The Background

We (David Vallerga and Peter Hartzell) are friends who live in the bubble of the San Francisco Bay Area, Redwood City to be exact.  Through our professional lives, Unitarian faith, travel and volunteer activities we believed we had a broad and considered perspective on life in 21st century America.  However, after the acrimonious 2016 Presidential election cycle and election of Donald Trump, we realized that there was much about our country and fellow citizens that we did not understand. Inspired by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s recent book Strangers in Their Own Land, we decided to “get out of our bubble” and learn.

We chose the Racine, Wisconsin from a long list of places we would love to get to know better.  We would be travel from California in an RV and spend about two weeks in and around Racine in early-mid October.  We are arranging to listen to a large number of people, for meeting people with a range of experiences and perspectives is essential. We hope to get to know a few people more deeply.  From these conversations we expect to write some of our impressions and learnings in this  blog for friends and family.  We also plan to package our experience into a presentation we can share with friends at home upon our return.

The overarching “rule” for this Listening Tour project is to listen respectfully and seek to understand the experiences of others with an open mind.  We have questions we hope to explore. But we will not push our perspective...our goal is to improve our own perspective because we have a lot to learn from the experiences of others.

If this trip helps us to feel more connected to a variety of other fellow Americans, we believe it will have been a success.

David Vallerga 
Born in Richmond, California and raised in San Mateo County; never lived outside of the San Francisco Bay area.  Married, five grown children and six grandchildren.  Retired attorney who specialized in mediation toward the end of his practice.

Peter Hartzell 
Born, raised and lives on the San Francisco peninsula.  Married with two college-aged daughters.  Has lived in New England, New York City, Charleston, SC, Southern Indiana as well as internationally in Asia and Europe.   Employee of Cummins Inc. for 13 years then owner of small construction/ service business for 12 years.

-- Peter and Dave