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.
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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.