Speechless in Phoenix

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.”

David Whyte, “Sweet Darkness”

 

Twice this week I have been rendered alive and speechless by dear friends who also happen to be valued colleagues.

The first episode of speechlessness occurred when Amira de la Garza shared with me the progress she, Bob Krizek, and Nick Trujillo have made getting commitments from scholars for a festschrift based on/been influenced by my work. For those readers unfamiliar with the sometimes serious, sometimes comic academic genre know as a “festschrift,” click here.  Details for the volume edited by Bob, Amira, & Nick:

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

1.  Provide your name and affiliation and address, as well as contact email and phone number for Bud (even if you think/know he already may have it.)

2.     Prepare a 150-250 word narrative of how you have known Bud. Tell us how you met, what he means to you, etc.—it’s up to you.

2.      Prepare an essay up to 4,000 words in length that demonstrates how his work has influenced your scholarship.

3.      The deadline for receipt of these essays is June 1, 2012.  It is very important to have timely submissions because of the time-sensitive nature of the project.  We would like to give Bud a copy of the bound collection in time for him to respond to each of the contributors should he wish to do so.

4. We ask that you DO NOT submit your contributions and questions by simply hitting "reply" to this message, if possible--to help us keep track of your individual messages.

Questions about your manuscript submission should also be sent to celebratebud@gmail.com.

After the manuscripts have been received, we will have a sense of the cost of a copy of the original festschrift collection, for those of you who would like to purchase a copy.  It is being published by the Innovative Inquiry Initiative at Arizona State University, and all proceeds from the sale of the collection will go toward a fund for an award to be presented each year at the NCA Ethnography Division meeting.  Bud and his wife, Sandra, have been working on the criteria for this award.

The NCA Award will likely be called “The Bud” (!) and will honor a published work in narrative ethnography that exemplifies excellence in storytelling informed by scholarship and intended for both scholarly and public audiences. San, Nic, and I are very excited about this award and grateful to Nick, Bob, and Amira for putting together the book whose sales (along with other contributions) will launch it.

***

I first encountered the festschrift when I was a doctoral student at Penn State. It was on one of the stacks in Old Pattee library, a slim volume dedicated to a guy I’d never heard of; an historian, maybe. I don’t recall.

What I do recall is holding the little black bound book in my hands and feeling a hoped-for connection to the best of academic life, the sort of collegiality and respect for work that leads otherwise busy people, themselves clearly accomplished scholars, to produce such a thing. It’s not the sort of publication that leads to wide readership or a merit raise. 

At that time I could not have imagined that one day I would be the subject of a festschrift. In fact, part of my speechlessness is due to the fact that I still have trouble believing it. But it sure does make me smile. [image error] 

***

The second Bud episode of speechlessness occurred when Norman Denzin send me an email. Norm is a distinguished professor of all kinds of things (truly he is a “polymath”) at the University of Illinois and also the force behind an annual conference known as the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. His email message said, simply, that he was dedicating this year’s International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry to me.

The IAQI has been an intellectual home as well as a gathering place for those of us who use qualitative research methods in a wide variety of fields and subjects. Under Norm’s leadership it has grown from a handful of narrative, performance, and qualitative scholars in the U. S. to a global education and political movement that spans all continents in over 55 countries, and 40+ disciplines, and that sponsors (through Left Coast Press) the publication of books, edited volumes, and three academic journals (with a fourth in the workings) annually. 

The conference at the University of Illinois is a major highlight for those of us who draw strength and new ideas from each other, and I hated to miss this year’s meeting. But my health just wouldn’t allow it. I was able to Skype in for a few minutes during Sarah Jane Tracy and Chris Poulos’s writing workshop, and that chance to participate – even via a screen and for a little while – made my day.

On Thursday, Norm read the following statement to the 1500+ delegates at the general assembly:

“Bud Goodall is not able to be with us this year. He has been a guiding force since the first congress.  I want to dedicate the 2012 Congress to Bud. His spirit hovers over all of us, and he will be sorely missed.”

Pretty cool, huh? I read it in his email and had a big ol' man cry. My pals attending IAQI this year tell me that the statement was well received. Again, I am rendered speechless, deeply honored and most of all, overwhelmingly grateful.

*** 

But I have put the speechlessness behind me. I have another reason to be happy this week and this one will require a lot of talk, a lot of laughter, and at least a glass of wine or two.

Today I am awaiting the arrival of my almost-lifelong friend, Stew Auyash. Stew and I met at UNC-Chapel Hill back in the fall of 1973, both of us new to grad school and to the South, he in Pubic Health Administration and me in Speech Communication, both of us residing that first semester is the old Craig Towers graduate dormitory. By the end of the semester we rented a 10’ x 60’ single-wide mobile home “out in the country” beyond Carrboro and there, singing James Taylor’s “Carolina on my Mind” with our friends, and engaging life for all we could squeeze out of it, we forged a great friendship that has lasted ever since. He is flying in from Ithaca, New York, where he has been on the faculty and serving as an administrator since 1982 at Ithaca College. 

Stew visited us earlier in our Cancerland experience. We had a jolly-ol’ time and I’m sure we will do more of the same this weekend. It’s true, I am somewhat “diminished” since his last visit, but that won’t dampen my enthusiasm. With friends, you just don’t let the cancer keep you down. At least, not yet. We still have too much left to remember.

So I say: “let the speechlessness end,” but with no end in sight for the gratitude I feel to those who continue to enrich our lives. For the "alive" they bring to us. This has been a great week! So this big smile is for you, kids … 

***