Saturday, February 21, 2009

Touro Communication Club Notes #63
Tourocommunicationclub.blogspot.com
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Room 223 - Midtown
“Handling Conflict”
This topic came out of our lively conversation on Gender Communication. Conflict seems to be a frequent occurrence in everyone’s life. We’ll talk about when conflict occurs, how to mediate conflict and, most importantly, how to anticipate and prevent conflict. Obviously some conflicts are unavoidable – and healthy, but we’ll try to focus on those that we can address productively.
Dear Communicators:
The inevitable topic of politics arose in our session on the theatre last week. Most people think of politics as happening in Washington or Albany or at City Hall. I would argue that politics happens when two people get together. The degree of difficulty of the politics will vary obviously with the people and the circumstances, but it is “politics” that seem to cause the greatest heartache in human exchange.
In recent months, we have experienced many negative outcomes of politics. That’s why “politics” has such a bad reputation. The financial crisis, Bernard Madoff (and now the Sanford group in Antigua), now ex-Governor Blagojevich, the tax troubles of three of President Obama’s cabinet appointees are among the painful outcomes of “politics.8 0
If one negative aspect of “politics” is the use of any and every situation to gain personal advantage, then the prize behavior belongs to two Republican Congressmen during the debate over the Congressional stimulus package. Both argued strenuously that certain provisions beneficial to their interests needed to be included. When these provisions were included, they voted against the bill, knowing full well that, despite their negative votes, the bill would pass. Now that’s first class Machiavelli as work!
We’ll explore how politics affect communication at an upcoming session.
UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS:
Wednesday, March 4. 2009 –
“Writing President Obama II”
Much will have transpired in Washington since our first discussion, reported below. More issues will surface, but the process of arriving at agreement remains the same. Since we are focusing on a real document that we will eventually send to the President, we are automatically engaged in the fundamental process of democracy – finding agreement amidst disagreement.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
“Politics and Communication”
When two people get together, there are “politics.” Politics occur at every level human interaction – personal, family, workplace, governmental, international. Politics include the ma ny elements and levels of human interchange. We’ll try to identify some aspects of
the politics of human interchange.
What happened on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 –
“Theatre III – Improvisation Technique”
Our group of willing thespians included Egypt Allen, Carlisle Yearwood, James Millner, Richard Green, Lorinda Moore, Marcus Vyandorf, Hal Wicke and, briefly, Anna Indelicato.
Hal opened the session with the difference between training and education. Unlike20musicians whose instrument is outside their bodies, the body is the “instrument” of actors, dancers and singers. The body and voice require training to accept the demands of the art forms of the theatre, dance and opera. The actor’s tool box requires extensive mind training to discover how emotions, among other factors, are created and guided in a performance.
Education, on the other hand, is a cognitive activity – focusing primarily on the mind and its critical thinking function. The mind in education exposed to a variety of subject matter to discover effective ways of thinking as demonstrated through writing and speaking. Education is designed to give students a wide range of intellectual options.
Actor training, as well as musical and dance training, is designed to train the mind to meet the demands of a performance. The mind is trained to gain access to the emotions that are an important tool in the actor’s toolbox. The mind is also trained to produce the necessary vocal and physical effects.
With Hal leading the group, the actors began with the necessary breathing exercises, moved to a series of guided images (body tracing, colors), sense memory (hot and cold), emotional recall (fear, anger, joy) to the concept of intention (transitive verb) and concluded with a brief “party” where each behaved according to their chosen transitive verb.
The group was very responsive to the instruction and candid in sharing their responses. When some had difficulty with the a particular exercise, Hal commented that perhaps the exercise was rushed and did not allow enough time for the experience to pass from the cognitive to the affective realm. Several had difficulty finding language to appropriately describe their emotional experiences. (Not an uncommon experience for people who have not been exposed to actor training.)
Not surprisingly, fatigue set in after about 90 minutes and some people had difficulty concentrating. The mental demands on ever yone are quite intense. Like exercising a new muscle, the ability to concentrate will increase.
Several who remained talked about education and what expectations students should have about their experience. Hal suggested that there is no “should” for any student. “Should” is a dangerous word because it imposes one person’s unrealistic expectations on another. Each of us may have a similar educational experience, but how that experience affects an individual’s life varies widely.
Let’s not forget Carlisle Yearwood’s IDEA several weeks ago. He suggested we develop a 3x4 index card with basic Touro information on it. We’ll talk more about this in the future.
As always, these sessions are open for everyone to attend. Bring a friend and join the excitement. See you next time.

Hal Wicke

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Touro Communication Club Notes #62
Tourocommunicationclub.blogspot.com
This Week!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 –
Theatre Workshop III – Improvisation Technique
We continue to explore the basics of acting – breathing, sense memory, emotional recall as foundations for intensifying our notions of characterization. No doubt, this will be another frustrating hors d’oeuvre in the smorgasbord of valuable life skills of actor training.
BREAKING NEWS! (At least for us)
Richard Green received the following email on Wednesday:
To the Touro Communication Club,
My name is Adam Oldman and I am president of the Human Communication Organization at Shippensburg University in [south central] Pennsylvania. We are a new club trying to get off the ground and when I was searching for information online, your blog came up in my search results. You appear to be very well put together with a lot of great material and interest!
I was curious if you would be willing to help out a gro up of fellow communicators by sending me a copy of you club constitution? We’re working on framing one of our own to be recognized by the university, and I’m looking for a model of sorts. Also I’m looking for programming ideas, and your blog alone is full of great material!
I do not know if this email is still functional for you, but if you get this, I would appreciate anything you could send my way. Thank you again so much!
/s/ Adam Oldham
President, Human Communication Organization (HCO)
Shippensburg University
UPDATE: We passed around Adam’s email during our discussion last week about writing President Obama. Hal wrote him a long response on Friday, saying that we didn’t have a constitution but that we meet weekly to chew the Communication fat.
ALSO: If you are interested in statistics, go to the very end of the blog to a link for endless stats on our blog. As of this writing, we’ve had 191 total hits (or people who opened our blog). From the U.S. 178 hits; Pakistan 3, Germany 3, and one each from Colombia, Canada, South Africa, Philippines, Turkey, Slovenia, Israel and Vietnam. A map identifies the approximate location of the various hits worldwide.
ALSO: Only one person, Susan, has left a comment – positive – in the comment section on December 21, 2008.
Dear Communicators:
With Obama stimulus bill passing both the House and Senate this week and the president due to sign it on Monday, there certainly was a lot of communication issues to=2 0chew on. But I want to comment on another communication issue for which had two examples this week: “Changing Your Mind.”
Brett Favre changed his mind and retired for the 2nd time. Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) changed his mind and withdrew from the Secretary of the Interior position in President Obama’s cabinet.
I suppose it’s not very earth-shaking whether a sports figure retires or not and then changes his mind to play again. So many have done it before Favre. The fans may be disappointed; management may be inconvenienced and Favre’s wife may be saying, Amigo! He’s going to be around!”
But Gregg’s change of mind is another story. Obama has tried to include Republicans in his cabinet – two remain. In his news conference, Gregg explained that he not realized how deep the gulf was between the President’s agenda and his own principles. The Republican Senator’s explanation indicated he was somewhat caught up in the aura of the romance of being in a Presidential Cabinet and did not take off his rose colored glasses fast enough. Certainly there were other considerations: the potential loss of a Republican Senate seat and the announced move of the Census control to the White House from the Interior secretary’s list of responsibilities.
Those details are particular to the individual situation. The action of changing one’s mind is universal to all communication situations. We have all found ourselves in situations where we have had doubts about a decision and have “changed our mind.” We change our minds in all situations: personally: dropping a course, breaking off a relationship, getting a divorce; professionally: changing jobs, getting fired; and nationally: America went into Iraq, now we want to get out.
As “mind-changing’ goes up the ladder of increase consequences, people are hurt or killed. Emotional upset is the by-product of a broken relationship. Children are damaged by-products of divorce. Coffins are the by-products of war.
What’s the Communication Message? Mind-changing often indicates that the person doesn’t know what he/she is doing. Mind-changing creates anger and disillusionment in those around the person who suddenly behaves unexpectedly. Mind-changing conveys uncertainty of behavior leading to reduced trust. People avoid and/or don’t do business with people who change their minds.
If we are to understand Socrates’ dictum, “Know Thyself,” we notice that some people don’t know themselves. In the political arena, belief systems and/or tactical advantage are considerations of mind-changing.
Like so many topics that have a Communication component, mind-changing needs much more exploration. And then there’s the opposite: someone who never changes his/her mind. But that’s a horse of a different color.
UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS:
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
“Handling Conflict”
This topic came out of our lively conversation on Gender Communication. Conflict seems to be a frequent occurrence in everyone’s life. We’ll talk about when conflict occurs, how to mediate conflict and, most importantly, how to anticipate and prevent conflict. Obviously20some conflicts are unavoidable – and healthy, but we’ll try to focus on those that we can address productively.
Wednesday, March 4. 2009 –
“Writing President Obama II”
Much will have transpired in Washington since our first discussion, reported below. More issues will surface, but the process of arriving at agreement remains the same. Since we are focusing on a real document that we will eventually send to the President, we are automatically engaged in the fundamental process of democracy – finding agreement amidst disagreement.
What happened on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 – “The Club Writes a Letter to President Obama”
Our group of regulars included Carlisle Yearwood, Richard Green, Egypt Allen, James Millner, Lorinda Moore, Meggy Lindsay, Drani Gabu, Anna Indelicato and Hal Wicke
Hal wrote on the board two goals of the discussion:
1) How are we going to organize the discussion?
2) What topics are we going to include in the letter?
It was quickly clear that the group wasn’t interested in deciding on any organizational plan, despite Hal’s futile attempts to channel the discussion. Each person seemed to have an issue which dominated his/her thinking. If one were to transcribed the session, the comments were disjointed, some responding to the previous statement, others introducing new topics.
Hal gave up and asked the group for a list of objectives of the letter to President Obama. After some discussion, we arrived at one objective;
To give the point of view of the students and faculty of the Touro Communication Club.
Hal tried to make it clear that we were not representing anyone other than the people in the room at the time of the discussion.
Then the discussion focused on developing other objectives. The group continued to disagree on the wording of the objective. Several ideas were floated regarding the impact of President Obama’s election on the country, but no one liked the wording.
Egypt was writing furiously during the discussion. She quoted Martin Luther King’s statement, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” She continued, “How will the [battling] you do with Congress place your initiatives front and center. What can we do as a collective populace to assist you in [making] a brighter tomorrow in addition to rebuilding the [character] of the U.S.A. …Planning is harder than constructing….As we re-address your campaign promises….”
The discussion ground to a halt and Hal switched to brainstorming the topics we would include in the letter
Domestic policy
Foreign policy
Education K-12
Torture
Taxes
Iran
Mortgage relief
Iraq – bring the soldiers home
Medical insurance
Jobs
Energy
Immigration
Drug enforcement
VA funding
Global warming
The group was visibly tired from the intense 90 minute exchange that this summary is not able to reflect adequately. We would continue drafting the Obama letter at a future date.
Hal closed with the Lorinda question – “What did you learn from today’s discussion?”
  • “How to be tolerant.”
  • “Communication is a process.”
  • “Patience is NOT a virtue.”
  • “My own ideas are incomplete unless changed by others.”
  • “I had early reservations about this topic, but we had some potent discussions.”
  • “Planning is harder than constructing.”
  • “Learning to compromise.”
  • “Compromise is a copout.”
Let’s not forget last week’s IDEA: Carlisle Yearwood suggested we develop a 3x4 index card with basic Touro information on it. We’ll talk more about this in the future.
As always, these sessions are open for everyone to attend. Bring a friend and join the excitement. See you next time.

Hal Wicke

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Touro Communication Club Notes #61
Tourocommunicationclub.blogspot.com
This Week!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 –
2 pm – Room 223 - Midtown
The Club Writes a Letter to President Obama
We will spend the session translating our ideas into a coherent document which we will send to the new President. All suggestions are welcome. In a very small way we are taking the abstractions of our opinions and converting them into an action proposal. We will experiment with walking our talk.
Dear Communicators
Sometimes I feel like a little child rediscovering what I thought I already knew. This past week was no exception. As you might have guessed I read the New York Times daily and watch CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox, Channel 13 plus C-SPAN on occasion.
I’ve been watching C-SPAN-2 this week when I could because on the Congressional discussion on the bailout/stimulus package. This experience drove home what I already knew – reality is different from the media’s portrayal of reality. The media’s “sound bite” does not often represent what really goes on. As the phrase goes, “The map is not the territory.”
If I believed what I read in the NYT and saw of TV, I wouldn’t recognize what C-SPAN recorded in the Senate deliberations on the stimulus bill. Compared to C-SPAN’s single camera on a Senate speaker, here are some observations:
  • The media greatly edits what happens (not surprising.) But it is WHAT it edits that is important.
  • The media selects some speakers, often the best known speakers, to represent reality.
  • The media eliminates any mention of opposition to the bill, or minimizes it so drastically that no one will notice the arguments of the opposition.
  • The media does not capture the tension and the hospitality (genuine and feigned) of the Senators’ interchange.
  • The media often presents as “done-deals” the Senate deliberations still in flux.
  • The media overlooks the extreme formality of parliamentary procedure which makes the deliberation overly slow for the average viewer.
  • The media omits most of the rhetorical nuances of the Senators. For example, a Republican called the stimulus bill as big as the Titanic waiting to sink while the passengers were rearranging the deck chairs. Another Republican made parallel references to Homer’s Odyssey where Ulysses is caught between the monsters of Scylla and Charibdus.
  • The media presents a partial picture which many people assume is the whole picture.
Although boring and repetitive at times, C-SPAN is more calming than the hype of the media on events that it covers. What’s communication lesson to be learned? Get your information from a variety of sources, especially when it comes to gossip and political news.
UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS:
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 –
Theatre Workshop III – Improvisation Technique
We continue to explore the basics of acting – breathing, sense memory, emotional recall as foundations for intensifying our notions of characterization. No doubt, this will be another frustrating hors d’oeuvre in the smorgasbord of valuable life skills of actor training.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
“Handling Conflict”
This topic came out of our lively conversation on Gender Communication. Conflict seems to be a frequent occurrence in everyone’s life. We’ll talk about when conflict occurs, how to mediate conflict and, most importantly, how to anticipate and prevent conflict. Obviously some conflicts are unavoidable – and healthy, but we’ll try to focus on those that we can address productively.
What happened on Wednesday. February 4, 2009
Discussion: Gender Communication”
Richard Green shared a handout he found on the Internet, claiming major differences in male and female communication. As we were beginning, Dean Stanley Boylan, Vice-President of Undergraduate Education, among other duties, strolled by, noticed the sign outside the room and peaked in. He took the handout, smiled and was on his way.
In addition to Richard, Lorinda Moore, James Millner, Markus Vyandorf, Carlisle Yearwood, Anna Indelicato, Geovanny Leon, Charles Mason, Jose Dunker, Egypt Allen and Hal Wicke welcomed Henry Prenord to the session.
Hal opened the discussion with the characterization by Dr.Louann Brizentine, author of "The Female Brain,” that women have an eight-land highway for a brain while men have a single, solitary, wandering country road.” No one seemed particularly upset by the statement.
The discussion began with each person stating whether the communication styles differed between men and women. Most everyone agreed there were differences but no single communication trait between the sexes emerged. Everyone had a different idea.
One suggested that women were more open minded than men. Another offered that men “report” while women seek “rapport.” A third commented that women operate in cliques whereas men seem to operate as loners.
One person raised the question of whether lesbians, gays and trans-sexuals are included in this discussion of heterosexual communication. She felt they were excluded from many conversations because of sexual preference. There was clear level of discomfort in the group as individuals suddenly became aware of a controversial issue and were not sure how to address it.
A reference was made to what the Bible said about men and women. Hal interjected that our discussions must remain “secular’ minimizing any reference to individual belief systems. When we have a “secular” discussion, we are on equal ground. When someone introduces a belief system as the higher authority, the discussion focuses on whether we agree with that belief system. Separating the two is an important part of our work in Communication. However, if we are talking about a topic within a particular belief system to which the group subscribes, then we remain on equal ground. To have an interesting and equitable discussion, we must have a level playing field.
The discomfort was not resolved in the discussion, but clearly it needed much more time for people to think about it. Hal suggested that for the time being we could pause and “agree to disagree.” The group seemed to relax at this point, -– for a moment.
Then Hal raised the question of nature vs. nurture between the sexes. Many people participated with many differing points of view. This subject is like the endless discussion of which came first – the chicken or the egg? Although not clear, there was some agreement that nature precedes nurture in influencing behavior.
The discussion moved to the question of whether homosexuality was clear at birth or whether it was acquired through socialization. The temperature of the exchange rose perceptively without a clear resolution. Again, this is a topic to be explored more fully in the future.
Other topics that were touched on were the number of women (vs. men) at Touro, how the arts prefigure politics, how the novels of Jane Austen capture specific male and female stereotypes. Since there was significant tension in the discussion, someone suggested that we examine how we can h andle conflict. That topic has been scheduled.
In closing, Hal asked one of Lorinda’s questions, “What did you learn from this discussion?” Many responses were forthcoming;
  • “These discussions are necessary,”
  • “They teach listening.”
  • “They are frustrating because we focus on so many topics.”
  • “There is too much stereotypical thinking going on.”
  • “We need more practice in learning how to disagree without being disagreeable.”
Let’s not forget last week’s IDEA: Carlisle Yearwood suggested we develop a 3x4 index card with basic Touro information on it. We’ll talk more about this in the future.
As always, these sessions are open for everyone to attend. Bring a friend and join the excitement. See you next time.

Hal Wicke