I’d never been to Spain...

I’d never been to Beemster but I kind of liked the tulips...

Since the events of the last post, it’s been quite a few new experiences. All of them firsts for me. I really love this.

May 9: I met Profs. Elly Konijn and Johan Hoorn and their family for a trip to Beemster to her brother’s tulip farm and other enjoyable sights. Beemster is on a polder outside Amsterdam. The polders are the farmlands below sea level on former lakebeds. I’d read about the polders, and the dikes that surrounded and allowed them to be drained and remain dry, but to be honest I never really understood it.  But after a short car ride and a stop to rent bicycles, we embarked out on the dike that defines an edge of the polder and it all made sense. The dike is only about 4 meters high, but it is broad enough for a road and an aqueduct through which the water is still pumped. Along the dike you look down into flat valleys on either side. These are polder lands, with small canals within them for drainage and irrigation.

Elly’s brother maintains the family’s tulip farm which was almost in full bloom, a little later in the year than normal because of the long, cold winter we’ve had. But this dry and mostly-sunny day was made for visiting the tulip beds! It is breath-taking. They do not harvest the tulips, they cut off the flower-tops and let the bulbs mature. Later in the summer the bulbs will be harvested and sold. Elly told stories of growing up, cutting off the flowers, and later, pulling up and cleaning the bulbs. Machines do that now, and Elly does research.  

Charming towns, lunch cafes, horse stables, we biked all day. Elly and Johan’s daughters thought I biked too slowly. But they forgave me when, over dinner, I asked them to teach me more Dutch. They could not believe my ridiculously stupid pronunciation, and they made bizarre faces to help show me how one’s mouth is shaped to make the right sounds. I have never had better language teachers.

I’ve never been a Lutheran but I kind of liked the pulpit...

May 13: Back in Amsterdam the following Monday, at the invitation of Dr. Mirjam Vosmeer I lectured to an undergraduate course in the University of Amsterdam’s Aula--a former Lutheran church and a grand building. It still looks more like a church than a lecture hall, and the speaker addresses the congregated students from the pulpit. I noted that it is quite common in my lectures for there to be very long silences when I ask students a question, but it would be reassuring that this time it would be due to extended periods of silent devotion and personal reflection.  I think the lecture went fine.  One of the students emailed me afterwards, which is a good sign.

Monday afternoon I went back to the VU to visit the Communication Science department. Some of these folks are old friends now, who I have known since they were graduate students, and it is nice to see how their interests and careers are evolving. I started a research talk by presenting the results from I’d been involved with in Israel, since last time I spoke at this department was in 2009 when that project’s data had not yet been analyzed. I spoke of other research as well, but at the end we sat around and speculated about untested new ideas. We clarified, inquired, compared, and refined some of these ideas, and it was stimulating and enjoyable to be welcomed to think out loud with a group of talented scholars. We had a nice dinner together, too.

Well I'd never been to Spain, but I'd been to California...

 Early the next morning I flew to Barcelona where it was raining on deplaning and rained for the better part of two more days. It is a beautiful city nevertheless, and I got to see parts of it walking and other parts riding a part-subway/part-train to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I was invited by Prof. Charo Lacalle who leads her research group in semiotic analyses of online group discussions and media convergence.  Other communication researchers at UAB are using experimental approaches to identify sex bias in journalism staffing. There are fewer experimental researchers there than there are at home or at ASCoR, and I had been asked to focus on methodology as well as conclusions.

I think my presentations provided a  contrast to many of their approaches in that respect. Wednesday I spoke about the last 5 years of my research and its focus on Web 2.0. Thursday I spoke about the last 22 years of my research: relational communication online more generally. Friday I spoke about a topic I have not discussed with an audience before: The complications of doing technology-based research and its great potential for premature conclusions. We reviewed the cues-filtered-out research and its research artifacts, the initial dismissal of electronic propinquity theory, and the temptation to infer that effects that occur in technological environments are due to technology and not more universal in nature.

The city itself was beautiful: Tall, stately buildings and broad boulevards near the hotel where I stayed, with squares at every intersection and parks or restaurants down the median of many streets. I squeezed in a little sightseeing, to the gothic quarter where old alley-sized streets seemed at the same time charming and mysterious. I expected secretive characters to glance furtively then avert their gaze as they traversed these passages.  Buildings by the architect Gaudi were exercises in anti-architecture, and the Casa Batllo I toured makes one a fish in an ocean of flowing structural and interior design.

I will admit a little difficulty finding food, as the many restaurants near the hotel did not offer much English (why should they?), and I was effectively ignorant. I have to thank Deborah Castro Mariño for helping me learn to navigate the trains and campus, and for good company. I am a fast learner but an apprehensive one. Where I come from, when one hears Spanish, there’s Mexican food nearby and I know what to do, but Spanish food has nothing in common. I should never have assumed it would—but I did, that’s how conditioned I am. But maybe my stereotyping was made worse in that the terrain and suburbs (as seen from the train) looked JUST liked Southern California to me. Rolling hills or low mountains with green foliage and houses abutting them; fruit trees, palm trees, and an occasional cactus; and low houses with red Spanish-tile roofs, one with a swimming pool in a back yard. The scenes reminded me of the Hollywood Hills, or old Orange County, once one leaves the city center.

Altogether it was a great trip to Barcelona and I’d like to go back. I’m grateful to the Spanish Fulbright inter-country lecturing program that helped all this to happen in no small measure.  I remain cognizant of how lucky I am to have opportunities like these – which, to be honest, blow my mind when I think about it -- and people treat me very nicely wherever I go, sometimes shyly so. It surprises me when younger scholars are reticent with me, but I suppose being on the Fulbright list inflates one’s reputation. I remember when I was a grad student who could not believe it when I would encounter some eminent authors at a conference, and was too tongue-tied to say anything to them. I know how it is and I still get nervous around great intellects in our field sometimes. The great ones are kind and open, and continue to teach me how to behave.

Back to Amsterdam to start packing for Paris.