A brief, open letter to the Redevelopment Commission.

...via a partial and paraphrased transcript of a semi-private, spoken reflection. I admittedly didn't ask my friend Rory for permission to share it, but he knows as well as anyone that I'm not worth suing.

Let me start with hospitality...

Culture is not just about meaning in some kind of abstract way. It is about the ways in which we make spaces for one another, the way that we are hospitable to people... I think of this in terms of making homes, making homes as guests..., and of making homes as in some ways the most basic work of culture, of civilization. The hearth, in the Indo-European traditions, is a very, very important thing. The fire is a worldwide thing and very important, certainly for native peoples on this continent.

How do we make a home for ourselves? What are the ways that we can come into a relationship with one another in a home... It seems to me that this a theme: a theme of home and displacement, a theme of how we make a home, how we can make a hospitable place for one another in settings where many feel displaced. And, in a sense, there's the other side of it which is hospice and hospital, the healing of trauma and the recognition and affective grace of mourning, which is also the work of cultural sustainability because we need to let some things go as well as hold on to them. - Rory Turner, January 18, 2011