Learning how to be a researcher

"At this point we are leaving the world of common language, and joining a discipline of scholars who make distinctions that are not required in everyday language." - Steven Chaffe in Thinking about Theory

Life story

I wrote my first life story yesterday on the general assignment shift. Again, I was nervous. But, once I got started, the nerves faded. In between communication law and answering the front desk phones, I pieced together the story of Louis Lohman, a man who lived to be 92. I heard about how he met his wife. I learned about their canoeing trips in the Ozarks. I spoke with his grandson. His family shared so many kind sentiments about their father. I left the newsroom at 8 p.m. hungry, tired and proud. I like the Missourian's life story policy and think it is also a valuable learning experience for young reporters.

Today, I mailed the story to 2 members of Louis Lohman's family. I'm not sure how many more chances I'll have to write a life story, but I would definitely do it again.

Louis 'Ming' Lohman embraced family, farming and canoeing

First article

I wrote my first article for The Missourian over the weekend (Boone Dawdle raises money for True/False, builds community for cyclists). I covered a bike ride fundraiser called The Boone Dawdle. I felt nervous before the event, but quickly loosened up and realized that many people were happy to speak with me. Only one interviewee made some comments unfit to print (!). Here are the six things I learned from my first reporting experience:

1. A small notebook is much easier to write on than a large pad of paper.
2. Repeat name spellings back to people (or show them what you wrote down).
3. Do more interviewing than you think you'll need to do. I felt like I spoke with too many people, but actually used most of what people said in the story.
4. Before leaving, be sure you can answer the who, what, where, when, why, how questions. (Thanks to Lee Anne Denyer for this excellent advice, which helped me fill in the information I'd overlooked.)
5. Reporting is less scarier than it first appears.
6. I have much to learn.

missing home

I miss New York desperately.

I miss the way my bike navigated those Manhattan streets so seamlessly and got me to my destination. Every time.

I miss arriving at work meetings just a tad late; always with a great story to tell about the new volunteer who had kept me in the first place.

I miss the way the sunlight came through my fourth-floor walk-up in the morning as Washington Heights awoke to another New York day.

I miss the kids at Harlem RBI and the way their city smarts mixed with youthful innocence in such surprising ways.

I miss Alberto.

I miss his apartment and his cooking and the way his speech slowed before sharing a contentious thought.

I miss his laughter and his kitchen.

I miss boiling water for green tea over his gas stove and then accidentally letting it spill over onto the burning gas.

I miss the runs around the Central Park Reservoir with Prospero and the way he always stayed just one step ahead of me.

I miss our weekly visits to the Duck, East Harlem's grittiest dive bar.

I miss my housemates and the pesky cockroaches that covered our dishes after midnight.

I miss the subway.

I miss the skyline at sunset.

I miss the trees in Brooklyn and the dinner parties we often had there on Friday afternoon.

I miss the joy of my life there.

And, though I am thrilled to be studying at the University of Missouri and realize that this dream of studying journalism is now coming true, I still wish, sometimes, that I could be there instead. I know that city isn't going anywhere soon. Although, by now I am old enough to know that once I get back, everything will have changed. Even the cockroaches. 

a memory from childhood

A book from my childhood resurfaced today. I have carried it with me through the years, but didn't take it to Turkmenistan. Again, it returns, as most things do and offers new wisdom.

The spine of my favorite book split in half recently. It was published in 1962, twenty years before I was born. As a pre-teen, I found it on one of my father's bookshelves. The books my dad owns have titles like Principles of Neuroscience and Educating for Service. I remember perusing their thickness and wondering when I would be able to read such a book.

My dad would often come home from work and find me sitting in front of his bookshelf. One day, he thumbed through some titles and selected the thinnest book from the shelf. "Try this one," he said as he handed it to me. I took it upstairs and began reading.

"Words came out of the womb of matter; 
And whether a man dispassionately sees to the core of life or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder,
Existence opens."  -Lao Tzu

Goose bumps appeared on my arms. I kept reading. The wisdom of Lao Tzu isn't even 60 pages long, but his lessons could take me a lifetime to realize.

I loved discovering the hidden power of intuition, realizing that death and life do not necessarily need to be viewed from a linear vantage point and that the wisest leaders often lead without their people ever realizing it. He spoke with such flexibility about appearances and how black could be white and conversely, white could just as easily be black.

These ideas held so much space for me. At 11, I often felt out of place and misunderstood. I realize now that these words held meaning for me because they suggested that life is confusing for everyone.

Over the years, I have returned again and again to this book. It is the first philosophical text I ever read. It is also the only religiously affiliated text I have ever finished. Yesterday, I discovered it inside one of the many boxes I stashed away at my parents' house while I lived in Turkmenistan for two years. As the spine split open, I felt the grainy paper between my fingers and began to read.

The spine had split along this entry, entitled #11, which is, if I recall correctly, the age at which I inherited this book from my father.

"Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub

By vacancies joining them for a wheel's use;

The use of clay in molding pitchers

Comes from the hollow of its absence;

Doors, windows, in a house,

Are used for their emptiness:

Thus we are helped by what is not

To use what is." - Lao Tzu

From one thing we can take another. And from nothingness, we can take eternity.

Running in forgotten lands

Bayramaly, Turkmenistan, is a sleepy town on the outskirts of a bleak and formidable desert. The Garagum, whose name means Black Sand, covers more than 80 percent of the country’s total area. A Turkmen proverb says that “when a bird crosses the Garagum, it loses its feathers, but when a man crosses the Garagum, he loses his legs.” This country has been my home for the past two years. It is here that I work as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), live with a Turkmen family and run.

The 50,000 people who live in Bayramaly today make a modest living working as teachers, doctors, taxi drivers and shopkeepers. But, on the outskirts of their town is a reminder of the past. A 4 km fortress wall made from packed clay lies just east of the city. The region around Bayramaly is an ancient place with a long and impressive history. Merv was one of the largest and most cosmopolitan civilizations in the world around the turn of the last millennium. Sultans constructed libraries and laid out a Greek-style city complete with hamams (communal baths) and ceramic water systems. Omar Khayyam is thought to have written his famous poems here and escaped just before the Mongols ravaged the great city in 1221. As the centuries passed, the Silk Road faded from the Western psyche and other empires forced their way into power.

During the 1920s, the Soviets pushed the Turkic peoples away from their nomadic traditions and into their communist mold. Tribal people found themselves herded onto collective cotton farms; their nomadic lifestyle deemed uncivilized and unproductive. In the 1980s, Turkmen people began living in bloc-style apartments. Soon enough, communism’s ideals took hold and Turkmen adapted to their new way of life.

Today, Turkmenistan remains one of the most closed countries in the world. Despite their billions in gas wealth, most of the country’s population lives a meager existence. The average family does not have indoor plumbing or a washing machine and corruption runs rampant in most sectors of society.

I moved to Bayramaly in the summer of 2010. I was fresh off of two months of intensive language and cultural training. After working for five years with an international NGO in the U.S., I was ready for life abroad.
One of my biggest concerns when I decided to become a PCV was: Would I be able to run? “You might have to run in your hut,” my placement specialist told me. I grimaced. Two years of hut-running was pretty difficult to fathom after growing up two miles from the Nike World Headquarters and spending my youth in Portland’s Forest Park, one of our country’s largest urban parks.

But, I persevered with my Peace Corps dream and hoped for the best. I arrived in Turkmenistan in the spring, just in time to witness a breathtaking poppy season.

I’m now in my second year of service as a community health volunteer and I’ve experienced some of my favorite moments in this country while out on my runs.

Turkmenistan’s terrain is rocky and dry. Camels roam the desert eating a prickly plant called yangdak (camel thorn) and salty groundwater colors the earth in a swirl of white.

I used to set out fully clad in rain gear prepared for damp Oregon weather. Here, the only must haves are sunscreen and a cap. The temperature exceeds 80 degrees Fahrenheit before 7 a.m. many months out of the year.

Although running is a rare sport among the general population, many people understand its value. I am often met with Russian greetings of encouragement on the trail. Most strangers assume I’m Russian. I wear my hair short and opt for Western-style clothing so that I can ride my bike to work.

Running in public would be difficult for most traditional Turkmen women. They are expected to wear long cotton dresses and silk scarves and they must carry out all the housework for their husband’s family.
“Running is a luxury,” my friend Bahar told me once. “After we finish our house chores, we don’t have the energy to exercise. Housework is our exercise.” I remember my own grandmother saying this to me when I was growing up. She never had the chance to join a sports team like her daughters or I did. Perhaps in two generations my friend Bahar will say the same words to her exercising grandchildren.

Turkmenistan now faces the same health problems many other countries face: heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity. On average, Turkmen people die 20 years younger than they do in the U.S. When a Turkmen asks me why, I usually start by talking about the lack of exercise and move slowly into the high-fat, high-sodium diet. Long ago, Turkmen lived in yurts in the hot desert and needed a lot of fat and salt to survive such rugged conditions. But now, American Toyotas imported via Dubai fill the streets and the average Turkmen need not travel miles in search of water. The sedentary lifestyle is just as standard here as it is in America. Our world has changed.

I like to tell the students who attend my weekly health clubs that exercising is more than just a weight-loss method. It is a lifestyle and a way of seeing the world. It’s a stress-reliever and a chemical reaction. It’s also a fun way to socialize with friends and break up the daily routine.

When I first arrived, I tried to replace my running buddy. Wednesdays weren’t the same without her and I always felt a tinge of jealously when I imagined her out on our runs back home. She’d never have to deal with kids throwing rocks or village dogs the size of wolves jumping at her. Then again, she’d never get to race a kid driving a donkey cart or see a field of Turkmen sunflowers against the deep blue Central Asian sky.

My running buddies eventually emerged. But here, they took the forms of another PCV and a Turkmen teen. We often meet to spend an hour running through the ancient city near our homes. Merv looks like a child’s sandcastle would after a few large waves attack it. The fortress walls are slowly melting back into the Turkmen sands.

Mud homes built into the riverbed remind me of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books I read as a kid. I used to yearn for a life that simple: a house carved into the riverbed and kept cool by the mud. Now, I’m running past the scenes I could only imagine in my childhood. Yet, this time they don’t look quite as romantic as I once imagined them. I wash my clothes and body using buckets of water and can now appreciate the convenience of last century’s inventions.

In many ways, living in Turkmenistan is like going back in time. Here, drinking tea late into the night is common practice. The Internet has been kept at arm’s length and has not yet dominated or altered life. Sometimes, I bemoan the fact that this suspicious government blocks my right to access Facebook. Other times, I am so grateful to see what life feels like without constant connection to the Internet. Here, human connection dominates. Life is slower. And, there is always time for a run.

Tracey Goldner is a Peace Corps community health volunteer in Turkmenistan (2010 – 2012). When not running, she enjoys perusing Turkmen bazaars, learning about local customs and throwing theme parties with her students.

the evolution of family

My brothers came for a visit this week. In the midst of their busy lives, they came back to the 'beav,' as we like to call it, for a few days so our little nuclear family could be together. With a 2-year commitment looming in front of me, I don't honestly know the next time I'll see them all sitting around the same table. It could be next December or years from now. As these days together become rarer, we seem to embrace them more. Tuesday night we cooked crab cakes and homemade macaroni & cheese with Nana. Just being in her kitchen made the night. We used her yellow measuring cups and mixed in bowls I remember from childhood. It was magic. Then I videotaped scenes from their house. I might not see them inside it again. My Papa is already nearly gone. He slipped away with the melting snows after his fall in December. Sometimes, we catch a glimpse of him. But those moments are so unexpected now. Mostly he sits and waits, nodding when it seems appropriate and looking so confused. I miss him. And I know this must be so difficult for them. My Nana faces their situation so confidently and beautifully. It makes me want to weep as I think about it.
But despite all of these challenges, I feel so much gratitude. As my friend, Bhuvanesh reminded me tonight, we have so much. We do. It's true. But it's so easy to remember what's lacking and to focus on the painful moments.
I think having a void is part of the human experience and being truly awake requires us to be painfully aware of the absences. I notice that the more I delve into myself, the more I show up to my own life. The more I notice the tiny silences, the fuller the moments become.