Open-minded

1. going to noisy, crowded parties
2. playing football (U.S version)
3. playing chess
4. reading comic books
5. jogging
6. shopping for clothes
7. repairing cars

Heroes and Villains

I noticed yesterday that two of my New York City Facebook friends have become "Fans" of Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the airline pilot who successfully landed his disabled jet on the Hudson River, allowing all 155 passengers to survive.

Though I'm not sure what the point is of joining the fan club, it's hard not to be caught up in the media splash surrounding this pilot's excellent handling of a crisis situation. The story is a compelling one, of course, and the pilot's behavior and skill are everything one would hope for in a person with such responsibility. I always hope the pilot of my plane is this capable and responsible. Flying several times every year and always arriving safely at my various destinations can also seem like a miracle, and I want to thank all these pilots who didn't have to make a crash landing while I was on board. Many factors, including timing and location as well as the skill of the pilot, contributed to the successful outcome of a bad situation.

It was about a dozen years ago that I first went to Turkey, attending the World Congress of AFS. Faced with a heavy number of meetings and responsibilities during the Congress itself, I had little hope of seeing much of Istanbul. Somewhat wistfully I watched the slide presentation by our hosts in Turkey, intended to highlight the wonderful cultural sites and the natural beauty of their country, which I had little hope of seeing beyond the walls of our hotel. And then a slide depicting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Turkey, came up on the screen and the dozens of young Turkish volunteers, guests, and staff spontaneously and enthusiastically applauded their hero. I was startled to see this tribute to a man already dead some 60 years. Washington? Lincoln? Kennedy? Would any past president in the USA elicit such a genuinely felt applause? Wouldn't the founder of Turkey by now be just a figure in history? Wouldn't his image be seen so often that such a reaction would be difficult to sustain?

I pondered this question of national heroes for a long time. In my high school and university years in the USA, there was a sense that we were constantly bringing down villains, but that we had no heroes. Was it not the time for heroes? Or was it simply that no heroes emerged? Or did the media at that time tend to foster cynics instead of heroes? This was a classroom discussion I remember from that time. We thought of heroes and villains as mostly stereotyped characters from the comics or from traditional melodramas and Westerns. In the 60s and 70s, movies that wanted to be taken seriously did not have heroes; nor traditional happy endings. Heroes and villains only re-emerged with the Star Wars films.

I don’t know how cynical we were in fact, but I do know that I am becoming less cynical in recent years. Perhaps my culture is moving away from cynicism as a cultural outlook, and more to a place where it makes perfect sense to create a hero's fan page on Facebook for a skilled airline pilot who had the misfortune to hit a flock of geese (it seems), the good fortune to have the Hudson River handy when this happened, and to have the skill and training to keep everyone safe in a frightening situation.

Is hope the opposite of cynicism? Maybe it's possible to have both together. This is probably nowhere more visible than when youthful idealism meets intellectual cynicism. From the perspective of New York City, the USA seems ready to embrace hope and heroism, and this is found not just in the excitement of Captain Sullenberger's achievement but also, particularly in neighborhoods like mine, with the inauguration of Barack Obama on the day after the celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King. Huge Obama posters that still hang in the stores down the street, along with images and references to Dr. King, whose birthday we celebrate today, although technically it was last week. And perhaps now I can imagine a group of young people from the USA who would spontaneously applaud an image of Martin Luther King, now more than 40 years after his death, or the soon to be president, Barack Obama.

There is always a rich and dynamic cultural story surrounding the heroes of a culture, whether their status lasts a few weeks or for more than 60 years; whether their ascent to heroism came about by chance or through long years of planning and organization. The story of a hero is one that connects in some profound way to a particular culture and its shared values, assumptions and beliefs. The story itself may evolve as the hero’s reputation lives. As in the case of mythic heroes, it isn’t even necessary that the story be objectively or factually true, but it must be emotionally true in a very real way to the culture that creates and honors the hero. I’m hopeful enough to want this story to last.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research, AFS International

Sometimes the most relevant information to guide our understanding of the world is found not in the main news sections of a newspaper or news program, but in what is often considered the "softer" area of the "Home" section. Following up on the last issue concerning on the cultural context that has led to the fact that I live far away from my 92-year-old mother, and how I attempt to care for her across this distance, I wanted to point out that an entirely different trend is being found in the USA, among slightly younger families than mine. 

Living Together:  Your Mother Is Moving In? That's Great! in today's New York Times is a report on an apparent trend in the US for grandmothers to live with their daughter's families and to help with the care of their grandchildren while the the parents are at work.

I think this article helps highlight some of the factors that contribute to cultural change, and the interplay of economic and demographic factors in creating these cultural changes. This is just another opportunity to emphasize the dynamic nature of cultures. We cannot learn even our own culture just once: it's a lifetime of new experiences with other people in a group we belong to. Learning about other cultures (of groups we don't actually belong to) is also a lifetime journey through both time and place.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Independent Living

It is so common to minimize cultural differences by focusing on the various things that culture have in common. Sometimes this takes the form of saying something like, “people everywhere care about their families.” You could also say that in every culture there are people who are alienated from their families and have a true statement. But even in the caring about their families, there are important cultural differences in the values we attach to how we care for our families.

Back in my graduate school days, I made an interesting discovery about the communication patterns among geographically dispersed and mobile extended families in the U.S.A. – by studying my own! Possibly Master's students in U.S. universities are still allowed to do case studies of their own families as part of their thesis work, but even then I realized the gift I was given. I wrote my master's thesis on the specific American cultural patterns of my own extended family.

At that time, there was a general emphasis on the nuclear family (again, why nuclear?) and the assumption was common that family ties were less important for the individualistic U.S. culture than for other cultures (in Europe, for example) where people tended to stay in the same towns and cities to be close to their relatives. These are stereotypes of course, and as with any stereotype there is often some basis for the statements made, but always serious oversimplifications.

What I had noticed about my own family was the enormous effort made by certain individual members to hold together and manage the dispersed network. The extended family also seemed to have more importance at certain stages in life, and I was entering just one of those stages as I tried to write my thesis while my little daughter napped. Fortunately, just by chance, I had a cousin who had moved to the same city at about the same time - a cousin who was one of those family network managers, and who brought a different perspective on my parents and grandparents.

I spent the last week with my mother, along with my brothers, my niece and my husband. We were helping her move to a smaller apartment as a necessary economy. She lives in a city we have never lived in, and there is no family there, so we rented a house while we prepared the new apartment and sorted through the photos from so many decades of family. In anticipation of her failing memory, my mother had written the name of those pictured on the back (or sometimes the front) of most of the family photos. We told many stories to my niece, who is a family network manager in training, eager to pass on the family history to her children and her brothers.

Outside of the U.S. cultural context, it may seem strange that we don't bring my mother to New York where I live, or have her move
closer to my brothers. After all, what is it that ties her to that small suburb in Florida where she lives now? Certainly we have considered doing this. But she made the decision to move to this retirement facility almost 12 years ago because she wanted to select the place herself where she would live out the rest of her years. At that time she described to us how, when needed, she could move from the "independent living" section to the "assisted living" (where she is now), and if needed to the "continuing care" section. She has already pre-paid the arrangements for her eventual funeral, there in this city where none of us lives. Like so many Americans of her generation in the U.S.A., she always valued her independence and she never wanted "to be a burden to you three children."

We see that she is happy there. We have developed personal relationships with the staff there who care for her in a way I'd never
know how to match. I have met with her various doctors and been impressed with the amount of time they give her, and the respect they show her. I realize sadly that this would not be easy to duplicate in New York. So we travel to her because this is where she decided to live, she is established there, and it is a good place. At the same time it never feels quite right to me to let her live so far away from us, though perhaps it is we who need to move to her rather than the other way around. So we balance our independent living, our right to chose where to live, with hers. For now, this is how it is.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Giving meaning to place
A few days ago I read about the Tokyo Tower in the New York Times as the Japanese celebrated its 50th anniversary. It is still "world’s tallest self-supported steel structure" but that's not what gives the tower its meaning. As a post World War II monument, the tower’s
symbolic growth and decline are contained within the lifetime of many Japanese citizens, so it's easy for the Times article to tap the memories of a few people and show how it is that a culture gives meaning and significance to a place.

Like the Eiffel tower that it resembles, the Tokyo Tower was quickly made into a symbol of progress and the technological ambitions of the nation. What's interesting about the article, though, is that it documents a change in the symbolism for Japan. Now, it seems that the 50-year-old tower (younger than I am) has become a nostalgic symbol of the recent past.

From the Times article:

“For my father’s generation, Tokyo Tower was the symbol of the new Tokyo that they wanted to build,” said Midori Tajima, 60, who owns a camera shop near the tower. “But for my generation, it has watched over us during 50 years when everything else seemed to be changing.”

Happy New Year!
Even though I live in New York, I have never been to Times Square on New Year's Eve, but on many a December 31, I have watched the ball drop on television. I am not keen on big, noisy crowds or standing around on frigid nights. Last year, the ball drop passed its 100th anniversary: twice as old as the Tokyo Tower.

Recently I passed through a newly renovated subway tunnel connecting the various subway lines that meet at the Times Square subway station. Following the tradition of subway mosaics that represent something related to the place above ground, a new set of mosaics shows a variety of New Year's revelers wearing New Year's hats and blowing horns and noisemakers. Some are carrying children on their shoulders, some are in couples or small groups, some alone.

This perhaps has become the meaning we give to the place, Times Square. It is the place where the nation marks the beginning of each new year. This has a lot to do with the way New Year's Eve is celebrated in the USA. It is the highlight of the party calendar, the
date for which you must have a date. It's not particularly a time to spend with your family, especially when you are young and nearly adult. Times Square means nightlife, writ large, and as the meaning of nightlife has changed over time, so has Times Square. The history of what used to be known as Longacre Square involved the brothels and sex shops of a red light district, which still marked the Times Square area long into the 1980s. But the district also was home to the Broadway theaters and "Restaurant Row" making it the city's most famous nightlife spot for tourists. Advertisers took advantage of the crowds with huge billboards.

In recent years the lights are so bright on Broadway that it looks like daytime even at midnight. The city has managed to remove much of the "red light" from the area and substituted the bright lights of consumerism. In spite of the $100 and more per ticket, and in part
thanks to Disney productions, Broadway theater patrons include many children, including always the precious 11- and 12-year-old girls who dress up for the occasion of their big night out more than anyone else in the theater.

And what is Times Square as a landmark? It hasn't been the home of the New York Times in decades. The buildings have changed over the years. Times Square is essentially a messy intersection caused by the diagonal street Broadway which crosses over 7th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets. But that's more where you stand to look at the building on 42nd between 7th Avenue and Broadway, which is "One Times Square" -- the building that used to be owned by the New York Times and where the crystal ball drops down the 77-foot (about 25 meter) flagpole to the roof of the building.

Why do so many flock to this "bowtie" intersection, passing through checkpoints, unable to bring any bags or backpacks, dressed for arctic temperatures? Only because they've given this place a meaning that approaches magic. It's become a destination on a journey, a place to mark the passage of time. And this is how we give meaning to a place.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education & Research

AFS International

link to previous post with video from Times Square

Times Square photo credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Times_Square_Evening.jpg