Pills, airplanes and vodka

A friend just returned from a Spring Break vacation in Colorado. I hadn’t known he was going anywhere. His big vacation break was to have been in the Caribbean Islands in February. He told me that he decided to go because he got a few free coupons from Northwest after his Caribbean experience. He had been flying south for his holiday and was nearing his destination when he, along with all passengers sitting on his side of the plane, noticed that one of the engines was on fire. The plane began to drop altitude. The pilot came on to say that they would shut down the engine and try to extinguish the flames. They would also make an emergency landing at the nearest Florida airport.

My friend said that everyone was silent and cooperative as they all went into emergency preparations.

In the end, it was the smoothest landing my friend (who is a very frequent flyer) had ever experienced. Any reflections on the incident? He tells me: “I was sorry that I didn’t get to finish my beer because the attendants swept away all loose debris during the emergency preparations. It was a good beer.” Any thoughts about flying? “The pilots are like anesthesiologists: most of their work is boring. They train for these emergencies. They did a good job, even though the fire extinguishers inside the engine did not work properly and so we wondered if the fire would eventually spread.” Wondered???

Perhaps we should all be flying these days with a small supply of tranquilizers. Not because I especially think flying is unsafe, but I do think you can get crazy with anxiety when the unexpected happens (an engine on fire in mid-air would qualify). I bet many hearts were racing on my friend’s flight. Though, when I was 10 and flying over the Atlantic, two of the prop engines of the small plane died in mid-flight. We had to make an emergency landing in Gander. It was freaky to be flying and looking out the window at the still blades. My recollection is that by the time we were over Gander, we were down to only one spinning propeller, but I could be off by a blade in this. As the drama unfolded, fellow passengers from the Soviet Union (it was a cheap charter flight, full of very frugal Eastern Europeans) opened several bottles of vodka and sang very loudly. There was an almost jovial atmosphere as we spun to our demise. Of course, we didn’t crash, but it wasn’t a terribly fearful experience.

A thought for future travel then: either pills or vodka in the flight bag. And the confidence that pilots can indeed land a broken down piece of metal with malfunctioning fire extinguishers.

An anniversary of sorts

As I start a new week in my “daily planner” book, I notice that today marks 8 full months (that’s 35 weeks) of rewriting the same basic list of general “to do” items in the side bar. This column has items that are of medium to low priority. Nonetheless, the assumption is that I will get to them for sure that week. (I start a new planning calendar each year toward the end of July, since that is when publishers of academic planners throw the new batch on the market.)

So what from this general list did I fail to accomplish yet again last week?

1. fax a copy of a statute that was requested by someone back in June (excuse: it would take me a long time to find the person’s fax number).
2. Ask for a refund of the deposit I gave to a hotel that I did not visit in the year 2002 (excuse: low likelihood of success, even though they do owe me the $230).
3. Check to make sure there isn’t radon in the basement (excuse: if our lungs have been damaged in the 15+ years that we have lived here, they can stand one more week of poison. I know this is a lousy excuse, similar to the justification for your own three-martini lunch offered in the line about the grandmother who drank whiskey daily and still lived to be 100; I do intend to get to this item. Really.)
4. Write a “congratulations” note and send present to a former student who notified me of giving birth last summer (excuse: I have since had two more students letting me know of similar events in their lives; if I wait a little longer, perhaps I can get a discount on a half-dozen cute Baby GAP overalls. That plus a baby book to start the kid reading is the standard Nina-gift-to-parent-of-newborn. If any of you are reading this, know that the gift & card WILL someday make it to your doorstep).
5. and so on.

A smart reader may point out that I should just write these items on a page in the back or front of the planning book rather than rewriting them each week. But the act of re-writing is guilt-inducing and so I will continue this practice until July 22 2004 at which time I will reevaluate my strategy for accomplishing things.

Cybertruth

I was just thinking about issues of truth and falsehood when lo and behold, the paper today turned up a story that tracked my thoughts.

The following assertion was made by Clive Thompson of NYT fame in the Times (I’m paraphrasing): even though one would think that internet communications would breed a large number of falsehoods (after all, who could ever track down a fabricated life?), it seems that people are more likely to lie face-to-face than they are in email or blogs (read about it here).

The cited study would throw any self-respecting survey analyst into a tizzy, but I think the conclusions are credible nonetheless. I can tell on my own survey of an n = one: the other day I told someone that I was really happy to have run into them and that I was hoping to get together very soon. I meant none of it. I would have never said that in an email. At most, I would have sent them best regards or wishes or some such nonsense and then moved on.

It’s not only a question of POLITENESS. In part, it is the act of writing things down – once written, the statement takes on extra potency and irreversibility. And, it also has to do with your own (my own) sense of what this particular forum is meant to accomplish. Why blog or write emails based on lies? If you don’t want to be truthful, you needn’t write much of anything. You can omit, mislead, you can diffuse – you have a wide variety of tools at your disposal. Whereas in conversation, you have no time to ponder, to select the best strategy to get away from an irksome topic. You just lie to high heaven to get yourself out of the hot spot.

I like the fact that Clive Thompson admitted to a blogging fanaticism of sorts (he writes: “I spend about an hour every day [I’m sure he’s not honest here—multiplier of at least two needed] visiting blogs, those lippy [great word!] websites where everyone wants to be a pundit and a memoirist. Then I spend an hour writing my own blog and adding to the cacophony.” Me too [who cares if this is an overstatement or an understatement; it is, for the most part, true].

Bumper sticker that was so simple that it completely confused me

This morning I saw this on a car:

Regime change begins at home

The car was a bit tattered and beaten up and it was being driven by fairly young drivers. I was sure they were the rebellious sort (ascribing traits based on my inherent biases and internalized preconceptions). Therefore, it was natural for me to worry about what devious plots might be going through their heads as they no doubt schemed to overthrow the dreaded parental authority at home. Perhaps they had already devised a way to create anarchy and chaos, to destroy existent methods of communication, and to replace dictatorial rule with proletarian control.

I was so wrapped up in my spin that it never struck me that the sign was of a political nature until I started writing this post.

Empty chairs at empty tables

It’s one of those times where a lyric from a song (matching the mood of the moment) hits some portion of your brain and stays there (hence the title to the post). Another trip to the airport today, this time emptying the house of visitors and returning me to a work-dominated existence.

To add a chuckle to an otherwise bleak day, I again poke around my favorite presses to see if they are printing anything even mildly amusing. For some reason, the following letter in the Washington Post makes me smile. It is a response to the prod “Tell us about the most money you ever wasted.” Now, you could say that small sums are going to lead to small waste and big sums to big waste, but in this case, the respondent makes you understand that sometimes even smallish sums will make you feel like you’ve suffered a tremendous rip-off, just because of the discredited hope and failed expectation. The person writes:

My sister once told me transcendental meditation would change my life, so I went ahead and did it: paid $125 for a mantra. It may not sound like a lot of money, but (a) this was 1976 and my annual salary as a budding botanist was $8,000, and (b) no money ever bought less.

Exceptionally funny for about eight reasons. Or maybe I am just that desperate for a laugh.

I don’t understand the US indifference toward the UN

Some days ago, I read a story about a film that is currently in production (“the Interpreter”). Many of the scenes are being filmed at the United Nations (at night, when the staff goes home), under an agreement entered into with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who gave consent because he found the film to be consistent with the basic values of the organization.

Pollock is directing it and Nicole Kidman along with Sean Penn have leading roles. Pollock had commented to the press that even though he lived for a good part of his life in New York, as did Nicole Kidman, neither had ever been inside the UN. He said when he first took a tour in connection with making the film, he was awestruck. Always a silent advocate, he found himself suddenly being a more outspoken one.

It makes me terribly sad to realize that the following is true for most people living in New York, (to say nothing of those from farther away): they’ll not have been inside the UN, nor thought about its mission. They’ll have never understood the work that it does, yet they will fire off strong statements evincing a lack of support, doubting the value or even the need for the UN. “I am no fan of the UN” – I have heard this a lot, and not only in conservative circles.

I was not surprised, therefore, to read the Op-Ed Column in the Times today where Nicholas Kristof describes the horror of childbirth in developing nations (where close to 500,000 women die each year in the absence of medical care at the time of delivery), focusing especially on Chad. Kristof is dismayed with our apathy toward this issue, and wonders how it could be that the Bush Administration would not only not increase aid for programs that help bring care to birthing women, but would actually cut off aid from (among others) the UN Population Fund (which, for example, provides training for midwives in places such as Chad). There are so many things wrong with this decision (made for political rather than budgetary reasons)! We are terribly incurious about the operations of the UN and its agencies. A blockbuster film by Pollock could change that. I’m hoping.

Seals, spring and serendipity

What can you say about a person who spends a brilliant first day of spring indoors, with stacks of files, mountains of papers and unopened envelopes—of the sort that have little windows on the front? That she should have attended to some of these on days when the weather was less alluring?

Perhaps. However, there’s value in finding myself in this predicament. I may garnish a number of awards: the only one in town dumb enough not to be outside at the moment, the only one blogging at the moment (I checked – all favored blogs are dormant), the only one amusing herself by breaking for a search of press stories that have the occasional puzzler or oddity to mull over.

And here’s just such an oddity, especially picked for the pathetic reader who also finds him or herself stuck working instead of playing. So, DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU TRANSPORT A DEAD SEAL’S HEAD IN YOUR LUGGAGE ON A DOMESTIC FLIGHT YOU MAY 1. HAVE THE SEAL TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU; 2. BE FINED UP TO $20,000; AND 3. FIND YOURSELF IMPRISONED FOR UP TO A YEAR? Along with the druggies and the Martha Stewarts and the disturbers of bear hibernation (see post yesterday), there may be in the jail yard someone who found it necessary to take back home the head of a dead seal. Read about it here, and then go back to your work.

Me, I’m going outside for a walk so that I can think about all this heady stuff.

It’s hard to deliver a good closing line

Sometimes a writer can whiz through a text with lightening speed, but get completely stuck on the final line. Summarizing makes the piece suddenly trite, punctuating it with a punchy comment may not fit with the tenor of the piece, nothing works.

I’m going to guess that the CNN reporter who wrote about travel to Eastern Europe (story here) had an angry editor standing over her or him, waiting to run the article over to the delayed presses (my imagery is very 40s), because the final line in the piece comes out of the blue. Here we are, reading along about the beauty of Prague, the cultural sights of Warsaw, the venerable streets of Vilnius and then, bang! –we get this finale:

Just head east -- and take a walk on the wild side.

Now I don’t much mind having my homeland described thus. There is something racy and attractive about viewing my roots as belonging to a place where wild things sprout. But it seems an odd way to end a story about sitting through Chopin concerts in the park and exploring the Royal Castle in the Old Town. Do I really not understand Westerners at all? Do they regard these sights and behaviors as brash? Audacious? Savage? What?

I think that the East in Europe is like the West is in the States – forever fighting the image of an untamed land. No matter how many centuries of history we have behind us, we will always appear quaintly eccentric and …wild.

Reflections on the last day of winter

The day (I'm thinking of time before midnight, so my focus is on Friday) had several things wrong with it:

1. A reader wrote that she had a premonition. She is the one, mentioned in an earlier post, who dreams things and then the dreams turn out to be true. This time she dreamt that I would be attacked in some way. As a result I have barricaded myself in the house, canceling all appointments until the alert lever goes down (tomorrow? She seemed to imply that it was a 24 hour thing).
2. I got a new ATM card (my old one was eaten by the ATM machine), with a promise of a new number, new personality, new pin, new look, new future. Yet, when I used it, it would only accept the old pin. Panic. What does this mean? Does it have the soul of the old yet the character of the new?
3. It was, formally, the last day of Spring Break. Tomorrow (Saturday) may look and feel and actually BE spring (acc. to the calendar), but today was the last day of BREAK. That means that I may officially tear up the list of ‘things to do during Spring Break’ and start afresh. I need not pay heed to the fact that I only accomplished two of the items on said list. After all, I have a whole new season to improve in.
4. A workman came to fix glitches in windows (we had installed new windows a few months back). One problem window was in my ‘study’—the room with the blooming jasmine tree (see earlier post). The workman, an old pal from many construction projects of years gone by, sought me out to inquire about the blooming tree. He said it was the most beautifully fragrant plant he had ever come across. I should have given it to him then and there, explaining that I myself could not live with it as it reminded me of Russian ladies of the 70s. But suddenly I felt proud and possessive. I answered: “yes, lovely, isn’t it?” The jasmine plant could have had a loving home and yet I refused to surrender it because suddenly it had VALUE ascribed by another. The human species is a selfish lot.

Why do mothers send their adult children newspaper clippings?

I just got my fat yellow envelope full of news stories from my Mom (defying stereotypes, she turned Berkeley-radical in her old age and so the clippings are of a certain slant, left-leaning shall we say).

I think she must still be holding a grudge about my primary voting behavior (reminder: she remained a loyal “Deanie” while I was already an “Edwardsian”), because many of the stories she sends point to character traits in Kerry that she knows I would find reprehensible (at the same time that she understands that the issues are moot since just about nothing would cause either of us to cross over and cast a vote for the GWB-DC ticket).

It is difficult not to love your candidate. I remember a long time ago when I taught social psych (to a class of 350, made worse by the fact that I didn’t really know what I was doing), I tried to explain the common phenomenon on imputing traits onto a person based on traits already in their possession. In Kerry’s case, one would tend to think that because he is a Democrat, running as a populist against a conservative Republican, he would be, therefore, more likely to give generously to charity, feel kindly toward the little guy, scorn ostentatiousness and pretension, and in general opt for a certain level of moneyed simplicity (no, this is not an oxymoron), regardless of the affluence that marks his life.

Au contraire.

True, Kerry’s current and past wealth are grounds well trampled by the press. However, in one article, the packaging of facts unfortunately creates an image of a man who is a big spender on himself and not so much on the little guy. In the SF Chronicle story, sent by my CA Clipper Supreme, the reporter mentions Kerry’s mansion on Beacon Hill and recalls how a fire hydrant in front prevented Kerry and his wife from parking their SUV there. They asked the city of Boston to remove the hydrant and the city obliged. In Nantucket, Kerry spends leisure time in a sprawling house and a power boat, the latter worth well over half a million (which he purchased recently for cash). Kerry comes with privilege written up and down his shirt sleeve: his mother was from one of the oldest WASP families in the state of Massachusetts. More importantly perhaps, while living on a senator’s salary of $100,000, Kerry’s total contribution to charity in one year was $135. During that same year he purchased a brand new imported Italian motorcycle (priced at $8,600). The locals in Boston and Nantucket report that he routinely cuts to the front of the line in airports, theaters, clam shacks, and at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

It’s irrelevant of course – all of it, down to the Italian motorcycle. My Mom just wants to rub it in. She liked Dean’s frugality. As to Kerry’s life-style choices – well, a Berkeley-radical is not going to go for any of this. I expect my Clipping Service is going to be hackin’ away at the newspapers in the months ahead.

Nonconformity

A blogger-reader-friend (her blog can be seen here) did a neat round up of “odd stories” in her post. Among the items is the following (from a Wisconsin paper, found here):

A bear is hibernating in a bald eagle nest at the top of a tree … while several of the birds look on.
``You can imagine they're thinking, 'Now what?' `` said Ron Eckstein, a state Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist.

This sounds like something that would happen to me: I would pick the wrong place to recline in, completely inappropriate to my species, dispossessing some bewildered souls of their lair and then have the whole community just laugh and laugh from below. Or, translated to human terms, I would plunge into doing something [in the manner of: “oh, this sounds neat.” plunge.] that most would consider rather batty, not realizing, not caring maybe, forging ahead because it seemed interesting, not seeing the oddity of it at all.

But let me focus on the bear for now. Why is he up there in that tree? Typically, bears hibernate in caves or other hollow places on the ground. The DNR specialist speculates that perhaps the bear had had some unpleasantry happen to it on the ground and was escaping the mean world below. Eagles are tolerant of other species: they’ll stare, but they wont be aggressive toward the visitor.

There is a fine for humans who would get it into their heads to disturb a hibernating bear. Just entering the den of a sleeping bear carries a maximum fine of $10,000 and 9 months in jail. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to put a person who entered a den of a bear in prison along with the Martha Stewarts and druggies of this world, but I suppose it would make for interesting, lively conversation during morning prison yard exercises (and what are you in here for? “insider trading” “possession of narcotics” “disturbing a bear”).

[photo credit: bear with us, inc.]

Rooms without a view

Every time I travel and stay in a hotel, I ask for a room with a pleasant view. This could be regarded as compensation for my early years in a Warsaw apartment that looked out on the ugliest church in the world (in a terrifying and gothic sort of way), adjacent to a highly trafficked tram stop; or for the years after, when our New York bedroom looked out on the back of the YMCA, where men routinely, unabashedly sat by their windows and stared right at our apartment. Creepy.

A good view should not be a hotel priority and I chalk up my request as belonging to the “dumb things I like in life.” After all, you come back late at night, it’s dark, you close the curtains, turn on CNN or check your email, and go to sleep. Still, unless there’s a price issue, I ask for the view.


So why do I eat with some frequency in places that offer at best a parking lot for your viewing pleasure? Or a gas station? Or a ridiculously busy intersection? Or –as in today’s lunch place—all of the above (did someone say Sunprint Café? Damn, you’re smart!). Yes, of course, a view can be sacrificed for the company, the food, or even (third on the list) the ambience of the interior. But I long for it anyway: a place to eat and talk and people-watch, with potted bay leaf trees or baskets of flowers at the entrance and maybe some winding little street or dirt road just outside, and let’s go for broke here: a boy pedalling an old bike, with a baguette sticking out of his basket, heading for an alley lined with tall cypress trees. Yes, totally idyllic—such stuff as dreams are made of.

Ah well, if something should be sacrificed, I suppose it has to be the view. Even a boy pedalling down a cypress lane isn’t going to overcome ratty food or tiresome company. Sitting through a meal where after ten minutes you wonder if it would be transparent to play the “sick dog at home” card (and after five more minutes you no longer care if it’s polite, you play it anyway), as you stare miserably at your plate of buffalo stew can ruin a day.

Life imitates cheap Russian perfume

I once purchased a gift for someone who had done us a tremendous service. I picked out a giant blossoming jasmine tree and left it on her doorstep with a gushy note attached. She called shortly after thanking politely but letting me know that she could not accept the gift. Even though she was a horticulturist, she said she could not tolerate perfumes of any sort indoors, and so she could not bring in the jasmine plant.

Only slightly hurt (the return of gifts is always a painful experience, moreover, I would have never known had she made a bonfire of the tree—I was not a frequent visitor to her place), I took back the tree, and plotted how I could rescind the gushy message as well.

The tree stands in my home ‘office’ and every few months it bursts into bloom, exuding the intense fragrance of jasmine throughout the entire lower portion of the house.

I should be pleased. However, I was conditioned to cringe at the sickly sweet smell of artificial so-called floral perfumes. For me, they are associated with the forceful Russian women who traveled to Poland frequently to stock up on our superior cosmetics. The odorous jasmine, I’m sorry to say, smells a bit like them.

I should pass on the well-intentioned tree to someone who will appreciate its willingness to sprout blooms with such regularity. But I’ve already had one tree chopped into firewood this year (see post somewhere below). I can’t live with the idea that I killed one off and orphaned another. It’s too much. I’ll just move my papers and work on the living room floor for all the weeks (the many weeks) of its blooming life.

Occasionally, one must write about politics

The IHTribune has an interesting comment (by Ian Buruma, who lives mostly in Asia and is the author of "The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan.") on the US presence in Iraq (here). Buruma compares the Western imposition of principled values (personal and religious freedom, democratic elections, etc) on a reluctant nation with the Napoleanic wars, when a true despot waged wars in the name of liberty, equality and brotherhood (and what French person doesn’t choke with pride over “Liberté Egalité Fraternité,” to this day?).

The author takes a sweeping look at the two hundred years that followed Napoleon’s crusade. He writes:

France's armed intervention was deeply resented. Some nativist reactions were relatively benign: romantic poetry celebrating the native soul, or a taste for folkloric roots.
.
But in other cases the native soul, especially in Germany, turned sour and became antiliberal and anti-Semitic. (…)

As soon as Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, the liberal laws he instituted in Prussia were annulled. And a century later, the resentments planted by Napoleon's armed liberation sprouted their most bitter fruits in Nazi Germany.
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Arab and Muslim extremism may never become as lethal or powerful as the 20th-century German strain, but it has already taken a terrible toll. Once again a nation with a universalist mission to liberate the world is creating dangerous enemies.(...)
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This is not necessarily because the Islamic world hates democracy, but because the use of armed force - combined with the hypocrisy of going after one dictator while coddling others, the arrogant zealotry of some American ideologues and the failures of a ham-handed occupation - are giving America's democratic mission a bad name.

(…) There seems to be little doubt that most Iraqis were more than happy to see Saddam go. Most would have remained grateful to the United States and Britain, if only the coalition forces could have somehow gone home quickly, leaving Iraq with a functioning administration, electricity, running water and safe streets.
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This, of course, would not have been possible even if Britain and America had done everything right. The fact that the coalition got so much spectacularly wrong has made things far worse.

And herein lies the real issue: was it not predictable that the ‘mission’ would be impossible? That internal conflicts would bolster extremism, making it difficult for the moderate Muslims (in all corners of the world) to maintain their stance against fundamentalism without appearing like puppets of the West?

A friend from Poland wrote that the nation is becoming skittish about supporting the coalition forces in Iraq ever since the recent dismantling of terrorist plots to attack the airport and a railway station in Poland. That, of course, is a curious reason to pull out support (but then, the reasons for initial support were also curious). However, it may be that the time has come for Europe to coalesce around the idea of forcing another round of discussions about the future of Iraq. That discussion will not be initiated by anyone in this country in the next seven months, and waiting until November seems dangerously long.

It could be snowing bugs

To stave off my complaints about the weather (snow AGAIN this morning), a friend sent me this CNN image from Australia (she is especially insect-averse):

[story about Australia's plague of locusts can be found here]






Of course, I could retaliate and send her this ---->, as a pleasant reminder of what’s ahead, after the snow. Morning bantering of this kind can really jumpstart the day.

Of all things, a post about God

To think I almost missed the article (in the Guardian, but not in the form of a major headline – rather, buried in the science/education section, as if it was only marginally important to the majority of its readership) that gave me a scientific formula persuasively stating that indeed, there is a God. Well, perhaps not too persuasively: odds are, according to the scientist who worked this through (read about it here), as ‘high’ as 67% that God exists.

I see the cautious way the newspaper is approaching this finding. After all, 67% isn’t that great. Not enough to be reassuring to “Passion” viewers, for example. Does the Guardian really want to underscore a study that says that there’s a 33% chance that life is all about a meaningless Darwinian pursuit of food, mating, and survival?

I want the blog readers who have some methodological acumen to tell me that I know what I’m talking about when I say the study is odd to begin with. It starts with the premise that there’s a 50-50 chance of there being a deity. Why that high (or that low, depending on your perspective)? And the factors that are then worked into the formula (for example: the existence of miracles) – do they not tilt the outcome somewhat?

Wait. Perhaps the math is credible, but the conclusion is wrong. Maybe the data should indicate that there is only a 67% of a God out there – that he or she isn’t all that we make him/her out to be? In which case we would have a God that is divine, yet as imperfect as the rest of us.

But I don’t think that is the author’s intent. It’s a yes – no type inquiry, reassuring to those who want science to be on their side. And BTW, the author himself is 95% confident about God’s existence. The discrepancy is a little befuddling, though maybe the author’s lack of impartiality helps explain the final outcome – on the side of God.

Bubbles

As I am not even remotely Irish, I have no special privileges on March 17 and moreover, nothing about the world appears green today (fresh snow outside). However, I do have a nephew whose name is Patrick and I know that in Poland, where he lives, name-days are even more important than birthdays and so at least one member of my extended family is certain to be celebrating today, though most likely he will be doing so not by dancing jigs, but by chanting with his Krishna friends (yes, that appears to be his calling—no secret there, he has a website with all details made public).

Still, even in my non-Irish frame of mind, I appreciated a reader’s email with a link to a CNN article on Guinness. Not so much because I am a Guinness Stout fan (predictably, my Eastern European DNA would prefer a pilsner), but because the phenomenon described in the article is baffling and incomprehensible to me. Guinness bubbles go down, not up. Really. I am assured of the correctness of this since it has the seal of approval from a joint team of Stanford U and U of Edinburgh experts who studied the bubbles and came forth with a definitive statement on the matter.

Nothing is certain in life after all, even the trajectory of bubble movement.

A Passion for the Cross

Thanks to the reader who sent me the story (here) about an unfortunate incident in Maine. I hope there wasn’t a suggestion that perhaps this is conduct worthy of me or anyone I know. Most likely the story was forwarded because much has been written lately about movies with crosses in them and this added an interesting new twist to the idea of religious fervor.

It appears that a 23 year-old man attempted to nail himself to a wooden cross in his own living room last week. Why did he do it? He said he had been seeing images of Christ on his computer screen. Having accomplished the act of nailing one hand, he then realized that he could not nail the second one and so he called 911. The article states that it was not clear if he was calling 911 to get medical assistance or to ask for help with the nailing of the other hand.

He committed no crime in his undertaking of this project and so after being treated for wounds, he was released. BTW, he had not (yet) seen “The Passion.” Since he seems highly impressionable, one has to worry what ideas will strike him after watching the film.

Food soliloquy

Who cooks these days? –asks a reader from Poland. Her son had just completed a translation of a cook book from English to Polish and both were a little perplexed at the complexity of the recipes and the number of ingredients used to prepare each dish.

It’s an interesting question. I suppose you could divide the country into foodie types and normal people. Foodie types insist on fresh ingredients, rarely serve leftovers, make a big production of most meals, are passionate cookbook hounds, and have stacks of magazines telling them how to do all this better. I admit to being a foodie type. I would think that most card-holding members of Slow Food are foodie types: it’s our mantra, after all, to cook slowly and eat in ways that promote social discourse.

But being a foodie person and following complicated recipes are not the same thing. Over the years, my own fastidiousness with having the “right ingredients” has gone down, to the point that I can now make a ginger sauce without even procuring the ginger, though maybe it should then be called “ginger-less ginger sauce.” If you’ve ever baked a spice cake, you’ll have had the experience of being on spice ingredient number 239 and wondering if ANYONE on earth would notice if you skipped finely grinding ingredient number 240. By your tenth bake of the cake, you’re down to only 10 spices and still no one comments on the omissions.

For once I can lay it on the French for having complicated out cooking lives. The Italians are quite different in their approach – none of this saucing, fussing with ingredients: simple and fresh suffice. After all, just switching a brand of olive oil with significantly alter the taste of a dish. You needn’t confuse the palate with 30 additional ingredients. But the French—oh, how they can strain your patience, particularly with their sauce obsession. Making the broth base alone requires ten herbs and thirty vegetables – and that is only the beginning. But in all this fuss you learn to respect each product, fall in love with the scent and texture of every item brought to the table. Behind this reverence for food is, of course, a high regard for the work of the person who crafted it with such care and with attention to the land, the climate, the history that conspire to give food its unique, regional character.

Of course, all this growing and preparing is not done in isolation. Working with food should never be a lonely act. And eating it? Even cave people huddled together over their buffalo stew, didn’t they?

So far away… doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?

(Carole King)
Almost the entire day was spent on rectifying a scheduling mistake, of the type you make when you are either over 40 or under 35. (In between you have a window of opportunity to behave in a rational and sane manner, with the benefit of experience, but with the ability still to remain attentive to detail.)

Next month I am to return to Japan to complete my interviews with court personnel in every corner of that sprawling country. I will, as before, go from the northernmost island of Hokkaido to southern Kyushu, hoping to discover some variation in the way that customary law intersects with the civil code, to produce the uniquely Japanese brand of conflict resolution in family disputes.

This project has been difficult from day one. For one thing, I don’t speak Japanese and so an entire dissertation could be written on whether I am entitled to draw conclusions based on interviews that are painstakingly conducted with an interpreter or two at my side. I continue with the project only because I have gotten my hands on such wonderfully telling information that I have not the courage to throw it all away. So, this spring I am about to work through my final round of interviews.

Except that in setting these up, I forgot about the Japanese Golden Week. The Golden Week is something we just don’t associate with the working people of that country. We imagine them to be industrious, after all, putting in an average of 80 hours a week, with overtime for especially demanding tasks (like entertaining foreign visitors). Because we operate with this fixed bias in our heads, we simply do not expect the entire country to look at a calendar and say: “oh! all those national holidays so close together! why don’t we simply close down the nation for ten days and not work at all?” Well, from April 29 until May 9 this year I can expect all government offices to be shut down in observance of this spring holiday period. And where will I be then? Trapped in the middle, waiting for the country to “reopen” again.

I could, I suppose, fly home in between my already scheduled meetings, but something tells me that spending 13 golden hours on the plane each way to escape this golden week of Japanese leisure makes little sense. Thus I will kill time on the islands, waiting for the holidays to be over.

Today I tried to find a spot in Japan where I could hide for ten days and not go nuts in my solitary state of disengagement (in the “Lost in Translation” sense), at the same time that I could experience something breathtakingly beautiful, at a reasonable price, on days when the entire nation will be hell-bent on travel and holiday merrymaking. I have several email messages out to different places where I may hole up for the period, but I am certain they will only produce the typical miscommunication I am famous for with my polite and non-comprehending pals in Japan.

I was discussing all this with a reader and a friend today. I got the distinct impression that she thought that a month of solitary work and travel would be too much for the likes of me – even though I generally am terrific at solo treks and enjoy talking to myself on sightseeing expeditions where the only person within a 100 mile radius that speaks any familiar language is me. She suggested that I turn to my usual list of people who in the past have not minded accompanying me on these ventures, just to see if they’d tag along this time, but I know it’s hopeless. The trip is barely a month away and Japan is expensive.

All I can say is this: be prepared for some odd blogs in April and May as I make my way through many weeks of conversational solitude, trying yet again to understand what the hell people are saying around me. It will be a challenge. Am I looking forward to it? But of course.

Admission

I admit to sitting through a late night showing of Monster last night. In addition to our small group, the theater had 4 other people in it, 2 of whom made odd noises throughout, making me think that perhaps they had randomly picked an empty theater to find a warm spot for their extra-cinematographic activities. If any movie does not lend itself to action of this sort it is Monster.

It was interesting to watch Monster in March, after the Academy buzz has faded and the only speculation that remains is about Charlize’s next acting stint, or about Christina Ricci and whether she is terribly grating because of the role she plays or the acting she brings to it.

And, of course, in this quieter period, one could view the movie and think more about the story line. Or is it that an anatomy of a murderer is no longer riveting because we accept the idea that anyone, if pushed hard enough, can plumet and commit heinous acts, verging on insanity? I doubt that we truly buy this. It’s so much safer to feel one’s moral superiority to the next person.

In high school, our history teacher used to like to get us going on the “what would you do under those circumstances?” spin. Mostly she redescribed for us World War II atrocities and placed us in the middle of them, asking Sophie’s Choice type questions about available courses of action. But we never played this game of mental anguish from a German’s perspective. There was no credible dilemma there for her or for us to reflect on—only the evil nature of the deeds and the deed-doers. [An aside: my history teacher was a bit of a character: a huge, muscled woman, she had a voice that carried. I remember a class period where, after reviewing the carnage wrought by some gruesome European battle, she stood up, pounded the desk and screamed out “I fear death!!” There was complete silence as we processed her words. I mean, what could you say to that? It certainly had the effect of temporarily abating any note-passing and random seat-mate kicking, both highly popular activities in the Polish public school.]

A movie like Monster takes you down that forbidding path where the perpetrator is also human. It’s a sobering experience to watch “Aileen Wuornos” turn her angry eyes on the court as she screams that they are sentencing a rape victim to death. My history teacher would have dismissed this scene and given us a lecture on taking responsibility for our actions. Aileen had done that initially and gotten exactly nowhere. Surely she was not the only one responsible for what happened then.
[photo: Zmichowska High School in Warsaw Poland]

Picking a Vice

A misleading title, to be sure, but the day’s young and needs some punch to get it going.

In the last New Yorker, Hertzberg offered a quick glance back at the democratic primaries and a look ahead at the selection of the Vice Presidential candidate. The process itself couldn’t be simpler: the Presidential candidate points a finger and that’s it. In the interim, the public engages in months of speculation.

The article notes that in the past, the VP’s job was virtually worthless. Hertzberg writes:

“My country,” complained its first occupant, John Adams, “has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” A century or so later, Woodrow Wilson chimed in, “The chief embarrassment in describing it is that in saying how little there is to be said about it one has evidently said all that there is to say.”

But times have changed, and there are now reasons to covet the VP position:

The Vice-Presidency is a much, much better job than it was in the old days. Back then, you drowsed through endless sessions of the Senate, lived in a flyspecked boarding house on a muddy street, and nursed your resentments. Now you get a mansion, a staff, and a plane worthy of a Saudi arms merchant. And, if you like undisclosed locations, no longer have detectable Presidential ambitions of your own, and serve a callow President so in thrall to you that when you headed his Vice-Presidential search committee you felt free to find yourself, you can end up achieving total world domination.

The biggest reason people want to be Vice-President, though, is that it has become the royal road to the Presidency, even if one’s boss remains in perfect health…. Four out of the last eight Presidents were ex-Veeps, only one of whom ascended on account of his predecessor’s death.

The article falters a bit when it comes time to speculate about Kerry’s running mate. No matter, it’s anybody’s guess at the moment and guessing is all we have for the next several months, to keep ourselves interested in the long long stretch before the election.

Some are born great…

If you can’t do something great, just do something to an excess and you’ll achieve greatness. What else can be said of a person who applied 18,000 layers of paint to a baseball to get into the Guinness Book of Records? And what can you say about the Indiana town that was so proud of him, that they named last Saturday “Ball of Paint Day?”

I wonder how he kept tabs, or whether he withdrew from life to devote himself to the task: “kids, I’ll be out painting layer number 14,236 today.” Or “for my birthday, I would like another can of paint; this time make it fuchsia.” And now that it’s done, does it enter a museum? Perhaps touring, along with select pieces from the Hermitage that I hear are making the rounds?

At the very least, the man and his big green baseball were spotlighted in a story on CNN (here). Millions of people around the world read it and wondered, “why?”

Turning red?

The Washington Post identifies Wisconsin as a Gore state that may well swing toward the Republicans in these presidential elections (article here). Along with the Gore-win states of Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, and New Mexico, Wisconsin seems on the brink of turning a Republican red. Why? The GOP is blitzing the state with ads attempting to move the focus of voters here away from the economy onto cultural issues.

Not being much of a TV watcher, I’m not sure what that means: is the state more culturally aligned with the Republicans these days? What is the source of the alignment? Culture: is it that the Republican-to-his-shrinking-midriff, Tommy Thompson, is at the forefront of the war on obesity (and Wisconsin both has an unreasonable case of Tommy-worship and a problem with obesity)? Is it that Kerry has historically supported gun control, while for many in this state, bliss means draining the contents of one barrel (beer-filled) and filling the contents of another (gun)? [An aside: I have recently learned that there is a town in Texas CALLED Gun Barrel—see site here—how odd is that?]

The Post states that only 18 states seem still in the running: strategists for both sides have all but conceded the remaining to one another. I suppose it is somewhat of an honor to have Wisconsin still in the race, though I was happier when we were heralded as a progressive Edwards-Kerry battle ground. This new image of Wisconsin turning toward the GOP is more disconcerting: haven’t we incorporated enough red already into our Badger state culture?

Evidence of Spring Break, continued

Spring Break is in full swing. Need evidence? Consider the following:

1. Students are blogging more (after all, they have more time), faculty are blogging less (after all, they have more time);
2. The Madison temperature outside is plummeting again to levels generally associated with regions of the Arctic tundra;
3. I could cross University Avenue on a red light without being run over by a steady stream of traffic (crossing on a red light is such a cultural thing. No one in NY would be foolish enough to wait for a green light—why follow rules made for everyone but you? ..whereas in Japan, it may be empty, it may be 2 a.m., it may be raining, sleeting, thundering—no matter, you wait for the little green man and the chirping bird to give you permission to cross);
4. My stack of “to do” lists grows each day, as I spend a considerable amount of time slumped in a reclining position thinking about what else should be added.

Since there is no holiday or event associated with Spring Break (meaning nothing to cook for), the week becomes one long guilt trip, filled with remorse over not doing enough. Can’t wait for classes to resume: the stress of the Break is killing me.

The (lost) art of winning

An interesting take on the movie “the Miracle” appears in the New Yorker this week.

Most people would say that I am the last person to ever blog about sports. That may be true, but I am a great fan of the Olympics – especially the Winter Games. Maybe it’s because I was raised with skis and skates strapped to my feet. For a brief spell, my mother believed that ruddy cheeks were a sign of healthy upbringing (her theories on this bought my sister and I noses and cheeks that look like we’re perpetually nipping at the flask: frost bite never goes away) and so we were out skidding on icy surfaces (you could hardly call that skating) and on hills where you had to CLIMB back up after each crazed run, frequently each winter. My passion for this nutso winter physical stuff continued into my adulthood, though over the years I adopted the label of “fair weather skier” – meaning I’d only do it if the snow was perfect, the sun was out, and the temps were decent. But I still love watching the stuff every four years on TV.

No surprise, then, that I was glued to the set for the 1980s hockey match between the Soviets and the US team. It was a shocking victory, and I remember feeling pleased in the way that one always is pleased when the underdog wins. Still, to me, it seemed that the Russians were always getting punched at from both sides – they had the tough lives, the corrupt government, and also the disrespect of the West. Beating the Soviets or Poles or Czechs always felt so good for the Americans –in a way that beating the Americans or other Western teams never did for Eastern bloc players, for whom it was always just a game, not a political statement (maybe “beat those damn imperialists!” just isn’t as catchy as “beat those damn commies!”).

Thus, predictably, in the States, the game became over time more than just a game: it became a STATEMENT about how these young, enthusiastic American players could undo the iron fist and the grim strength of the Soviets. That’s how winners from the Eastern bloc were always portrayed here: they were all robotic machines, cheerless, determined, without souls.

In the New Yorker, the author talks to Igor Larionov – now an NFL player, once a Soviet hockey star. Larionov was too young to make the Soviet team in 1980, but he watched back home in disbelief as the game progressed and it became clear that the Soviets would lose.

The irony is that the Russian players were anything but passionless machines. Larionov, for example, has the reputation of loving his Pushkin and his chess as much as the hockey that he plays so well. In the article, he describes how it felt to see the recently released “Miracle” – the movie about the historic hockey match:

At the multiplex, Larionov said, he had sat quietly, admiring the approach, as it was depicted in “Miracle,” of the American coach, Herb Brooks. He heard Brooks use the old Russian expression “The legs feed the wolf” and saw his compatriots depicted, as usual, as talented but humorless automatons. He was caught up in the movie, riding the emotion. He liked the story.
“At the end of the movie, there was a standing ovation in the theatre,” Larionov said. “I just left. To be honest, I felt like I’d lost. My friends played there—Krutov, Makarov, Fetisov, Kasatonov. I wish the guys in Hollywood had spent more time, maybe even just five minutes, to show the Russian side of the story. They should have showed a little bit of what happened inside the Soviet camp. But I know American movies are always like that.”

It’s sad that even in our victory, we can not appear gracious to the other side.

It ain’t over…

What Julia Child did to French food in America, Luciano Pavarotti did to Italian Opera worldwide. I’m a sucker for Italian music of any sort – especially the kind that climbs along full blown crescendos and explodes into an orchestral climax. And so it was with shock and sadness that I read the NYT headline today stating “Pavarotti Dies.”

It took only a minute to realize that his death was a stage death. I do remember vaguely his desire to retire from opera and concentrate on his new wife and family. And I’d picked up his lovely CD of Italian pop last year so I know the man’s branching out in other directions. But for a minute I thought we’d lost a great.

Hang your shingle

My sister is a freelance translator. I know a large number of freelance writers and cooks (aka caterers). Add to it the freelance teachers, tutors, even lawyers. People striking out on their own, fighting the institutional/bureaucratic model of service, opting for the personal touch. And don’t forget the freelance embalmer. NPR reports on one of the last in his trade (here).

Hurry up if you want to take advantage of his experience and expertise. He still makes housecalls. But he’s been at it for 41 years (that’s 40,000 bodies), and may retire soon so speed up the carbs and enlist his services now, while he’s still taking new clients.

Too many words, too few ideas

A writers group that I am loosely affiliated with posted this week a list of the most overused expressions in writing. Most of these words could be eliminated from any text without great detriment; the cuts would add crispness to a story or paragraph.

I can’t reprint them all without the writer’s permission, but I’ll post a few – just so you can laugh out loud at how often you’ve found them liberally sprinkled throughout the posts below. I read through posts with my finger poised on the backspace key, but I am not careful. After I’m done, oftentimes, here’s what remains:

actually
all of (replace with "all")
apparently
as it were
as you know
at an early date (replace with "soon")
at the present time or this time or this point in time (replace with "now")
at the same time as (replace with "while")
basically
be in a position to (replace with "can")
completely
despite the fact that (replace with "despite")
due to the fact that (replace with "because")
during the time that (replace with "while")
essentially
extremely
first of all (replace with "first")
for the purpose of (replace with "for")
generally
etc.

I make closet editors happy by feeding their ingrained sense of superiority.

The unwelcome reappearance of Simon

Hardly two months have passed, and he is with us again. On January 11, I posted a testimonial to Simon, the robot who takes care of all lost luggage for every defeated, worn down traveler who has the bad luck of waiting at a United baggage carousel, only to walk away without the one black upright suitcase that bears his or her name.

Well, Simon reentered my world last night, as I picked up yet another visitor to Madison, and returned home with said visitor but not her bags. The bags and the visitor are suffering pangs of separation anxiety and I am on a mission, determined to move toward reunification, asap.

Simon and I are about to have our famous protracted and nonsensical conversation whereby he collects voluminous tomes of information, disappears to think about it all, and comes back to tell me that United is working on my request.

Simon’s not dumb. He knows how to dangle a thread of hope, suggesting that any week, any day, any HOUR now I WILL see the luggage that I grow to covet more than anything else in the world. When months later the luggage does arrive, I am so deliriously overjoyed that I feel great indebtedness to Simon and we part friends.

That was then. These days, I am less sanguine about the matter. And because it is the THIRD time this year alone that bags have not traveled for us to Madison along with the passenger, I was given the PRIVATE NUMBER that is Simon’s “boss.” It may be a humanoid, or it may be a robot of superior intelligence: I am ready to go to this CEO of lost luggage, inc. and file my charges against the placating, ineffective, insufferable Simon. The goal is to penetrate through the thick layer of United indifference, and levy my punch in the Simon gut. Sounds brutal? I can’t help it –he’s made warriors of us all.

And, adversity breeds its own rewards. Because I have resilient entrepreneurial blood running through my communist childhood arteries, I will post the sale of the private United number on ebay. I’m certain it’s good for at least a two week vacation to Europe, traveling first class. After all, the number of otherwise peace-loving, God-fearing people wanting to maim and slaughter Simon and take him to task for his buoyant yet ultimately impotent nature must be substantial.

Three-part blog on why I feel better already and it’s only the first day of Spring Break

Pt.3 Where I come to understand that to not know something is divine
In an article by Farrar (look for it in the “Critical Review”) I read about the necessity of ignorance and I feel good all over. To “not know” is everything! Suddenly, any vestiges of dumbness within me are an asset, not a liability: my empti-headedness furthers science, politics, the quest for human camaraderie; you name it: whatever your quest in life –I am helping you achieve it by staying locked in my un-intelligence.

The author notes (in the essay entitled “In Praise of Ignorance”) that “ignorance is essential to life as we know it [go nc!]. Foreknowledge of the future would preclude choice, responsibility, individuality—even history. Full knowledge is the enemy of both intimate and impersonal relationships…Military strategy and natural science both depend on ignorance, as do law and politics.”

I realize that just because Farrar said it is so, doesn’t mean that it is indeed so. Nonetheless, the assertion does appear in print. Only a fool would not take it seriously.

Three-part blog on why I feel better already and it’s only the first day of Spring Break

Pt. 2 Don’t believe all that is said about Poland
In an article from the Journal of Democracy, I read that perhaps the western press has exaggerated the split between East and West Europe in terms of its support for the American decision to invade Iraq. We know that countries of Western Europe are anything but uniform in their support for the preemptive strike. And countries of the Eastern block? It appears that the deeply pro-American stance doesn’t put blinders on all citizens. The article by Zielonka states the following:

In the Czech Republic, for instance, opinion against (emphasis added) invading Iraq without a second UN Security Council resolution reached 70%. In Poland, which is considered pro-American and now has troops serving in Iraq, 62% said in February 2003 that Warsaw should decline to support Washington in the Iraq matter.

If you read the pro-American statements issued by the Polish government, you’d never guess that the nation had greater skepticism about the move toward full-scale war.

Three-part blog on why I feel better already and it’s only the first day of Spring Break

Pt.1 We talk because we don’t have time to pick nits
I spent the afternoon reacquainting myself with the feel of paper and the smell of ink. It’s been a while since I went through the literary mags at Borders (this is my periodic check-in to reassure myself that the published essays aren’t nearly as brilliant as the ones in my head, waiting to be written—only this time they were and so that was kind of a low point in the afternoon).

One essay was especially appealing (in the same ways as yesterday’s story on European identity in the Times was appealing, see post March 11—I feel myself much aligned with the subject matter and the conclusions). Diane McWhorter (who is no mere essayist – having already walked off with a Pulitzer Prize) wrote a sage piece about the value of “talk” (this is in the American Scholar, which does have a website, but today is paper day for me)—the conversational kind of talk.

I have to cite this one brief paragraph, which actually is a summary of Robin Dunbar’s Darwinian-like thesis on the origins of talk. She describes Dungar’s point thus:

Language was the evolutionary continuation of the grooming behaviors of our primate ancestors. The social cohesions essential for their survival flowed from the emotional bonds established by the obsessive intimacy of nit-picking and fur-raking. As the size of animal groupings grew, however, social management became trickier, and the amount of grooming time needed to grease the system (up to 50% of a primate day) began to interfere with the basic survival activities of gathering food and defending against predators. So humans evolved in such a way as to vocalize those rituals of emotional maintenance, which freed them to attend to other business simultaneously. And voila! –multitasking. Thus, through talk, are we h. sapiens able to massage the body politic while shelling peas on the porch.

McWhorter, who no longer worries that she is always the last to get up and leave parties, says a friend gave her his blessing for her constant quest for talk. He told her “There’s plenty of time for silence. Talk away.”

I suppose blogging and emailing are the next evolutionary steps (now that shelling peas on porches has gone by the wayside and coffee-house culture isn’t what I remember it to be), though they’re ones that push us even further from the obsessive fur-raking and nit-picking that were the hallmark of bonding. Ah well, one takes what one can get.

Stop the car and lemme outta here, pt. 2

So maybe China is not the only place where traffic has had a pernicious influence on daily life. The WashPost has an article on DC week-end driving issues (here). Compare these (China, post below & the DC story) to Madison’s own struggle with traffic problems (here) –obviously a high priority, as evidenced by the following statement (referring to the parkway project that is to ease congestion north of Lake Mendota): "The parkway is expected to be a joint county-state partnership and will be constructed in the next 10 to 20 years. Smaller road improvements are likely to happen sooner."

Stop the car and lemme outta here, pt.1

Maybe I’ve not seen my share of road rage in the States, or witnessed traffic patterns in remote corners of the globe, but I am fairly convinced that China must grab the title of the country with the greatest number of insane drivers, deserving of quality jail time for their road behavior. I remember several years ago sitting in a cab in Beijing with two girls in my charge (one was unrelated, making me wonder if her parents could sue me for the psychic trauma she suffered by riding in a taxi there) thinking that every single maneuver done by the driver would have gained him a hefty fine and a suspension of driving privileges in the States. As we shot through red lights, scraping the legs of cyclists and causing pedestrians to bang the trunk of this speeding demon, I wondered if the driver was putting an a show, what with the incongruous tape of Elvis music in the background and his own screaming tirade at every animal and three-wheeled contraption that got in his field of vision. Twenty cab rides later, I decided there was no show in it – they were all maniacs. Only one guy, perhaps 90+ years old, drove with any degree of civility as he slept his way through the traffic of Shanghai. It was rush hour, nothing moved much anyway. I gave him a 300% tip.

I read with great interest the NYT article today that spoke of changes that are around the corner in China: stricter enforcement of traffic regs (as opposed to zero enforcement), enactment of codes protecting pedestrian rights (anyone from the west would have to agree that crossing a street in a Chinese city ranks as the most terrifying experience: it’s you against a million moving objects, each going at a different speed and in a creatively executed direction), more rigorous testing of license applicants.

On this latter point though, I’m not sure they got it right yet. The Times mentions one of the test questions:

“If you come upon an accident and find a motorist lying unconscious on the road, and if that person's internal organs are also lying on the road, should you pick up the organs and put them back inside the person?”

Thankfully, the correct answer is “no.” But maybe the question should be rephrased. How about “If you come across a person on the road, should you maybe avoid hitting her or him so that organs may remain safely intact, protected by a firm skeletal structure, musculature, and a fine layer of undisturbed epidermis?”

Think: prevention.

Silent rage?

If the Finns cannot express anger, does that make them more prone to suicide, alcoholism and depression? What happens when a nation practices stoicism and silence to such an extent that it makes the government and the mental health professionals nervous? Is a STAID nation a happy nation? Or is it a repressed, resentful nation, in need of help and deserving of pity?

Why is anger completely absent from the very limited palate of available emotions in Finland? The IHT offers some possible explanations (here):

"Self-control is very important in Finland," said Liisa Keltikangas-Jarvinen, a prominent professor of psychology at the University of Helsinki. "You cannot show anger; it means you can't cope. If a person is very temperamental and alive, expresses emotions like anger and happiness, the person is seen as infantile."

How is life without anger and with minimal emotion? Well, it’s externally calm:

Here, experts say, a car accident triggers, not blame and insults, but a polite exchange of information. A bus breakdown causes no complaints; rather, the Finns on the bus will file off and try to push it to the next stop. …It is not unusual to walk into a restaurant and spot most people eating dinner in silence, content to chew and not chatter. Silence is a sign of wisdom and good manners, not boredom.

Well, I was willing to go along until that last comment. A quiet meal? To a Pole – how utterly awful.


When I was in my college years, I spent several months working on a farm in Finland, hired to teach the kids there some English. It was impossible: the time was too short, their language base was too limited and varied. But I loved the multigenerational family, all coexisting in a small, meticulously clean house. True, the father in the family was a bit of a drunk, but he was a QUIET drunk. If there was violence, I did not see it. There was, however, one opportunity for a form of family rage to come through, and that was in the sauna. As we piled into the family hot house after a day’s work, the kids would bring out the birch branches, wet them in the water (just to hear that sizzle of hot steam against flesh), and whip away at each other, me included. The practice was then to run across the field and jump into a cold lake (even in June, it was freezing). Emotions, both positive and negative, would somehow be drained out of you, so that all that remained was the isolation (we were close to the Arctic circle), the forest, and the eerie quiet.
[photo source:FinlandPhoto]

Spring break and a hidden past

With the last class over for the week, my spring break has begun. Some students stock up on sun screen, others on printer paper (conversation from yesterday: “Yes, your outlines are due in March, of course they are, what did you think? If you can’t do an outline by the end of March, can you do the full research paper by the end of April? No, don’t answer that, let me live with my illusions that you’ve been making consistent progress throughout the semester.”), I stock up on lists of things to read, write, tidy, pay, mail, post (new one this year!), watch, eat.

A reader suggested that, since I have a lot of New York coming up in my next year, I should pick up a copy of “Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts” by Leduff. Wanting to learn more about the book, I googled.

The book comes highly recommended. It’s about the forgotten men and women of New York. Writes one reviewer: “It is about laborers, dreamers, hustlers and immigrants from the city’s uncelebrated ranks of working stiffs. There’s the man who replaces light bulbs at the top of the Empire State Building, the last licensed trapper within city limits, the harbor policemen charged with the grisly task of removing dead bodies from the river, the black Santa Claus at Rockefeller Center, and the last civilian lighthouse keeper on Coney Island.”

So far so good, but what about the author? He’s a correspondent for the NYT, okay, cool, and what else?

I come across an article about Leduff in the San Francisco Magazine Online (here). Well now, Leduff appears to have a history of allegations of plagiarism. That’s not good. Are the accusations substantiated? Some are, others are borderline plagiarism (more like “idea theft” rather than text theft). Leduff appears to have a reputation for arrogance and a personality that is “bigger than life.” Suddenly I am wary.

On the one hand, this racy portrayal of the author should make him controversial enough to be, ipso facto, interesting. But suspicion, now running rampant, causes me to wonder about the veracity of some of his stories. So do I read the book, or reject the author and therefore his work? Seems like a harsh result based on a reading of an online magazine. Still, maybe I’ll begin my New York immersion with the other recommended book for now – “Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan” by Lopate. And I wont google the author until after I've read the book.

Get well notes

Thanks to all readers who wrote with deep concern and regret over what happened to the car (post March 7, below). [sample email: “eek!” “I feel terrible about your car’s mugging.” “Madison police are to be feared!”—okay, is there a story behind those words? “next year, park it in my block; nothing ever happens in my block” etc] I am sure if my torso got bashed in and my extremities were ripped out you’d all be equally horrified (wouldn’t you?). It is indeed reassuring that you exercise such deep feelings of empathy for the fate of an older Corolla. You’re not the type to do in an ailing grandmother or a sick dog --I admire you for your compassion.

Health update: unfortunately, the Corolla’s recovery is stalled. She’s turned temperamental ever since her brush with violence. The other day, for instance, she wouldn’t let me open her trunk and I had to undo the backseat and crawl in through there just to retrieve some groceries. I’m thinking it’s post traumatic stress, which should abate with the passage of time.

European identity

As May 1st draws near –the day 10 more countries, including Poland, officially become part of the EU- the number of articles in the press mentioning countries of Eastern Europe grows. Today, the NYT revisits the theme of apprehension about the great merger, evident both among the 15 current EU nations and the 10 still waiting on the side (here).

It’s a “refresher” article, in that it says nothing new, repeating ideas that have been much analyzed in recent months, especially in the European press (with all due respect to its author, because John Darnton is probably the most experienced western correspondent out there writing about Poland). But I liked reading it anyway. And, what’s old hat to me may need restatement for those less focused on that part of the globe.

One little paragraph in the piece hits the “belonging” (v. displacement) issue that I’ve blogged about previously. In describing the importance of a European identity, Darnton writes:

For others it becomes an effort to define what it means to be a European. Quickly, such conversations turn to intangibles, to talk of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and definitions offered centuries earlier by Dante and Voltaire. Some talk of a feeling of belonging that overcomes them in a Central European coffeehouse or of alienation when they visit the United States.

Yes, it is paradoxical that oftentimes you feel most “European” when you visit (live in) the United States. I feel somewhat vindicated, in the way that you feel vindicated when the NYT parrots something you have said again and again. I’ve often been asked what I miss most about Europe. For lack of anything specific to say I’ve answered that it is something about feeing the shadow of history at every corner, and living in a coffee-house culture. Darnton has spies in this house.

My life is my work

There are people who do not think about retirement. They never want to not go to work. As long as the feet move and the mind stays on track 82% of the time – the world of work continues (I’ve noticed that academia, the judiciary and the papacy attract this level of commitment). Sometimes this is a good thing. So many accomplished scientists, writers, academics never lessened their level of commitment to their field until they were well past 90. But this is not the majority. Most people, even the “love my work!” diehards want to give it up at some stage of their lives in favor of fly fishing or bird watching (no insult intended: I would right now love to watch birds; I don’t know the first thing about birds, but it seems like a fine activity, as long as it does not include watching crows, see post March 9).

My father was forced to retire early, prior to when he would have considered himself ready (age: not even 60); my mother began a “career” of sorts when she decided to learn word processing – this was when she was approximately 70. She quit when she felt she couldn’t take one more winter in Wisconsin, forcing a move to warmer places at the age of 78.

Today, the WashPost (here) reported the following: “Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who will turn 80 this year, acknowledges that he is thinking about retirement. But he will not say when that might come.” That’s a hint that it might come soon, isn’t it? The article states further that Justice Rehnquisit is not the oldest member of the Court. Justice Stevens will turn 84 this year.

I am impressed. But also, I am a little nervous about it all. There are the mental alacrity issues to worry about, sure, but there are also the human dimensions. Who should make decisions of this magnitude, the justices (professors, popes) who have passed the point where the issue would have any impact on their lives? Surely at some point the act of stepping down is more admirable than staying put.

Thanks, Madison Police

I take back my friendly notes on your warm and fuzzy approach to helping those in trouble (see post below, March 7). You are MEAN! I have a crippled car. Shattered glass is lodged in the pavement around it’s wounded body. The sole comfort it receives is from the heartening rays of the WARM SPRING SUN. Emphasis should be on SPRING SUN, because there is not a trace of snow on the ground and I want to believe we are seasonally there. Call me an optimist, but the weather is on my side and the daffodil tips are clearly visible underneath the birch tree.

But in the eyes of the Madison police, we are in a chilly frosty cold spell of a “hit you in the gut” way of life, and a calendar that says “nope, no spring yet.”

Okay, have it your way. I will pay the $10 ticket you stuck in the broken-down-in-spirit-and-in-form little Corolla. We didn’t move her to the other side of the street last night. She needed a rest. We thought you’d understand. Obviously not, mean-spirited cops that you are.

Snail news

My Polish friend and reader asks if I knew of the fact that the Slow Food organization now has a Polish chapter. I did not. But my respect for the work of this group is monstrously huge, and I was thrilled that Poles were grouping together to revive an interest in growing, producing and eating foods with attention and respect for tradition, taste and natural ingredients. My friend described some of the intriguing ways of crafting (Polish) quality foods (for example: making sour pickles in barrels dunked in a river). It would be great fun to see this. Next time.

In the meantime, moving back to this side of the ocean, let me quote from a favorite website, SlowFood.com, where I found this note on the Coppola wines:

Sofia Coppola toasted her Best Screenplay Oscar for Lost in Translation with the trendy new wine in Hollywood, Sofia Blanc de Blancs. This sparkling wine had its official debut on February 29 at the Oscar parties. It is composed of 70% pinot blanc, 20% sauvignon blanc and 10% muscat canelli and is made by Frances Ford Coppola’s winery, Niebaum-Coppola Winery in Napa Valley. A bottle costs $19, but the wine also comes packaged in single serving magenta pink cans with a straw attached, called the Sofia Mini, sold for $20 per box of four.

The Sofia Mini sounds too odd. And it hardly is fitting for a Slow Food temperament: sparkling wine out of a can, with a straw? Thumbs down!

Ter ror ism and birthdays

As you can see from the title, I have reached new levels of google paranoia.

Yesterday I attended a fascinating lecture on Europe’s reaction to nine slash eleven. The speaker contrasted the UK and Germany and attempted to find explanations for the differences in the national alert strategies adopted in these two countries. The UK has implemented a vast array of anti-ter ror measures that extend well beyond what was in place in Northern Ireland at the heyday of its period of violence (I always think that the current political climate in Ireland is a forgotten Clinton legacy). Germany, for perhaps obvious reasons, is treading with greater care, putting civil liberties on the table each time a new measure is proposed.

Having this talk fresh in my mind, I was interested to read a comment in the International Herald Tribune today about some of our own (US), less talked of anti-ter rorist measures. Let me reprint the humorous-in-a-dark-sort-of-way article here (copyright caveat: you can pick up the text on the Net here), because I know that most readers don’t bother following links (I speak from my own experience)—it is written by a retired correspondent living in England:

LONDON: My mother had a birthday coming up, and she loves English cookies. So we boxed up a selection, all under the irreproachable Duchy Originals hallmark of Prince Charles's Prince's Trust, and set out to mail them to Massachusetts.
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The woman at the Post Office wanted to know if they were home-made cookies. If they were home-made, we could have just sent them. But since they were bought, we would have to go through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It's part of the war on ter rorism, you see. She referred us to a Web site: www.access.fda.gov.
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"FDA industry systems," the site proclaims. Created "in response to the Bioter rorism Act of 2002."
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Can this daunting rubric accommodate Cookies for Mom? I have my doubts. But I'm relieved to find a four-page section, "Sending Food Gifts Through International Mail."
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It quotes the rulebook: You can send foreign food gifts if you warn the Food and Drug Administration in advance and get a Prior Notice Number to put on the package.
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"Who is authorized to submit prior notice?" it asks, rhetorically. "A prior notice for an article of food may be submitted by any person with knowledge of the required information. This person is the submitter."
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Resigned to going through the same rigmarole as someone shipping a freighterload of Duchy Originals, I pull up the five-page "Prior Notice of Imported Foods."
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I get my account number and password, and start applying online for a Prior Notice Number. As I turn in my submitter information, I'm stopped. The system doesn't like something.
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Rejected, I send an e-mail to Help, and two days later a woman apologizes for the problem and asks for my account ID and password so it can be researched. I send those, and I hear back that it's going to their "test environment." Please allow two to three business days.
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Meanwhile I decide to try again on the submitter information. Now I can't even get to where I was before! Can the Food and Drug Administration have learned what I'm thinking of it?
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The Help woman says: "No one else has reported this problem. Try restarting your computer."
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I do that, and again I'm turned away.
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Has anyone got a recipe for home-made shortbread?

Lawyers who write on the side

I met a lawyer today who is a mystery writer on the side. That seems almost mundane and therefore uninteresting, but just to get your attention, I was told that he is the winner of the Poe prize for the best new mystery short story of the year. This not insignificant accomplishment clearly impressed ME and so he gave me his card. I was going to look him up once I got home, but then I noticed that the card was (mistakenly?) actually that of an insurance agent in California. So what now? Track him down to let him know that I have the number of the person he needs to call for his insurance question? I looked up the award winners on google for the past several years and none of them sound like they might have been him.

The thing is, I had a very interesting conversation on the art of short story writing. If I find out that this is not based in reality, because the guy is really a fake, then are some of my thoughts on writing, formed during this talk, suddenly less valid?

Audacious emails, pt. 1

This new feature will give you an idea of the type of people who write to me. I’m not talking about blog reader email and I’m not talking about spam – i.e. email generated by the truckload to anonymous addresses—I’m talking about email sent to ME PERSONALLY. Of course, I will protect the confidentiality of senders. As I said, I do not make things up on the weblog [yes, the “triplets of Bellville” post (March 8) is true—subsequently I decided that this person simply must like the feel of all those “ll” sounds rolling off the tongue]. In posting a message, I wont tamper with grammar or style. I will, however, change names and facts slightly because 1. I’m a nice person and 2. I don’t want to get sued.

Email message (A):

My ex wife kidnapped my son 4 yrs ago. She fled to Austria with him. My son is now 10yrs old. Last year was the first time she allowed me visitation with him (in Austria). She has sole custody of him in Austria. I have custody of him in the U.S. She said if I change the court papers here stating she has custody of him in the US she would allow him to come for a visit here in a few months. Is there an easy and inexpensive way I can change the court documents so they would be vague but state that she has custody and I have visitation rights? When my son arrives here I would of course want to wipe it out so it’s back to my having sole custody. Please if you could help me I would deeply appreciate it. Or if you know of one of your students that could help me out with the paper work....or what ever you could do. I am very desperate and don't have much time to take care of this.

I should have replied thus: So let me get this straight: you’re asking a law prof and students, future illustrious members of the legal profession, to help you figure out a way to “adjust” court records so that their “message” would be fake but look real? And you want me to do this quickly and with little expectation of getting anything for my illegal and immoral acts, with the exception of possibly a criminal charge that’ll land me in jail along with homicidal drunk-drivers and convicted drug felons? If your ex siphoned money from a bank, would you write a prof in the business school asking for help so that you could do the same? I’m not denying that child kidnapping is a tremendous problem among divorced parents. But your devious plot, leading to the “recapture” of your son (possibly a lynching party, to go after your ex later on?) sounds like a BAD IDEA that should be PUT TO REST.
Copied to: Board of Professional Responsibility with a Post-it saying: “please put this in my file as evidence of the fact that I am a morally and legally upright attorney, that I do not take bribes and I turn away potential clients who ask me to do illegal acts. Thanks, NC”

Why do some people do great things?

We ask this about people such as Schindler – who risked his life to save Jews from extermination during World War II. Schindler’s List comes out today on DVD, hence there is a renewed sense of curiosity about the man himself (Schindler died 30 years ago). Why did he do it?

Do we ask this because so many Germans did the opposite? So that his act of goodness stands out like a single flower would in the rubble of war? Maybe we expect too little of ourselves… We marvel at greatness, as if it truly is the unanticipated surprise gift.

The year Schindler’s List won the Academy Awards (seven, including Best Picture and Best Director) was a good year for movies. Could I even find a dissenter who’d argue that the movie was not the most significant film experience of the year? I’m thinking no, and that’s a good thing.

From Blackmun to Black Birds and Blackboards

I’ve come to appreciate that in the suburbs, waking up to the gentle twitter of birds really should be translated as waking up to the screaming noise of black birds (not of the Agelaius phoeniceus sort, but CROWS).

Crows can make life on our block an offensively dirty and miserably loud experience. The birds build their nests in the tall trees that line the street (minus one tree – chopped down, my fault, see post below) and leave their droppings on chosen driveways. They love ours. No good reason, they just do.

They ravage the garbage pails each week. Thanks to them, I know that our left-side neighbors always order meat toppings on their pizza, and everyone up and down the block knows that we went through a summer fad of eating fruit juice pops. There’s actually more that they know, but what the block knows, the blog need not reveal.

This morning, the birds were at it from dawn and it isn’t even garbage day. I heard that one environmentally correct way of dealing with them (apart from brutal murder and I am not there yet) is to fly a plane overhead and make exploding noises. These days that’s just about the worst idea that you could have. So, I am working on developing coping strategies instead.

But mainly I am hurrying to review my lecture for this morning. It is an introduction to the issues surrounding child support. This is the one topic that I cannot do without using numbers and a calculator (an anathema to law students), because you cannot demonstrate the legal fictions and absurdities created by otherwise rational (one supposes) legislators without entering into the math of it. This in turn means that since I am technologically of the “behind” sort, I have to expose my other behindedness – meaning I have to turn my “back” to the class and write things on the blackboard.

I hate doing that—perhaps my loathing of it signifies my not wanting to lose control of the classroom. And in addition, when I turn my back to students, I am imagining that I have gotten myself into some absurdly compromising state, much to everyone’s amusement. This isn’t sheer paranoia. Four years ago, I was walking to my office in the morning and a random student on the sidewalk came up to me and said: “uh, I think you’d want to know, your skirt zipper is undone.” I was so GRATEFUL to her, but ever since then, I feel compelled to check every time I am turning my back to the class. The act of checking itself is probably completely indiscreet and produces gales of guffaws. What can you do.

To days gone by

Remembering today the Les Mis lyrics:

“Drink with me to days gone by,
Can it be you fear to die?
Will the world remember you
When you fall?
Could it be your death
Means nothing at all?”

So much has been said about the newly released papers belonging to Justice Blackmun that I needn’t add yet another blog entry on the topic. But there is one small file of material that, to me, is particularly intriguing. It has to do with the friendship between Blackmun and Burger.

Can you sustain a friendship in light of significant political and professional differences? In an interview some years back, Blackmun admitted that his mother was right to warn him that his lifelong friendship with Burger might be challenged once they were both appointed to the Supreme Court. Blackmun hadn’t believed her initially, but after a few years on the job, he changed his mind.

How can years of shared experiences be undone in this way? Is it because each Justice was convinced that the work product would survive into posterity, lasting far longer than any personal connection ever could? One can only speculate. Still, it is saddening to read about the details of the breakdown. Friendship is circumscribed, defined by each of the participants. Why would it dissipate so late in life? Reading the materials now, one can see the decline in spirit and commitment. For me, it is one of the sadder stories that emerges from the Balckmun papers.

What can be made of this?

[statement of intent: I am going to continue with my determination (see Saturday post) to favor text over visuals in the blog, but this post just would not work without the graphic. A new resolution is thus made: I will stick with text only, unless an OVERWHELMING URGE, or necessity lead me to incorporate visual imagery]

A friend has taken to inserting an odd phrase into the conversation. We will be talking about not anything in particular, and he will say “the Triplets of Belleville.”

[It’ll be like this, for example: “So far, March hasn’t been a very tempestuous month; in fact it has virtually manifested halcyon elements a summer season [nc: ignore the choice of words – this stuff is normal for him] perhaps obfuscated a tad ‘the Triplets of Belleville’ by the intemperate cloud-cover, wouldn’t you say?”]

I really don’t know what to make of this. I’m not even sure he saw this film. Perhaps the figures have made an impression – of the sort that only ten years of psychoanalysis would begin to unravel, in which case I don’t want to question him about it, in the same way that one doesn’t ask someone with 11 fingers why they have been blessed with an extra.

Sometimes I think that winter puts us over the top. We say and do bizarre things, which can only be attributable to our almost uncontrollable desire to pilfer, ravage and destroy anything in sight, just because we have such anger within, all the result of severe light deprivation.


I’m going to give him some time. By next month, either his head will have cleared and we will again converse quite normally, or I’ll rebut with an equally obscure and irrelevant phrase (like ‘ooee, oo ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang’ --from Alvin and the Chipmunks maybe? Not terribly sophisticated, but undeniably noticeable) and see if he responds. This may open the door for a reasonable discussion of the problem.

One line

Meet Krtek, hero of Saturday's post (see below), the mild-mannered bandit that stole my calm over the week-end.

Why did I fail to post images? Tonya (of blog fame) stopped by my office and we went over the steps I followed, versus the path she had taken. The difference? One line. I was missing one stinky little line. That's it. Computers are insane in their fastidiousness!

Late night run-in with the Madison police

It’s not what you think. No one called the police on me. I called the police on THEM.

Late the previous night someone took a club to the car that we park on the street, shattering and ripping out side mirrors, antennas, and generally leaving their vampire-tooth gashes up and down the body of the vehicle.

Being reticent to go out on days when March gusts of wind make the outdoors inhospitable, none of us noticed this car-nage until late in the evening, when our visitor decided that she had to get out and see the world [our visitors often feel somewhat isolated in the suburbs, what with the nearest hub of commercial activity consisting of a strip mall with not much in it beyond a Bob’s Copy Shop (an essential to suburban living) and a Hooters Bar (no comment)].

The car is a nifty little Corolla that once belonged to my mother. It got left behind when my mother decided to move to California to become one of those weather-obsessed (“is it as miserable as I remember it in Wisconsin right now?”), radically-leaning (words such as imperialism and socialism can be heard among the clatter of soup spoons in her cafeteria), gray panther types (power to the aging!) of Berkeley. In the typical way of an older driver, my mother had never put many miles on the car. Thus, even though the vehicle is old (not quite as old as she is, but gettin’ there), the odometer would have you think it’s virtually off the showroom floor.

Feeling frugal with this inherited machine that is now mainly driven by visitors, we have never bothered to insure it much – though of course, we insure against the damage to the planet that may be caused by its gentle movement around town.

As soon as we noticed the shattered glass and the twisted metal last night, I called the non-emergency police number and had the following conversation with the officer-on-call:

nc: “I’m calling to report that someone bashed in our car.”
Police: “A real shame. Do you know who did it?”

nc: “I have my suspicions..”
police: “Good. Would you like to give us some names?”

nc: “My suspicions are only suspicions. I know better than to accuse people without evidence of their guilt. However---- now that you ask, I do know that the car has an enemy. Last year a driver ran into its parked little sweet body and we made her pay substantial sums to get it fixed. She may well hold a grudge.”
Police: “What’s her name?”

nc: “No no, you’re not going to make me say it.”
Police: “Well, would you say that there’s more than a $1000 worth of damage now? Because if it’s less, why then we can just mail you some forms and you can self-report!”

nc: “What, no house-calls anymore?? In any case, it’s more than $1000. It costs $5000 these days to repaint a scratch on a fender. Of course it’s more than a $1000! The car has been walloped by a maniac with a clear homicidal impulse.”

Several hours later, a very young, very friendly officer came to our door. I had hoped he would come with great fanfare, lights shining, siren blasting, to scare the bejesus out of the people who did it, should they be watching from behind a shrub. But no, all was quiet, save for our barking Ollie who obviously has not yet learned to be intimidated by a blue uniform.

The officer wrote up the damage and gave me some good advice as to where I can get some salvaged replacement parts (for those who are curious: at the dump). I asked if he’d had any other calls of this nature lately, just to see if our peaceful existence is coming to an end (today: quiet suburb, tomorrow: drug-trafficing, gang-infested mean streets of the south side of Chicago type -- our last place of residence prior to moving to Madison). He answered “well, I typically work the downtown beat. It’s a little less calm down there, you know. Nice little block you got here.. noticed there’s a pretty little house for sale up the street?”

Maybe he’ll be a neighbor one day soon. Good. Our battered little car will feel safer. So far, being surrounded by houses where people’s jobs run from stamp-collecting (that is seriously the income-generating occupation of our immediate neighbor) to film-making (where the flamingos reside, see post in February) hasn’t kept vandalism at bay (mailbox bashing is a neighborhood past time for the young and restless).