Ending a Hiatus

Mingo County, West Virginia

Hmmmmm.

2 posts in the past two months.  I'm not sure that counts as maintaining a blog.

I've kept journals pretty consistently since I was 14 or so.  Sometimes they lapse, usually either because I find myself too uninteresting to be worthy of record, or because I'm caught up in too many other things and the backlog of potential entries starve each other.

These last two months have been more that second problem.

At work we've been busy beyond our capacities - and as research director it's been my job to keep projects rolling that explore how different people conceptualize and think about: good governance, mental disability, the transition away from coal in Appalachia, the earned income tax credit, family work balance, taxation, and money in politics.

Welch, WV

There've week-long been research trips - to central Appalachia on the coal project and California for money in politics.  I leave for Kansas City on Friday.  There has been phone interviewing, both by me and by people I've been training - on money in politics, the EITC, family work balance, etc.  I've been training assistants to handle our on-line experiments at testing communications strategies - for governance, taxation, and others, but there are a lot of moving parts.  And recruiting an extra ethnographer or two for upcoming research in Philadelphia.

With so much data coming in, analysis and writing has been the bottleneck, and it's been a high priority to get me back into the thick of that.

Carpinteria, California

In California, Porter is finishing up his junior year of high school, which these days means college visits.  So, when he came back from boarding school on his spring break in March we traveled to Maine to see old friends, but also to visit the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin triangle.  Plus MIT, Worcester Polytechnic and Brown.   Only a few weeks later we all went out to visit him on Family Weekend at Cate - meeting his teachers and advisor and seeing him perform in his chorale and camerata, and in the school musical - (he was the policeman in Singing in the Rain).

I've sworn to not neglect the garden.  Sunchokes have been dug up and pickled, the garden tilled and planted with potatoes, beets, and parsnips.  Chard and fennel overwintered and are growing again.  Mustard and cilantro seeded themselves, and I've planted more - as well as little patches of basil, parsley, broccoli, greens, leeks and tatsoi.

Monica came home with a few starts of cabbage and cauliflower, and though I doubt I'm diligent enough to save them from the caterpillars, I've planted them.  I even loaded some dirt onto the high hugel and put in some squash seeds.  Asparagus is up, though sadly I've only spied a single morel. Still to go in are the tomatoes, hot peppers and eggplants.

Asparagus and chard

My sad little peach tree didn't come back this year.  The root stock has put out some suckers, so I cut the top off and let it be.  The cherry is in leaf and I pulled off a few dozen caterpillars (winter moths, I suspect).

The apple trees put out blossoms, but whether they will set any fruit this year is anyone's guess.  The little crabapples seem to have evaded the deer, and only one of the plum trees took damage.  Other than giving them some water and checking to see if the Japanese beetles have arrived yet, there's not much labor there.

And the beehives are abuzz.

Volcán Arenal

Volcán Arenal  

It's a drier than usual dry season here, but the slopes of the great volcanos are still covered in lush forest.  Arenal is the most active of Costa Rica's volcanos, though is has been quiescent for a couple of years.  No lava runs down its sides -- only streamers of steam emerge upon the peaks.

Waterfall on Rio Danta

Lunch at the lodge

The first night we stayed at a resort outside of the town of Fortuna at the foot of the mountain.  Swimming pools for the boys, hot springs for Monica and birdwatching for me.

The second night was at the Arenal Observatory Lodge.  Dozens of species of birds move around the gardens and woods there.  Coatis roam the property scavenging.  Geckos, "gek-gek-gek-gek!" noisily as they hunt in the rafters for prey.

Early in the morning, before I went walking I recorded the sounds: Oropendola, distant howler monkeys, crested guan and all the other birds of the dawn chorus . . .

Porter took a picture at night - the mountain under the big dipper:

Economy Boosting Jobs

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I'm a cultural anthropologist.  In particular I study the cognitive and cultural models that people use to think about various public policy issues.

Two years ago, one of the largest non-profit foundations in the country gave our small outfit the task of re-making the public discourse in ways that could promote a broad array of policy initiatives to make things better for working families.

We sifted through and tested all the various frames and ways of talking about the issues of low wage work and the working poor.  And we found and reassembled and streamlined and jettisoned and edited the things that advocates have to say about the topic, and refined it into a story that resonates with the widest possible audience.

It is a story that makes improving the lives of working people seem like the most obvious common sense, and it is summarized in the video  below.

In the intervening months, as this story in its many variations has percolated more consistently through the culture, I have seen people reaching out and picking up on this narrative not as something new and shocking, but as though it were just simple, obvious common sense.  

And that is a kind of change that matters.

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Friends of ours went to meet old friends of theirs who were visiting from Morocco, and only finally managed to extricate themselves from New York after weathering hurricane Sandy there.  They arrived home to find a neighborhood with no electricity.

So our house has been the refuge, clamorous now with French as well as English and Spanish.  And we have been eating and drinking and talking and listening to music.  And the kids have been entertaining each other running around in the dark playing kick the can.

And today of course the climbing tree was a magnet.

A short video of the tree in action:

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We watched as a sea turtle swam among the mangroves along the Galapagos' Isabella island.

the hawksbill turtle in flight

It was an excellent, relaxing holiday. We had all of those things that you are supposed to have (except maybe for snow): family, food, children, gifts exchanged, carols sung, conversations, naps and small expeditions. An excellent, relaxing holiday.

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Porter's voice changed over the summer, but he's been finding it again.

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Since the early 1950's the Metz Family Reunion has been taking place at Brown's farm in Airydale, Pennsylvania.  This Saturday was the latest gathering, and here are a few pictures and some video of the barn dance.

My great grandfather, Samuel Metz had 12 brothers and sisters.  It's the clans that have descended from them who have returned here every July for the past 60 years.

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Skiing Pancieri's Field