Spatial Vox - Fantastic Love
My first experience at the OHA Annual Conference was fantastic. There were many interesting panels, and my own paper was well received and fun to present to an American audience. The walking tour of Ybor City was also worth the trip to Tampa itself. Our guide was a joy, bringing the neighborhood to life and making us laugh with several stories that I assume only he could tell with such panache. I greatly appreciate the support of the OHA International Scholarship which enabled me to make the journey and attend. I hope to return in upcoming years and see familiar faces from this time around.Adam King, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Spatial Vox - Fantastic Love
The meeting theme on the power of oral history to uncover links between political and cultural change and to inspire civic engagement interested me greatly. My paper based on my work as the oral historian for an oral history project with Sudanese refugees and the various sectors in the community who helped Sudanese people in their new Australian environment matched the conference theme. Presenting the project and its important issues of trauma, cultural awareness, and language as it affects an oral history project and involving children among others was an honor in an atmosphere of professional camaraderie. I loved being with like-minded professionals passionate about oral history and I sensed genuine interest in all the presentations. There was a real sense of aiming for excellence in the field and working with, and learning from, other professionals. The conference tone was academic but not pompous; it was learned but practical as well.
If in a country there are the following ten evils: rites, music, odes, history, virtue, moral culture, filial piety, brotherly duty, integrity and sophistry, the ruler cannot make the people fight and dismemberment is inevitable; and this brings extinction in its train. If the country has not these ten things and the ruler can make the people fight, he will be so prosperous that he will attain supremacy. A country where the virtuous govern the wicked, will suffer from disorder, so that it will be dismembered; but a country where the wicked govern the virtuous, will be orderly, so that it will become strong. A country which is administered by the aid of odes, history, rites, music, filial piety, brotherly duty, virtue and moral culture, will, as soon as the enemy approaches, be dismembered; if he does not approach, the country will be poor. But if a country is administered without these eight , the enemy dares not approach, and even if he should, he would certainly be driven off when it mobilizes its army and attacks, it will capture its objective, and having captured it, will be able to hold it; when it holds its army in reserve, and makes no attack, it will be rich. A country that loves force is said to attack with what is difficult; a country that loves words is said to attack with what is easy. A country that attacks with what is difficult will gain ten points for every one point that it undertakes, whereas a country that attacks with what is easy will lose a hundred men for every ten that it marches out.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 041b061a72