"It is the other who exposes me to unity.”*

Because Hubby’s grandfather emigrated from Schuivers Kapelle, Belgium, in 1920, our family has always had an affinity for things Belgian, even while not quite understanding what that meant. All I’d ever learned about the country over the years was the capital (Brussels), the two-language split (French and a form of Dutch called Flemish), and that they were really good at making beer and chocolate. This weekend, we were fortunate to learn more.

Through the auspices of the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Twin Lake, Michigan, and the local organizing efforts of the hard-working Brent and Rachel, we hosted a pair of musicians associated with Concert Band Maasmechelen from Maasmechelen, Belgium. For three days, we were privileged to immerse ourselves in their culture while sharing ours with receptive participants. The United Nations should be so successful.

Our guests Bart and Marijke (it took me a day-and-a-half to pronounce her name correctly) were delightful. From our first meeting in the parking lot of Wright State University’s Center for Creative Arts at two-thirty Friday morning (the group had transportation problems out of Chicago), we continually found common ground from our love of nature and hiking to a shared sense of  being overwhelmed by too many choices in restaurants, supermarkets and bookstores. The four of us talked for hours about daily life, education, food, family gatherings and of course, music. Bart plays euphonium (baritone, for most of us Westerners, although there are subtle differences) and trombone; Marijke plays violin, viola, and cello, although not on this tour. For the U.S. trip, she is part of the organizing staff. We chuckled together over her task of asking each member, “Do you have your papers?” before boarding the bus to head north to the second of four concert stops.

We knew immediately upon our arrival home in the wee hours of Friday morning that things would go well because our dogs loved them, and they loved the dogs. We spent the day (after sleeping off their jet lag) strolling through downtown Yellow Springs and lunching on the patio at Peach’s Grill. American meal portion sizes stunned them; Marijke took lots of pictures of food and beverages, along with the scenery. We learned quickly to counsel them on when to share an entrée to avoid difficulties. The practice of taking leftovers home in a doggie bag amazed them, as did the standard glass of water served gratis at each meal.

Following Friday’s rehearsal at Wright State, we went to Abuelo’s for dinner (Mexican food is so American, isn’t it?). Saturday included a trip to the Yellow Springs farmers’ market and a visit to the Glen Helen Raptor Center. In the afternoon, we attended an informal wedding reception for friends in Waynesville where Bart and Marijke became the main attraction, graciously answering the same questions over and over as they were introduced to each new arrival.

Concert Band Maasmechelen’s performance Saturday evening at Young’s Jersey Dairy was woefully under-attended, but the musicians played like they were at Carnegie Hall. Enthusiasm, passion, and talent were evident in every piece from Bert Appermont’s “Saga Candida” to “Soul Bossa Nova” by Quincy Jones. In a nod to their American hosts, the band ended with a spectacular “Stars and Stripes Forever,” complete with a talented piccolo solo. And naturally Young’s provided the visitors with ice cream after the show.

In keeping with the international flavor of the visit, on Sunday the four of us attended the Celtic Festival at RiverScape Metropark. After enjoying a typically rousing concert, our Belgians went home with a CD of Dayton’s own Dulahan.

All fifty-eight members of the tour and their host families gathered at John Bryan State Park for a potluck picnic Sunday afternoon. Organizers managed to crowd nearly everyone onto the bridge over the Little Miami River for a group photo before we scattered for one last evening at home. We ended our visit with a campfire in the backyard where Bart and Marijke experienced their first taste of s’mores. Nothing like Belgian chocolate, of course (their parting gift to us – yum!), but memorable just the same.

Monday morning brought a sad parting, back in the Wright State parking lot where our adventure began. The group moved on to Frankfort, Michigan; Strongsville, Ohio; and Dowagiac, Michigan, before returning home August 10^th. Follow their journey at their tour blog – you’ll need Google Translate (it’s in Dutch), and technology provides an interesting perspective with unintentionally humorous results.

I’m still processing much of what I learned during our cultural exchange, about Belgium and about us, having been given the opportunity to see our world through another’s eyes. It’s not always a comfortable vision. Bart and Marijke take for granted many things we as a country are just recognizing as important: government supported recycling and composting programs, quality affordable medical care, alternative energies – their solar programs have been so successful, government subsidies are being phased out. In contrast, we take for granted our over-consuming, commercially-focused lifestyle. They were astounded at the wastefulness we surround ourselves with every day, from excess packaging to enormous food serving sizes where much of what is served goes into the trash. “Everything here is so big,” Marijke noted more than once.

But more important was how much we have in common with Bart and Marijke. From our love of animals, to family traditions, to Star Trek and the Franco-Belgian comics of Asterix et Obelix, our cultural differences faded away into camaraderie. We shared jokes and laughter, quiet times and intense conversation. And I’ll never look at a truck labeled “Penske” (Dutch = “little belly”) in the same way again!

It was an experience we will long remember, even as the lessons learned may not be realized for some time. I hope the exchange was mutually beneficial, and I’m reasonably certain they weren’t bored with our quiet lifestyle and not just being polite when we didn’t visit the Air Force Museum, the malls or a zoo. We parted with sharing email addresses and promises to meet again. They’ve invited us to Belgium for a Scottish games festival in September, and we want them to come back to Yellow Springs. I want to cook for them. I want to take them to the theatre and introduce them to our adult children. I want our friendship to grow.

Our Belgian family has two new members, and we couldn’t be more delighted.

*Maurice Blanchot in The Writing of the Disaster

Apples and oranges and kumquats, oh my!

I’ve been struck several times this week by the propensity to draw invalid comparisons, everything from Cars2 versus Hangover II – really, do these movies have anything in common other than being sequels? – to an incident closer to home, Myrtle Beach versus Yellow Springs.

Perennial mapmaker Rand McNally is running a Best of the Road contest with categories ranging from Most Beautiful to Friendliest to Most Patriotic. Initial public votes narrowed the community nominations to six in each category before teams of travelers were sent out to visit the sites and report back.

Lovely Yellow Springs, our new home, is a finalist in the Most Fun category. We’re up against Glenwood Springs, Colorado; Park City, Utah; Vacaville, California; Santa Clause, Indiana; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I’m not familiar with many of those places, but putting tiny quaint Yellow Springs up against touristy Myrtle Beach does a disservice to both locations. Fun, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Myrtle Beach offers golf, beaches, water parks, malls, golf, outlet shopping, golf, and did I mention beaches? Such frenetic activity draws a certain kind of visitor and I’m sure it’s a wonderful spot for the sports-minded.

Ah, but Yellow Springs is for downtime, for free-trade coffee at Dino’s or tea and vegan Twinkies at Brother Bears. Lively street conversations with thoughtful people who care about important, and not so important, matters. Wine tasting and live music at the Emporium. Dining al fresco at Peaches or Ye Olde Trail Tavern. Dancing in the streets when you least expect it. Art galleries and artisan shops from pottery to jewelry to fabric design. Buskers of all sorts. Friendly folks. Leisurely hiking at Glen Helen Nature Preserve, biking the Little Miami Trail, or just strolling the beautiful tree-lined streets, enjoying the fabulous gardens and homesteads which dot the town.

How can our intrepid judges, TravelingJules and TravelingJoan, be expected to compare two such diverse locations?

And as always, my thoughts return to writing. As a writers friend pointed out in her blog bemoaning the comments she received on a 250-word contest entry, “…many of those responding neither read nor write in the genre of my story… Some things are genre specific, what might work in one genre, may very well be the undoing in another.” How can readers objectively compare chick lit and sci-fi? Fantasy and cozy mysteries?

The simple answer is, they can’t, any more than Yellow Springs can stand up against Myrtle Beach. A story can be judged on its tone, character development, continuity, narratives, and mechanics. But comparisons? “To compare is not to prove,” says an old proverb. Often based on a false dichotomy, comparisons divide, set friend against friend, brother against brother, and writer against writer.

I need to remember that the next time I read of an author simultaneously churning out titles in three different series while I struggle with juggling a novel, an essay, and a short story or two.

I hope TravelingJules and TravelingJoan remember that as well, and enjoy Yellow Springs to its fullest without the added burden of unequal comparisons.

Our new life

The waiting is over. The change has evolved to reality. The house is ours (and the banks, of course) and we are ‘Springers.’ Yellow Springs, that is, not Jerry’s dysfunctional crew. Although we’ve officially been in residence for just over a month, there are still mornings when I wake up wondering where I am, only to be awestruck at the beautiful surroundings that are now our home.

We’re still working out the kinks, trying to decipher the mysteries of the multiple filters needed for the water softener, reverse osmosis system, furnace, and learning to set aside a shared fear of really tall ladders in order to wash the seventeen-foot high clerestory windows which run the length of the house. Drywall, massive amounts of gardening, screen repair…the list is never-ending, but it is satisfying.

The dogs have adjusted well. Barkley patrols the backyard, getting lost in the vegetation so that often all we can see is his stubby tail, wagging furiously at the wonderful smells. Chi is more content to lie on the deck and watch the hummingbirds and butterflies, with an occasional roll in the sun-drenched grass. Sadly, we lost our cat Reese just two weeks after the move. At nearly twenty years of age, and with increasing physical issues finally slowing her down it was time. She died curled on the loveseat with me, dogs at my feet. The many memories of her years with us, from birth to death, and her ashes scattered in the backyard keep Reese with us forever.

Biking the almost seven miles to his office every day has Geo well on his way to fit and trim. I am constantly thrilled at being able to walk the short couple of blocks downtown to the grocery, drug store, a real hardware, the post office – and so much more. Yellow Springs is good for us. We’re entertaining old friends, and making new ones. I hope to be able to give back to our new community soon as well, as I search for just the right fit among the many volunteer opportunities available.

And now that I have completed my life in academia (for now) with a master’s degree from the final class at Antioch University McGregor (reborn as Antioch Midwest), I am writing for writing’s sake instead of to meet the requirements of a syllabus. Not as much as I would like, not yet, but it’s gradually becoming a larger part of my daily life as I’d always hoped. An agent from July’s Antioch Writers Workshop is reviewing my first novel; I’ll probably only get a critique, but that’s a terrific start. While I’m waiting (not so patiently, I confess) for her comments, I’m revising and editing novel number two. I’ve also had two more book reviews (Remembering Our Childhood and Student’s Guide to the History and Philosophy of Yoga) and a short story accepted for publication, and have several more pieces out for consideration. I’m working with not one but two writers groups, after years of solitary labor, and the support and encouragement offered is immensely gratifying.

So that’s my life these days, in a brief summary that can’t do justice to the joy and gratitude contained in every hour. Now it’s back to revisions, and submissions, and searching for new projects.

Maybe I’ll take a walk in the garden first…

Antioch naming debate

Much ado is filling my social network these days from Antioch University McGregor alums who are less than pleased with the proposed school name change to Antioch Mid-West. At the risk of alienating those people, all of whom I admire greatly and respect implicitly, I believe the first skirmishes in the battle they seek to wage were lost many years ago, when Antioch College formed what was then the graduate level McGregor School focused on business and management. The name change and mindset shift were set in motion at that time.

As I often do when beginning research on an unfamiliar topic, I turned to the oft-derided Wikipedia as a starting point and found this on Douglas McGregor, for whom the school was named: “management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954. He also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices. In the book he identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authoritative, direction and control or integration and self-control... In the 1970s, the McGregor school, a graduate level business school, was founded by Antioch College in his honor.”

Doesn’t sound much like the Horace Mann ideals espoused by Antioch which led many of us to the school in the first place, does it? I did not come to Yellow Springs, to Antioch, to follow the teachings of Douglas McGregor. As is obvious by my need to Google the name, even after four years as a student at AUM I knew very little about him. I’ve learned more since then, thanks to the wisdom of an AUM professor, and I have come to appreciate Douglas McGregor’s neglected philosophy with its “emphasis on community and the processes for eliciting effective participation.”

Initially, however, I was drawn by the reputation of Antioch, and of Mann. Again turning to Wikipedia: “Antioch College continues to operate in accordance with the egalitarian and humanitarian values of Horace Mann. A monument including his statue stands in lands belonging to the college in Yellow Springs, Ohio with his quote and college motto "Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Humanity.” That is my beacon and my anchor.

As long as the university remains “Antioch,” I am not too concerned with the tag lines that come after - at least at this point! I am an Antiochian. Some at the college may not agree, preferring to cling to that title as exclusively for their students, but that tradition is what brought me here, and that is the bond we share. In early 2008, in response to a debate circulating on campus over claims to that moniker, I wrote, in part: “In my humble opinion, an Antiochian is a seeker of truth, one who is not afraid to question authority at any level, and one who admits the limits of their own knowledge and learning. An Antiochian is at this university to learn and to grow and to be exposed to new thoughts and ideas, not to be further indoctrinated in those beliefs society has deemed acceptable.” My opinion in that regard has not changed, and it is not dependent on the “McGregor” or “Mid-West” surname.

During my tenure in the undergraduate completion program, many of us in the World Classics Curriculum groused over the move to the new AUM building. We lost many of the traditions held dear by Classicans for nearly twenty years – meeting under the majestic trees on main campus to debate the philosophical topics of the day, a rousing graduation march through the winding paths tooting on kazoos and singing rowdy songs – but as one of the many wise instructors in that amazing program noted, the move from main campus was the time for us to begin new traditions, to decide what was important to pass on to the next group fortunate enough, and brave enough, to be called Classicans. That creation of tradition, of carrying on the tenets we share into modernized forms that can overcome the materialistic world that threatens to overrun such seemingly quaint notions, is more important to me than any name the powers-that-be decide to add after our beloved “Antioch.”

I am far more concerned with the decline of the Classics program, with the loss of that unique and powerful curriculum which was literally life-changing for me. Its dedicated professors struggle to reshape it into something that still has a place in evolving university structure. I would rather expend my energies helping them make that transition than fight over a name. “A rose by any other…”

To my dear alums and colleagues, my fellow Classicans, I salute your passionate response to yet another assault on the Antioch tradition. I respect, and in large part share, your disappointment. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a parent, it’s to pick your battles. This one cannot be mine.