Lincoln Hall Project
Margaret Leinen (BS ’69, geology) and her son, Dan Whaley (AB ’90, English), describe how an urge to learn about Tibet led to one of their most cherished memories.
Margaret: So, tell me about what happened when you made this transition into that and said, “Okay. It’s about communication and writing.” What led to that?
Dan: Towards the second semester of sophomore year I had just seen a course, or a TV show rather, on the Tibetan nomads in Yakuts out in the high mountain plateau on National Geographic. And I, for some reason, was just captivated by the idea. It seemed not maybe far away from parents, but far away form everything—the most alien thing I could imagine going to. Also, like a land lost in time, a way to go back to the way things used to be. I think I’ve always been attracted to that. So, I went in to foreign studies office and said, “Do you have a program in Tibet?” And they said, “No. But there is a program in Nepal. University of Wisconsin had a program there, and you can take Tibetan as one of the languages.” So I went there, and during the period of time that I went there, I was starting to think that I might be interested in Anthropology—cultural anthropology—because I liked people. And I wanted to study people. And it was the time in Nepal and living with Tibetans and so forth that I realized that I didn’t want to study people from the other side of a notebook, or a microscope, or from a scientific, objective, arms-length point of view. I really wanted to study people from more of a, maybe the other side of a pencil or a pen—as more of a subject to interact with than a scientific study. That was when I realized that English might be the secret, the approach that would get me close to people and would allow me to engage with them.
Margaret: I’m tempted to talk about the trip that we had through Tibet, but it wasn’t really Illinois related, except that I got there through Geology. You brought the dimension of speaking Tibetan to the trip. And it remains one of the highlights of my life—that three weeks that we had going across Tibet. Tashi dele.
Dan: Tashi dele.
Margaret: Tashi dele.
Dan and Margaret (in unison): “Hello,” in Tibetan.
(Length: 2:58)