Well, I am back from Poland and have been writing up the adventure. I'll be
parsing it out as the draft is edited. I spent a considerable portion of the
trip in intensive care at a Szcecin cardiology ward - tending to a congenital
heart syndrome. A highly informative diversion. Despite this, I found what I
was looking for in going to Poland.
I think the Antikon presentation for the APTI delegation went well as we
started in with facts and ended with emotions. To the speech I made, at the
end of the group presentation, there was feedback from the APTI delegation
that I had possibly been too pessimistic in my vision of America. You may also
find it to be pessimistic, then again, you may not. In explanation, the speech
was not for the APTI delegation, it was meant to communicate to the Polish
audience of conservationists, which I had spent two days listening to. I
wanted to convey that we had in fact been listening to their questions and
concerns. One phrase in the speech is an exact quote of Thomas, our
translator. The most important question was why Americans would come to Poland
to learn about historic conservation. I was not working with an American
vision of America, I was working to transform a Polish vision of America. That
in itself is an interesting cross- cultural communications loop of filtering,
analysis, and response. Unlike an anthropologist, I meant to have an effect
and to modify the group's perceptions of themselves and the world. If I had
been meaning to communicate to the APTI delegation, or to Americans in
general, I would have likely given another speech. I was also hoping to answer
my friend Vitek’s question, “What do you think of what is going on here?”
Vitek was leader of the APTI delegation, as well as in the past having been an
active member of the Polish conservation community. The audience provided by
my friend Vitek, were his friends and peers. The context of an effective
speech is site, time, and audience specific.
The speach:
“Buildings speak the heart of the nation. They speak the heart here in Poland,
and they speak the heart in America. To walk along the avenues at dusk and see
the children playing, this is freedom.
In America we do not have a problem of someone else demolishing our buildings
and removing our past from us. Conservationists have to fight to stop other
Americans from demolishing the buildings in order to build ugly new ones. Ugly
new buildings that often do not work for people, but work very well for
automobiles. We love parking lots and super highways.
Even if our old buildings are really young buildings, they are what we have.
They represent our desire to keep freedom by honoring the labor of our
ancestors. Removing the buildings and replacing them with the new buildings
denies our history.
America is about relocation. We all came from somewhere else, we do not know
where we are going. The American standard is that every five years a family
move to a new location. We are always moving. Because we are always in a new
place, the history that we live with is always a history for someone other
than ourselves.
To have a building that is alive and permanent, reminds us that we are
wandering around without a direction. This is why we also love Disneyland and
McDonalds, because it gives us a common myth.
If a good building in America is more than 30 years old it needs special
protection, it is then considered historic. The same applies to an automobile.
I am old enough to have built stone walls in the countryside that are now
almost historic, and qualify for special protection.
We clear away the land and build new. For kilometers around the buildings
spread out with large parking lots, flat areas without vegetation that replace
the farms and turn the earth sterile. We tear our buildings down and throw
them in a hole on the ground. We lose all that our ancestors have yearned to
build, we discard their dreams of our future.
We have had poets, but we replace them as quickly as we replace our buildings.
The birthplace of the Ameican poet, Walt Whitman, is hidden in a suburb,
closed in by a shoe store and a donut shop. It is a memory surrounded by the
disguise of the new facades. This is what we say about America with our
buildings. Not only do we have less history than Poland, what history we have
is hidden, as if we wished to have none.
We are uncomfortable with each other, restless, always wanting to move on.
Always pushing to a new wilderness. It is as if we want to live in outer
space. America, all the time running to the edge of development.
We need the spirit of Poland to teach us to stop running and to enjoy our
living. Otherwise, with our freedom at the table, we will have eaten
everything, and soiled the earth forever.
The hope of our future is with Poland.”
][<en Follett
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