PhilNash.com: Phil Tajitsu Nash's Blog
Voyage to Amazonia
March 3, 2012
I was privileged earlier this year to accompany my wife Emi Ireland to visit the Wauja community in the Xingu Indigenous Park in the Brasilian Amazon. Thanks to the many supporters of our Return of the Captured Spirits (RCS) project, we were able to start the trip to the Wauja community on January 10th. Emi and I left from D.C. for Rio, and Jeffrey Ehrenreich and Mori Rothman left from NYC. Marcelo Fortaleza Flores left a little later from Paris, and our colleague Rafaela Vargas, who could not come for this phase of the project, stayed behind to help with online logistics.
After a short time in Rio to buy hammocks (much better than the ones you can get in the U.S.) and complete other logistical tasks, we flew to Cuiaba, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso in central Brasil. There, we were treated to wonderful hospitality by Regina and Giuliano, the mother and brother of Rafaela, before taking a long bus ride to the border town of Canarana.
In Canarana, we met with Chief Atamai, who had had to leave the village for a medical treatment, as well as other Wauja who are working and living in a community so small that you can literally walk across it in a few minutes. We stayed in the house of Aroca, whom we had met in 1996 when he was the schoolteacher in the Wauja village, and were given warm hospitality by Aroca and his wife Lorita, daughter Rafaela, and Rafaela's friend Renata.
During two nights at the Wauja house in Canarana, we showed some films of the Wauja taken in 1946, as well as videos of North American Indians, to Chief Atamai and about 20 local members of the Wauja community. One night we used a sheet for the projection screen and the second night we just projected from the laptop directly to the wall. On both nights, the audience was extremely interested in the images they saw, and the comments about ancestors and practices they saw on the screen were fascinating. I will report in more detail later.
At 4am on January 19th, we loaded the five of us, a Wauja guide, and many bags of camera equipment, trade goods, and gear onto two trucks for a three hour ride to the Kuluene River. True to its name as the "rainy season," we were treated to three straight hours of torrential rain, and we were very grateful for our two drivers, who knew how to navigate the many puddles and other obstacles on the roads to the river.
Once at the Kuluene, we had to transfer the gear into a long boat, cover it all with a tarp, and position ourselves as close to the back as possible so that the boat would rise up in the water as we moved forward. We started riding in the boat about 8am, and had no idea that what should have been an eight hour ride would end up 16 hours later with a midnight arrival in the Wauja village of Piyulaga. In short, the motor failed several times, and we ended up being helped by members of the Kuikuru tribe and then landing at the village of the Yalawapiti tribe, who loaded us in a truck and drove us to where the Wauja could pick us up and drive us to their village.
I will have more posts describing the initial encounters at Piyulaga in more detail, but the summary is that we arrived safely, the greeting by the Wauja community was enthusiastic, we had a comfortable lodging situation in the Chief's house, and the films have been well-received. In fact, seeing the Wauja sitting around the center of the village on the hard-packed earth, watching the images being flashed on a taut bedsheet against a star-filled sky, Emi was reminded of seeing movies shown at a drive-in movie theater, but without the cars.
For those who want more information or who want to support the project, please go to the Return of the Captured Spirits website.
Whitney, Amy and Adele
February 19, 2012
I was listening to Whitney Houston's music last night as it was the day of her funeral (it is unclear how she died, but possibly from drug abuse complications). I have been a fan since the 1980s, with "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "How Will I Know" being two of my favorite songs from the dance floor and "I Will Always Love You" and "The Greatest Love of All" being two of my favorite uplifting tunes. I was saddened not only by her death but by the tragedy that she apparently had not remembered the words of her own hit song: "Learning to love yourself / Is the greatest love of all."
From there, Youtunes directed me to listen to Amy Winehouse and Adele, two British singers who have had a big impact on the music scene (Amy died of drug and alcohol complications recently as well). The immediate take-away I got was both positive and negative. These strong young British women are exploring life in all of its dimensions — a definite product of the women's movement and the resulting ability of young women to try out all good and bad aspects of life (yes, including the addictions that tormented Amy, most famously memorialized in the words of her hit song: "They're trying to make me go to rehab and I say no, no no").
I could also hear the pervasive loneliness and despair in the hit tunes of Adele, a 21-year-old singer with a beautiful voice and a poet's insights into relationships. At 19, she wrote and performed "19," a critically-acclaimed and top-selling album with adolescent songs of broken romance ("Hometown Glory," "Cold Shoulder" and "Chasing Pavements"). Her next album, "21" is so full of powerful, soulful imagery and devoid of sexy gimmicks that some critics have called her the "anti-Lady Gaga." The hit songs "Rolling in the Deep" and "Set Fire to the Rain" continue her mining the vein of broken relationships and adolescent angst that have touched a nerve around the world.
I was especially touched by the pleading tone of Adele's songs and the self-destructive imagery seen in "Set Fire to the Rain" (she'll push herself and her ex into the fire) and "Someone Like You" (still carrying the torch for her ex while wishing him well in his new relationship). Taken to a macro level, I can see a generation of 20-somethings being stung by the bad deal their parents have given them ecologically, economically, and emotionally. Every generation has had 20-something crooners telling tales of woe because of failed romance, but the level of despair I took away from Whitney, Amy and Adele, combined with the tragic deaths of Whitney and Amy, is a wake-up call to turn things around for our young people (and the rest of us) as soon as possible.
Folklife Festival 2011
July 23, 2011
The 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival was a huge success. It featured programs on the Peace Corps, Rhythm and Blues, and the country of Colombia.
I enjoyed volunteering with the Rhythm and Blues program, where the music made each performance a danceable feast. My wife Emi volunteered with the Colombia program, and had a chance to work with Colombian tradition bearers from the Amazonian basin. She also had a chance to facilitate a dialogue between the Colombians and members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon.
If you live in the Washington area, you should definitely consider volunteering for the 2012 Festival. Whether you live locally or elsewhere, be sure to plan your schedule so that you can see whatever the 2012 Festival has in store.
From Margin to Mainstream
May 5, 2011
A year ago, I had the privilege of curating the Asian Pacific American program at the 2010 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It was appropriate and important that the Smithsonian focused on the Asian Pacific American community in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Various Asian countries had been celebrated, as had the Silk Road and Mekong Delta, but Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent had not moved from the margin to the mainstream at this largest of annual federal events (with over a million people coming to the National Mall in D.C. over ten days in June and July for over forty years).
The scholarly roots of that Festival included an oral history project done by students at the University of Maryland's Asian American Studies Program (AAST) during the preceding year. Local APA community artists, political leaders, non-profit executives, and others had had their stories captured on videotape and transcribed. Many of these stories were given to the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) for permanent archiving as a record of the APA community that will be made available for future scholars. Two of the most popular interviews can be found at the bottom of this CFCH web page (see Hiu Newcomb and Franklin Fung Chow).
Since January, I have been teaching an Asian American Oral History class at the University of Maryland in College Park to continue building on that relationship with the Smithsonian by encouraging students to conduct interviews of APAs and others that can be used by scholars who are developing the 2011 Folklife Festival. The Festival themes for 2011 are Rhythm and Blues, the Peace Corps, and the country of Colombia, so our research has focused on APAs and others who can shed light on those three topics. Interviews have explored the life stories of interviewees more deeply than the usual topic-oriented interview, while also going into depth about the interviewee's relationship to topics such as the interviewee's Peace Corps experience.
Some of the interviews are complete, and will definitely shed light on the Asian Pacific American contribution to the Peace Corps. For example, this video of Bessy Kong describes her work in the Philippines and then Namibia many years ago.
I plan to have my students create videos such as this every year, with the topics being the three topics being featured by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival for the following summer. In that way. Asian Pacific Americans will be seen as part of every aspect of United States and world culture, not as an isolated group that did not participate in the broader issues of their days. By doing this year after year, Gary Okihiro's reminder that we must move from the Margins to the Mainstream will come even closer to reality.
Remembering William Hohri
January 11, 2011
William Hohri's story represents a significant part of the larger Japanese American redress story, but it is often lost in the one-dimensional way history is remembered. We honor the victors who pushed redress across the finish line in Congress in 1988, or those such as Fred Korematsu who won their coram nobis cases, but we don't always remember to honor those, like William Hohri, who tried other avenues that did not prevail (although lobbyists in Washington in the 1980s testify that the threat of a class action victory was a factor in Congress pushing for a legislated payout).
If you have not had the chance, please look up Hohri's Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese American Redress and Resistance: Challenging America's Wartime Internment of Japanese-Americans. And if you are teaching Korematsu and other Japanese American cases in your classes, please remind the students about the multi-faceted way that law, legislation, and community organizing intersect in social justice cases. Race, Rights and Reparation by Eric Yamamoto et al is a great starting place for seeing the Hohri case in this context.
If you want to send a note to the Hohri family, please go to http://williamhohri.blogspot.com.
Thank you, William, for sharing your energy, your insights, and your faith in a democracy that lives up to its highest ideals. You will be missed.
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Remembering 9-11-01
September 11, 2010
It is hard to believe that nine years have passed since September 11, 2001. Political gamesmanship surrounding the events of that day continues unabated. Rather than add anything new, I instead will re-publish a trio of articles I first wrote for Asian Week that seem as relevant now as they did when published. Beyond the World Trade Towers is a present sense impression, written on September 11, 2001 right after the Towers fell. A Year After 911 is an analysis piece written in July 2002, comparing the state of our political and economic democracy in 2002 with FDR's guideposts for democracy in 1941. Finally, Return to Ground Zero is a piece I wrote in August 2002 after visiting the Ground Zero area in person.
Beyond the World Trade Towers
by Phil Tajitsu Nash
Asian Week, 9/11/01
I close my eyes and I can see the twin towers of the World Trade Center poking up from the Manhattan skyline. I lived in or near New York City for most of my life, and worked on Barclay Street, Hudson Street, and other locations within the zone that is now, as I write on Tuesday afternoon, covered by a foot of white ash and the swirl of snow-like debris. No doubt there are people with whom I shared a smile, a word, or a friendship who are buried at this moment in those charred remains. No doubt thousands of others around the country are also waiting on a phone call, an email, or a knock at the door to receive some news about the fate of loved ones caught in an international tragedy of ghastly proportions.
Life takes on a slow-motion, free-fall quality during these moments of crisis, at least for those of us who are not at the epicenter of smoke and ruin. Attending to a memo or an errand seems so meaningless in the face of grotesque human suffering. I have spent the past few hours just watching television with family members, sending emails, and talking on the phone to loved ones, not really saying anything. I have surfed from website to website to see if there was a face I knew or a scene I remembered.
I remember other days of tragedy comparable to this one, such as when my second grade teacher, Mrs. Bruno, was called to the door by the principal, Mr. Ferro, and came back sobbing at the news that President Kennedy had been killed. Being only six at the time, I just cried along with the rest of the class.
As a teen, I remember the killing of Dr. King on the day just before my brother's birthday in 1968, and the widespread riots that shook the country as an angry African American community erupted with a volcanic burst of passion at rights too long denied and another leader cut down.
For my parents, the memory of the bombing at Pearl Harbor is a living memory, and each of them was affected by the decisions made in the fateful days after war was declared. My dad, like most men of his generation, joined the Army and went to war. My mom, a teenage girl at the time, went with other Japanese Americans to a concentration camp in Idaho.
As I write this piece, speculation is rife that an organization from the Middle East is the perpetrator of this terrible crime. Our national leaders are singing "God Bless America" in Congress and pledging to back President Bush if he wants to use American military might. Even the Washington Post, no yes-man to presidential actions, has said in an editorial that, "The United States must resist the temptation to lash out prematurely; it may take some days to sort this out. But if this assault originated overseas it is not a question for law enforcement. It is an act of war, and must be treated as such."
Rather than go to war, I would prefer that Americans celebrate democracy and freedom by showing we can be strong and yet still be morally above a form of retribution that smites the innocent as well as the guilty. Terrorists kill indiscriminately to send a political message. America should be above terrorism.
Rather than go to war, we should punish those responsible, but not innocents. Going to war will result in the deaths of innocent American and foreign soldiers, whereas bringing the leaders of this criminal conspiracy to a courtroom or to an early grave through individualized retribution will avenge the killings without causing the grief to spread.
Whether or not the nation's leaders decide to take us to war, however, we as Asian Americans can play a role in our nation's future by defending innocent Arab-Americans from guilt by association and fighting future terrorism by the reducing American arms sales overseas. Unfortunately, within hours of the bombings on Tuesday, widespread misunderstanding about Islam, Arabs, and people from the Middle East and their issues had already led to calls to curtail the immigration and civil rights of Arab Americans that were hauntingly similar to calls to round up the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.
According to a story in Tuesday's Washington Post, Arshad Majid, a member of the Islamic Center of Long Island, said Islam—like Christianity and Judaism—condemns both suicide and hurting civilians. "We're concerned that the actions of a small number of extremists is likely to paint with a very broad brush the large population of God-fearing, peace-loving Muslims in America,"' he said. Between 6 million and 7 million Americans consider themselves Muslim, according to a study released in April by professor Ihsan Bagby of Shaw University in Raleigh.
Even as the world community rises up to condemn the killing of innocent people at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, we must also remind ourselves that the United States sells more conventional weapons than any other country in the world, and the proliferation of these weapons brings the terrified, sickening feeling we all feel today to many other parts of the world on an ongoing basis. Americans, within living memory,
have not seen an attack as devastating as this on a continental city by an outside force, so it is a new feeling to see people killed and our freedom from fear torn away so dramatically and tragically.
In sum, we must offer our condolences to those suffering from these terrible crimes, and must denounce terrorism whenever it strikes. In addition, we must recommit ourselves to reducing the availability of arms, preserving fundamental civil rights and civil liberties, and working to make sure that the punishment for this crime is not borne by innocent soldiers of American and foreign ancestry.
A Year After 911
by Phil Tajitsu Nash
Asian Week, 7/31/02
One useful way to evaluate how far we have come in the past year is to look back in history to another time of great economic, political, and social upheaval. On January 6, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt marked an important transition in American history with his famous "Four Freedoms" speech to Congress. While there is more than a little irony in this speech for Asian Pacific Americans, given how Japanese Americans were unjustly sent to prison camps a year later based on FDR's Executive Order 9066, the speech itself is still instructive over six decades later.
While historians have made much of the Four Freedoms part of FDR's speech, which ties together the threads of his earlier war on poverty and the coming war on fascism, an earlier section of the speech describes in more detail the things that Americans expect from their government beyond Freedom of Speech and Expression, Freedom to Worship, Freedom From Want, and Freedom From Fear.
"Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world," said President Roosevelt on the eve of World War II. "For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy."
Let us revisit FDRs ten guideposts for a healthy political and economic democracy as we prepare to commemorate September 11th in a few short weeks.
- Equality of Opportunity. Unfortunately, according to a report on "The State of Black America" published in Black World Today, terrible inequality persists. "If America had racial equality in wealth," the report states, "African Americans would have $760 billion more in home equity value, $200 billion more in the stock market, $120 billion more in their pension plans; and $80 billion more in the bank."
- Jobs for those who can work. Unemployment has been hovering around 6% for many months, with certain sectors hurt harder than others. Low-wage jobs for Asian Pacific Americans in the restaurant, tourist, garment, and other industries have been hard hit, and especially hard hit in New York's Chinatown—which borders the World Trade Center area hit by the September 11th attacks.
- Security for those who need it. Security is in the eye of the beholder. We certainly have more searches for those boarding airplanes, and tighter controls on those entering governmental buildings. The World Cup games and Super Bowl have been without incident. But terrorist belt bomb attacks are a real threat, and the possibility of anthrax, nuclear, or chemical attacks have not been ruled out by federal authorities.
- Ending of Special Privileges. Responding to public outrage at the accounting and profit-manipulating scandals on Wall Street, Congress has passed and President Bush has signed sweeping legislation to change accounting and management practices. Given large corporate bailouts already given to the airline industry, underfunding of key enforcement agencies, the appointment of Harvey Pitt and other corporate insiders to supervise the clean-up of messes they helped to create, and the $1 trillion in corporate welfare for failing phone companies being discussed by FEC chairman Michael Powell, the era of special privileges for the rich and powerful is hardly at an end.
- Preservation of Civil Liberties. Creation of TIPS (a citizen spy organization), prolonged detention on minor charges for men of Middle East heritage, and a statement by a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that a round-up and detention of Arab Americans might be necessary are all cause for grave concern.
- Scientific Progress. This is another category that is hard to define. We know more about the earth, the solar system, and other topics than previous generations, yet AIDS in Africa and world-wide climatic problems are but two examples of scientific problems whose solutions have eluded us.
- Rising Standard of Living. Once again, the issue is how we define the standard, and who we include in the results. The events of September 11th got many of us in touch with our families, our communities, and the parts of life that cannot be quantified, but public and private policies toward parenting leave, day care, and other issues make a more holistic lifestyle economically unattainable for many.
- Pension Security and Unemployment Insurance. Pensions have never been more insecure, because pensioners cannot even trust the financial reports that allow them to place their trust in many companies. New legislation removes some conflicts of interest and tightens some controls, but funding for enforcement and the appointment of objective governmental regulators have been lacking.
- Adequate Medical Care. Millions of Americans lack medical insurance. The running of hospitals by HMOs who care more about profit than patient care have undermined many American health care institutions.
- Preventing Munitions Makers From Profiting From War. General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, and other so-called "defense" contractors have had record earnings thanks to war preparations. Perhaps they should heed FDR's call to limit profits in the name of patriotism.
Return to Ground Zero
by Phil Tajitsu Nash
Asian Week, 8/15/02
You sense something is missing as you drive south on the West Side Highway. Tall buildings rise from the New Jersey shore to your right across the Hudson River. Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers whiz by on your left.
Like a giant hand without two fingers, the cavernous structures of New York's financial district come into view as you slow down near Chambers Street. The blue sky, streaks of sunlight, and wispy clouds of the harbor would look normal behind the business district of Boston or Baltimore, but they look out of place here.
Getting in the left turn lane at Chambers Street, you see a two-part sign. The top says, "Chambers Street." The words below have been painted over. If memory serves, they used to say, "World Trade Center."
Parking on the street in front of the Korean American take-out store on West Broadway near Park Place, the first thing you notice is the faint odor of something charred. It is intermittent and not strong, but it definitely is there.
Like any other urban commercial district on a Sunday morning, a number of the shops are closed. But something is different. A hand-written sign says, "Park at your own risk. Building to be washed on August 9th." Vendors sit in the hot midday sun at makeshift card tables, offering "I love New York" postcards, NY Fire Department hats, "Day of Tragedy" booklets, framed pictures of the pre-September 11th skyline, and other items that commemorate a day that irrevocably changed this community.
Looking south from the corner of Park Place and Greenwich Street, a giant shrouded building comes into view across a vast open construction pit. An American flag is draped on it, but the words below it are not visible from this distance. A giant construction crane stands quietly off to the left. To the right is the brown-colored phone company building which I used to see every day when I went out for lunch two decades ago from my Legal Services job at 125 Barclay Street. This phone company building also is covered in a red protective fabric which, upon closer inspection, is like a medieval knight's chain mail vest.
Walking east on Park Place, you get a sense of being caught in a malfunctioning time machine. The news stand sells the latest newspapers, magazines, and snacks, while the card table next to it sells reminders of news from eleven months ago. Vendor carts keep you firmly rooted in the present with the fragrance of honey-roasted peanuts, while the Hallmark Card store on Church Street devotes part of its storefront window to an exhibit of the damage it sustained from dust, wind, and water on September 11th.
Walking south on Church Street another block to Vesey Street, you notice a tall black iron fence completely covered by signs, hats, flags, shirts, pictures, and flowers. Someone from Manaus, the capital of Amazonia, left a Brazilian flag. French visitors wrote "New York sera toujours New York (New York will always be New York)" on a French flag. Carolyn Pisani wrote a poem for her brother-in-law Lance Tumulty that begins, "If tears could build a stairway / and memories were a lane, / we would walk right up to heaven / and bring you back again."
Although the messages are rooted in anguish, love, and admiration for acts of selflessness and heroism, present-day concerns have surfaced in the eleven months this makeshift memorial has been here on the fence surrounding St. Paul's Chapel. For example, an Israeli wrote "Terrorism should not be tolerated anywhere" on an Israeli flag, and someone else scrawled underneath, "And Israel shouldn't do the same to the Palestinians." A group from Kyoto wrote "Peace for the People" on a Japanese flag that is lodged near messages demanding attacks against those who destroyed the Trade Towers.
Whenever there is a break in the messages on the fence, your eyes look past the fence into an ancient church cemetery, where the gravestones are so old that the names are not always legible. Tilted at odd angles and chipped and cracked by the changing of many seasons, these markers remind us of ancestors who passed on without knowing of a Civil War, two World Wars, or the present undeclared "War on Terror."
To get an idea of how old this church is, remember that George Washington, after his inauguration as our nation's first president on April 30, 1789, walked the few blocks from Federal Hall on Wall Street to worship here in what was, at the time, the outskirts of town. According to its website, St. Paul's Chapel was built in 1766, and is Manhattan's oldest public building in continuous use. It was built in the Georgian Classic-Revival architectural style to resemble St. Martin-in-the-Fields church on Trafalgar Square in London.
Walking a few blocks to the south, you finally see Ground Zero. Surrounded by a chain-link fence, this immense hole in the ground which descends six stories looks just like any other large construction project. A rusty girder left in the shape of a cross and an American flag draped on a building are reminders that this is hallowed ground for the spirits of three thousand who died almost a year ago on this spot. But the emotional impact here is nothing like the emotions that are raised by a few minutes spent reading the tributes and reflections left on the fence surrounding St. Paul's Chapel.
As we enter the last month before the one year anniversary of September 11th, some politicians, commentators, and elected officials have already begun to use the blank slate left at Ground Zero to justify expanded war, more acts of violent retribution, and more attempts at peace without justice.
As an alternative, I propose that those who seek the meaning of September 11th start by reflecting on the history in the quiet cemetery at St. Paul's Chapel and then spending an hour taking in the rich tapestry of human kindness, caring, and concern draped on the surrounding fence.
My Dad: An Appreciation
August 25, 2010
Last week would have been Herman B. ("Keek") Nash's 84th birthday. Instead, he passed away on June 13th.
Dad's uncompromising opposition to racial segregation was captured in an appreciation of his life written in our hometown paper, the Bergen Record. He marched with Dr. King in Selma, took me to the March on Washington when I was only six, and worked with Veterans for Peace right after World War II.
Since his passing, it has been comforting to see the impact he had on others. A friend reported that his lifelong interest in science started with the chemistry experiments Dad performed in our house. Another friend remembered my annual birthday party trips to the Statue of Liberty and American Museum of Natural History, as well as the times Dad would have us all stay up late eating popcorn and watching meteor showers from the middle of the open ballfields in Memorial Park. In the appreciation written in the Bergen Record, an English professor and local Deputy Mayor reported that his stand against segregation had had an impact on them.
Whenever I see a rock outcropping that might contain fossils, I remember Dad's interest in geology and paleontology. When I hear the mournful sound of a train whistle, I think of the many nights Dad worked on the railroad after his opposition to racial tracking cost him his teaching job. And when I see a person of color in a leadership role, not excluded by the scourge of racism, I remember that Dad had a small but significant part in bringing about that reality.
While my dad drew firm lines against injustice, my mom drew circles to bring everyone together. Each had a strategy for improving the world that has its place. I miss them both.
Here is a poem I wrote for the burial that took place in August at the family homestead in Massachusetts.
Mt. Warner Road
by Phil Tajitsu Nash
We walk once again together
Down dusty Mt. Warner Road.
In years past
My legs swinging from your shoulders
I loved to hear the stories
Of your visits here as a child.
Sometimes I would skip ahead—
Darting into the bushes to chase a rabbit
Racing with the other kids to get there first
Never asking why the rows of ancient stones
At journey's end
Were carved with my family name—and yours.
Today, I am carrying you down that road
Down that long dusty stretch of road
Down that interminable length of road
Toward the simple white picket fence
Separating memory from reality.
Raising the rusty latch
We share a dry August breeze.
We greet the loved ones assembled,
The fields and sun-drenched mountains
Visible beyond the rows of etched stone
Are just as you first described them to me
While I perched atop shoulders that
Seemed to stretch to the horizon.
Just ahead, a red granite headstone
Reminds me of two who heard your first cries
Of two on whose shoulders you perched
Before I was a twinkle or a sigh.
Beyond are brittle shale stones
Leaning and soot-covered
Ancient weather-worn scripts
Barely visible names
Survived by those whose stones themselves
Bear the chips and flecks of many a New England winter.
Leaning on the stone of a one who saw
The dawn of the 19th century
I gaze through the fence to Mt. Warner Road.
Far away down the road
Down that dusty, interminable road
Past the granite and sandstone and soot-smeared scripts
I can barely hear
The excited squeals of children.
Folklife 2010 and Beyond . . .
August 18, 2010
For the past year, I have been serving as Curator of the Asian Pacific American program at the Smithsonian Institution's 2010 Folklife Festival, which was held from June 24 to July 5, 2010. The theme of the program was "Local Lives, Global Ties." You can read more about the Festival, and also see a short video of me describing the Festival, at the Festival website. My photos and writings about the Festival can be seen on the Festival blog. Another Smithsonian website also has a photo and report on the closing ceremony.
Festival Blog entries that are closest in style to my newspaper columns for the N.Y. Nichibei and Asian Week focus on the "Guest Book" sculpture at the Festival, the participation of the Sikh American community, insights from Asian Pacific American real estate brokers, playing the chinlone Burmese ball game, the 150-foot-long piece of calligraphy done by Korean American Myoung-won Kwon, counting to ten in various Asian languages, and thoughts on why we were celebrating the Asian Pacific American community at the Folklife Festival.
I have enjoyed my year as a Curator, and look forward to whatever the next phase of my life brings my way.
Welcome to PhilNash.com. I will be blogging about the things I learned from putting together the 2010 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and also continuing the public commentary I started in the New York Nichibei in 1978 and continued in other venues, most notably a weekly column in Asian Week from 1998 to 2009. If you have any comments or questions, please email me at p.nash [at] nashinteractive.com.
