Argument by way of Background

Many people hear the word “home” and instantly think of the place where their deepest roots lie. This notion of home evaded me most of my life. Though I spent my earliest years in the Washington, D.C. area, by the time I was 8 my family had moved to small-town West Virginia. Suddenly I was surrounded by people with extended families who had lived in the area for generations. Differences in accents and activities were glaring. School was dismissed for a week during hunting season; my family had never owned a gun. Nearly everyone drove pick-up trucks, while we had a collection of aging Volvo’s in our yard. The house where I lived with my immediate family was like a Yankee island in the deep-South. My parents, native New Yorkers, enjoyed the general peace, quiet and breathing room, but their new abode certainly wasn’t “home” to them (and still isn't, some twenty years later.)

After college, I spent a year living in Israel; a place that a whole lot of people fervently call their home. My husband’s ancestors have lived continuously in the Middle East for thousands of years; no other place will truly be “home” for him. I heard more than one resident of the country say they knew they are home because only in that country could they identify as an individual first and Jewish second (rather than the other way around.) Naturally I could not relate to any of this; my family had arrived in the U.S. from Europe but a few generations ago and no particular faith bound me to any land. In Israel, the language was strange, the people seemed rough. A pale, shy American girl, I surely did not fit in. For the first time, I began to miss West Virginia. I missed the rolling country roads, the fireflies, and the delineation of the seasons. I discovered that after all the years of yearning to go somewhere more exciting, W.V. did have a special hold on my heart. Now, visits to the countryside of my childhood make my heart sing.

Today I once again reside in Washington, D.C. and while I love revisiting the places I knew as a little girl (and feel very much at home here!), a funny thing has happened.  I miss Israel. The hot streets slick with fallen olives and dates, the salty Mediterranean breeze, the warm people who became part of my family…

It seems that these days, there is more than one place I could call “home.” This blog is about the experiences that got me to that point; about differences in culture that can be opportunities to learn and connect; about how travel can remind you of what home really means.

I feel I should write about this because I’m brimming with passion for travel and with observations to share, from the viewpoint of someone who has gone far out of her comfort zone and come back rich with new perspectives. 

Hopes for the Coming Weeks

“So you’re going to be a writer when you grow up!” I heard this statement quite a few times as a child. Perhaps it was the fact that it was rarely framed as a question that caused me to react contrarily and pursue visual arts rather than jump into a writing career. (Expectations turned me off.)

However, I suspect the real reason was a nagging feeling that I didn’t enjoy writing. I did seem to have a knack for it, something that could surely have been developed, but I found it agonizing to get any piece of serious writing going. The stress of thinking what I wanted to say and how to say it was a constant block to getting started. Those first few sentences came out in a painful muddle. The rewriting would begin before I barely had anything on the page. Writing just seemed like something for which I lacked patience. (Interestingly, throughout childhood I kept dozens of journals, but didn’t consider that to be “real” writing; there was no pressure involved.)

It’s worth wondering where all that stress came from. I’m sure most writers feel it to some degree.  My problem was a combination of self-consciousness and perfectionism.  I became frustrated and a bit panicked when the first draft wasn’t gorgeous. This perfectionist attitude has hindered me in other creative endeavors as well; I couldn’t let anyone see what I was doing until I was an expert. Of course, no one becomes an expert in a bubble.

Through this class, I hope to reverse my feelings about writing. I don’t expect it to become easy, but I would like to learn to have patience for the process, to embrace the challenge, and to be able to do it with a thicker skin. This becomes even more important when writing for interactive media. It’s time to allow myself to be imperfect in front of others. I hope in the coming weeks to let go, learn, develop a voice, and above all, improve my writing. 

Viva's Biosketch

Viva Green was born in Alexandria, VA and lived the first 9 years of her life in northern Virginia. She exhibited an early interest in art and books, spending hours at the coffee table drawing hundreds of pictures and devouring every written material as soon as she learned to read. She also loved nature and spent long afternoons in the backyard reading to the trees. In 1991 she moved with her family to a small town in West Virginia, where she began to develop a talent for writing, placing multiple times in a state young writer’s competition.  Viva experienced a bit of culture shock moving from a diverse urban landscape to rural WV, where for the first time she witnessed racial prejudice. Still, for the most part Viva enjoyed growing up in the beautiful rural surroundings and made life-long friends there. 

Turned off by the pressure in high school to choose a career and college, Viva took a year off after graduation. The time was spent bonding with her younger brother and figuring out what to do next.  In 2002 she enrolled in a local liberal arts college and somewhat on a whim, chose to pursue a degree in photography.  She soon found herself in love with and excelling at the course of study and upon graduation was given a prestigious academic title. Through the college, Viva was finally able to realize her dream of traveling abroad.  A junior year trip, partly funded by an Art Department scholarship, took her to London and Paris, and a post-graduation trip found her exploring Peru.

In 2007, Viva decided to return to her roots in northern Virginia and quickly landed a job as an administrative assistant at an international broadcast news station in Washington, D.C.  One year later she left to live with a long time friend (turned love) in the Mediterranean city of Tel Aviv, Israel. The she found work with an American promotional materials company and in her spare time wandered the city taking photos and soaking up the foreign culture. Another year passed, and in 2009 Viva and her partner moved together to Maryland.   After a six month search, she was able to find a job at a federal agency working in communications.  In the past few years she has written and photographed for local publications and published several photos in a Jerusalem-based newspaper.  She currently lives in Washington, D.C. and is pursuing an M.S. in Interactive Media.

A Weekly Clash

This is an article I wrote that was published in a community newsletter in 2010. Obviously this is a fraught topic and I tried my best to give equal voice to both sides while maintaining a neutral tone.

Every Saturday morning, a small group of people gathers on a sidewalk in front of 1400 Spring Street in Silver Spring. Some of the people hold up placards, pray and occasionally interact with the other people on the sidewalk; mostly college-age women in orange vests that read “Pro-Choice Clinic Escort.” The protesters sometimes refer to them as “death-scorts.” The building behind them holds the local Planned Parenthood clinic, which provides in-house abortions along with other reproductive services for women. The clinic also provides escorts to accompany patients inside the building, if they do not wish to speak with the protesters.

Olga Fairfax, a particularly vocal pro-life activist, tries her best to reach out to the patients entering the building, despite the presence of the escorts. Sporting a red “Pro-Life” tee-shirt and carrying a sign depicting infant body parts, Olga is a staple on the corner of Spring St. and 1^st Avenue, setting up large graphic signs and protesting every Saturday, as well as some week days. Dr. Fairfax, (who holds a Ph.D in Counseling), says her main message is that “this is an exploitive situation that helps no one. There is a better way.” On a recent Saturday, she successfully convinced a potential clinic patient to go instead to the nearby Centro Tepayac Women’s Center, a nonprofit Catholic agency which seeks to provide an alternative to abortion through such services as free testing, referrals, counseling, and providing parenting information. (Recently the Montgomery County Council passed a bill requiring the center to post a disclosure sign alerting patients that it is not a medical facility and lacks medical staff.) All services at Centro Tepeyac are free, which Olga compared to the Planned Parenthood clinic, where she says doctors “kill for money.”  She also asserted that the clinic pays the escorts for each patient they successfully bring in, a claim disputed by an escort who wished only to be identified as Paul.

According to Paul, the escorts are “invited guests” of the clinic and come from an all-volunteer organization, the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force (WACDTF). Despite the controversy of the situation, he said they try to stay focused on their core message, “which is that women are entitled to access to these clinics for legal reproductive health care.”  If a patient is intercepted by a protestor, escorts will let the patient know that she does not need to speak with the protesters unless she wishes to, and will offer to walk the patient to the building door. While the WACDTF has a strict non-violence policy, Paul says that there have been a few “nasty” verbal confrontations between the two opposing factions sharing the sidewalk, and passersby have occasionally called police.

Mary-Ann Hendler, another pro-life activist, attempts to take a gentler approach. She tells the escorts that she is praying for them, and even invites them to lunch with her.  Asked about her goal in protesting at the clinic, she said, “We are trying to help women see other alternatives – other things they haven’t thought of, such as adoption.  Nobody can deny the truth of what’s happening, the reality of it. They are also putting their souls at serious risk of being lost forever.”  Showing similar concern, a group from St. Bernadette's Catholic Church joins in prayer in front of the clinic on a weekly basis.

On any given Saturday morning, actual patients entering the clinic seem sparse in number, but the few who arrive can expect to be met by both activists and escorts, all of whom feel it is their duty to be present where they are needed.