Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Photo taken by author at Fiestas, 2012.

The last post ended with the idea that Truth or Consequences is a "familiar place," to me, a hometown of sorts. A hometown is a whole lot of who people are. There is a story in the New Testament, in Mark, about Jesus going to his hometown. I read as the liturgist a few weeks ago. It was interesting.

Mark 6:1-6. "Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. 'Where did this man get these things?' they asked. 'What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, 'Only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own house is a prophet without honour.' He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith."

I think this brings the tension between the nostalgic warm fuzzy idea of a hometown, especially a small town, up against the idea that our most familiar places can be hard places. Testing places. Even for the son of God. "But, you know," says Jim Carrey,  "you can't be a star at home." Jesus would have understood. Elvis said that "more than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me." 

There are reasons people leave their homes and hometowns. There are reasons they come back. There are reasons they stay. It is the home part of the hometown that carries the weight. Some two thousand years ago Pliny the Elder, a Roman naval commander, philosopher and naturalist, is said to have coined the phrase "home is where the heart is." T. S. Eliot wrote that "home is where one starts from." Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame, said that home "is the nicest word there is.” George Augustus Moore said that a “man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” And Robert Frost wrote that "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." 

It is hard finding a good quote about home being a hard place, except another by Wilder that said there "is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.” I was hoping David Sedaris would have something really funny to say about home being the place where they rip the heart right out of you, and if you are lucky they graft it back, and then you move back so you don't have to explain the scars. Striving to be fair and balanced, in the face of overwhelming sentiments that favor home as the keeper of all that is good, is not easy. But there is something to this idea that when we talk about where we are from, we are also talking about who we are, and we tend to focus on the better parts of our places and selves.  

It is an undeniable fate that homes, and by extension hometowns, leave indelible marks on people. How can communities make sure they are writing good stories? The narratives we write about places, and how we go about making places are the central considerations of my dissertation. A huge part of my research is looking at the people 'writing' place narratives and making places and talking to them.  We all do this to some extent, but some people do a lot more. I was lucky in my first real interview to talk to one of these people. 

My first formal interview was with a local leader and mentor to many.We spend four hours talking at Bar-B-Que on Broadway. People light up when they see him. He is the sort of person you want in your hometown, a decent guy who cares in both a general way and very specifically. He keeps a great many commitments to the town even though he spends a good deal of his year away from home. We talk through through the breakfast rush and the lunch rush. When we leave Kathy tells us to come back when we "can't stay for so long," with a friendly smile. It was a good place to be on a Thursday in July. Every table is a portrait of why so many people want to be from small towns or live in one. Smiling, saying hello, laughing and sharing stories over great food. On the other hand every table could just as easy have been a perfect reason why some kid is dying to get away. There are a dozen people who remember you at 3 and 4 and 10 and 15, and remember most of the rotten things you did. And they love you anyway. You can feel teens shudder at the thought. There is no getting lost in this crowd. 

A lot of people know him. A lot of people love him. You can tell this pretty easily. He loves them back. This is pretty easy to see too. He moved to T or C the summer before the 4th grade. He went down to Las Cruces after he graduated from high school to get his teaching credentials at NMSU, focusing on History with  minor in English. He then got a Masters Degree in History at NMSU and spent some time teaching in El Paso, Juarez and Guadalajara . After a few years he came home for a spell to publish a consumer newsletter. This is when an intrepid and brilliant Sherry Fletcher called to ask if he would teach at the alternative high school. Ten years later, as the school closed its doors due to decreasing enrollment, He had picked up a PhD and was the school principle. He was also raising two sons.

There were a lot of really sharp things that He said about places, hometowns, and people. I asked if I could share of few of these in this post.The idea that came though in almost every answer to my questions about place and place making was connection. What it means to have connections to a place and the people there. How important these connections are to him and to creating good places no matter where he is. What it means to have these connections to home when we are far from home. He feels very connected to Truth or Consequences. People may know your business, he says, but that can keep you from falling through the cracks. Even when he is halfway around the world, he still knows what is going on in town. T or C is his home, he says, no matter where he is or what else he is doing. A good home connects us, generally to family, but also to other kinds of things, like security. A good hometown connects us to one another, but also to other kinds of things, like opportunities to link to the wider world.  

Big cities generally have a cultural advantage in this way. But small towns have an advantage too. We can create a sense of history through familiar landmarks, knowing people, working together. He remarks that there is not a lot of formality in the town. People are pretty open and friendly, even people you don't know, or don't know yet. Korean's, he tells me, don't wave. Although he does have a couple of guards he sees daily into the happy habit of waving these days, a story about being open and friendly that nicely illustrates his personality. He is currently the MHS Academic Affairs Director at the SMIC Private School in Shanghai, China. The rest of the day I notice how often people wave. 

He talks about how the T or C community has worked at creating a strong sense of history and a lively cultural scene through establishing a historic district, holding yearly festivals, bringing in exhibits and speakers and other activities. He brings up the Smithsonian Museum’s traveling exhibit New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music that came to the Geronimo Springs Museum in April. He is animated as he talks about making things happen with volunteers. He still sits on the Board for the 4th Street Computer Lab and attends meetings from China via Skype. A sense of history and place connections run strongly through T or C, he says. He brings up his ten year high school reunion, where people like me, who lived in the area when they were young, came back because they still felt these connections to this place. 

There are problems, and he talks about these with the same passion and knowledge. There is crushing poverty and a lack of opportunity. There are not enough chances for kids to see the value of education. There are fears of changing and developing, of turning into a place where families of young kids and older folks on fixed incomes are not priorities. The backbone of the town is volunteers, and while this model can makes deep connections and can turn out a fine fiesta, it cannot be the only way community needs are met. There are a basic services that need to be in place for a place to prosper. It's hard to get ahead, and hard to stay afloat. This is true in places all over, but especially true in rural New Mexico. People may know your business, and may try to keep you from falling through the cracks, but sometimes the need create chasms. Support networks can be fragile, especially if they are entirely dependent on volunteers. 

We create high expectations for kids, he says, but we have to have examples of success to show them as well. To this end, one of the best things communities can do to create success is to have vision and to have leaders who have a sense of vision. Celebrating and recognizing history is key to creating a sense of place he remarks, but learning to see the possibilities in the world means having other models and experiences too. He talks about his travels and seeing the world, which he has done extensively. I agree a that love for your own place can more easily take root when you have been to others. This love of home grows in other ways too, but there is something about distance and the heart growing fonder that is true.  

You have to have diversity He says, in people, in experience, and in economic opportunities. This is the richness of experience that renders your own places vivid. You bring back this richness when you have gone away.  But what we take with us, he says, is home grown. He wraps up our interview with a story of how his home grown experience and connections impacted the life of a Chinese friend and graduate student in Korea. Through his mentoring, this friend wrote a thesis and finished his degree. We are always influences by our place and the people in our hometown, and what we learn there. This extends far out into the world he says. It translates from here to other places, and to the communities we make and choose. These connections are what hold us together no matter where we are. The world seems very small when he tells this story. Not stifling small, but small in the sense that you cannot get too lost, because all roads lead home.   

    

What Am I Doing?: Part II

An ethnography seeks to describe all or part of the culture or life of a person, or a community, by identifying and describing the practices or beliefs of that person or community.

Anti-Defamation League

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

Zora Neale Hurston, in Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942

Zora Neale Hurston (1/7/1891-1/28/1960) was an anthropologist, ethnographer, author and American folklorist. She published dozens upon dozens of essay, short stories and plays. She was a beautifully evocative, sharp, funny and lyrical writer. In the late 1920s she drove her car through the rural south as an anthropology student at Barnard, collecting African-American folklore. Mules and Men is the collection of the material and research about people and places she gathered in Florida. Her introduction talks about why she starts by going back to her old hometown to begin this work. I quote it generously below.

I am still figuring out who to answer the question everyone asks me about my work on Truth or Consequences. What are you doing here? Or there, depending on who is asking. I am still figuring this out honestly, despite the 20 page IRB application that I wrote up so the University would allow me to come to T or C to talk to people (see Part 1 of this post for more on my IRB). 

I want to talk to people mostly. This is basically what I am doing. I want to ask people what they think about the town, and what kinds of things they like about it, and what kinds of things they like to do. I want to know what people think that other people think about the town. I want to know about memories and activities and festivals. I want to know why people visit and why people stay. Really thinking about it on my drive home last week, after my second week of "fieldwork" and my first formal interview, I figured out that I want to know these things because I love the town. Truth or Consequences is not my hometown in some ways, but in other ways it is. I grew up in Albuquerque, but I also grew up in T or C. It is part of my "familiar ground."  The idea of familiar ground is something Hurston writes about as she sets off to do her fieldwork and research:  

Dr. Boas asked me where I wanted to work and I said, "Florida," and gave, as my big reason, that "Florida is a place that draws people, white people from all the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West." So I knew that it was possible for me to get cross section of the Negro South in the one state. And then I realized that I was new myself, so it looked sensible for me,choose familiar ground.

First place I aimed to stop to collect material was Eatonville, Florida.

And now, I'm going to tell you why I decided to go to my native village first. I didn't go back there so that the home could make admiration over me because I had been up North to college and come back with a diploma and a Chevrolet. I knew they were not going to pay either one of these I items too much mind. I was just Lucy Hurston's daughter, Zora and even if I had, to use one of our down home expressions,had a Kaiser baby, and that's something that hasn't been done in this Country yet, I'd still be just Zora to the neighbors. If I had exalted myself to impress the town, somebody would have sent me word in a matchbox that I had been up North there and had rubbed the hair off of my head against some college wall, and then come back there with a lot of form and fashion and outside show to the world. But they'd stand flatfooted and tell me that they didn't have me, neither my sham-polish, to study 'bout. And that would have been that.

I hurried back to Eatonville because I knew that the town was full of material and that I could get it without hurt, harm or danger. As early as I could remember it was the habit of the men folks particularly to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. Even the women folks would stop and break a breath with them at times. As a child when I was sent down to Joe Clarke's store, I'd drag out my leaving as long as possible in order to hear more.

Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually underprivileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, "Get out of here!" We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn't know what he is missing. The Indian resists curiosity by a stony silence. The Negro offers a feather bed resistance, that is, we let the probe enter, but it never comes out. It gets smothered under a lot of laughter and pleasantries.

The theory behind our tactics: "The white man is always trying to know into somebody else's business. All right, I'll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle. He can read my writing but he sho' can't read my mind. I'll put this play toy in his hand, and he will seize it and go away. Then I'll say my say and sing my song."

I knew that I was going to have some hindrance among strangers. But here in Eatonville I knew everybody was going to help me. So below Palatka I began to feel eager to be there and I kicked the little Chevrolet right along...

  

I know I will have some hindrances too, many of my own making. There will probably be a good number of people who won’t feel much need to talk to me. Trying to know someone else’s business is a treacherous thing. I have year to convince people of my good intentions. Good intentions can be treacherous too, so I will watch this. But I know I am in the right place, a familiar pace. Already there are a lot of people who are helping me. I am eager to be here in Truth or Consequences. I will, if I do this thing well, convince people that my business here is good business, and what I am doing, poking and prying with a purpose, is worth doing. 

What Am I Doing? IRBs, Protocols and Methods

It is common sense to take a method and try it.
If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
But above all, try something.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

What am I doing? 

Why am I doing this? 

How am I doing this? 

Where am I doing this? 

When am I doing this? 

Who am I doing this with? 

These are more or less the basic questions in research. They are also pretty good philosophical questions too, but the point of answering these questions in research is to narrow your gaze, not widen it. I am a fan of big sweeping ideas, gestures and interests generally. Having many interests is good, but not so much when trying to figure out a good research question. The goal of a research plan is to be as clear and concise as  possible. Each of the how, when, why questions should be answered. It might be basic, but it is tough. 

Yesterday I cut and pasted a brief excerpt from my Institutional Review Board Protocol in my introduction post. I promised to explain what I was doing more thoroughly. I spent the last several months struggling to put together a good IRB in order to come to Truth or Consequences and talk to people about place. I will start with a little on the IRB, talk a little bit about my method, which I will take from my IRB application, and end with some brief answers to the questions above. There are always "special" words that anyone who learns something new eventually gets to use to sound smart! I will try to define them when they come up. If I fail to be clear please send me a comment. A protocol, for example, is a detailed plan of your study.

What is an IRB?

 Members of the Tuskegee Study

The following is lifted from the New Hanover Regional Medical Center Website: www.nhhn.org

 

An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is charged with protecting the rights and welfare of people involved in research.  The IRB reviews plans for research involving human subjects.  Institutions that accept research funding from the federal government must have an IRB to review all research involving human subjects (even if a given research project does not involve federal funds).  The Food and Drug Administration and the Office of Protection from Research Risks (part of the National Institutes of Health) set the guidelines and regulations governing human subjects research and IRBs.

The definition of research involving human subjects is broad.  The IRB must review research that involves the following areas, among others:

    Medical and administrative record data.

    Research that uses leftover tissues.

    Health services research.

    Survey research.

    Behavioral research.

    Biomedical and other clinical research.

Why Does an IRB Review and Approve Research?

Review of research involving human subjects is required by federal law.  Federal laws and regulations regarding research on human subjects have specific requirements for IRB and study administration.

Questions of human experimentation and ethics in scientific research came to the foreground after WWII. Human experimentation and torture of prisoners in concentration camps emerged during the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trials were military tribunals held after the war to prosecute German military and political leaders. One result was the ban of human experimentation under International Law. The atomic bomb also influenced the perception that science and technology would move the modern world into a brighter future. This is a sweeping and broad history, but it impacts my own preparation for this small place study. In the United States, federal requirement for review of research by human subjects committee stems directly from experiences in the Tuskegee Study.  The Tuskegee Study was a federally funded study.  In it, a large number of poor African-American men with syphilis were studied for several decades to determine the natural history of untreated syphilis.  The diagnosis of syphilis was made before treatments for syphilis were available.  But the men were not offered treatment with penicillin even after it became available.  Worse, the men were not told they were subjects in a research study.  Many men in the study died of the complications of syphilis.

When this breach of ethics became publicly known in the middle of the 1970s, the federal government decided to put in place legal requirements for an external process for review and approval of research done using federal funds.  The federal government also decided to require that all institutions accepting federal research funds review all research done in that institution by the same procedures.

Federal regulations define “research” as:

A systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.

SUMMARY: Institutional Review Boards are in place to make provide research oversight. There have been a whole lot of evil scientists (and others) that have done atrocious things in the name of "knowledge." Its a complex history that is long and gruesome. In order to do research involving "human subjects" (I prefer participants myself)  means going through the University IRB. I wanted to talk to people and ask them what they thought about places. This is certainly not scientific research based on experimentation, but there are still live human beings involved. Information on the UNM IRB can be found at http://hsc.unm.edu/som/research/hrrc/index.shtml.

Here are a few excerpts from my IRB application: 

A. State Purpose & Research Questions/Study Goals: 

The purpose of this research is to explore how place, place identity and place making practices are constructed. This exploration will take place in the field utilizing the methods and practices of place ethnographies (see B.1. below for a description of the methodology). The research conducted in Truth or Consequences will be the foundation for my final dissertation chapter. My dissertation, entitled Welcome to Truth or Consequences, Place and Place Making in Modern New Mexico, is a historical exploration of how place narratives and place making practices were shaped by ideas of modernity, progress and science from the turn of the 19th century to the present through a case study of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico and the larger region. In additional to these historical methods, my final chapter engages in place ethnography. Goals include contributing to place studies scholarship, theory and case studies, as well as local place histories and scholarship in the southern region of New Mexico.

B. Rationale: 1. Describe relationship of proposed study to previous investigations in the field, summarize those previous studies, including previous human, laboratory, and animal studies (describe existing knowledge):

My proposed research draws on a strong tradition of place ethnography at UNM, developed within the larger field of place and space studies and cultural landscape studies. Keith Basso's, former UNM professor of Anthropology, has been formative in the development of this methodology, especially in his book Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). Basso, working with Steven Feld, edited the book Senses of Place (1996) which was the result of a conference at the Santa Fe School for Advanced Research convened to explore the complex relationships between people to places. The research in this text explores how people live in, perceive, and invest with meaning the places they call home in an era where many places are increasingly seen as imperiled by the homogenizing and flattening forces of globalization. Place ethnographies, they say, seek to "locate the intricate strengths and fragilities that connect places to social imagination and practice, to memory and desire, to dwelling and movement ” (8). Place ethnography uses a multitude of traditional methods, such as interviews and observations, coupled with approaches such as empirical observations on public space use and policy analysis, phenomenological methods from architecture that seek to capture the experience of a place, and the elements of that experience, as well as photography and other documentation techniques. I also draw on the strong tradition of cultural landscape studies, a method and theory that also has a long tradition at UNM and in the surrounding area. As a method, cultural landscape documentation is a field-based method of recording the physical landscape and documenting the cultural groups and practices in the landscape. Renown scholar JB Jackson taught at UNM and began his magazine Landscapes here. Many of the leaders in the field of space and place studies such as Yi Fu Tuan were published by Jackson. Jackson's study of ordinary landscapes shifted the field from elite landscapes to our  everyday places. Scholars at UNM such as Sylvia Rodriguez, Jose Rivera, Chris Wilson and Arnold Valdez have a large body of scholarship and research that engages place ethnography, cultural landscape study and ethnography, especially in the study of acequia communities, both traditional and iconic places landscapes in New Mexico. I seek to engage and extend this method of research to explore Truth or Consequences, its inhabitants place making practices, the multiple place identities that exist there, and finally, the practices of everyday life, borrowing from philosopher Michael de Certeau, that shape its contemporary contours.

 2. Identify specific knowledge gaps which research is intended to fill (rationale for performing the research):

I am interested in contributing to the growing body of literature in space and place studies that looks to ground theories of place, place identity and place making in place-specific ethnographic research. The knowledge gap I am most interested in contributing scholarship to is the critical assessment of place narratives and the contrast and collusion of individual place narratives and other place narratives, such as those from cultural, political or other identifiable communities and interests within the town, as well as place narrative that originate from other sites and sources, such as newspaper accounts, or state generated promotional literature . The critical theoretical assessments of narratives of place looks to historic and contemporary narratives of place, such as those in service of historic preservation projects, revitalization or tourist/promotional literature, in order to examine how place operates to further particular understandings and agendas. This can include economic or material goals, for example, but can also include explorations of how place narrative function to establish cultural dominance or political goals.

 

DEFINITIONAL ASIDE: An ethnography come from the Greek ethnos, people, and graphy, writing. It is a method used in Anthropology that is based on field word. Basically, the idea is that a researcher goes into the "field," wherever the research is taking place, and tries to figure out the culture practices and patterns. These can be anything the role of food in ritual to the role of hairstyles at punk rock shows. 

C. Research Methodology & Procedures:

Place ethnography is my overarching methodological framework. The following approaches to data collection will be employed in my place ethnography. I draw these specific methods from a rich body of critical and historical approaches employed for qualitative data collection. I begin with cultural landscape documentation. This method draws from fieldwork and course work completed while fulfilling a graduate certificate program in Historic Preservation and Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning, where it is employed as a primary methodology of place exploration and assessment.

1. Cultural landscape documentation. As a method of documenting the physical and cultural landscape, cultural landscape documentation shares many of the methods of place ethnography, and is considered here to be a part of the methodological framework of place ethnography. Focused initially on the physical landscape and cultural use patterns, data collection is focused on field work and site sketching, and photo documentation of the physical and built environment, including visual analysis and interpretation of artifacts in the landscape, the setting and relationship of buildings, the movement of people and other things, such as animals and cars, through the landscape, and archival research on these elements. It also includes oral histories with a focus on use patterns both individually and community uses as recollected and in the present moment. Cultural landscape documentation seeks to capture the patterns of human shaping of the physical environment, and the ways in which the physical environment shapes cultural norms and patterns. There is an expectation in cultural landscape documentation of formal oral interviews with community residents, but also of residents and others encountered in the field. Field data is kept in a field book, including sketched and observations. A separate field book is maintained for oral interviews. Documentary photography is a central component.

2. Reflective Observation. Methods with which researchers watch, engage and contemplate in a research setting. As the foundation for qualitative research, skilled observation reveals a great deal of rich information. This is what ethnographer Clifford Geertz calls "thick description." Observation and participant observation, where a researcher engages in community and cultural place processes will be the foundation for my place ethnography.

3. Interviews: Individual/Group informal public place interviews, with options for anonymity. I plan on conducting a total of no more than 200 informal public place interviews of various community members. I am asking the same basic questions to individuals/groups (see attached informal and informal group interview questions) and concluding with the option of open-ended reflection on place, place identity and place making. All interviewees will be approached in the field. Although small group interviews may trigger performance, my populations will be primarily targeted at teens and others who congregate together. There are several reasons for this approach, especially for teens. Teens tend to be more talkative in groups, as per the performance issue mentioned. In addition, as a vulnerable population, I believe that group interviews will provide a safe space for sharing. I will ask for a signed permission consent form from parents. These interviews will be conducted in several locations. They are Ralph Edwards Park/Skate park, Sonic, The Youth Center, The Movie Theater, and other sites as yet to be discovered/determined. Youth will be identified through first name only. In addition to teens in public places, I will also seek to identify and engage other public place groups, from tourists to mothers to groups, like old guys, hanging out in front of the coffee shop. All interviews will follow the informal interview questions. Written consent forms will be required. I am asking similar place, place identity and place making questions, although more numerous, and concluding with the option of open-ended reflection on place, place identity and place making(see attached formal interview questions). I will also seek formal interviews from elected officials and community leaders, business members, artists, recently relocated retirees, tourists, elder and others can be identified as having something to say or do about the town or its development. All data will be kept in interview field books. Participants will be asked to sign the attached consent form. No recorded data could be used to identify individuals who wish to remain anonymous. Documentary and individual or group photograph will be taken if a consent form is signed.

4. Social Mapping. A final component of my data collection will be social mapping, the  documentation of relationships between groups, institutions, organizations and social structures, to help determine the relationship between people, things and places.

AND BACK TO OUR ORIGINAL QUESTIONS!

For those of you whose eyes have not glazed over, and are still with me, here are the answers to the questions I posed above!

What am I doing? 

I am doing a place study on Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico.  It is both a historical account from the turn of the 19th century to today, and a ethnographic study. My 'place ethnography' will be a field-based study of the town and its people. I want to know what people think about place, say about place, and what kinds of things they do to make places. 

Why am I doing this? 

I am interested in place: what we say about it, how we think about it, and what we do with it.

How am I doing this? 

I will be talking to people, and watching what they do.

Where am I doing this? 

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

When am I doing this? 

I will be in the field in the summer of 2012 through the summer of 2013. 

 

Who am I doing this with? 

Anyone who will talk to me, and everyone who I observe, unless they tell me to look away. 

What I want to do is write a good solid dissertation that says something interesting about a particular place in the world and the people who live, work, play and visit there. I will end this lengthy post with a naked baby picture of my daughter Emagen (and the top of my mom's head) taken last year on her first visit to Elephant Butte Lake. Just a nod to one of the reasons people keep trying to figure out the world in order, some of us hope. to to make it a little better. 

 

A Brief Introduction

Hello There! I am starting this blog as a part of my dissertation work. My dissertation, tentatively titled Welcome to Truth or Consequences: Place and Identity in Modern New Mexico, explores contemporary ideas about places from the turn of the 19th century to the present through a place ethnography of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. My purpose here is to create a on-line place where I can share some writing and research on the town in the next year as I do my field work. My ultimate goal is to be compelling, useful and lively enough to generate readers and feedback. 

My idea to write a dissertation on Truth or Consequences was the result of my interest in  ideas about places and region at the turn of the 19th century. How did we think about places? What did we say about places? How did we make places? By mid-century the advent of suburbia and the rise of automobile landscapes had transformed our cultural landscapes. In other respects, however, a lot remained the same. Old patterns of place and place making persisted. This is a fascinating history with a lot of tension in how places were imagined and enacted. I was  keen on doing my research in New Mexico's southern region, which compared to the north in New Mexico get very little scholarly attention. My dissertation will end with an exploration of how places across the region are trying to transform themselves at the turn of the current century. Historic preservation, tourism and other efforts are being promoted as traditional base industry struggles in a changing global economy. I am curious about the same kinds of questions about place narratives and identity, boosterism, politics, art, people and community. Truth or Consequences is, I believe, a perfect case study. 

I plan on writing five chapters that span the town's history set against larger regional and national trends. I am going to be spend a lot of time in Truth or Consequences in the next year to research Chapter 4, which is a place ethnography. Thus I will be in the "field," or the town itself, observing and talking to people. This is why I have created this blog. I will explain what a place ethnography is in my second post and talk a little more about my methods. This is a small excerpt from my Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol, (jargon which will also be explain in my second post):: The purpose of my study is to explore what people think about places and why they think about places in certain ways. My primary research focus is finding out what people think about Truth or Consequences as a place, identifying why they think about this particular place in these ways, and asking what people think about places in general. My secondary research focus considers how people engage in place making in public and shared places. My study goal is to identify shared elements and characteristics of what, how and why people consider place and engage in place making, and to unearth individual and shared narratives of place experience and memory. But more on that later. 

A little about me. I am a Ph.D candidate in the Department of American Studies at UNM. My research and teaching fields are Southwest Studies and Environment, Science and Technology (EST) Studies. I am also pursuing a graduate certificate in Historic Preservation and Regionalism through the School of Architecture and Planning. In general I study place and place making, place memory and place narratives, historic preservation, cultural landscapes, and tourism. I also focus on issues of sustainability, especially in the built environment, planning and design, technology, water and reclamation. I teach an introduction EST courses every semester, and a Southwest Critical Landscapes upper division course occasionally. I have a BA and MA in Government, both from NMSU. I taught at the College of SanaFe in Albuquerque for many years. Most recently I have worked with with Elmo Baca and the New Mexico MainStreet Program to create historic preservation and compliance resources. 

On a personal note, I was born and raised in New Mexico. My mom Barbara is an artist, and my dad Wayne Shrubsall is a semi-retired professor and banjo genus. My great grandparents on my mom's side, Ruth and Emmitt Isaacks, homesteaded in southern New Mexico in the late 1880s, and I have a deep love for the south of New Mexico. I lived in Las Cruces as a young child, returned for college, and worked there for a few years as an Americorps teacher and adjunct faculty at NMSU before moving back to Albuquerque. I grew up mostly in Albuquerque, although lived briefly in a few other places in northern New Mexico, including Algodones and Ojo Sarco, but my temperament is more suited to the sprawling beautiful south. I spent my formative 5th and 8th school years with my grandparents, Jean and Bob Berger, in Monticello, a village about 20 miles from Truth or Consequences, and went to elementary and middle school in T or C during this time. I have a lively 2 year old girl, Emagen, and live in Albuquerque's Old Town neighborhood with my partner Jeanmica Schultz, an irrigation contractor, and his 6 year old girl Bella. I am exuberant and excessively friendly, and although not the same kind of rowdy I was a few years ago, I am still pretty boisterous. My phone number is 505.917.9111, my school email is tberger@unm.edu, and you can find me on facebook under tita berger. Please contact me anytime.

I will end this first post with a few of my favorite lines on place, taken from a great poem by T.S. Eliot. I believe that poems have a way of making us sharply aware of ourselves and our places. I often use pieces of poems in my writing, to inspire me, and to make my own writing seem better than it is as I seek to inspire my small audiences.  

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our journeying

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

T. S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding V', from 'Four Quartets' 1942