Fukushima Dai-ichi

We awoke well before sunrise to catch the Shinkansen to Sendai and then board a slower regional train to Odaka. As usual, I insisted on taking a much earlier option, though we could have chosen an itinerary that would get us to our destination with three minutes to spare. In the U.S., it makes much more sense to presume some delay in mass transit. In Japan, though, I’m coming to understand that when they say the train will arrive at 11:57, they generally mean 11:57. Anyway, we arrived two hours early, which afforded a chance to find a nearby ramen house. And I mean house. The owners ushered us into a back room with other folks who ceased their chatting and looked at us like we’d flown in from Mars. But once we joined them on the Tatami mats and gamely pointed at one of the written options on the low table, our neighbors went back to their conversations. A couple folks spotted us slurping our noodles with suitable joy and encouraged us to pronounce the food as “ichiban,” which it indeed proved to be.

At noon we joined a small group of fellow tourists (two from Argentina and one from Malaysia) gathered to visit the Red Zone. On this site in 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake located on the Pacific side of Honshu generated a tsunami that partially engulfed the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing three of its six reactors to melt down. The tsunami killed about 16,000 people and forced an estimated 150,000 people from their homes. While plant workers struggled valiantly to manage the nuclear crisis, the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the physical and psychological impacts of radiation exposure remain difficult to quantify. Today, the Fukushima region continues to suffer the social and economic impacts of population loss, even though background radiation has returned to relatively healthy limits. Some local boosters are hoping that tourism can play a positive role in regional revitalization.

Of course, a fair question arises: Why would anyone want to holiday in Fukushima? Some might find it ghoulish to visit a field of broken tombstones laid flat by a torrent of water, to pass by lots of demolished homes where only family shrines remain, to drive through empty villages whose abandoned shops once buzzed with commerce. Some surely would think it odd to mount a hill overlooking the panorama of the plant nestled near the water’s edge, now the site of mammoth decommissioning and cleanup efforts that will take decades and cost somewhere near 200 billion dollars. Tour organizers know all too well that many visitors come in hopes of reliving episodes of Dark Tourist, or maybe even attempting illegal “urban exploration.” Yet they hope that they can resist that sort of “ruin porn,” seeking instead to send visitors back with stories of the region’s resilience.

Our guide was a prefectural manager named Shuzo Sasaki who arranged the permits for our small group to enter the exclusion zone. Driving down roads lined by weeds and debris, we passed empty fields and rice paddies now increasingly used as solar farms. We also saw vast collections of black bags filled with contaminated soil. How many bags? Current estimates total around 16 million. Occasionally we’d pass a digital readout of radiation levels. And everywhere are abandoned houses and vacant lots. 

At one point we stopped at the farm of Masami Yoshizawa, an activist who cannot sell his cows but has opted not to slaughter them. While over 5,000 cows were left to starve after the tsunami, Yoshizawa stayed behind to care for his. There is, of course, is no market for Fukushima milk, which leaves him struggling to survive. To dramatize his plight, Yoshizawa built a “Cow Godzilla,” a performance-art piece that he often drives to Japan’s parliament to raise awareness of the struggle that Fukushima fisherfolk, farmers, and ranchers still endure.

Advancing closer to Fukushima Dai-ichi, we cruise down National Route 6, stopping occasionally along the tour’s dismal stations. At Ukedo Elementary School we see the waterline etched below the roofs and imagine the destruction caused by deluges that roared up to ten kilometers inland. At Kumamachi Elementary School we peer into classrooms filled with scattered books and bags. At a fish nursery we survey the destruction wrought by the tsunami, and we photograph the sarcasm directed at Tokyo Electric Power Company: “TEPCO will last for 1,000 years.”

And in towns like Ōkuma and Futaba, with their rows of empty houses and shattered-glass businesses, I flash back to The Last Picture Show and imagine the haunting of ghosts. I think about those farmers and plant workers who managed to live but still left, and those school children who fled along forest paths to the tops of hills, barely escaping the waves that crashed below. From time to time we stop and shoot our typical photos, asking our banal questions. And then as afternoon falls, we begin our exit, checking out with masked police officers dressed in blue and white. Our final checkpoint involves us sticking out the soles of our feet for radiometer inspection.

As it turns out, we visited Japan during its cherry blossom season, a brief period when petals open and bloom, only to fall a week or so later. So during the tour, and afterward, I reflected on the concept of mono-no-aware, sometimes translated as the sadness or “ahhness” of things. That evening, Jenny and I joined Karin Taira, owner of the Lantern House (where we stayed for the evening), and compared our thoughts on the concept. She agreed that one may certainly discern sadness from mono-no-aware, but one also contemplates acceptance and even appreciation for the passing of things.

Related both to Shinto and Buddhist teachings, mono-no-aware reminds us that we ought not hold too fast to material things. Doing so only invites suffering. Instead we are wise to study the changing of things, the passing away of appearances. In such meditation, one comes closer to wisdom. I suspect it will be a long time, if ever, before I can claim any kind of understanding about Fukushima. Even writing these few paragraphs has been harder than I expected. But I start here, knowing I have a long way to go. 

A Rhetoric of Ruins: Darvaza Gas Crater

Beware the reveries of desert travelers. In the same way that some tourists who wander the crowded quarters and narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City may confuse themselves with Christ dragging His cross down the Via Dolorosa, the traveler just back from the undulating sweep of sand dunes and juniper and sedge may be forgiven for boasting some deep and newfound understanding of things heretofore unknown when they stumble, perhaps mad from the heat, into civilization. After a recent trip into Central Asia’s Karakum Desert, I might have fallen prey to that same conceit. For it is here where I visited a place known previously to me only through strange and affecting photographs of a locale, termed a ruin, now transformed into a peculiar tourist site: Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Gas Crater.

~

Before we visit the crater, let me tell you a little more about the process of getting to this place. Like virtually every visitor to Turkmenistan, I employed an agency that, among other conveniences, secured me the all-important Letter of Invitation. Given the nation’s role as the world’s fourth largest producer of natural gas, Turkmenistan makes enough money from its natural resources to sustain its political leadership without joining fellow Central Asian nations who have gone into the international hospitality business. One local expert assured me that his country admits barely 20,000 tourists a year. [Understandably, the State Committee on Tourism reports higher numbers.]

One senses that the nation would just as soon avoid the hassle of too many strangers skipping across the borders with Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, bringing a little hard currency but also the threat of cultural contagion. Turkmenistan appears to have concluded that tourists are simply not worth the hassle. As a result, I was obligated to secure the services of a state-approved guide to enter the country. Indeed, I recall few words uttered more sternly upon my arrival at an international airport than when the officer, after surveying my passport and stamping my newly affixed tourist visa, offered his no-nonsense admonition:

“Welcome to Turkmenistan. Never travel without guide.”

Technically this rule does not apply to visitors who remain in the capital city of Ashgabat. And travelers who manage to score short-term transit-visas may also avoid this stricture altogether. But after nearly 24 hours of omnitopian flow produced by a structural and perceptual bubble of elevators, shuttles, pedways, buses, trains, and airplanes, departing from my previous abode in Finland to enter this marble and gold enclosure of Turkmenistan’s international airport, I was not inclined to quibble.

Exiting the airport, which is shaped like a falcon spreading its wings, I notice more and more the traditional clothing of local folks, particularly the long, colorful caftans and headgear worn by women – often sporting vibrant scarves that cover expansive skull caps to manifest an aristocratic bearing, while also providing insulation from the heat. Some younger women, recent brides, bite down on their scarves while in public, reflecting a pledge to stay silent until given permission by their in-laws. [One should add Turkmen women, stemming from a people whose traditions of pride and bravery recognize no barriers of gender, have no problem learning to speak through clenched teeth]. I also notice that men often wear colorful taqiyahs, or sometimes telpeks (also known by outsiders, not without some derision, as “big furry hats”). And among many women and men in this country, gold-capped teeth are still viewed as a sign of wealth. [Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s first post-Soviet president, a dentist before he rose to power, condemned this practice as a threat to personal and national hygiene. Still, some traditions remain stubbornly hard to eradicate.]

One discerns in Turkmenistan an ever-present sense of formality and decorum. Like Ashgabat’s march of cookie-cutter apartments that arouse visions of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, this place is a monument to order. Still, as it does everywhere, the surveillance state leaks with humanity. People here are friendly and easy-going – although the overly enthusiastic smile of an earnest tourist may be met with bemusement, or even scorn. Again, this is a post-Soviet society, which means that unwarranted exuberance is often interpreted as foolishness, or deception. Even so, Turkmens are tolerant of strangers, a practical necessity given this nation’s historical position as a desert oasis. Thus, despite the rare appearance of dedicated taxis, most local folks hitch rides by standing alongside the road, hands stretched downward (though without the “patting the dog” maneuver practiced in other countries), awaiting a car driven by anyone looking to score a few Manats. A quick check of destination, a brief negotiation for price, and folks get where they want to go with minimum hassle.

Perhaps it’s the blazing sun that explains why local folks prefer not to draw unnecessary heat in their public lives. By admittedly playful illustration, I would note that beards are discouraged in Turkmenistan. Given my own stylistic choices, I am happy to report that they are technically allowed, though you can hardly expect to find any worn. President Niyazov condemned them as signs of religious excess against his secular state. Accordingly while most folks here adhere to the Sunni brand of Islam, and quite a few seek their own kind of solace in Russian Orthodoxy, one finds no condemnation for those who practice other faiths. This is, one should remember, the norm across most of the Islamic world; no one would confuse Turkmenistan with Saudi Arabia.

That being said, the government allows virtually nothing in the way of public dissent, political opposition, journalistic freedom, or disrespect toward its president. In fact Ashgabat is positively aglow with golden statues commemorating Niyazov, augmented by a growing number of portraits celebrating his successor, the current president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Instead one finds a multitude of advertisements for the state brand, typically projected on large video displays. On these electronic murals, the president may be shown surrounded by children, cupping his hands upward in piety, or occasionally sitting astride his horse, a symbol of pride among a people famed for their equestrian skills. And, yes, travelers on Turkmenistan’s national airline will find his portrait gracing each cabin, receiving assurance for a safe flight under his watchful eye. In this omnipresent reminder of Niyazov’s legacy and Berdimuhamedow’s benevolence, one gradually leans inward and toward the disciplinary contours of docility, the ever-fine tendrils of reverence, that perpetuate the performance of control.

Statue commemorating Ruhnama,
Saparmurat Niyazov's book of spiritual guidance for the Turkmen people

Beyond the airport, the nation’s surveillance structure expands ever more intricately along physical and digital pathways that connect cameras and other tools of observation nestled among lighting fixtures and inserted throughout other nodes of public life. I would also not be surprised if Turkmenistan has chosen to follow the authoritarian model advanced by China to employ facial recognition devices and algorithmic assessments to mark the movements of every person in the country’s larger cities – or at least hopes to do so in the near future. In the meantime, access to social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram is banned.

As for more surreptitious forms of surveillance, I can offer no specific experience. I would merely presume that all tourists, some surely more than others, receive their portion of special attention by the nation’s security apparatus. Augmenting this diffused brand of panopticism, one grows familiar with the sight of baton-twirling cops in blue uniforms and high-peaked hats who stand on seemingly every major street corner, sometimes chatting amiably with each other but seldom abandoning their alert gaze. Mirroring the eight-pointed star, the ubiquitous mark of the nation woven into carpets, etched along walls, and even used to shape the Turkmenistan’s Wedding Palace, this government does not shirk from its desire to maintain an environment of pleasantly total jurisdiction. The eye of state sees in all directions.

Nonetheless I did not come to Turkmenistan to study its surveillance practices. I simply took them for granted. Like the irksome blinking light found on smoke detectors in hotels around the world, this reality first vexed me before it became a less troubling feature of life. So with a healthy respect for my surveilled status, nodding politely at cops broiling in the heat, I toured the nation’s capital city – a Central Asian version of Las Vegas sprawling with gleaming programmatic architecture – as a cheerful tourist. 

So, yes, in fact and in spirit, I would marvel at the city’s blocks of white apartment buildings that stretch in geometric repetition along the city’s monumental boulevards. Naturally I would delight at the sight of splashing fountains that dance with gaudy excess amid the desert that covers about 80 percent of the country. Led by Murad Arrykov, my guide and translator, I would also tour the ruins of the Old Nissa fortress and visit the Silk Road “Wandering City” of Merv near the city of Mary, a short domestic hop away. And I did come to love those ancient ruins, drawn to the universal desire to trace some passageway between the hyper-present and the distant past. Of course, my trip was centered on that crater in the desert.

~

Driving north of Turkmenistan’s capital city of Ashgabat on a day that burned hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I figured AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was the right tune for the trip. The Aussies, after all, know something about deserts. The Red Center drive from Alice Springs to Uluru, the chance to barrel past hopping kangaroos and bounding wallabies remains one of the highlights of my life. But I trusted Murad who insisted that Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally, that ode to promiscuity and purgatory, the slippery divide between coming and going, was the perfect choice for the moment when we pulled off the main drag, just before the Daşoguz checkpoint, to see the pit.

Hopping over the rocky, rutted pathway toward our destination, we cranked Sally up loud enough to bang our heads, though our 4X4 made plenty of percussion on its own. Our driver, a taciturn dude whose eyes squinted sharply under the blazing blue sky, kept his focus on the road. No “да, да, да” of agreement here; if the driver dug the tune, I would never know. Nearing our destination, Murad pointed out details through the windshield, displaying his mastery of culture, history, archeology, flora, and fauna. Yet from time to time he too adopted the reserved pose of the driver. And I joined his silence. Just a few miles more, we would find what locals supposedly call the Door to Hell. And then, at that moment, Little Richard belted out a line from Long Tall Sally that made perfect sense: “He has the blues but he has a lot of fun.” This, as much as anything, is the mantra for a place that gathers people to reside between pleasure and despair. 

We arrived in late afternoon, after making stops at two nearby craters produced by failed gas mining efforts. One was filled by water; the other was filled with mud. At these initial stops, my guide and driver waited long enough for me to walk their perimeters. Ambling around the second crater, which bubbled and smelled faintly of sulfur, I recall feeling a similar vibe to the process one endures to circle the labyrinth in a cathedral like Chartres. Whether surrounded by fellow travelers or, in this case, alone, I could still sense a long-needed stillness, a reverential silence. Later, tracing our route from crater to crater, though playing a bit with the order of elements, Murad would remind me of a conversation we had the previous day, while visiting Nissa, concerning the Zoroastrian triangle of earth, water, and fire. Despite my tendency to overstate my perceptions of these experiences, I can confirm the existence of a primal, elemental feeling in this place.

After three and a half hours of banging along rugged terrain, dusty villages, ragged camels, and the occasional highway roamer pointing a hand downward in hopes for a ride, we arrived at the gas crater. The pit, about 230 feet across and more than 60 feet deep, marks a site where 70s-era Soviet geologists hoped to mine natural gas. Despite their best efforts, though, a vapor pocket exploded, wrecking the drilling rig, and collapsing the land into a crater. The immediate economic and human costs were bad enough. Worse still was the potential for poisonous gasses to kill nearby villagers. In response, engineers would eventually decide to set the chasm on fire, hoping that this operation would burn off the dangerous fumes. The plan would supposedly need only a few weeks to work. 

Decades later, the fires still burn.

I must confess that the crater did not impress me at first. In afternoon light, the pit was lit by small flickering bursts of flame that trickled from blackened, flinty surface below. Standing inside the protective rail, I saw gentle waves of heat that rippled like sand dunes, interesting but hardly a spectacle. All at once, I was blown back by a furnace of heat as the wind shifted in my direction. I began to picture the horror that would overcome anyone who might plummet below, caught between life and death just long enough to anticipate a fate they could not hope to avoid. I admit it: I also anticipated how easy it would be to jump to my death, to suffer that horror. The feeling passed, but not the guilt of such dismal musing.

I then lowered my shorts and pissed into the crater.

Since we had set up camp, I had all evening to practice Murad’s advice that I should return again and again to the pit. As the sky darkened and shadows lengthened, I began to notice that the black edges of the crater began to glow, subtly at first and then with an angrier hue. The flames did not change in any actual way, but they appeared to pop more fiercely from their torrents. Then I observed something that I had never seen before, except when studying the change of light through a camera viewfinder. As the spurts of conflagration broke through the surface, I could actually feel the irises of my eyes adjusting, producing a jerking response as vision compensated for rapid shifts from deep red to bright yellow and back again. And here, unlike the Chartres-memory summoned by the mud crater, I did indeed imagine a glimpse of hell – perhaps more closely akin to the "Doomsday Machine" that haunted the heroes, and one guilty survivor, of the eponymous Star Trek episode. Thinking about Commodore Decker piloting a stolen, doomed shuttle into the flaming center of a weapon “right out of hell,” I wondered more gravely what guilt would compel me to contemplate such a leap.

I had come a long way to see this place, to consider these questions, though I could hardly explain why. If Murad and our driver remained awed by the crater, they did not show it. They had completed this drive countless times, usually taking small caravans of tourists into the beautiful, brutal desert. They had learned to negotiate the jagged trail of broken stone with professional detachment. No doubt, they came to tolerate the standard questions posed in places like this, the typical fears and exaggerated responses. And surely, patiently, they waited for their doughy visitors to drift off to sleep in tents while guide and driver opted to rest under the stars (or sleep in the 4X4). This time, aside from some Japanese tourists who had come to rent yurts on the other side of the crater, we were alone. I figured this was as good a time as any to ask Murad his opinion: Why do people come here?

As his usual habit, Murad looked me directly in the eyes, forming words from a smile but with a no bullshit demeanor. His reply was poetic, and though memory does not serve to quote him directly, I was moved by his clarity of analysis. First, he said, the crater is unique. There is nothing quite like this place anywhere in the world – a sensible enough hypothesis. Then he paused, gazing solemnly as he chose his next words. At this point, the sun fully dipped below the horizon, setting forth a radiant band of blue and purple. The breeze had begun to pick up and a nearby hill had started to glow with reflected fire. It’s the flames, he concluded. That’s what attracts us all to places like this. And he makes a good point. Since the beginning of all civilization, people have been drawn around the campfire to share the safety of numbers, to tell stories.

Night had fallen and the cavern glowed in searing eruptions of red and orange, not quite belching but rather constantly streaming a hiss of natural gas set aflame. At first we sat on a carpet, offering some protection from the stony ground, an imaginary shield from jumping camel spiders and pinching scarab beetles. But then Murad stood up and took out a mobile phone and launched an astronomy application that employs augmented reality to layer digital constellations over the display. As soothing music rolled out of the device's speakers, he swung around in a wide arc to reveal a network of otherwise invisible lines. Aided by GPS, he could pick out stars and planets with precision that would have mystified the ancient travelers who relied upon celestial objects to chart their own paths across the unforgiving desert.

And then, fueled no doubt by a fulsome meal of chicken, lamb, tomatoes, and eggplant, and four cans of Turkmen Zip beer, Murad and I began reciting bits and pieces of Homer’s Iliad to each other. Murad began by asking if I had seen Troy, Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 epic starring Brad Pitt as Achilles and Eric Bana as Hector. We both share an affinity for movies, so, despite the middling nature of the film, I could affirm I had indeed seen it. “I like Hector,” Murad stated. “He died, but he died as a man.” I had to agree. While the Trojans are cast as antagonists to those fractious seafaring heroes who would later be called “Greeks,” I hoped that I too could face my fate with the courage mustered by Hector. 

Gradually our conversation turned to Homer’s original tale, which features gods who meddle in the affairs of human beings. I recalled how the poets sang of the tricks that Athena played upon Hector, using her supernatural powers to give the Achilles an unfair advantage. Hector, in noble contrast, stood alone, knowing that he would be slain this day. But, Murad emphasized, the Trojan hero would perish as a man. In turns, we recalled how Achilles heaved his spear at Hector who, by now, could rely only on his sword. Impaled and near death, Hector begged the wrathful Achilles not to spare his life but rather to spare the indignity of his body being ravaged by dogs. At this moment, Murad and I exclaimed in unison, “But he wouldn’t do it!” Then and now, I share my guide’s respect for Hector, but that is not quite the point. Like the Trojans who heretofore had awaited the coming of the Greeks where “a thousand camp-fires gleamed upon the plain,” we too sought ways to reckon with forces and powers beyond our control. There together, drinking and talking, we could imagine ourselves like those heroes who gathered under the stars to share stories of men and gods, lit only by firelight.

Ours was a convivial party, even adding one more fellow for awhile, a young skinny fellow crossing nearby in search of his friends. Speaking not in Russian but in Turkmen, the guy apologized for his intrusion and asked us to share some water. We naturally shared a friendly portion and wished him well as returned to his path. Anyone who lives here knows the necessary ethic of such an act, and it felt good to share these moments. Yet ultimately I had come to the desert to stand a few moments alone. So I began to trudge up the hill that rose behind us for a God’s eye view of the crater. Under a nearly full moon, the valley was bathed in soft light. Still, I added an extra coat of protection with the beam of my phone’s lamp that rendered the ruts and rocks more navigable. I made my steps carefully, with the reverence one might imagine when climbing the stone steps of Teotihuacan toward the sun. At last I reached the summit and turned to face the panorama above and below. 

The small party of Japanese tourists were snapping pictures of the crater, posing with arms outstretched pointing toward the flame. Next to that yawning chasm of burning gas, buffeted by occasional gusts of wind that could char a person with frightening heat, they traced confident circles and laughed. This, I think, is something of that desert reverie that I mentioned earlier, that feeling that one comes to know in a place like this, and a giddy power to impose upon those forces that constrain us, that belittle us, that frighten us. I wonder if each of us who visit Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Gas Crater, and places like it, come to find a power to gaze into the abyss of our mortality and face it, perhaps even to inscribe upon it some markings of permanence. In this manner our stories, photographs, our etchings, our graffiti become totems of our power to confront the inevitability of ruin with a certainty that, no matter how ephemeral, bolsters our abilities to endure questions beyond answer.

~

These are the sorts of stories I hope to tell in my book, tentatively titled A Rhetoric of Ruins. I want to understand more thoroughly why people come to places like this – not to ancient structures suspended in a state of arrested decay such as those found in Angkor, Cambodia; Khajuraho, India; or the Acropolis in Greece, but rather to modern ruins: a more contemporary constellation of places such as industrial accident-sites, Soviet-era showplace relics, abandoned Olympic stadiums, economic ghost towns, and the like – those abandoned and sometimes fascinatingly repurposed locales that call forth ambivalence, despair, or even the guilty pleasure associated with the term “ruin porn." I hope to read those remnants that provide a medium through which we may interpret, resist, and potentially transform our encounters with late-modernity. In future iterations of this essay, I will trace more rigorously the intellectual underpinnings of my project. But for now I conclude this note, a first tentative draft, with thanks to Murad and our various drivers during a five-day visit, and hopes that I will return to Turkmenistan one day, to better understand this country’s ambivalence about tourism, to study its bold and increasingly sophisticated surveillance mechanisms, and, of course, to savor once more the strange and guilty pleasures of the Darvaza Gas Crater.

A few questions for Andy

Recently SJSU's College of Social Sciences asked me to answer a few questions about my teaching and research. I'd dreaded this assignment for the past few weeks. Having completed it, though, I found it a useful opportunity to reflect on where I am these days. So I figured I'd archive those thoughts here...

1. What research questions currently preoccupy you?

While my research has generally focused on communication and the built environment, studying structural and perceptual flows whose apparently distinct places convey inhabitants to a singular space, I have begun to examine disruptions in those flows. Initially I explored, somewhat optimistically, the production of “locale” in roadside architecture, arresting places whose evocations of home and community provide a nostalgic and therapeutic response to the stresses of contemporary life. More recently, though, I have concentrated on the somewhat more ambivalent rhetoric and performance of seemingly (but almost never actually) abandoned places. Currently I am interested in the uses, aesthetics, and ethics of “ruin-tourism” practiced in places like Detroit, Post-Katrina New Orleans, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

2. What personal factors contributed to your study of communication and the built environment?  

I recall a conversation with a senior colleague, now retired, in which I outlined some plans for research into the history and design of postwar motels, now often used as long-term apartments, halfway houses, and shooting galleries. Summarizing my plans, I noted how my interest in roadside architecture began during the years when my spouse and I drove between Ohio and Florida to see our families. I was quite surprised when my friend asked, “but didn’t you tell me that you lived in motels for awhile?” I was amazed that I had somehow forgotten that dimension to my personal interest in the built environment. Fleeing an abusive relationship, moved by my mother to the relative safety of a Mom and Pop motel, I grew to appreciate the freedom evoked by roadside architecture – and the fear too. Coming to grips with that continuum of feelings is a personal factor shaping my research that long precedes the academic purposes of my work.

3. What has been most challenging in your research and teaching?

While I bring a scholarly interest in theories and frameworks to the classroom, as well as a humanist belief that study and contemplation are valuable skills whose outcomes may not be “measured” or “assessed” in some contemporary meanings of the words, I recognize that many SJSU students (and some administrators) bring what they perceive to be more practical concerns to our interactions. Many folks struggle with the notion that we should cultivate a keen interest in the world beyond our material ambitions, to read, to travel, and to explore a wide range of topics for the pleasure of doing so, for the opportunities to join the human conversation of values, interpretations, and possibilities, without being forced to account for the energies expended in these endeavors as one would complete a spreadsheet. Of course, addressing this struggle is a challenge worth undertaking.

4. How has your position in SJSU contributed to your research and teaching? 

As an SJSU faculty member, I have sought out opportunities to fund my travels, chances to experience the flows and disruptions of places that have contributed directly to my publications and lectures. Along with traditional college grants and departmental matching funds, I have sometimes needed to negotiate some non-traditional opportunities. For example, when asked to teach a second peer training course during my service as director of the university peer mentor program, I agreed with the proviso that my additional work be compensated with a one-time travel allotment. With those funds I completed a cross-country road trip in 2008 whose outcome included one of my most favorite scholarly articles, “Two roads diverge: Route 66, ‘Route 66,’ and the mediation of American ruin.” Though my research has required some similar appeals over the years, I have found that my university is willing to support my road-tripping and globe-trotting ambitions as long as I advance a productive array of scholarly output.

5. Do you have a hidden teaching talent? 

I have developed a small repertoire of songs that I’ll sometimes share with my students to advance one point or another. For example I love to sing “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” in COMM 149 (Rhetoric and Public Life) when we’re discussing Disney’s corporate vision of American domestic spaces, an ideal future of consumer technology. I also sing “[Get your kicks on] Route 66” in any class that includes a discussion of travel and tourism. My singing is not technically a talent, because I can hardly boast a gifted voice. But my willingness to express myself in song contributes to a memorable learning environment – for good or for ill.

6. What is one book that changed your life (or teaching/research) and why: 

John R. Stilgoe’s Outside Lies Magic is a nearly perfect collection of essays that build to a coherent argument for the need to sharpen our acuity about the human-made world around us. I return to his book often to borrow illustrations about how the built environment consists of layer after layer of patina that can be scraped away through physical or mental means, revealing more than mere history as an intellectual exercise but rather the means to encounter bygone modes of life that shimmer like William Gibson’s semiotic ghosts. Outside Lies Magic encourages readers to become explorers of the “why” of everyday life. One example: Stilgoe says that if you peer into the cabinet under the kitchen sink of an early twentieth century house, you stand a good chance of finding apple green wallpaper – the same color found in that era’s police stations and asylums. Read the book and find out why.

7. What is one website/journal/newspaper (in your field) you follow without fail? 

While I scan the international, national, and regional journals that host the scholarly conversations of my field, I must confess that I almost never read an issue cover to cover. Speaking as a former journalist whose work was measured by its relevance and accessibility, I find far too much of our academic writing is laden with foggy, derivative, and frankly soul-sucking prose. Accordingly I don’t follow publications as much as I read a few authors whose works, which typically appear within and beyond one particular field, demonstrate a balance of intellectual sophistication, practical utility, and aesthetic quality that inspires me to improve my own writing.

8. What is some advice you’d give to newer faculty or students?

I encourage newcomers to balance enthusiasm and dedication with a healthy degree of stoicism. Far too many folks approach their duties with a kind of zealotry that blinds them to the subtleties of why people and things work as they do. People who approach each challenge and each obstacle as a matter of success or failure (or worse, as good or evil) end up being frustrated – and frustrating as co-participants in SJSU life. Successful faculty and students bring zeal to their tasks, yes, but they never lose sight of the fact that the world is far more complex than their desires, and that they are merely one part of a much more complex universe whose workings often defy easy understanding. A little stoicism – not dour acceptance but a deeper reservoir of patience and humility – goes a long way in this life we have chosen.

Chernobyl and Pripyat

My daughter Vienna and I have a joke about Homer Simpson arguing with Jean-Luc Picard. In The Simpsons episode entitled "Lost Our Lisa," Homer convinces his daughter to break into a museum so they can see a special exhibit. They enter the building but stop at a velvet rope that intimidates Lisa. Homer takes a more adventuresome view: "You can't go this far and then not go farther!" In response, Captain Picard affirms the value of limits, especially when faced with a grave threat. Thus he replies in Star Trek: First Contact: "The line must be drawn here. This far, no farther!"

As far as I'm concerned, Homer wins the argument. Thus I went to Chernobyl. I mean, I was in Belarus. It was just a one hour flight to Kiev [Kyiv, around here] and a two hour bus ride to the Exclusion Zone. And my friends know, I am fascinated with relics and ruins. There was no way I'd miss this chance. I'd walk if I had to…

Of course, "one does not simply walk" into Chernobyl. It is a highly secure, undeniably dangerous place, that also happens to be quite beautiful in springtime. So I joined three other tourists - Yasushi Oizumi and Chihiro Kino, from Japan, and Olivier Wullen, from Belgium - and took a tour led by SoloEast. During the drive north from Ukraine's capital city, we learned about the disaster - and about the heroism of the "liquidators" who marched and flew into certain death to secure Reactor Number 4, sometimes by dropping armloads of sand, lead, and other absorbing materials into the burning core.

While scientists debate the possibilities, folks around here claim that an uncontrolled meltdown and subsequent follow-up explosion would have destroyed Kyiv and likely rendered Europe uninhabitable. Is this a fact? Did the world come this close to such a catastrophe? I haven't a clue. What I can confirm is that the radiation hazard is relative. Igor, our guide, demonstrated this fact by showing us a meter in downtown Kyiv: 0.15 micro-Sieverts, which is much lower than one encounters on an intercontinental flight. Weirdly enough, the level was also slightly lower when we passed the 30K checkpoint of the Exclusion Zone. But step near a hot spot and the levels exceed measurable amounts. All the more reason to visit Chernobyl with an experienced guide - and respect the signs.

Passing the guard-post required a display of our passports and careful scrutiny of our vehicle and tour-group paperwork. We then commenced to a rigid but fascinating itinerary of overgrown buildings, abandoned villages, crumbling Soviet propaganda ("Communism Lights the Future!" "Lenin is Always With Us!"]. In one room, early in our tour, I spotted a doll covered in dust. Igor downplayed the discovery: "You'll see lots of those."

Driving further into the Exclusion Zone, we passed an old woman named Rosalia Ivanovna who was walking the road from Chernobyl City to the village of Zales'ye, where she lives alone in a wooden house surrounded by pear and apple trees. Local authorities have begged her to accept a free flat outside the contaminated zone, but she insists on staying put. Normally she walks, but today she accepted a ride.

After we pulled off the weed-pocked road and begin tramping the winding path to her door, my memory drifted back to the Dark Walks of old English pleasure gardens, some of which were outfitted with freshly constructed ruins. Occasionally, their owners would install a real live "hermit" whose job was to offer benedictions of "Memento mori" to revelers wandering the pathways, and perhaps hoping for a little earthly romance in the cool of the evening. Igor reminded us that Rosalia doesn't often chat with strangers; he assured us that we were quite fortunate to meet her. And naturally we felt gratitude as she picked us tulips from her garden and presented a bag of bread for our day, reminding us (via translation) how Jesus fed the multitudes with a few loaves.

Suitably inspired, we picked our way closer and closer to the infamous reactor, detouring though to visit the "Russian Woodpecker," an early-warning radar system built to safeguard the Soviet Union against American nuclear missiles. The structure, formally the Дуга-1, earned its nickname from the chirping sounds it produced that could be picked up on televisions and radios all over the world.

Today the towering device is being devoured by forest, its control stations dripping and dank. I was therefore especially surprised when Igor announced, "We are not supposed to go inside. We will go inside." And so we did, making our ways down dark corridors, lit by the flashes of our cameras and phones.

Later in the afternoon we visited Reactor Number 5, crossing a rickety wooden bridge toward the interior of a vast cooling tower. We stared at the blue sky as birds wheeled lazy circles above us, and we clanged pieces of metal debris to produce creepy echoes of our presence. Following recent rains, the ground was moist and spongy, redolent with mushrooms, and a few sun-dried bones that seemed incongruous to this place.

We then drove next to an artificial canal where Igor pointed out monstrously (but naturally, he emphasized) huge catfish. How nice, I thought, that Rosalia had furnished us with a bagful of bread. The fish gobbled each slice without taking time to chew. Once more, the "loaves and fishes" story swam through my mind.

Finally we drove to a viewing stand next to the sarcophagus of Reactor Number 4, the plant whose explosion was caused, we are told, by a steam turbine test gone catastrophically awry. Yes, the radiation levels are somewhat higher here, but not excessively so - at least not for controlled visits. In fact, most of the truly dangerous stuff is found further north of this place, crossing over into Belarus. It was all a matter of prevailing wind patterns. We stood in silence, checking meters and photographing the rusting structure built to contain the damage.

An international array of countries and companies is erecting a new sarcophagus nearby, which will be rolled by rail and bolted over the existing container. The job was scheduled to be completed by now, and even when the new sarcophagus is fitted over the old, perhaps in a few years, no one expects it to last more than a century.

Because Chernobyl is, in its own way, still a working nuclear facility, undergoing a dismantling process that will take decades, this was one of the few places where our photography was closely monitored. Igor said we could take pictures of the reactor and the new container, and the monument, but nothing else. At least from this vantage point.

We concluded the day with a trip to Pripyat, a model town completed in 1970 as housing for Chernobyl workers and as a showcase for Soviet urban design. The city was developed to accommodate 50,000 people. This was a young town. The average age was 26, with about 1,000 children being born each year. Just prior to the disaster its people were buzzing with anticipation for the upcoming May Day celebration.

When the reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, few local people understood the significance of the event. And it took two days for officials to order that the city be abandoned. To reduce the risk of panic, evacuees were instructed to pack only documents and other essentials. No need to bring more than a 72 hours worth of supplies; they would, after all, return soon. Now Pripyat is called a ghost town, which is mostly true. There are some workers here, however, and a growing population of animal and plant life who have fitted themselves to the lethal environment.

Our group stayed at a tourist hotel outside the 10K Exclusion Zone and was reminded to obey the 10 p.m. curfew. Having heard of wolves that roam the area, the curfew seemed like more than a reasonable idea to me. The next day we returned to Pripyat for a more in-depth tour, which included a police station, a fire house, an experimental green house, and several schools. As Igor promised, we found lots of dolls, and in School Number 3, a pile of child-sized gas masks. I also found a booklet containing monthly dues stamps for a trade-unionist amid a pile of children's alphabet flash cards.

I held the artifact in my hand and wondered about its provenance. It might have been from someone who lived in Pripyat before the disaster, or it might be from a worker trucked in to decontaminate the city afterward. Either way, just a quick slip into the pocket, I thought, and I can bring it home. What a souvenir, from Chernobyl! With much reluctance, I laid it back upon the pile. Just walking through the places so quickly abandoned by people who thought they'd return in a few days makes me feel guilty. There's no way I would disturb this place any more than necessary.

Throughout the two-day trip, I frequently thought about the reasons why some wags dismiss this place as a "Radioactive Disneyland." One cannot doubt the pathos of this place, the reality of loss - even as one may hardly forgo the reality that every photograph taken by every tourist (mine included) have been well rehearsed.

But given the constant crunch of broken glass, Chernobyl is no theme park attraction. SoloEast recommends that visitors wear thick-soled boots, which is damned good advice. Because I wanted to limit the weight of my travel bag, I seriously considered bringing shoes better suited for a business meeting than for this decaying place. Only at the last minute did I realize the foolishness of my plan and dress for the environment. And sure enough, with every creaking floor and sagging roof, with every breaking shard of glass under my feet, and with every scrape against some protruding jab of rusting metal, I grew ever more grateful for those bulky, uncomfortable, heavy shoes. The song in my head all day? That silly Australian PSA jingle, Dumb Ways to Die.

We concluded our tour by climbing the steps of a 16-story building to get one last view of the region. We huffed and sweated our way to the roof and stared down at the city. A breeze blew and birds sang, and we could almost imagine the forest plodding its way toward the center of Pripyat, consuming the concrete and metal and moldering paper, transforming all that dead material into some new living thing. Clouds rolled overhead and the sun glowed silver. Then Igor announced one last stop before we descend the stairs: a special treat, he said, for the two Japanese tourists in our group. A dead dog on the 16th floor. He told me that some folks from Japan claim this to be the most meaningful and memorable part of their visit. Igor mused that one guy photographed the decaying animal for 45 minutes.

Yasushi and Chihiro, however, were not excited to photograph a dead dog. I snapped some images, but I soon wished I had not. If there is any moment that signifies why some critics refer to these trips as "Disaster Porn," this was it. Nonetheless I understood what Igor tried to do. He was evoking the Japanese concept of Mono no aware, an encounter with transience that is sad and wistful but also appreciative. It would be silly of me to ascribe my own reasons to visit Chernobyl to this concept. As I lack the linguistic flexibility to properly speak Japanese, I also lack the cultural nuance to fully contemplate Mono no aware. I was a Chernobyl tourist, no different from the thousands that have proceeded me.

So I bought cheesy souvenirs and took typical pictures. I then used Photoshop and HDR software to enhance the images, to convey some sense of my experiences here. With each step, and with every story I will tell about this place, I grow more and more removed from that final glimpse at the tower overlooking Pripyat. It becomes a series of self-contained moments, anecdotes, picturesque frames. Nonetheless, I can still hear those birds singing in the empty town, and I can remember the dance of dust particles as I swatted debris from my shoes and clothes.

And then it's time to leave. To depart the Exclusion Zone you pass through a minimum of two radiation detectors. The process is strangely perfunctory. You stand in an upright machine, your head resting against a gadget and your arms raised to either side. You place your hands into reading devices and wait for barely a second, wondering if the Russian word for "clean" will glow its faintly friendly affirmation. It does, but you're not sure if you can proceed, even as you feel the metal door unclick beside your waist. Later you learn that only a shrieking alarm will signal that you've carried some radioactive particle on your shoes. Otherwise you are clean. The machine says so. Still, you will always wonder.

One additional note: I took over 700 photographs in two days. This blog-post includes a small selection of them. Want to see a few more of my favorite images? Point your browser to my Facebook Album.