TARA Trek: Citizen Journalism Anew

Tsunami Citizen Journalism Mentions

These are a few references to my tsunami blogging and a few other mentions on my writing in general that are publicly available. I apologize if this comes across as patting my own back, but I'm I'm trying to get some bylined articles in the press as well and using this post as a "references" page. 

Shel Israel's first reference to my writing post-tsunami :

Evelyn Rodriguez is superb writer with a keen eye and a sense of irony. She was slammed by the tsunami at Phuket Beach, had her knee gashed open so she could see the bone, had to hobble the streets of Bankok on crutches to get a temp passport and had the SJ Mercury report on her return as if it were an adventure vacation of some sort.   She talks  about how losing her clothes, getting too little sleep and having no shampoo become trivial whle seeing the trauma and personal losses of others. I've been reading dozens of personal experience reports, but hers is the most moving, the most informative and the wisest.

Why Would You Go Back?

" Buddha himself had defrocked a monk for performing a miracle in public, declaring that the transformation of the human heart was the only miracle that really counted." - from Cave in the Snow: Tenzim Palmo's Quest for Enlightenment by Vicki Mackenzie

I happened to be vacationing in the island of Phi Phi, Thailand when a wall of water rose up from the Andaman Sea and engulfed me. It was much later before I learned it was a tsunami. And so I became an accidental "citizen journalist'" in the days that followed December 26, 2004.

This blog is intended to answer Why Would You Go Back? and many more Frequently Asked Questions about TARA Trek, my artisan journalism / citizen journalism / solo journalism / backpack journalism call it what you will return to the tsunami-struck countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka for six to eight weeks beginning in early December.

What's artisan journalism? It's the celebration of the amateur. In this project, I'll be capturing oral histories of how people create meaning out of tragedy, how they exhibit compassion-based action, how they orchestrate their own grassroots reconstruction efforts. And writing about it. Uploading the audio and photos and video clips. And allowing them to write in first-person themselves if they wish.

Tara is the name of a Tibetan Buddhist Buddha, also known as a goddess of compassion. In Southeast Asia, she is known as Kuan Yin, but that would have been a long domain name! "[Tara] was compassion in action, said to have been born out of the tears of the male Buddha Chenrezig, who saw the suffering of all sentient beings but was unable to do anything about it. Tara, it was said, had the distinction of being the first woman to attain Enlightenment." (Cave in the Snow, Vicki Mackenzie). 

p.s. This isn't about women, if you know anything about Kuan Yin, you'd know gender is irrelevant. Yep, been steeping myself on Buddhism and Hinduism for the trip and for my own spiritual expansion.  But that's not unusual: I was reading a 500-page tome on the Adhyatma Upanishad sitting on faded green slung chair on a shell-flecked beach a few days before the tsunami too. But only near-death experience forced me to truly digest that stuff; before it was purely scholarly. 

December 24, 2004 (another snippet from last journal entry before long lost journal found again somewhere in vicinity of Phi Phi, Thailand):

The day you realize that all running is futile you come to a dead stop right where God is. The day you come to know that you have not gained anything by running, you do not run anymore. - Finger Pointing to the Moon, by Osho

Getting my journal back among the wreckage seems like an omen: write.

I Ought to Have 45 Friends

I suppose my tsunami anniversary artisan journalism project fundraising effort is similar to how any independent filmmaker funds their projects (in this case it's documentary writing via multimedia blog): We beg.

We ask for donations from obligated and pressured family, friends, acquaintences. And nowadays we nag our blog readers.

At my spiritual center, we're going through our own fundraiser (yet more begging here for my participation in the sit-a-thon). This year the staff decided to do things differently. "We're removing the obligation, pressure, competition, cajoling, compulsion element. Last year's team competition was fun, but it also had an edge to it. We want to be in harmony with the consciousness we're trying to raise. Can we inspire people rather than push? Have people pulled by a vision instead of pushed by pain? No phone calls of: And what will be your commitment this year?", said the director Tuesday night.  She confesses, "It's exciting... if I remember to breathe. Someone once said, fear is excitement without the breath."

Inspired by a vision, instead of being pushed. I like that. I'd like to share my vision. It's New New Journalism. Oral histories with video and audio and writing in first person. And good old-fashioned storytelling more than reporting. With complexity - not everything's roses - but an artful presentation of the raw truth which is sometimes humbling and sometimes jarring and often beautiful and true.

Call it artisan journalism (podcast interview). But whatever you call it - it'll be self-evident in the doing of it.

We've heard plenty of December 26th, 2004 blow-by-blow accounts and watched footage of 30-foot ocean wall rushing inland like a freight train, but in reading 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers what I really wanted to know was how 9/11 survivors are faring. How does one live as a result of coming face to face with your own mortality?

I've suffered loss of close family members, material possessions, and livelihood before, but this was radically different. Everything changes when one confronts your own death. I'm a tsunami survivor myself (apologies to long-time readers that keep hearing backstory over and over and over again).

Some people experience post-traumatic growth. Others post-traumatic stress. And everything in the middle. Many stories are still in the making. There are tons of coming together in our mutual resiliency grassroots "doing it ourselves" stories. For instance, nine months later Reuters reported that "although Phi Phi had one of the biggest concentrations of tsunami victims, no formal aid organisations are here." Reuters continues  that most of the relief work on the island I was vacationing on is being done by residents themselves along with volunteers whom pay their own way. And Little Andaman Islands architects and planners contacted Earthship to come over and teach them how to deal with shelter, water and sanitation issues in a sustainable manner. The main angles are post-traumatic growth & grassroots disaster relief  & resiliency, but I also stay open to where the stories lead.

I'm asked, What good is blogging? Why write? Shouldn't I be doing important like building housing? Good questions. Why write deserves it's own post. In short, I am grateful that Anne Frank did write her diary. And, ultimately, this bird was made for singing.

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. - Anne Frank

So many find talking, being listened to, writing, expressing to be theurapeutic that I'd like to offer this space for others to do so and sharing heals others in turn.

What I need: I ought to have 45 friends and friends of friends within my own network that are interested in $100 sponsorship links for THREE months on my blog (through 1/16/06). Any contribution appreciated. Donate here for the tsunami anniversary artisan journalism project ($100 & up includes ad link), or at the tipjar on upper left of blog. I'm interested in how blogs can help with fundraising in general and will share lessons learned. Also needed (loans ok): intra-Asia frequent flier miles, iRivers for audio oral histories, digital camera with video, lightweight (and smaller than regular laptop) computing device for publishing, ideas for satellite broadband or any Internet connectivity. Help in the way of leads to publications and media - print, radio, TV, online - that might be interested in bylined first-person writing & pro bono publicity and public relations. (More)

On funding, I was asked if all this money is just lining the airline's pockets. The Thai government is graciously offering to fly any tourist injured in the tsunami (includes me) or one surviving family member for the anniversary. The rest of the intra-Asia flights ought to be covered by frequent flyer miles.

No, I don't need all $4500 for myself. If the full goal is reached early enough I will be able to help perhaps another tsunami anniversary blogging/journalism effort plus seed the artisan journalism microfund for next year (thinking Africa, thinking kids perhaps - but who knows? we'll be taking applications for microfund recipients).

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. - Anne Frank

Bonus: Help me reach the full 45 sponsor goal, and I'll create and throw in a free autographed blook to all 45 sponsors when I return (a compilation of relevant prior posts, quotes on growth & resiliency from prior posts, all the tsunami anniversary posts - plus other blogger's creative commons licensed posts I may find - plus photos if color doesn't break the piggy bank).

Tsunami Anniversary / Tsunami Memorial Writers and Journalists: Contact me to have your project linked from the blog and featured.

p.s. Again I'll share lessons learned on fundraising. I believe that artists, innovators, creators need to learn how to make our own projects come to life.

UPDATE: Mike Sansone (see also) shared a brilliant idea. Why not donate your three-month sponsorship link to a charity of your choice? Mike is probably wincing by the attention as he intended this to be anonymous, but I'd like to give credit where it is due. He went a step further and told me to give his three-month ad to the charity of my choice. He ends his email: Be contagious with your courage and compassion... I am humbled and touched that so many people that read this blog intimately know the definition of bodhisattva without the benefit of a Google search.

p.s. Originally posted on my regular blog.  BTW, Tara is a bodhisattva.

What Good On Earth is Writing?

A longish post today citing anecdotes and digging into research on how post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, combatting AIDs, and just plain out-and-out stress and anxiety can be dramatically helped by naked honest expression and sharing. In particular - writing our deepest thoughts and feelings. We bump into our sanity through writing.

I've thought about the thousands of survivors back in Thailand for the anniversary memorial service. 

It's not so easy descending back on the beach and standing where it all happened exactly one year later.  An acquaintenance just returned from a Habitat for Humanity disaster build in Khao Lak, Thailand shares:  "They're still afraid. No one wants their house built close to the ocean."

I'll be collecting survivor's handwritten, emailed, scrawled on napkin, or whatever writing they hand me in whatever genre to include over at Crossroads Dispatches.  And same in Sri Lanka. And India too.

Besides writing? I'll be listening.  Lots of listening.

How Do You Know What to Write?

"Nothing is less real than realism... Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things." - Georgia O'Keefe

I heard dozens of stories each day. Thank god each day I had no more than 30 minutes  online in post-tsunami sans-laptop Thailand as it forced me to get out of the way.

When I'm asked why I decided to write the sort of thing I do write, I always think the question is always revealing than any answer I could possibly give. Wrapped within  it, like the chewy stuff  in the center of a Tootsie pop, is the assumption that the writer controls the material instead of the other way around. - Stephen King, On Writing (hat tip for book, Lisa Stone)

As Stephen King's agent liked to quote Alfred Bester: The book is the boss. Here's an example of one story I chose to write that resonated with many (here's another). Of course, without the immediate trauma of one of the biggest disasters in last century I think I could do better (plus another year of blogging practice):

Humbled by Stories of Tsunami Survivors

Five minutes after the southern Asia tsunami hit I was just grateful to be alive, period. One hour later I was even more grateful even though all I had left were the clothes I was wearing (just a bathing suit) and although I could see straight through to my knee bone through an open wound. But in the grand scheme of things, that was all minor stuff really.

But it's funny how quickly you forget. I've been alternating between waves of humbleness and gratitude and self-pity, fatigue, and frustration. However in meeting more and more people directly involved in this mass tragedy, I've been moved by their stories of missing people in their party or how they separated from loved ones for 30-48 hours or being stranded hiding in the jungle on the highest hills for nearly two days. So, that last post was more on the whiny side of the pendulum.

I flew to Bangkok today (a necessity as we had to go to the US Embassy in person) via the Royal Thai Air Force. The C-130 was reserved for injured travelers and was about a quarter full of people in stretchers. The Swedish woman next to me had befriended a severely injured Finnish boy whom was traveling alone.

Five minutes after the southern Asia tsunami hit I was just grateful to be alive, period. One hour later I was even more grateful even though all I had left were the clothes I was wearing (just a bathing suit) and although I could see straight through to my knee bone through an open wound. But in the grand scheme of things, that was all minor stuff really.

But it's funny how quickly you forget. I've been alternating between waves of humbleness and gratitude and self-pity, fatigue, and frustration. However in meeting more and more people directly involved in this mass tragedy, I've been moved by their stories of missing people in their party or how they separated from loved ones for 30-48 hours or being stranded hiding in the jungle on the highest hills for nearly two days. So, that last post was more on the whiny side of the pendulum.

I flew to Bangkok today (a necessity as we had to go to the US Embassy in person) via the Royal Thai Air Force. The C-130 was reserved for injured travelers and was about a quarter full of people in stretchers. The Swedish woman next to me had befriended a severely injured Finnish boy whom was traveling alone.

Can Women Tackle Solo Journalism?

My mom recently visited me in San Jose. Within the space of a day, she'd 1) yanked me out from a crosswalk in SF (I didn't think they were stopping the car in time) 2)  alerted me to every manner of foodborne outbreaks when my chip touched the Napa Valley winery's artichoke dip, 3) was screaming at me (kill it! it's a brown recluse! or it could be!) when I scooped the small scrawny spider crawling across the kitchen counter onto a napkin to release outdoors.

So it's hard to believe being raised to be afraid of everything that I'm perfectly fine trotting across the world by myself.  (I was a rebellious teenager.) I remember some closing comments at BlogHer on safety and security by Jay Rosen.  So I bet it's on people's mind: It's OK for Kevin, but can a woman tackle backpack sojo?

So I guess an international travel resume is in order (I stay in hostels, campsites, pensions, abergues, rent rooms in homes, etc so I can be engaged with the local environment -- unless it's on the expense report).

By the way, you'll note it'll be my third time in Thailand. (I like novel, so unusual that I return to a country. First time in Thailand for vacation, 2nd for romance, 3rd it's a calling).

Poets are those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss. - Joseph Campbell

• 1992, Thailand (first time in Phi Phi), Malaysia, and Hong Kong with a group of 20 runners. Lugged more stuff and luggage on that (newbie traveller!!) than in my VW Jetta moving out to Silicon Valley exactly three years go.
• 1993-ish, Japan. Two business (tip: always tack on extra time for pleasure) trips where the Mitsubishi businessmen marvelled how I managed as a woman, alone, sight-seeing. Alone? You? Yourself?  I shouldn't have had the sashimi at their corporate cafeteria. Very long train ride next day.
• I'm getting tired, cranky and less humored, go read rest of travel resume. Of course, women can do this!

Why Is This Relevant? (The Tsunami is So Last Year)

When the landscape is constantly changing, how can we really rely on experts of anything? By the time anyone can proclaim they’re an expert nowadays, the field of knowledge has become obsolete. - Glenn Mandelkern

Rarely does anyone come straight out and tell me that the tsunami is so, like, last year. But I know it was in most minds ever since Brad and Jen's split hit newstands January 7th.

So you'd think I'd have a tough job. With this relevance thing. But I ask you to consider: What does Web 2.0 rising from the rubble of dot-com bust and folks resurrecting a year later from a major international disaster and Bob Dylan have in common?

We live in a global society of accelerating change. Futurists call it the Age of Anxiety.

Yet we go into change kicking and screaming. We buffet ourselves from the unknown that lurks just five seconds ahead. Hopefully and with luck we can extrapolate this moment into five seconds ahead. One fine afternoon Stephen King is taking a walk and "planning to pick some berries in a field that overlooks Lake Kezar. I wouldn't pick for long, though; I'd have to be home by five-thirty because we were all going to the movies." And the next he is struck by a blue van.

I entered the hospital on June nineteenth. Around the twenty-fifth I got up for the first time, staggering three steps to a commode, where I sat with my hospital johnny in my lap and my head down, trying not to weep and failing. You try to tell yourself that you've been lucky, most incredibly lucky, and usually that works because it's true. Sometimes it doesn't work, that's all. Then you cry. - Stephen King, On Writing

It's one thing to talk about how cool creative destruction is and quite another to witness displaced engineers struggling with acceptance: retraining was supposed to be for their blue-collared brethen in Detroit or another abstract frozen place.

Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. - Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

There is a myth that's told. A myth that if we turn away and close our eyes hard enough - from change, loss, grief, and the whole gamut of all the little deaths - we can create a dam powerful enough to withstand the tide.

But.

Life isn't dammable.

Citizen Journalism Anew One to One Microfund

"Have the best, most surprising, most dramatic, most revealing, most intimately reported, most human and engaging story that editor is likely to see that day or even that week."  - advice on writing a query letter in the 2006 Writer's Market

Hmmm, now how many surprising, dramatic, revealing, intimate, human, engaging stories do not see the light of day? (And they'll definitely screw your deadline.) The story is too surprising. Too dramatic. Too revealing. Too intimate. Too human. Too engaging. Basically, thanks, but it's not for us. I once wrote:

I recently read that until the 1830's, the typical daily newspaper was sold by subscription to a small audience whose interests were purely business and politics. "Just the facts, mam" fit neatly into four pages. Then in 1833, The New York Sun transitioned into a Penny Press and began telling "stories" with a "relevance to their reader's lives."

The Sun's first issue sold out immediately, and contained numerous "human interest" stories (a form practically invented by the Penny Press) that drew an audience of readers "starved for information about other people like themselves, distressed souls from other lands or from upstate farms - people marooned in a rapidly growing city that was often inscrutable, uncaring, or unintelligible," writes historian George H. Douglas. - Robert S. Boynton, The New New Journalism: Conversations On Craft With America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft

Not much has changed really. If anything there are more distressed souls marooned in a rapidly growing world that is often inscrutable, uncaring and unintelligible.

We're starting modestly, but I want to share the vision of the Citizen Journalism Anew One to One Microfund. You supply the passion & commitment, we supply a (micro) boost. Via all the legs of the stool - financial, social/emotional, and educational  - for an immersive type of citizen journalism I call artisan journalism. I'm switching to we mode because this isn't mine, it's eventually (soon!) everyone's.  Goals include:

Can You Boil All This Down?

In answering questions for my sponspor, Travelpod, an online community for independent travellers who hosted the first travel blogs, I distilled the essence of the FAQ:

I am an adventurer, writer, thinker, prolific blogger and social media consultant living in the heart of Silicon Valley a stone's throw from Apple's headquarters. Those who read my blog have been known to call me the Zen Mistress of Business.

I was on a romantic holiday idyll on an emerald jewel of an island (Phi Phi, Thailand) in the aquamarine Andaman Sea when a freight train of water rushed towards us on the beach. As soon as I got to a computer terminal at the hospital, I found an avalanche of email from concerned friends, including blog readers. That's when I started my accidental foray into "citizen journalism" putting the unfathomable disaster into a human scale and context as best as individual can under the circumstances. I was unprepared for the response.

I learned that personal, heart-felt writing was impactful in a world that is hungry for connection, intimacy, meaning, purpose and a groundedness in the eternal rather than the ephemeral. Personally, I learned too that our travails (the French word is root of travel) are sometimes a kind of fierce grace and a nudge towards living a life with purpose without delay. I learned that sometimes it is just the push to thaw our hearts and compassionately connect with people everywhere and wherever we may travel.

I resolved to go on a pilgrimage back to Thailand. In the process of fundraising, I stumbled upon the idea of a rotating microfund and support network to provide a financial boost to other aspiring amateur documentarians, writers and bloggers that are interested in telling the small, particular human interest stories that often clarify the larger, fact-filled picture. For instance, next year we're kicking around the idea of a blogging safari to Africa. Perhaps have kids at an African orphanage share their stories in images and words. In the end, I believe that "embedded" journalists ultimately are the people living in their own communities telling their truths.

I plan to go back to Thailand - back to that exact spot on the beach too - and other tsunami-struck countries to capture and record the epiphanies of other survivors on the one-year mark. These stories of recovery, regeneration, and rebuilding given the perspective of a whole year are infinitely more instructive than immediate accounts for our collective humanity - for anyone that's known trauma, tumult, creative destruction and the unexpected within their lives. This is certainly relevant today. For instance: What does Web 2.0 rising from the rubble of Silicon Valley dot-com bust and folks resurrecting a year later from a major international disaster and Bob Dylan have in common? (A lot.)

I'd love to continue the themes and (would take additional funding) go to Mexico, Guatemala, Kashmir, and the Mississippi Gulf coast to cover regeneration and rebuilding after the hurricanes and earthquakes there.

I hope to interview individual people and grassroots organizations in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India and capture the accounts in real-time on my blog for a seven-to-eight-week period starting in mid-December (the anniversary is known as Tsunami Boxing Day is on December 26th, 2005). Journeys and journalling are inextricably linked in my mind, so I intend to give other survivors a common space to share their perspective and lessons in their own words on the blog too.

"Volcanic ash creates some of richest soil in the world. But absolutely nothing grows there while it is still smoldering." - Evelyn Rodriguez

Blog: http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com (or www.tsunamianniversary.com)

Project Questions: http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/tara

p.s.  Here's how I contrast journalistic reporting and human-interest narrative journalism, from a blog article I wrote in July after returning from a writer's conference.