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"Chicano Park",,"I had been in San Diego for less than a week and was still unsure of bus routes. Having successfully navigated the trolley-to-bus transfer from La Mesa to the Gaslight District downtown, I figured I was close enough to walk. If it were a different day I would welcome any unexpected detours as a result of getting on the wrong bus, but today I was headed somewhere specific.
It was July, Saturday, and sunny. I walked southwest from downtown heading toward Barrio Logan. A historically working class Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood in the city, Barrio Logan is home to Chicano Park. Chicano Park is located under the Coronado Bridge and contains over 70 outdoor murals that decorate the pillars that support the bridge.
Chicano Park came into existence in April 1970 when neighborhood activists occupied the then vacant space under the bridge. The bridge was built around three years earlier, displacing thousands of residents in the process. Though the vacant space under the bridge was originally set to be the site of a highway patrol station, community activists instead demanded that the site be turned into a public park. After months of struggle, the city ceded to the community activists’ demands and designated the site a park. Soon thereafter local residents began calling the space Chicano Park. The name Chicano Park reflected not only how Barrio Logan was a predominantly Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood, but also how those involved with the takeover supported El Movimiento, the civil rights movement in the U.S. that focused on those of Mexican descent. Activists who participated in El Movimiento regularly identified themselves as Chicanas and Chicanos.
Since the 1970s artists like Victor Ochoa, Yolanda Lopez, and Salvador Torres have painted murals dedicated to Mexican and Mexican American culture and history on the bridge’s bare pillars. Popular murals painted in the 1970s include Historical Mural, Quetzalcóatl, and Birth of La Raza. Much like the name of the park, artists found inspiration in El Movimiento’s goals of eradicating ethnoracial discrimination and used the bridge’s pillars to present positive renderings of those of Mexican descent. Also starting in the 1970s, a festival, or Chicano Park Day, is held each April commemorating the day community residents occupied the land under the bridge, reinforcing the park’s continued importance to the local community.
After around a half hour of walking toward the park, colorful pillars broke into view. I entered the park and saw people walking among the pillars taking photos of the murals and reading the walls. People sat on steps of the green, red, and white painted kiosko situated near the center of the park. As I walked around taking my own photos a man in his mid-20s approached me and we began to talk. Learning that I was not a local, he began running through aspects of the park’s history. While I would later tell him that I was writing about Chicano Park in my dissertation, I initially kept this information to myself. I was more interested in hearing about how he spoke of the park. As he talked he braided the park’s history and importance to the community with the park’s significance in his own life. We stayed in the park and talked for hours while he guided me from pillar to pillar discussing the murals.
My “Humanities Moment” is therefore the confluence of walking to the park, seeing the pillars for the first time, and listening to a man – now a friend – talk about the importance of Chicano Park in his life and to the community. Chicano Park is representative of Mexican and Mexican American activism, culture, and history in the U.S. and reveals the power of community to determine the shape of its immediate surroundings. As my friend also demonstrated, Chicano Park is deeply personal and holds layers of meaning for community residents and those who visit the park. ",,"My visit to Chicano Park in San Diego, California ",,2017,"Sean Ettinger, 28, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign",,,,,,chicano-park,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"During the National Humanities Center VGSSR2020","Activism,Artists,Communication,Community,Cultural History,History,Public Spaces,San Diego, California",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/17/401/73849b6c02430c12b5db2964049f4acb.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2020",1,0
"“It’s not nonsense, it’s Shakespeare.”",,"Dr. Michael P. H. Stanley describes an encounter with a terminally ill patient who, in his pain and confusion, demands to leave the hospital ward in the middle of the night. While the patient’s pleas are initially regarded as “nonsense” or evidence of his delirium, Dr. Stanley recognizes the patient’s writings as lines from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. As Dr. Stanley highlights, his experience speaks to the lasting power of texts and stories to leave an indelible imprint on our minds, offering up a means of communication when all other words fail.",,"Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare",,,"Dr. Michael P. H. Stanley",,,,,,its-not-nonsense-its-shakespeare,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Communication,Doctors & Medicine,Drama,Illness,Language,Macbeth,Medicine,Patients,Shakespeare, William",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/351/shakespeare-67698_1920.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0
"One movie changed my life!",,"The first time I saw Children of a Lesser God was in a large theater. I expected it to be just another blockbuster and as it started my expectation was to be entertained for 2 hours and then I would go home. In a very short time my senses were overwhelmed and I realized there was a whole world that I knew almost nothing about (the deaf world). It was amazing to see scenes unfold and a story told through facial expressions and music. The use of music to conjure up emotions and advance a story was a new phenomenon for me.
I realized that words are not the most important means for communication but rather body language and facial expressions ""say"" as much, if not more, than words. This one movie singularly changed the way I see and experience the world. The sounds of birds are not background noise but a conversation in a different language. Music isn't just something you hear when you turn the radio on but it is the basis for all experiences and emotions. Deaf people ""feel"" the bass line of a song and can experience music without hearing a single note. Sign language is a language without sound and deaf people use it and facial expressions and body language to communicate.
This movie changed the way I experience music and sound (even as I write this the music behind the words/scenes on the TV show playing tells me when to look up and alert me to something that is about to happen). It introduced sign language as a language like English or Spanish. It greatly increased my awareness of facial expressions and body language as a ""language.""",,"Movie: Children of a Lesser God",,1986,"Lisa Perrier, 52, director of print",,,,,,one-movie-changed-my-life,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Family member","Communication,Language & Languages,Motion Pictures",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/330/sign.language.jpg,Text,,1,0
"Pre-verbal Sketching",,"Before I was able to articulate in words how I was processing the world around me—shifts in mood, media images, the domestic mundane—I found sketching to be a release valve through which I could work through everything, even if the result was nonsensical or abstract. In this case, it was not an external piece of art or culture that spoke to me, but my putting pencil to paper that gave me room to speak to an audience of one.",,"My sketchbook",,"Primary School","David Roh, 41, Associate Professor of English",,,,,,david-roh-sketching,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,NHC,"Cognition,Communication,Sketchbooks",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/14/298/sketchbook-pencil.jpeg,Text,"National Humanities Center Summer Residents",1,0
"Poetry in Silence",,"Grace Momberger describes how the story of one woman’s ability to make poetry without sound altered the way she perceived the very meaning of communication. ",,,,,"Grace Momberger, speech-language pathologist",,,,,,poetry-in-silence,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,"Heidi Camp","Communication,Creativity,Poetry,Speech Pathologists,Vocation",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/275/flower-3876195_960_720.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0
"Set On a Path by Socrates",,"As a college freshman, Thérèse Cory encountered Plato’s Socratic dialogue Euthyphro for the first time. Reading Socrates’ exhortations for Euthyphro—a man bringing charges of murder against his father—to articulate a clear and universal definition of piety, Cory realized the extent to which many of us take key terms and ideas for granted. The story ignited her belief that we must discuss and understand one another’s conceptual perspectives in order to live harmoniously together. This intellectual commitment set Cory on her path to become a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.",,,,,"Thérèse Cory, associate professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University",,,,,,set-on-a-path-by-socrates,,,,,,"
As a humanist, you collect a lot of Humanities Moments, but the one I wanted to tell you about is one that’s burned vividly into my mind. And it’s one that’s especially formative, perhaps it’s responsible for the fact that I’m a philosophy professor today.
It happened in my first semester of philosophy class in college. It was Dr. Muller’s class, freshman year, first time I’d ever studied philosophy, and one of the first texts we read was Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro. In this dialogue, Socrates is heading into court where he’s going to be tried for his life. He meets an acquaintance of his named Euthyphro, and Euthyphro is there because he’s prosecuting his father for murder, which is of course shocking for the ancient Greeks. The idea of a son prosecuting a father is impious. It’s completely contrary to the respect owed to parents. But Euthyphro professes that he has a higher responsibility, and he tells Socrates that it’s actually pious to prosecute murderers, whether they’re your parents or not.
Socrates is intrigued by this, and he asks Euthyphro to explain to him what piety is. This is always the catch in a Socratic dialogue—the moment when Socrates gets interested. Euthyphro answers pretty quickly, “Piety is doing as I am doing. That is to say, prosecuting anyone who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or any similar crime whether he be your father or mother or whoever he may be.” And here comes the moment that absolutely stunned me as an 18-year-old. Socrates responds, “Wait a minute, Euthyphro. You just gave me an example of a pious deed, and that doesn’t help me know what piety is. I want you to explain what fundamentally makes this and all other pious deeds be pious. What do they all have in common?”
This was like a revelation. I’d been going through my entire life using these concepts like justice or piety or beauty or goodness or harm to talk about things. We talk about an unjust pay scale or an unjust law or a beautiful painting or a good course of action. We say, “Don’t do that because it’s harmful.” It never once occurred to me that you could ask about the concepts themselves. It’s like I’d been using these word tools all my life and I never asked where they came from or how they worked or whether they were the right tools for the particular job at hand.
This was just an absolutely life-changing moment. There was this whole new layer of reality opening up that I hadn’t even known was there, a whole new set of things to think about. It really was just exactly this Plato’s Cave moment where you’re watching the shadows on the wall and suddenly you get turned around and you see the puppets and you say, “Oh my goodness, the shadows are the effects of something else that’s been behind me out of sight the whole time and now I can see them!” It just completely changed the way I think about life and how I approach having discussions with people. I mean, there’s no point arguing about whether a new rule is fair or not if you haven’t stopped to investigate first if you’re even both using the same concept of fairness. This attention to the level of the concept is just crucial to living together well as human beings, and this was just my first glimpse of it. There’s so much that’s transformative in this dialogue. I always teach it now to my first-year students.
I also wanted to mention this interesting twist at the end of the dialogue that I think is so important for the humanities. Euthyphro gets impatient with the discussion and he’s embarrassed that his off-the-cuff answers keep falling apart under Socrates’s questioning, and so there’s a sad moment at the end of the dialogue where he cuts Socrates off and says, “We're just going to have to have this discussion another time, Socrates, because I’m in a hurry now and I have to go.” Plato just ends the dialogue on this tragic note, because as the reader, you know that Socrates himself is going to be condemned to death on charges of another kind of impiety—for not believing in the Greek gods—in the very next dialogue, and what Plato is telling us is that this impatience with philosophical reflection can be deadly. The most intelligent people in ancient Greek society are going around using concepts like justice and piety without caring enough to really put the time and effort into thinking those concepts all the way through. People die on account of that shoddy use of concepts.
The tragic ending really stayed with me ever since. We want the quick answer, the quick solution. We get impatient with the slow thinking before we can really experience the results, but if we really want to reap the fruits of the humanities, we have to cherish the slow thinking and make time for that patient, enduring, contemplative, questioning look at reality.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"College Students,Communication,Euthyphro,Language,Philosophy,Plato,Professors,Socrates,Teachers & Teaching,Vocation",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/8/179/Socrates.jpg,Sound,"National Humanities Center Fellows",1,0 "Deciding Not to Be a Doctor",,"Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, went to college expecting to become a doctor, but taking a course on religious ethics and moral issues shifted his direction. To him, the humanities allow us to be introspective and to understand our lives from a larger point of view, which leads to a more revealing and enriching human experience.
To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to explore what the humanities mean to them. For more information visit California Humanities: We Are the Humanities.
",,,"California Humanities",,"Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation","Standard YouTube License",,,,,larry-kramer-deciding-not-to-be-a-doctor,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"College Students,Communication,Critical Thinking,Ethics,Introspection,Psychology,Religious Studies,Vocation,Writing",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/5/55/Religious_symbols.jpg,"Moving Image","California Humanities: “We Are the Humanities”",1,0 "P.O.W. Poetry in Code","Borling’s poetry, composed in the most oppressive of conditions, demonstrates how the arts and humanities are essential to the human spirit and give evidence to the shared human impulse to make sense of our lives in words and through creative expression.","In the Hanoi Hilton, the place where the North Vietnamese imprisoned and often tortured American captives during the Vietnam War, the US prisoners used a tapping code to communicate with one another. But they didn’t just send conversational messages, they tapped out poetry, reciting from memory some of the favorites they remembered from school and composing new poems to lift their spirits. Their captors would not allow them to speak to one another. But they didn’t notice the tapping — or didn’t understand what it was about.
Here’s the code they used. It breaks the alphabet into five lines, each with five letters in it. So any letter (forget about K) can be conveyed through two sets of taps. A is 1, 1; Z is 5, 5 (K is either C or 2, 6). The code’s five lines are:
Captain John Borling was one of those captives, and the poems he composed as a P.O.W. were shared and memorized by his fellow prisoners. And, after Borling returned to the States after the war, his poems were pubished in Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton.
Borling’s poetry, composed in the most oppressive of conditions, demonstrates how the arts and humanities are essential to the human spirit and give evidence to the shared human impulse to make sense of our lives in words and through creative expression.