Field work now lined up and ready to begin

This upcoming weekend we have our first opportunities to do field work, and I'm delighted that we have folks who are ready and eager to jump up from their computer screens to venture out and take it to the field.

On Saturday the Montagnard community in Greensboro takes part in the Glenwood Neighborhood Celebration. Glenwood is a neighborhood in Greensboro in which the Montagnard community is well represented. This promises to be an interesting event to document, offering a unique opportunity to see the Montagnard community in relationship and in context. It will be my first time to attend this celebration, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Goat Lady Dairy Farm on Open Farm Day

On Sunday Montagnard weavers take part in Open Farm Day at the Goat Lady Dairy Farm (GLDF). This promises to be an interesting event as well, since the GLDF is quite an amazing place to see successful sustainable agriculture in action. I have been to the farm a couple of times and am eager to return. It is very intriguing to see how the most cutting-edge contemporary practices in agriculture --such as those at the GLDF-- mirror the methods of traditional agriculturalists such as the Montagnards. So the connection is very strong and intriguing.

We watched a video early in the term of a Wade Davis presentation entitled Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World and in many ways the Goat Lady Dairy Farm is an object-lesson in not only why ancient wisdom matters, but also how it can be applied in contemporary life.

Starting with videoconferences sets the stage

After two weeks of preparatory/organizational work --involving sharing and discussing background materials in Anthropology and Media Studies, along with the usual start-up tasks involved in college courses-- we are, as of today, officially under way.

A Montagnard garden in Greensboro NC

It seems official today because we had our first direct interaction, via video-conferencing, between participants in three sections of the Digital Media for the Artist (DMA ) and members of the Montagnard Dega community living in the Greensboro NC area.  On the UNCSA end of the Skype call, we introduced ourselves and talked with two Montagnard Dega women, both of whom were engaging, kind, and delightfully honest and forthright. My friend and colleague of 15+ years, Andrew Young, did a masterful job of introducing the Montagnard Dega women to us, and facilitating our interaction with them.

We asked questions ranging from what they missed about their home culture in Vietnam, how it came to be that they settled in Greensboro NC, and what the challenges their youth face here in the USA. We also asked Andrew Young how he came to be interested in Montagnard Dega culture. In each instance the responses were enlightening and informative. I include the three video-conferences below: