I started this blog in my own words "to blog primarily about thoughts about my work and life out here". Well, both work and here are changing. Today is my last day at my small northeast ohio medical school, and my last day as a trainee. As of next week I will be fully fledged tenure track junior faculty, and back on the east coast. And so I feel this is a good time to end this blog.
I have enjoyed writing it immensely. It has helped me think my way through the past five and a half years. But it was written for a time, a place, and a version of me. And all those things have changed.
I do not use the internet as I once did as a trainee scientist, as a place to learn more about my chosen field and my career path through it. And indeed, the world has changed, especially online, since the heady days when I joined twitter and later started blogging. As the great unpleasantness of 2016 wore on, I began to become exhausted by the endless hot takes and rapid fire opinions of the internet. And so I began to question my own role in it. Is what I have to write so essential?
When I retreated from the internet, a friend of mine commented that that was loss of a young queer academic voice on the internet. Perhaps. But quitting the internet meant recommitting to where I was physically. To become a young queer academic voice in rural northeast ohio. Which is no less valuable.
The tension here is one I have always felt. I call it the Bolkonsky Bezhoukov dichotomy, after two of the main characters from Tolstoi's war and peace. Prince Bolkonsky, a sceptical materialist, gives up the opportnity to be a camp aid, convinced that he can do more good, indeed only do good, as a sergeant to his unit. Peter Bezhoukov in contrast, believes in the paths of providence, the possibility of great change, and moves from secret society to secret society to be part of that great change. These days, I am a Bolkonsky, but unlike Tolstoi, I think a Bolkonsky can indeed do thing.
So I am ending this blog. Thank you for reading. And watch where else I will speak, in new ways, about new challenges.
Good luck to you all.
Paleogould
Showing posts with label Moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moving. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 June 2019
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Continental drift of the heart
The Mistress of the Animals has a new series of posts up, on dealing with less than ideal job situations. Go read them, they are useful, and make good points. And, as is Potnia's wont, a very important meta-point: what, at any given point in your life, is important to you, and what, at any point in your life, is worth putting up with?
The twist is that what matters, what is important, what you need, want and value, does not remain constant, nor is it always clear to oneself. Some of our values and priorities are like the Hawaiian volcanic hotspot, arising straight from our core and remaining fixed even as immense changes pass over our surface. Yet these hotspots are few. More often, things we think are massive and perennial are like the summit of Everest: superficially imposing, but in actuality a temporary wrinkle on the surface of our ever changing selves. We often change without knowing it, only recognising much later that things we once valued, were once utmost priorities, have shifted to peripheral importance and we are in fact organising our lives and decisions around new mountains.
Ten years ago this month, I moved to America for the first time. What did I want ten years ago? What was important? So important that to pursue a PhD I could have pursued at home in less time, I traveled to America, willingly moving to a city I had never even visited to start a PhD with an advisor I had never met? I remember why I did it: a desire for adventure, and a fear of getting bogged down. I lived in central London. I had good degrees and a good job and I could easily see myself never moving far from where I had grown up, devoting all my efforts to keeping a toe hold in the immensely comfortable, yet predictable life I had in London. I looked at the life my mother had led, which, while far from easy, had involved travels around the world by the time she was thirty, who had lived in three countries, and I balked at how stayed the profile of my own twenties was becoming. The furthest I had moved from home was Cambridge, a 45 minute train journey from King's Cross. In my master's degree, I met a diverse cohort of people from all over the United Kingdom and further, whose path to that masters, while more winding, and perhaps less easy than mine, still had given them a host of life experiences that made me stop and think. So, I resolved to have my own adventure, and to go pursue all my dreams at once: America, a fresh start, and a Ph.D. I applied to four programs, was interviewed at two, got into one, and with the blessings of my friends and family, boarded a plane and landed in Baltimore airport on August 20th 2007, with two suitcases, an address, and the name of a person I'd never met who was going to pick me up and take me to my first apartment I had rented without seeing.
And what a fresh start it was. For the first week I slept on an air mattress on the floor, and had only my laptop perched on my suitcase as furniture. The very first day I had my first encounter with how little London had prepared me for an American city. I left my apartment in Mount Vernon in search of food and some basic housewares. Despite walking from North Avenue, to Lexington Market, to the inner Harbour, I could not find a home ware store, and returned home with four cheap glasses, and a an overpriced saucepan from the convenience store down the road. It wasn't until the middle of the week when my new fellow graduate students took me to the Target on the outskirts of the city I was actually able to buy what I needed. The first five years I lived in America were the adventure I hadwanted. I lived in and discovered a whole new city. I made many new friends. I did field work in India and Wyoming, and travelled all over the United States collecting data, spending weeks in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York city. And yet, by the time the adventure ended, already, subtly, the need for adventure had been replaced by other priorities. The desire for some stability, to be able to build a life with my partner, and the growing realisation that my increasing desire to be back home with my old friends and family was getting less and less likely to be easily combined with my desire for a fulfilling personal and professional life.
Ten years later, America is no longer an adventure, even though I have moved away once, and moved back to a new part of the country. America is a reality in my life, a part of it far more profoundly than I ever thought, at twenty three, it would be. It looms like mount Everest, or like the width of the Atlantic Ocean, in my decision making. My priorities now do not feature America, they must accommodate it. My desire to see my husband happy and fulfilled professionally means we are likely here at least another six year, probably more. My desire to be a good son, brother, and uncle, means I must continue to find ways to fly home often. My desire to have a successful career in academics mean I must continue to work hard, travel, be flexible and take opportunities. America is the geographic and political chess board on which I try to make my moves. And I know it now, I know it well. But whereas once, the fact I lived in America was a goal in itself, that time is long gone.
The twist is that what matters, what is important, what you need, want and value, does not remain constant, nor is it always clear to oneself. Some of our values and priorities are like the Hawaiian volcanic hotspot, arising straight from our core and remaining fixed even as immense changes pass over our surface. Yet these hotspots are few. More often, things we think are massive and perennial are like the summit of Everest: superficially imposing, but in actuality a temporary wrinkle on the surface of our ever changing selves. We often change without knowing it, only recognising much later that things we once valued, were once utmost priorities, have shifted to peripheral importance and we are in fact organising our lives and decisions around new mountains.
Ten years ago this month, I moved to America for the first time. What did I want ten years ago? What was important? So important that to pursue a PhD I could have pursued at home in less time, I traveled to America, willingly moving to a city I had never even visited to start a PhD with an advisor I had never met? I remember why I did it: a desire for adventure, and a fear of getting bogged down. I lived in central London. I had good degrees and a good job and I could easily see myself never moving far from where I had grown up, devoting all my efforts to keeping a toe hold in the immensely comfortable, yet predictable life I had in London. I looked at the life my mother had led, which, while far from easy, had involved travels around the world by the time she was thirty, who had lived in three countries, and I balked at how stayed the profile of my own twenties was becoming. The furthest I had moved from home was Cambridge, a 45 minute train journey from King's Cross. In my master's degree, I met a diverse cohort of people from all over the United Kingdom and further, whose path to that masters, while more winding, and perhaps less easy than mine, still had given them a host of life experiences that made me stop and think. So, I resolved to have my own adventure, and to go pursue all my dreams at once: America, a fresh start, and a Ph.D. I applied to four programs, was interviewed at two, got into one, and with the blessings of my friends and family, boarded a plane and landed in Baltimore airport on August 20th 2007, with two suitcases, an address, and the name of a person I'd never met who was going to pick me up and take me to my first apartment I had rented without seeing.
And what a fresh start it was. For the first week I slept on an air mattress on the floor, and had only my laptop perched on my suitcase as furniture. The very first day I had my first encounter with how little London had prepared me for an American city. I left my apartment in Mount Vernon in search of food and some basic housewares. Despite walking from North Avenue, to Lexington Market, to the inner Harbour, I could not find a home ware store, and returned home with four cheap glasses, and a an overpriced saucepan from the convenience store down the road. It wasn't until the middle of the week when my new fellow graduate students took me to the Target on the outskirts of the city I was actually able to buy what I needed. The first five years I lived in America were the adventure I hadwanted. I lived in and discovered a whole new city. I made many new friends. I did field work in India and Wyoming, and travelled all over the United States collecting data, spending weeks in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York city. And yet, by the time the adventure ended, already, subtly, the need for adventure had been replaced by other priorities. The desire for some stability, to be able to build a life with my partner, and the growing realisation that my increasing desire to be back home with my old friends and family was getting less and less likely to be easily combined with my desire for a fulfilling personal and professional life.
Ten years later, America is no longer an adventure, even though I have moved away once, and moved back to a new part of the country. America is a reality in my life, a part of it far more profoundly than I ever thought, at twenty three, it would be. It looms like mount Everest, or like the width of the Atlantic Ocean, in my decision making. My priorities now do not feature America, they must accommodate it. My desire to see my husband happy and fulfilled professionally means we are likely here at least another six year, probably more. My desire to be a good son, brother, and uncle, means I must continue to find ways to fly home often. My desire to have a successful career in academics mean I must continue to work hard, travel, be flexible and take opportunities. America is the geographic and political chess board on which I try to make my moves. And I know it now, I know it well. But whereas once, the fact I lived in America was a goal in itself, that time is long gone.
Sunday, 29 January 2017
I am not a "good immigrant"
"We will continue to attract the best and brightest" says Prime Minister Teresa May, as she makes limiting migration the centre of her policy plans for the next five years. Her Brexit speech made clear she is willing to sacrifice everything (the economy, international cooperation, the UK's moral standing) in order to prevent those dratted foreigners from entering the country. Then yesterday happened. The American president passed an executive order blocking all entry to the country, regardless of paperwork, for all refugees and nationals from seven countries. They detained even green card holders *. And Mrs May, who'd been in Washington earlier that day to curry favor with the president, has issued only the most tepid of repudiations.
I am an immigrant to the US. For reasons of history and geography and luck of birth, I am a fortunate immigrant. I am not routinely stopped at the border. I have never had extra burdens placed on me to get either my visa or my green card. But I have never once re-entered the US without some trepidation since I first got my F1 student visa. After yesterday, that trepidation is increased.
As the events at airports around the country have reminded people overnight, in the US it is the border agency that has final say about who can and cannot enter the country. The visa you spent money and time obtaining (every time I had to get my visa renewed or issued was a day off work, and I was fortunate that I lived in London) is only part of the evidence. It is the person at the desk at immigration, at the end of the line labelled "aliens", who has final say.
One of the criteria by which a border agent can deny you entry is if they have a suspicion you carry any of a certain number of infectious diseases. When I first moved to America, HIV/AIDS was on that list. Border protection need no proof you have the disease, a suspicion is sufficient. As a gay man, you see where I'm going with this. Yes, guidebooks and immigration manuals warned me that "looking too gay" could, feasibly, get my entry denied.
When I left America at the end of my Ph.D., leaving my then partner of four years behind, I could not return to America based on that relationship. DOMA was still in force. So I found a job. Luckily, as an academic, visas for jobs are easier to come by. But the easiest one (the J1) is a non immigrant visa with a firm requirement you leave the country after two years for at least a further year. It is difficult to get an exemption from that. The H1-B (skilled workers) visa doesn't have that limitation. But some universities will not sponsor postdocs for H1-Bs, and they cost PIs money. I was lucky, I got one. But even the H1-B has catches. It is non transferable, tied to your employment, and unlike the F1 visa has no grace period: as soon as your employment ends, your H1-B expires and you are automatically residing in the country illegally. Yes, that is correct. If you're on a H1-B and you get fired, you can technically be reported for overstaying your visa that evening. This is why H1-B visa holders tend to be quiet about problems at work.
Through good fortune, a progressive presidential administration, and a liberal supreme court, I became eligible for a spousal green card while on my H1-B. None of those things were guaranteed. Under the Bush Administration, they would have been unthinkable. Under a Trump administration? Well, we can guess how likely anything that makes immigration easier will be at this point. But even then, the green card is not guaranteed (unlike what my in laws thought). It costs $1500 to apply, and the process is complex, opaque, and open ended. I was hugely fortunate in that we had extensive documentation of our relationship, and a very friendly interviewer for the final interview in Cleveland. Will that still be likely in the coming years? Will be guidance be issued? If the so called "first amendment defense act" passes, same sex couples may end up in limbo when faced with unhelpful UCSIS employees. And it may not even take that much to suddenly make spousal green cards much harder to obtain. And mine must be renewed in two years. In the UK, for example, Teresa May now only allows British citizen to bring a non EU foreign born spouse into the country if they are earning above a certain threshold. Nothing is safe in the pursuit of reducing immigration.
So, no. I don't feel safe or OK after yesterday, despite being from the "right" sort of country, having the "right" skin colour, and being among "the best and brightest". Regardless of claims to the contrary, I know my supposed usefulness to people like May and Trump is secondary to the political capital they get from being "tough on immigration". If you doubt it, watch May's willingness to bargain with the life of my mother, who has lived in the UK legally for 40 years, but has the misfortune of being a French citizen after Brexit.
To be an immigrant, even a fortunate immigrant, is, if you keep your eyes even slightly open, to know you live at the good will of your host nation. And when that good will appears to be running short, no one, not even "good immigrants", is safe. It was not so long ago that the very permanent resident status I have now was explicitly denied to me by federal law. It is not so long ago my sexuality would make me suspect at the border. And, as a former H1-B holder paid out of a federal grant, "American Jobs for American People" is a chilling phrase. Permanent residency is usually treated much like citizenship for job eligibility purposes. Now, with this administration, I begin to wonder how safe that is.
People's lives were ruined yesterday, make no mistake. Some people will die as a direct consequence of that decision. But every green card or visa holder in the country woke up this morning, and wondered just how much the little bits of card we carry in our wallets are worth, and what might have them become as worthless as those held by Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, Sudanese, Yemeni, and Somali citizens who called America home.
I am an immigrant, I am angry, and I am more afraid than I was before.
* I'm aware that as of today, Priebus has claimed to walk that back. But I'll believe it when I see it.
I am an immigrant to the US. For reasons of history and geography and luck of birth, I am a fortunate immigrant. I am not routinely stopped at the border. I have never had extra burdens placed on me to get either my visa or my green card. But I have never once re-entered the US without some trepidation since I first got my F1 student visa. After yesterday, that trepidation is increased.
As the events at airports around the country have reminded people overnight, in the US it is the border agency that has final say about who can and cannot enter the country. The visa you spent money and time obtaining (every time I had to get my visa renewed or issued was a day off work, and I was fortunate that I lived in London) is only part of the evidence. It is the person at the desk at immigration, at the end of the line labelled "aliens", who has final say.
One of the criteria by which a border agent can deny you entry is if they have a suspicion you carry any of a certain number of infectious diseases. When I first moved to America, HIV/AIDS was on that list. Border protection need no proof you have the disease, a suspicion is sufficient. As a gay man, you see where I'm going with this. Yes, guidebooks and immigration manuals warned me that "looking too gay" could, feasibly, get my entry denied.
When I left America at the end of my Ph.D., leaving my then partner of four years behind, I could not return to America based on that relationship. DOMA was still in force. So I found a job. Luckily, as an academic, visas for jobs are easier to come by. But the easiest one (the J1) is a non immigrant visa with a firm requirement you leave the country after two years for at least a further year. It is difficult to get an exemption from that. The H1-B (skilled workers) visa doesn't have that limitation. But some universities will not sponsor postdocs for H1-Bs, and they cost PIs money. I was lucky, I got one. But even the H1-B has catches. It is non transferable, tied to your employment, and unlike the F1 visa has no grace period: as soon as your employment ends, your H1-B expires and you are automatically residing in the country illegally. Yes, that is correct. If you're on a H1-B and you get fired, you can technically be reported for overstaying your visa that evening. This is why H1-B visa holders tend to be quiet about problems at work.
Through good fortune, a progressive presidential administration, and a liberal supreme court, I became eligible for a spousal green card while on my H1-B. None of those things were guaranteed. Under the Bush Administration, they would have been unthinkable. Under a Trump administration? Well, we can guess how likely anything that makes immigration easier will be at this point. But even then, the green card is not guaranteed (unlike what my in laws thought). It costs $1500 to apply, and the process is complex, opaque, and open ended. I was hugely fortunate in that we had extensive documentation of our relationship, and a very friendly interviewer for the final interview in Cleveland. Will that still be likely in the coming years? Will be guidance be issued? If the so called "first amendment defense act" passes, same sex couples may end up in limbo when faced with unhelpful UCSIS employees. And it may not even take that much to suddenly make spousal green cards much harder to obtain. And mine must be renewed in two years. In the UK, for example, Teresa May now only allows British citizen to bring a non EU foreign born spouse into the country if they are earning above a certain threshold. Nothing is safe in the pursuit of reducing immigration.
So, no. I don't feel safe or OK after yesterday, despite being from the "right" sort of country, having the "right" skin colour, and being among "the best and brightest". Regardless of claims to the contrary, I know my supposed usefulness to people like May and Trump is secondary to the political capital they get from being "tough on immigration". If you doubt it, watch May's willingness to bargain with the life of my mother, who has lived in the UK legally for 40 years, but has the misfortune of being a French citizen after Brexit.
To be an immigrant, even a fortunate immigrant, is, if you keep your eyes even slightly open, to know you live at the good will of your host nation. And when that good will appears to be running short, no one, not even "good immigrants", is safe. It was not so long ago that the very permanent resident status I have now was explicitly denied to me by federal law. It is not so long ago my sexuality would make me suspect at the border. And, as a former H1-B holder paid out of a federal grant, "American Jobs for American People" is a chilling phrase. Permanent residency is usually treated much like citizenship for job eligibility purposes. Now, with this administration, I begin to wonder how safe that is.
People's lives were ruined yesterday, make no mistake. Some people will die as a direct consequence of that decision. But every green card or visa holder in the country woke up this morning, and wondered just how much the little bits of card we carry in our wallets are worth, and what might have them become as worthless as those held by Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, Sudanese, Yemeni, and Somali citizens who called America home.
I am an immigrant, I am angry, and I am more afraid than I was before.
* I'm aware that as of today, Priebus has claimed to walk that back. But I'll believe it when I see it.
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
"One does not love breathing"
"Until I feared I might lose it, I never loved to read.
One does not love breathing" Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Two weekends ago I was in Washington DC with the husband. The weather, which was supposed to be cold, turned out lovely, one of those perfect DC days when the sun is warm but not hot, the sky is blue, and the exuberant mid Atlantic spring turns every yard and every park into a riot of colour.
We were staying in north east, just off H street, at a friend's town house. We've stayed there many times. In fact the husband lived there for the year we were apart after I had to move back to the UK after finishing my PhD. So I know the area well. On the Sunday morning (to overcome the over indulgence of the night before), I went for a walk in the glorious DC spring. Ostensibly, I went in search of coffee. In truth, I went in search of what has always been my third place.
I grew up (as I may have mentioned before) in the heart of a big city. A big city where driving is very much optional, and far from practical. From the time I was old enough, I walked with my parents throughout our neighborhood. I walked to the gated square at the end of the block for which we had a key. Then later I walked to Holland park. My school was a twenty minute walk away, so sometimes my older brother or sister would walk me home. At eleven, I was giving my own set of keys, and permission to walk to and from school on my own. And from that day, London was to me as the Shire was to Bilbo: a place to explore on foot. In my head I have a mental map of most of the center of that city. I have walked from Ealing to St Katherine Docks, and from Camden to Clapham.
Walking in London became my third place: the whole city, as long as I was on foot, a place for thought and escape, a place that was neither at home not at work but that was mine. Walking home from school, I would take detours through the parks if it have been a long day, or if it was a sunny day. I remember once stepping out of school into driving summer rain. Rather than go home, I went to Hyde park, and walked in the downpour until I was soaked through. Walking became how I process my thoughts, how I establish what's important, how I calm my nerves.
In French, there is a word for walking aimlessly in the city: "Flaner". The closest equivalent in English is to stroll, though one can stroll through the country, or one can stroll to a destination. "Flaner" can involve neither. "Flaner" invites, encourages serendipitous, aimless exploration of the city. "Flaner" is what results in stumbling on a tiny church park one has never seen behind one of London's busy shopping streets, or stumbling on the Monument to the great fire on a sunny day and climbing it.
As I was strolling in vaguely aimless search of coffee in DC that sunny sunday morning, I felt closer to home, and closer to myself than I had in long time. And I realised, not for the first time, how much this inability to walk chafes me living in Ohio.
One can, and I have, debated quite how inimical to walking my current situation is. But it was in DC that I realised it was not so much the physical activity of walking that I miss here. It is the impossibility of "flaner". When I lived in the small town (little more than a highway exit) where our university is based, there was literally no where I could walk from my doorstep, not effortlessly, not pleasantly. The roads had no sidewalks and narrow verges, cars went fast, and there were no paths through the countryside to explore, no byways. Even the state parks, pretty as they are, have limited walking options. Paths are short and disjointed, and one must drive to the state park which to me, limits the spontaneity. The counrtyside of France and England that I am used to has footpaths at every doorstep, leading to fields and forests and home again. My aunt's house in Alsace has the local equivalent of Bilbo;s map of the shire in it: each path marked from doorstep to mountaintop. I could write an entire blog on how my European hiking habits are poorly adapted to American hiking, even though the rewards of American hiking are breathtaking.
Even back here in the city, the walking options are limited. The layout of most American cities, ravaged by the construction of transurban highways, is confusing to the pedestrian. One will quickly end up on a busy road, side walks vanish, and, for the most part, there are no shops to discover, no hidden pubs to find, no magnificent flower beds in tiny squares hiding behind rows of sedate houses.
And so, here in Ohio, I have been robbed of my third place. And I am often restless, frustrated, in ways that I cannot quite identify, until I remember how I used to deal with that feeling: by grabbing my keys and my wallet and walking somewhere, anywhere, through the streets of London, my own Shire.
One does not love breathing" Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Two weekends ago I was in Washington DC with the husband. The weather, which was supposed to be cold, turned out lovely, one of those perfect DC days when the sun is warm but not hot, the sky is blue, and the exuberant mid Atlantic spring turns every yard and every park into a riot of colour.
We were staying in north east, just off H street, at a friend's town house. We've stayed there many times. In fact the husband lived there for the year we were apart after I had to move back to the UK after finishing my PhD. So I know the area well. On the Sunday morning (to overcome the over indulgence of the night before), I went for a walk in the glorious DC spring. Ostensibly, I went in search of coffee. In truth, I went in search of what has always been my third place.
I grew up (as I may have mentioned before) in the heart of a big city. A big city where driving is very much optional, and far from practical. From the time I was old enough, I walked with my parents throughout our neighborhood. I walked to the gated square at the end of the block for which we had a key. Then later I walked to Holland park. My school was a twenty minute walk away, so sometimes my older brother or sister would walk me home. At eleven, I was giving my own set of keys, and permission to walk to and from school on my own. And from that day, London was to me as the Shire was to Bilbo: a place to explore on foot. In my head I have a mental map of most of the center of that city. I have walked from Ealing to St Katherine Docks, and from Camden to Clapham.
Walking in London became my third place: the whole city, as long as I was on foot, a place for thought and escape, a place that was neither at home not at work but that was mine. Walking home from school, I would take detours through the parks if it have been a long day, or if it was a sunny day. I remember once stepping out of school into driving summer rain. Rather than go home, I went to Hyde park, and walked in the downpour until I was soaked through. Walking became how I process my thoughts, how I establish what's important, how I calm my nerves.
In French, there is a word for walking aimlessly in the city: "Flaner". The closest equivalent in English is to stroll, though one can stroll through the country, or one can stroll to a destination. "Flaner" can involve neither. "Flaner" invites, encourages serendipitous, aimless exploration of the city. "Flaner" is what results in stumbling on a tiny church park one has never seen behind one of London's busy shopping streets, or stumbling on the Monument to the great fire on a sunny day and climbing it.
As I was strolling in vaguely aimless search of coffee in DC that sunny sunday morning, I felt closer to home, and closer to myself than I had in long time. And I realised, not for the first time, how much this inability to walk chafes me living in Ohio.
One can, and I have, debated quite how inimical to walking my current situation is. But it was in DC that I realised it was not so much the physical activity of walking that I miss here. It is the impossibility of "flaner". When I lived in the small town (little more than a highway exit) where our university is based, there was literally no where I could walk from my doorstep, not effortlessly, not pleasantly. The roads had no sidewalks and narrow verges, cars went fast, and there were no paths through the countryside to explore, no byways. Even the state parks, pretty as they are, have limited walking options. Paths are short and disjointed, and one must drive to the state park which to me, limits the spontaneity. The counrtyside of France and England that I am used to has footpaths at every doorstep, leading to fields and forests and home again. My aunt's house in Alsace has the local equivalent of Bilbo;s map of the shire in it: each path marked from doorstep to mountaintop. I could write an entire blog on how my European hiking habits are poorly adapted to American hiking, even though the rewards of American hiking are breathtaking.
Even back here in the city, the walking options are limited. The layout of most American cities, ravaged by the construction of transurban highways, is confusing to the pedestrian. One will quickly end up on a busy road, side walks vanish, and, for the most part, there are no shops to discover, no hidden pubs to find, no magnificent flower beds in tiny squares hiding behind rows of sedate houses.
And so, here in Ohio, I have been robbed of my third place. And I am often restless, frustrated, in ways that I cannot quite identify, until I remember how I used to deal with that feeling: by grabbing my keys and my wallet and walking somewhere, anywhere, through the streets of London, my own Shire.
Thursday, 1 October 2015
Coming to America
Why did I move to America? Because I'd always wanted to. Even when applying to undergrad, I did a cursory search of Harvard's website (this will immediately tell you something of what I thought about America, but no matter). I ruled it out as too expensive (and I resented the idea of having to take an extra exam), but I probably gave it more serious consideration than I did French university, and I'm a French citizen.
It is difficult, I think, for Americans, particularly the academically inclined, liberal kind, to truly understand the hypnotic fascination that America (before 9/11 in particular) could have on Europeans. Your cinema and television exported a culture of sophisticated glamour. Even the world of your cheesy soap operas (Baywatch, Sunset Beach, Dawson's creek, The OC) were so much more exciting than the dour drama of our British offerings. America seemed alive, and huge, and beautiful.
To put it this way: there was only ever one trip I wanted really to take, and that was to the statue of Liberty. By the time I had moved to America, I had already been here five times. The first ever trip I took to America in 1993 was the fulfillment of an already years long dream, and I didn't even get to go to Disneyworld. The statue of Liberty was enough.
And so, when I decided to go to grad school, I decided I would try to do so in America. I had no excellent reason beyond "why not fulfill two dreams in one?" I would become a paleontologist, and I would move to America. Both things I had wanted to do since I was less than ten.
But fulfilling childish dreams as a adult has costs. I suspected, applying for grad school in my early 20s, that things might end up more complicated than a five year jaunt across the Atlantic. One does not with impunity embark on a major life change in one's early twenties.
It is now 8 years since I first came to the US, and I have been here 7 of those last 8 years. I am now married to an American man. I have paid taxes in the US for more years than I have in England (even though I am ineligible to vote). I know the history, geography and culture of this country as well as I know that of France and England, and as well as many Americans. Yet I am not an American. I am a French and English man, here by choice and circumstance.
Many academics get used to international moves. Yet I get the impression that few choose those moves. I chose mine: I applied for PhDs in the US. And I knew what I was risking. Yet I did not know perhaps how much. This week I was applying for jobs back home. My husband and I have only the vaguest idea of how we would mesh his career goals with me moving back the UK. As much as part of me yearns to be closer to my friends and family, in some ways, that seems almost more complicated than staying here and flying home once a year or so. Yet what shocked me more was that I had no idea HOW to apply for a job in Britain. All my tacit knowledge in reading job apps, all my professional skills, all my wordsmithing were tailored to the American job market. Faced with a British job application, I was stumped.
I should not be surprised by this. I am the second generation in my family to drift between countries and cultures. My mother moved from France to England in 1973, and has lived as a French expat in London since then, awkwardly balanced between a culture she no longer entirely understands, and a culture she has never entirely understood. My siblings, I, and many of our friends are a syncretic mish mash, knowing the work practices of the English and the social practices of the French and only truly feeling comfortable when surrounded by other binationals who get the feeling of never quite fitting in. And I've added America to that mix. It is my home, yet I am not at home here.
This weekend, I spoke with my mother, as I do every week. We talked about my career goals, and about my husband and I. As I told about jobs in the UK I was applying for, to convince her I cared and was not a bad son, she asked me what my husband would do if I moved back to the UK. I answered that for his career, we would probably be apart a couple more years. Without hesitating, my mother told me that she would travel to see me wherever I was in the world, and that I should think about my husband and I as a couple when making career choices. She lifted a great weight from my shoulders, at the cost of not calling her youngest son home.
I have been true to myself in the geographical choices I have made (well, apart from Ohio. Ohio was not part of the plan). I have no regrets. But the life of the voluntary expat comes with costs, all the more complicated to weigh and measure in that they are in part self inflicted. I was not forced to come to America. What does that say about my attachment to my family? And if I refuse to consider myself American, then how do I deal with having my professional and family life here? Expatriation bears a toll, and as more academics become more international, more of us bear those secret bruises.
It is difficult, I think, for Americans, particularly the academically inclined, liberal kind, to truly understand the hypnotic fascination that America (before 9/11 in particular) could have on Europeans. Your cinema and television exported a culture of sophisticated glamour. Even the world of your cheesy soap operas (Baywatch, Sunset Beach, Dawson's creek, The OC) were so much more exciting than the dour drama of our British offerings. America seemed alive, and huge, and beautiful.
To put it this way: there was only ever one trip I wanted really to take, and that was to the statue of Liberty. By the time I had moved to America, I had already been here five times. The first ever trip I took to America in 1993 was the fulfillment of an already years long dream, and I didn't even get to go to Disneyworld. The statue of Liberty was enough.
And so, when I decided to go to grad school, I decided I would try to do so in America. I had no excellent reason beyond "why not fulfill two dreams in one?" I would become a paleontologist, and I would move to America. Both things I had wanted to do since I was less than ten.
But fulfilling childish dreams as a adult has costs. I suspected, applying for grad school in my early 20s, that things might end up more complicated than a five year jaunt across the Atlantic. One does not with impunity embark on a major life change in one's early twenties.
It is now 8 years since I first came to the US, and I have been here 7 of those last 8 years. I am now married to an American man. I have paid taxes in the US for more years than I have in England (even though I am ineligible to vote). I know the history, geography and culture of this country as well as I know that of France and England, and as well as many Americans. Yet I am not an American. I am a French and English man, here by choice and circumstance.
Many academics get used to international moves. Yet I get the impression that few choose those moves. I chose mine: I applied for PhDs in the US. And I knew what I was risking. Yet I did not know perhaps how much. This week I was applying for jobs back home. My husband and I have only the vaguest idea of how we would mesh his career goals with me moving back the UK. As much as part of me yearns to be closer to my friends and family, in some ways, that seems almost more complicated than staying here and flying home once a year or so. Yet what shocked me more was that I had no idea HOW to apply for a job in Britain. All my tacit knowledge in reading job apps, all my professional skills, all my wordsmithing were tailored to the American job market. Faced with a British job application, I was stumped.
I should not be surprised by this. I am the second generation in my family to drift between countries and cultures. My mother moved from France to England in 1973, and has lived as a French expat in London since then, awkwardly balanced between a culture she no longer entirely understands, and a culture she has never entirely understood. My siblings, I, and many of our friends are a syncretic mish mash, knowing the work practices of the English and the social practices of the French and only truly feeling comfortable when surrounded by other binationals who get the feeling of never quite fitting in. And I've added America to that mix. It is my home, yet I am not at home here.
This weekend, I spoke with my mother, as I do every week. We talked about my career goals, and about my husband and I. As I told about jobs in the UK I was applying for, to convince her I cared and was not a bad son, she asked me what my husband would do if I moved back to the UK. I answered that for his career, we would probably be apart a couple more years. Without hesitating, my mother told me that she would travel to see me wherever I was in the world, and that I should think about my husband and I as a couple when making career choices. She lifted a great weight from my shoulders, at the cost of not calling her youngest son home.
I have been true to myself in the geographical choices I have made (well, apart from Ohio. Ohio was not part of the plan). I have no regrets. But the life of the voluntary expat comes with costs, all the more complicated to weigh and measure in that they are in part self inflicted. I was not forced to come to America. What does that say about my attachment to my family? And if I refuse to consider myself American, then how do I deal with having my professional and family life here? Expatriation bears a toll, and as more academics become more international, more of us bear those secret bruises.
Monday, 4 May 2015
Lines: on the experience of Baltimore
This is not a post about current events. I am not the voice you should be listening to for that. There are many excellent authors and social media activists of color (I suggest Sean Reed, Shaun King and DNLee as excellent places to start) who can provide a better view on the struggles that urban people of color face in the US and in academia.
This is a post about experiencing Baltimore the way most white academics will experience it: as an outsider dropping into one of the city's elite universities. It is a post about understanding how the social and geographic spaces of the city are structured to make you see only a tiny part of it, and to make you believe that part is most of the city. It is a post about how the stories about the rest of the city are controlled. It is a post about complicity in a system that wants to maintain the narrative that the salvation of Baltimore has to come in spite of the people that live there, not because of them. It is a post about the difficult feelings that those of us who came to love this most unloved of cities carry with us about that place, and about our place in it.
It is a post that does not always present me in the best light. It is a post that does not present Baltimore's elite universities in the best light. But if this week's events have shown anything, it is that we cannot, should not, accept narratives about Baltimore's institutions that paint them in a good light. Because what is left out of those paintings is odious.
I moved to Baltimore to do my PhD at Johns Hopkins Medical School in 2007. Before I have even left the UK, I was being warned about the city. "Have you seen the Wire?" was to become a refrain I would hear continuously over the next five years. When flat hunting, (as I wouldn't have a car), I limited my search to place within walking distance of the Hopkins shuttle route. But even then, there were caveats: "not North Avenue", "Don't live near the medical school". I was being taught the rudiments of the geography of Hopkins Baltimore.
When I got to my little apartment in Mount Vernon, next to a hip sushi restaurant and on the same block as the city's two main gay bars, I found I could see the medical school from my apartment. The first day I headed to work, I couldn't figure out where to get the shuttle. So I walked to campus. Down monument street. Under I 83 (through a fenced in parking lot, as there was no path). Past what I would later learn was the infamous Downtown Baltimore Supermax. Past abandoned buildings, school playing fields, housing projects, emergency clinics and bailbondsmen. Towards Hopkins medical school. I was uncomfortable. My years of living in London told me this wasn't an entirely safe neighborhood. And, to be honest, I had never encountered that level of dilapidation and poverty in London. But I made it to work. I found my department. And I was instantly told not to tell anyone I had walked to work, or they would freak out. And certainly never to do it again. You'd have thought I had walked through a mine field.
As the semester wore on, I began to notice other lines. Such as that no one at Hopkins knew how the city buses worked. We all used the Hopkins shuttles and went only were they went. Or we drove. I began to notice that the people behind the reception desks, or the people cleaning the office, pushing the carts, doing security, were black. And the people in the offices white. I began to wonder about riding a shuttle emblazoned with the Hopkins logo through deprived East Baltimore towards the Campus. I noticed that the words Kennedy and Krieger were lit up at night on the tallest building on campus, in the middle of the poorly lit streets of east Baltimore. I noticed, when I finally took a city bus to the party district of Fells Point, that everyone on the streets was black until you got to three blocks from the waterfront. Then suddenly, lily white.
The narratives that students and faculty told about Baltimore were stories of fear. There is almost a hazing of new arrivals. You're told where not to walk, where not to go. You're told where is not safe after dark. You're told of all the muggings and the murders (even if, when you finally look up the statistics, you realise that affluent whites are not at all the victims of Baltimore's crime problem). And it seeps into your skin.
When my mother came to visit, I got her a map. I drew lines on it, delineating a small area from Mount Vernon to the inner harbor. "Don't go north of here (north avenue), South of here (Federal hill), West of here (Lexington market), East of here (I 83)". I had learnt the geography of Baltimore quite well. Better, in fact, than I knew
A few months after I arrived, I missed the bus again. I tried once more to walk to work. Nothing had happened to me in all my time in the city. But as I reached I 83, my anxiety reached epic levels. I began to have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other. Every inch of my being screamed for me to turn back, and head to the safety of the shuttle. I did.
That moment was a turning point. I realized that if I was going to live in the city, I had to fight the narrative I was being given. I moved closer to campus, and got to know the nice bits of East Baltimore better. But there were still lines. I never went North of Campus. I never went West of MLK.
A few years into my graduate program, I stood on the roof of one of the Hopkins parking lots and looked north. When I had gotten to Baltimore, the abandoned housing had reached up to that building. Now there were two blocks of bare ground in every direction. New lines being drawn in the cities divided geography.
I grew to love Baltimore. I met my husband and some of my best friends there. But in five years living in that city, three of which were within a bock of the Caroline Street projects, and two local schools, I never made friends with any of the city's African American residents. The bars and restaurants and cultural institutions that I love so much catered to that semi transient, mostly white, population that moved there for school or work, and left when they had kids.
And here's the thing: the city that people like us lived in is nothing like the city that most of Baltimore's population live in. Yet ours is deemed "economically important". And I know full well that that economic importance is used to justify the police activities in Baltimore. After all, how will Hopkins and UMD attract top talent to a city without a couple of craft cocktail bars?
And we can't accept that. My lifestyle in Baltimore ought not, must not be used to justify the violent oppression of those whom the city has ignored and mistreated. Fixing Baltimore must primarily fix the city for the majority of its population. Those of us who've lived there must recognise that, and put our experience of Baltimore aside. When we tell people about how hip and cool Fells Point and Canton are, when we talk about all the festivals, when we discuss the city as though the tiny portion of it we know is all the city, we are complicit in a narrative that wants to erase the reality of the city for most of its population. And that erasure, as we have seen, is more than rhetorical.
As the semester wore on, I began to notice other lines. Such as that no one at Hopkins knew how the city buses worked. We all used the Hopkins shuttles and went only were they went. Or we drove. I began to notice that the people behind the reception desks, or the people cleaning the office, pushing the carts, doing security, were black. And the people in the offices white. I began to wonder about riding a shuttle emblazoned with the Hopkins logo through deprived East Baltimore towards the Campus. I noticed that the words Kennedy and Krieger were lit up at night on the tallest building on campus, in the middle of the poorly lit streets of east Baltimore. I noticed, when I finally took a city bus to the party district of Fells Point, that everyone on the streets was black until you got to three blocks from the waterfront. Then suddenly, lily white.
The narratives that students and faculty told about Baltimore were stories of fear. There is almost a hazing of new arrivals. You're told where not to walk, where not to go. You're told where is not safe after dark. You're told of all the muggings and the murders (even if, when you finally look up the statistics, you realise that affluent whites are not at all the victims of Baltimore's crime problem). And it seeps into your skin.
When my mother came to visit, I got her a map. I drew lines on it, delineating a small area from Mount Vernon to the inner harbor. "Don't go north of here (north avenue), South of here (Federal hill), West of here (Lexington market), East of here (I 83)". I had learnt the geography of Baltimore quite well. Better, in fact, than I knew
A few months after I arrived, I missed the bus again. I tried once more to walk to work. Nothing had happened to me in all my time in the city. But as I reached I 83, my anxiety reached epic levels. I began to have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other. Every inch of my being screamed for me to turn back, and head to the safety of the shuttle. I did.
That moment was a turning point. I realized that if I was going to live in the city, I had to fight the narrative I was being given. I moved closer to campus, and got to know the nice bits of East Baltimore better. But there were still lines. I never went North of Campus. I never went West of MLK.
A few years into my graduate program, I stood on the roof of one of the Hopkins parking lots and looked north. When I had gotten to Baltimore, the abandoned housing had reached up to that building. Now there were two blocks of bare ground in every direction. New lines being drawn in the cities divided geography.
I grew to love Baltimore. I met my husband and some of my best friends there. But in five years living in that city, three of which were within a bock of the Caroline Street projects, and two local schools, I never made friends with any of the city's African American residents. The bars and restaurants and cultural institutions that I love so much catered to that semi transient, mostly white, population that moved there for school or work, and left when they had kids.
And here's the thing: the city that people like us lived in is nothing like the city that most of Baltimore's population live in. Yet ours is deemed "economically important". And I know full well that that economic importance is used to justify the police activities in Baltimore. After all, how will Hopkins and UMD attract top talent to a city without a couple of craft cocktail bars?
And we can't accept that. My lifestyle in Baltimore ought not, must not be used to justify the violent oppression of those whom the city has ignored and mistreated. Fixing Baltimore must primarily fix the city for the majority of its population. Those of us who've lived there must recognise that, and put our experience of Baltimore aside. When we tell people about how hip and cool Fells Point and Canton are, when we talk about all the festivals, when we discuss the city as though the tiny portion of it we know is all the city, we are complicit in a narrative that wants to erase the reality of the city for most of its population. And that erasure, as we have seen, is more than rhetorical.
Wednesday, 26 November 2014
Thanksgiving
I grew up in a family that was quite synchretic in its attitude to traditions. My mother is French, but from Alsace, which celebrates Christmas in the Germanic style (on the 24th of December in the evening, with cured meats, choral music, and white wine). My father is English, which means church on Christmas morning, stockings, roast goose, plum pudding and plenty of brandy. We lived in Belgium for four years, and there picked up yet another Christmas variant (December 6th, St Nicolas, chocolate coins in slippers laid out by the fire). And we did Hallowe'en long before it was widely observed in the UK, I now realise, because my mother's neighbour in West London when my brother and sister were young was an American women with two young daughters. Thus, my family collects holiday traditions, and as a rule, sticks to them.
Thanksgiving is not a holiday in the United Kingdom or in France. This is obvious if you know its history, but the traditions we are raised with seem so natural to us that I have more than once had to explain this to Americans. In much the same way, I am still not used to not having a four day weekend for Easter (in England, both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays). Yet as I have now been in the US for six years, and have a American fiance, Thanksgiving is very much part of my own branch of the family's holiday traditions. In the years I have been here, I have had the good fortune to enjoy many different thanksgivings varieties: a gathering of international waifs and strays in a small apartment on the upper East Side of Manhattan, in a room barely big enough to hold us all was my first. The next year, it was a huge clan of Connecticut Jewish Americans in an old house outside Phili (hosted by that same former American neighbour who'd introduced our family to Hallowe'en). For the past few years, it's been at my soon-to-be-in-laws house outside DC, where they make two turkeys (one roasted, one smoked). We'll be headed out there shortly. And I'll be spending next week in the gym.
Thanksgiving is an oddity in the American calendar. A day held holy, where everyone must find somewhere to go and belong. Uniquely, it is a time when the ordinary and day to day must be suspended. It's as if all the energy and focus that Europeans spread across a year's worth of holidays is shoved into one weekend, where it is considered normal to fly across the country, or drive 12 hours, all to eat the same food with the same people. The tradition of hospitality attached to Thanksgiving, which requires that you invite anyone in your home who may have nowhere to go, is a wonderful thing. It's very clear to me why it is such an important holiday to so many here, in a way that sterotyped movies focused around turkey mishaps never quite capture.
Throughout graduate school, my mother would come to visit for Thanksgiving. She would spend a week with me in the US. We built a series of traditions around that week, just the two of us. A day wandering around DC, a trip to Phili to visit her friend, dinner at a particular restaurant in Baltimore. Thus, in that week, we re-affirmed each other's place in our lives, even though we were an ocean apart.
Each family, each person, each group of friends, builds a personal narrative of traditions with the holidays, places and times that we encounter throughout lives. Some of these traditions survive almost unchanged throughout huge chunks of our lives. The 24th of December in my family is merely a slight modification of the Holiday my mother learnt from her parents. Some are entirely new, arriving with new people or new places entering our lives. Some are abandoned, or modified. Some are created to mark new life stages. In this pattern of shared traditions across time and space, the ebb and flow of our lives, and our connections to our history, both personal and larger, are made explicit. A year full of public and private holidays to be celebrated in particular ways is a marker of a life lived in the company of others.
Happy thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is not a holiday in the United Kingdom or in France. This is obvious if you know its history, but the traditions we are raised with seem so natural to us that I have more than once had to explain this to Americans. In much the same way, I am still not used to not having a four day weekend for Easter (in England, both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays). Yet as I have now been in the US for six years, and have a American fiance, Thanksgiving is very much part of my own branch of the family's holiday traditions. In the years I have been here, I have had the good fortune to enjoy many different thanksgivings varieties: a gathering of international waifs and strays in a small apartment on the upper East Side of Manhattan, in a room barely big enough to hold us all was my first. The next year, it was a huge clan of Connecticut Jewish Americans in an old house outside Phili (hosted by that same former American neighbour who'd introduced our family to Hallowe'en). For the past few years, it's been at my soon-to-be-in-laws house outside DC, where they make two turkeys (one roasted, one smoked). We'll be headed out there shortly. And I'll be spending next week in the gym.
Thanksgiving is an oddity in the American calendar. A day held holy, where everyone must find somewhere to go and belong. Uniquely, it is a time when the ordinary and day to day must be suspended. It's as if all the energy and focus that Europeans spread across a year's worth of holidays is shoved into one weekend, where it is considered normal to fly across the country, or drive 12 hours, all to eat the same food with the same people. The tradition of hospitality attached to Thanksgiving, which requires that you invite anyone in your home who may have nowhere to go, is a wonderful thing. It's very clear to me why it is such an important holiday to so many here, in a way that sterotyped movies focused around turkey mishaps never quite capture.
Throughout graduate school, my mother would come to visit for Thanksgiving. She would spend a week with me in the US. We built a series of traditions around that week, just the two of us. A day wandering around DC, a trip to Phili to visit her friend, dinner at a particular restaurant in Baltimore. Thus, in that week, we re-affirmed each other's place in our lives, even though we were an ocean apart.
Each family, each person, each group of friends, builds a personal narrative of traditions with the holidays, places and times that we encounter throughout lives. Some of these traditions survive almost unchanged throughout huge chunks of our lives. The 24th of December in my family is merely a slight modification of the Holiday my mother learnt from her parents. Some are entirely new, arriving with new people or new places entering our lives. Some are abandoned, or modified. Some are created to mark new life stages. In this pattern of shared traditions across time and space, the ebb and flow of our lives, and our connections to our history, both personal and larger, are made explicit. A year full of public and private holidays to be celebrated in particular ways is a marker of a life lived in the company of others.
Happy thanksgiving.
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
Perspectives and expectations
There's an interesting thing about the place I now work. Almost everyone who isn't faculty is from here. By from here, I mean from this state, and in most cases from this region. People have lived their whole lives within three hours drive of this small town, and in many cases, so have their parents and grand parents.
In contrast, almost no one is from the city I grew up in. And even people like me, who lived there long enough to almost qualify, have only been there for one generation. Furthermore, my city looks to the world. It's one of those places of which people say that's it's more similar to New York or Tokyo than to towns an hour away.
In graduate school, almost no one I knew was from the city itself (for complex, difficult and unpleasant socio-economic reasons). It was a private R1 institution (in fact, pretty much the R1 institution) in a heavily socio-economically deprived area. As a rule, places like that aren't so good on representing the local community.
So to be somewhere where most people's perspective is limited to the State, and even to an area of the State, is an adjustment. Well meaning efforts at improving diversity at the university come across as naïve and ham-fisted. Awareness of broader world issues is limited. Knowledge of either of my home countries (which are not particularly obscure places) is limited to stereotypes and, in some cases, gross falsehoods resulting from right-wing political discourses about the depravity and lack of freedoms in the old country. The oddest comment yet was when one of our summer students asked me how I felt about my home country having presumption of guilt rather than presumption of innocence. I was slightly baffled by this, as it was news to me.
In spite of this, everyone in the lab is very open to discussion about political and social issues. This could be tense, but I have to say that these are the most respectful and least awkward such conversations I've ever had. Which is good, as they tend to occupy much of the 5 hour surgeries we've been doing lately. The group mix covers several decades of age difference, several thousand miles (mostly due to me) of geographic distance, and a fair breadth of socio-political views on most issues.
Today was an interesting challenge of my assumptions though. In a conversation about gay rights, I mentioned the Stonewall riots. At least one of our summer students is involved in the local LBGT community as an ally, but even he had no idea what the riots where or how they related to the modern gay rights movement. More surprising to me was that when explaining the history of the riots, the students were amazed to discover that the police used to regularly raid gay bars in cities across the country. My advisor then reminded them that, when she was a child, there was nowhere in her home town for her mother and her African American friends to have coffee together.
In some ways, I guess I should be heartened that a new generation should be so far removed from that time that they would have no concept that such overt, state sanctioned discrimination should happen. On the other hand, I cannot help but slightly fear that such a degree of unawareness of where we have come from explains much of our erstwhile allies lack of urgency in joining us in the struggle for a better world.
In contrast, almost no one is from the city I grew up in. And even people like me, who lived there long enough to almost qualify, have only been there for one generation. Furthermore, my city looks to the world. It's one of those places of which people say that's it's more similar to New York or Tokyo than to towns an hour away.
In graduate school, almost no one I knew was from the city itself (for complex, difficult and unpleasant socio-economic reasons). It was a private R1 institution (in fact, pretty much the R1 institution) in a heavily socio-economically deprived area. As a rule, places like that aren't so good on representing the local community.
So to be somewhere where most people's perspective is limited to the State, and even to an area of the State, is an adjustment. Well meaning efforts at improving diversity at the university come across as naïve and ham-fisted. Awareness of broader world issues is limited. Knowledge of either of my home countries (which are not particularly obscure places) is limited to stereotypes and, in some cases, gross falsehoods resulting from right-wing political discourses about the depravity and lack of freedoms in the old country. The oddest comment yet was when one of our summer students asked me how I felt about my home country having presumption of guilt rather than presumption of innocence. I was slightly baffled by this, as it was news to me.
In spite of this, everyone in the lab is very open to discussion about political and social issues. This could be tense, but I have to say that these are the most respectful and least awkward such conversations I've ever had. Which is good, as they tend to occupy much of the 5 hour surgeries we've been doing lately. The group mix covers several decades of age difference, several thousand miles (mostly due to me) of geographic distance, and a fair breadth of socio-political views on most issues.
Today was an interesting challenge of my assumptions though. In a conversation about gay rights, I mentioned the Stonewall riots. At least one of our summer students is involved in the local LBGT community as an ally, but even he had no idea what the riots where or how they related to the modern gay rights movement. More surprising to me was that when explaining the history of the riots, the students were amazed to discover that the police used to regularly raid gay bars in cities across the country. My advisor then reminded them that, when she was a child, there was nowhere in her home town for her mother and her African American friends to have coffee together.
In some ways, I guess I should be heartened that a new generation should be so far removed from that time that they would have no concept that such overt, state sanctioned discrimination should happen. On the other hand, I cannot help but slightly fear that such a degree of unawareness of where we have come from explains much of our erstwhile allies lack of urgency in joining us in the struggle for a better world.
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
A moment of belonging
As well as a change in scientific direction (which I promise I will get to soon), this postdoc has represented a major lifestyle change for me. For the first time, I am not living in major city. In fact, I live in a rural area. I drive past cornfields on my way to work every day, and work is only two miles away.
In many ways, I'm now living in the sort of place I always swore I wouldn't. I'm renting what I would call a semi-detached house on a cul-de-sac on a modern property development in the rural rust belt. The nearest big town is an hour away. The nearest Ikea is in the next state. For someone who grew up in a world city of 8 million people, and found his graduate school east coast city of half a million a bit small, it's a change. Moving out here has required a lot of adaptation. I've had to get used to a slower pace of life, to more limited access to the sources of entertainment I'm used to, to having to drive everywhere, and to spending far more time than I used to at home.
It doesn't help that the countryside I'm used to (that of England and France, where I spent all of my holidays growing up) is very different than where I live in now. I can't just walk out of my door, Bilbo the hobbit style, and follow a footpath through the fields up the nearest mountain, and then to the nearest pub. Mountain, pub and footpath are all inexistent. American villages are not places of easy community. There is no village green, no cafe de l'hotel de ville. Yes, there are state parks everywhere, but I still view having to drive as an imposition. The outdoors is on my doorstep, I shouldn't have to drive there.
So finally, after a harsh and dreary winter, I've taken up cycling. It turns out the roads near here lend themselves wonderfully to it: straight country roads, not too many hills, and local drivers who are ridiculously respectful. They always give me plenty of space when passing, and on two occasions have stopped to let me take a left turn. Although I've been warned repeatedly by locals that cycling here is dangerous, let me tell you, compared to my home town, it's a kitten to a tiger. Through these daily back road rambles, I've found a connection to this place, specifically, to my childhood holidays. The neat yards and fields remind me of summers in France. The heat of the day lies heavily on the landscape in the evening; everything is lying still, waiting for a storm or the evening, whichever will bring respite first. I ride past growing, ripening wheat fields, past people mowing their lawns, past ditches full of reeds and wild flowers. As I cycle through the roads, the smells of summer holidays past - cut grass, wood fires, and the fragrant exhalations of meadows wilting in the summer sun - take me back to the small village where my aunt's holiday home is. For as long as summer lasts at least, I feel at home in this different place.
Academia makes us into nomads. This fact is well known and well lamented. Perhaps it would be better if things were different, if one could be an academic and stay close to home. Moving brings with it heartbreak, difficult choices, and a host of unanticipated complexities. As long as things remain this way, however, finding moments of belonging in unfamiliar places will always be a welcome balm for the soul.
In many ways, I'm now living in the sort of place I always swore I wouldn't. I'm renting what I would call a semi-detached house on a cul-de-sac on a modern property development in the rural rust belt. The nearest big town is an hour away. The nearest Ikea is in the next state. For someone who grew up in a world city of 8 million people, and found his graduate school east coast city of half a million a bit small, it's a change. Moving out here has required a lot of adaptation. I've had to get used to a slower pace of life, to more limited access to the sources of entertainment I'm used to, to having to drive everywhere, and to spending far more time than I used to at home.
It doesn't help that the countryside I'm used to (that of England and France, where I spent all of my holidays growing up) is very different than where I live in now. I can't just walk out of my door, Bilbo the hobbit style, and follow a footpath through the fields up the nearest mountain, and then to the nearest pub. Mountain, pub and footpath are all inexistent. American villages are not places of easy community. There is no village green, no cafe de l'hotel de ville. Yes, there are state parks everywhere, but I still view having to drive as an imposition. The outdoors is on my doorstep, I shouldn't have to drive there.
So finally, after a harsh and dreary winter, I've taken up cycling. It turns out the roads near here lend themselves wonderfully to it: straight country roads, not too many hills, and local drivers who are ridiculously respectful. They always give me plenty of space when passing, and on two occasions have stopped to let me take a left turn. Although I've been warned repeatedly by locals that cycling here is dangerous, let me tell you, compared to my home town, it's a kitten to a tiger. Through these daily back road rambles, I've found a connection to this place, specifically, to my childhood holidays. The neat yards and fields remind me of summers in France. The heat of the day lies heavily on the landscape in the evening; everything is lying still, waiting for a storm or the evening, whichever will bring respite first. I ride past growing, ripening wheat fields, past people mowing their lawns, past ditches full of reeds and wild flowers. As I cycle through the roads, the smells of summer holidays past - cut grass, wood fires, and the fragrant exhalations of meadows wilting in the summer sun - take me back to the small village where my aunt's holiday home is. For as long as summer lasts at least, I feel at home in this different place.
Academia makes us into nomads. This fact is well known and well lamented. Perhaps it would be better if things were different, if one could be an academic and stay close to home. Moving brings with it heartbreak, difficult choices, and a host of unanticipated complexities. As long as things remain this way, however, finding moments of belonging in unfamiliar places will always be a welcome balm for the soul.
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