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Connecting with Flag one step at a time

By KATIE EUBANKS
Thursday, October 12, 2006

"Vote for Khalsa-Rhymes with Salsa!" When I saw this sign sticking out of the ground, I laughed. Were all local politicians as much fun as Khalsa? I'd never seen campaign slogans like this, at least not where I came from.

This was one of many surprises I would experience that recent afternoon. I had lived in Arkansas for 16 years, and now I was walking around Flagstaff with some fellow NAU students. Our task was to observe our surroundings, "connect" with the town, and take good notes. We'd been divided into groups, and each group, armed with a map and an Honors upperclassman, took on a different part of town. My group explored east Flagstaff.

Our up-close-and-personal introduction to Flag was part of the new Flagstaff-as-Text unit at NAU Honors. Through Internet readings, this walking tour and an essay or two, our professors were gently prodding us into all sorts of connections with our new home.

I didn't really mind. I wanted to get to know Flagstaff, and I enjoyed the scenery.

A cowboy's face stared at me from above the door of the Redwood Saloon. But this "saloon" wasn't an authentic, splintering relic. It was in a strip mall. I grinned-for the second time I saw that the people of Flagstaff didn't take themselves quite as seriously as I'd expected.

Later, my group found a message painted in vibrant shades of green on the back of a low-roofed building: "R.I.P. Mayi," it said. That wasn't all it said, but we couldn't decipher the rest. The entire graffiti was about four feet tall and six feet long.

The painting was recognized as art, just as the mural covering the front of the little pizza place down the road was art. Realizing that Flagstaff valued creativity so highly, I began to feel more than curious -- I felt welcome.

Our professors were determined to get us to "connect" with Flagstaff, because if we don't get to know this town now, then all our preparations for entering "the real world" will be in vain; when we graduate, we won't know anything about Flagstaff, and Flagstaff won't know what to do with us.

The phrase "college town" does not mean "a town near a college." It means an intermingling of age groups, races, lifestyles and ideas.

The immediate function of our walk through Flagstaff was to tease us, to whet our appetites for more. If it worked, then we are ready to make Flagstaff our home and find our place in it; we are eager to find what Flag has for us as students, voters, artists, writers, teachers, tourists, and most importantly as members of a community; and when we graduate, we will not emerge timidly. We will come out confidently, with the ability to live as citizens of this or any other community.

It worked for me. After the walking tour, I wanted to see every inch of Flagstaff, and I'm eager for the opportunity to explore it to my heart's content.

Despite all that I saw during my walk through Flag, the Khalsa/Salsa sign stands out the most to me, just because I found it amusing. But is the sign relevant? It told me a bit about one candidate for Coconino County Justice of the Peace (one who eventually lost), and it told me about some of the demographics he was trying to reach.

This doesn't seem like much. But connection does not occur in mass quantities; it happens one person, one event, one thread at a time. The quality of each thread is what matters-not the number of threads we can weave together. I don't have a tapestry of Flagstaff yet, but I have a few unique threads-including one which smells ever so slightly of salsa.

Katie Eubanks, a native of Arkansas, is a freshman at Northern Arizona University. She is pursuing a journalism degree and a minor in creative writing.

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