Settled Enough to Do Things

The previous blog post ended with the beginning of the Freedom Summer 50th Conference, and that's where this one will pick up.

Except not actually. I realized that I should give a brief update update work. I know which communities I'm going to be working with this year, and when I'm going to be going to each!


View Klionsky 2014-2015 Communities in a larger map 

So. I'll be working with Dothan, AL; Shreveport, LA; Lynchburg, VA; Williamsburg, VA; San Antonio, TX; and Houston; TX. Quite a spread!. My travel dates are: 7/22-26; 8/6-9; 8/12-20--I'll be going to each of my communities, but also tagging along on some of the other fellows' visits for extra practice.


And now back to Mississippi and Freedom Summer. 

Bob Moses and Marian Edelman Wright spoke about contemporary challenges to civil rights at one of the conference's morning sessions.

SNCC co-founder Julian Bond, sitting a few rows ahead of me and probably texting someone really important. This was during the "roll-call" of Freedom Summer veterans, each of whom was given a minute (loosely defined) to say where s/he had worked doing freedom summer and what work s/he is doing now. Very cool to see that lots are still involved in civil rights, education, and equal-access work 50 years later! 

The conference was hosted at Tougaloo College, a historically black college just north of the Jackson city limits. The school is old--it was founded just after the Civil War--and I was a little surprised by how how similar the building interiors looked like the interiors of big high schools I've been too, rather than colleges. To be fair, I was only inside the large gym, where the plenary sessions were held, and what seems to be a lecture hall, there were no (built-in) chairs in the room and there was a built-in stage.
I was excited to stumble upon a fig tree on the campus! I'm pretty sure no one will mind if I check back every now and then to see if they're ripe... There's also a community garden run off the campus, and another at the park a couple blocks from my house. I've started going to the workdays and it's nice to spend some time outside getting a little dirty and eating fresh, crispy cucumbers!

When I first got to Mississippi, I noticed that there was an interesting-looking exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Art called This Light of Ours, a collection of photographs from Freedom Summer in 1964. I also remembered noticing that the cover article of the June Princeton Alumni Weekly was something about Mississippi and Freedom Summer. So I took a look, and it turned out that the article was about Matt Herron '53....who is not just a photographer who came down to Mississippi in 1964, but in fact one of the photographers whose work is in the This Light of Ours exhibit and moreover, is the curator of the exhibit! Many of the iconic photographs from that summer are his.
If Princeton taught me anything, it was to take full advantage of the alumni network. So the first thing I did when I made the connection was send Matt and email asking if, by chance, he'd be down in Mississippi (he now lives in California) for any of the Freedom Summer Conference. Of course he was coming--and invited me to join the gallery tour he was giving for other Freedom Summer veterans. 

You can see in the background of this photo one of Matt's most iconic and shocking series from that summer. (Click here for larger images.) Five-year-old Anthony Quinn's mother had told him not to let go of his American flag, whatever he did. In his words, "I was way more scared of my mama than I was of the policeman." (I hadn't realized the powerful symbolism of the American flag; holding one meant "we want the law to protect us, as Americans. The alternative was holding a Confederate flag.) The irony of the photo is apparent: the policeman trying so hard to grab Anthony's flag that he's nearly lifting the boy off the ground--in the background is another policeman holding a sign that says "no more police brutality" that he's obviously snatched from another protester. The arm reaching out in the center photo belongs to Dr. June Finer, who volunteered during Freedom Summer with the Medical Committee for Human Rights. Although she didn't know Anthony at the time, in the next photo you can see her comforting him after the two of them were arrested (Ye, they arrested a 5-year-old child).
Flash forward 50 years: Anthony Quinn is a lawyer in Atlanta, and somehow the conference organizers got in touch with him. This gathering was the first time Quinn and Finer actually saw/met/spoke to each other since!

Next up: some ways I've been spending my time:

I forgot to mention in my last post a third frustration besides my lost package and setting up the internet: I was disenfranchised! Many of you probably know that there was a hotly-contested senatorial (?) primary in Mississippi a few weeks ago. The incumbent Thad Cochran beat Chris McDaniel, though McDaniel is challenging the count still. I was fortunate my friend Teddy, who is working for the New York Times was sent down to cover the election, which means that Teddy was officially the first friend to visit me here in Jackson!
Anyway. The point is that when I came down in May, I asked to register to vote at the same time as I got my license. I was getting nervous when I hadn't gotten any confirmation of my registration so I called to check the status. Long story short, bureaucracy sucks and the DMV never sent my application to the Circuit Clerk, so I couldn't vote. I'm not convinced that it wasn't intentional....
These are the elevator doors in the Circuit Clerk's office, where I hand-delivered my voter application so that I'll be good to go for the general election in November. (Indeed, I received my voter card in the mail last week.)

The view from the office where I did some phone-banking for Planned Parenthood. They recently re-opened their offices in Jackson and Hattiesburg, MS. We were calling people asking for updated contact information, and I'm proud to say that one of my successful calls (updated info and interested in volunteering) was to a member of the state House of Representatives!

What could be more American than going to a (AAA) baseball game on July 3? Maybe getting to see fireworks afterward?! The Mississippi Braves are Atlanta's AAA team.

The Old House Depot is my kind of place! It's basically a warehouse of house stuff from homes and businesses--doors, window frames, mason jars, wooden chests, traffic lights, these big letters... They have a big party on July 4 with freshly-picked heirloom tomatoes! (And lots of other delicious things and a brass band, but the tomatoes were the best part.) I'd like to go back with my Real Camera sometime and take some nice photos there. 

The next few shots are from around the neighborhood.

They're very very tall, in case you can't tell.

Your eyes are not tricking you, that's a miniature horse! She lives in the neighborhood and belongs to the same folks who started the Rainbow Natural Grocery Coop back in the 1980s (not the Mississippi of most people's imaginations, eh?). Usually she's in her own yard/stable, but sometimes--like after the July 4th parade (which is why her mane is braided with r/w/b bows)--she wanders around other people's yards. 

Just some vines.

This was my perfect Sunday morning: porch swing with cheerios, a nectarine, NPR, and a breezy 75-ish degrees.

On Sunday afternoon, we went blueberry picking! Yum! The sweetest part of the deal is that we didn't pay for any of it. 

The woman who owns the trees (in Mississippi, blueberries grow on trees, not shrubs) has a system worked out where anyone can come pick for free. You give half of your pickings (well, half of the ones that make it into the bucket) to her for her to sell, and you keep the other half!

Pretty berries :)

(Photo by Arielle Nissenblatt). I think I came home with close to 7 pints! Yum yum yum.

Meanwhile, the lost package saga continues. I'll spare all the details, but suffice it to say that I have spent more hours on the phone with the United States Postal Service than any human being should ever have to spend on the phone with all government agencies combined. The most recent update is that my box of books is definitely at the--I kid you not--"Dead Letter Center"--in Atlanta. The name has officially been changed to "Mail Recovery Center" for many years (decades?), but everyone still refers to it as the DLC. But here's the deal-io. USPS auctions people's stuff off. Because most people don't go through the trouble of contacting them by any means possible as I've done. So they wind up with boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff--hundreds of lost Apple products, thousands of books, boxes and boxes of ownerless Lego sets. When I heard this I 1) freaked out that all my books were being sold and 2) decided that I was going to go down to one of these auctions and write a piece about it for the New Yorker. Just my luck: they stopped doing live auctions in favor of online ones a year ago. So now you can buy other people's belongings even more easily!

Well, wouldn't you know: I walked into work on Monday and was told there was a package waiting for me! I obviously freaked out, excited that my books had finally made it to Mississippi! What a letdown when I heard it wasn't a big box, but rather a small bubbler mailer. So I walked dejectedly to my desk and found this envelope! From the Atlanta Mail Recovery Center! "Woah. They're going to send me back one book at a time? Absurd but...I'll take it!" I open the package impatiently only to find... a copy of The Help that isn't even mine! Yes, that was one of the books in my lost box--good news, it means that the MRC has received at least one copy of my list of books and plea to return them. But it also means that they were like, "This is so great, this girl will be so happy that she's getting one of her books back, even if it isn't the exact copy that belonged to her!" Let me tell you, I was not happy.
I called USPS once more and finally was able to acquire an email address (which bounced. Thanks Twitter for helping me find a correct one.) and a fax number. The email address was a whole stupid mess because it turns out you can only submit this specific form via the internal employee Outlook system. So today at lunch I went to the post office, form in hand, and waited while they emailed it in for me. We shall see what happens!

The final post: Munich and Salzburg (cue "Sound of Music" songs)

The last few days in Prague were a whirlwind of taking tests (6), writing papers (4, including a 7-pager that I wrote in 3.5 hours. New record!), Seeing Things I Hadn't Seen Yet, packing, and eating blintzes for Shavuot. Then I headed off to the subway at 6am to catch a 7am bus to Munich (in Princeton, someone always offers to help me clunk my suitcase down the stairs to the NJTransit; not so in Prague, apparently). 

MUNICH/MITTENWALD:

One of the highlights of the afternoon of wandering around town with Michele was the middle-aged Bavarian man we met at the flea market of the City Museum: he started chatting with us, gave me two postcards, and upon learning that I'm from Chicago, said he'd been here once (the airport) on his way to Madison to visit his brother; apparently, he had a chance meeting with the then-governor, though his brother didn't believe him until the governor's secretary recognized him the next day! When we left, he gave us some enormous Bavarian radishes to eat. The City Museum is right near the Ohel Jakob Synagogue of the new Jewish Center Munich (their webpage is all in German), where we went for services. It was much nicer than the shul in Berlin, and although it was huge with not many people, felt like more people were singing along. Final count: on this trip, I went to services at nine synagogues in six cities (this doesn't include cities where I went to synagogues but not during service time). 

The weather report said that Saturday was going to be the only all-nice day the whole time I was in the area, so we booked a train ticket to Mittenwald, from where there are lots of hiking trails in the Alps! Yes, this is really how perfect it is up in the mountains. 

Even after leaving the area, we could hear the clanging of the bells around the necks of the sheep. 

"Good [morning] [plane] jumping [through] the moon."

Van Gogh! I think I tried to draw this painting in 5th grade art with Debbie.  Many of the museums have a special 1-euro entry fee on Sundays, so Michele and I seized the rainy day to check out the new and old art museums. 

After the museums, I went out in the drizzle to see part of the enormous Englischer Garten. This is the Monopteros, in the southern part of the park. I did a lot of walking and couldn't sit down on any of the benches since they were all wet, so I kept walking through the park, trying to figure out where I was, and eventually made my way out and onto one of the main streets again. 

I found him!

On my wanderings, I came upon Konnexion Balkon playing near the old and new town halls. I'm not really sure what they do, except that their newest CD is modern interpretations of classical music (ie: Pachelbel's Cannon) with modern lyrics/rap overlayed. And the cellist is really, really enthusiastic. And by enthusiastic I mean really weird. According to YouTube, though, they also do some pretty fancy and formal stuff. 

On my way to the subway, I spotted this piano in the middle of a square outside one of the university buildings; since no one was playing and the square was pretty unpopulated, I sat down for a few minutes to play J.D.'s Boogie Woogie, the only piece I remember well enough to play (part of) without music. [Also, that kid is awesome. And he's the only one I could find on Youtube who does the phrasing like I do.]

On Monday morning I did one of those Sandeman's Free Tours, and it was actually pretty good! Although I'd seen most of the buildings before, just from walking around, it was great to get a chance to learn what everything was. This is the New Town Hall, and apparently I'm lucky to have missed the glockenspiel display, because it's annoying; I saw the Prague one, though!

The ceiling of the Frauenkirche (Cathedral of our Lady) has a menorah on it; during WWII, the church helped save lots of Jewish ritual objects. As thanks, when the Church needed restoration work done, the Jewish community contributed a lot of money, and the Church put in a menorah as its symbol of gratitude. 

The Hofbräuhaus started as the royal brewery of Bavaria, but then the royal family decided it wasn't fair to keep the best beer away from the citizens... Now the beer hall is open to the public; while Hitler and the Nazis held the first party meeting there in 1920, the tour guide was quick to point out that this was far from the HQ of the Nazi party--they held meetings at many breweries and beerhouses (it's where you have meetings in Munich, apparently). 

Hitler also made speeches from the Feldherrnhalle, apparently, which is ironic because the lion on the left of this picture, with its mouth open and facing the government buildings, is meant to indicate that a people should be free to criticize and speak out against its government; the lion on the right, facing the church and with its mouth closed, symbolizes that no one should speak out against the church...

The Theatinerkirche is very strange, in that all of the ornamentation inside is white plaster, a big contrast to the fancy gold/etc. ornamentation that I've seen in most other ornate churches around Europe. It was built at the demand of the court priest, who chose the cathedral as his gift for successfully praying for a male heir to the throne of Ferdinand Maria; according to the tour guide, the priest wanted the king to be able to see the cathedral from the palace, as a constant reminder of "who's really in control around here." 

After the drizzle cleared up (every day seemed to have about 30 minutes of rain, followed by beautiful blue skies with lots of sun) Michele and I rode out to the Olympic village, and asked around until we found the apartment block where the 11 Israeli athletes were murdered in the 1972 Olympics. 

There was a concert going on near the main stadium of the Olympics. 

 SALZBURG:

First stop: the Mirabell Gardens, including the dwarf garden where part of the "Do Re Mi" scene from The Sound of Music takes place. 

This is looking down on  Kapitelplatz, the Residenz, and the Cathedral from the hike up to the Salzburg Fortress.

Somehow, they get away with charging lots and lots of money to get into the fortress, and fail to discriminate between those who want to see the museum/state rooms/etc. (not me) and those who just want to see the fortress itself and the view from the top (me). So instead of paying, I continued walking along the trails of the Mönchsberg Mountain above Salzburg, and found my way to this beautiful overlook. Some UWMadison grads did a whole photoshoot for me! 

In the very back you can see the Salzburg fortress; other notable buildings include the Kollegienkirche (closed for renovation), the Old and New Residenz, and the Cathedral (which greeted me with a choral concert when I stopped in!). 

Just weird. 

The Bavarians (and the tourists who the shops are targeting, I suppose) really like their traditional outfits. 

Serendipity led me to the Department of Jewish Cultural Studies (housed in the Old Residenz building) , where I asked someone to point out where the synagogue was. Unfortunately, it was closed so I couldn't see inside, but the Brazilian couple we met at services on Friday came to Munich because they were saying Kaddish and Salzburg doesn't have Shabbat services, apparently.

I think they love bragging about Mozart even more than Hyde Park loved bragging about Obama on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 (this is where Mozart was born). 

yum.

Mandatory Abby And All Her Stuff picture! Not sure how I ended up with the baby-pack on front, even though on the way to Prague I didn't have it and on the way back I had less stuff (gave all my sweaters and books to someone who was visiting from Princeton). And somehow the lady at the airport was very nice that my hiking backpack was way over the weight limit and told me "good luck" but let me get by without paying. 

It seemed fitting to end a semester in Europe with a beer on the way back home. 

And that just about wraps up the semester...Facebook photos will follow (eventually). Thanks for reading!

Vienna: art, music, books, palaces, and delicious dessert!

At 6 on Thursday evening, Gaby and I pulled out of the bus station at Florenc, in Prague. The ride was four hours, and we hopped on the Ubahn (subway) and found out hostel--a really funky, "eco-friendly" hostel with musical instruments out and gardens with huge backgammon and chess boards--really easily. 

FRIDAY:

On Friday we started by attempting to do a self-built walking tour of the Innerestadt based off of one we'd found online, but didn't really end up sticking to it. Instead, after seeing (the outside of) the famous Wiener Staatsoper (State Opera House), we went to see the galleries at the Albertina, where we saw Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Rembrandt, and some of the work of the surrealist Max Ernst...and more. Here's Monet's signature!

After lunch (I found myself staring face to face with an entire trout...), we headed  to Cafe Sacher, home of the original Sacher-torte. It was delicious, though definitely not the best chocolate cake I've had. DD, you've still got them beat with some of your creations, I think. 

Stephansdom at night. St. Stephen's Cathedral is the seat of the archbishop of  Vienna. We kind of stumbled upon it by accident; earlier in the day we'd seen the two towers poking through the sky and assumed it must be something significant. When we were walking around all of a sudden we found ourselves in Stephansplatz, the courtyard that surrounds the church. 

The roof of St. Stephen's Cathedral, during the day.

Inside St. Stephen's Cathedral; the stained glass was very bizarre here. It seemed like it wasn't actually stained glass, and instead the windows were clear glass covered in huge sheets of colored cellophane. The colored light coming through and bouncing off various surfaces was still beautiful, though!

On Friday night, Gaby and I went to services at the Stadttempel, the Central Synagogue in Vienna. We got there a bit late, unfortunately, but it was still enough time to enjoy the voice of Cantor Shmuel Barzilai. This photo is from the second-tier of the women's section. It makes a complete ellipse, and I walked around to behind the Ark, where you can neither see anyone else nor be seen by anyone, and just listened. I think it must be one of the focii of the ellipse, because from there it sounded as if the choir was right next to me.

We went to the home of one of the Chabad families for Shabbat dinner, which was wonderful. We got to see an entirely different neighborhood of Vienna, and to enjoy delicious food with a really nice family! On our way back to our hostel, we hopped on a tram and were pleased to find out that it dropped us off at the subway station we wanted to get on at.

SATURDAY:

This is the painted domed ceiling of the State Hall of the National Library. If the ceiling alone looks like this, just imagine the rest of the library! (I know, that's probably difficult, which is why I'm including the photo below).

The center "room" of the library. It's the largest one in Austria, and contains some 7.1 million volumes.  Princeton's Firestone Library has got it beat, though: 7.3 million volumes.

Yum, cheese spätzle with fried onions for lunch! I figured since I couldn't (wouldn't) eat the wienerschnitzel (who knew that "real" schnitzel is made with veal, not with chicken like it is in Israel!), I should ad least have something representative of typical Austrian cuisine. It was delicious, though a bit heavy.

The Imperial Silver Collection (Silberkammer) at the Hofburg Palace is impressive. I have never seen so many different sets of dishes or cutlery, even on the Crate & Barrel website! There are everyday silver place settings and dishes, pretty porcelain ones used by various monarchs on individual (or very infrequent) occasions, gilted sets...plus the large numbers of beautifully-embellished chamber pots. 

I'm assuming that this is where the guards of the Hofburg Palace used to stand, but now they're mostly for tourists who want to take pictures (ie: me and Gaby). Upon trying to get down from my perched position, I realized that my shoes were stuck in the teeth! 

As we left the complex of the Hofburg Palace, we saw these guys doing some incredible Rollerbade tricks.

When we left Peterskirche (St. Peter's Church) on Friday afternoon, we saw a sign advertising a free organ concert on Saturday night, so we made note and came back for it. The concert was for organ (obviously) played by Christopher Klöckl and french horn, played by R. Horvath.

If you look closely, at the center of the painting in the middle of the photo (which is above the altar at the front of the church), you can see the Tetragrammaton painted. Really not sure what it's doing there. (One of the other altars, in the smaller side chapels, also had Hebrew calligraphy painted, though neither Gaby nor I could figure out what it was [supposed to be] written.)

A video clip I took during Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

SUNDAY:

Our day on Sunday started with a leisurely walk around the border of the Ringstraße (that funny ß-thing is a double "s"), which I learned about in one of my classes in Prague. It turned out to be a good decision to save the Ringstraße, garden, and Schönbrunn palace tours for Sunday, because the weather was gorgeous! Our first stop was at the Burggarten imperial gardens. That's where the famous statue of Mozart is--he played for the court at age 6, and quickly became a celebrity--but also where this beautiful, blooming magnolia tree is. I was getting a bit jealous looking at everyone's pictures of campus in the springtime, so climbing this tree made me especially happy!

On Saturday we'd seen the top of the Rathaus (City Hall) from the Hofburg Palace, but didn't make it over there, so this was our first view of the immense building structure. I do have a picture of the entire building (ie: without it's noggin cut off), but this one is of me and Gaby together, and I figure you can imagine what the top part of the tower looks like. You never get a perfect shot when you ask strangers to take pictures, but that's okay. 

It was such a beautiful day out! For the first time the whole weekend, there was no threat of rain, and I was wishing I'd kept my Chacos on instead of chickening out and wearing sneakers in the morning. 

Looking down one of the hallways on the porch (for lack of a better word) of the Rathaus is kind of like looking down a hall of Holder Courtyard, no?

Hundertwasserhaus is a bit far from the rest of the things that one generally sees in Vienna, but it was definitely worth  going. It's a regular old apartment building where normal people live, except that it's designed by the funky painter-turned-architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. There's apparently a "Modern Art Toilet," but neither of us wanted to pay .6 euros to use it.

Johann Strauss, immortalized in the form of this kitschy statue in Stadtpark. There's also a statue of Schubert, among others, but we wanted to make sure we spent enough time at Schönbrunn Palace, so we walked quickly.  

We were impressed by the expanse of the Schönbrunn Palace when we approached it from the front, until we went around back and saw this view. Huge, beautiful (though without their usual spring flowers yet, apparently) laws leading up to a hill scattered with picnickers and sunbathers, atop of which stands the Gloriette.  Though it was a bit of a hike to get to the top, the view we got while picnicking (last picture in this post) was well worth it. 

Our lunch, mostly scavenged and saved from our huge breakfasts that we got at our hostel. Delicious chive bread, blueberry and apricot jam, Nutella, cream cheese, butter, and apples! Yum. It was hard to make ourselves get up from the sunny lawn and go inside to do the tour of the palace (essentially a sequel to Saturday's tour of the Hofburg Palace, complete with very similar audio guides, it turns out) because it was so beautiful out!

Before we went back down to the palace, I went all the way up to the Gloriette.  On my way down, I saw this woman teaching a bunch of kids how to make bubbles! (There's a whole series of these photos, which will appear on Facebook when I finally post pictures from the semester.)

The funny faces are because we're staring directly into the sun. But this is what we got to look down on while we were eating our lunch: the palace with the whole city behind it! We had just enough time after finishing our tour to get apfelstrudel (yum!) before heading to pick up our bags at the hostel and (barely) making our bus back to Prague.