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Oregon Humanities is a journal of ideas and perspectives published three times a year by the Oregon Council for the Humanities. Each issue includes essays and articles that explore a particular theme from a variety of perspectives, broadening the ways in which readers think about a subject and providing a basis for further thoughtful discussion.

Oregon Humanities Spring 2008

Posts: Readers Write about Strangers

The Stranger You Know

As a schoolgirl in eastern Washington in 1939, armed with correspondent lists from hopeful teachers, I wrote to a Palestinian student in Haifa and to a boy on the Gold Coast of Africa. It is M.H., the student in Haifa, who swells my memory. To state his name would seem an affront to his life, as if the peace that he might find in the world were being distur-bed. It is not beyond the unexpected that he still may be alive.

Since M.H. was fluent in English, typing long letters to me, I assumed he had had British language teachers. Happy in his family, beginning to question literal translations of the Christian Bible (and similarly, of the Koran), he loved to discuss politics. He followed--probably in both English and Arabic--legislation in Washington DC. He knew what bills had been discussed in the Congressional Digest. I thought, "What an exciting stranger--I like him for being a citizen of the world. I feel that way myself!" His love of the Arabic language led him to send me papers in Arabic, showing the beauty of the print itself.

Two things overwhelmed me: first he invited me to write articles for the Arabic press from an American's view; and second, in one of his last letters he wrote that if we were to meet, a bond would surely develop between us. A breathless teenager watching Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, I had no idea what American viewpoints I could offer Palestine. And I could only guess at the bond that might unite us.

Into my college years, M.H. continued to widen my scope. He sent addresses of cousins in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. I exul-ted, "I'm covering the Holy Lands!" One cousin, a girl who wrote letters in English about her daily experiences, asked for some popular American music. I joyfully sent a collection of pop radio hits of the time. Then the world exploded.

An anguished 1948 letter from M.H. described the Jewish take-over of Palestine. His house was burned to the ground, and both his parents were killed. He wrote from England. It didn't surprise me that he had managed to arrive in Liverpool. He had joined a young Communist group and was planning to attend the University of London, majoring in law. He vowed never to declare friendship with the United States again, since our nation had recognized Israel. I was wordless, unprepared to choose sides for the future.

In conversations with friends, however, I remained faithful to M.H. Whenever the Middle East came up, I would say, "No peace will come until Palestine has a country and a government in its own right." People fresh from Paul Newman's Exodus would frown at me and say, "Huh?" Today, if the name of M.H. were on the delegate's list, I would find him and begin again as if it were the next letter. There's a great pull toward meeting the stranger you know.

--Joanna Klick, Damascus

How You Play the Game

After sitting in 105 degree heat for two hours, all I wanted to do was go home. Instead, I was sequestered in a dugout with my son, his ten-year-old Little League teammates, and their parents, afraid of what the people on the other side of the cyclone fence might do to us.

Just a half hour prior, we had shared the shade of a willow and stories of our boys with the parents of the visiting players.

Then, in the middle of the sixth inning, the game ended and the fireworks began. Players on the opposing team burst into tears, as did their grandparents. Parents screamed insults at the officials. One woman flung trash, and then a chair, onto the field.

Fearing for his team's safety, our son's coach omitted the traditional exchange of high fives and "good games" with the opposing team and sent his players and their parents to another field until things settled down.

There, he told us of the umpire's ruling that forced their opponents to forfeit the game.

As the protests and tirades continued on the other side of the fence, I watched my son shouldering a bat bag nearly as tall as he was. Baseball was his passion; it was a world where playing your best was what really mattered. As a mother, I had tried to protect that innocence for as long as I could. Now, those people had taken it away.

I know how quickly wife can turn against husband and neighbor against neighbor, each hurling words that will never be forgotten. I also know that regardless of how right I think I am--or how scared--I always have a choice in how I respond to a situation.

We waited until the crowd had thinned and headed back to our car. A few feet behind my son was a boy from the other team.

"You played a great game," I called.

He ducked his head, but I saw the tears as he whirled around and kicked the fence.

A woman in front of me stopped. My shoulders tightened in anticipation of her rebuke.

"I'm sorry," she said. "He's usually so polite. He's just very upset."

"He has reason to be. They were the better team."

Parents and players from both teams brushed past us. I was breaking the rules, fraternizing with the enemy.

"We feel terrible about what happened," I continued. "We didn't want it to come to this."

The woman's face softened and tears formed in her eyes. "Thank you."

As we walked on, the two young ballplayers fell in step with one another.

"Good game," my son said quietly.

"Good game," the boy replied.

--Lori Russell, The Dalles

Countering Fear

Fear certainly has its place in shaping our response to the stranger in our midst. But when I teach about reconciliation, I tell my students, "I think it's laziness that drives us" It's darn hard work to get to know 'the other' as a person rather than a category. Once we know the stranger personally (be that a person of another race/culture, or someone whose socioeconomic situation or sexual orientation differs from ours), it's much harder to stereotype. Perhaps it is fear that captures us as groups of people, so courage and hard work are required for an individual to break through that fear.

How do we--as groups--counter fear? And how do we--as individuals--summon courage and the investment of time needed to put a face on the stranger? First, it's important to look at the variables contributing to our propensity towards exclusion. It can't be as simple as "I'm afraid the members of this community will take all the low-paying jobs, and I won't be able to find employment." If it were, wouldn't you think folks would respond to rational argument on the matter? "They're not taking a job you would have wanted anyway--they're taking jobs we in this country (or city, or county, or industry) simply refuse to do. If immigrants weren't here, the strawberries simply wouldn't get picked--and you still wouldn't have a job if you weren't willing to pick them."

What about the "kick the dog" theory (a man gets picked on at work, so he goes home and beats his wife; she in turn yells at the kids, and then the kids kick the dog)? This theory assumes that humans always need someone to place lower than themselves in an invisible hierarchy. There's some truth to this, certainly--some of the most virulent racism in Southern states comes from impoverished white communities. The KKK in the Midwest in the 1920s and '30s targeted not African Americans, but Roman Catholics--the nearest, largest group that could be considered "other" and mistreated for it. But it's much more complicated when we face mistreatment of strangers who don't fit into a pattern of hierarchy. Is an employer or a landlord who discriminates against a lesbian or a Muslim "kicking the dog"?

Mistreatment of others in the name of God is nothing new--it's been with us for centuries. Public conversation these days tries desperately to distinguish between loving the sinner and hating the sin: "We don't oppose Islam--we just have to crack down on Islamist extremists." "I'm sure they're nice people--I just don't want them living next door." Unfortunately, when God's name is attached to those doing the persecuting, it's awfully hard for those on the receiving end to experience it as anything but hatred cloaked in a thin veneer of ... not even tolerance.

--Laura K. Simmons, Portland

Surrounded by Celebrities

Standing in the checkout line at the supermarket I learn that Brad is finally "DONE" with Angelina. Another magazine tells me that Brad's friends are distancing themselves from Angelina. A third runs two photos of Angelina on its cover, and in one she looks heavier than in the other. Has Angelina gained ten pounds because she's pregnant again? The cover copy implies, in excited red type, that they have the inside scoop on that.

Contemplating these urgent questions about Brad and Angelina, another one occurs to me. I wonder why, even though these magazines are very much in my face, I spend any time at all thinking about movie stars, and why many of us do. What is the cult of celebrity all about? Why do we get pulled into caring about these strangers on the big screen?

Actually, I think I may know a few answers to those questions. I have a little theory that focusing on celebrities distracts us from the sense of community we don't have. Pretty boy Brad, gorgeous Angelina, girl-next-door Jen, suave George Clooney, bad-girl Britney, and all the rest, with their unfolding sagas of success and failure, love and loss, glitz and grime, substitute for what once was a sense of community in American life. Often we know much more about the lives of celebrities than the lives of our next-door neighbors. And they don't move away.

There are other things too. The Greeks felt ambivalence about their gods, just as we do about our celebrities. The gods, in spite of inhabiting another realm, as movies stars seem to, did have human flaws, so when the gods messed up, the Greeks got a certain malicious pleasure from it and there was always a moral to the story. When Paris Hilton goes to prison, well, that's what she gets for driving recklessly and thinking she's above the law. Watch out for hubris.

Thinking about this from a darker angle, I believe there's a kind of sadism in how we treat celebrities and a kind of masochism in how they allow us to treat them. We think, and maybe they think, that they have struck a Faustian bargain, so there's no wiggling out from under the relentless glare of media attention. After all, many of us feel that we've gotten a less than rosy deal, what with jobs that sap our energy, long commutes, child support, credit card debt, and kids who act out. So, why should celebrities have all the goodies and not have to pay up in some way? Is that how our reasoning goes?

I wonder what Brad is doing right now, as I write this. Bouncing baby Shiloh on his knee? Reading a new script? Or having a tense conversation with Angelina? Maybe Brad, like me, is enjoying the weather, and certainly his pleasure in it would not be greater than mine. I've got some errands to run. Later, I'm going to the movies.

--Carol Imani, Klamath Falls

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I never realized how foreign my neighbors were to me--or how much we had in common--until I started walking to work.

When I bought my first house, I thought of all the television shows I had watched where neighbors were good friends and a friendly chat in the front yard was commonplace. I also thought of all the studies I'd read showing that people no longer get to know their neighbors. And I vowed that wouldn't happen to me.

Then it did. My husband and I moved in, and none of our neighbors came by to say hello. I thought, "I'll just go knock on their doors sometime." Sometime became next week, next week became summer, and before I knew it, I'd been in the neighborhood for more than six months and had barely talked to anyone.

Walking to work was a decision bred by concern for the environment and a need for exercise. I took the same route daily, and I closely examined the homes along my path. There was the giant corner house in desperate need of a coat of paint. The house with beautiful front windows and a meticulously landscaped backyard. The house with the newly planted garden on the side--I watched the rows of berries, lettuce, and broccoli grow taller with each passing day.

As the houses became more familiar, I started noticing the people. I said hello to the man who tended the vegetable garden. I discovered that an acquaintance lived in the small home near the high school. I bought a paper fan from two young girls selling them on their doorstep.

But these people still felt like strangers. They were of different ethnicities and cultures, worked vastly different jobs, and seemed to have different interests. Nothing really bonded us beyond the fact that our houses happened to be located near each other.

As Halloween approached, I gazed at the beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges gracing the neighborhood trees--and the ground beneath them. The dread of raking leaves crept up on me. When I passed the home with the now-dormant garden, I said my usual hello to the gardener outside. His response: "Feel free to take some of my leaves home with you." I laughed. "I've got plenty of my own, thanks."

It was a simple connection--that of two homeowners facing the woes of constant raking--but this time it gave me a newfound feeling of camaraderie. These people and I were connected. We carved pumpkins to celebrate Halloween. We enjoyed the outdoors when the weather agreed with us. We raked the leaves every fall. I still haven't had many meaningful conversations with people on my block, but I do view them with different eyes--not as strangers, but as fellow Oregonians, fellow city dwellers, and true neighbors.

--Sarah Evans, Salem

Hope

This year Passover begins at sundown on April 19. The weeklong holiday commences with a Seder, a ceremonial meal that retells the story of the Jews' exile to, and ultimate redemption from, slavery in Egypt. For many Jewish families, regardless of their everyday spiritual practices or lack thereof, this holiday--and, more precisely, this ritual meal--is longed for in a deep and soul-satisfying way. Even in the most secularly Jewish home, the Passover table is redolent with symbolic food and wine, song and storytelling, remembrance and hope for the future.

The liturgical text guiding the Seder is called a Haggadah, a remarkably adaptive book that can incorporate protest songs, commentary on stewardship of natural resources, or stories of the women too often missing from traditional liturgy.

Early in my family's Seder we reaffirm the value of retelling the story of the exodus from Egypt, thinking of it not as a story that happened to someone else, but as something that we, ourselves, experienced. This call to leave our collective and individual experiences, to see ourselves as slaves, belittled and impoverished under a cruel despot, introduces the portion of the service that touches me most deeply.

The Haggadah reminds us that "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of a stranger, having been yourself strangers in the land of Egypt." This exhortation is mentioned several times more. We are admonished that "When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them. ... You shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

When we imagine ourselves to be the ones with the differing customs, languages, and beliefs of the stranger--much less the person enslaved in mind and/or spirit--do we gain a kind of empathy that is not possible when the story is imagined at arm's length? From that place of strangeness--let alone from a situation of despair and toil--are hope and redemption made more sweet and necessary?

The lesson I choose to carry away from this part of the Seder is that remembering and imagining are not enough. Empathy that does not cultivate the possibility of a change of heart or mind, a willingness to listen or act in a new and more expansive way, seems hollow to me. If I am the stranger in the land of Egypt, it follows that you are equally a stranger to me. And together then, might we choose not to be strangers, to come to know and understand each other? Therein, I believe, lies redemption.

--Carol E.Hickman, Portland

The Differences among Us

The Sandy Boulevard bus was twenty minutes late. I put my fare into the box and a tattooed teenage boy offered me his seat. He smiled at me from under a mass of tangled dark hair. A man with deeply etched wrinkles who smelled like a stale bar, flashed his pass. "Trouble down the line, eh?" he said. He grinned to the crowd and tipped his pork pie hat. The bus swayed suddenly and bodies bumped together.

At Northeast Thirty-third Avenue, five young mothers carrying babies and collapsible strollers pushed their way on. A mom with her baby in one arm, hung onto the overhead strap in front of me. Six inches of bare, plump midriff with an outie belly button pierced by two silver rings came close to my face. I smiled up at her. She smiled back. The presence of babies lightened the mood.

Just when it seemed we couldn't jam another person on, the bus pulled up to the stop at Northeast Twenty-fourth and Sandy. A blonde woman of about forty clutched the handrails and pulled herself up step by step. Her enormous girth filled the aisle. The only sound was her labored breathing. She inched her way to a pair of seats that had been vacated for her. She spread her legs wide, arranged the folds of her body, and settled onto the edge, extending her swollen feet out into the aisle. I tried not to stare. Other passengers averted their eyes.

When the doors closed, I felt trapped. The driver sped up and ignored clusters of passengers at every stop.

As the bus raced across the bridge into downtown Portland, a strong female voice rose up: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference."

Passengers smiled. Laughter broke the tension.

At the next stop, the young moms gathered their kids and tumbled out in front of the Portland Rescue Mission. Men on the sidewalk peered out from sleeping bags and bedrolls.

The man in the porkpie hat hurried past the street people. He swung his cane and dragged his foot in a ragged rhythm. The driver wiped her forehead with her sleeve and rested her elbow on the steering wheel. "You take care, now," she said to the tattooed teenager.

I glanced back at the blonde woman, immobile in her seat, when I stepped off the bus at Pioneer Courthouse Square and collided with a street preacher who stared at me with vacant eyes. He waved a sign that read, "The end is near."

--Helen Crowley Cheek, Portland

Published in the Spring 2008 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2008 Oregon Council for the Humanities

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