K and C took really good care of me in my one week post-Institute. I've been having a good, restful time. I'm ready to go back because I miss J, and I miss my C, but I'm not totally ready to go back to all of the dealings of my regular, day to day life. My feet will likely move a little bit slow on the way to the gate tomorrow morning.

I like Portland--I love Portland. I like that on a mid-August day I might need a sweatshirt while I walk around the farmer's market. I like that people don't have to separate their recyclables. I like the rain, even though it only rained once while I was here, and I like that people ride bikes and public transportation. People buy organic food like crazy here, and the grocery stores and nice and clean.

I like Portland, but it doesn't really feel like home like it used to. I used to feel like I was less myself in Minneapolis, and while it's still true that there might be more essence of true me in Portland, there's more of me in Minneapolis than ever before. I used to feel like all of my friends were in Portland, and I was not. I still have really good friends in Portland. Friends so close I consider them more like family than like friends. But, it has been more than a few years and I've learned these friendship bonds are strong; strong enough to weather miles and time and reliance upon email and cell phone calls that happen all too infrequently.

A few years ago, I left Portland to go to school in Minneapolis. I wasn't sure what the future would bring, but when our car rounded the bend onto the first mile of the highway headed out of town, I remember thinking--I am leaving a place I love. A place that has been good to me. I may not be able to ever really come back again.

People tell me now, move back to Portland. You'll move back someday, they say. I tell them I might want to, but wanting isn't going to get me a job here. Things are moving in my direction in Minneapolis. I'm finishing my degree. I'm feeling a little more settled. I have a good feeling about where things are headed. There may be some changes in my short term future--good changes for me and my family.

There'll always be a little bit of my heart in Portland. I love this city, and I'm glad to have had the experience of living here. But, it's time to head home. The Twin Cities are home.

In the meantime, I've been recovering some of the layers of what I learned at the institute, and one of those things was about intellectual freedom and intellectual responsibility. In one session I attended, we talked at length about how in US higher education, more and more students are coming to expect that they don't have to engage with ideas/texts/etc that are challenging to their own espoused core values. Examples of this abound, including in Arizona where a woman basically refused to read a required text and somehow the instructor was pressured to give her an alternative assignment. In my workshop, we talked about these kinds of situations and how they reflect the intellectual development of college students, according to the Perry scheme. (Dualism--Multiplicity--Contextual Relativism). I'm still unpeeling the onion, so I'll say more as it becomes more clear.

On Sunday morning, I was flipping channels and saw Ann Coulter on Book TV. Mostly, I shy away from the empty rhetoric of hate-tv people, but I was drawn in, waiting to hear the next crazy thing she might say. I think that she would likely be in support of the woman who didn't want to read Snow Falling on Cedars. Coulter's ultimate suggestions is that conservatives should take over the public school system and higher education. As she says this, I'm realizing just how deep the gulf is between dualism and contextual relativism. I'm not sure how we can really bridge this expanse--to forge understanding, if that's even a worthy goal. But, as a mother of a near-school-aged child, I'm nervous about sending my own child forth into a school system that is becoming more conservative and simulataneously less solid. My head hurts, but I'm giving it some time, as I continue in this reentry process, knowing that there'll be more to say as I keep peeling back another layer of the onion.

Answer: I didn't come here for the food.

I'm never sure what I'm coming to the summer institute for intercultural communication for. Some people come because their institution has some ill-fated strategic plan, and they have money in the budget for a week away at a place where people can offer sympathy, empathy, and a little support or space to not think about that futility of a strategic plan. Some people come to learn skills and strategies. It's not that I have low expectations, but I come to see what might reveal itself to me.

So, it seems like one thing I've been learning is about essentialism in practice. Or, something like that. Case in point: how do you use information about core values of a culture? Information that says US-American core values include speed and capitalism. I'm a US-American. Do I value speed? I don't wear a watch. Do I value capitalism? I don't think I do, at least not in the corporate dominant way (I write this on my Dell laptop with my Microsoft windows software, while drinking a Diet Coke....I can't really say I'm not positively affected by capitallism, now can I?) Sure, I might give it up for some good socialized healthcare, where I wouldn't be getting these occasional letters from my insurance--"we need more information before we can process your claim." But, even in my poor attempts at resistance, I'm still seeing the world through a lens influenced by capitalism.

Essentialism. I am not my culture's core values. But, if you're going to interact with me, you might be able to use US core values to predict some things about me. It might be a start of a conversation or a place to begin to build a bridge. I don't think we should avoid the conversation at the risk of confusing me with my cultural core values. It seems like if we're avoiding the conversation, the best we can do is to assume we know each other's core values, or fail to acknowledge what we don't know. Where's the conversation? I don't think I'm willing to forego that conversation.

Last week, a very prominent interculturalist gave a speech at an important meeting of interculturalists here in Oregon. It was to be a state of the art in the field of intercultural. And he said, much to my surprise--indeed, my horror--that intercultural as a field is, and should be seen as, rooted solidly in communication. He called cultural studies, anthropology, and psychology (note that education is notably absent from the discussion at all) pretenders to the field.

Pretenders to the Field

Did I hear that right? Did I type that right? I pause to reflect again on my disbelief....

What happened to the interdisciplinary nature of the intercultural? As an educator, as a person who sees and acknowledges the power relations present in all cultures, across cultures, and between cultures, I take offense. I take offense to the notable absence of education in the discussion. I take offense to calling psychology a pretender because psychology has offered me, as an interculturalist, much to work with in terms of human development, cognitive function, understanding identity formation as a multicultural human being. I take offense to calling anthropology pretenders. Perhaps not all anthropologists embarked on cultural forays with the best ethical intentions, but the same could certainly be argued about some interculturalists. I take offense to calling cultural studies pretenders because once again, the inherent power relations so present among people have gone unacknowledged to say that they don't matter enough to be considered part of "the field." I take offense to the suggestion that communication is the only true home of the intercultural. Why create this artificial disciplinary boundary? What does it offer, when it has the potential to limit so much?

This year, I'm spending my summer in Portland at the Summer Insititute for Intercultural Communication. I actually wrote (and got) a grant to come out here, where I have been, and will be, taking some professional development workshops that are really helping me develop an action plan for the long-term work I want to be doing with language teacher preparation.

Last week, I attended a session called "Diversity Work: Where Do We Go From Here?" It was probably more designed for people who are the "Diversity Director" in their organizations, but I got a lot out of it, in terms of nurturing my soul (we talked about some great strategies for avoiding burnout, for example), increasing my own awareness to go even deeper ("When you woke up this morning, were you inhaling, or exhaling?"), and some downright useful information (statistics and such) to make the case for diversity, which is something I think the field of language education still hasn't totally understood.

I think one of the challenges with a field instead of an organization is that organizations are easier to change. Granted, organizational change is not easy, but I think changing a field is an even bigger challenge because I'm not much of a supporter of incremental change because I think that by the time any significant change is observed, the context has already moved on. The impact, under these conditions, is not enough.Thoughts?

Well, there'll be more to come from PDX, for sure. But now, I'm getting ready to go to the Carribean Festival. It's summer in Portland, indeed!

So, too, this blog must come to an end. Hopefully, it will begin again next summer, but in the meantime, you can find me at Winter in the Cities.

So, drink a latte and imagine the rain. Read a Willamette Week or two. Soon it will be Summer in Portland again.

9. The weather, and not just because I was there the two months it doesn't rain

8. Powell's City of Books (of course I can still check them out online!)

7. Trader Joe's

6. Liberalism that can take itself for granted, most of the time, that is

5. Trees--big leafy ones with outstretched canopies

4. Portland State University (where the motto is, "Let Knowledge Serve the City"

3. good public transportation

2. Portland's proximity to the Pacific Ocean

1. my friends (of course!)

Three Things I Still Want to Do:

1. Go to the Japanese Garden. I can't believe we haven't done this, but it's true!

2. Go to the Chinese Garden. Not surprising, considering #1.

3. Ride the Yellow Line Max to the Expo Center. It's new this year, so I couldn't have done it before. But, I didn't get to it this year; I want to wait until Chris and I can ride it together.

People walk pretty slowly in the Portland airport. No one's really in much of a hurry. I had a great cup of coffee, a wander through Powells at the airport, and a long look at the rain hitting the tarmac before I left Portland for the summer.

I spent a little time in Phoenix, since my flight wasn't direct. The Phoenix airport was cold due to the humming A/C, with people walking a bit faster to make their connections. I settled into watching CNN (not available in Portland) before my flight.

Then, MSP. The pace a little faster as the crowd makes its way to the tram to the main terminal. A long walk past closed shops, down two sets of escalators, and finally, a hug and kiss from Chris and Jurgen! Home at last!

I returned the library books I had checked out all summer, and I thought about how accessible the PSU library is, how I don't have to walk across a long bridge to get to it. That's a good thing, even if they don't really have that many books. I didn't say goodbye to the nice library guy who remembers me from my graduate student days at PSU. I figure I'll see him again next year.

I went to send a fax, and ran into the Smart Copy guy for the first time all summer. I'd been to his store in July, but his wife helped me then, and she never really knew me. We talked about his mother back in Indonesia, who was ill in February, but is better now. He told me he can fly direct to Jakarta from LA, but it's an 18 hour flight and it costs $1800 unless it's the off-season. He didn't charge me the full rate to both receive and send a fax, which I did. I sure don't expect favors from him anymore, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

I went to a goodbye party for a friend of mine who is leaving PSU to go to Clackamas Community College. After her party, we realized that when I come to Portland again, things will be different for both of us. It's a good feeling, with some twinges of sadness.

Later, we went to dinner at the Delta Cafe, in SE Portland. We went there for dinner the first full day I was here this summer. We noticed how that first day, it was so hot that nobody wanted to cook, and the Delta was a good place to be. Not totally air conditioned, but shady, and good southern food to get us through. This time, it was cool and rainy, and the menu's changed. Still southern, but no more red beans and rice.

I'm leaving tomorrow to go back to Minneapolis. Summer's almost over. I have a couple more entries--things I want to say about Portland before I'm done. But after that, we'll have to wait until next year.

Slightly more complex version of above review: This movie, filmed largely in Portland, is about the brain and body, religion and science. It's a pseudo-documentary (really, half-documentary, half-slightly cheesy story) about how we can change the world by realizing that the world is inside of us. We change our emotional addictions and we change ourselves and the world around us, and more.

One of the most interesting parts of the movie is when Amanda (played by Marlee Matlin) is standing on the MAX terminal at the Oregon Zoo (how do I know this? Because I know and love Portland, that's why!). She sees some images taken by a Japanese photographer. They're all molecules of water, but they came from jars in which the photographer wrote different words, like love, thank you, and I want to kill you, on the outsides of the jars. One jar didn't have any words, so we can see how it's differnt. The difference in the images of the molecules is absolutely amazing! The point of the whole movie is that our emotions signal our bodies to produce different proteins; those proteins then change the make up of our bodies. We can change the makeup of our bodies by changing the emotions we feel.

Have you seen the movie? Do you want to see the movie? Post comments, and let me know.

Okay, you might get a bit damp, but it's pretty uncommon, except in the middle of winter, to have a rainshower that soaks you to the bone. It's more likely to have a steady mist. True Portlanders rarely carry umbrellas. In fact, we know how to stand under trees (which you can do because rain is hardly ever accompanied by lightning and thunder), and we know how to walk down the street by passing from one overhang to the next.

I'll admit that I've got an umbrella in my backpack right now. But, it's been raining off and on all day, and I haven't used it. No need to, because, in fact, the rain feels kinda nice in its gentle way coming down.

The weather was cool and rainy here today. It's a beautiful almost fall day. I took the bus down to Lloyd Center (the biggest mall in Oregon), and I walked back. I didn't realize it was so close. The walk was absolutely beautiful. Cool, crisp air, and sunny skies. A little like fall in Minnesota, just without the impending sense of snow.

Yesterday, there was a homeless Vietnam vet coming back from OHSU, a guy trying to take the bus from the hospital to Vancouver, WA and not knowing how to transfer, two African American sisters going to the mall, and a host of other people.

I won't forget the group of Vietnamese women who were having a great time gossiping on their way to the mall a few days ago. They were sitting in the bench seats in the front of the bus. One of the women had her young daughter (probably age 7) with her, and she was sitting in the first set of seats facing forward. The mother was looking in the direction of her friends (and therefore away from her daughter, who was essentially behind her)while they enjoyed their chat. The whole time, though, the mother had her hand on her daughter's knee. Meanwhile, the daughter just sat there quietly, not being allowed into the adult conversation in front of her. I wondered what the girl was thinking. She and I made eye contact a few times, but never a smile from the girl. Just a neutral expression until she followed the women off the bus and into the mall.

Where am I going with all this? The bus is, to some degree, what Mary Louise Pratt (1991) terms a contact zone. It's a space where cultures collide, and sometimes not just metaphorically. Different communication styles, nonverbals, eye contact, physical space issues...these are all observable on the #8. It's a great place to be an observer of--and participant in--the intercultural.