Toward a New Consensus: Voting Thumbs Side

Posted on July 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

Toward a New Consensus: Voting Thumbs Side    —by Jinny Batterson

Most Americans these days are subjected to increasingly agitated media and political environments—uneasiness about the state of our personal finances and national budgets, evidence of ethnic and racial profiling, demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, terrorism fears, an American presidential contest replete with name-calling and innuendo. A cheery attitude seems somewhat out of place. Still, I keep looking for glimmers of an emerging new consensus, both locally and beyond my geographical area. 

During the late 1970’s, I was exposed to the human potential movement. In intensive workshops, I completed solo, two-person, and group exercises to better understand what motivated me, and what might motivate all of us attendees to interact more humanely and productively with each other. One impression that has stuck with me is that individuals and groups typically exhibit agitated behavior just before transitioning to a different level of organization.

A decade later, I attended an experiential simulation of a five phase change model based on the work of family therapist Virginia Satir: 1) original, decaying status quo; 2) introduction of a “foreign element” that generates resistance; 3) chaos, resulting in a transformative understanding; 4) practice and integration of new learnings, leading to—5) a different status quo. None of us participants wanted to go through the chaos phase. Yet, as the simulation progressed, we each came to recognize that passing through chaos was the only way to transform a system that no longer worked for us, to move toward a newer, generally more inclusive state.       

About the same time, I started attending an annual week-long “un-conference” with other small-scale consultants at “consultants’ camp.”  A decade into the camp experience, an initial phase of “top down” camp leadership ended, and our group went through chaos to evolve an alternate model. Part of the revised model consisted of a single annual morning session to tend to the nurture and future of the camp community through consensus decision making.

One of the most important features in the consensus model we adopted is an open system of thumbs up/thumbs side/thumbs down voting to validate any proposal. Approval requires a strong consensus from all community members—a single “thumbs down” vote defeats a motion. However, because it is highly unlikely that any proposition will be equally pleasing to the whole community, we include a “thumbs side” option. Voting thumbs side is much more participatory than abstaining. While a “thumbs up” indicates enthusiastic support of a proposal, a “thumbs side” shows that the proposal being voted on is not the voter’s first choice, maybe even not his/her fifth or sixth.  However, by voting “thumbs side,”  the voter shows a willingness to abide by the choice of others voting either thumbs up or also thumbs side. A thumbs side voter agrees to support the proposal, if enacted, and to avoid actions that might undermine its implementation. No gossiping, no backbiting, no second-guessing, no requests for reconsideration until the succeeding year’s camp session. This kind of consensus decision-making requires much time, effort, and goodwill among participants, but it seems to generate better long-term decisions and stronger group cohesion. 

The model for our smallish camp (typically 25-35 members) likely does not scale up to broader political discourse. However, other efforts are underway in lots of places to re-establish civil discourse and downplay strictly “either/or” choices. For example, an Institute for Emerging Issues headquartered near where I live in central North Carolina has focussed for the past year on the future of work, trying to come up with long-term strategies to enable North Carolinians to earn living wages in the face of continuing automation and globalization. Localities throughout the world can now organize TEDx conferences to bring together people and “ideas worth spreading,” using a template developed by the evolving non-profit, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).  So I remain hopeful, I keep the television mainly off, and I practice strengthening my “thumb side” muscles.         

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The Firebrand and the First Lady

Posted on May 7, 2016 | 2 comments

The Firebrand and the First Lady     —by Jinny Batterson

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship, published early in 2016, was written long after the deaths of its protagonists, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt and Anna Pauline Murray. Eleanor Roosevelt was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and the activist wife of her distant cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She continued in her own right after her husband’s death. Pauli Murray was an activist, organizer, lawyer, writer, and eventually a priest. She dealt with the double whammy of discrimination for being black and female in a time that undervalued both.

Just after the title page, author Patricia Bell-Scott introduces the two women through quotations taken from their extensive writings and correspondence. The first listed entry, from Pauli Murray, was published over 20 years after Mrs. Roosevelt’s death in the journal of Murray’s university, The Hunter Magazine:

“For me, becoming friends with Mrs. Roosevelt was a slow, painful process, marked by sharp exchanges of correspondence, often anger on my side and exasperation on her side, and a gradual development of mutual admiration and respect.” 

Mrs. Roosevelt’s initial quotation came from an article, “Some of My Best Friends are Negro,” published in the magazine Ebony in 1953:

“One of my finest young friends is a charming woman lawyer—Pauli Murray, who has been quite a firebrand at times but of whom I am very fond.”

Over three hundred well-researched pages chronicle their developing friendship during the years when the two women’s lives intersected, and then the years after Mrs. R.’s death when Murray continued to write, speak, work for social justice, and honor Mrs. R.’s legacy.   

The two were born a generation apart—Roosevelt in 1884, Murray in 1910–to economic and social circumstances that could hardly have been more different. However, the emotional traumas of their early lives were similar. Both lost parents at a tender age. Both were shunted among relatives and schools throughout their teens.

Mrs. Roosevelt first encountered Pauli Murray on a visit to an upstate New York camp for unemployed single women in 1934 or 1935.  Murray had gone there during the depths of the Great Depression to help regain her strength after a couple of years of intermittent employment in New York City. Mrs. Roosevelt had helped finance the camp. She had insisted that it be racially integrated. During the first lady’s visit, Murray hung back and said nothing, later getting scolded by the camp director for her lack of manners.

The two women next interacted when Murray copied “Mrs. R.” on an impassioned 1938 letter to FDR criticizing his spotty civil rights record, especially his recent speech praising “liberal” University of North Carolina, which repeatedly rejected Murray’s graduate student application on racial grounds.

By the early days of 1940, Murray was executive director of a non-profit highlighting the problems of sharecroppers. She and several colleagues had a chance to meet with Mrs. Roosevelt in Mrs. R.’s Manhattan apartment. From then on, the two women carried on an irregular but spirited correspondence for the rest of their mutual lives. Mrs. R. helped when she could with some of Murray’s causes, but cautioned restraint, occasionally even upbraiding Murray’s brashness.

When Murray graduated from Howard Law School in June, 1944, ER sent a congratulatory note and a bouquet. When FDR died in April, 1945, Murray sent Mrs. R. a lengthy condolence: “…There is not one I’ve seen who has not expressed a physical illness over the disaster which has befallen each individual American today. …I pray for your strength and fortitude, because we all need you more than ever now.”   

ER went on to chair a U.N. commission that developed and got General Assembly approval for a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. She worked at the U.N. for several more years, then continued writing, speaking, and humanitarian work until her death in 1962.

Murray offered this public tribute at a 1982 conference celebrating Mrs. Roosevelt’s life:

“I learned by watching her in action over a period of three decades that each of us is culture-bound by the era in which we live, and that the greatest challenge to the individual is to try to move to the very boundaries of our historical limitations and to project ourselves toward future centuries. Mrs. Roosevelt … did just that.”

Murray attended a 1984 conference celebrating the centennial of ER’s birth, but was hospitalized soon afterward with serious health problems.  She died in 1985.

If the delay in publishing The Firebrand and the First Lady partly resides in the meticulous scholarship to track down sources and verify quotations, it seems to me that the timing of the book’s release is providential. It comes as this year’s U.S. Presidential campaign intensifies. One of the chief actors is a former first lady with extensive qualifications of her own. It comes at a time when LGBT communities, of which Murray was a closeted member, are becoming more insistent on full citizenship. It comes as we approach this year’s celebration of Mother’s Day, when we acknowledge both our physical mothers and those who have nurtured and challenged us, in the best tradition of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt and Anna Pauline Murray.

  

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The Whole Earth Generation(s)

Posted on April 27, 2016 | 2 comments

The Whole Earth Generation(s)   —by Jinny Batterson

April 22, 2016 was observed in many countries as “Earth Day.” This annual event, first celebrated in the United States in 1970, has gone global, drawing attention to environmental challenges and the need to cherish this planet, the only one we know can support human life.

By the late 1960’s, the excesses of unchecked industrialization and conspicuous consumption were starkly evident. Our generation, then coming of age in the U.S., had experienced less global armed conflict or material deprivation than our parents’ cohort. Instead, we’d been shaped by the political assassinations of the era, by proxy wars, by the rise of the civil rights movement, and by a growing awareness of the drawbacks of gender inequality. We had a youthful desire for meaningful change—sooner rather than later. Teach-ins were a popular tool on a variety of issues. A Wisconsin senator, Gaylord Nelson, hatched the idea for a national “teach-in” about the environment after viewing the massive 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Twenty million Americans participated.

A little before the first Earth Day was celebrated, a low-cost, no-advertising catalog appeared: The Whole Earth Catalog. Editions were published about once a quarter during the years 1968-1972, and somewhat less regularly thereafter. Many editions carried on their front cover an image of planet Earth as seen from space. The tone of the early catalogs’ introduction was somewhat defiant: “So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. …(A) realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his(/her) own education, find his(/her) own inspiration, shape his(/her) own environment, and share his(/her) adventure with whoever is interested.” 

The catalog listed its function as “access to tools,” specifically tools that were: 1) useful; 2) relevant to independent education; 3) high quality or low cost; and 4) easily available by mail. 

It may have been through the catalog’s pages that my husband and I were introduced to the work and lives of Helen and Scott Nearing, a professional couple who left city life in Philadelphia during the 1930’s and homesteaded successfully, first in Vermont and later in Maine. The Nearings lived off the land, growing their own food, building their own shelter, writing books and articles about their successes—getting about as far from the “rat race” of corporate culture as one can. Unfortunately, when we tried a similar move in the early 1970’s, we soon learned that we lacked both the homesteading skills exhibited by the Nearings and the stamina to endure the periods of off-land unemployment that are often part of rural life. We retreated to a mid-sized urban area where jobs were more plentiful and the worst excesses of the rat race were less in evidence. We never gave up on the dream of a more sustainable lifestyle. 

Culture and technology have changed a good bit since 1970—the biggest threats to global health and stability can now be more diffuse and harder to tackle than the nation-state wars of preceding generations; civil rights and gender equality have made patchy, uneven, progress; telecommuting has made it more possible to locate in rural settings while still earning a living using mostly urban skills; the Internet has outstripped postal mail as a communications medium. However, some of the basics of human interactions have not changed all that much.

In the Next Whole Earth Catalog, put out in 1981, I found an entry that spoke to me, part of a sidebar called the “Rising Sun Neighborhood Newsletter”:

“If you notice that all the leaders who might make things better get shot you can:
1) Assume their deaths were no coincidence and give up;
2) Spend years proving their deaths were no coincidence and convincing others;
3) Need leaders less.”
When our 2016 crop of putative leaders leaves me unenchanted, I remind myself to need leaders less–some global changes require large-scale interventions, but many more can be carried out at an individual or small group level.

 The “boomer” generation I’m part of is the first to have spent our entire adult lives with images of Earth in all its splendor and fragility as seen from space. The generations coming after ours were born with these images available. I hope they have recognized both their beauty and their vulnerability.  Though we all need leadership at times, I hope that future “whole earth” generations will mature and find their paths realizing that we are all both followers and leaders, and that we need external leaders less.

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My Cousin Bill

Posted on March 24, 2016 | 1 comment

My Cousin Bill       —by Jinny Batterson

This time of year I often think about my cousin Bill. Bill was a cousin-by-marriage, wed for nearly thirty years to my mother’s second cousin Jen. Before I remember meeting Bill, I met the small “gentleman’s farm” that he and Jen owned in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. One summer in my young teens, I spent nearly a week at their place on a return visit after their only daughter Grace came to stay at our much smaller homestead in the suburban fringes of Washington, D.C.   Bill and Jen’s place wasn’t near any large city. Their farm of a hundred acres or so had a small herd of beef cattle and was way out in the country. The closest town of any size was the college town of Lexington, Virginia, about twenty miles away. What I mainly remember of that visit was not Bill or Jen, but how scared I was of Grace’s two horses, huge animals compared with the dogs and cats at our house. Over the course of my visit, I managed only one brief ride on the gentler and smaller of the two mounts.

Several years later, Bill and Jen came to Maryland for my grandmother’s funeral. As they gave me a ride from the cemetery back to our house in their car, I got my first direct exposure to Bill, who regaled us with stories about Granny and how much she’d enjoyed racy anecdotes, despite her somewhat stern Presbyterian upbringing.

A couple of years after that, as Grace went off to university in Atlanta, I began attending a small women’s liberal arts college near the Shenandoah Valley. Once I got access to a vehicle at school, I went to visit Bill and Jen, driving my little car through the verdant countryside of a Virginia spring to their front gate. Bill welcomed me and gave me a house and garden tour while Jen fixed lunch. He’d filled the walls in their parlor with “ancestors,” a portrait collection of Indians and Africans decked out in ceremonial dress, plus assorted other individuals that were no biological relation, but struck Bill as having character.  He’d made up stories about each one. Outdoors, in one of their several flower beds, Bill pointed out the “night-blooming enuresis,” a yucca to which he’d attached the label for childhood bedwetting as a joke on some of the snootier but vocabulary-limited ladies of the local garden club.

Later, when I began seriously dating a young man who was a student at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, I brought Jim with me to meet my sensible cousin Jen and her eccentric husband Bill.  Bill and Jen would invite us to their place every couple of months. Bill entertained us with more stories, while both he and Jen plied us with home cooked meals more varied and nutritious than we’d get at the cheaper town restaurants that were our typical date-night fare.  I began noticing the extensive collection of fine china and cutlery that filled a long wall of cupboards in their remodeled kitchen. Only gradually did it slip out that Bill had inherited a large fortune from his now-deceased parents. It also gradually slipped out that Bill was a gentleman alcoholic as well as a gentleman farmer. He was generally good at staying away from drink, but every year or two his disease would get the best of him. Neighbors knew to phone Jen and to manage to get Bill home from wherever he’d fallen off the wagon.

When Jim and I got engaged in the spring of 1968, Bill wanted to throw us an engagement party. The party didn’t happen—coordinating schedules for our out-of-town families proved too complicated—but Jim and I continued occasional visits to the farm. Early that December, I completed my undergraduate schooling and moved home to Maryland to begin graduate work and start planning our wedding. We’d get married in the chapel at Washington and Lee the next spring. Of course we’d invite Bill and Jen.

In January 1969, we got word that Bill was seriously ill.  He’d been feeling a little rundown when we’d last seen him in the fall. Jen eventually nagged him into seeing a doctor. The diagnosis was dire—acute leukemia. At first I was sure Bill would bounce back, his wealth giving him access to the best medical care money could buy. However, later news from the farm was not good.  About ten days before the wedding, I talked by phone with Jen, who explained that Bill was quite weak and no longer able to drive, but that she’d do her best to arrange a driver to bring them to the small college chapel where our ceremony would be held.

Our Saturday wedding day dawned clear, but brisk and windy. Once or twice during the early afternoon ceremony, I looked around to see whether Bill and Jen had slipped in at the back of the chapel, but they never appeared. Our simple wedding was followed by an equally simple reception at the college’s alumni house. By mid-afternoon, the festivities were over. Our best man retrieved our car. Despite his best efforts to hide it, it had been festooned with shave cream slogans and peppered with jelly beans. We drove back toward Maryland at a leisurely pace, with no extensive honeymoon in prospect, but no work or school until the following Monday. At the turn-off to Bill and Jen’s, I hesitated. Would they welcome a short visit?  We decided to try it—Bill and Jen hadn’t come to the wedding, but the wedding could sort of come to them.

We knew by now to ignore the “Unruly Dog” sign at the gate. We went straight to the front door and knocked. Jen opened it. We could see Bill, wheelchair bound, behind her in the parlor, along with a neighbor who’d come to help with nursing and provide support for Jen.

“Howdy,” Bill croaked, his voice weak and slightly slurred. “It’s so good to see you. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it to Lexington. The powers that be (here he nodded at Jen and the neighbor) forbid me to go out into the wind.”

He had a small tumbler of whiskey in one hand—one side-effect of his disease was the capacity to absorb alcohol without the likelihood he’d do any further damage to himself or others.  We chitchatted for a few minutes, but could see he was very tired, though glad we’d come.

“Y’all go on now,” he said. “I expect you have other things on your minds than visiting with your old cousins.”

We left.  A few weeks later we got news that Bill had died. When we first learned of Bill’s leukemia, Mom told us that Bill had lost his first wife to a different, but equally aggressive cancer, a number of years before he met Jen. He was no stranger to death.

It’s early spring again. Easter and our wedding anniversary are not far off. The slopes of the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia will soon be filled with redbud and dogwood blossoms, and the pale, almost iridescent green of newly sprouted leaves—nature resurrecting herself. I don’t reflect all that much about death, afterlife, or resurrection, but I often remember Bill, especially at this time of year. I think perhaps it’s enough that Bill, and others like him, live on in the memories of those whose lives they touched.

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Public-Private Partnerships

Posted on January 27, 2016 | Leave a comment

Public-Private Partnerships   —by Jinny Batterson

I don’t use public transportation very often, but lately, while visiting extended family in a faraway city, I had several occasions when I didn’t have easy access to a car. Busses were a viable alternative.  From the look of it, the other folks riding were a fairly diverse bunch, tending toward the lower end of the economic scale—not people I’d typically have met while car-enabled. I was a bit nervous at first, but it turned out that one of my bus experiences was punctuated by a couple of examples of exemplary public service by one particular bus driver.

As I waited for the second bus ride of my day a week or so ago, I was annoyed by the high-volume conversation being carried on by another potential passenger on her cell phone as a group of us waited at a regional transit mall.  I’m a “digital immigrant,” part of the not-quite-doddering generation who grew up without personal computers or cell phones. I continue to be bemused by the amount of personal information that now gets shared in public airspace. “Miss Garrulous,” who looked about 20, was explaining in great detail to her cell phone conversation partner why she was considering breaking up with her current boyfriend. I tried to tune out her most explicit remarks.

Finally our bus prepared for departure. The driver motioned us onto his bus. A slightly less voluble middle-aged man got on, along with me, Miss Garrulous, and several other passengers. Miss Garrulous interrupted her conversation just long enough to put her bicycle onto the carrying rack attached to the front of the bus. As the bus was beginning to move, the middle-aged man rushed back to the front of the bus and requested that the driver wait for just a minute. Rather than stick to his official schedule, the driver assented. The man made a hurried exit-reentry after retrieving his cell phone, which he’d nearly left on a transit mall bench.

Miss Garrulous continued her non-stop description of past and present boyfriends, trysts, and parties from the back of the bus.  She pulled the “stop request” cord several stops before I planned to get off. Relief!  Shortly after her departure, just as the bus was starting up again, the driver pulled on his brake and flashers and hurriedly exited, yelling “Miss, wait!” very loudly.  It turned out that Miss Garrulous had gotten so involved in her conversation that she’d forgotten to retrieve her bicycle.

Bus drivers don’t get extra pay for shepherding the personal belongings of distracted passengers. I was impressed by the care this driver took of his temporary charges.

My favorite recent example of public service, though, comes from “outside the bus.”  The suburban town where I live hires school crossing guards at some of its elementary schools. Their hours are short; their pay is low; their outdoor working conditions are varied and somewhat unpredictable. One particular school sits beside a busy commuter route where the flow of car traffic is heavy and the number of schoolchildren needing to cross is relatively light. I’ve sometimes needed to go that way about the time school is starting or letting out. After several trips, I began to notice this particular crossing guard, an older, somewhat heavyset man with a grizzled beard. He had created a friendly mini-environment for himself, bringing to his work site a collapsible padded chair for when no children were crossing. Rather than just sitting there beside the crossing markers, though, he’d smile broadly and wave at each passing car. The commuting congestion was much less bothersome along the route past “Mr. Sunny.”

It seems to me that there is no ideal mix of “public” and “private” any more. Perhaps there never has been. Still, I wonder if we would be wise to celebrate more consistently the small extra services that occur in our public sphere.  A slight schedule slip, a “Miss, wait!,” or a smile and a wave, may not appear on any financial balance sheet, but they are still worth plenty.

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Sichuan’s Pandas, Preserved? (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on November 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

Sichuan’s Pandas, Preserved? (Part 2 of 2)     —by Jinny Batterson

During the summer of 2008, pandas and staff from the Wolong National Nature Reserve who’d survived the Wenchuan earthquake were temporarily relocated to the Bifengxia Giant Panda Base, near the small city of Ya’an.  There I had several chances to visit in 2008-2009 while teaching at a nearby university. A first visit was escorted by our university’s Foreign Affairs Officer, Ms. Chen, on a gorgeous autumn day. We four foreign English teachers got a weekend glimpse of the park, still absorbing its additional pandas. We mostly bypassed the parts of Bifengxia that were a sort of commercial zoo, with the kitsch that can mar the natural landscape—even more Disney than Disney. Instead, we spent most of our time wandering  paths in a relatively undisturbed part of the valley, picnicking beside a small stream, only glancing on our way out at a few of the relocated pandas.

On my final Bifengxia visit, in spring 2009, I showed two American friends more extensively around the panda part of the base: the panda nursery, the juveniles’ play yards, the large enclosures for adult pandas, and the quarantine areas for pandas about to be shipped to zoos in other parts of the world.  I even succumbed to kitschiness enough to buy several fake panda backpacks and snugglies for the grandchildren. 

“Wow,” one friend remarked. “Zoo panda exhibits will never be the same after this.”

I agreed. We’d seen almost 60 pandas, though still in somewhat artificial settings. 

The final preserve I visited, in 2010, was the panda breeding center near Sichuan’s capital city of Chengdu. Programs there were similar to those at Bifengxia, but with an even greater emphasis on pregnancies, births, and nurture of baby pandas.  My husband and I were able to get within about a quarter mile of the center’s entrance by public bus. The bus disgorged us at the end of the line, where a major artery narrowed into a two-lane road. Nearby earthmoving equipment punctuated the soundscape. Construction-generated dust occluded the landscape.

A short walk brought us to the center’s entrance, where groves of trees helped reestablish a quieter atmosphere and filter out the worst of the dust. Multilingual signage pointed us over a small knoll in the direction of the pandas, or alternately downhill to a koi pond where we could buy food pellets to feed the fish, as many visiting families with children were doing. The pandas, when we reached their area, were cute, well-tended, obviously a source of pride and a generator of tourist income. Still,  it seemed to me just a matter of time before this center would be forced to relocate to a less densely populated area. Though muffled, the sounds of the bulldozers could be heard not far away from the 500 acre center.    

According to the website giantpandazoo.com, over 120 panda cubs have been born at the Chengdu panda breeding center since it was first established in 1987. With a survival rate of over 70%, the breeding center no longer takes pandas from the wild, but exchanges genetic material with zoos and other centers worldwide to help preserve genetic diversity. By 2006, when National Geographic Magazine explored the economics of panda breeding and research in its article “Panda, Inc.,” the number and genetic diversity of captive pandas in breeding centers and zoos worldwide was approaching the 300-animal population level that experts predicted would allow the continuation of the species in captivity indefinitely with no deterioration due to inbreeding.

Maintaining a zoo panda in the U.S. costs between 2 and 3 million dollars per year. For zoos outside China, the annual cost of a panda includes a hefty conservation fee to Chinese wildlife agencies to help with panda research and conservation efforts in their home country. Periodically, pandas that have been “rented out” to foreign zoos are returned to China for breeding and further research.  Pandas’ symbolism and cuteness makes their endangered status more evident and their long-term species survival somewhat less tenuous than that of other similarly threatened species. However, these cuddly creatures beg a larger question that grows more crucial as human numbers and activity increase:  What is the value of wild-bred non-human populations? What are appropriate human roles in planetary stewardship?  If we could communicate with her, would recent panda mother Mei Xiang (at the Washington D.C. National Zoo) have a different response?

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Sichuan’s Pandas, Preserved? (part 1 of 2)

Posted on November 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

Sichuan’s Pandas, Preserved? (Part 1 of 2)     —by Jinny Batterson

I have yet to see a giant panda in the wild.  I’m not too disappointed— skilled naturalists and nature photographers have spent years, even decades, on quests for reclusive wild pandas, whose numbers are now estimated at only a thousand or two across the entire span of their range.  What I have seen are three panda preserves in China—Wolong National Nature Reserve, Bifengxia Giant Panda Base, and the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, all in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan. I visited Wolong, the most remote, first. In the spring of 2004, I was in the provincial capital, Chengdu, getting ready for a multi-day tour to two national parks, with an extra day before that tour started. I approached our hotel’s day concierge, map and Mandarin phrase book in hand as back-up.

“Is it possible to visit the nature reserve at Wolong?” I asked, enunciating carefully.

“I check for you,” came the reply in only slightly accented English. 

A couple of hours later, he phoned my room. “Visit is possible, but you must hire car and driver. If  tomorrow you want to go, I find someone to take you.”

“Wonderful!” I gushed. “Please phone me again to tell me when I should meet the driver and how much I should pay.”

I’d heard about the reserve through the World Wildlife Fund, for whom the cuddly panda “bear” has become a symbol. Road conditions in many parts of Sichuan were iffy. It took several hours down muddy, narrow tracks with lots of twists and turns to reach the preserve. I’d just about given up finding it when I noticed  a bilingual sign near the top of a small rise.

“Stop!” I requested. I read the English version. The expansive reserve encompassed nearly 500,000 acres, managed through a multi-decades partnership between international wildlife organizations and the Chinese government to try to stabilize or even increase endangered panda populations.

At the park entrance, the driver negotiated entrance fees, then finger-wrote the figure on his hand for me. I paid my fee and his, too. The preserve seemed designed more for research than for tourism. I listened intently as one of the scientists at the main panda enclosure explained parts of their program in Chinese, then in halting English.  

Nearest the reserve’s entrance, a series of masonry cages resembled old-fashioned U.S. zoos—bars at the front, bare concrete floors, a small cave-like room at the back of each cell.  Slightly further along in a different part of the valley were several large fenced natural areas, perhaps a quarter acre each. Some housed a single adult panda, others had groups of juveniles. One older adult male paced the front of his enclosure in such a consistent pattern that he’d worn a path in the grass. Every now and again he paused and stood on his hind legs, with front paws grasping the fence, looking out. Then he resumed his pacing. The juvenile playground had equipment human children would envy—ropes, ladders, inclines, and mounted wooden platforms. Panda cubs tussled and batted at each other, playing their version of “king of the mountain.”

The scientist explained a little about an experimental program to acclimate some of the captive-born pandas to life in the wild. (Through recent Internet research, I’ve found out that the first captive panda birth at Wolong occurred in 1986, with up to 16 births per year in subsequent years.) The first pre-release panda, later to be fitted with a radio collar, was still about a year from the end of his 3-year preparation period.  I later learned, sadly, that this first wild release was not successful—the young adult male died about a year after he left the enclosed part of the reserve, most likely in a territorial  dispute with a more-established wild male. 

Even more tragically, the structures in the reserve at Wolong were almost totally destroyed by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Several reserve employees died, as did one of the captive pandas, crushed by the masonry wall of her cage. The damage, the obliteration of many surrounding bamboo groves, and the danger of subsequent earthquakes along an active geological fault made rebuilding on the original site unwise. After several  years of construction and weather delays, a new center was opened in late 2012  in a different, more stable part of the reserve, near the village of Gengda.

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Mid-Autumn Festival and Moon Cakes

Posted on September 29, 2015 | Leave a comment

Mid-Autumn Festival and Moon Cakes    —by Jinny Batterson

This past weekend in China, people celebrated “Mid-Autumn Festival,”  whose closest U.S. equivalents may be various localized harvest moon celebrations.  The Chinese festival falls at the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. Mid-Autumn Festival is a time when families will reunite whenever practical. As if to help encourage the custom, the Chinese expressions for “round” (yuan) and “reunion” (tuanyuan) sound similar and share their main character.

At Mid-Autumn Festival time, I’ve sometimes gotten gifts of “moon cakes” from Chinese students or colleagues.  The recipes for these mostly round confections vary from place to place.  All the ones I’ve tasted have been greasy, heavy, and sweet.  Commercially made moon cakes are most often sold in decorative boxes with elaborate wrappings, eight or twelve or even twenty to a box. Moon cakes frequently have decorations or sayings stamped into their tops, with fillings of sweet bean paste, green tea paste, or fruit preserves. They remind me a little of the traditional dense fruit-and-nut-laden cakes that sometimes accompany U.S. family gatherings at Christmas time. People are reluctant to discontinue the tradition, but may be just as reluctant to eat large portions of the rich cakes. An anecdote I heard during one China stay was that gifting boxes of moon cakes to co-workers used to be nearly obligatory, but that “regifting” was widespread as well—people told me of one Shanghai office worker who placed an inconspicuous marker on a box of cakes before giving it to a colleague.  Sure enough, several days and giftees later, the marked box made its way back to him.

Various stories and myths are associated with the holiday. Historians trace the offering of moon cakes during the festival to the beginnings of the Yuan Dynasty, whose army was victorious during the 13th century in part because it passed secret messages back and forth imbedded in moon-shaped cakes. One popular legend tells of ancient hero Hou Yi and his lovely wife Chang E.  Chang E was forced by the queen of heaven to drink an elixir that caused her to leave earth for the heavens beyond. Because she loved her husband and did not want to leave him, Chang E stopped at the nearest heavenly body to earth, the moon. When the moon was full and round, Hou Yi could sometimes see an image of his wife in the patterns on the moon’s surface. He began offering Chang E’s favorite foods as a sacrifice at a local shrine. The custom was later taken up by others, who offered sacrifices of moon cakes at Mid-Autumn amid prayers for peace and good fortune.

The one time I was in China and paying attention at the Mid-Autumn holiday, I missed an invitation to some students’ moon viewing party because I wasn’t fluent in “QQ,” a widely used social networking tool in China.  Students later consoled me for missing their gathering—it had been impossible to see the moon, anyway, they said, that misty evening in Ya’an, Sichuan. At a recent mid-autumn gathering in the U.S., I saw a video of a traditional Chinese family Mid-Autumn festival evening. The hostess for the extended family gathering had made a homemade moon cake about the size of a large pie. She carefully cut the cake into enough pieces for everyone, offering the first slice to the oldest family member. At Mid-Autumn celebrations, someone often recites the Su Shi poem, “Shui Diao Ge Tou,” or performs its musical version.  It tells of the poet’s longing to be reunited with his faraway brother.

In this season when nostalgia comes easily, as summer’s heat gives way to the occasional chill, as the first frost looms, we can all remember family, friends and loved ones, even those separated from us by great distances. All of us can view the same moon.

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When the Earth Moved: Two Perspectives

Posted on August 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

When the Earth Moved: Two Perspectives  —by Jinny Batterson

(Ever since the May 12, 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province that shook many people’s worlds, I’ve been trying to write about it. An earlier version of this prose poem originally appeared in the 2014 edition of the Silly Tree poetry anthology, “The Way the Light Slants.” )

He: I was hiking in the Sichuan hills with two friends, one American, one Chinese,
When the earth began to shake. For some interval of time, I thought I would die.
We took shelter beneath a rock overhang until the worst shaking subsided.

She: I was babysitting our grandson in America when the phone rang–
A newspaper reporter from our former hometown asked,
“Do you have a close relative in the earthquake zone?”
“What earthquake?” I responded. Then the earth began to quiver for me, too.
I tried to stay calm for the sake of our grandson.

He: We decided to seek more permanent shelter
In the little village we’d passed through coming up the hill.
Dodging boulders, we arrived safely, to find some houses smashed,
But everyone alive, amazingly hospitable to a city stranger and two foreigners.

She: While the toddler napped, I trolled the Internet.
The earthquake’s epicenter had been near the giant panda preserve at Wolong.
Online posts told of bad damage at this site of my husband’s previous email.
However, no foreign casualties were reported. Most fatalities occurred in cities
As buildings collapsed. I took heart: husband and friends were in the rural hills.

He: Officials from a larger town downhill, where our Chinese friend’s car
Was parked, came and insisted we go with them.
We resisted. They persisted. We dodged more boulders, rejoined the car.
Townspeople offered food and a tent. We joined them in a simple meal,
Cheered with them when their exhausted children walked safely,
But grimly, single file, back to town from their damaged school.
Aftershocks punctuated the night. We catnapped in the car. By morning,
Soldiers had hiked in over a mountain pass–most roads were blocked.
They cleared rubble.

She: Once the babysitting day was over, our son returned from work.
Soon questions came from all sides–When had I last heard from him?
Did I know where he was, exactly? My inbox overflowed; the phone kept ringing.
I offered more reassurance than I felt: Area communication lines were down;
He’d been in the countryside, most likely out in the open.
I was pretty sure he was safe. I’d relay further news as soon as I heard.
Please try not to worry. I slept.

He: Officialdom everywhere can be a nuisance, even a danger.
We were told: “Foreign tourists should not be in the earthquake zone.
No earthquake images allowed.” Cameras were confiscated, pictures deleted.
Police cars, at breakneck speed, returned us to the provincial capital
Over roads that would not be fully repaired for years, if ever.

She: The second day was harder. No babysitting chores. No direct word,
Only more and more Internet reports of damage and deaths,
Even in the countryside. I did some part-time contract work, poorly.
Early to bed, but not to sleep, much. About 4 a.m.
I again checked the Internet. Short new message:
“Madam, excuse please poor English. Husband and friends safe.”
Quick phone call to the American friend’s wife,
Emails to other family and friends, then, at last, sleep.

He: We began to absorb the massive extent of the quake.
Our Chinese friend’s city was especially hard hit–her parents’
House badly damaged; friends, classmates and colleagues killed.
At last I could contact my wife–let her know I was all right.

She: That fall, we began a year of English teaching at a Sichuan university
Far enough from the epicenter to have escaped major damage,
But close enough so some students had lost family or friends.
We grieved with them, easing the pain by writing and telling it out.
One weekend in May, 2009, we made an unofficial visit to the quake zone.
Temporary housing sprawled amid massive reclamation efforts.
I got to meet and thank some families who’d sheltered my husband and friends.
I finally got to meet and thank the English-challenged
Cousin of our Chinese friend, whose simple email had surpassed language.

 

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Voting with Our Feet (and other essential body parts)

Posted on July 19, 2015 | 3 comments

Voting with Our Feet (and other essential body parts)   —by Jinny Batterson

Recent retirees like me get a lot of health-related information—mailers, email reminders, targeted Internet advertising.  Fairly often, these messages tout the benefits of regular exercise. Walking gets mentioned a lot—helps our circulation, requires little special equipment, can be done anywhere, anytime. So, even in the heat of summer, I try to keep up a regular walking routine. Over the past several seasons, I’ve been doing a good bit of more targeted walking, too, participating in protest marches and fundraisers for causes I think are important.  One of those is global climate change; another is voting.

Last September, I joined hundreds of thousands in New York City to draw global attention both to the problems we’re creating with our profligate use of fossil fuels and to possible alternatives, including the low-tech, available-to-nearly-everyone switch to walking more and using our vehicles less. I got a walker’s high moving along with the varied and huge crowd around me, most in comfortable shoes, some with banners, others with slogans on their clothing, some coasting beside us on skates or bicycles, a few in wheelchairs.

This past week, I joined a smaller, more localized crowd in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to draw attention to the start of a federal court case considering the constitutionality of several restrictive 2013 changes in my home state’s voting laws. The weather was sultry—July in North Carolina can wilt even the most stalwart. However, organizers had ordered thousands of bottles of cool water, and we guzzled it down as we listened to speeches and songs before taking to the streets. We wanted to help reinforce the message that the U.S. Constitution has been repeatedly amended to expand, rather than constrict, the franchise. The 15th amendment gave the vote to male former slaves; the 19th enfranchised women; the 26th, ratified in 1971, reduced the voting age from 21 to 18, giving the ballot to 18 to 20 year olds, including young men subject to military conscription.

I’m most grateful that my tramps have so far been voluntary. Nowadays, a huge number of people are walking for more distressing reasons—the number of international refugees and internally displaced persons has reached a level not seen since World War II. In 2014, nearly 60 million people, about 1 in every 125, were in refugee camps or temporary shelters due to wars and ethnic conflicts around the globe. When armed conflict breaks out, many vote with their feet just to survive.

In Isabel Wilkerson’s 2011 award-winning saga, The Warmth of Other Suns, I read that nearly 6 million African-Americans voted with their feet during the period between 1915 and 1970. These participants in the “great migration” left the Jim Crow south for points north and west, pushed out by fear and discrimination, and/or pulled away by the lure of better opportunities and less blatant oppression.

During my lifetime so far, I have not been forced to vote with my feet because of wars or oppression. However, voting with a ballot is a right I no longer take for granted. Recent quantum leaps in the sophistication and prevalence of gerrymandering make it more difficult for me to cast a meaningful vote, as do both subtle and more blatant attempts at voter suppression. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have made “voting with money” more prevalent, an emphasis I find distressing. The problem has gotten too big for any single citizen, candidate or political party to solve on its own.

At the New York City march, some carried placards proclaiming: “There is no Planet B.”  On a less global level, I wonder, if we destroy our country’s democracy, what “plan B’s” await us? Our union has become considerably less perfect over the past decade or so. Perhaps we can reverse the trend—some of us may have to vote repeatedly with our feet in protest marches. We’ll also need to engage our heads, our hearts, our hands, having serious debates about vital issues, registering and voting, resisting demagoguery and pat answers, listening to each other, working together. Let’s keep walking…

 

 

 

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