how do you know you are learning?

Yesterday was Day 1 of our staff planning retreat. Despite uncertainties about what the coming year will hold, particularly for the NEH budget, we all shared a great deal of excitement about moving forward.

We ended last year with so many reasons to celebrate - our largest fundraising event to date last October, a move to a beautiful, newly-renovated space, receiving an important capacity-building grant that will increase our ability to serve our constituents, and a great, talented, passionate team in place. This spring, we will bring on a new class of board members and begin work on board development and capacity-building.

We started our meeting with a fairly open-ended discussion of what our particular strengths are at this moment, and how we'd like to leverage these in the new year. One of the refrains of the morning was the need to create the appropriate and necessary space for reflection, documentation, and rigorously and regularly interpreting our own learning. As an organization whose mission embraces learning, reflection, and interpretation, we all believe that this is critical and valuable. But in the onslaught of day-to-day tasks for a small staff, how do we prioritize this? What does this look like?

For starters, I think it looks like more time for meaningful conversations - internally with staff, and externally, in our community. We discussed the possibility of a series of discussions with grantees and other stakeholders about how our organizations are assessing their own work, what we can learn from what we've already done, what we can learn from other types of organizations. We want to continue to build trust and transparency about what we do and how we do it.

This afternoon, we move to Day 2 and specific goal-setting. (There may be Gantt charts.) And I expect we'll be announcing some open-house type meetings for the coming months. Perhaps you can join us.

everything is pathologized

I think I am perhaps a bit too willing to pathologize behaviors - mine and others. Recently, I was explaining to a friend that my pre-school-aged son's teacher suggested that he might have some sort of disorder. I described the behaviors and what the teacher had said, and my friend blurted out, "yeah, it's called being FOUR!" Then, another incident: explaining to a colleague that I thought my depression about a certain aspect of my work was getting in the way of doing it effectively. "Why do you call that depression?" he asked, "it strikes me as a sober analysis of the situation."

The particulars of the situations described above do not matter for the purposes of this post (whereas they matter very, very much in my actual life). My point is that a tendency toward labeling emotions, reactions, behaviors, with a kind of false specificity, is worth questioning.

I just finished reading Clancy Martin's fine essay, "The Drunk's Club: A.A., the cult that cures," in the January 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine. His essay examines the role of A.A., and the nature of meetings on the lives of those who are recovering. He refers to philosopher Herbert Finagrette who observes that the label "alcoholic" can harm the drinker in a number of ways, not the least of which is that the term can excuse behavior, carry social stigma, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Certainly, the labeling of contemporary youth with varied and multiple disorders, the self-diagnosis I participate in on a seemingly daily basis - can do similar harm, even if harm is not all that they do; that is, even is there is some merit to the diagnosis, and a pathway to management emerges from it.

We label things (and people) in order to understand them, to ascribe meaning, to interpret. In so doing, it seems, we should take great care not to allow the label to replace the thing itself, to become a stand-in for something far more complicated, more nuanced, and ultimately, more human.

words made of light

I was recently introduced to the poetry of Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborksa. I read her poems alongside the etchings, drypoints and photogravures of William Kentridge in this beautiful art book, called Receiver.

I was struck by the deceptive simplicity of her language.

Consider the poem "Some People," which opens with a description of people fleeing their homes, leaving behind their possessions. There is the sound of airplanes circling and gunfire. Although we don't know exactly what they are fleeing, the poem's closing lines are chilling:

"Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who?
In how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life."

Tonight, I had the good fortune to stumble on to this: Earlier this week, Jenny Holzer created an installation of Szymborska's words, projected on to the side of the Portland Art Museum.

To see language, so imbued with power, composed of light, yet addressing the darker elements of human nature: this to me is thrilling and haunting and beautiful.

words matter

The word "humanities" has grown on me.

We are in the midst of a conversation, my colleagues and me, about whether to retain the word "humanities" in the names of our organizations.

Initially, I was all for abandoning the weighty word, in favor of something simpler, perhaps more understandable. As I have delved deeper into the work of the public (or "applied" if you prefer) humanities, over these last three years, I have discovered that really, I am not willing to give up the word that does, in fact, encompass what we do.

There is the sense among some that by talking about "building community," we are being clearer about our mission and purpose. I am not sure that I agree. Community-building has become such a ubiquitous phrase as to be nearly meaningless. I think that we do, of course, help to strengthen ties between people, which does, in fact, build communities. But the methods we use to do that are different from those of real estate developers, or social service agencies, or neighborhood advocacy groups, all of which could claim that they, too, build communities.

So, for now, I will continue to use the word "humanities" as frequently and in as many situations as I can. I will take any puzzlement or confusion on the part of listeners as an opportunity to engage in conversation about the term, and leave the community building for another day.

Artists, writers, and the exercise of leadership

Earlier this spring, as part of my year of fellowship through the Rhode Island Foundation, I had the opportunity to participate in an executive education session at Harvard’s Kennedy School, called, “Leadership for the 21st Century: Chaos, Conflict, and Courage.” Led by Martin Linksy, and his colleagues at the KSG and HBS, there were several underlying principles that have stayed with me and that I have tried to think about these last several months.

First, authority (position / title) has nothing necessarily to do with the exercise of leadership. Second, that all systems – teams, organizations, families – are set up to generate exactly the results that they are getting, and to preserve themselves exactly as they are. Change is – from the perspective of the “system” (more on that later) – not welcome. Third, that titles and authority are the rewards that we are given when we live up to the expectations of the system that rewards us. They are not bestowed upon us because we have exercised leadership – rather, because we have met the expectations of those who are invested in the system remaining the same. And finally, the exercise of leadership exists at the margins of our authority. We are most likely not exercising leadership if no one is at least a little bit upset. The phrase we were given as a working definition of the exercise of leadership: “disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.”

If one can suspend any accusations of irredeemable cynicism and any accompanying hand-wringing, one might ask, “why, then, would anyone ever exercise leadership?”

The answer is purpose.

Those who exercise leadership as it is described here, do so because they are driven by a sense of purpose that transcends a traditional system of rewards (think: job security, financial security, societal recognition, even physical safety in some circumstances). They are motivated by a clarity of purpose so that the challenges presented to them do not sway them from their work. They are willing to forego comfort (in its myriad manifestations) in service to their purpose.

As I reflected on these ideas, it seems to me that artists do this. Artists – and I mean the term to describe serious-minded individuals who make a life commitment to their craft, whatever it might be – pursue their work not because of any guarantee of financial security. Not because their friends and families will be thrilled they’ve chosen this path. Not because they will live in comfort with societal admiration, and rich rewards. Many artists spend their entire careers in relative obscurity and isolation.

To describe an artist as exercising leadership does not exclude leadership in other forms. Political figures, organization heads, corporate CEOs – it is possible, of course, for individuals in positions of authority to exercise leadership. One can’t help but wonder, however, if the positions of authority themselves serve to inhibit the practice.

Don't ask me to buy a backpack for a child in need

Last night, I attended a lecture at the beautiful Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University. The speaker was Dragana Dulic, from the University of Belgrade. The thesis of her talk, entitled, “Geopolitics of Humanitarian Assistance,” was deceptively simple: All humanitarian aid is inextricably linked to the political strategies of the distributors of that aid. I’m paraphrasing here, but the basic premise seemed to me to be that although we tend to want to think about humanitarian aid as pure in its motives and values, it is not really possible to distribute funds into different parts of the world without there being some sort of strategic politically-motivated choices being made (why this country’s poor and not another?).

"Humanitarian aid," she stated flatly, "cannot solve the political issues."

Many in the audience – who were far, far more knowledgeable on these topics than me – questioned the data she showed toward the end of her presentation. This seems to me a kind of curse of expertise. Experts (and we probably all consider ourselves experts in something) tend to get hung up on the accuracy of the graphs (which, admittedly,are important to get right!) and gloss over the larger, more complicated issues, that in the long-term, have far more impact on social issues than whether we under-reported total humanitarian aid dollars in a research report.

I'll make a big leap from humanitarian aid writ large to individuals as donors. As donors, we typically want to give to something immediate, because it is inspiring and gratifying and motivating to see immediate change. The success and visibility of things like “backpack drives” for school children is a one simple example.

I remember seeing a television spot on a local backpack drive. What image signifies back to school better than a child wearing a backpack? So, we see photos of kids with no backpacks. How can they possibly start the school year? I go to Target, plop down my $20, buy a kid a backpack and now she's ready to go - she's invincible, equipped!

Next image - kid smiling, backpack on. And I can take credit for that change.

Of course, we know that this does nothing for the kid’s family, or for next year, or when the backpack wears out, or gets lost or stolen or left on the bus.

Short-term problems or long-term infrastructure issues? Immediate crisis or strategic change?

The answers to long-term systemic change require courage and boldness, and putting ourselves and our own comfort at risk in a way that handing over a backpack makes no claims on us – no claims on our values, our courage, our commitment.

What are the limits of individual responsibility? Does my responsibility end with my time on this committee? My volunteer hours at this shelter? My shift at the job? What responsibilities do we have beyond the boundaries of our days? Our own lifetimes? Those of successive generations?

read to me.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the reading marathon. Having been a graduate student in writing, I suppose it reflects badly on me that I had not heard of this before, but I had not, until she told me about the Melville Marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum that she participated in earlier this month.

It was difficult, she observed, when the readers did not fully appreciate or understand the particular cadences of rhythms of Melville's prose, and there were times, as one might imagine, that the listening experience was less than pure pleasure. I was suddenly transported back to my years in my graduate writing program, which was the last time I attended literary readings with any regularity. Writers and poets came through town weekly, it seemed. There were frequent student and faculty readings, too, and for each one, we huddled into a black box space, sipped wine from plastic cups, and nibbled on cheese cubes, and for an hour or two, we were read to.

I miss being read to in a darkened room.

I miss the poets especially.

I started looking through my stacks of poetry chapbooks and collections. One of the first I re-encountered was Under Flag, by Myung-Mi Kim, and wondered if there were recordings available online.

Of course, there were, and I stumbled upon this: Lunch Poems.

There are many reasons to avoid YouTube. But today, I'm grateful for it. Enjoy!