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March 30, 2002 --
Hello, everyone
- An assortment of thoughts:
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Saufi
Mausoleum
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Teachers:
So often unappreciated. Bakhauddin (Decoration of Religion) Naqushband
(Engraver of Metals) recognized that.
Naqshband
was the 14th century founder of the Sufi movement, which incorporates
spirituality with a practical approach to life: "May God
be in your heart but may work be in your hands."
He is buried
where he lived, not far outside the ancient Silk Road city of
Bukhara. (A picture of his mausoleum is attached). Learned and
wise, he insisted that he wasn't a saint and ordered his followers
not to pray to him. He also instructed them, "First visit
my mother, then my teacher, then me." Many visitors alighting
from taxis and buses heed the first part of that directive as
we did, walking dusty streets to his mother's house and tomb.
Visitors - pilgrims - often bring empty plastic bottles to fill
with the reputedly holy water that pours from spigots at the well.
But then
they head directly to Naqushband's own shrine, mausoleum and adjoining
mosque. There, many walk three times around a dead tree that lies
on the ground and supposedly dates to Naqshband's lifetime. They
tie ribbons or leave money for luck, and some pull out knives
to slice off slivers of wood. Then most go home.
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Teachers
Mosque
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So what about
the teacher, his master Hazrat Saidd Amirkulol? I confess that
we didn't go to this tomb second but we did go - unlike most other
visitors. A 10-minute taxi ride took us to a small UFO-ish mosque
of pale yellow with an olive-colored dome. (picture attached)
Quiet. Uncrowded. Only one souvenir vendor, compared to dozens
at the other sites. We entered the half-cellar, took off our shoes
and sat on cushions in front of his tomb, which is covered with
an embroidered cloth. A man read aloud from the Koran, we left
some money and headed back into the sunshine.
Outside on
a pole hangs a horsetail, a symbol of respect for teachers. So
often unappreciated.
***
Ground
Zero arrives in Tashkent
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Ground
Zero
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An exhibition
of almost 30 photographs by New York documentary photographer
Joel Meyerowitz just opened at the new Tashkent Center of Contemporary
Art. At the embassy's invitation, I brought a dozen students to
the media preview and news conference (the first press conference
most had attended), with U.S. Ambassador John Herbst and the photographer's
studio manager, art historian Susan Jenkins - flanked by flags
of the United States and Uzbekistan. (picture attached -- You
only see the tops of their heads since the flags and photo are
more dramatic.)
"After
September 11: Images from Ground Zero" depicts life on the
site in the weeks and months following the attacks. Girders scattered
like pick-up sticks. Smoldering, smoking rubble. Police and firefighters.
Construction workers and cranes. Reflections. Flags. The international
wall of remembrance. Determination.
One thing
that struck me when entering the high-ceiling white-walled gallery
was the contrast between the modernity of the photographed buildings
- glass and steel - with the classic Oriental shape of the museum's
arch-topped widows and doorways. Old and new. In the pictures:
the despair of an autumn of terror. Outside the window: leaves
emerging on the trees, branches swaying slightly in the spring
breeze. A week after Navrus ("New Day"), the national
new year holiday that coincides with the first day of spring.
Incidentally,
Meyerowitz's experience offers a lesson for journalists about
perseverance. You recall that after the attacks, the area around
the World Trade Center was blocked off as a crime scene - no press
access, no photographs. Undeterred, he went beyond the lines and
got thrown out but, in Herbst's words, "refused to allow
the authorities to prevent this history from being recorded."
Perseverance paid off, not only with stunning images but his winning
sponsorship by the Museum of the City of New York and becoming
the only photographer with unlimited access to Ground Zero.
***
The worlds
we live in
Erick Schenkel,
the director of the Central Asian-American Partnership for Academic
Development, recently returned from business trips to Afghanistan
and Switzerland. (His organization is a nongovernmental organization
that partners with, among others, the Uzbek State World Languages
University and Northeastern's School of Journalism. It provides
my faculty office, photocopier and office phone and computer -
yes, Windows 95 is still alive and well.) His observation: "There
must be some middle ground between a country that combs each blade
of grass and a country that eats the grass."
***
Press
ethics: Who's watching?
I recently
talked to about 15 English-language teachers at the National University.
Their students are primarily in the sciences, math and social
sciences. My topic: media ethics. I started with a hypothetical
- an anti-government group phones you, a visiting foreign journalist,
and says it will set off a bomb the next day in the marketplace.
What do you do? The teachers' consensus was to immediately call
the authorities, so we discussed the implications of doing so.
I also distributed copies of the controversial, now-classic photo
that a California paper published of a family grieving over the
body of their young son, who had just drowned. The consensus was
that no newspaper should publish such a picture - and I prodded
them into a discussion of news values, privacy, taste and other
considerations. Interestingly, one teacher in the back of the
room remarked several times, "This doesn't matter to us.
We're not journalists." I replied, "But you're all consumers
of news" - customers of the media - so these types of issues
do affect them. I doubt that I convinced her.
***
Student
work
Attached
are the results of a homework assignment for
my feature-writing students. You might enjoy them, but don't
believe everything you see in print.
Eric
Feature
Writing
Near the
end of my feature-writing course for third-year students, I had
them conduct a group interview with me as the subject. To help
overcome their reluctance to voluntarily participate, each had
to prepare a question in writing, then exchange it with another
student who would actually ask that question. They were to take
notes during the interview. For homework, they were assigned to
write the lead of a profile.
As you can see from the results, some wrote more than a lead,
but the five that were handed in (from a class of 15) did show
improvement in writing ability after six weeks. Remember, these
students are not native English speakers. To give an accurate
flavor of their style, I've corrected spelling and paragraphing
but nothing else. You'll notice, for example, the frequent absence
of articles - a, an, the - and some unusual word choices.
It's interesting to see what they chose to focus on, ignoring
what may (in my mind) have been more intriguing for a lead, such
as some of the ethics situations I've been involved in. But all
of us have our own sense of news judgment.
Caveat: Some "facts" they wrote about are contradictory
or inaccurate and some reflect misunderstanding, mishearing, misrecording
or misremembering my answers. I hope that if their questions and
my answers had been in Russian or Uzbek, the stories would have
been more accurate.
Ann Gvordeva
Professor Eric Freedman - he is my english teacher in the university
of Word Languages. Two years we asked our dean about good professional
teacher from America but it was unanswered. And one day something
interesting happened. The first time Mr. Freedman came to our
lesson on February and at once gave us papers where we could write
our timetable, what we would do every his lesson.
He looked very well. In my opinion he was about 44-46 years old.
But sometime later I knew that Mr. Freedman was born in 1949 in
Massachusetts and now he has 3 children.
In childhood he dreamed of becoming a lawyer but he became a journalist.
But life changed his plans. Now he enjoys of his job. He likes
to work with the students (only good students). He wants see them
more successful and he wants to be useful for them. When I asked
him a question, "Why did you go to Tashkent?" "A
several reasons I have," answered Mr. Eric Freedman. "I
like travelling and I think there are much interesting things
in Uzbekistan and I would like to write about it. But it's a pity
that I don't know a language. It is difficult to live here without
having of Russian Uzbek languages."
Mr. Freedman worked in Australia, Ireland, much worked with American
students, much traveling and wrote the articles.
I like my teacher. There are much interesting things I can write
about him. All his lessons he spent very interesting and I wish
more so teachers as Mr. Eric Freedman in our university."
Vasiliy
Markov
He is a lawyer by education but he is a journalist by profession
because of his ambitiousness: he likes his surname published in
newspapers.
He has unusual silver marriage ring and buckle of his belt is
always somewhere on his side. Traveling for joy he works and he
uses his job for traveling for joy. He dislikes ties but he thinks
he should wear them because Uzbekistan students will not perceive
him as a teacher here if he does not.
Xristofor
Karapetov
Eric Freedman feature writing teacher at University of World Languages
was born November 14, 1949 in Brookline answered students questions
about him and his. He wears extraordinary ring, he said it because
he likes everything which is extraordinary. He has a lot of colored
ties. He said that something made him change profession of lawyer
to journalist and it was in university. He understood he wanted
to work that job all my life.
Journalism is chance to see a part of the world for him. His favorite
writers are John McPhee, Bernard Cornwall, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bill
McWhirter, Chekov, Arthur Miller. He visited Australia, England,
Ireland, Spain and now he is in Uzbekistan.
He don't know Russian, as he studied it one semester when he was
a student. His lovely colors are blue and silver and he expects
more from students.
Indira
Khudabergehova
"I feel proud when my students publish good articles in press.
I tell I was able to help them to become good journalists."
The bell rang. As usual, Eric Freedman, a professor of Michigan
State University, who is a Fulbright lecturer at the Faculty of
International Journalism of Uzbek State World Languages University
now has come to the class in time.
A big rucksack, a bright tie (they say that a tie shows a personality
of a man) make his exterior free and easy.
But there is an amazing combination of external naturalness and
internal seriousness in this man. As it seems, this man doesn't
like commonness, monotony, standardization - two rings on his
hands, one on each one, are so original, especially the silver
one on the ring finger of his right hand.
Who is this man, whose eyes radiate magnetism, who can predispose
the students to himself by his natural appearance, who wears bright
ties, but always talks about the very serious things? Why after
getting the education of a lawyer and working as a lawyer for
almost 20 years ("In my childhood I planned to be a lawyer")
he suddenly decided to change his profession and to become a journalist?
How could he won so many awards in journalism? What's the secret
of his success?
Nigora
Khashnova
He dresses very strange. He wears classical shirts, sport trousers
with a belt on the left side. He has a very strange boots, which
are usually worn when it rains and he wears very, very funny ties.
It seems that he flown in from another planet.
He has a grey hair and he is about 40, but skin on his face so
smooth that he looks like the young man of about 25-30.
He has two rings, one on left and one on right hands, as if he
married two times in this and another planet where he came from.
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