After dinner at the Thai Kitchen, Catherine wanted to look for the hooded merganser she'd seen the other day at Goose Lake. We didn't find the mergansers but there were widgeons, a bonaparte gull, and a pair of magnificent Pacific loons, and a yellow legs.
Joe and I, fooled by the bright sun, and thinking we wouldn't be out long, only were in our shirts. So while Joan and Catherine were watching birds, we took one of the cars home to warm up. When the ladies got home they said the loons 'ran' across the lake several times making all kinds of noise. And the only bird close enough for the camera was the yellow legs.
Last spring, Professor Kerry Feldman invited a group of faculty to help him develop a small grant proposal to fund students to take independent study classes in which they would develop a project to help give voice to communities that usually were not heard on campus. While the original intent was to highlight different immigrant populations, that was quickly broadened to allow students to define community. Goals included reaching out to students who might feel that the university was not interested in people from their community, to raise awareness of these different cultures among other students and faculty, and to improve the interaction between the campus and the community at large. At the beginning the faculty were not sure what the students would be able to accomplish. Each student would be assigned a faculty mentor, would get tuition waiver for the class, and $200 to spend to help cover costs. Interested students could also get a faculty to help them develop their proposals.
Yesterday the students presented their final projects, which were far more consistently excellent than the faculty dared to hope for back at the beginning.
Cassandra explored the "Diverse Artistic Voices of Mountain View," a low income neighborhood. Her excitement about being able to do this project with faculty support and class credit bubbled over in her presentation. She's been busy in the community interviewing artists and community leaders and clearly is going to keep working on this. Celeste Hodge, a community member on the steering committee and member of the Mayor's staff, gave Cassandra her business card and asked her to call her because she wants to expand the project to other parts of town.
Robin interviewed students in her Alaska Native Studies class as well as the elders who helped teach the class to determine the roles elders play in an urban setting. The elders' participation in the class went a long way in getting students to explore not only Alaska Native culture, but their own, and made them realize the urgency of beginning similar dialogues with older people in their families and communities.
Lauren looked at the adjustments military familes have to make when moving into Anchorage. Her findings suggested that Anchorage is a pretty good posting, in part because of the strong community support for the military, the great natural environment, and the general convenience of shopping, community activities, and recreation.
Austin was so excited he couldn't hold still. A music education student, he explored Carnatic music of India with two Indian-American residents of Anchorage. He discovered a whole new way to experiencing music and his enthusiam got the audience excited as well. And then he played Swagatam Krishna which he had transcribed for the clarinet.
Shelley explored how her upbringing affected her world view. Born in Columbia on a Christian farming community, she came to the US as an infant when the guerilla activity forced the community to abandon their land. Eventually they made their way to a similar community of 50 people in rural Alaska.
And although today's event began at 11am and went until after 5pm, steering committee member Phyllis Fast and her students prepared plenty of food for all and beautifully decorated the room.
Tafi's presentation focused on male Samoan children who are early identified as Fa 'afafine and raised as girls to have a unique place in their cultural life, crossing between gender roles. The particular focus was on what happens to them when the come to study in the US. He interviewed Fa 'afafine of two different age groups to see if there was a difference.
Isaiah grew up in Unalakleet where he started videotaping in 8th grade. He's now an accomplished film maker and used that talent to document how villagers are adapting to life at UAA. The group of students he followed seemed to be adjusting pretty well, though they find the bus system in Anchorage really inconvenient.
There was also a presentation on "Birthing from Multicultural Perspective" and on "Anchorage's Political Refugees." A number of the students told us how significant this class was in their academic and personal lives. And those who didn't say it explicitly demonstrated it in the enormous amount of work they did and how well they presented their findings.
This goes with yesterday's post. I had really wonderful students and we all had a good time that night at Arnut's beautiful home, great food, and the Karaoke.
OK, this is short and a little shakey, but hey, how often do you see Greater Hornbills? They hide out way up on top and they are hard to see. Look carefully, you'll see it once it starts to move.
Sunday morning, March 4, at 7:30am, before class, Manit picked us up and took us to his Gold Shop in downtown Korat where his friends were playing an informal concert. They practice Tuesdays. They also have a Western Classical group.
We came over to the dining hall as the sun was setting. All the students were there waiting for us.
We met Mark, an Irishman and his partner Noy. He was on vacation in Thailand when he fell into a teaching job in the south of Thailand. He is on vacation now visiting the student he is sponsoring here in Umphang. Joan and I were also called on to come up and talk to the students. Because Joan had said there were Hmong students in Alaska, he asked the Hmong students to stay and meet us afterward.
This is a brother and sister. Next are twin Karen students (on the right) with their sister.
Thanks to an adept student, this video is ready to post. More later. This was at the Chinese New Years Festival in the center of Korat, Thailand last night. I must say it felt wonderfully normal to me - just like many festivals I attended in Kamphaengphet many years ago. Except for the Rock n Roll.
Healing Racism in Anchorage, a group I belong to, was invited to present to the Alaska Bilingual and Multicultural Education Conference held in Anchorage this week. Yesterday we did. Shirley Mae Springer Staten and Norwood Eggling did the keynote address. Shirley Mae emphasized the importance of stories in getting these kinds of issues out and talked about discovering she was different on a bus trip to the South as a young girl. "When we share our stories, we open the window on compassion, we open the window on foregiveness, we open the window on love."
Norwood talked about being part of an organization that has Racism in the name. How people are disturbed by the word. Americans don't want to believe that racism exists in the country or in themselves. He also talked about the difference race made by comparing himself - an adopted white boy who spent his preschool years in Japan with Japanese women raising him while his parents worked - and his older sister, who was also adopted, but was Japanese. When the family returned to the US, not that long after WWII, he was easily accepted into the new life, while his Asian sister never did adjust to school.
Toni Pounds, Mari Ogimachi, and I had a smaller session after the keynote. We had a good mix of people - Whites, Alaska Native, Asian, American born and not. Mari was the moderator. We had an exercise which focused people on how they learn about things that affect how they judge people. They rated a number of characteristics from 1 (extremely negative) to 5 (extremely positive). We talked about the things they rated as 1 and then those they rated as 5. Some 1's were: being late, fingernails dirty, missing tooth, carries a bible. As we talked, people explained why they thought this was bad and where these beliefs came from. One Russian woman thought about teachers having students hold out their hands to check the fingernails. Another woman thought about her religious family always judging her and was thus not happy about the bible, while someone else had imagined a small pocket bible just peeking out of a pocket and saw this as a good thing. Talking about these issues which are fairly easy to talk about publicly, even though they pushed some people's emotional buttons, was a comfortable lead in for Toni to talk about the cycle of oppression. How people absorb beliefs that are reinforced by society and the cycle continues.
Our living room window faces south, so when the waxwings come to feast on our berries I'm always filming into the light. (The sun is basically on the southern horizon all winter when they come to claim their prizes from the Mountain Ash trees.) And this being the first time I videoed the birds, using my digital camera, I totally forgot about the sound. Luckily, the music on the radio is ok, unfortunately, my wife was talking on the phone. But, for the time being, I'll post it as a way to entice you to find links to better pictures of these beautiful birds. And as a reminder to others who might forget their camera is recording sound as well as video.
These are the second set of tree trimmers maintaining our mountain ash trees.
There's something about the contrast between what the music sounds like and what the words mean, that captured me here. Also, the universality of modern problems. Listen a little bit without reading the subtitles. Then start reading.
For more info on the choir itself, and others like it, go here.
