Shouts We Doubt Never Got Shouted

A Memory on the Occasion of Putting Animals to Sleep

2012-01-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

You think about the pit mix who was young once along with your children.
They were all of a piece.
The dog with the pointy ears and pink and black snout.
The child with the pointy ears
and the sudden way
she darted across the room followed by the puppy.

Now the puppy has rheumatism.
The daughter is grown, has a job, and asks you for a little extra money to buy an IUD.

The son darts naked through the den spraying water
on the daughter and the white carpet and the cat who leapt to the top of the glass door catching a fly.
Now the cat licks his chops in a square of sunlight while the son rockets down a field in circles like a billiard ball.

You cry thinking about having to put these beloved animals to sleep.
You miss putting your children to bed and holding their hands while they sleep.
You dream -- I dream -- of the softness of fur, the unspeakable wetness of children's kisses.
Reminded of how young we were,
Darting through life.
Crazy with the love of it,
Believing, half believing, this would never end. --AE

In Charlotte NC: Daughters and Moms on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

2012-01-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

The picture of the relaxed-looking daughter above who seems in charge of her life as she surveys prospective wedding venues in Ashville, North Carolina is actually an illusion created by my Nikon 3100 SLR camera.

She is 24 now, an independent curmudgeon who never appreciated a thing I did. She is also funny, devoted to me, and wild. As a kid, she drowned her pagers; she smoked and drank; she told me she was going to be a food scientist at the age of 5, pulling out every sauce and meat and mustard concoction from the refrigerator, adding soy sauce to strawberries or mixing cheese with maple syrup. In virtually every respect she did exactly what she wanted because she knew what she wanted.

At 14 she started catering at old folks homes. She read to Alzheimer's patients. She made a lot of friends with women and men I would have classified in another age and time as "low class" or even "trashy." Frequently they would cuss at me when I'd try to find out where she had disappeared, which was often. At one point, at the age of 16, she clocked me and gave me a bloody nose. All her girlfriends, Grainne excepted, got pregnant by the age of 17 and none went to college save for her. She was the one, I remember, who walked all the way into Media to keep her appointment at Planned Parenthood. I once caught her in our apartment fooling around with a tough leech of an Italian boy who had good abdominal muscles which he called "cut." Our apartment was robbed by one of his friends when he left the backdoor open. My daughter screamed at me for not throwing him out after the first week of leeching (before the robbery); finally I had to call his father to throw him out of our house because he would not stay in my son's room.

When she was 14 years old I had to take a business trip to Monterey, California. As the plane touched down on the runway at 11 pm local California time my cell phone rang. "I can't find your daughter. She's disappeared!" the baby sitter cried. My Juliet had climbed down from her second floor rooftop chamber with the assistance of Guttersnipe, the local Romeo from Garden City who helped her use the fireman's trick of sheets knotted together. I remember her tantrums when I sent out the police after her...And I remember several times when she smashed her fist through the panels of her armoire (it was a pretty cheap armoire). Throughout her childhood she scratched or threw our family pictures against the wall, smashing glass all over the place. As a kid, she had something like dyslexia but ended up loving to read and even made self-help tapes for me at age 9 to talk me out of my depressions regarding men. She reminded me, in form and function, of her father, but seemed to have other redeeming qualities that came out of no where.

My favorite was her "tire therapy," when she ran out our side door and leaped onto a large rubber tire swinging from a heavy rope tied to our lovely chestnut tree. She hung from the hole in the tire and dragged her bare feet in the mud beneath, telling me she played in the "tender mud" because it made her happy. These kinds of therapies were uplifting after my husband left and she could no longer stand my tears as I confessed my anguish and self-pity fruitlessly to my mother or sister on the phone. (I should have saved it all for a priest.)

Today, as the psychologist Mary Pipher might have predicted, she is a disciplined worker, a banquet supervisor at Marriott Corporation in Charlotte, and a creative marketer who writes well and still swings sadly into dis-ease when her fiance must take to the road to work.

She pays her bills, has a college degree, rails at me for allowing her to go to the school of her choosing (Johnson & Wales) instead of a "first-rate" school, which of course she refused to even consider when she was of the age to do so. She is a jumble of charms, fears, and resentments -- most of the resentment is reserved for me and the terrible mistakes I made as a young parent. She is still afraid of tackling an MBA, even though she seemed confident about it two years ago. For a while she seemed worried about making any career move without her fiance Jason, a very talented executive chef and all around Zen-like Southern boy who gleams when he looks at her.

A day ago in Charlotte she charged ahead of me when we walked on the streets. Finally I talked back and said she needed to walk with me even though I am loping and "slow."

But yesterday, after a thankless morning at a chic but impossibly priced bridal salon, after she charged ahead of me again forgetting to thank me for lunch, I was reminded how sullen I was and STILL CAN BE when I am upset. She reminds me of how lousy she is at housework, how incredibly loving she is toward Jason and her friends, and how occasionally loving she can really be toward me, wrapping her arms around my neck and saying, "I'm really appre--appre-cia-tive of that dress." Yes, that incredible dress, which she found on the fairyland mannequin of herself at New York Bridal salon in the middle of a strip mall outside Charlotte. She found the right fitter, a girl named Mona with lovely dark skin, her smile cracking open, as Grainne's did after the fourth or fifth try on. She was in bliss. Mona brought a half-size Mannequin of a groom (cut off at the knees) so she could stand next to him and compare their "looks." And yes, with her bridal party of dearest friends David and Kristin cheering her on with tears and extravagant exclamations, Grainne poured into that antique lacy confection showing all her curves like buttermilk pouring into a gelatin mold. We knew, after a dozen more try-ons, that she had found her happy fit; that gorgeous thing every bride wants. And I also realized, no matter what, she would walk down an aisle I've never taken and be braver than I have ever been. Because it is not easy to surrender oneself to another person and agree to share another's fate; and this is precisely what she has done.

Bridal Party Cheering Squad: Dave, Grainne, Kristin

And so, with the agony and ecstasy of this daughter, I celebrate her tire therapy once again and hope she will swing swing swing up and out with all the happiness and unexpected twists and turns of a new life.

What I Meant to Tell You About Mongolia

2011-11-13T08:04:00.001-08:00

Hello friends and family--

To catch you up on the last 6 weeks, since much of the time either my brain or the UC Denver Virtual Private Network (VPN) doesn't work and thus I can't get access to my own blog...

Chapter 1: Mongolia

After waiting in Beijing Capital Airport October 1 for 18 hours for a flight to Outer Mongolia, and having been bumped again from another Mongolian Airlines flight that actually did fly and told to come back at 3 AM to find out whether the Ulan Bator shuttle which was supposed to arrive 24 hours earlier at dawn might finally show up -- my friend Lona O'Connor and I decided to call it quits.

Tomorrow is another day, we said to ourselves, exhausted and cognizant that if we waited until 3 AM, another flight might arrive. Or it might not.

We shrugged and headed for the taxi stand. Our booking agent in Ulan Bator told us she'd have to check at 9 AM on the morrow to see if we could rebook. By now we realized that even with rebooking, we had already lost 36 hours of our planned 6 day Genghis Khan Glorious Reunion Tour to the frontier, and would lose another day or so before we could get there.

I felt despondent. Lona had flown all this way from Palm Beach, Florida to see the wilds of Mongolia. We had planned to take a 1000 kilometer overland jeep tour to Bayangobi, to see the Hoyor Zagel Ger camp and to ride horses on the steppes, the dunes and mountains. We were then headed to Erdene Zuu monastery in Kharakorum, in the middle of the steppes, to see their collection of the most remarkable Buddhist paintings and religious objects in Mongolia. And we would finish in Khustai National Park...to see the wild horses and enjoy the feeling of understanding what Genghis Khan's birthplace was all about.

No dice. The weather was against us. The travel agency couldn't rebook the flight for some reason mainly because, I think, we hadn't bribed the airline agents to let us on. And there was no one at the Mongolian Airlines office on a Sunday. And the computers were either non-existent or stopped working. The travel agency, very strangely, refunded our money rather than trying to rebook our trip.

And that flight at 3 AM ended by showing up near dawn. So, if I had been more patient, and willing to wait out the full 24 hours at the airport, we would have gotten to Ulan Bator after all.

Bite me!

Suddenly I remembered a little episode in Southern Taiwan 37 years ago, when my friend Melinda Liu, who later became the China Newsweek correspondent (she is still reporting from Beijing after all these years, and I am having dinner with her tonight) told me we had to stuff ourselves into a bus to get to the Southernmost tip of the island. Otherwise we would be stranded on a dirt road in the jungle with night about to fall.

At the time, surveying the Taiwanese country bodies hanging out the windows of the little yellow school bus, I said, "There's got to be another bus. Or we can take a taxi. This can't be the last bus."

"This is the last bus," Melinda said. "Get on." She shoved and I moved. People were getting on the bus by climbing into the windows and jumping on the top. There were geese and ducks in cages and kids without bottoms on. We squished and stood for about two hours with one foot on the bus floor and another atop our suitcases.

We ended up having the time of our lives on that trip. We took tours through the jungles where the '7 pacer' snakes slinked in the bush and drank Coca Colas with children without bottoms on who set up a lemonade stand in the red clay flats only 100 meters from land's end. At night, at our little hotel, we climbed on the roof and saw the claw of Scorpio dipping a golden arrow into the Pacific. The ocean caught all the light of the stars, and I remember looking southward toward the dark spit of land, the South China Sea on our right, the Philippine Sea to our left. I could reach up and touch the planets and stars in the dome, so bright. To this day, I dream of stars that bright and touchable.

But I had forgotten her lesson. "For these people, this is the last bus." And now I kicked myself for it...I've never waited for the last bus. I've been a Mexican jumping bean. Melinda did, and that's one of the reasons she's at Newsweek and I'm at the International College of Beijing teaching journalism to Chinese kids!

Anyway, we never made it to Ulan Bator. But something else happened. Once again, my opera singer friend, Hasegaowa (see post below, "Close Encounters")-- part Mongolian, part Manchurian, part bologna and cheese, and her artist husband, Liu Ya Jiang, one of the most gifted artists I have met thus far -- rescued us. "We'll drive you to Mongolia," they said.

And they did.

II.

Though we didn't reach Outer Mongolia, we did get within ten miles of it, traveling through the umbelievably huge grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

Now Inner Mongolia is a part of China. Mr. Liu Ya Jiang tells me, confidentially, that Outer Mongolia is a pretty dangerous place to be. If you don't bribe everyone you meet, you are likely to get your things stolen or perhaps your head or your legs will be exchanged for a horse's. Or you just won't come back from that long jeep ride of yours. Outer Mongolia, now an independent country, is still trying to 'find itself.' Apparently it is drifting between hyperinflation and Mr. Liu's hyperbole. It is still the land of Genghis Khan, Liu tells me, but it must solve huge economic problems that come with independence following decades of Soviet corruption and repression.

As I learned, Inner Mongolia has fewer problems. It is becoming richer (and more polluted) with mining, which casts a gray shadow over the otherwise sparking and treeless Soviet-style cities. People from Outer Mongolia frequently cross the border to shop in the towns of Inner Mongolia, where foods and other goods are still more affordable. Nonetheless, some of the people of Inner Mongolia are still facing grinding poverty -- sometimes from a sudden loss of herds (freezing storms that kill whole herds at a time), sometimes from other personal misfortunes. I had an opportunity to encounter some of these people on the trip Hasegaowa strategically arranged.

The Lius picked us up on a Wednesday morning in the sunlight which is so rare for Beijing and we headed in their rented SUV northwest to their suburban home of Yanjing, about 130 kilometers northwest of the city. Yanjing is a gorgeous farming town set on the border of mountains; it is not that far from Badaling, one of the restored sections of the Great Wall. We skirted the Great Wall which I saw on the mountaintops above us, then we drove along highway G7 through the mountains and lakes toward the tip of the Guanjing Reservoir, a big and lovely body of water in unspoiled areas that reminded me of the drive in Colorado toward Breckenridge.

We stopped along the way to see a Buddhist festival (with touches of native Taoist traditions) on a mountain top; this particular day, townspeople were remembering and sacrificing to Mothers. Chinese opera singers were hamming it up on stage, and the towns people dressed in woolen caps and pullovers were sitting enjoying themselves in an openair ampitheatre. Just past the ampitheatre, I saw little temple courtyards with cheesy statues of Buddhist and Taoist gods and goddesses, including Matsu, the goddess of the sea (one statue has a baby sucking her nipple). People were burning sacrifices of sausages, fruits, red pieces of paper, cigarettes, and other goodies on coal fires. It was festive, and in the parking lot a group of ambitious farmers was decapitating a sheep, thankfully already dead (I tried not to look, but I couldn't help myself).

We stayed the first night at Hasegaowa and Liu's beautiful traditional Chinese home in Yanjing, were treated to her marvelous meals and fresh European coffee and juices, and finally got to see Liu's painting studio, where he is assembling a series of heroic oil portraits of the Mongolian women he has grown to love in many trips to the countryside there.
Lona and I stayed in the studio and though there was no heat, the Liu's have KANGS, so they can put hot coals in a pot beneath their elevated bed and stay warm and toasty at night.

Hasegaowa, with her unbelievable powerful party connections, arranged FREE hotel lodging for us and free feasts (including a high definition TV set which was turned on in every hotel banquet hall) in the Mongolian steppe throughout out trip there. We stayed in the cities of Xi Ling Hao Te, a large, expansive Soviet-style stronghold on the grasslands, not a tree in site, with a gorgeous museum filled with Genghis Kahn and other archaeological memorabilia.

Unfortunately, it was closed the day we got there, perhaps for the October 1-10 Autumn Festival. As we headed toward the grasslands, we stayed in smaller cities: Ou li ya si tai (also known in Chinese as Dong wu qi) and Xi Wu Qi. The accommodations got a bit more modest as we headed along, but every hotel was at least three stars, the food was marvelous, and at Dong Wu Qi we were treated to a feast and entertainment with four Mongolian girls that I can best describe as "wards" of Hasegaowa, Liu, and a group of private citizens who are trying to help them with their schooling and heating bills.

Three of the girls are sisters. Their mother died tragically from an illness a few years ago and their father is confined to a wheelchair after a car accident. The girls are 19, 18, and 12, one more gorgeous than the next; the middle child, Chaolumen Ge Ri La, has served as model for Liu's paintings of strong Mongolian women (she and my Uncle Don look alike, which again makes me think we have a Mongolian connection somewhere in our medieval past as horse thieves).

The girls sang traditional songs of Mother's Love and Father's Bravery for us (I am checking their names before I include them). I will post their songs on audio files on my blog if I can ever get access to it again. All of them wore rich quilted traditional Mongolian costumes of brilliant colors: reds, blue, and green. The little one, who lost her mother at a very young age, greets Hasegaowa with kisses; she's like favored daughter. The little one got the courage to sing for us; as she sang, her reedy voice grew louder and more confident; she was brilliant.

The fourth girl, whose parents are both alive, is an especially fine student (although all the girls are hard at work in school; the older two are planning on university with the help of private citizens who contribute). She danced for us, but no longer can afford a dancing dress since she has outgrown the other. We visited their homes after the feast. The three sisters belong to a proud herding family and their home in the grasslands, which we later visited, is now closed shut. The family lives in a barebones apartment on the fourth floor of a city tenement. Fortunately, this apartment has heat (the last one didn't), and the girls like it better. The older is like a mother to the other two. Her cousin, a young man of about 15, sang for us and his songs brought tears to my eyes. They are happy and hardworking kids...I wish I knew more, but I don't. I gave the kids some scholarship money to continue their studies. If they don't finish, their options are very limited, and Hasegaowa and Liu told me the upsurge of capitalism in China doesn't permit much government aid to these people. The mother of the fine student girl hugged me when I gave the young girl some money to put away for her dancing dress.

During the day we went to the grasslands and visited the 49 year old mother of Saihaqi-ma-ge, another 18 year old dancer so talented she is now studying at a university in Xilinhaote, Mongolia. The mother and father live year-round in a GER, a traditional tent, and the mother invited us in for tea and snacks with the father's younger sister's husband in attendance (the Dad, unfortunately, was on herding duties). The GER is about 15 feet in diameter; it has decorative wallpaper and a stove in the middle. The mud floors are covered with rugs and pillows. I imagine they can keep warm in the winter, barely. The mother looks worn, about 70 years old, but not unhappy. The daughter hopes to become a dance teacher.

My friend, Lona, a journalist, doubtless took better notes than I did, and I'm anxious to read her account of those days on the steppes. I can tell you that Hasegaowa could easily become a public relations manager for Premier Wen Jia Bao of the Communist Party, or Paris Hilton, or the Inner Mongolian government. She can finesse anything and anyone. At one point, when Lona and I were thrown into a police car by a seemingly tipsy town manager at Xi lin hao te, a "da ge" (big brother) of the Lius, she popped into the car with us, convinced him to hold us ransom only for a dinner, and then let us go on our way. During that drunken feast Big Brother, a staunch Communist apparachik who reminded me of a character from Dr. Zhivago, drank so much liquor I thought I'd have to personally pump his stomach. No matter, I tried to emulate Hasegaowa's charm (not easy for me), fed him with my chopsticks, flirted a little, and was happy when his anger at my memory of Taiwan abated (I said only that I had learned Chinese there more than 30 years ago -- his response, a growl, was that "Taiwan belongs to China.").

In our final day on the grasslands we met a rich family of herders who guided their horses and sheep with motorcycles rather than riding on horseback themselves. The handsome father, Er deng bat te, and his wife, Duo dea Mugin, live 900 kilometers in the grassland from DongWu Qi near the Outer Mongolian border. They have an adorable motormouth of a five year old, Gom Batu, who is incredibly smart, runs back and forth to Hasegaowa hugging her, and mastered my camera in about 5 minutes. The boy eats everything in sight. He is already learning his Mongolian and Mandarin characters at kindergarten. He has to live with his grandfather in order to go to school, but neither he nor the parents seem to mind it much. All of them dressed in their blue quilted Mongolian outfits to greet us; and their house had many rooms, parquet floors, an entertainment system, and soft couches. What a contrast to the gers and tenements of the days before! They seemed to enjoy their life; and Er Deng Batte particularly enjoyed a feast of MACDONALD's hamburgers that Hasegaowa brought him from Beijing. In turn he gave us roasted meat and yogurt. I think we got the better part of the exchange, although some things on that party platter that resembled organs from a med school's cadaver lab. I'm glad he didn't force us to eat them.

Visiting this last family was in some ways, the highlight of the trip. I think Lona got to see enough that she was satisfied there was so much more to see. We wandered across the steppes, now brown and rolling as Iowa in winter. We took pictures. Hasegaowa's talented son, Michael, and his friend Jason, took lots of photos of us. It was sunny, and the wind was not too fierce. I understood how and why a woman like me, living near Chadds Ford PA and loving the Wyeth artistic tradition, could end up in Mongolia with a family that also loves the Wyeth tradition. We were entirely lucky to visit these people, and I look forward to the day I can go back in July and August, when Mongolia turns green and purple with rain and flowers. This is the Mongolia Liu paints; although I love the barrenness of the place, I want to see it again in the sunlight when the men go shirtless and ride their horses in competitions to see who is the strongest and best.

Liu, I think, will one day come to the States and see our grasslands of Iowa. Hopefully, I will help him exhibit his paintings of strong Mongolian women in the Brandywine museum, next to his muse.

Love,

Arielle

A Message For Chinese Students: Go Anywhere but Here

2011-10-12T07:54:00.003-07:00

See the full story at Caixin Media Magazine (English), published in Beijing, China, at http://english.caixin.cn/2011-10-24/100317029.html

The students in my Beijing classes must believe I hold the key to their future career success. When I arrive each morning at the International College of Beijing (ICB), part of a University of Colorado Denver cooperative undergraduate program, their eyes light up as though I am a ten-foot tall avatar. They believe in my power, or at least they pretend to. We speak the common language of their futures: both Chinese and English. They are among the lucky and privileged Chinese youth who, powered by scholarships and their parents’ cash, are among the 440,000 Chinese students flooding international university programs both at home and abroad.

My birthplace – the West – has quickly become the Shangri-La from which these students hope to reap the rewards of an international education. Those with solid English and strong technical skills will become the investment bankers, economists, researchers, and golden transnational communicators of the next generation. As they pass their TOEFL tests and complete their studies in America, the UK, or Australia, these students are likely to outperform and out-earn their stay-in-country college counterparts by far.

Close Encounters with Beijing and Mongolia

2011-09-09T22:19:00.000-07:00

Artist Liu Ya-jiang, painter and unique voice of Mongolia

Shortly after arriving in Beijing, I joined a local gym on the 5th floor of the Jinma hotel and bought a hot pot whose operation required a hands-on demonstration by three Chinese sales people at Sunning Appliance store. I also attended the opening ceremonies at the International College of Beijing, my home university, and met a husband and wife artistic team with roots in Mongolia.

Extraordinary things happen every day here. At least every day happenings appear extraordinary to me, the Western outsider with just enough Chinese knowledge to be "dangerous." In other words, I can comprehend much of what is being said; I don't understand all that it means.

First off, the Jinma hotel is dubbed a five-star hotel and it sits just west of the Chinese Agricultural University East Campus. There is a Starbucks on the ground floor around the corner from the hotel, along with a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Subway franchise, with turkey and bologna meat that appears to have been shaved or hacked from local farm animals. However, the Zhangbei fitness center is a picture of modernity. You enter the center from the back side of the hotel and emerge in a dark cavernous space on the 5th floor where two Chinese women receptionists without any English will welcome you, albeit reluctantly. Since I speak Chinese, I was able to register with my colleague, economist Enoch Cheng, without a problem.

A friendly, strikingly tall young man, Jiang Wen-leng ("Culture Dragon" Jiang), whose English name is Penny, sits down and explains all the gym services. There are frequent classes including Yoga, Latin Dance, spinning (which Penny teaches), and Pilates; body building equipment, and a sky-lit indoor pool (now out of order; it is being repaired, and I have since heard from an Irish colleague that people spit in it). I have been to the gym five or six times, adapting to an electronically compromised cross-trainer and the weight equipment.

Two young athletic coaches, Mr. Wang, who is about 25 and a graduate student (friendly with an easy laugh) and Mr. Liu Fei, have given me free training. Liu Fei, who is 29 years old and built tightly, like an acrobat, has repeatedly asked for my phone number and declared that I am "piaoliang" (beautiful). I believe the blond hair and fit build are inspirations fed by Western advertising. I have discussed the subtleties of Japanese body building technique and research on physiology with Mr. Liu, and even though I don't understand everything he says, he has assured me that he is available for personal coaching sessions (for a fee). We have also talked about democracy and the progress China is making in that direction; the first thing Liu told me is that China has too many people.

I appreciate this instant attention, even if it's coming from an uncertain place. Liu has already taught me new words, like "duan lian" (tough workout). I don't get to hear many personal compliments anymore in America, especialy compliments about my looks. In China, no one believes I am past a certain age (maybe in the future I won't tell them). I look at my photographs now and ask myself how I suddenly got here, tilting toward middle age. Even though my body is still in good shape and the muscle tone is decent, there is something in the flattening of disks and spine and the loss of winsome skinniness that diminishes me. Moreover, I frequently take pictures standing with my children, who are now grown and at the peak of their beauty. Nonetheless in China, some people believe I'm "hot."

Yesterday at the gym I relented and gave Liu my business card and told him I'd be happy to have dinner with him as a friend. Somewhat risky but he knows I'm a third degree blackbelt; he seems to have backed off from his original passion. He now realizes I am old enough to be his Mom.

Hasegaowa in tennis attire with me at the Guest House

At the opening reception of the International College of Beijing, which contained many speeches, including a nervously competent delivery by my student Claudia, I was entertained by a couple, Mr. Liu Ya-jiang (Liu "Asia river") and Ha Se Gao Wa, his wife. Both are incredibly talented. They sing, they paint, they philosophize. Ha Se Gao Wa sang Mongolian grassland and love songs with a carefree lilting acapella. Yi-jiang also has a gorgeous baritone voice with a catch that will make you cry.

Both in their 40s, the Lius have experienced the best and worst of Chinese contemporary life. Ha Se Gao Wa saw both her parents carted away during the Cultural Revolution for three years. She was about 3 years old when this happened and was cared for by her older sister while her parents labored in the countryside. Early in her life she became a movie actress and she thrives today on stories of love and peaceful reconciliation. When I ask about Chinese censorship (including censorship and repudiation of the imprisoned Nobel Prize winner Liu Shao-bo), she explains that negativity and harshness may foster reprisal in the government and that love and peace produce much more positive feedback. Husband Ya-jiang believes that the lack of stability in China for many years has produced a wariness regarding complete and uncensored freedoms. I sense they are patient and hope eventually things will loosen up. In the meantime, this couple drives a practically new SUV and enjoys a comparatively carefree artistic life.

Ha Se Gao Wa and her husband both know a smattering of English, and they immediately befriended me (I felt privileged, since there were about 30 faculty members at this first dinner). When I visited them in their own private quarters in our Guest house (they get some nicer suites on the 4th floor) Ya jiang showed me some images of his sketches and paintings. I was flabbergasted; my thought was as good as Wyeth, maybe better, and different. A graphic designer by trade, Ya-Jiang has his own successful graphics business, is friendly with Dr. Meng and appears to have some understanding, if not ties, to Party apparatus, although the exact nature of his relationship to the Community Party is not clear to me. He is a student of a Chinese painting master in Beijing. He is also quite familiar with the Wyeths of Chadds Ford (he mentioned the city, and I told him I lived nearby), both Andrew Wyeth and N.C., whose style and subject appear weirdly to intersect with Liu's across a century of time and space. Liu has spent months in the winter living with families in the Mongolian steppes. He produces complex portraiture of Mongolian women and farmers which I hope to preview in the States at some point.

The Lius have also "adopted" an 18 year old Mongolian girl, a dancer, someone they've known for years. They made a video of her at the age of 12 dancing gracefully with cups on top of her head (I will encourage him to release it to Youtube; it is so precious it should go 'viral'). The young girl did an authentic Mongolian dance for us combining minute seductive glances and shoulders invitations, along with simulated horseback riding. The dancer hopes to train at University and perhaps to go to New York. In addition, Ha Se Gao Wa and Ya-jing have a talented 15 year old son who is training with his father to become a painter or illustrator. The boy sings Michael Jackson songs in a faithful falsetto. The Lius have elected to home school him rather than place him in conventional Chinese secondary school.

I love spending time with this family because their language is truly Chinese. Liu, who seems to be fairly wealthy, with a home in the countryside of Beijing ("the air is clear there," he says) and in Guangzhou, for the winter season, is preparing an exhibition of his work. I suggested he start with an exhibition in the Brandywine (Wyeth) museum in Chadds Ford. He says he is at least three years from perfecting his work for the world to see. However, I sense such spirituality in his work so true to life (at least an elevated life) that I believe it is bound to be noticed in any country. He offers a glimpse of an untainted Mongolian life that probably should remain a secret. Perhaps his vision is too pure for a society already jaded by manufactured realism.

Line 1 subway in Beijing: Jet Li stars in a movie about war and love

Short notes: Since I've been here I have also shopped in the very modern, spacious "Merry Mart" supermarket, taken the subways (crowded, but efficient), and met up with friend Ivy Lu, from China Monitor, a 23 year old woman who has spent exactly two weeks in America and speaks like a native. I have shopped with her in the monumental Wang Fu Jing, which has a dizzying Western style punctuated by enormous avenues and shopping malls leading to Tian An Men Square. I have also been to San Li Dun, to the Bookworm Store, to hear a lecture/debate by a Dutch woman novelist and, separately, a Dutch scientist who doesn't believe in Global Warming (we argued). And I have met many lovely people here on campus. My students are a blog in themselves. Soon I will post some photographs on Flickr, but for now, I will leave you with the news that I will be writing as a regular columnist for Caixin,probably the best investigative English language economics and news publication in China. I will start as an education columnist, but I have to do the research to find good stories in a society that still appears guarded and largely opaque to me. -- Arielle Emmett

Anguish and Order in China

2011-08-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

Pictured above: Sculpture in front of Olympics Stadium at China Agricultural University

Dear World,

This is my first post from the International College of Beijing. I have been here since Friday, so I'm hardly an expert. Relying on the good graces of a very capricious virtual private network (VPN) that links me directly to the outside world through the University of Colorado Denver, I bring you these first thoughts.

[Otherwise, without VPN access, my blog is entirely blocked in China. I can't even download instructional video training from sites in the US or anything on Facebook or Youtube. These are strange and imperial restrictions that bear no logic for me,the alien girl from another earth!]

I arrived Friday without incident at the Beijing International Airport which appeared to me to be entirely modernized and imperial (with great red colonnades reminiscent of the Forbidden City and China's association with "red" as the color of love and good fortune.) My "seatmate" on the United Flight, Chris Luo (Luo Dong-ping), an entrepreneur who shuttles back and forth between his Internet security firm in Beijing and his family in San Francisco, provided some amiable instruction and pointers. He was kind, considerate, and reminded me that the two most popular areas of Beijing for foreigners, among them Haidian and the Chaoyang District, east of the Eastern gate in Beijing, were far and frustratingly apart. Right now that's pretty much my feeling about all of Beijing. Far and frustrating, "must get to," but not yet. I plan to venture out seriously Thursday nite to a Bookworm event in Chaoyang and hence brave the bus and subway system. Even though I have all my time in Taiwan behind me -- more than three decades past, as a very young, long-haired "golden dragon" who aggressively pursued Chinese and a new life --this city feels strange and new to me, and I am strange in it.

My first encounter with Chinese "efficiency" was in buying a cell phone. I went to a China Mobile store and was told to find an appliance store to buy the handset. I go into the appliance store and muddle my way to a fairly inexpensive Nokia handset. I am given a set of instructions in completely inexplicable "tu-hua" -- something about a chong zhi ca (charge card) and some freebie domestic time I have, but no information about how to obtain an international plan. I return to the China Mobile store and the same young lady eyes my China Unicom SIM card number and tells me she can't help me with an international plan. "Go back to the appliance store and get another SIM Card," or find a Unicom shop which, she says, is "miles away" (no address). She doesn't know where it is.

There is military music blaring as I speak. The campus seems very unmilitary, and the students in general casual and well dressed.

I return to the appliance store and the help (no one speaks a word of English) reported that the SIM card comes with the phone and that they cannot switch out a SIM card that has a China Mobile brand on it. Meanwhile, the kind Claudia, my student escort of the moment, and a freshmen at ICB, is trying to translate, but she is just as frustrated as I am. "The Chinese systems are really inefficient," she tells me. We return to the China Mobile store, find a young man, explain the situation, and he notes that China Mobile can give me a new SIM card, a new number, and a new plan, only I have to take a number and wait for at least an hour to talk with a technician. At this point we're out of time, I [figuratively] throw up my hands and return without a card or a plan.

The situation immediately rights itself when Patrick Dodge, my adorable boss, takes me on his scooter to a group of little shops around the corner from our campus, part of a tour he generously gives me, along with a decent meal. A store owner hands me a China Unicom pre-pay card. He charges me 30 yuan for a 100 yuan international calling card. What happens if it doesn't work? we ask. Then he can't take it back, he says. But he is convinced it will work. I fork over the 30 yuan (roughly US$5), what do I have to lose, and the next morning I make my first successful calls to my sister and my kids to let them know I'm okay.

I would be lying if I said I felt completely adjusted to this combination of intense population that is peaceful and totally organized, a city where blue sky is almost never visible because of pollution, and where Communism and Communist principals and virtually never spoken of openly. The main objective at the college is to enjoy and learn and then get a good phat job...the idealism and social consciousness appears at a bare minimum.

The campus where I live is in the midst of military training. All freshmen must participate for two weeks prior to the opening of school. From 5 AM young girls and boys in white or yellow T shirts march to orders barked by young men in military fatigues. There is a lot of "counting" -- "yi er san si!" ("one two three four"), much stiff legged goose stepping, and some practice suspending one leg in midair for long periods of time. Other than that I can't much decipher what these kids are doing.

I asked Claudia, a lovely (and tall!) young freshman girl who spent 1 1/2 years in Melbourne Australia perfecting her English in highschool, what the military training meant. She really wasn't sure. "I don't care for it," she said. Did it have something to do with training young people to fight for their country? For helping to unite them in a spirit and love of her school? "Yes, something like that," she admitted (we speak both Chinese and English together). Claudia was hoping that the military theory class she planned to attend two days ago would be quite interesting. But it turned out she couldn't go; another teacher made some demands on her time, so she missed the one class she was really looking forward to.

Claudia is a beautiful, shy, and anguished young girl. She is trying to get her bearings in a college and admitted she felt some uncertainty and loneliness. I tried to assure her that everyone feels that way starting out, but she said that it was lonely especially because she had no brothers and sisters, and her cousins are quite distant. Her one boyfriend is now in America studying, and she feels he is more like a brother than a lover, but she misses him terribly. "I have known him since I was five or six years old," she says sadly (I tried to give her a hug). She scored the highest of the entire college on her English entrance exams and was practicing her matriculation speech for me, very nervously.

The organization and ability to "ting hua" (listen to talk, literally), is extraordinary among these students. They do exactly as they are told, even if they admit (like Claudia) that it doesnt' seem to have much meaning for them. I will be interested to see what really does have meaning. I have enjoyed a few brief encounters with faculty but, as I mentioned, I still am feeling my way through all of this. Luckily, there is a Starbucks around the corner but the coffee is just as expensive as the States.

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer: Her true life's path leads to China

2011-08-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

Available at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20110818_Her_life_s_true_path_leads_to_China.html

Her life's true path leads to China

by Arielle Emmett

There is a rumor in my mother's family that we are direct descendants of Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol conqueror. In reality, we are most likely related to Khan's General Subutai, a military genius who orchestrated the Mongol's clean sweep of 32 nations.

With cunning, diplomacy, and the use of huge stone-throwers, Subutai is said to have overrun more territory than any other general in history, and, along with Genghis Khan, paved the way for the opening of direct contact between East Asia and the West.

The Mongols left the seed of Asia inside Europe. They also left traces of my genetic heritage - the almond eyes, high cheekbones, and fiery spirit. These traces still rule my imagination and my blood, even though I am blond and blue-eyed.

In a few weeks I'll follow Subutai's footsteps to China. With patience, diplomacy, and online dictionaries, I will dust off my Mandarin and follow a new Silk Road leading from America to Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, the powerhouses of China's burgeoning economy.

As a new Ph.D., I plan to teach media production for University of Colorado Denver at the International College of Beijing, exploring opportunities for close East-West encounters. But I leave Philadelphia - a city I've lived in and cherished, along with my children, for 19 years - knowing that every great empire has a beginning and an end, every civilization an arc of power.

China appears to be in ascendancy, especially Beijing, where I'm headed. Philadelphia is - well - struggling.

For the last two years, I have looked at the want ads here. Several U.S. positions (almost all not in Philadelphia) in both academe and the private sector were canceled or defunded, even after I was tapped as a finalist.

On the way to the city, I drive past ships mothballed, pipes and gears grinding to rust, whole neighborhoods boarded up and beset by fear and trash, smokestacks like organ pipes gone silent. I read the jobless reports. Four of the major Philadelphia counties have jobless rates paralleling or exceeding the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In America, private nonfarm employers "initiated 1,624 mass layoff events in the second quarter of 2011 that resulted in the separation of 261,346 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days."

(This is supposed to be good news, a decrease over the last year.)

In my neighborhood of Rutledge, people are just grateful to be working and sending their kids to school. But the ennui and sheer frustration I've felt in Philadelphia trying to find my place has finally reached a breaking point. It has given me wings.

Once again I am free to reclaim my status as a barbarian at the gates. The strange affinities I felt long ago for China - the draw to study the language and culture, my time as a Mandarin student in Taiwan three decades ago, my closeness to a Chinese family that "adopted me" as their own in Taipei while the horrors of the Cultural Revolution raged on across the Formosa Straits, walled off from America - all of these affinities are about to pay off.

Perhaps I didn't realize it, but looking back, the passion with which I wrote that application letter for my job in China must have come from a not-so-secret pool of anger - a woman longing to fly, to beat her breast in grief at the desolation and confinements of her land.

China certainly won't be Shangri-la. I will be among 600,000 foreigners, a little more than 71,000 of them Americans, a tiny minority living in a country of 1.3 billion people. But our numbers are growing each year.

Moreover, I realize that China is desperately polluted, its sanitation lax, its income distributions unequal, its levels of corruption and resistance to economic reciprocity and free speech difficult for a Westerner to grasp. At the same time, the opening of China is great news not just for educators and students, but for all Americans. Though it is commonly assumed that we are fighting for our economic lives and that China has gobbled up our factories and manufacturing jobs, America actually has more to gain by steadfastly breaking down technical, business, and spiritual barriers to the Far East. We are innovators and China needs us. We need them. All of us will do best building bridges of innovation and prosperity together.

Though I don't know exactly how it will happen, I do know this: The time of wall-building is over. I will leave Philadelphia and say goodbye to my children, my home, my neighbors. For at least a while, I will become a warrior again, and the future will come to me with galloping clarity. China beckons - I'm ready to take the risk.

Graduation Merry-Go-Round

2011-06-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel that we do not come alive unless we are in the presence of those who love us and share our histories.

In other words, we are actually dead or in some state of suspended disbelief for most of our waking hours, days, and years.

I imagine in actuality we wait our entire lives for the few desultory moments when we can drop the vellum that shrouds us and live entirely in relation to the few people who buoy us up.

Such was the case of my doctoral graduation. After four years of study, frustration, and occasional pleasure and insight, I found myself rapt in an aura of family for just a few precious days.

May 18, evening. It began when my sister Rowena and her husband, two nieces, and my two children flew out of the sky and found me at BWI airport. My sister's cockeyed optimism infects the whole group -- she has been prodding me to look forward to this day for a lifetime, as though it were really important that I had finally achieved the status of "doctor" at age 57.

We spent the night in Annapolis and ate in a splendiferous French restaurant, Cafe Normandie, which was not expensive and was something that I had found on the Internet. There was a glow to the moment that I cannot forget. We take pictures in a group and I am always amazed at how much theatre and the beauty of actors pervades my sister's family. Everyone is prodigiously handsome on the inside and outside, and there is almost never anything wrong.

The next day I put on robes that seem to me like a cross between high church and Harry Potter. Doctoral robes should be medieval, but they are now mass produced and possibly mass stitched, so they have a kind of cheesy costume quality to them. We sit through 3 hours of ridiculous speechifying in the Comcast Center and David, my brother-in-awe, takes pictures of me that make me seem as though I'm floating in a world beyond the world. I suppose, in some ways, that is true for the moment. I hold up my piece of paper as though it is a graduation from Voldemort's Academy (the dark equivalent of Hogwarts) and now I am a wizard capable of making media fly through air (I think that is a better description of David, who is a fine photographer).

In the afternoon, there is a repeat performance at the Journalism School. A few who didn't want me to graduate mysteriously fail to show up at the festivities while those that do are full of smiles and accolades. These people include my beautiful advisor/wizard, Dr. John Brown, a philosopher of art, and Gene Roberts, who gets an honorary doctorate along with my "hard slogging" one (Note: For Gene, 17 Pulitzer Prizes as Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and one for his own book, The Race Beat, isn't enough!). Gene hugs me after giving a speech about how young journalists still ought to go work for a little home town newspaper, something I should have done rather than going straight to the New York Times as an intern after graduating from Univ. of Michigan.

That night we celebrate at the Chart House. Friends Rick Rudolph and Emily Hartz, lovely advisor Dr. Maurine Beasley, the whole crowd is there...the kids make gracious speeches. Son Emmett stands up and says I am "the best Mom." Daughter Grainne says she owes me for having been dragged to all her shindigs as she was growing up. I remember she held me up while I stressed about my dissertation defense with shaking hands.

The card from niece Danielle DeNottbeck pictures a golden retriever sporting eyeglasses. "I have never been an intellectual but I have this look" -- Woody Allen.

Friday my two nieces commandeer an electric Duffy boat, a 6 mph "putt putt" in the harbor of Annapolis and we see Ospreys building nests inside the cabins of dry-docked boats. Danielle accidentally cuts a few fishing lines and rams the dock as we return. "Oops, sorry!" she shouts to the fishermen who are shouting at her, reminding me of Elle in Legally Blond. Niece Dainna, the veterinarian, splits her pants doing yoga postures in the stern.

Saturday, May 21 2011 we are at the Smithsonian and my son decides to manifest his true saurischian self.

The world was supposed to end on Saturday starting around 4 pm on the West Coast, but nothing happened. We were in the Smithsonian watching an IMAX movie on dinosaurs. Needless to say, no one went extinct in those few hours.

My family is normally scattered to the four winds. It is odd because we actually relish the moments we can be together. But circumstances have not been entirely kind, and we all have our missions, and willfulness, and desire to be independent and functioning in the place of our choosing. And so we are apart most of the time -- most of the time I am welded within an ice shelf, anticipating the few moments when I can be set free to live in the warmth of this small surviving tribe. My children, my sister and her husband, my nieces. My "people."

They do not always understand me. Nor I them. But in this moment when all seemed right after so much had gone wrong, I could bask for a few moments and realize that happiness is a spike in the shake-o-meter of real life. So I enjoyed it to the hilt, and the photos prove it. AE

The Ferris Wheel

2011-06-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

Saturday June 4. Today I read that Abiah Jones, an 11 year-old girl from the PleasanTech Academy Charter School of New Jersey, fell from the top of a Giant Ferris wheel in a Wildwood amusement park known as Morey's Mariner's Landing Pier.

Abiah was on an annual school field trip. She was seated alone in an open-air gondola and no one knows exactly how high she was when she fell, although police said it was near the top. Preliminary investigations indicated there was no mechanical failure causing the accident. But Abiah Jones had no seat belt. By the time she hit a metal platform 156 feet below the highest point of the wheel, at 12:30pm, she was dead.

According to a 2010 National Safety Council report, estimated annual injuries in amusement park rides in fixed-site parks (these presumably do not include traveling circuses or mobile amusement parks), are 1,086 annually, or about .6 per million patron rides. [Note: it is entirely plausible that there are more accidents that are not reported.] A spokesperson for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions said that individuals have a 1 in 9 million chance of being seriously injured in America's 400 fixed-site amusement parks (Philadelphia Inquirer June 4 2011, p. A4). She did not comment about whether these odds have improved -- or worsened -- over time. This particular fatality was the first in the Morey's Mariner's Landing Pier history.

Part of the thrill of ferris wheels or roller coasters has always been the feeling that one could fall out of the sky. Humans love the sensation of being hurled and thrust upward, riding in rockets, Ferris wheels, roller coasters, and whirligigs. Yesterday, in the most lovely and sun-burnished June weather, the kind of day that makes one feel that heaven touches earth so children can ride high like angels, Abiah Jones went willingly to her open-air gondola. For whatever reason, in the grip of the whirling wheel, the gondola let go.

Maybe she was playing or screaming with the thrill and not holding on tight. Maybe she grew dizzy, or the gondola may have lurched and upended.

Still, I wonder why one of the tallest Ferris wheels in North America had no seatbelts.

I wonder why engineers or amusement park owners think a beltless Ferris wheel with locked gates is "safe enough" when a child can still tumble 15 stories to her death?

Remembering Non-Violence

2010-09-28T11:56:00.001-07:00

Remembering Non-Violence

My first recollection of non-violent struggle came when I was about six years old. My father, a New York City actor who also was an advertising genius, was standing in a Bohacks supermarket in West Islip, Long Island handing out candy canes and pamphlets about CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, to which he and my Mom belonged. I stood with him there as he spoke quietly to people going in and out of the market with their groceries loaded up in shopping carts, the pneumatic doors whooshing open and closed on thin carpets of air.

I didn't know it at the time, but in February 1960, in Greensville, North Carolina, four well-dressed black students, trained in the non-violent civil resistance techniques of Gandhi, had already staged their first lunch counter sit-in. Within a few days a group of Negro students in Nashville staged another round of sit-ins; this time James Lawson, a non-violent activist and teacher from Vanderbilt University, had trained them. TV cameras captured white toughs pouring soup all over the protesters, knocking them off their seats and bashing their heads with soup bowls and fists. In March 1960 a Houston man named Felton Turner was beaten and hanged upside down from a tree, the initials KKK carved on his chest. Martin Luther King Jr. was indicted in Alabama for tax evasion and later went to jail with 50 others for staging a sit-in at an Atlanta department store.

Fast forward to 1979: I am a career journalist working for The Detroit Free Press as a features reporter. I am a white woman living in a black and white city. My beat is to cover mostly positive social movements for change and improvement to education and health care in the city, especially among children. I have come to Detroit right after the riots, after Kennedy's death, before Martin Luther King's and Robert Kennedy's death. I recollect my high school speech teacher proudly boasting that he kept several rifles at his bedroom window poised to fire on any Negro who crossed Detroit's 8 mile Rd.

In Detroit for several years, I nurtured a love of journalism as a way to speak. I have watched and listened and read the newspapers, books, and magazines for signs of wisdom. Somehow I came to believe that words -- speech -- photographs -- film -- media, can help reach people and transform lives. I remember, as my father died painfully at age 40, the words he used to describe his own non-violent resistance to social injustice and disease: "I shall fight with speech and treasure the grossness of the human condition," he wrote from his hospital bed. "I shall go on...a day, a week, a decade or more. I'll take all [the life] that I can get."

A decade after he died, I had a dream under a full moon and violet sky in Detroit that I had killed my father. In my dream I discovered a cache of guns in my basement and a coffin with the face of John F. Kennedy on it. Was it my father I murdered, or was it Kennedy, or Martin Luther King? I'm not sure. Perhaps I borrowed from the memories of the riots, or the whiff of death and violence and guilt one feels being comparatively privileged in Detroit. Anyway, as a young woman reporter in Detroit, I felt orphaned. I lived in a city of bullets in a post-apocalyptic time. My heroes, with the exception of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Toni Morrison, and my mother, a political activist since the 1930s, had been men. What, I asked myself, does this city, this country -- any country -- on earth, do now? How can we apply the lessons of civil resistance to the enormous, crushing tasks at hand? How do I find my own strength as a woman, and as a woman journalist, when the violence and deprecations, insidious corporate backbiting, unspent racial heat, oppressive regimes, and my own struggles to gain self-confidence as a writer and woman, conspire to defeat me?

For the past 4 decades I have tried to answer these questions. I am stronger now. When I falter, I try to remember my father's words. "I will fight with speech and treasure the grossness of the human condition. I'll take all that I can get."

In 2010, I have continued on as a writer. I have become a mother of grown children. I am divorced and finishing my doctoral degree. Although I have seen my beloved newspaper industry begin its fast devolution from primacy as the "watchdog"/independent monitor of American and international power to a more confused, diluted state as just one of many forms of digital expression worldwide, I still believe in the power of journalism.

Words are a democratic thing; the press is still essentially about democracy: seeking truth, above all, verifying facts, giving voice to the voiceless, serving as an independent monitor of power, providing loyalty, first and foremost, in stories written for and by citizens. Words and images are instruments to measure desire; they reflect our need to make sense of that which makes no sense most of the time. We will never stop needing people to practice journalism in all its forms; if anything, given the current state of the planet, we need good journalism as never before.

Citizen journalism, in particular, is a tool that digital democracy gives all of us to capture and reflect back the world we see. I believe that no matter what the struggle, people who write well, who ask penetrating questions, who carefully verify facts, who photograph and film with unrelenting creativity and vision -- especially those citizens who serve as journalists of a conflict, violent or otherwise, and have the background and knowledge to help contextualize for viewing audiences exactly what they see: these people are desperately needed.

Mainstream media can no longer accommodate the huge demand for accurate, thoughtful, incisive journalism necessary to cover the depth and breadth of civil resistance around the world. From the West Bank to Zimbabwe, from South Africa's Black Sash movement to the Women in Black movement in the United States, we need a new and highly personal form of multimedia journalism that maintains the best of the old practice with the jewels of the new. By jewels, I mean the freedom to practice "parachute" journalism in territory that is rarely explored. We need to unearth stories that are hardly, if ever, told. There is a wealth of material out there, in both desolation and abundance, and I believe that women journalists, in particular, are uniquely equipped to document these stories in a way that transgresses conventional boundaries.

Although we live in a world of two-minute broadcast stories and sound bites, what we really require is depth. Depth with nuance means reporting that is more truthful to real-world experience, especially the "world" of someone else's existence. Women journalists, whether "professional" or citizen journalists who are women, can step forward with courage to articulate a journalism of real life that does not count on continuous exposes of violence to keep it alive. The men, especially male leaders (if not male publishers and network presidents) have largely blown it. As a woman journalist, my goal today is to a new language of journalistic expression -- photography, writing, film, multimedia -- that is neither dryly "objective," purely subjective, nor stridently political. I want to know, with accuracy and subtlety, how to create journalistic reportage that shows us the best and worst of this condition we call "humanity."

In particular, I want to see citizen journalists cover democracy movements in ways that produce viewer surprise, delight, and anger at the truth. Though I'm not in favor of giving up conventional journalism altogether, which I believe does have its place and time, advocacy journalism can be used quite effectively to document important stories of people and their civil resistance movements that are going untold.

I call on all women to join me. To learn more about women's roles in democracy movements, and to see citizen and feminist journalism in practice, go to http://inwomenshands.wordpress.com/

A Wedding Song for Dainna & Jordan

2010-08-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Here are poems and excerpts from a ceremony that I performed August 14 2010 for my niece Dainna and her fiance Jordan at Ten Mile Station in Breckenridge, CO.

For Dainna & Jordan –Prothalamion (Wedding Song & Opening Poem)

by Arielle Emmett (c) Arielle Emmett

When the road seems wide and lit with magic lamps, all bending to thy will,
Flaring with the night a flame so red, so gold, the thrill;
I see my youth, my Traveler, passing swiftly by,
Bidding me to march much faster, Time is passing, Time the Master,
Time that waits for no one, leads to nowhere but the footsteps on the hill –

Will you slow your pace for me, Father Time, Mother Rhyme, will you let me dream and love,
And slow my pace, for your embrace; and love the one I love?

For she is lovely, my dove; she is Godiva and Lady all at once, her blond hair falling as rain
In winter’s sunlight upon her breast. She rides a beast so light and dark I know not what its color is—
A Trojan horse with eyes and sinews mad with fright, taking flight with no cause other than to live;
But for her touch, which calms the beast in all of us, and makes a man cry with joy
Just at the scent of Air, the Air of her body rushing by, breathing in him such sweet tendrils of delight.

And he, from far away, a warrior whose only sword is the kindness of his heart,
The skill of his mind and hands, matching hers, the gentleness of his touch—
He loves all Creatures, large and small;
Especially his Dainna, he that loves her with eyes as the eyes of doves;
His cheeks as a bed of spices…his lips like lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh;
It is he, Jordan, she loves. It is she, Dainna, his soul adores.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart; as a seal upon thine hand;
For love is as strong as life; jealousy is as cruel as the grave; and
I shall strive to love thee all my life; and keep all jealousy away.

Oh daughters of Jerusalem, oh sons of Zion,
These two come here today to make their peace with Time.
Time that waits for no one, time that, for a moment, makes a flower,
Pins it quietly to a bower, only wide enough for two --
Today these two, Dainna and Jordan, shall declare to all:
“This is my beloved. This is my friend. We shall walk the road with magic lamps together,
Bending around the curve, not knowing where it will end.”

Will you slow your pace for me, Father Time, Mother Rhyme, will you let us dream and love,
And slow our pace, for your embrace; and love the one we love?

Tarry not. Arise and go now, my loves, and make thy life together –
Make haste for happiness, love, family, and friendship…forever!

Part II

Beneath this wide Colorado sky, two miles high, at the top of a continent still new and full of promise, two young lives will be entwined today…two who will make a difference.

I’m Dainna’s aunt. Like many of you, I’m Jordan’s friend and admirer. We are here as witnesses and participants in a rare joy…a marriage of a beloved son and daughter who actually belong together. Families and friends have come from thousands of miles apart, from every city in the US, and even from Canada, to share their miracle of deep and abiding love.

These two young people were born thousands of miles apart. But somehow, they managed to find each other at a Vet school in California… Their passions are animals and healing…their loves are biking, hiking, running and scuba…and their families and dearest friends. They are born adventurers. We’ve all seen their incredible journey of places, times, and moods on their website…where every image shows such tenderness between them… the fun they have...their communication…whether it’s the Olympic Peninsula, or the beaches of Washington State where Jordan proposed to Dainna with their dogs as witnesses, his “Marry Me?” written in the sand with the Pacific as a backdrop….or whether it’s hiking or skiing in the Grand Tetons or scaling the Empire State building, or bonding 60 feet under water with scuba gear…

It’s unique to bathe in their light. When we look at them, we feel their altitude of mind, where every smile is saying “Wow, this is so great. It’s our time to bask in sun and rain and each other’s company. The best part is…we touch eternity every day together, and we are so full of vitality, youth, and purpose.”

I’m not going to throw much water on this. Dainna and Jordan, you know there will be times when things will not be happy…when you’ll both be tested…. But you are already prepared to answer these challenges, I think, given your unique set of disciplines. So here we are, two families about to be united in these craggy heights and mists …celebrating Dainna and Jordan’s remarkable union. This is as good as it gets.

Believe it or not, I’m reminded of a Chinese saying. It is about couples who are made as pairs in Heaven. The Chinese expression is "yuan fen."

“Wu yuan jian mian bu xiang shih, you yuan, qian li lai xiang hui.”

Roughly translated, it means “If there is no pairing, no match, you can meet head on and not think a thing about it. But if you are a pair, a couple ordained to be as one, a thousand Li cannot keep you apart.”

Let it be so with Dainna and Jordan…you two, I believe, are yuan fen.

For a moment, let me acknowledge all the family members and friends who have come here today to share your blessing. Remember, Dainna and Jordan wouldn’t be here today, making these vows, starting a new life together, if it were not for the love and support of each and every one of you… mothers, fathers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and friends. And I have to say, never in all my years have I seen two families from a bride and groom with so much in common.

When I first met Elyse, Jordan’s beautiful, funny, mother, I was amazed at how she and my sister, Rowena, Dainna’s mother, bonded…The same with Michael Waters, Elyse’s husband, and my brother-in-law David Stelmach, Dainna’s father, who walked Dainna down the aisle just a few minutes ago….And then there’s Jordan’s incredible sister Ali, who loves Dainna and even flew out to accompany my niece across the country so Dainna would not be alone on her drive back from Texas to the West coast. That’s the bonding of families… My sister said to me a few days ago, “What do Elyse and I have in common?” Well, one thing is that we’ve both had children who have never disappointed us…and their light shines in and around us every day."

I’d like to honor today some other family members who are here: Jordan’s Dad, Andy Scherk, who gives Jordan his rapier New York wit…Teddy and Joel Moscot, Jordan’s terrific grandparents, who share a love of the theatre with our family. In addition, Michael Waters’ parents are here –Adam and Kammy Waters, and Andy Scherk’s Mom, Joan Scherk. We also want to especially honor Betty Moscot, a jewelry artist, who designed Jordan and Dainna’s gorgeous wedding rings, which look different from the outside because of the couple’s differences in style, Jordan explained to me. But inside, both rings have an identical ruby, signifying their deepest love that unites them even in their differences…

Let the spirit and light of this couple be with you this LOVELY evening and all days forward...Let their commitment, love, and trust for each other shine on you and all your loves and friendships. Know, each and every one of you, that your light shines within Jordan and Dainna, too, as an aura that carries them forward to light their way, to help them become more real, centered, and loving every day of their lives:

We will now have a reading from “The Velveteen Rabbit”:

(Samantha Moscot reads excerpt about becoming 'real.')

Okay, Dainna and Jordan, this is it. You are about to exchange your vows and your ruby-throated wedding rings. You are about to smash that glass – surely a symbol of fertility. But before you do, I’d like to read you this, not as a denial of Evolution, but as a covenant to protect it:

"And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds; livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.' And God saw that it was good.

"And God said, 'Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly about the earth across the great expanse of the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teams, according to their kinds; and every winged bird according to its kind.' And God saw that it was good…

"And God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.' And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day.”

And there was life.

Now it is your life, Dainna and Jordan. Work hard and be fruitful. Enjoy your rest, cherish each other always, and keep your vows. You may now say them to each other.

(Dainna and Jordan speak their vows.)

(Exchange Rings)

Before all these witnesses who love you, before the Earth and Sky that need your protection, will you, Jordan, take Dainna to be your wife? Will you love and comfort her, honor and keep her, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse, as long as you both shall live?

Jordan: I will.

Dainna, before all these witnesses who love you, before the Earth and Sky that need your protection, will you take Jordan to be your husband? Will you love and comfort him, honor and keep him, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse, as long as you both shall live?

Dainna: I will.

By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.

(Break the glass and kiss…)

Friends and Family…I now introduce Dr. Jordan Scherk and Dr. Dainna Stelmach, partners in life!

Past and Future Stage a Party

2010-06-22T04:53:00.000-07:00

The other night my father showed up at a graduation party at my house, even though he had passed into another world 40 years ago.

He looked exactly as he did at 35, a taller version of Jack Lemmon (he used to be stopped on the street for Lemmon), thick black hair brush cut, smelling of hazel and aftershave, the tails of his shirt hanging out of his Brooks Brothers suit. He was on the run, as usual, because he was an advertising man, but happy to get to the party just a little late. My mother, dead since 2005, also showed up. She offered the charming, heavy lidded looks of Marlene Dietrich without the accent. Both were eating hors d'oeuvres and congratulating me on my doctorate. They couldn't believe I had gotten through so much academic baloney to finally nab my degree.

"Dokter! Dokter! Ich bin ein Berliner!" My father cut the rug with his faux Sid Caesar German. He was clearly delighted for me even though he had almost no connection with academics and barely appreciated what a doctorate was.

My adviser who loved and hated me also showed up. I introduced her. She does not take terribly good care of her body, but somehow her thickness and natural smile charmed them, precisely because she seemed like an alien from another planet. I wrapped my arm around her waist and, at the end of the party, carried her outside as though she were a five year old. She was charmed by the strength of my left arm. I set her down and I guess she caught a taxi.

We dream and dream of what was and could have been. As I struggle to the finish line with this thing my parents never knew, this doctorate, I meet them in sleep and they are just as real to me as they ever were. And young, so young, younger than I am today. I have rewritten my history so they are entirely alive at my graduation. And instead of being as old as am, with two nearly grown children, I'm 23 again, and yes, they can call me a doctor!

Shouts and Murmurs: The Underemployed

2010-06-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker uses this expression. Shout it out and passersby cower and move on. Murmur your protest and no one listens. Although my task at this time is my doctoral dissertation -- in theory I should have plenty to say about that, although i will say nothing just now --in reality my attention turns silently to a national struggle of underemployment.

This is the Great Recession's silent killer. An April 2010 Gallup poll showed that 20.3 percent of all Americans were either unemployed or underemployed (working part time but seeking full-time work) in March. The Gallup organization polled more than 20,000 Americans in March. Not only has the percentage of part timers increased, but more than 60% say they are not hopeful about finding full-time work in the near future. Gallup suggests a solution: we must reeducate an undereducated workforce. I would suggest we start by tearing down Wall Street's entire scaffolding and reeducating our government leadership. The Obama Administration has marginalized -- ignored -- the millions who struggle and do some work, but not enough to survive, much less thrive.

America is a country willing to work. But it has been sapped not only by a widening chasm between the rich and poor, but also by the now well-exposed collusion of Federal Reserve financiers and Wall Street barons, among them Alan Greenspan, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Leonard Blankfein, Robert Rubin, and Henry Paulson, to name just a few. All have played a role in blocking financial reforms and refusing to rein in the most unsavory and dangerous mortgage lending practices from this decade and the last (see Clinton Administration). Wall Street has been allowed to profit from the pain of home foreclosures. Why didn't the President demand the resignation of every staffer involved in the derivatives debacle?

It's not enough to hold our government or Wall Street exclusively accountable, either. What about the fear and inertia of the American people? We have seemingly lost our gumption to speak out, to stage non-violent protest, to raise our voices and placards, to strike, to vote out our Congressmen and women who play insanely in the pay-to-play politics of the rich. We should be using our blogs, our websites, our letters and phone calls /interactive media to register our disgust and rejection of a pay-to-play system that no longer leads the world or generates the work and capital necessary to support its citizens.

We have become a silent, murmuring population, as if to confirm Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann's 'spiral of silence' theory that has resulted in the destruction of so many societies of the past (including Hitler's Germany).

I believe we should all be shouting now and forever. The Obama Administration, for which so many of us had such high hopes, has sunk into an abyss of tepid responses, pyrrhic military ventures, and co-opting strategies with Wall Street and hostile right-wing Republicans. All of the change promised has become a thin and pathetic lie. Economist Paul Krugman has come out strongly against the dangers of spending cuts and deflation that will result in long-term structural unemployment for millions, and I, for one, am scared about the prospects -- both for me, my family, and all Americans except the rich.

When do we recover the gumption of the 1930s and 1960s to demand leadership that will sweep out the incumbents and produce the democracy Americans crave? Why are we so afraid to muster our chutzpah and demand an alternative New Deal required for our survival? AE

Bottom Line -- from Gallup

"As unemployed Americans find part-time, temporary, and seasonal work, the official unemployment rate could decline. However, this does not necessarily mean more Americans are working at their desired capacity. It will continue to be important to track underemployment -- to shed light on the true state of the U.S. workforce, and the millions of Americans who are searching for full-time employment."