Riding the Ride: Lessons from a little blue bus

He’s a morning driver for the Green Line bringing people to work in the early am. He greets every passenger who gets on the bus, and taught me step by step how to secure my bike to the front of the bus. (After I tried on my own of course,  fiddling with bike, camera, and mike in hand for a good embarrassing minute.) I see him in the mornings and he always says hi.

As does Debbie, who drives the red line out on HPR.
And Clip who drives the blue.

I met John just a couple of days ago, while catching the Green Line to SEARHC hospital, a major destination for bus users coming to and from work. I ride to SEARHC in the mornings, but have no appointment. I ride to the Ferry Terminal in the afternoons, but have no ticket. I ride downtown, and down HPR and off onto Sawmill Creek Road. That’s why I’m here in Sitka, to hop-on and off a non-hop-on-hop-off bus.

“Is that what you do? Ride the bus and… talk to people?” a new friend asks me at a quintessential Sitka potluck.
Well, kind of.

It’s what an average day looks like, carrying the video camera, tripod, and microphone around, asking strangers to sign Artchange waivers, standing on the bridge, waiting for the perfect moment for that mountains-in-the-background shot of the little blue bus. I collect the stories and support of those who ride the ride. And then I make short videos.

“Well that doesn’t sound very exciting. A documentary about the bus?” asks my grandpa, the night before I leave to catch my Seattle-Ketchikan-Sitka plane. “It’s not going to be a documentary, grandpa!” I laugh and add, but it does leave me wondering. What’s exciting about the bus?

For Josie and Sabrina, it’s pulling the rope when it’s time for their stop.

For Destiny, it’s getting on and realizing all her friends are on too.

Oh, and for me?
For me, it’s yes, pulling the cord, being a new member of the bus crew, getting to meet and know locals everyday. But it’s also fighting for something that seems small but really isn’t. I may not be fighting for world peace (what a paradox that is) or working for basic human rights and environmental justice out in the field, but changing people’s perceptions regarding who takes the local bus and helping those who fully depend on it keep their principal and often only method of transportation is a pretty big deal. Suddenly a little blue bus seems like a big deal. Especially if you’re a storyteller. Suddenly, the footage that you thought was made of dustbunnies (as Ellen calls it) becomes a story worth sharing.

Clip, Debbie and John, Sabrina, Josie and Destiny, they’re all Peanut Butter & Jelly Heroes. Peanut Butter & Jelly heroes are the people making society’s Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, helping those who need it, doing their best and working behind the scenes without the accolades and attention. I’m excited to make films with them as the heroes.

And so, off I go, back on the bus.

Feel free to follow my tumblr for more on and off bus adventures: http://berriesandbears.tumblr.com/
And as our very first meme says, follow us, Artchange, Inc summer interns with the hashtag #stikastories.

Brian Sparks on his Oral History of the Iraq War

Soldiers evaluate a roadside bomb detonation, May, 2005.

We recently asked Brian Sparks to explain why he’s embarked on a journey to interview the veterans from his own platoon in Iraq eight years after they returned, and about the impact of war on soldiers, families and communities. We wanted to get a sense of what he learned so far and hopes to share:

I wonder how so many books have been published about the Iraq War that completely ignore the human experience and real-world social problems that this war created.

I’m working on an oral history project of the Iraq War because the human experience of the war has so far been ignored. I’m working on this project because I’m afraid history will forget this war, like it forgot Korea and the Banana Republics and so many others. And I’m working on this project because, eight years after returning from Iraq, I still do not understand my own experience there.

If this project accomplishes only one thing, I hope that it will bring to light the human cost of war to the individuals who participate, and the cost to their relationships and their communities.

What I’ve learned so far is how little I knew about the war before starting this project. And I was there! Beyond my own experiences I knew the war from the lens of CNN and political and military experts who have written books. These sources aggregate the experience of war, turning it into a list of numbers, an abstraction. I want to tell concrete stories from people on all sides of this conflict, beginning with the stories from the soldiers of my own platoon. I want to make a special point of gathering and including stories from Iraqis who lived and worked in the same part of Baghdad where my platoon conducted operations.

I did not know the meaning of vicarious trauma before visiting a friend in New York. His wife of seven years had a nervous breakdown the week before my visit. The doctor diagnosed anxiety among a host of other symptoms. She blamed her husband’s PTSD for causing trauma in her life.

What amazed me was that my friend denied having PTSD. I had met with nearly a dozen men from my platoon before this meeting, and every single person had stories of Post Traumatic Stress. Yet this one person claimed to be unaffected.

Maybe that really is how he feels, maybe he transferred all his stuff to her.

Sometime later I was visiting a friend in California. After a few hours and a few beers he got up to use the restroom. As soon as he’d shut the door his wife urged me to look into vicarious PTSD. She said a number of her friends were being affected.

And I’ve looked into it. The research and statistics that exist point to a large, yet very unseen, social problem. When the soldiers remain in the military their spouses and their children can seek treatment for vicarious PTSD, and, by the way, treating secondary PTSD is becoming a huge part of the Department of Defense healthcare budget. But as soon as the soldier leaves the service, there is no recourse for the family. The Veterans Affairs people don’t provide counseling for this. It’s a hidden cost of the war, and it shouldn’t be.

Nearly every book I’ve read or movie I’ve seen on the subject of America’s recent wars has been decidedly pro-war and pro-America. Subjects are discussed in the abstract, perspectives offered are those of Americans. Experiences of Iraqis and Afghans are discounted, and they shouldn’t be. I hope this project will help to change that.

My name is Brian Sparks and I deployed to the al-Dora district of Baghdad in 2005. If you would like to read excerpts of interviews I’ve conducted, feel free to check out my website. secondplatoon.wordpress.com

Frankentweet: A Work in Progress

Frankentweet is a project that grows out of three basic
elements:
1. An intrigue with digital technology.
2. The surname “Frankenstein.”
3. The shaping of narratives that take viewers into a realm of “disorienting dilemmas.”

What will this be or become?

One mode of delivery will be a long form documentary useful for broadcast,
the classroom and public screenings. Also fitting to the topic, our era of media consumption and social media, the
project will be revealed in short bursts with participation along the way.

We welcome ideas, stories, and collaborations.
Send them our way.

Thinking About Glaciers

As we work on the film, Tracing Roots, (working title) I’ve been thinking about glaciers.

They’re always on the move.  What they do impacts us. What we’ve done impacts them.

People around here, pre borders and highways, used to walk over glaciers to trade. As Lani Hotch says in an interview for the film, she remembers her grandmother’s stories of using an ice axe to travel to the interior from the coastal Alaskan community of Klukwan.

I  had a hunch, as I thought about glaciers that saying they’re melting was a simplification. Last week talking with Dr. Gwenn Flowers, a glaciologist,  I confirmed my hunch and learned about accumulation and ablation. When the loss is greater than the gain the terrain uncovered has usually not been exposed for a long time.

As I found in an article on archeological discoveries made possible by global warming, “An entirely new discipline of archaeology called ice patch archaeology is evolving. Ice patches are long frozen areas of water and snow that lie on the always shaded sides of mountain ranges”and they don’t move like glaciers.  More here.

In this landscape, archaeological artifacts that have been trapped in the ice for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years come to light once again.  These aren’t just stone objects, they’re organic material, like the Long Ago Man Found’s Spruce root hat–the hat Delores is replicating in the documentary.

When I chatted with a couple archeologists and read some more, I learned about finding Caribou dung in places where no one thought the caribou had been.  What was exciting about that was a 4,000 year old spear shaft found in the dung, So thinking about glaciers led me to talk about dung with scholars. That doesn’t happen everyday.

Plus Gwenn pointed me to a couple of useful resources.

Take a look at this interactive tool designed to help students better understand glaciers

Here’s a  link to Kate Hartman’s fun piece on glacier-human communication. It is a great example of art and science intersecting.