​Last night, my university won a big basketball game to make them one of the top four teams in the US. Yes, KU is going to the Final Four.
 
Yay!! Yay!! Yay!!!
 
I have become a big fan of basketball from spending so many years at a basketball powerhouse (don’t ask about the prowess of our football team). Even as I know all the things wrong with college athletics and the inequities for the athletes, even as I know how much more attention and money should be directed toward academics, I love my [start noticing the pronouns that are popping out, not deliberately] KU basketball team, and I love the NCAA Tournament. I am indeed infected by at least a bit of March Madness.
 
So in my joy from the big win last night, I celebrate today all the traditions and rituals, the habits and practices, even the genres that we fans of a team share. I wrote before about my friend the big Kansas City Royals baseball fan, who is also a big KU basketball fan, and I've written about those pesky basketball brackets, which are busted for most people this year, too. Today I’m writing about how I experience the big game with my local fan crew.

Here we go, from preparing through the end:
 
Game day attire—team-labeled T-shirt and sweatshirt, jeans
 
Superstitions—gray shoes with pink shoelaces, Jayhawk earrings—but I forgot the earrings both of the last two games we won, so they’re out for the next game, too.
 
Food offering—I buy it at the local store rather than making it myself, which somewhat lowers the status of my offering, but my crew is a forgiving bunch
 
Beverage offering—wine or beer? Always a tough choice. Like food, dependent in part on time of day of the game, but my offerings are well-received
 
Watch party—this is the center of it all, of course, the house that welcomes us to share the experience of the game, filled with people who know and love basketball together, even if they don’t know each other outside this context
 
Greetings—“hello,” “hi,” handshakes, hugs, depending on how long we’ve been watching together
 
Pre-game chatter—“What’s your prediction?” “This team will be tough to beat” “How are you settling into your new house?” “How was your trip?” “How’s your mom doing?” [Notice work talk avoided even among colleagues, as much as possible] “Wish our center wasn’t injured” “Who made the corn salsa? It’s delicious!” “I’m feeling pretty good about this one” “Don’t say that! You’ll jinx us!” “Getting ready to tip off, everybody!”
 
Taking up Positions—There are those sturdy folk who sit still in the rows of chairs in front of the big screen, in their traditionally designated seats. There are those of us who stand in the back where we can move and pace and jump and cheer loudly and move closer then move farther back when things get too tense. If you position yourself just right, you can see just the action while a post and ledge block only the score and remaining time. There are one or two of us who leave the room, pacing the upstairs hallways and even stepping out on the porch if it’s all just too much. I know, we take our basketball pretty seriously.
 
Nervous eating—those of us in the back, near the food, pacing back and forth, back and forth, stopping to dip a chip or grab another wing or cookie far too often
 
Nervous drinking—same, just extending the pacing to behind the snack bar where the beer fridge and wine counter hold our many offerings
 
Cheers—“Let’s go, Hawks!” “Defense!” “Rebound!” “You can do it!” “Go Hawks!” “Yay!!” “Yeah!” “That’s the way!” [loud clapping of hands]
 
Groans—need I say more?
 
Half-time interlude—Whatever our original positions, we gather in the space near the food and drink, replenishing empty plates and glasses, grabbing another beer or soda, sharing impressions of the first half, praising great plays and the athletes who are hot, worrying about what’s ahead “Phew,” “I don’t know,” [shaking heads]. You might be able to tell we haven’t shared a lot of blow-outs this season.
 
Resume the position—People don’t generally change positions for the second half. We have our preferences. And who knows what might happen if we change the usual?! Superstitions rear up if someone has to leave early because of a sleepy child, or if someone new attends. That can be good or bad luck, depending on what then happens the rest of the game.
 
Cheers
 
Groans
 
Louder cheering or Louder groans and silence, depending on what’s happening up on that screen, far far away where we can do nothing about it but witness
 
End of game—raucous cheers or quiet remarks; gathering back in the food space, high fives and hugs or muttered commentary and vows to get ‘em next game or next year. Last night [we won in overtime in an incredibly close and wonderful game] was full of “I can’t believe it!” “We did it!!” “We’re going to the Final Four!” “He was incredible!” “Can you believe that defense?”
 
Departure—fast or slow depending on the game outcome. Last night, it was hard to tear ourselves away from the cheering and laughter and delight in big plays
 
Post-game analysis—radio interviews in the car on the drive home, professional commentators on TV, radio, and online, our own analyses of what we saw, what went well, what went wrong, and, this time, excitement about the next game
 
Recovery—drinking lots of water, sitting (finally), waiting for the adrenaline to die down enough to go to bed (we get lots of televised night games)

​That’s my local process of watching the big game.
 
Hey, we do what we can. Since we have absolutely no control over how the game goes when we’re playing away, when even our loudest cheering can’t be heard to give the players an extra shot of energy, all we can do is what has worked before.
 
All we can do is share the experience. That’s what works. Having a familiar crowd around you of friends and fellow fans, having a role to play—from bringing your usual food to sitting, standing, or pacing in your usual spot—and having the routine, our own game to play, since the game itself will be anything but routine.
 
And having fun. As someone who goes through a lot of tense agony during the game and is way too invested in whether they win or lose, I remind myself that it’s only a game and the players are kids, and I sometimes ask at the end of a game, especially one we lost, “Is this fun?”
 
Yeah. It’s fun

I have colleagues I’ve never met. Friends I don’t know. Family I couldn’t pick out of a lineup. (Well, maybe I could. Both sides of my family have some pretty distinctive physical features.)
 
Colleagues, friends, families. All groups I’m a member of. All communities I’m a part of. I’m confident that you, too, share communities with people you’ve never met.
 
But how can we share a community if I haven’t met the colleagues, don’t know the friends, and wouldn’t recognize the family members?
 
One of the ways is discourse, genres, the shared ways we communicate.
 
I have family members I know only through the family stories told about them, and others I know are part of my family because of my cousin’s record of our family history on Ancestry. I know some family members only through a family Facebook page. But they’re all family.

I have friends I know only through social media. I know, I know, they aren’t truly “friends” in a BFF good friends for life way. Don’t count on Facebook friends to help load your moving truck or show up for your funeral. But there are people I know only through shared Facebook postings who I know friend-type stuff about, like their fondness for decorating cookies or bird-watching or skiing. And I feel friend-type feelings for them when they share successes or struggles. I don’t want to get into a debate about the declining nature of friendship (a cartoon: youngster says “I have hundreds of Facebook friends,” old man replies, “When I was young we called them imaginary friends.”).  But I have a sense of community with friends on Facebook that comes only from our shared genre, Facebook posts.

Let’s start with the official conference genres (it’s a long list, so feel free to skip to the end of the bullets once you get the idea):

• Call for Proposals that defined the conference theme
• Proposals that we submitted to present our work at the conference
• Conference Program that lists the many hundreds of presentations and also contains other genres: a Greeting from the Chair, Welcome from the local arrangements committee, Meeting room maps, Exhibitor list, Advertisements, and Indexes
• Registration form
• Name badges, with first names in large print
• Presentations, whether Prezi talk or paper read
• Roundtables, a differently defined form of sharing work
• Discussions after the presentations or roundtables
• Questions from the audience
• Answers/Responses from the speakers
• Responses from officially designated respondents to a panel (that’s my role this year)
• Posters, for those sharing their work on a poster
• Workshops before and after the conference days
• Opening General Session, which includes the genres of Greetings, Introductions of scholarship recipients, and Award presentations
• Chair’s Address, during the General Session but a defining moment for the conference each year
• Committee meetings, including Special Interest Group meetings
• Book exhibits, that include Books (surprise!), Journals, Flyers, Banners, and increasingly software demonstrations
• Receptions, Breakfasts
• Annual business meeting, including Resolutions, Motions, Amendments, Discussion, Votes, Ballots, all governed by a Guide to Parliamentary Procedures

 
These genres help to create a community. Through the Call for Proposals, we define ourselves with some shared words and perspectives. (This year, it’s Cultivating Capacity, Creating Change.)  Through giving us name badges with big first names, the organization tries to create a chummy community, where “big names” mean first names, not important people. (But those tiny last names on the name badges drive me crazy, not because I’m stalking Andrea Lunsford or Asao Inoue or other superstars but because I can’t remember the last name of that person I met last year and how can I introduce her to the graduate student I’m with if I can’t read her tiny last name on the stupid name badge?)
 
But one of the things that’s interesting to me is that these genres don’t necessarily create a community through all of us participating in them. Many of us attend the Opening General Session and hear the Chair’s Address, but not all of us. Most of us attend presentations, roundtables, and workshops, but not all of us and not the same ones. Most of us browse the books in the book exhibit, but not all of us.
 
Still, there’s the sense that this is us—the books and the talks and the speeches and the awards and even the business meeting. What all those genres do is declare us a group, a community.
 
Even if we don’t attend the Chair’s Address, we hear echoes of it all through the conference rooms and hallways conversations—and it’s later printed in that journal I mentioned.  We don’t hear the same presentations, but we hear some presentation (or I expect most of us do). We’re experiencing the same conference.
 
There’s some thought that the conference has gotten too big. It’s hard to keep that community feeling going among 3,500 people. Smaller groups emerge through participating in shared genres—through attending special interest group meetings or just attending presentations on the same topic (like genre, history of women’s rhetoric) or type of school (two-year colleges, independent writing programs). 

But as I finish up this (late) post, many colleagues are sharing the news that their flights out of the Northeast have been canceled by Storm Stella and they won’t be able to make it to the conference at all this year. And I’m sad for these people I mostly don’t know. I feel my community diminished. They are colleagues who will be missed, even by those of us who don’t know them. Because we’re a community.
 
Because community.
 
As I head off to Portland (airlines willing), I'll be participating in many other genres--the informal, unstructured ones I share with closer friends and colleagues. Greetings, conversations over breakfasts, lunches, dinners, drinks. Accounts of our last year.  Jokes. And stories. And more.

But those closer relationships don't diminish the relationships of the larger community. In fact, they exist precisely because of the genres that enable the larger community to exist. Those friends and colleagues are ones I met through our shared profession, our shared school or interests. We began as part of a larger community, then became colleagues, then became friends. And that larger community exists, and shows itself, through its genres.

Because genre.

So if you're reading this blog and you make it to Portland, please do stop me and say hello. After all, we're colleagues in a shared community. And hey, you've read my blog!

And if you're not part of this community, you're part of many others, and I bet some of them are communities whose members you don't know but whose genres you share--fellow gardeners, baseball fans, or caregivers. We may not know all the individual members of our communities, but we know something about them. They're us.