Click on It

An unexpected yet interesting portion of the Knight reunion was meeting a couple of Fellows who were yet to go through the fellowship year. One of them, Krissy Clark, talked to the group about her upcoming project regarding "geomapping." It's basically linking information about places so you can get not only the factual information about a locale, but personal histories and insights as well. I love the idea of tying in the emotional and human ties to a place; usually we're so caught up in the statistics that we forget a place has a life partly because of the lives around it.

The concept reminded me of a reading I heard by Jorie Graham where she discussed her obsession with imagining a literal timeline of a place. That when she sits in one given spot, she tries to imagine what happened in that exact spot five minutes ago. Or five years, or 50 years, or 500 years or even 5,000 years ago. As I sit on my couch writing this I think about gold miners and loggers, Native Americans, Spaniards and even bears and salmon that may have existed in this very spot. Journalists are very concerned with storytelling. The milestones of our lives are often richer stories because of the unusual links we attach to them. I like thinking about those attachments through voice or time. I like thinking that a journalist would remember this, too.

Good luck, Krissy-I'm excited to see how your project rounds out!

What's Behind Door #3?

The second day of reunion sessions was informational yet surprisingly fun and amusing. Luis Fraga, a former professor at Stanford who now works at the University of Washington, spoke on race relations-specifically about our country's readiness for candidates like Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor. In addition to his position as a political science professor, he is also Director of the Diversity Research Institute on campus.

Some of the assertions he made based on his extensive research was unnerving, such as slavery's importance to the way our nation is shaped today. (Probably true, but our presuppositions about even talking about slavery in other terms besides 'horrific' and 'wrong' are difficult to wade through) His candidness paired with a lively sense of humor made the presentation fascinating yet easy to stick to. A Powerpoint presentation can be stimulating (though some people may doubt that) and Fraga's ability to engage with the audience on a tough topic helped move his visuals along nicely. He is intelligent, charming and definitely someone we need right now. The race issue is so huge, so intimidating, so powerful--I'm glad to have someone of his abilities on the front lines to help us make sense of it all.

The second presentation was given by Baba Shiv, a professor with the Graduate School of Business. His talk, entitled, "The Frinky Science of the Human Mind" delved into how emotions influence our decision making. Most of us came away from his discussion with this in mind: Arranged marriage is the way to go.

Shiv has done research on "simultaneous" decision-making vs. "sequential" decision-making. And guess what? Turn out that more people were satisfied with their choice when they had all of the options in front of them, decided and moved on with their lives. So, if you have three potential mates, for example, you'd be better off choosing one of them, marrying them and moving on to whatever else you need to decide upon, like paint colors for your newly shared apartment. But those people who date one person at a time are more likely to have unresolved issues with their choice-perhaps thinking that the next candidate will be better.

Unfortunately for most of us, we tend to engage with potential significant others on a one-to-one basis. We date one person, that works or doesn't, and we go on to date another person. Maybe our ancestors had the right idea. The yenta, the matchmaker. And now the girlfriend who hosts the cast-off party or even speed dating--maybe we should decide on our life partner the same way we would the fish at the fish market: Line 'em all up and see which one is the least stinky.

But for me, what's at the crux of all this is the choosing part. It's interesting to think about the energy we put into our choices, from a potential partner to a pair of pants. I think of the line from "Soak Up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow, "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got." And if my life partner is reading this somewhere, don't worry--after all these years, I still want and choose you. :)

Rodin and the '78s

Friday evening's reception took place at the Rodin Sculpture Garden at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. Among the sculptures displayed are The Three Shades, Adam, Eve and The Gates of Hell.

During our fellowship year we spent a lot time in the sculpture garden. Granted, lots of people spend time in front of The Gates of Hell pondering each small figure and what they represent. Others run to the library to grab Dante's Inferno. For me, it was the idea that world-renowned artworks could be present on a college campus. My college, UC Davis, had artwork, but I do not recall a Rodin on premises. Let alone an entire sculpture garden's worth.

In this gorgeous setting I gave Doug and myself a task: To meet Fellows we weren't acquainted with from other years. We were so pleased to be with our fellow Fellows that we'd ignored the other fantastic people gathered for the reunion. So we turned to a few older Fellows and chatted them up, discovering they were at Stanford in 1978. The only four people to attend from their year, they were lively, fun and engaging. One of them had a son who would be going to seminary school in Seattle, so he had a lot of questions for us about the area, which led to questions about faith and you can probably guess there was no lull in the conversation after that. The experience reinforced for us how special the Knight Fellowship year is-and how long those memories last.

A side note about the evening: Our dinner was catered by CoolEatz, the brainchild of Jesse Cool. As a group, our fellowship class toured her home and organic garden while she talked with us about her mission (Fresh, organically raised foods; compostable take-away containers and eating utensils; her water-saving toilets). Doug, Justine and I ate dinner at her Flea St. Cafe, which was amazing, though I could not tell you what we ate. This time our dinner consisted of a crazy-delicious cold pea soup with mint and herb-crusted halibut. I know there was a dessert, but I can't remember what it was. I could have eaten three more bowls of that soup.

Tweet me? Tweet you!

I walked into the first session, "The Future of Journalism: Where We've Been, Where We're Going," about 20 minutes late. Leonard Downie, VP At Large with The Washington Post, was at the podium presenting.

It felt a lot like a laundry list of options for how papers could make it given the economy and transition journalism is going through. He talked about non-profit and low-profit possibilities. He talked about a lot of other stuff I'm sure, but I was distracted by the fact that he read from his printed speech at the podium. I wanted to be more involved with him and his presentation, but I could not see his entire face, as it was tilted downward toward his paper.

I decided to check in with technology. There had been a social networking session the previous day for pre-registrants who wanted info on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (Justine and Patricia had attended) and I wanted to see if anyone was posting. Turns out a couple of people were! I'd read postings "covering" events via Twitter, but I'd never been at the event being covered. It was a little surreal to hear the speaker then watch tweet post referring to the speaker by his @name. The '@' will be the new quotation mark. So bizarre.

After 'following' the other tweeters and looking up their professional info, it felt strange to connect with a journalist this way. We read stories, make connections to reporters through their bylines or columns and get a sense of their voices over time. 140 characters or less (usually with the speaker's @name and #hashmarks added so that means way less than 140 characters) doesn't give you a lot of time to hear the voice of the reporter. For one guy posting, he didn't even have his news organization posted on his profile. It really felt removed from journalism, and there are those who would argue for and against the idea that tweets are journalism, but I could appreciate that I was a member of an audience and through Twitter I could communicate with another member about what we're listening to in real time. In a minute or two I could post a comment about what was just said. Those in the room of 100-150 people who were following me via laptop or cellphone could get that comment, then turn around and respond, argue, refer or agree (and ReTweet!) with me. It was almost as good as leaning to my friend to whisper some comment, but this time I whispering it to the audience-and beyond.

Another perk to adding these communication tools to the sessions was connecting socially with other posters. I made professional connections online, then face-to-face connections when I sought them out afterwards. See that, journalism? We're transitioning, and it's not all bad.

Reunited And It Feels So Good

As we drove around Palo Alto, I asked Emma if she remembered any of what we were seeing. She didn't but promised to let us know when she recognized something. Turning onto Palm Drive she exclaimed with excitement from the back seat, "Mom!! I remember this!" Her little voice sounded out exactly what Doug and I were feeling: Everything took us back to our time here, to our dynamic experience at Stanford.

Our first event of the Knight Fellowships Reunion was a reception and dinner at the Old Union on the Stanford campus. The Union was under construction during our fellowship year, so it was fun to see the completed courtyard, complete with fountain.

Not only did we get to see fellow Fellows from our year (about 12 of us), but fellows from other years that we knew from Seattle. The sun was shining, the kids could run around and Doug and I got to reconnect with kindred spirits.