One of the storyteller's tasks is to know where to begin. It
can get complicated sometimes because there are no clear lines
of demarcation in life. There's no set boundary between now and
then. We carry the past around with us. Every starting point derives
from what came before.
It's also complicated because each of us is a mixture of ingredients
-- from our genetic inheritance to memories still fresh in our
minds, from the cognitive circuitry of the cerebral cortex to
the layers of invisible forces that drive behaviors, guide decisions,
touch our souls, make us who we are. And as we try to figure out
just who we are, we realize how much of our makeup comes from
outside of us. Our parents, our upbringing. The neighborhood we
grew up in, the teachers we had, the experiences that affected
our lives.
Each of us is a rich and fascinating composition, deserving
of consideration, contemplation, a story. But how do we decide
what goes into that story? And where do we start?
When examining our lives or telling our life story, many of
us hearken back to ancestral homelands, to the branch of the family
still planted in Italy or to forebears who connect us to the old
sod. Others identify with racial, ethnic and cultural histories.
How many of us -- when taking stock of ourselves -- call upon
the people and places of generations past, as if they are intrinsically
woven into the fabric that is us? Which, of course, they are.
This edition of the magazine takes a look at beginnings, some
of the influences that define us, shape us, point to our roots.
The hometown. The geography of our making.
The cover treatment originated with University Relations veteran
Dick Conklin, who retired to his old Minneapolis haunts after
decades at Notre Dame. We asked him to write about that return
home and what he found there. Then we asked others to write about
their hometowns.
As we were pulling these threads together, hurricanes hit the
Gulf Coast, demolishing homes and hometowns and ways of life.
Although much has been reported on this destruction, we included
a few stories about their effect on some Notre Dame people --
and people whose lives should be affected by ours.
Another tempest, one that begs questions of beginnings and self-identity,
has been roiling of late. Disagreements over creation, evolution
and life on Earth have intensified recently as another theory
on the origin of our species, Intelligent Design, has rekindled
the quarrel between science and faith. It also has drawn Notre
Dame people into its flame -- on all sides of this ultimately
unresolvable enigma.
And then, as if on cue, (and because of lines cast upon waters
long ago) we received -- unexpectedly, serendipitously -- an essay
about science and faith, an essay by a woman pondering the culinary
lessons of Hurricane Katrina and another essay by a woman who
ventured into the caves in France whose walls were painted by
ancient ancestors 30,000 years ago (adding a poignant voice to
our chorus of storytellers ruminating on the meaning of hometowns).
These final additions, which tell us more about who we are and
which we slipped into our Perspectives section, are but further
evidence of life's uncanny interrelatedness and of forces emerging
in the present whose genesis can be traced to some distant past.
Kerry Temple, a 1974 graduate of Notre Dame, is editor of
the magazine.
(January 2006)
