March again, walking again. This time in the Arctic. The undescribably beautiful archipelago out on the seas off the Northern coast of Norway. Exploring this other frontier of our Western progression, to the North.
A pope oversaw the founding of the world's northernmost church near here, and called it Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae Juxta Paganus - The Church of Mary Saint, among the Pagans. And, as in California, the colonization process is still in progress.
The Danish colonizers referred to these "Lappish" (rag-tag, marginal) lands as the mute land, because it would not bear agricultural fruits. Yet the landscape yells in powerful voices, those that our (agri-) culture would prefer to see in a museum or a history book.
We shall meet to hear those voices, to review the history that led us here.
Ignacio Chapela walks, talks, works in Berkeley as a public amateur: someone who is willing to learn in public, be seen navigating the process of learning and accompanying others along the same paths.
He is lucky to be paid by the people of California to represent them in the flagship of public academe, where he teaches and researches the world of the living-invisible.
