment, I reflected, as I left the beetle to its business. In 2008 I had covered the 30-mile Wildwood Trail and numerous linking paths, but I had missed out on many areas hardly anyone sees—and a few I’d rather not see again. Answering the All Trails Challenge offered by the Forest Park Conservancy acquainted me with all eleven watersheds in the park, including one with the charming name of Rocking Chair Creek. I am at ease with the park in a deeper way now, able to anticipate where the footing will be slick and the trillium will bloom come spring. The process of planning and recording the 110 miles it took to account for those 80 miles of trail left me more familiar with the lay of the land and with the life that is there.

And yet, I’m glad once again to relate to Forest Park simply as a beloved terrain rather than a task site. Heading upward toward the access trailhead on Saltzman Road, it occurred to me there might be a corollary between this insight and how I conduct other relationships. Head-down in a project with others is an exhilarating and sometimes exasperating place to be. One naturally gets to know both the work at hand and the people sharing the experience, but eventually the show closes, the project is delivered, the conference wraps up. What then?

It is hard to establish genuine friendship without taking the time to know another person in multiple contexts—as a person with a partner, a family, a circle of community, a secretly held desire. The work or volunteer goals we reach together, and the joys, frustrations or conflicts we encounter in the process, are all bonding elements. Still, the people we keep seeing when there’s no deadline to meet or carpool to coordinate are those with whom relationship has become instrumental, an end in itself. Valuable and life-enhancing as conversations along the goal-oriented way may be, taking the time to connect when there is nothing on the agenda beyond friendship is sweet indeed.

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Beyond Naming the Terrain

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Karen Mathieson

“To hear the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features—the soughing of the wind across it, its upward reach across a clear night sky, its fragrance after a rain,” writes Barry Lopez in the introduction to “Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape.”

Four years of effort by Lopez and his co-editor Debra Gwartney culminated in this 2006 book, which speaks to the elongated love affair between a language-making creature and its world. It is a decade, then, since Gwartney and Lopez conceived of the project, a decade since classes of eighth-graders in Seattle, expressing their feelings about the September 11 terrorist attacks, used one phrase more than any other: “On our own soil.”

It is a comfort even now to think of home ground, not of ground zero. It helps, even now, to read William Kittredge writing with fleet concision—no entry in “Home Ground” exceeds 200 words—of basin and range, the 400,000 square miles of the American West where the graben of a down-faulted valley marches north alongside the uplift of a horst such as Steens Mountain. One who knows that migrating wildfowl long found refuge and food in the Malheur wetlands where the runoff from Steens collects might muse on how our planet’s geology is in an eternal dance with ephemeral surface life. One aware of how invasive carp in their millions have now wreaked havoc in the nurturance of the birds might give a long sigh, and turn to another page.

And there’s the wonder of “Home Ground.” From the wide, gracious margins, in which one may read resonant quotations from fiction and poetry, to the charm of words like “krummholz” (the contorted vegetation of alpine transition zones) there is always another voice, another opening vista for the reader. This is a book to read not cover-to-cover but in which to wander and emerge refreshed.

There are deeper implications beyond the effortless acquisition of an evocative language of terrain gained while following one’s curiosity from canyon to cleft to cranny and crevasse. “Home Ground” has also been a boon for attorneys, land use planners and others addressing environmental issues in North America. “If you will be having a conversation that’s going to show up in a court of law, you’d better have your terms straight,” Lopez told listeners gathered at Graham Oaks Nature Park in Wilsonville, Oregon in late July, 2011.

At the event, co-sponsored by Oregon Humanities and Metro, Lopez and Gwartney encouraged participants to spend time experiencing the nature park, most of it now being restored as an oak savanna after a century and a half of other ways of relating to the land. Returning from the group’s walkabout, one woman spoke of encountering a point where fingers of cool air from an evergreen grove reached into the hot rustling dryness of a midsummer field.

Lopez smiled. She was describing an ecotone, he said, and then spoke of how such nebulous zones between habitats hold some of the greatest diversity of life on earth. Writing in “Home Ground,” William deBuys points out that ecotones are “human constructs, which derive their shape and character from the qualities their observers find most salient.”

Have we, in the last jumbled and distraught decade, been passing through an ecotone in American society? What other metaphors might we draw from the landscape to help us understand both the past and the future into which we now gaze, here on our own soil?

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Authentic Americana

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Karen Mathieson

It wasn’t business as usual at the Happy Sparrow Café on this hot August day. True, proprietors Danny and Mary Quach were working well before first light, preparing racks of buns with sweet and savory fillings to serve as “breakfast with a twist” (their business tagline) for their neighbors in southeast Portland. And yes, those who came by for a regular latte or an iced Vietnamese coffee left with an extra spring in their step thanks not only to caffeine but to the atmosphere of good cheer.

Yet, when closing time came at 2 p.m. Danny did not turn as usual to setting up for another predawn session of crafting kolaches: For the next few days, Danny and Mary will be racing in a Hood to Coast relay team, pounding the pavement from the glacial slopes of Oregon’s Mount Hood to the toe-curling cold of the Pacific Ocean.

Thereby hangs not only a distinctively American tale, but a study in authenticity.

The first time I dropped by The Happy Sparrow was a case of pure serendipity. I was walking along SE Belmont on the hunt for a nosh and liked the way the café perched on the corner at SE 30th. Sitting at a small square table wrapped in patterned oil cloth, I  considered why the place made me wish to linger. There were Danny’s silhouette murals in black, gold, periwinkle and persimmon, for one thing, and Mary’s burbling laugh as she visited with each customer. I liked the cleanliness, the bright lighting, and the board game boxes (Scrabble, anyone?) stacked on the mantel of a tiny gas fireplace that suggested this was a place for rainy as well as sunny days.

The second visit was intentional: I wanted to understand more about this enterprise with a logo that’s both chipper sparrow and yin-yang symbol of the Tao. How did this couple with successful corporate careers come to leave friends and families in Houston to put a bird on it in Portland? After all, Mary doesn’t even have a tattoo.

“We didn’t know where the winds would take us,” Mary told me, describing the strong sense each of them had that they were called to move on from prospering lives in Houston. Danny and Mary’s was a leap of faith in more ways than one—they are devout Christians, as well as owners of a business in parlous times. Still, that vault into their future was executed with considerable skill. As we chatted, I gathered clues to what makes the Happy Sparrow such a harmonious delight as place and business model:

  • The owners found ways to fill their food service niche with specialties reflective of their shared personal story. Both are the children of Vietnam War refugees;  Mary remembers her mother at every breakfast, sipping strong coffee laced with condensed milk. Danny’s flick of the wrist as he rounds off each palmful of kolache is a wave to people of Czech heritage in central Texas. “This is our way to honor America and the diversity we find here,” Mary said firmly.
  • The owners had the practical savvy to turn a dim space with awnings that drooped like half-closed eyelids into an environment of wide-awake sociability. They were also frugal in their up-front investment two years ago, whether coaxing the last drop of paint from a can or rummaging at thrift shops and garage sales for art to recycle. Mary and Danny wanted to make the place look as if it belonged in Portland, and it does.
  • The owners took full advantage of lessons from both their related work experience and their education—Mary, 35, holds a degree in marketing from the University of Texas, Austin, while Danny, 37, earned a degree in graphic design and communication arts from the University of Houston. They also canvassed the neighborhood to learn what it wanted, and found that surrounding businesses “had hopes for this corner,” Danny reported. The Happy Sparrow thrives in personal, professional and community context.
  • The owners know precisely what they need to be happy. While they felt a strong sense of vocation in creating a gathering place that celebrates diversity, they also chose to open a business that would let them be free to “have a life,” as Danny put it. They may get up in the dark six days a week, but the afternoon closing gives them breathing room. If their passion for distance running calls for a much-needed holiday, then they’ll take it.

These days, the proprietor of the smallest business is instructed to create cohesive brand communication across the media spectrum. By this criterion, the Happy Sparrow is secure on its electronic nest, from a cheery red-dominant website to an email address of chirp@happysparrowcafe.com. Twitter? But of course!

My sense, however, is that what a customer tastes biting into a Happy Sparrow kolache warm from the oven at 7:05 on a weekday morning is the authentic flavor of American small enterprise making good.

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