Geography

I recently thumbed through a book called The Geography a Bliss: one Grump’s Attempt to Find the Happiest Place on Earth. In it the author endeavors to find which countries of the world are happiest and why. I am particularly fond of Bhutan’s quest for happiness through its policy for Gross National Happiness (GNH). Created by Bhutan’s king in the 70s and summarized by one of its ministers, the ideology “connects Bhutan’s development goals with the pursuit of happiness”. This policy has amounted to a fairly sequestered life for Bhutan's 700,000 citizens, who only recently began to face the envitable impact of the global marketplace and technological advancement. The fear of some in Bhutan seems valid; how does one maintain priority for quality of life over the material priority for productivity and wealth?Let’s hope Bhutan retains cultural vitality when foreigners and competiting priorities entrude.

If geography includes both the physical features of a place as well as the human-made contours such as borders, cultures, and attitudes, I wonder if one or the other more fixed? While terrain and weather and vegetation shape our day-to-day existence and our national productivity, in many ways our lives are realized in the midst the slightly less physical phenomena of people adapting to their surroundings. Everything from the language we use to describe life to the way we cut our hair emerges from our ties to a place.

I’ve been reflecting on my internal geography. As I think about departures from life as I know it, I’m led to feelings of sadness and loss even as I know there are exciting unknowns ahead. Because I can’t imagine fully the day-to-day life I will live in a new physical place, I turn to what I do know, myself (in part), my relationships, my story, my worldview. These things come with me in the next chapter. I have to think that while a place will shape and change me, I retain much of who I am as I interact with and engage in another culture.

Thoughts forthcoming. In the meantime--a monkey.

We will indeed be posting more interesting things here in weeks and months to come. So please do check back. This is a photo I came across of a monkey on Sulawesi, one of Indonesia's many islands.

The photo and text is from the BBC:

"Trouble-maker" Italian Stefano Unterthiner's photo of a mischievous Sulawesi black-crested macaque won Wildlife Photographer of the year competition’s Animal Potraits category. The monkey earned his nickname "trouble-maker", Stefano explained, because it was more interested in the photographer than being photographed.

Reading True North

On and off for the past couple weeks I've entered into the life story of Jill Ker Conway, scholar of history and first woman president of Smith College. The second of the books that comprises her memoir, True North, chronicles her scholarly, professional, and emotional development through her move from Australia to the US to attend Harvard, her marriage and its development in the culture of academia, and her foray into higher education administration. I could have rabbit-eared dozens of pages, but because I am swapping my book for the first book of her memoir tomorrow which a colleague has been reading, I hesitated to do so.

Now that the trend is for women outnumber men on college campuses, it's hard to imagine the days when women struggled to gain access to higher education. I found myself marveling at her ability to navigate the world of academia. I also found myself moved by the way in which her academic work engaged her personal journey. Quoting one of her graduate school instructors, "One's research should always involve some element of therapy. It only counts if it's really close to the bone."

For the past few years, I've listened for what seems close to the bone, allowing the many external options to fade and the predominant themes from my own life to come to the foreground. I see the next few months as a time to hone my research based on the topics that strike closest to my core--women finding their voices, women leading informally for the good of society, promoting empathy and understanding, particularly where religion has divided.

I've found this to be the hard work that I am tempted to put off while I search craigslist for housing in Jakarta, which inevitably leads me to vacation housing in Bali. I'm just saying...it's a little distracting. While much of me tugs to do the tangible, practical preparation, I know I need get in the middle of my personal and emotional motivations for my research and where north will be in my own journey.

what did i do?

It's now been a few weeks since I learned I got the Fulbright and will head to Indonesia for 10 months. Dear people have expressed their enthusiasm, and their responses foiled my own internal response of "oh my gosh, what did I do?" One never really knows how or why these sorts of opportunities pan out, and I certainly knew to prepare for disappointment. When the news came, I then faced the reality of life on the ground in the archipelago of Indonesia...a place I've never been, but one that now occupies my dreamspace. This blog will be my attempt to chronicle the process of preparing to go and the going. I am looking forward to a new journey and what it holds for Todd and for me. Join us as we go...