Links I liked, November 18, 2014
I liked so many things I read today that, rather than clutter social media, I’ll make note of them right here:
“Falling” by William McPherson – By far, the most depressing thing I have read in a while. McPherson is a Pulitzer winning writer and former editor at the Washington Post who chose a life of curiosity and is now paying the ultimate price. It’s awful that the brightest people have to be punished for thoroughly embracing life. So many people I know are going to go this way, it is possible that I might, too.
In India, Growth Breeds Waste NYT – Documenting India’s mounting problem of what to do with its waste. Europe went through their urbanization pains centuries ago. Unfortunately, developing countries are rising to the challenge fast enough. The problem, of course, is that elites are sheltered from the problems of waste and weak and corrupt government structures disallow people from demanding that their countries clean up. International environmentalists need to focus less on screaming about corporate polluting (though it is important) and need to start making demands for more boring things, like managing waste on a local level.
Stop calling me ‘the Ebola nurse’ – Kaci Hickox – This lady was a hero. She never had ebola, but was still illegally interned for having it because a few Americans don’t understand science. Anybody who supported her detainment should just stop speaking to me now. It was shocking how readily Americans were willing to lock people up simply because they were scared and even more shocking where the calls for her “arrest” came from. I give up. People like Hickox put their money where their mouths are. She did what most humans wouldn’t do and she was vilified for it. Unforgivable.
Ten Things that Anthropologists Can Do to Fight the West African Ebola Epidemic I think it should be required that every field research project include an anthropologist.
Q Fever Is Underestimated in the United States: A Comparison of Fatal Q Fever Cases from Two National Reporting Systems People are dying of Q, but much of it isn’t recorded.
Interview with an academic: Ben Brucato
Continuing my series of interviews with interesting people I know, this week I spoke with Ben Brucato, a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. You can read more by and about Ben at his website, www.benbrucato.com.
Tell us about yourself and what you do.
I’m a husband and father. I live in upstate New York because it’s where my doctoral program is located. I look forward to moving on. I’m currently a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Science and Technology Studies department. I have taught periodically as an online instructor in the Sociology department at Northern Arizona University, where I earned my MA. I’m about to start teaching as an adjunct at Union College in Political Science. I came to RPI to study with my advisor, Langdon Winner. I’ve been a musician since I was about 10 years old, and have played in all sorts of bands. I’ve been making noise as Clew Of Theseus (and other projects) since 1997 or so. I’m in a black metal band that’s trying to get off the ground. I started a label in around 2001 or so, called Cathartic Process, which releases noise and power electronics. Lately, it’s been a cassette-only label. It’s been very slow going the last couple years, though.
Every academic has a history. What brought you to this arena?
College was the expected thing to do after graduating high school. I intended to go to graduate school right away. Through my activist work, I met and became good friends with Joel Olson. He was just finishing his PhD and trying to find a job. Seeing that process put me off of my intentions to be a professor. I came back to graduate school after a nearly decade-long advertising and marking career. It was soul crushing and I hated everything about it except the paycheck. After the last place I worked was essentially liquidated and my unemployment ran out, I started considering other options. Spending a couple years being broke again changed my expectations. I knew I could go back to school and have a reliable but small income from stipends. It was a way to get by for a few years more than a stepping stone in a career trajectory. It would be nice if it ends up being the latter.
You have a black metal/noise history. What’s that about and does it inform your present work? Do you find extreme music to be helpful to your academic work?
I’ve been a noise artist for a while now. That was always more important to me than my professional life. Now that I’m finding more satisfying theoretical and topical issues to explore in my work, my studies and writing is more personally rewarding. But I don’t think these really inform my work that much. The themes in black metal and noise have me more attuned to the extreme, the pessimistic, and so on. I’m sure there’s something deep inside me that draws me to both fanatical politics and extreme metal, to cosmic pessimism and the bleakest industrial noise. I’d like to offer some more profound explanation, but any real connection is at an affective level that resists verbalization.
It might just be me, but I’m thinking that reports of police brutality are becoming more prominent in public discourse. First, is there evidence to suggest police brutality on the rise? Second, what do you make of the fact that, despite increased public awareness of police brutality and abuse of power, that no pubic representative (to my knowledge) has commented on the problem? Third, I feel that issues of police brutality were softened in the 90’s by TVs shows such as COPS, which forced viewers to watch through the perspective of officers, but that public opinion seems less empathetic to police in the YouTube era. Producers necessarily had to defer to the police to make the show. It’s my opinion that it very much matters who holds the camera. Do you find that the new trend of citizen produced (or edited video) is changing attitudes to police brutality? Or has nothing changed at all?
What counts as police brutality? What would it mean for police brutality to be “on the rise”? I don’t think there are clear answers, and that the terms discussing these have to be tentative, provisional operationalizations. They have to be tied to a context and to texts, to discourses and the places where they emerge. My research is mostly tied to the visibility of policing and its violence. Some researchers have addressed the idea that because police use-of-force is now more visible, the perception is that standard, ongoing police activity – including use-of-force – is becoming more prevalent, more invasive, more violent, and so on. The research on incidence and outcomes of use-of-force by police is incomplete, and there are few longitudinal studies. Without quality, national-level, longitudinal research, most assertions about these things are speculative. I am, however, comfortable claiming that use-of-force incidence remains stable, and I think there is some reasonably reliable empirical basis to support this claim. The bulk of my research is motivated by trying to understand, on the one hand, why the Rodney King beating prompted a national conversation and nearly led to a crisis for the policing institution as a whole. Yet, on the other hand, we are now presented with a new documentary video of a police beating or shooting about every week and without the same national conversation and crisis of legitimacy. What explains this? As I’m finding, there are many reasons for this that work together to explain it. I’d say the most common reaction I hear is that people are becoming “desensitized.” I think that has very little explanatory value. I’m sure it contributes, but that’s not an explanation I spend much time exploring. I think you’re on to something with the reference to COPS, which predates the Rodney King beating. I think we have a “toolbox” of codes and symbols we use to interpret these visualizations and representations of police violence. Reality shows like COPS, and all sorts of other cultural artifacts help people decode these images. Most of our toolboxes are full of lots of white supremacist and classist codes that are used in interpreting these videos. So, the purported objectivity of video – which the intentional and politicized monitoring of police in some ways relies upon – is suspended in doubt, here. The idea that video and cameras will change policing in some ways relies on the idea that these images will be received without any need for interpretation, that “what really happened” will be laid bare, and any reasonable viewer will be offended by the common violence the police rely upon.
I am interested to see the shift in public attitudes toward surveillance that has been occurring throughout the past decade. In the 00’s, there seemed to be a general acceptance that government would use any means necessary to weed out terrorists (for example). Now, it seems that the public is much more concerned about the issue. Do you think this shift can be sustained?
I think the issue is barely cut and dry. I think there is a lot of cognitive dissonance that occurs here. The less fascist people even have trouble squaring their demand for security – presumably which can only be supplied by the state, and violently so – with their desire for civility and democracy. Then, of course, you have the bold-faced authoritarians who love when cops beat Black bodies, and wish they would more frequently. More recently, vigilante activity seems to be on an upswing, as white supremacists – as they have been wont to do in the past centuries – have joined with state forces in doing this policing, i.e. George Zimmerman. But then there’s the inherent conflict in a class-divided society the police are first and foremost designed to maintain, protect, and administrate. I don’t think more people are aware and concerned as a result of consciousness-raising, more visibility, and so on, but rather as a result of more historically privileged people falling into the working class after the financial collapse. White folks are more frequently on the receiving end of invasive policing, surveillance, and so on. Some of them are quite happy to see the force of a racist regime demonstrated. Some white folks are offended that they occasionally are made subject to it, e.g. at TSA screenings in airports, roadside checks and searches, etc. Suddenly they speak up when the policing that people of color and sexual minorities have been subjected to is inflicted on them. But there are a handful of these folks who have either some class consciousness or moralistic defense of egalitarianism that inspires their feelings of offense as these situations are more widely spread and visible.
I see that you post frequently on issues of public surveillance, but not so much about issues of private surveillance. I personally think that the private sector often gets a free pass on issues of privacy intrusion, despite that the private sector might present as great a threat. Do you think that private sector surveillance has implications for the populace?
I’m generally not that interested in the theme of privacy. So we’re already past an area of discussion that I have much to say about. As for the distinctions between government surveillance and private surveillance, and how the latter contributes to invasions into our lives and affairs, and even the structuring of our navigation and negotiation of everyday life, I’m rather interested, intellectually, and concerned and committed politically. I think any blind spot here is simply a result of the fine-tuning of my own research that more obsessively focuses my attention to state violence and state surveillance. But both policing and surveillance are phenomenon that exist beyond the state, and particularly more so during the processes of neoliberalization. Private prisons, private police, and the like are just the tip of the iceberg.
What projects are you working on now, what should we look for, and where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I’m not so sure higher education will be very recognizable in 10 years. I’d like to say I see myself as a tenured professor, teaching a small load of courses of my own design while conducting smaller but long-term (and funded) research projects. But I think that’s not a very realistic projection even for those who are lucky, well-connected, and have a history of careful planning for such a trajectory. But if I entertain that fantasy a little, you could expect something like this: First would be a book on critical technology studies that takes the work of people like Mumford and Ellul as they were responded to and developed by Langdon Winner, David Noble, Richard Sclove, and others. It would characterize and develop their work, showing its relevance to understanding technology today. There would also be a book on surveillance and policing, focusing especially on the political fantasies and imaginations about transparency. The latter would obviously be based on my dissertation work. Ideally, I’ll be teaching in northern Europe, struggling to learn the local language, and be well along the way toward building a sustainable eco-village.
What’s up with the beard? I’m thinking that it’s a symbiotic living entity.
It’s a habit more than a symbol. Although, the statements it does make (except “I’m a hippy”) are generally ones in which I find more positive than negative.
Interview with a warrior: Greg Pratt, homeless advocate
Pratt with the MISSION crew. Pratt is third from the right.
Today’s interview is with my friend, advocate for the poor and downtrodden and purveyor of loudness, Greg Pratt. Greg’s a great guy in just about a billion ways. This interview should tell you why. You can learn more about the group he works with MISSION A2, here.
Who are you and what do you do?
Greg Pratt. I am a social worker by training, an organizer and movement worker by necessity. The two primary foci of my work are material and political support.
I help people with resources for living outside, so propane, water, socks, tents, sleeping bags, batteries etc. I also help them organize politically [internal and external]. Sometimes, that manifests in a camp community [internal] other times that manifests in local ordinances like the Good Neighbor Amendment to the Ann Arbor Parks Ordinance [external]. This amendment waives the fee for organizations handing out free material goods to folks in A2 public parks.
The Camp Take Notice Good Neighbor Subcommittee worked on this from April 2013 until the ordinance passed its 2nd reading on November 18, 2013. The Subcommittee was comprised of 7-8 individuals and I believe everyone but myself was homeless or recently emerging from homelessness.
You have done a lot of work with homeless people in the Ann Arbor area. How did you get started doing that work?
I am an alcoholic. On December 31, 2001, I had my last blackout and was charged with my third DUI.
On July 3, 2001, I was sentenced to six months in Oakland County Jail. The first five days were spent in the middle section of a three-section holding tank area of the Oakland County Jail. Each section was 10’ X 15’, separated by plexiglass, and had anywhere from 10-15 individuals in each section at any given time. There was one toilet per section. We were let out once per day to eat.
After I got out of there I was transferred to the County Barracks across the street for the work release program. This was basically an army style, bunk bed living quarters. We paid weekly rent [I think mine was something like 160-70 per week] and were allowed out of the barracks, at most, 5 days/week. I was only fortunate enough to get out 4 days/week.
After getting out of jail, I spent six months on tether [house arrest]. At the same time, I began my probation which included many hours of community service.
I chose to do my service hours at SOS Community Services at the River St. Location in Ypsilanti, MI. I did their “empathy training” to become a volunteer crisis counselor. At the time, the River Street SOS location served as a place for people to get referrals to other services in the area, food distribution, and a 24-hour crisis hotline which people used for information or just to talk when things were getting a bit to much to handle. I only had one suicide call [fortunately] while we still had the phone lines in place. I continued on in my volunteer capacity at SOS for a year after I got my hours for probation completed. I really enjoyed the work and the community I was a part of as a result of being there two to three times per week.
Anyhow, that is how I became involved. My first social work mentor, from SOS, was Christina Oliver. She still works in the area as a disabled-persons’ advocate.
I haven’t had a drink of alcohol since February 19, 2001. My higher power is the collective consciousness of all living beings. I am not anonymous, but I practice the principles in my daily life.
Do you find that the situation for homeless people in Ann Arbor is getting worse or better? Is Ann Arbor becoming increasingly closed?
I think you may be asking the wrong person on this one.
I am going to give an answer that is the best I can with the information I have from the friends [I don’t use the word client or consumer] with whom I work.
Assessment
On the one hand Ann Arbor is great because of its manifold set of resources for low-income people struggling with mental/physical health, addiction, and unemployment. On the other, it has very little in the way of low-income housing that is near places of low-income employment. The bus system is ok, but has limited evening hours during the week [M-F] and pretty much zero hours on weekend nights. So, if you live in Ypsilanti and work in Ann Arbor and have no car, your options for hours to work are limited as a result of these limited transportation options. If you talked to the current VP of MISSION, Jimmy Hill, you may get a more comprehensive version of what it is like trying to navigate one’s way out of homelessness in Ann Arbor.
Is is getting better? I hope that in the wake of the forum hosted by the Ann Arbor District Library last week it will. Camp Misfit A2 [one of the groups interdependent with MISSION] has, through their activism and public actions, put the issue of lack of affordable, low-income housing on the radar of local politicos as well as the local human services industry. I am cautiously optimistic right now.
Ann Arbor, as a small and somewhat well to do area, likely does not have the social space or will to accommodate an underclass, but at the same time, would not like to be seen as exclusionary. Do you think that Ann Arbor will ever be able to rectify these competing problems?
Good question. For me, change will have arrived when “our” kids can play with “their” kids.
I don’t think that we will ever correct the problem given the current system of resource distribution in our society, Capitalism.
Capitalism is a system that is framed to encourage economic growth. In this system, there are winners and losers. It is not “survival of the fittest” that determines winners. It is more like a complex gambling system that is weighted toward those with more wealth.
So, I think for Ann Arbor to rectify these problems, we would have to end capitalism as it is practiced now.
Here is another point I want to make. This one is predicated on our capitalist system of resource distribution. Homelessness is not a pond we can drain, but rather a river that flows on beyond our time here on this earth. We can dam up the river and provide bridges at certain sections of the flow, but regardless of our actions to “stop the flow” it continues on just like the wind.
There are people who are “chronically” homeless. But, most folks struggle with this for a matter of months. At our camp out on Wagner Rd [RIP], the average stay was just under three months. The Delonis Center has a similar statistic, although I think stays have been increasing over the last couple of years there.
I’m finding it interesting that Ann Arbor is having discussions about whether to create and improve public spaces, based on a perception that homeless people will use them (like this is a bad thing). How much of these concerns is based on alarmism, and how much is justified?
I think that we need to plan those spaces in an inclusive way, all stakeholders at the table. If we were to take that tack as a community I think we might reduce some of the alarmism. But ultimately, I think the folks with capital to invest in this area would rather see sunshine and lollipops and yellow brick roads, than help people who are struggling to make it in our community.
What do you see ultimately happening?
For the time being, more sunshine and lollipops and yellow-brick roads to nowhere for the poor and to increased wealth for Rick Snyder and his Carpet Bagger Finance Capitalists.
You’ve also done work with the unions, specifically during the push to bring GSRA’s into GEO. What’s your history working with labor?
Ugh. What a nightmare campaign that was. Before that disaster, I helped nontenure track faculty at MSU and EMU build their unions.
Yes, I worked for AFT Michigan [American Federation of Teachers]. I was a member of GEO as a grad student at the UM School of Social Work and was interested in learning labor/political organizing. I became a member of the GEO Organizing Committee just as our 2008 contract campaign was ramping up in December 2007. This was the contract campaign wherein we shut down both the UM Stadium and Business school renovation projects. I was picket captain for the business school site.
That summer, I was hired by AFT to work on a campaign with non tenure track faculty at MSU. After we won that campaign, I was sent to EMU to help bring the part time lecturers into the existing full time lecturer union. EMU has about 120 full time lecturers and about 500-600 [depending upon the semester] part time lecturers. In order to accomplish this, we conducted a few well-attended sit-ins at President Martin’s office. Paul Horvath [Math Lecturer at EMU] was one of the key lecturers involved in that effort. Good times.
After that campaign, I went to work with GEO leaders on bring the GSRAs into the union. In the wake of that Rick Snyder signed a law that prohibited GSRAs from joining a union. I believe this law has since been found unconstitutional and is in some sort of legal limbo on appeal.
That battle was eventually lost. It seemed like a really not so controversial idea. What do you think was going on to make it blow up as big as it did?
I think that conservative anti-union folks in Michigan watched AFT organizing at many of the colleges and some community colleges across the state. Grad Students, Lectures and even some faculty were joining unions in large numbers through the dedicated work of organizers like Jon Curtiss and Lynn Marie Smith between the years 2003-2010. When Rick Snyder was elected, the republicans had every lever of our state’s government under their control. I think they saw an opportunity and put a lot of resources toward blocking this campaign.
That describes what happened on their side. I think it is more telling, what happened on our side [labor]. Our leaders, when planning this campaign, did not listen to the suggestion of leaders on the ground in GEO and in general on campus. We were internally divided. That made it easier for the Mackinac Center to pick us apart and stop the momentum we had while out talking to hundreds of researchers like yourself.
You eventually left. What happened?
Unions are great at the local level. But, as they get bigger, the organizational structure mirrors the organizations they are meant to regulate or keep in check. I didn’t want to compromise my organizing style in order to get a paycheck. I decided that the work needed to be done was the work for which there is no paycheck.
I had been teaching at UM School of Social Work in Winter 2012. I continued on as a lecturer there and at EMU until December 2013.
I am currently unemployed, but doing the work for which there is no paycheck.
[MISSION]
What’s up with your radio career? How does radio figure in to your worldview as champion of the poor and marginalized?
You are very kind to call it a career 🙂
How does it figure in? Well, I grew tired of complaining about the media and decided to become a part of it instead. Viva Jello!
What’s up for the future?
1) Kicking ass for the working class!
2) Getting a job with a paycheck.
Interview with an academic: Dr. Julie Huntington
I’m working on a series of interviews with creative, interesting and amazing people I’ve known over the course of my life who, through whatever series of events, have found themselves in academia. This time, I’m interviewing Dr. Julie Huntington, who I know mostly as the oboe player in the seminal Michigan skronk outfit, Galen but now works on Francophone African literature in NYC.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Julie Ann Huntington. By profession, I am a professor of French language and comparative literature at Marymount Manhattan College. I also identify as a bicyclist, runner, advocate, writer, noise-maker, thrill-seeker, daydreamer, gourmande, and vagabond.
You’re from Southeastern Michigan, but now live in New York. I don’t know what I missed, how did that happen?
It’s a rather long story… that’s where the vagabond part kicks in. I’ve actually spent more consecutive years in New York City now (going on six) than any place in my life since graduating from high school. My first stay outside of Michigan in the summer of 1996 led me to a picaresque nanny job in a tiny town called Hem working for a psychiatric professional with some anger management issues and a college professor who tried in vain to seduce me with lines like “I see what kind of books you read… I know what kind of girl you are…” At the end of three weeks, we all agreed it was best for me to head to Paris to pursue other paths. With little money, I spent most of my days daydreaming and walking around the city. One day, I ended up wandering into an English language bookshop near the Notre Dame cathedral. After chatting with the owner, I secured lodging with some other ex-pats in a bed-bug infested library in exchange for a few hours of work each day. With little money, I spent much of my time reading books and helping out around the shop. George [Whitman] took notice of this and promoted me, calling me his Cordelia. In exchange for more responsibilities, consisting mainly of book-keeping and listening to George tell stories about lost generation Paris, I got my own room full of first editions and a sublime view of Notre Dame…
Filling in the gaps, I returned to Michigan to finish my BA at Eastern Michigan University in Anthropology and French. At the start of my studies, I had wanted to be a journalist, decided that I was ill-equipped to take on the burdens of truth and objectivity. Degree in hand, I headed back to Paris to consider my options…
I worked as a waitress in Paris in a Tex-Mex restaurant in Paris in 1998 for the World Cup matches and beyond. The restaurant isn’t there anymore, but I still have a scar on my knee from the celebrations. During that time, I decided to go to graduate school and prepped for my GRE exam…
And then you went down South?
In 1999, I moved to Nashville to start an MA-Ph.D program at Vanderbilt. My preliminary intention was to study XX century feminist narratives. As luck would have it, the woman with whom I had planned to work left the university and I had to shift gears. I became interested in issues of language and identity in areas where French was spoken as an official but not maternal or vehicular language. I was particularly intrigued by “noisy” writers who presented multilingual, musical, and otherwise resonant texts to readers. It all started with Ousmane Sembene… In my first year of graduate study, I read Guelwaar and God’s Bits of Wood… It was love at first read…
My interest in Sembene led me to Keur Momar Sarr Senegal in the summer of 2001 where I spent a summer working on a rural development project in coordination with community members and a group of Belgian and American volunteers…
I went back to Nashville and finished my Ph.D. at Vanderbilt in 2005. My work focused on exploring how instrumental literature, non-vocal music, and otherwise noisy phenomena are translated and transcribed into the frames of literary texts as a means of creating spaces for identity negotiation that lie beyond the limits of Western/Northern identificatory paradigms…
What was your first job?
I worked as an Assistant Professor of French at Clemson from 2005-2008. While I was there, I spent summers taking students to Ghana on a summer program I created. I also traveled to Martinique and Guyane for research and conferences. I feel lucky to have visited Saint Pierre, Alawla-Yalimapo, Nzulezo by chance as sidetrips on these journeys as they are beautiful and unique places that have informed my work in important ways…
I loved the job at Clemson but was miserable living in small-town and even smaller-city South Carolina. I struggled to be happy there. It just wasn’t a good fit for me culturally…
When I was offered a tenure-track job at a small liberal arts college in NYC in 2008, I embraced the opportunity. Regardless of the professional pros and cons of my decision, I am happy with the choice I made. I love working at a teaching-focused job in a city where I feel joyful and inspired…
Since my arrival in NYC, I have spent time away in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and France for research, but have always felt compelled to “come home” to NYC. I’m not sure if this is my forever city, but my vagabond heart is happy here doing what I do for the time being.
I really don’t think I’ve seen you in person in nearly 20 years, at which time you were active in music. Are you still doing music?
Music is a part of my life everywhere I go and I sense that it always will be. Although I don’t have any regular projects at the present time, I find myself collaborating on a few projects every year. Most of these are spontaneous and performance-based. I feel like the energy and logistics of living in New York City foster these kinds of dynamic but ephemeral musical encounters. Some of my favorite NYC collaborations have been with Samuel Consiglio (of Tami on 12 inch and Perfect Weiners and Butts), who I met while dancing at Zoot’s in Detroit in the 1990s. Another performance moment I enjoyed was when I was invited to perform as an oboe-playing cannibal in a play—It Didn’t Have to Come to This by Normandy Sherwood.
I seem to know a lot of people who did odd music things, and then moved on to the wacky world of academia. How did you go from music to academia? Do you feel like your particular musical experience serves you well in your academic career?
Coming from a working class family in Michigan, many of my life decisions as a young adult were guided by financial imperatives. From a young age, I understood that work defines so many aspects of an average person’s day-to-day existence, especially in American culture. With that understanding, I followed the path that I thought would lead me to my greatest contentment. In spite of the present states of fiscal and identity crisis in academia, I feel like I made the right choice. Working as a professor is fulfilling in many ways. I learn so much each and every day in my interactions with colleagues and students, but also in my own investigations and explorations.
In terms of music, being a musician definitely helps me to be in tune with the people and texts with which I work. It is particularly useful in the space of the classroom. Playing in collaborative projects throughout the years has helped me become better in listening to and responding to others. I am very student-centered in my approaches to teaching and I often position myself as a collaborator-facilitator-coach when working with students on discussions and projects. One could liken the structure of a lesson to that of a jazz standard. In this respect, there are definite objectives and protocols in place to guide our interactions during class time, but there are also spaces for every participant to voice, interpret, and respond in a multiplicity of harmonious or cacophonous ways.
I just picked up your book at the UMich library. Wow! A BOOK. Did it feel amazing to put it out? What’s the story here? How did you choose this particular topic?
I became really interested in questions of linguistic, cultural, and regional identities in post-colonial frameworks, particularly as mediated in literary texts. Since there was already a fair amount of work being done on linguistic approaches to identity negotiation and appropriation in literature, I turned my focus to music. Although much work had also been done on the aesthetics and implications of oral genres in written literature, instrumental genres were not being considered to the same extent. I wanted to create a rationale and a vocabulary for considering sounding elements in literature, particularly non-vocal ones.
The book project came about after the series editor, Gregory Barz, approached me about revising my manuscript to give it a more interdisciplinary focus. We agreed that I would take out much of the literary jargon and construct narrative frames around the chapters.
A book in itself is strange because it fixes ideas on the written page, even if those ideas are still being revised, reconsidered, and reconfigured. It is like a time capsule of thoughts. All things considered, I am proud of this work with all of its shortcomings and strengths. In my view it is just the beginning, a point of departure, the start of a dialogue.
What took you to Senegal? In the book it sounds like you just kind of showed up there. While the experiences are obviously amazing (outside of drinking the borehole water: been there, done that), I’m kind of thinking the whole time “How did she get there?”
The decision to spend time in Senegal was motivated by a desire to get a feel for the geographic and cultural spaces and the aesthetic and linguistic protocols I was reading about in the works of writers like Ousmane Sembene and Aminata Sow Fall. I signed on to volunteer with ASREAD, L’Association Sénégalaise de Recherches, d’Études et d’Appui au Développement, an NGO in Keur Momar Sarr, where I lived and worked with members of the local community.
In a sense, I did just show up without any sort of formal agenda. I just wanted to learn as much as I possibly could during my time there about music, language, and culture. For the most part, I let the villagers guide my experience of that learning. This created openings and opportunities I would not have been able to witness or experience if I had come in with a clear itinerary and agenda.
I really enjoyed the cross-cultural, cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary nature of the work, (and in the Julie-in-Africa vignettes).
Whereas personally, I find it very fulfilling to work across languages, continents, cultures, and disciplines, the work is challenging and not always well-received.
In a sense, interdisciplinary work is destabilizing. It requires critics—both readers and writers—to suspend self-ascribed notions of mastery of their respective methodological approaches and areas of expertise while exposing themselves to alternative modes of analysis and subject areas. Metaphorically speaking, interdisciplinary work is the mixed martial arts of academic work. In this respect, interdisciplinary practitioners develop proficiency in a multiple areas of expertise which they incorporate interchangeably depending on conditions and contexts. Multifaceted, versatile, and dynamic, interdisciplinary work creates opportunities for dialogue and exchange across categories, perspectives, and methodologies. The limits of this type of work is that is simply not possible to be a specialist in all styles. By consequence, interdisciplinary scholars often exchange the jargon and depth of analysis displayed in single-discipline scholarship for the accessibility and interwoven or textured quality of interdisciplinary work with varying degrees of success.
In terms of working across languages, cultures, and genres, there are multiple challenges at work here. The main challenge is that what we conceive of as the academy is still grounded in the geographic, linguistic, and cultural zones of Northern/Western nations. Even when working in scholarship grounded in African locations, critics find themselves faced with the imperative of constructing argumentation in dialogue with critical frameworks created within and endorsed by scholars working predominantly in Northern/Western academic and cultural systems. There is a type of academic hegemony at work here and it is difficult to overcome.
Are you ever going to come back to Michigan? It’s still cold here.
My parents and much of my extended family still live in Michigan, so I come back to visit a few times a year. I would also come back for an epic jam session.
What’s next? Anything new coming down the pipe?
I am working on a second book project examining culinary narratives, folklore, and recipes in contemporary West African fiction. I am also training for the 2014 Boston Marathon.
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Julie’s book, “Sounding Off: Rhythm, Music, and Identity in West African and Caribbean Francophone Novels (African Soundscapes)
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Does malaria facilitate the development of exploitative agricultural estates? Interview with Dr. Luis Chavez
My friend Luis just published a paper in PlosOne on land consolidation or the formation of “latifundia” in Spain. Latifundia were large agricultural estates owned by the Romans, often dependent on slave labor, the growth of which has been implicated in Rome’s fall.
Luis creates a mathematical model to describe the formation of these large estates. He then tests the hypothesis that malaria transmission exacerbated the situation, by forcing land owners to sell cheaply to opportunistic land owners in less malarious areas.
Luis, an ecologist who works on issues of disease transmission (and all around great guy), is somewhat unique in the world of quantitative sciences. He took a few minutes to talk to me so that you can see why.
Who are you and what’s your background?
If you ask the japanese they might say: O gata no hen na gaijinsan. As to my academic background, I studied biology/parasitology as an undergraduate, then mathematical ecology for a M.Sc. and then was granted a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology (note: at the University of Michigan).
Nevertheless, I have always been interested in the humanities, especially history since it gives the best vantage point to understand the present. I grew up in a household where mixing things/topics was usual. Both my father and grandfather went to grad school, something unusual in Latin America, and since i was child lunch time talk was heavy on the side of human rights and solidarity, science and the need for change. When Nelson Mandela died i remembered that a lovely family activity during my childhood was going to a cultural/educational event in solidarity with Nelson Mandela and the South African people to end the apartheid.
For lay people, what’s the paper about and what motivated you to explore it?
The paper presents a mathematical model that can explain the formation of latifundia (large estates) when the profitability of land varies across landowners in a landscape. The model is also used to show that when such differences are not present latifundia still can emerge if there are differences in the risk of acquiring an infectious diseases. I built the model based on historical records to show that both patterns have been observed in societies as different as “latin” Europe (Italy and Spain) and China.
What’s a “latifundium” in Spain? I dug around a bit and could find some things about Rome and Latin America, but not so much about Spain. Why choose Spain?
A latifundium is a large estate, which requires the labor of people that do not own the land. I chose Spain because a essay by Chantal Beauchamp presented a couple of striking maps showing that places where malaria was common were those where Latifundia were common during the 1930s (Fig. 2): http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ahess_0395-2649_1988_num_43_1_283483
The pattern of association between malaria and latifundia was not new, but only Beauchamp had data amenable for a quantitative analysis.
Are you trying to say that malaria helped enable capitalist land appropriation?
It might be the case. The hypothesis that malaria helped to enable land appropriation was put forward by the great italian malariologist, Angelo Celli. He has a book on the topic [reference 8 in the paper, available at the UMICH SPH library]. Celli was probably the most advanced malaria epidemiologist at the turn of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, he and other italians [most notably Grassi] were blackbolded in the Anglo-Saxon world because they threatened the ego of Ronald Ross by saying malaria was not just due to a parasite transmitted by the bite of a mosquito [a biological fact that, nevertheless, they independently showed and published in Italian]. If you are interested just check the oldest records for malaria in the Nature archives.
Though issues of land tenure are very different in the US (given that we killed all the natives and stole it all), we did have some big and awful land plantations in the South along with a serious malaria problem. Might we also try to apply this to the United States, and, if so, how?
I think it might have helped to the consolidation of large estates in the south. Interestingly in the Midwest you never had the latifundia observed in the south, but you had malaria in Michigan (the midwest) at some point (See Humphreys M. 2001. Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States. Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press.).
Nevertheless, in the south due, for example, to Jim Crow laws there might have been a differential risk of malaria infection not observed in the Midwest. However, i found no data to go beyond speculation, well other that in the Canal Zone the Jim Crow housing organization showed the differential malaria risk: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/529265
I find these quantitative approaches to historical problems fascinating (I also started work on a paper on malaria in post-conflict Angola, maybe I should publish it). Do you think applying these methods to history as informative to present day problems? If so, how?
I think so, history probably gives the best vantage point to understand the present (Rendering history a tinker damn’s is a good strategy to sell things no matter if they are useful or even safe, Henry Ford was clear about this). In theory failures can be highly educational, something the model suggests is that equity in land tenure is an unstable equilibrium that could only be maintained by an external policy as the Chinese did before the An Lushan rebellion, and that any kind of unfair land redistribution could only be expected to not work (latifundia will be eventually formed), as observed over and over in most Latin American nations.
The mix of methods is rather novel. However, in the discipline focused and partitioned environment of academia, do you find that its hard to get an audience for this kind of work? Is there a future in it?
I can tell you this stuff is only suitable for publication on the Arxiv.org or PLoS One/ Springer Plus, if you want it to be peer reviewed and you don’t sign your paper with an address in Princeton or Oxford. I think the audience does not belong in any department, though scholars working on the diverse fields of ecology, health, sociology, maths, economics and even history might find it interesting. I think there is some future, there is the emerging field of cliodynamics that looks at historical dynamics and there is even a journal for cliodynamics where they, every once on a while, publish good food for thought like this paper: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ks0g7dr#page-1
I thought my data was not dynamical enough, so I didn’t try there.
This work is heavily political. Do you think there is a place for politics in science?
I think everything gets embedded in politics. Otherwise there would have been no shutdown in the CDC and other US government agencies few months ago, etc. I don’t think my work is more or less political than a risk factor analysis for lung cancer and smoking. I think i might be blackbolded by some of the references I cited, but to understand Capitalism even the Catholic Church is studying Marx [Funny the leading scholar is the Munich Bishop, whose last name is Marx]:
Kim Ki Chan
Every once in a while, I will just pick a book off a library shelf and check it out without quite knowing what’s inside. The University of Michigan is a great place to do this.
This time, I picked up a book of works by Korean photography Kim Ki Chan. Kim passed away in 2005, but spent the brunt of his adult life documenting Seoul, and its (and Korea’s) transformation into one of the richest areas in the world.
His pictures, rather than focusing on rampant consumerism and youth culture, center on the back alleys of the urban poor. Mostly black and white, his portraits of local Korean families struggling to get by are stunningly beautiful. I’m positive that the pictures appeared vastly different at the times they were taken, but looking at them now and thinking about how Korea has grown, one can’t help but thinking that the subjects are filled with anything but optimism.
Kim’s subjects are overwhelmingly poor. This presents a challenge to a photographer, who can often run onto dangerous ground of portraying the poor as sad and helpless, or romanticizing poverty as cute and adorable. Kim does neither. It’s clear that many of the subjects know Kim already, probably as a friend. He probably saw some of the kids he photographed grow up and have their own over his long career.
My experience in Korea is really quite limited. I went there a couple of times in the late 90’s but my lack of Korean kept me from venturing out to the areas in which Kim operated. I’m sad that I never had the chance to see them, but suspect that some of it still remains.
Guest Blog: Jamie Ought to Put his Money Where he Thinks Poor People’s Mouths Should Be
Jim Pyke as Iron Man
I’ve just browsed around some articles online about the latest Jamie Oliver “controversy.” The issue, in which Oliver is persistently laying himself open to criticism for blaming the poor for some of their own travails, basically boils down to this (from an essay in The Guardian by Alex Andreou):
Oliver observes:
“The poorest families in this country choose the most expensive way to hydrate and feed their families. The ready meals, the convenience foods.”
If only he could travel back in time and advise the homeless me of 2009 how to replace a Tesco Value lasagna or Tesco Value chicken curry, both under £1, with something healthy that I can buy from the King’s Cross Tesco Metro (the only supermarket within walking distance) and cook in a microwave (the only cooking apparatus at my disposal).
This points to the idea that the real issue, the one Oliver isn’t seeing – despite his generally acknowledged good intentions – much less addressing is actually infrastructural, as opposed to attitudinal, cultural, or whatever “boot-strappy” fallacy Oliver is allowing himself to get caught up in.
Where I live it is relatively easy to walk or catch a bus to a well-stocked grocery store, but this is not always the case – especially in places of concentrated poverty. Additionally, the tools and equipment needed to cook cheap, healthy and *fast* meals may be neither readily available, nor cheap to purchase in those same areas. For example, I can make a lot of staple foods pretty quickly in my kitchen with just a bag of flour and a few other common ingredients.
However, this would take a prohibitive amount of time without my stand mixer and the attachments I have amassed for it over the years. Plus there’s the fact that cooking anything from raw ingredients requires, even more fundamentally, a bare minimum of clean, uncluttered counter space (to say nothing of a functional stove, oven, pots and pans, etc.).
Maybe instead of writing more cookbooks (even giving copies of them away to every public library in the country – as he did in an odd effort toward damage control) and spreading himself around on the TV, Jaime would do well to partner with or mentor some potential business operators in impoverished neighborhoods in order to open fresh food co-op stores. They could go further and add well-equipped co-op kitchens/dining rooms around the backs of the stores.
These cooperatively run businesses could become pillars of their neighborhoods where people could come together and strengthen themselves with healthy food and robust social relationships. They could benefit from sharing the knowledge of individuals in those communities some of whom undoubtedly work in food service or have family food traditions and would be only too happy to give back to their neighbors in this way. Kids could go there to learn how to make their own healthy after school snacks and eat them while hanging out and doing their homework in the co-op dining rooms in the hours before the evening neighborhood dinners available through pay-at-the-door or multiple-meal punch card buy-ins.
The economy of scale – especially if the idea could somehow be “franchised” – would benefit everyone in the neighborhoods by providing lower prices for and higher availability of healthy fresh food.
I am not a business person myself, but I suspect something like this would require ongoing charitable donations or an endowment of some kind to ensure that it wouldn’t just fall into disrepair almost immediately after the grand opening. Such funding would likely also be required for core staffing needs. Volunteerism is great, but even good organizations that run mostly by the grace of willing volunteers need a core of paid staff in most cases. Maybe Jaime and his fellow celebrity chefs could rally some of their millions to provide that seed money instead of (or at least in addition to) trying to sell poor people copies of the companion book to his new TV series.
Imagine all the free publicity and product placement possibilities present in these proposed shop/cook/dine hybrid storefronts. (I do think it’s important to balance being hopeful about positive social change against a touch of skepticism or even cynicism regarding the ability of celebrities to drive that change.)
Come to think of it, the journey to setting up something like that would probably make a really lovely, very sincerely uplifting reality TV series.
Il Motiok
We are now working in Il Motiok, a small community of Maasai families located in Laikipia, Kenya. These families eke their existence almost exclusively through goat herding, though some work on neighboring livestock ranches.
It’s a small community of about 130 households. Most people have never been to any level of school. Times have changed. Lack of land and climate change has made their old ways impossible and families are now sending their children to school. Some are hoping to send their children to university.
The people I’ve met so far have been grounded, capable people distanced from some of the more severe social problems that plague poor communities. As the pictures show, however, they do have an incredibly large number of children.
Il Motiok just got cel service 6 months ago. Every adult has a cel phone now. Don’t ever let people tell you that illiteracy is a barrier to wide uses of technology. Not only are they communicating with one another, herders are calling one another to inform of prime grazing spots for their goats.
As part of our research efforts, I have been offering family portraits as a way of saying thanks for letting us intrude on people’s busy lives. Here are some of the pictures.
Donald Richie, RIP
Donald Richie
I approached Mr. Richie after class and asked him if it would be alright if I sat in on the class. He looked a bit distressed and asked if I would be doing the course work. I said that didn’t really matter to me. I just wanted to come to the course every week and listen to his lectures.
Richie loved the Japanese cinema. His lecture style was so un-alienating that one couldn’t help but love it, too. He would present the films in a manner that made them entirely foreign and unique products of the particular culture that produced, but simultaneously fit them squarely in a worldwide tradition of movies. He would present his lecture on the movie of the week, then we would watch the film in a theater, where he would deliver an abridged version of his Tuesday lecture for people who didn’t have the pleasure of attending his class. I think I learned more about art, cinema, media, culture, social science, the humanities and politics in that one 7 week course that I did in the entire remainder of my undergraduate education.
The time for the first mid term came, and I sat for it. Richie came up to me again with a distressed look on his face and stuttered, “A-a-are you taking this c-course for c-c-credit?” I said no, but asked him if I could take the exam anyway. He looked stressed but said yes, no problem. The following week, when he passed back the exams, he had thoughtfully commented on my work, writing more than a page of notes, ending with “If I were grading this, I would give you an A+. Good work.” When the time for the final exam came, the entire incident was repeated. To this day, I’m not sure why my not officially signing up for the course stressed him so. Perhaps he had too many students. I would like to think that he was trying to be meticulous and follow the rules to the letter, which was rather uncharacteristic of a man who flouted so many rules in his lifetime. Perhaps Japan had rubbed off on him more than he cared to consider (though there was no sucking of air through teeth).
I would see him on the street and he would always say hello. I regret not engaging him more while he was there, but it’s hard to just approach someone when you’re a starstruck kid. I later learned that he had a terrible time in Michigan, mainly because the stodgy faculty in the Japanese studies department would take him out on the town in neighboring Ypsilanti. I wish I would have known.
Shortly after that, I became more and more immersed in Japanese cinema studies and decided that I wanted to go to Japan and eventually pursue a graduate degree in the field (I didn’t do the latter). I arranged for a job teaching English conversation in Osaka (with the help of a friend), and left for Japan in November of 1996. It was there that I started speaking Japanese on a daily basis, and met my wife, who still puts up with my abhorrent command of the language.
If I had not taken Richie’s course, I don’t think I would have gone to Japan. It can’t be said that life would have been better or worse had I not gone, but it certainly would have been very different, and probably a little less interesting and certainly minus a life partner. For this, I am entirely grateful for Donald Richie’s existence and wholly sad for a great man’s passing.
Richie made experimental films in the 1960’s. This is one of them:
Andrew WK: How He Almost Became the US Cultural Ambassador to the Middle East
Andrew WK is a rock star, composer, motivational speaker, Taco Bell enthusiast, television host, inventor and (very) part-time painter based in NYC.
Andrew was a student of mine (I gave him an A- and got him grounded) when I was doing a volunteer teaching gig at Community High School in Ann Arbor, MI in 1994. We became acquainted, played in a couple of bands together, and later I put out a couple of his records on my BULB record label. Most important to me, however, is that he’s a good friend.
A couple of weeks ago, it was suddenly announced that Andrew would be serving as a “United States’ Cultural Ambassador to the Middle East.” Andrew would be travelling to the Kingdom of Bahrain on behalf of the US State Department, where he would be spreading his positive “Party” philosophy (the freak out, good time sort, not the divisive Democratic/Republican kind). Not more than 24 hours after I heard the announcement, however, news appeared stating that the entire trip had been cancelled. Many of us were scratching our heads, wondering if the entire thing was a stunt. Fans of AWK have been known to start and passionately spread odd rumors in the past.
However, several media outlets ran articles that included a transcript where a representative of State mentioned the trip and its subsequent cancellation. The State rep was quoted as saying “There may have been some preliminary conversations with him, but he will not be going to Bahrain on the U.S. government’s dime.” Andrew’s scheduled trip to represent the US was very real.
Bahrain is a particularly troubled place right now. Protests have rocked the tiny, oil-rich nation but the heavy handed monarchy has managed to brutally stifle much of it. Bahrain’s human rights record has been described as “dismal” by Human Rights Watch. Sending someone like Andrew, whose positive, self made image very much represents the ideals of liberal, free market democracy would actually be a perfect choice to represent the US in this difficult time.
Perplexed the whole thing, I decided to reach out to Andrew and get the full story. Andrew was kindly able to take some time out to answer some questions about the incident. First, I would like to thank Andrew. Here’s the interview:
FB: Tell us about how this whole thing came to be. Were you cold called by State? Or did you actively seek out an opportunity to work with them?
A: We were cold called, but there had been some murmuring about me traveling abroad in some capacity for a few years. We first officially heard from the State Dept. on September 13th, 2011. That was when they wrote to us with an official invitation reading, “Department of State sponsored trip to Bahrain for motivational speech”.
FB: I’ve read that someone from Bahrain specifically made a request to the Embassy there.
A: We had never heard anything about the trip being requested by a citizen of Bahrain, but I had heard rumors from my managers that they were approached about an entertainment project with the U.S. government. We didn’t know what it was exactly until we got the official invitation. It was always presented as a government sponsored event to spread good will and cultural exchange between the U.S. and the middle east. The people who I work with and who help plan my career have always worked on ways to help further the cause of uniting different cultures and promoting the coming together of the human race. I’ve followed and embraced that spirit for a long time and definitely want to do right by them. This was a natural step in that larger effort. Western culture is very powerful.
FB: How far along was the planning?
A: The planning was a long process that went on for about 14 months. There were many levels of approval and clearance we had to go through on both the U.S. and Bahrainian sides. We just did what we were asked to do and completed all they requested with respect and cooperation. There were some background checks, but it seemed the State Dept. had already done a huge amount of research on me before hand. Most of the details were planned with my handlers and managers without my direct involvement. The plane tickets were booked for our trip to officially begin on December 1st, 2012. We coordinated the flights and travel details with the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain and left them completely in charge of all the on-location details.
FB: Was there ever any discussion of how to announce the event State-side?
A: We had our last planning phone call on Wednesday, November 21st, 2012. That’s when our State Dept. contact went over the final schedule and explained that I should officially announce the trip to the public. He explained what language to use and the overall tone of the trip and the ideals we would be promoting. I never actually met anyone in person from the State Dept. Everything was done either on the telephone or the computer. In 2003, I had been given a private tour of the White House by an ex-Secret Service official who was very passionate about my work and music. It’s possible that he was the one of the folks that first helped introduce the State Dept. to my work as a motivational speaker. Otherwise, I don’t know how they picked me specifically. That’s been really perplexing, but I didn’t think about it too much at first. I was just so excited to be asked. But once they canceled everything, I obviously have been trying to figure out what this whole thing is really about.
FB: Did State set up an itinerary?
A: Yes. We were sent the official itinerary by the State Dept. at approximately 6am on Monday, November 26th, 2012. The plans for the trip had always been based around lectures and motivational speeches at local schools. There was never a public concert planned, although we had plans to “jam” with some of the local musicians in Bahrain at a rehearsal space and music store. The main bulk of the trip was to be spent focused on positive interactions with the young people of Manama, the capital city. I planned on talking about positive thinking, making the most of one’s life, embracing freedom, and using partying to help forget your troubles. The State Department gave me overall guidelines, but were also very open to allowing me creative control when it came to how I would present our ideals and how I would present myself. They were always very familiar with what I do – that’s why they came to us in the first place – and they were certainly made even more familiar with me during the lengthy year-plus process of planning and clearance.
At about 11am on the same day we were sent the official itinerary, our State Department contact called us in a panic with the news that his “higher ups” canceled the entire trip for unknown reasons. Apparently it went far up the chain and a lot of people were getting in trouble, even to the point of being fired over this project.
FB: That’s terrible! Do you have any idea who the “local musicians” were that you were going to play with? What were you going to do exactly?
A: It was explained to me that there was a passionate rock and metal scene in Bahrain. I had heard similar reports from others about there being lots of loud music fans in the more liberal parts of the Middle East. I was planning on playing some drums and keyboard and just making up songs or playing songs that we all could learn together. It was all very open to spontaneity. However, the State Dept. also made it very clear that the musical parts of the trip were secondary to the speaking engagements. It was always explained to me that the main goal was for me to help foster a positive impression of the U.S. in the minds of students and the people of Bahrain at large.
FB: How did it all start to fall apart? What happened?
A: It all happened very fast. Everything was good to go up until that Monday morning, after we received the itinerary. In that window of time between 6am and 12 noon, something happened and it has still yet to be explained what exactly it was, beyond that “higher up” State Dept. officials had changed their mind and now decided I was not an appropriate person to represent the U.S. as a Cultural Ambassador. It’s still not clear why they had this change of heart at the last second after they had invited me and spent a year carefully planning my trip. We had flights booked and the trip was less than a week away.
Some have said it was canceled because we announced the trip to the public, but I was encouraged to announce the trip by the State Dept. directly. The whole idea of my Cultural Ambassadorship was to generate public interest and excitement about the meeting of our two cultures. It was never meant to be a secret event – that would have defeated the entire point.
In the days since the cancellation, I’ve received inside tips that there was a passionate debate in the State Dept. about my going at the last second. It’s possible that someone outside of the State Dept. who wasn’t aware of the trip initially became incensed that they weren’t informed before. Apparently some of these unknown higher-up officials were on my side and others were deeply offended by the idea of me going. It would still be nice to learn exactly what happened and who specifically pulled the plug. I’m not taking it personally. For all I know, they could be protecting my own safety. Maybe there were threats, related or unrelated to the trip. It’s definitely confusing and kind of feels like a dream – like there was some other aspects to this project that maybe we didn’t understand or weren’t told about. I’m still as much in the dark as anyone.
FB: Bahrain is a pretty troubled place right now. I’m surprised that State was willing to send anyone over there. Did you have any reservations about going? We know from your live shows that you aren’t concerned about personal safety, of course. It could be suggested that the US would be supporting a repressive state, which some people might have trouble with. Was this ever in the conversation?
A: In the months leading up to the trip, I’ve learned a lot more about the complicated situation in Bahrain. I was definitely looking forward to getting an in-person view of what’s been going on and get a clearer impression of their land and their issues. Since I was going there to spread positivity on behalf of the U.S., it’s definitely been interesting and also concerning that I may have been used as some sort of pawn in a larger game to distract from the potentially bad situations. My handlers insisted that I would be safe and that the U.S. and Bahrain had a good relationship. I was going in the name of supporting that relationship and was expected to support a positive view of both countries.
Some of what’s been most confusing about this is wondering how it’s connected to earlier projects we’ve been a part of, and if I was chosen for reasons that aren’t as obvious, or weren’t openly explained to me. Kim Kardashian had been scheduled to visit Bahrain the same weekend we were there. She wasn’t formally sent by the U.S., but she was there to promote an American milkshake company. Apparently there were protests to her visit and some controversy in advance to her arrival. Some have speculated that maybe the State Dept. canceled my official Ambassador trip because it coincided with her unofficial visit. Of course, she has every right to visit with or without government sponsorship on our side, but it would be unusual to think of the State Dept. not wanting me to be there at the same time as her.
FB: Are there any plans to go anyway?
A: In the past week, we’ve received an incredible outpouring of support, especially from folks in Bahrain and the Middle East that had been looking forward to this trip. It’s been really moving and has definitely motivated us to find a way to go there with or without the support of my own country. We’re working on it. I’ve never been to the Middle East and really want to go.
FB: I could only find information on one other Cultural Ambassador, and that was Kareem Abdul Jabbar. How does it feel to almost have been in a club with the famous star of the seminal cinematic work, “Airplane“?
A: Kareem Abdul Jabbar is amazing and I’ve always loved him – his basketball legacy, and his work as an entertainer are awesome examples of America at its best. It’s been a real privilege to even imagine sharing some sort of place with him and other ambassadors in the history of U.S. culture. It seems like these are opportunities for us to show the world what this country can offer and to help unite more people together in the spirit of freedom and a shared global purpose.
FB: It’s great to have talked to you again after so many years. Were you OK after Hurricane Sandy? Did you eat any sand?
A: It’s wonderful to talk with you too, Pete! We were OK during Sandy, thank you. I always eat a bit of sand every few days, just for the earthy taste and texture. I’ve loved dirt eating since I was about 6 years old. I strongly recommend people try it at least once in their life. Party Hard Forever and stay strong!
PARTY HARD FOREVER
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