Two Conversations and the Middle Ages

Last week I had two really good, deep, enlightening conversations and they were both with old people (if you consider someone in their 70s old). Here are some highlights:

The first one was with Louise S. She's a volunteer tour guide at the Pettigrew Home & Museum. The tour guide shifts at the Pettigrew are three hours long and usually when a volunteer comes in he/she will chat for a bit then head upstairs to the break room and wait for tours. Not Louise. She sits and talks to me for the whole three hours (unless she has a tour) and she will say things like "I'm just talking too much" or "listen to me ramble on" or "enough about me, what about you," but she still keeps talking and still keeps talking about herself and her life. This is okay, though, because I like what she has to say.

Last week Louise and I talked about many things. A school dorm on a reservation in South Dakota burned down recently. Louise is part of a church quilting group that makes quilts and then gives them away. She saw the news story about the dorm burning and she wanted to donate quilts to the victims. Her quilting group wasn't so sure it was a good idea and they were very concerned with trying to figure out the logistics of making the quilts, packing them and getting them to the victims. Her quilting group did not think it was going to work out. This really bothered Louise because she saw a need and she felt like it was part of her quilting group's mission to overcome what she considered trivial issues and get what was needed to those who needed it. Sometimes I am like one of those cynical quilting group members who tries to quell others' idealistic visions. I need to learn to appreciate the passion of people like Louise, whether I agree with them or not.

Louise and I also talked about racism in South Dakota. We both agreed that most everyone has some degree of racism and most people are in denial about it. The first step is recognizing it. Think about it, we are always using skin color to describe and catagorize people. Why would we say "look at that black guy or that Indian" when we could say "look at that guy wearing the red shirt"? Or sometimes we feel differently (like maybe threatened or disgusted) when we walk past a group of people with a different skin color from us. Are these feelings right? I am not sure they are. Someday Louise and I would like to not feel that way and would like to not describe people based on the color of their skin.

The second good conversation happened a few days later while I was holding up a portable dark room for an historic wet-plate photographer (it is a very interesting process, you should research it). Steve L. has been working in the geneology library in the museum for the past month or so. He saw me outside as he was leaving work and came over to chat. We started talking about where I was from and how I came to Sioux Falls and then ended up talking a lot about his family. Suddenly he told me he thought I was a very direct and insightful person, which he really appreciated. He said he appreciates people who are direct in their communication because he doesn't get the feeling from them that they are playing games with him or trying to manipulate him for their own benefit. Steve used to be a Lutheran pastor and he said Lutherans (pardon the generalization) are too passive aggressive. He used to have so much trouble with meaningful communication with people in his church. I told Steve Mennonites grapple with that issue too. It's like we think we are fulfilling this never ending quest to be humble if we don't come out and just ask for things. It's not taking advantage of someone if they are offering you something (material or emotional).

One thing Steve learned from his years as a pastor was that in order to best communicate with people you need to figure out how they best communicate and then work with them on whatever level that is. It's tricky to do because it's different than brown nosing. You actually have to think about the other person and figure out how they are interpreting what you are saying. Good communication is not necessarily about telling people what they want to hear, it's about telling them how they want to hear it. It's not about content, it's about tactic. Excellent points Steve, I completely agree.

Now this is totally random, but today after my evening run at the park I was walking back to my car when I spotted a group of people dressed in Medieval costumes. Some of them were participating in this fighting game involving large logs. I just thought it was hilarious to see a group of people in costumes in the middle of Sertoma Park acting like what they were doing was totally normal. I wanted to ask them if it was a club or special society or something but what they were doing with those large logs looked pretty scary.