| Development Groups: This anthropologist, Joe Berlund, made us pick groups and laid out plans for us to
tear one another apart while looking at Hawaiian culture, our culture and hope to find ways of getting to know a foreign
culture. At our first get together we discussed our weekend and how we got to know Hawaii (and Ookala). The staff did a "fishbowl" and it was pathetic at one point discussing the finer points of the differences between “trash,” “garbage” and “rubbish.”)
Another night we had critical incidents to discuss and we had to rate one another afterwards. From the conflicting
remarks about me, I tossed it out as an useless exercise as it seemed to demonstrate that people used predetermined attitude to simply
come up with their rating and not using the previous half-hours discussion. We had a big row over the purpose of the group.
Everyone hated to have to meet at such and such a time and discuss forced topics.
Berlund sensing this unrest said we could do whatever we wanted, but he wanted reports about what we were doing.
Pinochle: Every other group just forgot the whole thing or made feeble attempts to meet. But our
group was solid. We decided that we didn't want to discuss ways of finding out about a different community.
We were well organized and had a goal. I disagreed with the group and wanted to find out everything about Ookala.
So we put Monday nights aside for Hawaii and I made reports. Tuesday was Fiji night and we had our instructors
come as guest speakers. Wednesday was American culture night. Thursday was pinochle and Friday was free.
And we called ourselves the Pinochle Group.
We got off to a great start. We made a list of what we thought were important means of getting into a community
and discussed that one out - just Berlund wanted all along. Herb spoke to us on "Why America is rich".
Jas put on a good show - he was drunk and fell off his chair twice. Ernest showed us how to prepare avacado.
We became "the" group, people from other groups came to sit in on our discussions. I even typed up reports for Berlund. Also see: Oct 21st |
