In the boat

The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown (2013) is currently getting a great deal of attention in the Pacific NW.  The book was mentioned in the local Seattle paper before the opening of boating season this spring, a local university where I teach has just selected it as its common book for next year's incoming freshmen (see http://www.onlinefast.org/wwutoday/news/the-boys-in-the-boat-selected-as-western-reads-book-for-2014-15 ), and not too many months ago, I caught a mention of the book on a Facebook post by a brother-in-law who was a Husky varsity crew alumnus himself.  Brown frames the story around the life of a young man of very modest means who goes off to the University of Washington in the early 1930's to study engineering and becomes a member of the collegiate rowing team.  The broader story is about the importance of teamwork and perseverance and how underdogs do sometimes win (a favorite American theme).  Along the way, we learn about the sport of rowing and a little bit about the craftsmanship of wooden boatbuilding, and while the writing is a bit heavy on hyperbole and foreshadowing (the Nazi specter looms large as do impending dust storms, cold spells, and heat waves), Brown shapes and paces the story well, enhancing it with details of the broader socioeconomic and political context.  For me, the best part though is the endnotes which are offered in an abridged version in the book and more completely online.  Brown's transparency is refreshing and satisfying as he explains the sources of his accounts and statements and even how he contrived some of the obviously undocumented quotes.  Some might quibble that he was brazenly filling in too many gaps but I would say he was telling a story based upon his interpretation of the sources available to him (and he wasn't lazy in digging for sources).

It is the sources that Brown had available to him that really caught my eye.  The interviews, and especially the journal and logbook entries, printed photos, and personal handwritten letters that the author relied upon made me realize how increasingly rare those latter archival sources are, and make me wonder how our different modes of recording the ephemeral events of our lives today will color future stories and accounts of lives lived, victories won, or events experienced.  For example, my children have never written the kinds of letters or had penpals like I did, or experienced the regular bliss of receiving a letter in the mailbox (many of my letter-writing Finnish cousins and penpals, and my Swedish and Danish ones,are still part of my life, if in smaller ways than when I was younger).  They have never waited for photo prints to be made or thumbed through packets of them fresh from the photo processing shop.  They do not have boxes of old letters, in the handwriting of grandparents, younger siblings, from a romantic partner, or half-filled old grade school diaries, piles of printed photographs--loose and in albums.  I'm not imagining that any of those in the boxes in my attic and the files in my office will ever be of value to anyone except me and I am sure most will likely end up being thrown out someday.  I am grateful though that my spouse's grandfather's precious letters home during World War II were lovingly saved by his wife and later collected and archived by his eldest daughter so that we can all have a small understanding and the physical touch of how the war was experienced by a family member and how it likely colored his life.  Similarly, if those UW crew men in Brown's book hadn't kept journals and written letters in the first place, and if their sisters, girlfriends, grown children hadn't saved these, and if the logbook of the crew coach hadn't survived, we would not have the rich story that Brown tells us.  I wonder how authors will fashion and tell the stories that my kids and their kids will read years from now.  What will the documented sources of these stories look like and feel like?

Saving everything, especially today when many of us have so much, threatens to overwhelm us in clutter and garbage.  It is satisfying to reduce, to de-clutter, to clean out, but some of the 'documentation' that reminds me of the story of my life and of my world I just won't part with; I'll leave that decision to my descendants! They'll have to decide if my huge email inbox, my yearly wall calendars, my tattered photo albums, or even the posts of this little journal-y blog are archive-worthy.  Others are already making similar decisions about loved ones' materials on social media sites and on laptop hard drives.  In the meantime, I will record here, for posterity or for the garbage can, that my family had a magnificent in-the-boat experience once too, last year, when our German cousins arranged for us to take a one-day, 32 km paddling trip together down the Ardèche river in southern France.  While our less than harmonious paddling and some mild rapids resulted in a few out-of-the-boat instances and there was no gold medal at the end of our trip, the eye-catching nudist beach along the way, the very mad rush among hundreds(!) of other canoeists to make it to the endpoint in time for the last bus, and the eventual reward of a bottle of French champagne all made this an epic experience in our lives.  And I'm very glad I saved some documentation of it.

A moment of loudness

In a twist, today at 12:12 pm, the state of Washington will have observed a moment of loudness, in celebration of the Seattle Seahawks professional football team's recent Superbowl victory.  That shared moment will no doubt have been most deeply felt and expressed by the thousands of victory parade attendees in downtown Seattle, while other fans are decked out in fan gear as they go into school and work today.  (The superintendent of the Seattle public schools apparently misjudged the fervor of the fans in the city and had to back down from his initially firm statement that school absences to attend the parade would not be considered 'excused' by the school district. Local King5 news has reported on tv that over 500 of the 3000 district school teachers are absent today, and 13,000 students out of 50,000 are out.)  Markers of fandom are still visible in the aftermath of last Sunday's game, with ornaments and flags on homes, yards and cars all over Washington state (and apparently elsewhere, among non-Washingtonian fan club members, see "Vancouver Seahawks fans are Superbowl Ready," Jan. 31, 2014, CBC news).  The flags and jerseys depicting the #12 are especially popular (see flag in photo below).  It's not an idea original to Seattle apparently (see Ballard, Chris. "Into the belly of beast mode in Seattle's 12th man," Nov. 6, 2013, Sports Illustrated), but it has cleverly linked more fans to the team and created new merchandising opportunities.  As a single entity, the fans are depicted as the imaginary but instrumental 12th man on the 11-man team roster.  Those fans, the ones with tickets to home games anyway, have been credited with creating so much noise inside the stadium that they have helped derail opposing teams' efforts.  Presumably, other Seahawks fans wearing #12 jerseys while watching at home on tv contribute in spirit.

Such fandom represents the quest for social solidarity in modern society. It is similar to the religious fervor that ties people together and that fosters essential social cohesion of which sociologist Emile Durkheim spoke over a century ago. Social connectedness is what gives meaning to people in their lives as members of communities on multiple levels. Without it, societies would cease to exist. In the past, shared religious beliefs were the source of such ties in much of the West (and continues in some parts of the world), while nationalism, or national pride is a more modern source. In the current era, love of country is often supplanted by enthusiastic fandom focused on loyalty to sports teams and their wins and losses. Wars between countries fought on fields and trenches become socially constructed as war-like athletic skirmishes on artificial grass fields created by a "civilian leisure class", as Steve Almond notes in his riff about football and its real physical risks for players ("Is it immoral to watch the superbowl?" Jan. 24, 2014, The New York Times Magazine).  Some sporting events bring together national pride and sports fandom such as the Olympic games beginning today in Sochi, Russia. 

source: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/seahawks/files/2012/05/MemorialDay.jpeg

The connections between war and sport, and religion and sport are nothing new.  Neither are the intense feelings and the potential fanaticism that these all may bring about, and that spell potential danger. (Fan is short for fanatic.)  When groups of fans recognize and bond tightly over shared identities or feelings and expressions, the implication that often follows is that if we are this, then THEY, those people and groups who are not us, are something else, not as good, not as smart, not as human perhaps. This us vs. them mentality is inescapable even when the distinctions are really quite weak.  Obviously there is nothing that inherently different from a Seahawks fan or a Denver Broncos fan, or a Olympique Marseille fan and a Paris Saint-Germain fan if we want to talk football as the rest of the world knows it. Yet, in my family's short experience as denizens of the south of France, we quickly learned that it was interdit (forbidden) to root for the Paris team, even when this team was playing a foreign team such as Barcelona's team!  (Read my take on French football rivalries here: Allez les gars! Nov 26, 2012)  In this case, team loyalties seemed to go much farther than nationalistic ties, and sometimes these have led to fights and vandalism between warring fans.  When local or national or religious or sports pride supersedes good judgment and mutual respect for fellow humans, that is when we get into trouble and undermine our humanity.  It is our shared and more fundamental identities as human beings and citizens of planet Earth that would seem to be more significant (at least until we discover other analogous life forms elsewhere).  Go world!

Département 13

As with foreigners everywhere, we are often asked where we are from.  We say we are Américains or in my case, Finlandaise-Américaine, and we usually add the detail that nous venons de Washington (we come from Washington).  People here often think we mean Washington D.C., and we swiftly correct them, clarifying more specifically that we are from the WEST coast, from SEATTLE, yes, from Microsoft country (in my childhood, I remember the business reference was Boeing).  For us, it has been important that we establish our national and regional identity correctly.  In one way, this shows that we feel connected to certain places and the people within them, and we want to affirm, if just to ourselves, that this connection still exists even if we have left.  People who have not left their homes also often invoke their social connectedness to particular regions and places, to perhaps reinforce or reassert their ties, out of pride or when challenged.  French sociologist Emile Durkheim considered such social ties vitally important.  He suggested, over a century ago, that social solidarity, or that 'we-feeling' among people in a particular area, sustained communities and gave their members shared purposes and meanings.  Social solidarity is not a natural, intrinsic quality but one that is socially created, in part by the human desire to belong and to survive.  It is also something that starts at the local level, in one's village or town, where we establish connections to those with whom we interact personally and regularly, and it is only through great social, economic and political changes that we have come to a point where social connections can occur on the national level.

Revolution and the eventual creation of la République française contribute in part to the importance of national identity in France today.  We have found that many French are keen to know our nationalities (even if they are less interested in the distinctions between the two Washingtons).  To our faces, most are kind and nod knowingly when we explain where we are from.  (We've heard our share of derisive comments about being American, mostly from French middle school kids and we ignore these as much as we can).  The French also seem to assert their nationality proudly, and many want to know how we, as Americans, like France.  We are asked this almost weekly.  Many seem satisfied when we tell about our appreciations for French food and the French lifestyle.  Others agree with our frustrations with French bureaucracy.  Still others want to know more; last fall I had a conversation with a doctor who spoke in generalizations with me about what "the French" think about politics and feminism, and she wanted me to comment on what "the Americans" think.  It was very difficult for me to speak for Americans on any of the issues we discussed without carefully qualifying my remarks.  I thought it was interesting that she did not qualify whom she was speaking for, when we do know that being French does not have the same meaning for all who live here nor does it seem to include everyone, especially those who don't necessarily look or act the part.

As for regional ties among the French,  I'd known, from the little reading I'd done, that for a long time, the French citizenry was seen as consisting of those from Paris and those from the rest of France.  (The desire to begin understanding the rest of the French is what spurred me to read Graham Robb's prize-winning people's history last fall, The Discovery of France, 2007).  The rest of the French are actually a complex lot, just like the wines they produce!  The French state recognized this when it began to create the administrative geographical divisions that still persist today.  In fact, it seems like regional French identities have in part been forged or socially constructed by the state.  Today there are 27 régions and within them are a total of 101 départements.  We live in the région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, and within our région, there are 6 départements.  We are #13, also known as Bouches-du-Rhône, which is highlighted in red on the map above.  #13 identifies our postal code, the number appears on our license plates, and the number has popped in school and other affairs.  This past weekend we were skiing, in #73.  It was a saleswoman who explained the numbering on my spouse's souvenir shirt and the red shields with the white crosses that were displayed everywhere in the villages we visited.  These are both emblems of the alpine département Savoie, also known as #73, which lies within the region Rhône-Alpes.  It is probably true that the départements in France have some social salience to the people who live in them, especially if the numerical identifications appear over and over on the things that make up everyday life.

I suggested in my initial paragraph though that most people feel their strongest, most meaningful social connections with others in their immediate locality.  Unfortunately, I haven't been in France long enough or spoken to enough people to be able to offer insights yet on local connections.  My strongest indication that local ties matter is the response we've gotten from other French when we tell them we live in Aix-en-Provence.  More than a few times, we've been told that while Aix is a fine town, it's a little 'bourgeois'.  I've been really curious to know what the speakers mean by this, and I'm guessing I may get a better idea very soon.  As the French go the polls in the next three weeks, to elect that person who will be their President and represent them all, as French, as denizens of this région or that département, and as town dwellers and villagers, I am hoping the voting returns will show more clearly some of the other ways that the people here relate to each other and to their communities.  Perhaps I'll also learn what makes some of them think that our little town is so bourgeois.

Image of U.S.: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Washington_in_United_States.svg/270px-Washington_in_United_States.svg.png

Image of France: https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjZ6Kt7_6rCwbYsL1-Wrf2M_gtNWzu7wkZzVL-zGWqc7WIFwIh

Image of Aix-en-Provence: http://en.aixenprovencetourism.com/photos_provence/355-plan-centre-a-imprimer.jpg