I’m just coming out of a conference held today at Kenan, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on LGBT Human Rights Advocacy. We had lawyers, activists, and social scientists interacting with each other, as well as with a diverse audience who were free to join the conversation. Because of the international array of topics and examples, I realized what a spectrum there is in the evolution of rights around the world. It was very interesting to see the intersections between the different disciplines and modes of engagement. How much does the law affect social change, and vice versa? What is the best entry point for change in different societies? It also became clear that because of the endless spectrum of identities, priorities can be at odds. A fascinating example came from China, where there is currently a rift forming within the activist community. While gay activists think of marriage equality as the primary goal, lesbian activists are actually fighting for the right not to marry, because of the tremendous pressure for women to marry at a certain age regardless of any factors, including sexual orientation. A nice takeaway that speaks to a more global and universal goal is the idea presented by one panelist that all people should have the right to relate – to establish and promote the relationships of their choosing with fellow humans beings.

Happy Friday all! If I can persuade your weekend plans in any way, I absolutely recommend you go see Me Too Monologues tonight or tomorrow, 7:30pm in Nelson Music Room.  The Kenan Institute supported the event through a Campus Grant (by the way, spring applications are due by February 15!), so I was invited to attend the opening show last night. I knew it was a landmark Duke event, but I was absolutely blown away—by the personal narratives that people were brave enough to share, by the phenomenal acting, and by the peer support that was made clear by the audience’s enthusiasm.

Without giving too much away, I will say that certain facets of identity were unlocked and explored, not only for the authors or performers, but also for each of us sharing in their stories. The purpose of the Campus Grants program is to promote ethical reflection, deliberation, and dialogue at Duke and beyond. Based on the snippets I heard walking out of the performance last night, and the passionate conversations I’ve had with several people today, that goal was met in all three of its parts.

Some of the issues were things I have previously thought would not really affect me, or maybe could not possibly enter my realm of identity. But the explanation poured out through the emotion and candor of each monologue made me experience what it might actually be like to be that person, to have that identity, to live in those shoes. It was devastating; it was uplifting; it was a tremendous experiment in moral imagination.

The day after Christmas my family sat hunchbacked over a card table, fitting together rivers and road signs as if our very understanding of place depended on it. We were doing a jigsaw puzzle together, but this one literally hit home. It was a “Your Town Your Puzzle” jigsaw that my mom gave my dad for Christmas—using the home address that she entered, the manufacturer put together an extract of a USGS map of the area surrounding our house. The finished product is pictured to the right. I know it’s small, but it should be pretty easy to see the evidence that I am indeed from a rural area! We poured over this thing the whole evening, completely absorbed!  Obviously we knew the layout very well in some sense. But this process of mapmaking clarified and solidified what I thought of as home.

I think it’s sadly an established fact that Americans are pretty bad with geography.  Maybe we remember most of the states (fewer capitals) that we learned in fifth grade, but placing the countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa…not so much. I’ll include myself in that category. But I’ve recently put a world map on a wall, and just give it a look here and there (brushing your teeth is an excellent three minutes to be utilized!) If you look at something enough, it starts to stick. The same was true with this puzzle of Murfreesboro and the surrounding county. I saw exactly how the creek on the Ramsey farm, which we grew up romping through, fed into the Meherrin River. The thick and thin and dotted lines marked the roads I’ve been travelling most of my life, but which I had never really visualized how they fit together.

How do maps change how we relate to our surroundings, both distant and familiar? It makes me wonder how much we really know about the landscape of our homes, and whether it matters. I probably will not go back to inhabit a dot on this map of Murfreesboro, my family’s home for generations. Along with being more transient, we are also more reliant on the technology of GPS. So, you could say, of course we know more. At any moment we can look up the exact location we are in, we are looking for, or we are merely curious about. GPS is a magical tool, but I think it is also perhaps dependency producing. When you look up directions, does anyone still look at a map, or even write down steps and then ingrain the route for future use, or do you simply follow that pin and accompanying voice on your mobile phone? Is it a problem that we do more consulting, but less remembering?

I shouldn’t downplay the level of sophistication that is employed with digital mapping, or devalue its merits, including accuracy. There are some really cool things being done with modern mapping. I guess a distinction that seems important involves the functionality of the map. What do we want it to show, and why do we value the particular map? Usually I want a map to show me where to go, and while the Apple Maps on my iPhone does that really well, the function is very utilitarian. (Although one can be innovative with the use—check out the way Kenan faculty Kieran Healy put Apple Maps to use recently). Road maps served the same utilitarian purpose in past years, which brings into question how different the concepts really are. Now road maps might seem somewhat of a relic of former times, and therefore considered in a different light.

This brings me to another function of maps, which I hesitate to call a function at all. They can be very personal representations of home and many can also be considered elaborate, fascinating artwork. The intricacy of design on paper maps fascinates me. The history of mapmaking is also rather astounding to ponder. Some of these thoughts are coming after viewing the Mapping the City exhibit now on display at Perkins Library. The curators say they are “challenging your perception of what a map is supposed to be.” I’ll continue from the introduction:

Maps silence as much as they reveal. They are beautiful and compelling. They are arguments and propositions. They can show the fingerprints of national power or the anxieties of international rivalry.  They can be read as historical texts.  They can represent something more than just a place. They can be treated as works of art.  They can raise questions of what makes a map accurate and even what makes a map a map in the first place.

I hope you’ll explore these questions as I’ve been trying to this week. Want a few examples of alternate notions of mapping? This American Life featured a story a few weeks ago about five unique ways of mapping the world, using the five different senses. What struck me in these stories was the way very particular elements were drawn out of the milieu, sometimes layer by layer, to notice and appreciate. Even in the section on visual maps, which I would have expected to be the most conventional, the maps were anything but. Have you ever thought about mapping the light falling through the leaves of trees? The pumpkins on front porches in the fall? Graffiti?  Dennis Wood has done this in his neighborhood in Raleigh, and published what he calls a “narrative atlas” called Everything Sings. Other resources that have been pointed out to me in discussing the concept of mapping are related to the history and heartbeat of our city of Durham—Digital Durham and Open Durham.

So what’s the purpose of a map? A lot more than I thought. I wonder, what if we all tried to create a narrative atlas of our lives? What kind of maps would you use? What would they represent?  Would they help you get to where you want to go?

It’s exciting when you have been around a place long enough to see a long needed improvement come about (less exciting when it’s been long enough to see something noticeably decline!)    Throughout my time at Duke I’ve thought of Gross Hall as an outdated monstrosity that no one ventured near. I take that back – I occasionally took a shortcut behind it when walking from Towerview towards Erwin Road. But I definitely never knew what was inside…

The exciting new development is that the Social Science Research Institute is moving to Gross Hall, and it looks like there will be plenty reason to step inside! The latest GIST magazine outlines their plans, and this interview with SSRI Director Thomas Nechyba appeared in DukeToday. They are branding a totally modern, sophisticated space, including an Apple or Google-esque open meeting area called “The Connection.” I think it will be of value to the whole university to learn more about SSRI and utilize what they have to offer. By emphasizing research methods and data processing, they enhance the work of any discipline. Nechyba mentions that interdisciplinarity happens when different disciplines “leverage their expertise with that of others,” and I think SSRI wants to help people make those connections in sophisticated ways.  He goes on to say that his hope for three years down the road is that “no one at Duke will wonder what it is that SSRI does.”

So, if I stick around Duke a little longer Gross Hall may be the latest hot spot on campus!

This year is coming to a close with a heavy weight. The nation is mourning the horrifyingly unnatural end to the lives of children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Indeed we are devastated for each of the 26 families who lost loved ones, and the gaping void that collectively they create in their community. That this could happen to such small children shocks us. That yet another massacre in a public space has taken place on the heels of the Aurora, Colorado shooting seems inconceivable. The circumstances of the event draw us drastically to attention.

In a piece that has resurfaced this week about naming the experience of losing a child, Karla Holloway presents the Sanskrit word “vilomah,” meaning “against a natural order.”  She recognizes that “grief leaves a melancholy and sometimes nameless company,” and therefore goes about identifying survivors’ loss. It is absolutely against the natural order for six-year-olds to be killed in their kindergarten classroom, and for their parents to have to bury them. Unfortunately, as Holloway points out:

…these days can give us ways and means abundantly to grow accustomed to a vilomah. A parent whose child has died is a vilomah. Watch the evening news and you will see a vilomah. Scan the news on the web and you will read about a vilomah. Walk through your neighborhood, there are homes with vilomahs inside.

This statement leads me to a burden that has been weighing on me this week—the burden of vilomah on families of homicide victims here in Durham, in my home county in North Carolina, in the places of which any of us are integrally a part and yet often do not recognize the vilomah. Does it take a massacre of 26 people to get us to pay attention to the news, or to have homicide at the forefront of the news? Do the families have to look like ours for us to be able to truly empathize?  I’m afraid for many of us it was just too easy to picture our own kindergarten classroom or that of our childrens’ and break down in tears over the thought, “what if it had been here?”

But can we place ourselves in the shoes of the family of Kaaylon Pamplin, a 17-year-old from Durham who was killed by gunshot in October?  This story ran on Saturday, in connection with the Connecticut shooting, but I can’t say that I was aware of it in October.  How about the other homicides in Durham this year, or the city that you call home – did you notice them? As Brady Campaign statistics make clear, there are too many deaths, too much violence, too many instances of vilomah.

I’ve become more aware of them in Durham because of an organization called the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, specifically after reading Living Without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence, which is part of a book series by the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School. Their mission is “to prevent and rectify the injustice of violence that segregates our city and diminishes our humanity.” Originally founded in 1992 to address gun violence through policy and legislation, the model shifted to one of relationship building with both the victims and perpetrators of gun violence, fostering compassion and reconciliation.

The country is ringing with discussion over gun legislation and yes, the discussion needs to be had. Many Duke professors have been in the news with valuable commentary. Kenan’s Kieran Healy has been cited repeatedly for his statistics on violence in America, which he posted to Crooked Timber after the Aurora shooting, and explained further this week on his blog. His two main claims are hard to reconcile with each other: the U.S. is much more violent than other OECD countries, and yet the rate of assault deaths per year has been in decline since the 1980s. So while we desperately want to enact policy in the wake of a crisis, there is a bigger picture to consider. We should be careful of drawing hasty conclusions, as Peter Ubel explains in an interesting comparison to other regulatory arenas. Violence in this country must be addressed, but I hope it will be in a holistic light that takes into account our full society.

And that brings me back to the work of RCND, and how we as individuals may think more holistically about violence in our communities. RCND recognized long ago that while legislation is battled, implemented, and sometimes reversed, communities remain tarnished by violence, and should respond collectively in support. RCND, therefore, hosts prayer vigils at the sight of every homicide that occurs in Durham, gathers for community luncheon roundtables, and partners with newly released prisoners in a reconciliation and reentry ministry. Perhaps hardest of all is considering the humanity of the perpetrators of violence, but they too are a part of our communities and a part of the path to a greater whole.

One of the things I like most about RCND’s model is the proclamation that there is not a place or person outside of our community. Everyone can contribute in some way, whether lending their expertise in the policy arena, or lending a shoulder for a neighbor who is grieving. Vilomah is something we hope we will never have to experience too personally.  But we can join in empathy, in solidarity, in recognition of a common respect for humanity that hopefully leads to fewer instances of vilomah going forward.