reverse culture shock-predeparture

After 5 weeks in far west China I made a short week of visits with friends in Japan. It was refreshing to move from a position of almost total benighted ignorance of languages (Uyghur, Kazakh, Chinese) and society (Urban Urumqi, campus culture, autonomous Xinjiang province distant from Han majority eastern China) to a position of semi-ignorance in Japan, where I can hold a conversation and accomplish much of what I need to do for daily life. Suddenly the signs and spoken announcements are clear and understandable for meaning and for culture (expectation of what is being intended, precedent and why one should find value in such). But then as I begin the return path from Japan to the trans-Pacific leg out of Beijing, I begin to think ahead about the USA, where I have not striven to keep current on headline news, people or places.

Three vignettes cause me to think about who are the U.S people that I hear about from the people around me.
1. (photo) On the platform at JR Osaka I begin to see people who are visibly foreign to Japan (of European, S. Asian or African descent). I reflect momentarily: probably their experience is like mine recently in China. They only barely skim the cultural and linguistic surface, managing to get from point A to point B thanks to the alphabetic subtitling of public transportation signage. But the vast ocean of meanings and individual lives and aspirations is out of reach. Upshot: foreigners have their own rich universe of meanings, but there is little interconnection to the society and language outside their own. And among the people raised in the USA there is even less likelihood of ability, interest or exposure to other languages and lives. Reverse culture shock: most of my people (if those on the train platform are such) are monolingual and are poorer for it individually and collectively.

2. Airport check-in line includes so many visually non-Japanese bodies, voices, and faces (well maybe 10-12 all together). I reflect: here is only the second person of African descent that I have seen in the past 7 weeks (one here, once in Urumqi at the university), and here the bodies seem too tall, too heavy and altogether too big, bulgy and pointy-nosed. The posture or presentation of self makes gives me the impression of aggressive, confident, entitled to own their own destiny. Reverse culture shock: identity of self and in the eyes of others has much to do with surface appearances. One's point of reference gives a relative scale of what is the range of 'normal' so that when one's world has relative uniformity, then those people who are outside that boundary stand out extraordinarily. Probably the reverse is true, too: when you see diverse range in skin, hair, clothing, body-type then the experience of a place of relative uniformity must seem restrictive and the fine-tuned differences may get lumped together as "all the same."

3. Food hall at International Youth Hostel at Hagoromo (Hamadera Koen/park) in Takaishi: 20 somethings with N. American accents are somewhere behind me bemoaning the lack of clean clothes and need to line up for using the coin laundry facilities down the hall. The talk goes to employment woes and apartment living, college experiences and career interests. The trigger to my reverse culture shock is the flat, slightly nasal voices (Midwest?), and the shared script; that is, they seemed to be in the same boat, paddling the same pace and riding the current in the same direction. There was an unspoken oneness of monolingual, monocultural conversation that feels suffocating after the opposite extreme of Urumqi, where it is routine to hear or speak several languages from one moment to the next, with the accompanying cultural narratives that go along with each. Reverse culture shock: the mainstream, single current, one directionality of consumer culture and brand name living that I associate with those young people's voices. This dirth of social and linguistic diversity is stifling, unproductive (of qualitative variety, but productive of quantitative scale: mass markets) and maybe dangerous.

music, crafts, food festival

 

Here is a 3-photo stitched view of the evening audience at the 10th annual Great Lakes Folk Festival, http://greatlakesfolkfest.net, in East Lansing, Michigan (48823) which began with the first three years funded as the site of the National Folk Festival (Smithsonian Institution) and which is notable for featuring musicians who play the standards as well as some personal adaptations and interpretations. The stage photo shows the Michigan-based Bluegrass ensemble called Detour.

The stage also featured sign-languge support so the lyrics and introductory comments could be picked up by those in the audience who can sign. The range of listeners went from in-utero to elderly fans.

Looking over the rows of music lovers the common delight unifies them. Yet when the applause ends and they move back into their individual lives, all the abiding concerns cover them again: financial worries, job insecurities, interpersonal anxieties or comforts, rising or falling self-confidence and spirits heavy, average or light.

band camp, day 4

at www.kettunencenter.org on Thursday afternoon: about 150 musicians from grades 10-11-12 preparing for the fall season of half-time entertainment for the home football games in September and October. The choice of Union Jack among the flag carriers is meant to go with the theme of British rock music.

talent show of 12 performances

From a yearly contest of numerous high schools in middle Michigan, here are images from each act. The young people have plenty of amateur talent and sometimes pour a lot of time and money into their love of expression. For the mostpart the audience of peers was quiet and respectful, with occasional chit-chatting or hub-bub breaking through the spell of the performers. Students on stage came from Ovid-Elsie, Breckenridge, St. Louis and Birch Run schools.

And here are a couple of video clips from the same event.

church selling second-hand goods

For dozens of years this Congregational church has helped raise funds for projects by inviting donations of used materials to organize, assign prices, advertise and open for sale to the public. The past 15 years, though, some things (such as clothing) have been excluded and the quality of donation is supposed to be a little higher than a typical residential Yard Sale, Garage Sale, Rummage Sale or Porch Sale.

Most years the proceeds total a couple thousand dollars. So this big effort is valued for the results in addition to the shared work and fellowship it creates among the volunteers who organize and the people who offer their donated things for sale.

lobby of high school - highest levels of competition

entrance lobby at high school in the morning before classes begin

Students and parents are greeted in springtime with the special decoration at the main entrance to encourage teams and clubs that rise above peer schools to reach regional and finally state-level competitions.

"farmers' market" at newly rebuilt Lansing City Market

24 April thronged with the great and small: a slight consciousness about knowing one's food sources and makers is growing. And the conversations along the way are an added quality of life issue for more and more people who make time for driving, biking or walking to the City Market in Lansing, Michigan. Credit Michael Pollan in large part for this public interest, www.michaelpollan.com, with his several books about food and society these days.

big box foodstore takes local business away

Local grocery chain of six supermarkets closes another of its locations in middle Michigan, USA.

closed for business

Across the road is a Midwest chain of really big stores that buys in greater volume and negotiates with vendors more stringently than the locally based food stores. Perhaps shoppers will one day deliberately do business at small but more expensive places for reasons other than price tag, such as supporting local owners and workers: less automation may appear less economically efficient, but then there are other factors in a person's livelihood than dollars and cents.

menu this week at rural high school

Monday: chicken nuggets, green beans and mushroom soup
Tuesday: bacon cheese burger, curly fries
Wednesday: pasta bar, garlic bread, Caeser salad
Thursday: Scalloped potatoes and ham
Friday: 7 inch round pizzas

Menu reflects the continental scale of food production, promotion and distribution.
Little of the elements will ever touch human hands along the cycle from seed to digestion.

University community changes on campus

While attending a performance at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, I picked up the on-campus list of events and communications (not the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, but the university source, www.umich.edu/urecord). The overall impression, compared to the middle 1980s, was of status consciousness and displays of hierarchy fading; of established routines and expectations eroding, and of a general increase in the amount and variety of campus events outside of classroom instruction.

Perhaps this impression comes from my middle-age vantage and my collection of life experiences in various organizations and projects where the Ivory Tower has become shorter and less rarefied. And perhaps the diffusion of personal computing over the Internet has supported and indeed stimulated diverse small interest groups and projects. Whatever the origins, the impression stands out at the periphery of my vision and understanding: present but not quite focused.

Iconography - This is USA (passport watermark landscapes)

Printed on my new passport book. Try to identify the date and location of these showcased scenes. Then consider the cultural production: what Presentation of Self, or collective representation is shown (not too many people are featured, certainly).

national anthem before music event at high school

faces turned to the flag, standing, and some with hand on heart

Seeing the many families loyally in support of the outdoor marching band season finale here in the school gymnasium, I began to imagine all the statistical facts reported in the news headlines and in feature stories by investigative reports, documentary film makers, and so on.

Among the 300-400 people gathered this evening, we can imagine such things as:
-jobless rates (and those under-employed; those working without benefits)
-single parent households
-people dependent on social services for food, heat, health, transportation
-debt loads vs net assets/worth
-per centage of un-insured (and under-insured) for health care
-fraction of the adult population who smoke (a generation ago almost 40%, now 20%)
-number of people with serious health threats
-public health problems: flu, obesity, lack of fresh food (not refined or highly processed)
-educational attainment levels (those completing 2 years of college; four; advanced degrees)
-income stratifications
-abuse: substance abuse and addictions (including gambling), DV, TV-video gaming
-personal development difficulties: adjustment, self-esteem, lack of (wide) perspective
-learning difficulties (emotional, physical, mental)
-generational preoccupations: each season of life has distractions and worries

fall scenes - field corn & bare fields

high school contest to decorate classroom doors - Hallowe'en

around October 28 the judges went round the halls of the school to award top rank to best decorated doors: this one is far better than most (in fact it appeared that fewer than 1/2 the rooms participated), but not the top place. On the Friday (10/30, last day of school before the actual day, Oct. 31) a number of students and a few teachers also dressed in costume or parts of costume in keeping with the halloween theme. I was not at this school on the Friday, but at a different high school instead.

traditions of marching band (high school days)

After a week of summer practice the 150 musicians, band leaders (drum majors) and flags (only one male this year) perform at the football game half-time (15') interval during the fall when the game is hosted locally. When the team is away, the band there will do the halftime show. As the sun sets earlier week by week, for the final performance in middle October they have decided to end with a "light show" in which small lights attached to uniforms and shoes accompany the moving formations under cover of darkness. Somehow the sound seems all the bigger when this eerie twilight surrounds the marching band.

Two scenes from the Friday, September 11 game in 2009.

see also a short thumbnail movie from the Monday night rehearsal

death and dying - stone grave markers

The stone cutter across the street from the burial ground must have supplied most of the markers, since the ones from many of the active years of burial are the same granite source material. Some of the early 20c stones are very large indeed; solid, no-veneer. As in life, so also in death the addresses are neatly arranged.
[East central Saginaw, Michigan (USA)]

Compare also the much smaller graveyard that was once beyond the city of Kalamazoo, but now finds itself at the exit ramp to the interstate highway there at the edge of the city.

Flags and feelings

Commemorating public safety workers directly affected by rescue and later recovery from 2001 terrorist attacks of September 21. Pictured here is an oversize US flag on the end of the ladder truck at the front of the town fire station in rural middle Michigan, looking east at the intersection of Main Street.

Seeing this prominent public display got me starting to think about all the things the flag can stand for - individual memories, shared experience, layers of historical resonance, abstract national-ness (essence symbolized); as well as the meanings contained by critics of the US present or past actions and way of handling things. Some of these feelings and ideas may be similar in scale or degree for other flags and other peoples, while other elements may be particular to the US experience as an immigrant society of relatively few generations since its foundation.

Another flag display, this time on a private house, got me thinking more about the flag & ways that people use it to stand for one or more expressions.

Here's a first look at a list of possible connected meanings, http://www.flickr.com/photos/gpwitteveen/3985554820/

--see also 2014 video clips from the remembrance ceremonies

--see also 2016, the July 4 display:

Avenue of Flags - set of cemetery festooned with U.S. flags
[at Memorial Day and again at Independence Day the hundreds of flags are placed]

http://miserybay.usanethosting.com/indylite/archives/3460 =article
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lywSMljkiTU =slideshow of scenes

see also https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/flag-desecration-laws

Waiting for 'flu shots 2009

Annual "healthy families" county-wide health fair. With official figures for unemployment in Michigan at 15% and underemployment also high, the chance to receive a few health services and lots of free information was very attractive this Saturday morning (8:30-noon): vision & hearing tested, blood tests (sugar, cholesterol, pressure), online self-test for risk of heart disease and so on.

elementary school classroom (management)

Managing the minute to minute flow of student interest, questions, reference points

1. Reference: weekdays in which students go to special teacher outside the classroom (art, music, physical education, library).


2. Selecting one student at random: flat wooden sticks with student name written.


3. Behavior codes: students warned about own behavior (green >yellow >red). Students are meant to record this at end of day in parent communication folders.


4. Day & Date: hand-written at top-right of whiteboard (like orienting one's work papers by recording one's name at top-right).


5. Schedule for day (sequence of activities to aid in transitioning and retrospect).


6. Delegating responsibility/status (day's helper: distribute or collect papers, select order of dismissal).


7. Attendance (self-serve): students move own name magnet to the lunch heading: hot, cold, pizza, milk only.


8. Pencil, please: jar of loaner pencils scavanged (likely also set for "self-serve" will be paper: scrap, drawing, lined)


9. Numbers in daily life: calendar, weather, time (yesterday was..., tomorrow will be...), number of instructional days [or days left in the school year]


10& 11. Discretionary time: wide selection of levels and topics and series for reading (or listening) in 10-30 minute times






Not pictured:


a. Tangible rewards - letter O's given to students to collect (trial month, giving out 10 per day; then 5 per day). Gathered in public view. Traded for prizes.


b. Workflow - student "mailboxes" for accumulated daily work produced that students (self-serve) dutifully carry home at end of day.


c. Timeflow - morning meeting to do routines of calendar, weather, day's schedule; end of day "afternoon meeting" as recap & reminder moment.