GA Journal by Kok Heong McNaughton

Wednesday June 26th 2003

We left Los Alamos around 9 AM to give us plenty of time to drive to Albuquerque and catch the plane at 1 PM. The last half hour had me pacing back and forth nervously waiting for the last Webstaff shirt to be delivered to me. This has been a nightmare, literally, as I had awaken twice in the night with dreams of mishap. The shirts, all but this one, had arrived in Boston several weeks ago. There had been a mistake in the size of one of them and Vicky was making this one in the right size for me to take to Boston. When I picked it up two days ago, I had noticed that it read, "General Assembly 2002" instead of "2003"! She must have picked up the old logo in her computer! Panic. Can she unpick it and redo just this part of the logo? She had promised delivery before 8 and there was still no shirt by 8:30. Frantic phone calls. No answer. Finally... yes! "Oh I rang the door bell and there was no answer, so I left it on top of your car," she said. Phew!

At Cincinnati, we met up with Sally Noe from Billings, Montana, who served with me on the Leadership Succession Committee a few years ago. We chatted about the usual: politics, religion, grandchildren and such. "What have you been up to?" she asked. I mentioned APIUUs and shamelessly switched on my recruiting antenna. "Are you by any chance Asian?" I asked. She does have dark hair and dark complexion and anyway, you can't tell from the name alone. Just look at Kim Varnay. I would never have guessed from his name alone that he is half Japanese. "Nop, Portuguese," she said. Whoops!

We sat next to a retired elementary school principal who was born and raised in Boston. She is currently teaching ESL to refugee children from Somalia in a special school in Cincinnati and is on her way home for a family visit. She is Irish-Catholic and has two children about the same ages as Jenni and Elizabeth, but no grandchildren. The two-hour flight went by quickly as we had much to chat about, including our purpose in flying to Boston. At the end of two-hour, she was paging through the latest issue of UU World and her curiosity was aroused enough that she said she would drop in at St. John's Unitarian Church in Cincinnati. Hahaha, the UU Evangelist strikes again!

Lugging the heavy luggage up and down the stairs from the airport to the convention center by way of the Rapid Transit was a big challenge. All the stations are so old they don't have elevators. We should have called a taxi. When we finally got into our bedroom, it was eleven PM EST, a whole 12 hours on the road. Our luggage had been opened and physically inspected and I realized why. I had brought hundreds of A/PAmerican Heritage and other posters rolled up into cylinders that looked like homemade pipe bombs under any X-ray machine. Well, at least I know the Transportation Security Administration is doing its job.

Thursday June 27th 2003

Switching from Mountain Time to Eastern Time gives us the advantage of waking up at the reasonable hour of 6 AM instead of the unGodly hour of 4 AM. We met up with JJ and Bill Lewis in the elevator, which was a good thing because JJ had a key to the Maverick Suite, which is the "Press Room" for our web team. Last night when we stopped by the press room at 11 PM, it was closed like a clam with a note directing those seeking email access to visit the GA Cyber-café in Room 101 of the Hynes Convention Center. I was particularly anxious to get on the website to find out if Elizabeth was going to be OK. The last message I had from her, before we left Los Alamos yesterday was that the Albuquerque bosque fire was only 2 miles from her home and she was anxious that they may have to evacuate. This was an anxious time for me, with nightmares of fire burning up homes invading my dreams again.

JJ checked the Albuquerque news first thing when she got on the computer, before I was able to find the power supply and network connection to my laptop. "The fire burned more than 700 acres, but is now under control," she gave me the reassuring news. I scanned Elizabeth's posting on the Purkle_couch bulletin board and was relieved that it has gone from "local news" back to the usual Neopets chitchats. All is well. I sighed.

Young Kim came by and took some APIUU "business cards" from me to give out. I dove right into work -- checked assignments, cracked my cyber-whip and took time for a quick breakfast, then went through all the process of registration, delegate credentials, obtained the proper ribbons (they didn't have our names on the volunteers list and so we gave up on trying to get our volunteer ribbons). I met up with Jennifer Ryu at the A/PIC booth that we shared with Interweave, OBGLTC, and DRUUMM. The banner was beautiful! Jen has set up some T-shirts, so I added the posters and additional handouts that I had printed.

I handed out APIUU business cards to everyone I came across who looked Asian. Most thanked me, and a few said they already had one, which meant that others are doing the same. At the MDD In-gathering, I made a plug for Frank Wu's workshop and handed out more business cards to those who have APIUUs in their churches. Some ministers are particularly interested in taking these home to their congregations. By the end of the day, I only have about 20 left of the 100 I printed.

The webteam was treated to a wonderful reception in Kay Montgomery's suite at the Marriot. We were congratulated with stories of how people "all over the world" are accessing our website, and the positive feedback from many of our viewers, readers and listeners. Once again, we did a group photo with most of us in our bright red Web-shirts, the color was chosen "in honor of Kok Heong", Deb said. Well, it's not quite the "Chinese Red" that I had wanted, but that's the only red we could get.

GA attendance is so large this year (more than 7100 have registered as of today) that the main meeting place is not large enough to seat all of us, and we were divided into two separate groups. This is quite a challenge in technology to have the key people be physically in one room, but simulcast and projected on the screen in the other room. In order to be fair, the key people had to be shuttled from one room to the other at the right time. We sometimes have split screen simulcast of things happening in both rooms! In addition there's a "simulscript" contracted out to a company in Boston where someone types what he/she hears phonetically. Sometimes they made hilarious typos. "Our Singing Tradition" becomes "Our Sinning Tradition" and "Unitarian Universalists" becomes "Arian Universe."

There was much confusion as to where the Opening Night Dance was to be held and where the Coffee House with The VariAsians was as there was a last minute change to both locations. I covered both events by taking time to drop in and take pictures on both. The VariAsians is a group of young Asian Americans who organized as a group about a year ago and offers a variety of musical offerings, from group a cappella to solos, with minimum instrumentation. Much of the rhythmic background was provided through lively vocal percussion. Ranging from 19-29, they are "friends who enjoy making music together." As a group of 5 women and 6 men from ethnic backgrounds including Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and different countries of origin including Malaysia, they presented a rich program that varies from traditional and ethnic folk songs of the East to the standard popular songs of the West. It was truly a feast for the ears.

Friday June 27, 2003

Friday and Saturday are the peak of our GA coverage. Having lost two reporters at the last minute, the load is spread amongst the remaining 8 of us, so with each of us taking 3 workshops each (one for each time slot), we still have events left uncovered. Such is life. We try our best, and we can do no more. I'm behind with writing reports. For lack of practice, the writing comes slowly. Painfully slow. I can no longer whip out a two-page essay in an hour.

At the UUA Bookstore, I loaded up with 20 copies of "A Chosen Faith" and 20 bumper stickers that read, "The Uncommon Denomination. Unitarian Universalism." This is the logo and catch-phrase that were used recently to "grow congregations" in some of the larger cities. I think some people in our church would be pleased to have them.

The workshop on Church Staff Compensation and the one on Covenant Group provided much materials to write about, but the Faith in the World presentation, sparsely attended in the late hour of the evening, gave me no inspiration and I don't have a clue how to write it up. The challenge here is to make up something that closely approximate the "spirit" of the presentation.

My web duties did not allow me the leisure to attend the Frank Wu lecture, conducted off site, nor the VIP dinner reception before hand, so I await reports from other members of the A/PIC Steering Committee. Today is so busy I didn't even have time to stop by the A/PIC booth to check on how things are going, but I did see a couple of people walking around with our new A/PIC t-shirts, so I know they are selling some of them.

Saturday June 28, 2003

The morning was spent writing out two of the three workshops I went to yesterday and when afternoon rolled around, the second report was just barely started. I'm way behind!

Both the Frank Wu talk and the panel discussion afterwards were well-attended, with close to 200 people in each. Frank's speech was dynamite! He did it without notes, just off the cuff, yet keeping everyone riveted to their seats. I took copious notes and the challenge now is to make some sense of them, particularly the disjointed jottings taken at the panel discussion. Apparently, my feeling on this is not alone. Members of the webteam were talking last night, as they worked late into the night, whether covering and writing up panel discussions are worth the effort. How much does a non-attendant get out of the session is questionable. We ought to re-think this for next year.

A reception was held in honor of Frank and his wife Carol Izumi at the DRUUMM suite in the Sheraton. We didn't know about this until we bumped into Joey Lyons near the escalator. We dropped in and was delighted to be able to spend some time talking with and getting to know Carol, who is witty and easy to talk to.

More writing in the evening trying to catch up. It occurred to me that I have had to miss out on all the planery sessions so far except for the opening ceremony. People were talking about, "Did you hear Bill Sinkford say...." and I am clueless. I'm thinking that next year I would like to take a sabbatical from web-reporting and really enjoy GA without responsibilities! Wouldn't that be nice!

Sunday June 29, 2003

How do you shuttle over 7000 UUs from the Convention Center to the Fleet Center for the Service of the Living Tradition? Not very easily. Some of us walked, which takes close to an hour. Most of us take the Rapid Transit, which takes about 1/2 hr from stop to stop. Even though the Planning Committee has alerted the Boston Public Transport about this event and the necessity for more trains, each train only had two cars, and they were packed with UUs on the Green Line from Convention Center stop to the Fleet Street stop. Security at the Fleet Center was tight. We were warned not to bring anything bigger than a handbag as even those were searched.

The service was, as usual, a big boost to my UU pride and will probably sustain my evangelism for another year! The Children's choir was delightful. The short homilies were uplifting, and the final number from the Living Tradition Choir, consisting completely of Ministers, ministerial students and their family members, was fiery enough to rival an African American Baptist revival!

Four new Asian UUs joined us at our General Meeting this afternoon in the DRUUMM suite. This is good. We are growing, slowly but surely. Statistically-speaking, as Asian/PI makes up 4% of the total US population, if representation is proportional, there should be 10,000 Asian UUs in our denomination, and 6 of them should be in my very own congregation. There are only two: myself and my daughter Jenni who recently signed our membership book. Where are the other four?

We went around introducing ourselves, stated our congregation of affiliation, where we were born, and our childhood religion. More than half of us are born and raised in the USofA. One phrase that Joey Lyons introduced, which I particularly like, is "UUism is a liberal religion for progressive Asian Americans." Although it doesn't take into account of the global vision, it is a start. Kim challenged that this phrase "would be up in our website within 24 hours." So here it is! It's also in the FAQ section of this website as the first question.

A non-Asian UU friend wants to know, "A/PIUUs are telling the rest of us UUs that we are doing it all wrong, or not enough. But you don't tell us how we can do it right, or what to do to make it right." As I was riding up the elevator with many things going through my head, certain neurons snapped together and the word "suspension" kept popping up. Suspension of disbelief. Suspension of judgment. Likewise, suspension of quick connections. When a "clueless white folk" asks, "Where are you from?" of an Asian/PI or any minority person or of a person with an accent, this person is attempting to make a quick and easy connection through opening up dialogue around this question. What does the person gain with this knowledge but some small advantage to a quick and easy opener? Suspend the question. Slow down, let the information find its way out at its own pace. Don't be too quick to connect at this level. I am wondering now: is this level of connection is a deep level or a casual level. I tend to think it is the former. Perhaps that's why some of us feel uncomfortable with this simple question. I don't speak for the entire Asian American community (to quote Frank Wu), I am not upset by being asked where I am from. It's because I wasn't born and raised in the USof A. I can understand how those who were born in raised here feel about such a question. It tells them that they are strangers in their own land.

Rather than bemoan what's not right, we ought to emphasize what is right. Perhaps we could collectively come up with a list of ten do's and don'ts. Rather than highlighting the current racial problems of this world, why not envision what the ideal world would be like? Again, we could collectively come up with a list of ideals.

Monday June 30, 2003

Final day of GA. Where did the time go? Two more events to cover today. Four point five events to write up. I'm not going to be able to finish them all today. I'll just have to do my best and write up the rest of them once I got home.

During the "Joining the Wide UU World" workshop sponsored by ICUU, Rev Jill McAllister asked those who speaks a different language to come up and do a chalice lighting in their own language. Although I speak Mandarin and Cantonese, my vocabularies in both are limited to everyday conversation like the weather, family news, the home, shopping and foods, nothing that involve ideals and philosophy. I think in English and dream in English. One time, when I was coming out of anesthesia after surgery, I asked for water in English. I had a hard time coming up with the word in either Mandarin or Cantonese for "chalice." Cup yes, chalice no. So my chalice lighting, translated from Mandarin back to English, roughly says, "I light this fire to celebrate the love in the world." I was glad there wasn't another Mandrin-speaking UU in the workshop to call me bluff. I'm reminded once again how difficult it is to bridge the gap in conveying our UU philosophies to people of other languages. McAllister's advice on speaking English to another person whose native language is not English is to speak it slowly with clear annunciation and use words in their original meanings, none of these flowery idioms and nuances that only English-speaking people can understand, and even when they do, misunderstanding happens.

John Hurley was writing the "Hometown Press Release" for the GA website and I happened to mention that phrase, "UUism is a liberal religion for progressive Asian American" that I heard "at our first General Meeting yesterday." "That was your first General Meeting?" asked John. "That's newsworthy. Send me some info, I might be able to use it." Woo-hoo! I thought, if we made it into the Hometown Press Release, that would mean more people are going to hear about us.

Later I asked John if he has posted the Press Release yet. He said he wasn't able to use the info I gave him because this isn't our FIRST meeting. "But it's our FIRST General Meeting," I protested. "The other one was our first ORGANIZATIONAL meeting." Ah but people aren't going to know the difference. Oh well, I tried.

For me, GA would not have been complete without the Closing Ceremony. Again, we had to be in two separate rooms, which was unnecessary if they had opened up the balcony for us. Both the GA choir and the Children's Choir performed, sometimes separately, and other times together on the same piece of music. After the closing ceremony, we bumped into Brian Olson, a young adult who grew up in our church. His picture was on the front page of the GA website. He is now a delegate from Santa Barbara and sits on their Board of Trustees. I remember when he was in the YRUU, he attended GA for the fist time in Pheonix, AZ. How to keep our youths in our denomination? One answer is, "send them to GA!"