The power of the personal; notes from Germany

A trip to a new country leaves one with a great many impressions. The strongest from my recent visit to Germany are connected to personal stories I encountered.

Let me mention first the amazing Holocaust Memorial, more formerly known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The Memorial has two parts: an external sculptural placement of 2,711 giant concrete blocks of varying sizes. You can walk through these blocks from any direction, and so they formed a kind of labyrinth. These are 3 photographs I took to give you some idea of the effect: a sense of overwhelming number and individuality of view and experience at the same time.


The information center complimenting the stones adds to this effect with an overview history of the Holocaust but then, importantly, offers a portrait of horrifying deprivation, cruelty and violence in photographs and diaries from fifteen families, each from a different country.

For me, the specificity of this approach made the information sink deeply inside me. In all cases, the photographs from the pre-oppression period showed healthy, glowing faces at various family gatherings. And these served to bring the photographs from later times into exacting and sharp relief. It made quite a difference in impact that every photograph of an individual was identified by name. There were no walls of nameless victims here. Everyone belonged to a family, to a story.

The second experience I want to describe comes from the business part of this trip. For the first two days in Germany, we were in Hannover, where I attended a work-related conference. In addition to the meetings, I was able to have many personal conversations over lunches and dinners with my colleagues from German and Swiss libraries and research institutions. In the process, I began to establish relationships with them, ones that will, of course, grow as we continue to work together.

In these circumstances, we learned a little bit about each other. For instance, I discovered that German children are taught the American Pilgrim story. I was surprised by this, I have to admit. I still find it puzzling. When I, in turn, explained that Thanksgiving is a good holiday for Americans because it is not tied to any particular religious tradition, this was a new idea for Wolfgang and Anja, who explained that Germany is a Christian country. (There you have it.)

For their part, Wolfgang and Anja asked about the wall between the United States and Mexico. They wanted to know how long it is, and whether it stretches all the way from Texas to California. I realized, as they were talking, that Germans understand about walls. They also wanted to know if we had a trade agreement with Mexico, and, if so, why there wasn't free movement between the two countries as there is in Europe between members of the European Union.  Now, Germany is not a country without immigration issues of its own, of course, but I didn't bring this up. Instead, I was just interested to hear how the United States is seen from the outside.

I was walking back from an evening reception on the first night of the conference with a colleague from Switzerland, Angela, and another German, Stefan. Angela said something along the lines of "What I want to know is, we just love President Obama. Why don't you?" Stefan agreed that, yes, he had this same question. I made a response I don't think really satisfied either of them, though what can you say to something like that, actually?

As a side note, I observed this pro-Obama feeling elsewhere in Germany: at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, there is a President Kennedy Museum and Shop. In the big picture window right now, there is a huge poster of President Obama.

One last snapshot: every time we opened a map on the streets of Berlin, someone stepped forward and asked if we wanted help. Most notably, on our first afternoon, as we walked down Welserstrasse with a map, a woman stopped to help us. When she found out it was our first visit and first day, she asked us what we were interested in seeing and gave us what ended up being the outline for our full 3 days.

I'll remember her a long time.

Happy Gay Pride Month!

There's a real thrill for me when I come up out of any downtown San Francisco BART station in June. All along Market Street, the big rainbow flags are flying, and it is a site to see.

For many years, my family marched up Market Street on the last Sunday in June, especially when our son was a little boy. We marched with the LGBT Parenting contingent, and it was an absolute balm to get all those cheers! When Nathan was little, the kids' groups were lined up right after the groups for people with HIV-AIDS, and in the late eighties and early nineties, those groups were pretty grim looking. By the time the children came along, I suspect that the crowds were really looking for a sign that life was going to carry on.

At the time, I really needed the boost too. I often felt like I was holding it together all year long as a lesbian mom, more or less in conflict with my family of origin, and so for this one day in June to have tens of thousands of people cheering for me was truly wonderful.

The rainbow flags remind me of all of this.

I saw them this week as when I went into San Francisco to get euros for our trip to Germany. We're leaving on Saturday the 5th and returning late on Saturday the 11th, so there will be an interruption in my posting next week.

It's a business trip to Hanover with a pleasure trip to Berlin added onto the end. Amazingly, when we get to Berlin, we will land smack dab into the middle of Europe's biggest Gay Pride Week!

So, we'll celebrate in a whole new way this year. I've already learned something new, which is that lesbian in German is lesbisch. How about that!

Human sacrifice

On my recent trip to New York, I had a spiritual experience of a particular sort. It happened on Friday when I was visiting the campus of New York University. April 2, 2010, was the second-to-last day of an art show at the Grey Art Gallery. The show was Downtown Pix: Mining the Fales Archives, 1961-1991.

Earlier in the day, I'd had the opportunity to meet the Director of the Fales Library and Special Collection, Marvin J. Taylor, as my colleague and friend Jennifer Vinopal was giving me a tour of NYU's Library. I'd made a mental note to come back to the show after Jennifer and I went our separate ways. Taylor has been collecting the work of artists, playwrights, choreographers, photographers, and activists of New York's downtown scene since 1994. The show "reveal(ed) the vital intersections of experimental theater, performance and installation art, graffiti, punk rock, and sexual liberation." (I'm quoting the show brochure.)

As I walked downstairs to the lower level, I encountered the moving work of Fred McDarrah who covered New York's Gay Pride Parade every year from its inception for the Village Voice.

And then, suddenly, I came upon David Wojnarowicz's photographs and silent films. He worked in the late 1980's and early 1990's at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. The installation included a film running in a loop of Wojnarowicz's lover's last moments and then his prone body, draped in a sheet, and carried by four or five men from a table to a dark, unclear space.

I stood still, watching this, aware that the hour approached 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday, and I wondered: what turns a death into a sacrifice? Did Wojnarowicz's lover die for a purpose, as I was taught to believe about the Nazarene carpenter?

And what about all those other young men who died so young? After all this time, I must say I have not discerned any meaning.

I remember the late '80s and early 90's well. We lost Iris's brother Jon and our friend Kevin Lally in 1993. Indeed, everybody we knew lost someone or many someones. Even though there is a great temptation to make some sense of death, it looks to me now very much as Wojnarowicz depicted it: simply a dark unclear space we are left to ponder.

Travel notes

Next Tuesday, I'll be flying to New York to visit Nathan until Sunday, so I won't be posting next weekend. This is the first time in a very long time that I will be going on vacation on my own, and I'm excited about it. Iris has had a couple of trips to New York (related to work) since we last saw Nathan together in October, and she has been able to add in some time with him both times. So I've been feeling a mighty pull to see him myself.

He's had his spring break and so is on the downward slope toward end-of-term, meaning he is a busier-than-usual graduate student. Hence, I'm lining up some plans for things I want to see and do on my own. It's not hard in a place like New York.

In a funny kind of way, New York has been brought down to size for me now that it is the city where Nathan lives. This happened to Los Angeles a few years ago. We had previously thought of LA as a vaguely evil, hulking monolith in the Southland. Having Nathan down at UCLA meant that we spent a number of long weekends there, coming to appreciate quite a few aspects of the City of Angels, including learning that its downtown actually has a history!

But, back to my New York plans: on this trip, I am going to indulge my love of history. This is partly because I am meeting up with our dear friend Lisa, who is an historian teaching at UNC-Wilmington. Here are some of the places I hope to see:

• Tammany Hall, on Union Square, the last home of the New York's famed Democratic political machine. It's now the site of the New York Film Academy. The most famous boss was William M. Tweed, seen here in a well-known political cartoon by Thomas Nast from the late 1860's.

• The Asch Building, former site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. On 3/25/1911, a fire claimed the lives of 146 young sweatshop workers, many of whom jumped from the windows of the upper floors where the doors were locked, preventing them from exiting.
  
  In this photo, firemen are searching for bodies of victims on the sidewalk around the building.
  
  
  Following the fire, the outrage and protests were so widespread, long-needed reforms, including new health, safety and sanitation standards, were finally enacted and enforced.
  
  The Asch Building today is known as the Brown Building and is used for classrooms by New York University.

• The Tenement Museum--a Lower East Side apartment building that has been turned into a museum of the daily lives of people living in tenements. Nathan, Lisa and I have tickets for three of the tours: "Getting By," "Piecing It Together" and "The Moores."

• New York University's Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. On Friday next week, I'm going to be having lunch with a colleague who works at NYU, and afterwards, I thought I would take a look at her library's special collections. One of the gems is the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

It ought to be a fascinating backdrop to my conversations with a young man learning the profession of city planning. One other spot I know I will want to see is the park in Brooklyn where Nathan is doing his internship. This is along the waterfront on what is essentially reclaimed land, using recycled materials. He says the views of Manhattan alone are worth the trip over the bridge, but I know I'll want the full tour!