[Membroj] Washington research progress report

[Jed Meltzer]

These are some interesting ideas.  Let's be clear on how we get from a vague
theme to an actual conference program.  For starters, I think this "Lando de
Libereco" thing has been seized upon as a straw man.  It's a pithy slogan,
which we need for a conference theme (unless we drop the idea of having a
theme).  There isn't anyone on the LKK who is planning a series of
heartwarming lectures on how St. Zamenhof's clear vision for the future of
humanity is to be fulfilled in the national progress of the United States.
 The problem is, there isn't anyone who is planning a series of lectures
period.  Many of us have been busy with the logistics of the conference, and
there is plenty of room for people to step forward with plans for content.
Obviously, the majority of the program will come from whoever volunteers to
present something, mainly from out town.  So all a theme does is provide a
general suggestion for people to work with, and it should probably be
represented by a brief essay on the conference web site.  This is important
though, because it will be a public face of the conference should anyone
look at it.

The Esperanto-USA conference is always, by definition, about Esperanto and
the USA, but I think given the 100th anniversary, and the capitol location,
it's appropriate for this year's theme to center on "USA" a bit more than
usual.  What we make of that is up to us.  So there are basically three
things that will require a bit of consensus:

1)  Some though-provoking text about the theme to put on the website, since
otherwise a slogan alone means nothing.

2)  Content of a brief public program, if we are going to do it, and I think
we always should at a conference, no matter where and when.  Keep in mind
that the primary purpose of this will be to introduce Esperanto to those who
know nothing about it.  The non-Esperantist academic audience for topics in
the history of the Esperanto movement consists of ?

3)  Content of the rest of the conference (esperanto language).  We need
volunteers to actually provide the content.  People are suggesting some very
interesting topics, that's great, but nothing will come of it unless you
actually do the research yourself and present it, or arrange for someone
else to present it.  This is why we need to get the website up quickly with
a call for lectures, and the more detail we can put in about what we're
looking for, the more responses we'll get.  I don't think anyone is going to
be dissuaded from lecturing or attending just because we have some specific
ideas up there.  This part doesn't really require consensus, since I'm
pretty sure we'll take whatever we can get.  I don't think anyone has ever
been turned down for proposing to run a program activity at a Landa
Kongreso.

For instance,


>In short, with some detective work, an interesting portrait of the various
viewpoints from which the >Esperanto movement could be viewed, all radiating
out from the question: what was the world like >in 1910, and what influences
converged upon Washington in that era?

That would be great.  But what will this be?  A lecture, an exhibit of
artifacts?  Please, by all means, do it!

Personally, I'm all for not being too terribly serious.  For instance, I am
planning on my primary programmatic contributions to be a bicycling
excursion and a musical performance.  This is supposed to be fun.  The theme
and the lecture program are important, but there is much more than that to
the conference, and I intend on mainly drinking a lot, staying up late
talking in Esperanto, and dragging my sorry tired ass into work Tuesday
morning exhausted from working hard and playing hard.

On the other hand, I do plan on writing up a brief description of the
proposed theme for the website.
But that's just because I perceive the need for such a thing.  I'd be more
than happy if someone else would do it.  Writing a text by committee would
be ideal but I can't imagine it actually happening this century.  Would
anyone like to have a go at it?

-Jed



On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Ralph Dumain
<rdumain at autodidactproject.org>wrote:

> As next years's ELNA congress will be on a holiday weekend, being too
> ambitious in terms of getting the public to come to some event would
> probably be a mistake.  That leaves us with entertaining ourselves, and the
> question remains, how serious does one want to get on a holiday weekend?
> It's a shame that we can't plan something more ambitious, becuase there is
> something far more interesting that could be done than simply shnorr for the
> American dream -- lando de libereco.. .. Here are a few thoughts.
>
> The 1910 was an international as well as a national event. Presumably
> others from the Americas outside of the USA were here too, along with
> Europeans and maybe some Asians. Hence we might think of the Latin American
> connection.
>
> This year is Colombia's centenary in the Esperanto movement, and they are
> having a commemorative congress there.
>
> I'm reading Zamenhof's big ms on Hilelismo, the predecessor of Homaranismo,
> and I'm finding it fascinating and instructive about his mindset. Recently I
> read Van Kleef's monograph on Homaranismo.
>
> 1910 was also smack in the middle of the great Jewish (and other) migration
> from Eastern Europe, which means that Zamenhof could have gotten a chance to
> see how his people were doing here, not to mention that there may be been
> immigrants participating in the American Esperanto movement.
>
> In 1910 Washington was a centerpiece of Jim Crow. How did Zamenhof and
> others react to that, and how did Black Washingtonians perceive the 1910
> Esperanto Congress?
>
> What other viewpoints were extant other than the 'lando de libereco'
> fantasy? Esperantists did or could have known better, or at least did in
> subsequent decades, when an Esperanto translation of Leib Malach's play
> "Mississippi" was published in Esperanto in 1939. (See my recently uploaded
> foreword and biography from that publication). Furthermore, Malach traveled
> all through the Americas (Latin American connection again), inter alia
> causing an uproar in Argentina with a play about sex slavery.
>
> Now most interesting of all: I've been discovering references to Esperanto
> and other constructed languages in the black press. So far the most
> prominent black Esperantist of the time was William Pickens, who published
> in or was reported on in The Voice of the Negro, The Amsterdam News, and the
> Chicago Defender. I don't know yet whether he was here in 1910 but he well
> could have been. He was a major civil rights figure of that time. There are
> other articles in the black press on Esperanto and at least one on Volapuk.
> The Pittsburgh Courier reported (in 1953!): "Ido movement names Negro to top
> post"--a peculiar achievement, given that the Ido movement was dead by then!
>
> In short, with some detective work, an interesting portrait of the various
> viewpoints from which the Esperanto movement could be viewed, all radiating
> out from the question: what was the world like in 1910, and what influences
> converged upon Washington in that era?
>
>
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