Sitting in the Frankfurt airport, waiting for my flight back to Helsinki after what has been a pretty remarkable week in Ireland and Austria, I’m feeling deeply grateful for the incredible opportunity Fulbright has provided me: Not only have I been able to delve deeply into Finnish culture over the last few months, but, through the Fulbright travel award program, I’ve had glimpses into other places and cultures as well, met new people and shared my work with new audiences.
Thursday and Friday last week Benjamin accompanied me to Cork, Ireland, where I was co-hosted by Cliona O’Carroll, research director of the Cork Folklore Project and Martin Galvin, who oversees civic and community engagement initiatives at University College Cork. We spent the first day visiting the Cork Folklore Project, on Cork’s working class North side. The project’s Outreach Hub is a large room like a social hall in a church—in fact, it is a social hall in a church. The walls are covered with banners from an exhibit about “The Orthopaedic,” a local hospital that had closed down and about which they had recorded interviews and produced a book. The room was dominated by The Memory Wall, a large display with screens on which you could choose snippets of interviews to listen to on headphones. We spent several hours learning about their work, their wonderful successes, and their financial challenges. I was particularly impressed by a young temporary employee’s energetic and creative presentation of the fabulous workshops he runs for elementary schools. In one, he tells the youngsters that they are going to “produce a movie” about childhood in Cork. Each team of students is responsible for listening to one oral history clip about an aspect of childhood, and then, using props he gives them like a bicycle or game pieces, acting it out. He is the “producer” and their teacher is the narrator. In another they played a version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in which he asked them questions about Cork history and if they couldn’t answer, their “lifeline” was to listen to a snippet of an oral history interview. I could see why Cliona was distressed at their inability to hire him on a permanent basis! The project is developing new cooperative projects with the Health Services Executive (HSE), which is funding interviews about another local health clinic as well as other creative endeavors.
The next day I visited the university, where I talked at length with Martin and Cliona (in a fabulous old room in the tower of the main university building, about the work of the Southern Oral History Program and various models for civic engagement work using oral history. Martin explained the exciting projects going on at the University, and also some of the challenges they face trying to do interdisciplinary civic engagement work in the Irish educational context. I also learned a great deal about Martin’s earlier life in Philadelphia, where he had run an innovative school for children from around the University of Pennsylvania, completely focused on training the youngsters to be advocates for their community especially concerning health. For instance, they had learned how to use statistics and computers to layer maps showing the location of McDonalds in the area and the incidence of diabetes. Years later, although the school is gone, some projects they started, such as fruit and vegetable carts from which the youngsters sell produce grown in local community gardens to families after school, carry on.
That afternoon I gave a public presentation about the Stories to Save Lives project of the Southern Oral History Program, in which we are interviewing people across North Carolina about their experiences with health, illness and medical care. The audience included academics from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, students, and a woman from the HSE. I talked with her afterward and was particularly pleased by how my talk had deepened her enthusiasm for the collaboration with the Cork Folklore Project. I left Cork impressed by the dedication of the creative people I met and the potential for the university to make more and more of an impact in its home town.
After a couple of days sightseeing in Dublin with Benjamin (who then headed back to Helsinki), I boarded a plane for Vienna Sunday evening. A too-tight transfer in Frankfurt due to a flight delay meant I had to run what felt like miles through the huge airport and then arrived in Vienna after midnight without my baggage. Somewhat distressed given the neurotic energy I had invested in what to wear over the next few days, I nevertheless felt pampered by the fully-stocked toiletries kit and soft t-shirt to sleep in provided by the kindly woman at Lufthansa airline, and my gorgeous hotel room complete with chocolates on the bed, thanks to my host, the U.S. Embassy.
Monday morning Roland Fuchs, the Embassy’s Cultural Specialist and my host and guide extraordinaire for the next two days, met me in the lobby and we launched headlong into a packed agenda. He took me first to the Embassy, where I had to give up my computer and phone (no pictures!), and ushered me in to the impressive building. I felt rather rumpled in my day-old clothes but hoped I was presentable enough. There I met Public Affairs Officer Daniel Mattern, whose ID, I immediately noticed, was attached to a Carolina blue UNC lanyard. We chatted about campus and the Tar Heels, and then he took me upstairs to meet Ambassador Trevor Traina. Ambassador Traina graciously talked with me for a bit and listened as I explained the SOHP’s new project on healthcare.
From there, Roland whisked me by taxi to the Carl Renner Institute, a think tank affiliated with the Socialist Democratic party. I was greeted by a friendly and enthusiastic room full of women policy analysts, politicians, and organizers who lunched on soup and sandwiches while I presented a talk about my forthcoming book, Speaking of Feminism: Today’s Activists on the Past, Present and Future of the U.S. Women’s Movement. I was thrilled by their positive response and their requests to know when the book would be available in Europe.
Roland kindly procured me some granola bars, since I’d been unable to eat and talk at the same time, and we went on to the Amerika Haus. There I presented my talk to a group of female high school teachers (one of them asked “Where are the men?”) and we had a good discussion about teaching women’s history and feminism to young people.
I had a brief break from 4:00-5:30 p.m., during which I wandered through one of the nearby “Easter Markets,” marveling at the hundreds of delicately hand-painted Easter eggs for sale, along with boughs of pussy willows, gifts, and chocolates. Back at the hotel my baggage had arrived, so I was able to change my clothes before the final event of the evening, a public talk to a large crowd at the Amerika Haus. The energetic discussion, the front row filled with teenagers brought by one of the teachers from earlier in the day, the excited young female scholars, and the enthusiastic response from older women in the crowd all meant that I headed back to the hotel feeling delighted and energized despite the long day.
Unfortunately, the evening took a bad turn when I tripped on a cobblestone in the dark and fell to the ground, hitting my head on the sidewalk. Painful as that was, the worst part was the two different women who saw me fall and walked past me without even stopping to ask if I was ok. Luckily I was ok, and was able walk back to the hotel, where an old friend, Matthias Bernold, was meeting me for dinner. The reception desk attendant asked the bartender for some ice, and Mattias made me sit in the lobby holding it to my face while we talked. After a while, when we were both sure that I didn’t have a concussion and was basically fine, we left to go get a bite to eat, some ibuprofen, and a quick view of the sights.
The next day, after covering my bruises with makeup, I met Roland in the lobby again and we set off for another round of talks at two different high schools, a radio interview, and finally a two-hour road trip up through beautiful countryside to Linz, a small city along the Danube river. After dinner by the river, I talked to a friendly group at a local teachers’ college. My talk was co-sponsored by the Austrian-American Society, whose members gave me an original Linzer torte as a thank you gift. While an Embassy driver chauffeured us to and from Linz, I enjoyed chatting with Roland and learning about Austrian cultural institutions, family life (hiring babysitters is not really something Austrian couples do!), and work at the Embassy. Returning back to the hotel around 11 p.m., I collapsed into bed, tired but proud that I’d made it through.
As I head back to Helsinki, I am wishing I’d had more time to explore the beautiful city of Vienna, and am adding the Alps to my list of places I’d like to visit. But mostly I am marveling at the wide variety of people I had the pleasure of meeting in two different countries, and feeling grateful for all the warm welcomes, and for the eagerness with which they wanted to learn about the SOHP’s project on health, about oral history in general, and about feminist activism in the United States.