How my job is (and is not) like Peace Corps.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about my new job so far has been the intense sense of déjà vu that I have at least three times every day. How is it possible that I can be home in my own town, my own community, speaking my own language, and yet what I see in front of me is a vision of what I was supposed to understand when I was 10,000 miles and two hemispheres away.

I suppose I had some idea of what the University Extension program was all about. It’s fairly easy to see some immediate parallels: find some educated people, stick them in remote communities, provide a series of trainings and give them access to resources. Major differences are also obvious: we were true foreigners in that community, most of us were pretty young and clueless, and our term was for two years, three at most. Still, in theory there’s a lot to be matched in the theory.

Yet, there were other parallels. Extension was raised as a model of what some of the agricultural outreach services were intended to do in remote Madagascar and Vietnam. The “Champion Communities” model also strove to do something similar with putting a educated (usually young) Malagasy person in each community to serve as a coordinator for community collaboration and improvement. Unfortunately, they lacked the impressive pay and academic support the Extension system offers. They were forced to make choices between doing things to take care of themselves and seeking to find resources from other places.

And so I come home to the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension program. A program that puts graduate-degreed (or imposes the requirement to become so) professionals in multiple sectors in each county, pays them a living wage with the type of benefits and provides the type of supports that allows one to focus on work, and then floods them with access to the type of resources that might overwhelm some, but would cause any self-respecting geek to drool.

I’m not saying the UW Extension system is perfect, but you can see what the Peace Corps and all of these other community-based expert programs strive to do through it. Just as when you are dropped at site as a PCV, UWEX orientation (at least in the family living program, which parallels the health education program fairly neatly) maps out your timeline from first day, first week, first month, first three months, first year. Your supervisor takes you courtesy visits to the important people. You read the black book or letter left from your predecessor (if you had one). They tell you to do a needs assessment, but you spend the first three months trying to figure out what to do. And they tell you not to even attempt a Plan of Work before six months. You get trained in cross-cultural sensitivity.

But then Extension does it better. Granted, they can plan on having their agents around for longer than two years. They offer professional development in every effort to try to keep agents around longer. In the ideal (and sometimes in fact), county agents become a central resource to their community, providing information to politicians, and documenting program impact through research and academic evaluation. Peace Corps was great. But now I’m seeing how it can really work, when real academic, political and yes, some financial, resources can be mustered. Sure, the extension system could be better. And Peace Corps is a fantastic program for reasons that the Extension can never dream of. But I do see in the day-to-day functioning of the Extension program, thus far, a system that developing countries should envy.

In Mourning for the Old Way of Life

On February 1, 2010, I drove away from the house that I have called home for the last nine months at 7 AM, and looked back at it, knowing that it would be at least six days before I saw the daylight through the windows. I cried.

The most difficult part about starting a new job - one that involves a 45 minute one-way commute - was giving up the flexibility and comfort of working mainly from home. The house I'm living in has an extraordinary view, and on fortunate days in the winter, is full of sunlight from sunrise to late afternoon.

Trading that, and the ability to put in a load of laundry or bake a loaf of bread while I sit at my desk in the sunlight, for a basement office locked far away from any natural light from eight in the morning to four thirty or later at night, almost convinced me I'd made a mistake.

That long last look back was subsumed by days of orientation, organizing the office, and evenings full of music rehearsals. Now, almost three weeks into my job, I know I haven't made a mistake. It is possible to make the basement world a bit more habitable, and I've found the other basement dwellers to be more than welcoming (maybe they're planning to fatten me up and eat me?). Many evenings I've had to kill time and haven't left work until after 5, and for the first week that meant I didn't come up until after dark. Now, I find it disturbing to emerge above ground in the evening to find the late afternoon sun blazing onto the parking lot.

Maybe next year you can hire me to be your groundhog.

Reformed Reflections

Even as a Catholic, I have a special place in my heart for Lutherans, particularly the ELCA Lutheran church. It all began the fateful day when I realized that if I really wanted to experience music in college, a Catholic university just wasn't going to cut it. Whatever you want to say about the Reformation, Martin Luther had something right when he returned the gift of music to the people of the church.

And so I matriculated at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where I, a good German Catholic girl, well-acquainted with Friday night fish fry, Vatican II and incense, was enrolled in a four-year intensive course in "How to Speak Norwegian Lutheran" à la Garrison Keillor and Weston Nobel.

This week, I was again doused in all of the best of the First Protestant Church.

Today, Sunday, the Northwoods Brass Quintet added its voice to a special service celebrating the 20th anniversary of Prince of Peace Lutheran church in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Throughout the service people shared memories of the first days of the "mission church" in Eagle River and the construction of the building and sanctuary boasting beautiful acoustics and a warm, welcoming atmosphere - an atmosphere that reflects directly the personal warmth of the congregation that inhabits it. A small church in northern Wisconsin, but with a full-voiced choir of the type that would inspire Luther to post his 95 theses all over again.

Lutherans say music is second only to Word in the liturgical experience. Luther College seeks to instill this in all of its students, and often it is the students themselves that further push the envelope in how music can best be used to express that which is inexpressible.

One of those students who used music as a bridge across cultures and religious experiences has been lost to this world. Ben Larson, Luther graduate of '06 and fourth year seminarian, died when the main building of St. Joseph's Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, collapsed on him during the earthquake on January 12, 2010.

Ben, the younger brother of my twin sister Luther compatriots, lived for music and for the Lutheran church. On Friday I had the honor of attending his memorial service at Luther College. In true Luther style, the event was meticulously planned and hastily thrown together. Every detail was attended to (as one might expect of a memorial service planned by a family of musical pastors and ex-bishops with a contingent of advising pastors and bishops for a near-pastor), but the execution of the event was up to a motley crew of those with various musical talents gathering that day. The result was seamless, and a highly appropriate mix of decorum and informality.

This, to my experience, is the essence of the Lutheran tradition, and the one that the Catholics stand to learn the most from. Ritual guides the practice, but a deep, underlying humanity colors the actual event.

Every human being, regardless of religious creed, should have the type of memorial I witnessed this week. Less the particular ceremony, and more the intent and emotion behind it. Sometimes you need to leave your own tradition to rediscover it in another.