The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I'm off travelling in Europe and it's hard to always get to a computer to make updates. I do have some thoughts backlogged to share though.

I've come to realize that part of the reason that Americans and the French and Germans don't agree about Iraq is that they are not basing their opinions on the same information. Before I left for Europe I watched Deutsche Welle TV and they did a story about the sorry state of an electrical power plant, discussed its critical importance, and noted that the US had done nothing to help nor allowed for anyone else to come in and help. Several days later (a few days ago now) I saw the same story on French TV news, and nothing had changed.

Meanwhile, in the US we get to see all the touchy-feely feel good stories about the random good things that did result. I don't doubt that there were in fact some, and I never doubted that there would be. But a handful of good things doesn't outweigh a pile of bad things and we need to be aware of them. We can't steer a legitimate policy if we have no concept of where we should be steering it to.

I've admired Johnny Colla for a long time as the saxophonist/guitar player/singer/all-round important guy in Huey Lewis and the News. In addition to playing with the News he is also stretching out to leading his own band and doing his own material, which is quite good. One CD is out, and I can't wait for his next one so that I can have a recording of the great new songs he's done. They are the kind of songs that creep into your head and stay there. Which on the one hand is fine with me because they are good songs, but on the other hand is driving me up the wall because I haven't caught all the words and so I can't sing them. They simply rattle about my brain in a recursive loop.

What I hadn't necessarily realized about him in all the years that I've followed the News is the extent of his talent and intellect. Because the News play as a blended ensemble, it's hard to separate each person's contribution. With his solo work it's clear what he can do. Not only does his voice come through loud and clear, but his songs are well-crafted melodically and lyrically. The crafting of the words is what I find most interesting. I am poorly equipped to judge the relative technical merits of a musical piece, but I find that the finesse with which one can manipulate words tends to reveal a sophistication of thought behind them.

It's always nice to discover that someone you admired is so much more worth the admiration. And in the last few weeks as I've watched several solo perfomances and several performances with the News I feel like I've gotten to know him all over again and feel quite comfortable in calling myself an admirer. He also has written comments on his own web site, and hence the point of this post. Huey Lewis and the News as a band are apolitical, and that's fine. Music can play a role in uniting people, but it generally needs to be politically neutral to successfully pull it off. It doesn't mean, however, that the individuals behind it need to vacate any political consciousness of their own. So, like my blog here, Johnny used his web site as his soapbox to comment on the state of the world, particularly with regards to the Iraqi situation.

I'm mentioning it here because I agree completely with his position, and it's nice to see someone else express so eloquently many of the thoughts in my own head.

For posterity (I hope he doesn't mind - the link will probably break the next time he posts):

...

"Do I feel any different now that we've 'won the war'? No. Like getting a bad tooth drilled, I'm glad the pain didn't last too long, and it feels great now that it's over. On the other hand, for a few of us the pain will last a lifetime. I think we just cooked up a big pot of something extremely unsavory. It's just begun to simmer and it won't be done for a long time (if ever!) and in the end it may not taste very good.

The anti-war, peace movement mindset my generation embraced forty years ago was a wonderful ideal, and still permeates our part of the world. Unfortunately back then we believed, naively, world peace would be within our grasp in short order, possibly in our lifetime. In our youthful exuberance of the sixties we wanted quick results. In some instances we even used violence to make our point! The fact of the matter is war and violence is an everyday, ingrained part of life in a large part of our world and within our own country. It is the everyday occurrences against women and children or the old and helpless, and moves out into the big-city battlefield of perceived enemies, real or imagined. It's a tragic human condition passed on from generation to generation. I think I've lived long enough now to know change in the world, that is, a serious shift in consciousness, is a very slow-turning screw. But I try and remind myself daily that peace, love and compassion starts or stops, lives or dies, every day in the home behind closed doors. Keep an eye out for the enemy within, and be patient."

...

Edit 7/19/03: The link to his comment did change so I updated this post.

This past weekend my mom and I went to Yosemite. I'd been there before and had once climbed Half Dome, but she hadn't seen the valley and all of its glacier-molded gigantic granite topography.

She has seen lots of granite before though, particularly in New Hampshire, known as the Granite State. She's vacationed there nearly every year since I was in elementary school so I've seen a lot of it as well. One of the things I remember seeing is the Old Man in the Mountain. The Old Man was an over-hanging rock formation on the side of a mountain that when viewed from the side looked like a Lincoln-like profile of an old man. There were lots of legends about the Old Man, some dating back at least hundreds of years.

At Yosemite's nature centers there was a lot of emphasis on the slowness of geologic time, explaining how it took millions of years for the features of the valley to be shaped. So imagine my shock to have learned that a few weeks ago the Old Man in the Mountain collapsed. It fell off. It's not there anymore. Somewhere in the scale of geologic time, a seemingly permanent feature of the landscape disappeared in my lifetime. I hope this is some random coincidence and not a harbinger of other geographic traumas to be suffered as a result of me somehow being cursed...

It's Bastille Day and a great time to comment on all things French.

On Friday the Sofitel Hotel in Redwood Shores hosted a party to celebrate an early Bastille Day. It wasn't all that much fun - way too American! (The band should have played French music!) - but I got to catch up with my friend Valerie, an actual French person, and there were fireworks afterwards. We spoke French a little as well and I was happy to see I haven't forgotten it all despite not having been in France since March. When I'm in France my French skills sort of warm up and I get more fluid with my speaking. But I don't practice much when I'm in the US because it just doesn't seem intuitive to describe life in the US in French. French fits France: the roads, the buildings, the people, the food, the life, the light, the French ambience in its entirety. But in the US, and maybe California in particular, the spaces are broader and, how shall I say it, differently colored? There is a rhythm to life which requires the English vocabulary and its broader phoenetic syllables to describe. Whereas IN France the opposite is true and English feels clunky and ineffectual.

Apparently last year for Bastille Day the Sofitel Hotel hung a gigantic French flag off of their building. This year I guess they've chosen to be more subdued. I think it's an absolute shame that they think they need to. There was a recent article in the New York Times about how American families were refusing to host French foreign exchange students. Such behavior is absolutely appalling.

• Even if we assume that the French have done something unforgivable, what sense does it make to penalize students?
• Given the rift between our respective cultures, what sense does it make to deny ourselves the opportunities to build bridges between us that foreign exchanges afford?
• Even if we accept the most cynical assessment of Chirac's motivation for not agreeing with the US on Iraq, I don't believe, from my experience meeting real live actual French people in France, that the French reluctance to invade Iraq was based on anything other than reasonable, rationale, and humane concerns.
• If either country has behaved in a way that requires apologizing, it's not France. All things considered I think the French have been tolerating tremendous American arrogance with astonishing equanimity. I've not heard of an example of the French being nearly as inhospitable to Americans as we are being to them.

Not to mention how foolish this attitude is if it turns out that the French were right about Iraq.

I just find it unfathomable that there are Americans who would tell me that to support my country I need to now hate the French. I didn't go to all the trouble to learn their language just so I could lord myself over them in a misplaced sense of haughty patriotism. I think, rather, that it would be advisable for more Americans to go to the trouble to try to see things from the French perspective. And rather than continue to resent them for WWII, if we are determined to rely on history to justify our contemporary relationships, perhaps we would be better served by recalling the contributions of Lafayette, or perhaps the gift of the Statue of Liberty, or any other of a number unsung occasions of the French supporting Americans.

I'm chagrined that it's been a week since I last posted. I think I'll blame it on this whole law school transition thing... Actually, that's not too far-fetched. By the end of last week I'd gotten myself and all my stuff to Boston, but I hadn't quite finished the unpacking when last Sunday I drove down to New Jersey to see my family (and in the interests of full disclosure, another Huey Lewis and the News concert...)

I've come back to visit periodically during the 10+ years I lived in California, but this time it feels different. Those times I felt very detatched, and I also felt like I had to zoom around to suck up all the things about the East Coast that I missed on the West Coast (food, seasons, etc.) This time I have this sense that I can take my time. Boston is close enough that nearly all the things I like about NJ can be experienced up there. I was talking with my dad the other day about getting some Jewish deli, when I realized as though by epiphany that I didn't need to knock myself out to get it down here since I could get it at home! The awareness that I could get things I liked NEAR MY HOME suddenly made me feel much better about having made this move.

With regards to feeling detatched, though, that was a much harder emotion to work through. When September 11 happened, I wasn't there. I was sleeping in California. Though the tragedy was a blow to the entire nation, the real impact was born by New York (and its surrounding area). It used to be MY city, that used to be MY World Trade Center, but after nearly a decade of being away, I wasn't sure they were still mine anymore. It was one of the seminal events that will forever define New York, but I wasn't there to be defined with it. The place changed, and I was left behind. I wondered if I would ever be able to come back and call this place home.

My dad says I'm thinking too hard about this and that of course I can come back. It's not like there are rules for who gets to live here and who doesn't. But regardless, yesterday I got something resembling redemption. I was at my mom's house, where I grew up, playing with the computer (in fact, I was trying to update my blog!), when suddenly the computer rebooted (it ate my blog entry!). It came back on for a few minutes, and then the screen went blank again. And stayed that way. Eventually I wandered outside and chatted with my next door neighboors, who I haven't talked to in years, and we tried calling the electric company. The line was busy, and then another neighbor across the street came over to tell us he'd heard on the radio that most of northern New Jersey and New York were out.

At first everyone thought it was another 9-11. What else could have caused such a vast area to lose all their power? I remember when I lived in California getting teased about the rolling blackouts. People joked it was a third world nation. But at least there the power "rolled" with some warning, lasting only short duration and sparing the hospitals and other mission-critical institutions. Whereas yesterday it all went kaput with no warning.

People came out of their houses and started milling around on the street. Sensing the scale of it meant that it would probably be a while before we got power back, we decided to have a Clean-Out-Your-Refrigerator Potluck Barbeque Block Party. It was a good chance to meet the neighbors and feel like part of the neighborhood again. It was always a nice street to grow up on, although when I was about 6 most of the other families with kids had moved away. It's only recently that it's become a vibrant neighborhood again with lots of kids (in fact, nine boys were born on the street the same year - they'll be able to field their own baseball team in a few years.)

The neighbors had a generator so we were able to watch tv and see scenes of utter pedestrian gridlock in New York. It was a rough place to be, but New York has changed since 9-11. It functions much better as a unified community, something I think it struggled with in 1977 and the last major power outage.

Just as we were about to eat the lights came back on (figures.) But people stayed for a while and enjoyed the occasion as one of the little gifts adversity sometimes brings.

Rosh Hashanah has come (and nearly gone) again. I have not managed to make it to services for the holiday, but I am trying to maintain a sense of newness in all other things.

On Friday evening I met my sister and some friends at a Bosnian/Mediterranean restaurant to fete the new year. Then last night my friend and I threw a potluck party, ostensibly to celebrate the new year. But we'd planned it very late and most of our Jewish friends already had other plans (or didn't get the invitation in time.) So we opened it up and included anyone who wanted to come for a party. We had a small crowd and lots of food, including jambalaya which I now think is a required staple for any party.

The eclectic nature of our party led to some interesting discussions. We got around to talking about President Bush. Nearly everyone held him in tremendous disfavor, except for the guest who brought the jambalaya. Born and raised in Kansas, with close ties to New Orleans, his cultural centering contrasted with the sensibilities of those of us who grew up on the urban northeast or west coasts. Respect for his opinion kept the evening from becoming a Bush-bashing fest. Rather, I asked him if he could explain why Bush has such traction in certain parts of the country. He thought it had something to do with Bush appearing (albeit perhaps falsely) as an Everyman. We want a President we think we could go have a beer with, he said, not someone who's an academic lording his credentials above us. (paraphrased, but that was the gist.) Part of that makes sense to me - who wants a sense that they are being "ruled" by a president with nothing in common with them? On the other hand, would you not want someone with some sort of qualification to deal with the important issues that a president needs to deal with? The conversation turned to discussing what these qualifications might be, then wandered to gun control, then airline security...

It was invigorating and frightening to hear these other opinions. Invigortating in the sense that exchanging ideas so frankly helps lead you to improve and refine your own. And frightening in the sense that it exemplifies why there is so much discord in the world: even the issues that seem so simple and solveable to you have proponents who think they are simple and solveable to the contrary. How do you figure out who's wrong and who's right? And what if, in some way, everyone is right? Then what?

In the days where naming rights to every civic structure are routinely sold to the highest bidder, it's nice to see things get named after a deserving and appropriate person.

California just completed a new suspension bridge (in the Bay Area, crossing the Carquinez strait carrying eastbound I-80 traffic) and named it the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge. According to CNN:

It is named for an ironworker who fell from the Golden Gate Bridge during its construction in 1936 and survived to help build six more bridges in the Bay Area.

Zampa died in 2000 at 95, weeks after turning the first shovel of dirt for the bridge.

He sounds like a worthy recipient of the honor of naming a bridge after. Much more worthy than others who've had civil engineering projects named after them, say, like Ronald Reagan. Someone wrote on the Internet somewhere (I forget where) that it was tremendously ironic to name an airport after the man who fired all the air traffic controllers.

I think that it would be advisable to make a rule (codified, or simply a hegemonically and tacitly socially agreed upon tradition) not to name things after people until 50 years after their death. This would give us a chance to really reflect on their contribution to society and decide if, on retrospect, we still feel highly enough about them to justify the honor. Also, particularly in the case of political figures, it eliminates the partisan quality to naming structures that everyone shares, even people who don't favor the political contributions of the naming honoree.

Granted Zampa died only a few years ago, but it's not like he was a political figure whose supporters called in the favors to have the structure named after him. And his story seems to make naming a bridge after him seem very appropriate. Maybe if it was a baseball stadium I would feel differently. Then again, if it would prevent another recurrence of an Enron Field...

Edit 3/9/04: There's an interesting and related comment pertaining to this post here.

A few days ago a friend of mine nonchalantly commented, "I like snow." And now look what happened. We're up to a foot and a half of it! So I think he should comment, "I like money," and see if he gets a similarly voluminous result. Other friends are skeptical about whether he truly has any sort of cosmic power or if this isn't some sort of coincidence, but I think it's very important that we test the theory in case he should happen to comment, "I like manure," or something else that would be unpalatable in large quantity.

A few days ago I was comparing notes with my friend about our travels in Europe. I've been many times, including after graduating college when I had a month-long Eurail pass. I milked it for all it was worth, heading as far south as Rome and as far north as Narvik; west to London and east to St. Petersburg. I generally took night trains, as it seemed most cost effective and time efficient to take care of sleeping and traveling at the same time. I traveled by myself for the most part and had no problems doing so at all (contrary to the skepical comments I received from people I met there who couldn't imagine doing the same.) In fact, the whole trip went swimmingly with just two minor exceptions in Rome and Madrid.

On the one hand, with train travel in Europe, you want to be somewhat prepared before beginning. It's good to know where the trains go, when they go, which destinations are reached by night trains (if that's what you plan to take), and consequently to have some sense of the places you want to visit. On the other hand, you don't want to over-plan and end up forcing yourself to miss out on unanticipated adventures while you catch your pre-booked train. Like many other things in life it's all about balance. I had a general idea of the places I wanted to visit and carried around xeroxed train schedules so that as I decided where I wanted to go I could easily figure out how to get there. Generally I would book my reservations a day or two in advance as my plans firmed up, trading off a wild adventure that might crop up in the current city for the certainty that I'd have a berth on the train I wanted. (The Eurail pass covers the ticket portion of most trains - the part that pays for the distance traveled - but not sleeping berths which are good to have if you plan on taking a night train and want to be in any way well-rested upon arrival at the next city.)

By the time I got to Salzburg I knew what night I wanted to go to Venice. I also knew that the following night I wanted to go to Rome, and the night after that to Nice. The clerk in the Salzburg station spoke English well so it was a good place to get organized, but for reasons he couldn't explain he could only book me to Venice. This seemed odd because elsewhere in Europe I'd been able to book for any other train anywhere else. I decided to take my chances and go to Venice anyway, figuring it would be easier to sort out the Italian trains once I was in Italy. My hunch seemed to pay off when in Venice I was able to reserve the night train to Rome, but still no luck with the train to Nice. Ah well, it worked out with this train, so I'll go to Rome and take my chances.

Unfortunately, no one in Rome could book me on the train out that night, nor explain what the problem was. In fact they could not explain whether there just wouldn't be sleeping cars, or if there was to be no train at all. So I had a problem. I could wait around and try to catch the hypothetical train, but I ran the risk of being stuck at the train station at 11:30 at night if it didn't materialize. I still wasn't sure what to do when I bumped into an American woman who invited me to join her on her trip to Florence in 2 hours. I decided it would be better to start heading north so I agreed to join her. "It's too bad, though," I said, "Because after studying all that Latin I really wanted to see some ruins." So we jumped on the metro, took it two stops, hopped out at the Coliseum and took pictures, then got back on the metro and caught the next train to Florence. Where I spent a few hours in the lobby of her hotel wiping honey off of everything in my daypack (the jar I was carrying had leaked) before wandering around the city, trying out Florentine Chinese food for dinner, and then catching a midnight train to Nice, as planned.

Sometimes the misses end up the best stories but, as I told my friend the other day, I was having trouble construing my minor mishap in Madrid positively. Earlier in my trip I had met my sister in Paris and we went to Spain together, first stopping in Madrid. At mealtime things got interesting. She's a vegetarian, and a picky one at that. And we were both poor students. So choosing a restaurant required extensive studying of menus to strategize the best offerings of tapas for our budget and tastes. (It had to be tapas, because boorish Americans that we were, we got hungry well before most Spaniards began to consider eating dinner.)

We found a nice place, we thought, on the Plaza Major. A waiter caught our eye and sat us down at an outdoor table. But then he disappeared for a while, which was too bad because the table was dirty. We caught another waiter's eye and we told him about the table. "Sucio," I mumbled in my long-forgotten Spanish. So he moved us to a different table. His table. As opposed to the other waiter's table. In the U.S. this kind of move would be no big deal, but judging by the argument the two waiters got into I think it was a very big deal in Spain. From what I gather, each waiter is sort of an entrepreneur for his tables. The second waiter, with our ignorant help, had essentially stolen the first one's customers. The manager emerged to sort out the scuffle and apologized to us, and eventually one of the waiters came to take our order.

We carefully pointed out which things we wanted. Many of the dishes came in two sizes, and cheapskates that we were, we ordered the smaller plates. When the order came out we thought one plate looked larger than we expected but after discussing it, we decided that it was reasonable and assumed that the waiter had gotten it right. He hadn't, which we discovered to our horror when we got the bill. This led to another discussion with the manager, this time much less pleasant. My Spanish skills were taxed to their limit and beyond - I had to use entire sentences and consequently conjugate on the fly - as I made our case (which was much more convincing than I've articulated here, now 8 years later and fuzzy on the details). I won the argument but it was clear that we wouldn't be welcome in these parts again. I was fine with that, for a few reasons. For one, I felt conned. We had been clear, and the waiter had either screwed up or pulled a fast one. But even beyond the sense of justification, I also felt mortified. To the extent that the trouble was my fault, particularly in failing to account for cultural differences, I was embarrassed and not eager to show my face there again. Until this week, I was happy to steer clear of Madrid altogether.

In the few days since telling my friend that story, everything changed, including my antipathy toward Madrid. It now seems petty and small, and I feel more compelled to visit again as a show of solidarity. The location of the bombing – at the train station – was particularly significant to me. I took a lot of trains in Europe, including in Madrid. I even remember having noted then how Spanish train stations in 1996 showed the most obvious signs of security. I frequently checked my luggage in lockers before heading out for the day (necessary when taking night train after night train) and Spain was the only country that required passing all bags through an x-ray machine. "Because of the bombings," I remember thinking to myself. Pretty similarly to what I also thought to myself in June 2001, when passing through the lobby of the World Trade Center and seeing all the security apparatus. "Because of the terrorism." This nonsense has got to stop; I'm tired of these bitter ironic thoughts.

I wasn't going to post on my blog until exams are over, but I opened my shades today and saw leaves on the tree and felt it needed to be noted.

Happy spring.

I got the following email from my dad yesterday, and I think more people should be aware of the points he raised. With his permission I'm posting it here:

Here's the link to Seymour Hersh's current article on the Abu Ghraib prison. It's very enlightening and, after listening to the Senate hearings on this issue, is even more disturbing for its implications and the damage done.

"TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?"
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

The article raises some very strong points, primarily about the breakdown in command and is another example of the many ways we were unprepared for handling post-war Iraq.

The whole situation at this prison emphasizes something I've objected to from the very beginning: We should not be sending reservists into the combat zone.

Reservists (which includes both the regular reserve and the National Guard) are by their very definition not professional soldiers in the way the enlistees are. They are older, hold full-time civilian jobs not necessarily related to their military roles, are less trained, and, in general, did not volunteer for what turned out to be combat service. The reserves are really meant to fill in the domestic gaps when we ship our regular military overseas. In the case of WWII and Korea, the reserves were used as cannon fodder (with disastrous casualties) until the time a regular army could be drafted, trained, and sent overseas.

I was in the National Guard for six years. My service overlapped the time of the riots in Newark, Detroit, etc. during the mid-sixties. I went through the farce of what was called riot-control training. If we had been called out for riot duty I would have had pity for us, the rioters, and any civilians who looked to us like rioters.

We were frightened, ignorant, poorly disciplined, and inadequately trained. Our officers were a joke who lacked capability, leadership ability, and respect. Few had seen active service and most had been through, at best, National Guard officers training (4 weeks total). They were comic book soldiers. In fact we all were. If we were called out and issued live ammo we would have had needless casualties on both sides. I'm fortunate that I wasn't put into that sitiuation.

Reservists still train a weekend a month and two weeks during the summer. That's the total. MP units in my reserve division did traffic control for the most part. To send folks like that over to guard jails in a very complex political-social and dangerous situation without a lot of special training is asking for trouble and victimizes the soldiers who in turn end up victimizing their charges.

Poor discipline, lack of clarity of one's duties and responsibilities, plus being in a situation in which one feels unprepared is a bad mix. Add to that what seems like an organizational breakdown based on a nudge, a wink, and contradictory authority, and what happened could have been expected.

I don't condone the behavior of the guards, but nailing them alone is like picking up the dope pushers on the street corner and claiming to have broken the narcotics trade. What they did wasn't done in a vacuum. The buck stops a lot higher up.

Since I'm currently living in Washington, it's been hard to ignore the fanfare over Reagan, though I've certainly tried. The jets that flew over his Capitol procession also flew over my house, and the ceremonies on Friday were on TVs all over the city. DC was also very quiet that day as Bush had given a lot of people the day off. Meanwhile I just held my breath and waited for it to be over.

It's not that I want to jump up and down and spit on his grave - he was a father, a husband, and he leaves behind loved ones and I'm sensitive to their loss. And I agree with what I overheard someone else say, that as a US president his death was due a certain ceremony.

My objection is to the posthumous deifying of the man. I don't want to change the money in his honor, or anything else for that matter. And I don't want to pretend that he was the greatest president ever, although I admit that his presidency did have lasting effects. Whether all of them are effects we'd like to have, though, I'm not so sure.

There are a couple of things that come to mind most strongly when I reflect on Reagan. One, that he gassed the students at the University of California at Berkeley. (He called out the National Guard as governor of California and they gassed the student protestors.) I wasn't there, but I don't need to be - nor do I need to be an alumna of the school (though I am) - in order to feel that it was a violent over-reaction to dissent. Given the degree that he's being feted for having "defeating" the Soviet Union it might be nice if we didn't forget how he acted in such a Soviet style himself.

I also question whether he really did "defeat" the Soviet Union in the Cold War. I remember being terrified when I was in elementary school that he was being so provocative that he was going to get us all blown up. It may have been an oversimplified perception, but as I've gotten older I've noticed that fifth graders, with their less convoluted outlooks, often get things more right than adults who tend to get more lost in complexities.

(Gorbachev, who I do tend to think is more deserving of honor for ending the Cold War, himself credits Reagan for helping to end it. I don't deny that Reagan played a crucial role, but it may have been more to create the political realities that allowed Gorbachev to do what he did. Perhaps if these actions had been part of a flawless design I could congratulate him for it. But my sense of the history was that it was, like so much else, more a fortunate accident.)

The thing that bothers me the most, though, is that in fourth grade he made me cry. There was some nonsense about bringing school prayer back to schools, and for a brief period this directive manifested in a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegience. It was just a moment of silence, we were told, not a directive to pray. As if that made it ok. I knew its purpose was for a moment of Christian contemplation. I wasn't Christian, I knew it wasn't for me. It was a moment when I became an outcast in my own country. As if the fourth grade wasn't trying enough.

There are some conservatives who have lambasted critics of Reagan as being partisan in refusing to go along with the flow in feting his fictional flawlessness. It's an unfair criticism for the most part because it serves no one's interests if we can't evaluate his presidency thoroughly and honestly, to face down the mistakes if we wish to celebrate the glories.

Lest I be painted with the same critical brush, I also wish to point out that I grew up during the Reagan presidency. That I've become a Democrat is directly due to him because as I gained my political consciousness I looked around and knew there had to be a better way.

Edit 6/15/04: What did happen in 4th grade? An article in today's New York Times says that unlike Bush, Reagan didn't mix religion and politics. That's not my recollection, but perhaps I'm missing something.

The article talked about comments made by his son at the funeral, trying to differentiate Reagan and Bush's invocation of religion into politics. Of course, from my understanding, Ron Reagan Jr., whose views I generally do respect, often didn't see eye-to-eye with his dad. But I admire the son for having tried to bridge the ideological gap between them.

Edit 7/10/04: Here's something I wrote about Reagan during his presidency. I was about 11 when I wrote it.

Every day on my way to work I pass a red brick building. It's been empty, which sort of seemed odd for such a prime location. But I'd noticed other empty buildings around the neighborhood so I didn't think much about it.

On Wednesday morning, though, I noticed a camera crew setting up in front of it, with their microwave truck in the street. More interestingly, there was a FOX News truck around the corner. But other than that everything looked just as it had every day for the past month and a half.

While at work, my friend IM'd me that Tears for Fears, his favorite band (he nicely ranks Huey Lewis and the News as number 2), would be having a free lunchtime show at a nearby club. Apparently Tears for Fears had broken up for a while, but they now have reformed and have an album coming out in September, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. Since my friend has let me share HLN concerts with him, I decided to come along to check out his favorites.

It was a good show. They played a lot of the new songs, and closed with some of their famous hits from the 1980s like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

For me it was interesting being at a concert where OTHER people were the big fans. At HLN shows I'm always the one who knows all the words, all the history, who all the people are. I'm so involved with it that I have no idea what it's like to be at a HLN show for someone new to them. So it was a nice change to be at this Tears for Fears concert where all the other people were the hardcore fans and I got to experience them for the first time.

And there I was, right in the front row at a show by people who've filled stadiums. All one day at lunchtime in DC.

On the way back to work I walked past the red brick buiding, which now had crowds of people in front of it (and several more microwave trucks) and by now it was clear what was going on. It was the Iraqi Embassy that had now been reopened. The flag had gone up just minutes before.

It was a moment of historical significance at an otherwise nondescript building in a nondescript neighborhood. A couple of city busses passed by, dropping off their commuters while hemming in the diplomats' vehicles on the narrow city block. The ordinary juxtaposed with the extraordinary.

All in all, just a typical day in DC.

FYI: for any friends and relatives reading, do not panic. I'm fine. I will continue to be fine. And maybe, because of my phone call, so will other people.

Late, late on Thursday evening I eventually realized that the person outside screaming was seriously screaming for help. It took a while to notice because one of my roommates frequently is absurdly loud at late hours so I've learned to ignore her. But eventually it seemed like some investigation was warranted.

It turns out that as she was coming home, right in front of the house, she was accosted. A shiny black car had pulled up and a short hispanic-looking man wearing a long white t-shirt had gotten out and brandished a knife. He took her purse and touched her inappropriately, but then ran off. We found her in the aftermath when she was giving the description to the police.

It was concerning because from time to time I walk home after dark. Not too often because it gets dark so late these days and I get sleepy so early... but sometimes. I'm not stupid or reckless about it, but it's my world and I refuse to cower from it. Still, all weekend I felt sort of squeemish about asserting my independence so overtly (ironic, I thought, given the Independence Day celebrations.) For instance, when I came home late on Friday I took a cab from the metro. What a stupid waste of money: $6 to go 4 short blocks. Otherwise I feel completely safe in my neighborhood. I might worry about petty crime, of things being taken if they aren't nailed down, but I have no reason to fear violent people lurking in the shadows.

Today I happened to have been watching the local news - something I rarely do - and I caught a mention of an assault on Friday on a woman in Alexandria. I didn't pay much attention until they included a description: two hispanic-looking men... long white t-shirt... shiny black car.

The similarities were too striking to be coincidence. But who was going to make the connection? This assault was in Virginia. On Thursday it was in DC, and the 911 call would be recorded on Maryland's tapes.

I used to work in a newsroom and I knew that there were certain kinds of calls from viewers that would actually be helpful. (So many weren't: every 5 minutes people would call objecting to something I had no power to do anything about.) So I tracked down the number for the station's newsroom (which took quite a bit of research since they don't publicize it) and let them know about the other assault. The woman who took the information was interested and will go call the DC police to confirm the connection, if there is one.

I think this was the right way to handle it. I could have called the police, but which police? And since I wasn't a party to it they might not take me seriously in the same way that they would a news desk (something I else I learned from my former job). Plus the news would have an incentive to break a story about a serial predator, whereas I got the distinct sense, judging from the lackadaisical comportment of the cops when they came on the scene, that they might be unmotivated to do the same. The different jurisdictions, plus being busy with ordinary holiday mischief, would also make it harder to put these pieces together on their own accord.

I actually feel much better about the situation now though, having made this connection. I didn't feel comfortable before when I was worried my neighborhood was being targetted. Knowing that the entire metropolitan area is being targetted is almost a strange relief.

Previously I posted about the futility of not having Metro Card dispensers at LaGuardia Airport. I'm starting to wonder if that has less to do with any decision on the part of the MTA (who runs the buses and subway) or if it's a Port Authority decision.

The Port Authority runs LaGuardia Airport. It also runs bridges and tunnels that connect New York and New Jersey, including the George Washington Bridge (the original "GWB"). The George Washington Bridge has two levels, and unlike the Bay Bridge in California, each level has traffic in both directions. I remember when I was a kid always nagging my dad to take the upper level, where the view would be better, and how most of the time we'd end up on the lower level anyway. Sometimes it was because the traffic was better, sometimes it was because we missed the turn-off, and sometimes it was because the exit routing for where we were going was easier to follow on the lower level than the upper.

It seems, however, that recently the Port Authority got the brilliant idea to make the tolls for the lower level EZ Pass-only at night. A huge mess has naturally ensued, as people have ended up in the wrong place with only cash, which apparently the Port Authority doesn't want to trouble themselves to take (the toll is expensive, so it's quite a bit of money to be turning down.) People who end up in the wrong place are stuck with either having to make moronic driving maneuvers, or to drive through the tolls without paying (which then gets them a bill for the toll and a $25 fee.) It's a dangerous situation, and a loud one as well that's been waking the people who live nearby with all the honking and police loudspeaker announcements and such.

Sounds like an idea that should be revisited, right? Apparently not.

"If we start making exceptions," said Ciavolella, the Port Authority spokesman, "then it would defeat the purpose of what we're trying to do."

Exactly what is it that the Port Authority trying to do? Is it something more than collecting money and keeping traffic flowing smoothly, things you'd expect the Port Authority to do? Because it's clearly not doing those things well. What is it that it thinks is more worthwhile?

Port Authority insists that people will learn. OK, maybe regular commuters will figure out this arrangement, but what about the people who aren't? The people who are most likely not to have EZ Pass transponders? These people won't learn the system, and the system is going to make them scofflaws with large penalties to pay for an innocent mistake made due to no fault of their own.

When I was a webmaster I had to learn all about usability. It wasn't enough to make my web site the way I thought it should be designed. I had to make it in a way that the USERS thought it should be designed to suit their needs. It was amazing how many web sites ignore that very basic principle and stubbornly cling to their own myopic way of trying to "reach" people. There has to be a compromise between the provider of a system and its users. If the system's design prevents some users from using it, it's a complete failure that requires a redesign and not merely the obstinate hope that the users might somehow change.

When the system in question is a public utility (roads) such a failure is particularly inexcusable. All people, as they are, have the right to use the roads. Locals, one-time visitors, everyone. It's enough of a burden that any toll needs to be paid at all (poor people should be able to cross the river too) but if the arrangement essentially obstructs people from legitimately using a public system in a legitimate way, it must be changed.

Since the lower level of the George Washington Bridge is sometimes the only effective way to travel to one's destination, it needs to accommodate people without EZ Pass.* And the Port Authority should adjust its attitude. It's raison d'etre is not make the system it thinks it wants to make. It's purpose is to make a system that all people can use.

* People like me. Don't even get me started on how the police can find you wherever you are on the roads by tracking your EZ Pass signal. You think it's just to pay a toll conveniently? Think again.

Edit 7/21: Well, the Port Authority has made an improvement. Sort of. Now two lanes are "escape valves." If you end up there they tell you they will bill you for the toll and waive the fee, as long as it's the first offense. Lovely. So this presumes that occasional travellers won't make the same mistake twice. Or that more confusion won't be caused with more jockey-ing through confusing lanes and signs. Plus the admin costs of doing the billing. WHY DON'T THEY JUST TAKE THE DAMN MONEY!!!! I can't imagine it take more than a handful of cars per hour to pay for the manpower required to accept the cash. This is a major thoroughfare across a major river to a major city. I'm inclined to think that even in the middle of the night there are still likely to be more than a handful of cars looking to cross.

On Ambivalent Imbroglio there was a post about the National Parks Service allowing only Bush supporters access to the inaugural parade, permitting dissenters only if there's space left over. I find it incredibly plausible that there would be such a policy, given similar preclusive behavior by the sitting administration towards protestors attending his campaign rallies.

But the dissenting group whose difficulty in obtaining a permit was cited was A.N.S.W.E.R. Although I don't think their particular views should affect whether they can be present at the parade - just as I don't think anyone's views should be vetted before being allowed to attend - it would be a mistake to permit A.N.S.W.E.R. to be the proxy for all those who disagree with Bush, particularly in his foreign policy, for they are not the ambassadors of peace they purport to be.

What I posted on the other blog:

The access issues are important, and I don't trust this administration to not clamp down those who disagree with its policies.

But be careful about holding up A.N.S.W.E.R. as the epitome of progressive thinking. I went to a huge protest of theirs once, just before the war in Iraq when ~100,000 people marched through the streets of San Francisco to a rally at the Civic Center. We came to lend our mighty presence against the imminent war, but at the rally we were instead regaled with an anti-semitic attack against Israel. That our tremendous turnout now appeared to be supporting.

At best, it was a confusing of the issues counter-productive with making headway on the matter at hand.

It was also imbalanced and inaccurate, and full of hateful invective and uninformed bias against anyone Jewish. Even the thousands and thousands who were there in attendance, committed to the cause of peace.

It was so clever of them, to use a rally where everyone in attendance was attuned to nodding affirmatively and saying "Amen" to every cheer that was led, and then using that momentum to trick people into cheering for their anti-semitic rhetoric.

We need more protests against the war, and more demonstrations for peace. But we should not be lending A.N.S.W.E.R. the legitimacy of organizing them. They're little more than a hate group in disguise.

It didn't make sense why, at a protest against the war in Iraq, A.N.S.W.E.R. had invited a panel of speakers whose mission was to rail against Israel. While in a rigorous discussion of Middle East politics it's worth including Israel in the analysis, to do so here confused the issue. We had a singular purpose: to stop the war in Iraq. Even if the Israeli issue had been fairly and accurately represented (and it wasn't) it still would have been ill-advised. As it was the US still went to war in Iraq despite this huge protest - all that civic energy needed to have been directly applied to stopping it. Diluting it by focusing on other issues simply wasn't constructive towards that overall goal.

Of course, it's not that I would have expected perfect hegemony among the protestors. Of the 100,000 people in attendance there were probably just as many agendas represented. Different people were there for different reasons, and that's fine. But the organizers of the rally, A.N.S.W.E.R., had a responsibility, to its purported mission and to the people who had answered its call to be there, to live up to its advertised promise of being against the war. Pure and simple. Dragging in the other issues derogated from its duty, and allowing hatemongers to take advantage of the crowd to derive tacit support for their politics was inexcusable.

We who had attended had been duped. We had been lured to the rally by false pretenses. Thinking we were going to weigh in for peace, we found out to our horror that our weighty presence was instead going to be thrust in favor of unpalatable, inaccurate, and hateful rhetoric. Peace turned out to be the last thing on the agenda.

It was truly terrifying as the speakers ranted about Israel and Jews. In addition to misrepresentations, the rhetoric contained a tone of "nudge, nudge, wink wink," that anyone who thought they were for peace would also need to adopt these biases. It made my skin crawl, and I wavered between shouting out against the speakers and fearing for my physical well-being. The crowd was thick, and I couldn't tell just how much the people besides me were buying into the Jew-hating invective. It was like the speakers, and A.N.S.W.E.R., were playing "whack-a-mole" with the Jewish protestors, making us feel like we needed to duck away from the crowd and crawl into a hole. It was also confusing: I thought I had been invited to the rally to lend my support in the quest for peace but it turned out I wasn't actually welcome there at all. Except to the extent that my presence was able to be co-opted to facilitate my own persecution.

In what had otherwise been a triumph of civic participation, to have had so many people there at the rally, we should have all been standing strong in solidarity. But instead A.N.S.W.E.R. chose a path of divisiveness and hate. We should not support their efforts to do it again.

Edited 12/19/04 and 2/7/05.

When I went to Cambodia last summer, instead of Thailand, I thought that Thailand would still be there to visit. It is, in large part, of course. But not as much as before.

It's a strange and horrible tragedy, the tsunami. It affected so many countries, so many peoples, so many cultures, so many religions, so many languages. In an age where mass tragedies are so often human-inflicted, it's unfamiliar to have one where there is no one to blame.

There is a really irksome letter to the NY Times today regarding Kosovo's independence. It says that Kosovo should not be "rewarded" with independence because it has not learned how to protect the minorities in its community. True, last March there were terrible riots against the Serb minority. Kosovars shouldn't have done that, and relations remain tense. But the letter rubbed me wrong because it implies that the Kosovars are blood-thirsty and vindictive, and should not get autonomy until they learn not to be. When the reality is probably much closer to the Kosovars becoming increasingly resentful as long as their autonomy is withheld.

(It also seemed grotesquely ironic that the letter was written by the Serb Ambassador. "Serbia remains committed to a multiethnic and multicultural Kosovo that is safe for all its citizens..." he wrote. Great. But unfortunately Serbia wasn't so committed 7-8 years ago when it tried to cleanse Kosovo of the Kosovars, thus creating this mess in the first place.)

The situation isn't good, and Kosovar leaders may be culpable in the attacks. But the major defect of the situation has to do with the incredibly inept and unconstructive governing of the region by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). UNMIK governs Kosovo, not the Kosovars. They still don't have their autonomy, and UNMIK is hardly an effective ruler. It is supposed to help keep the peace, but it fails. The March riots last year happened on UNMIK's watch, and many reports suggest that the greatest damage occurred right under UNMIK's nose. (For example, UNMIK was supposed to protect the historic monestary in Prizren, but seems to have abandoned its post when the rioters showed up.)

I wrote last summer about the fact that it was impossible to find anything in Kosovo that was made in Kosovo. There is no economic growth, and there can be no investment as long as Kosovo remains in this limbo. So people remain poor, villages remain ruined, electricity and water remain off, and people become increasingly desperate and bitter. And yet we seem surprised by all this.

I saw a telling quote in an article from last summer:

"'The international community is not here to develop Kosovo’s economy,' one senior official told IWPR. 'We are a temporary peacekeeping mission that answers to the Department of Peace Keeping Operations in New York, not a government answering to the pleas of voters or citizens.'"¹

It is absurd to pretend that there is no connection between economic and political stability. Consciously failing to develop the former inherently dooms the latter. Even the most cheerful, optimistic, peaceful Kosovar is going to become frustrated and embittered after years of no electricity, no water, and constant poverty. While there may very well be "extremists" among the Kosovars, they wouldn't have such traction if people weren't so desparate.

1. "Kosovo Braced for Autumn of Discontent," by Arben Salihu, Muhamet Hajrullahu and Zana Limani. From the Institute for War Reporting Balkan Crisis Report #509, July 30, 2004.

At Nuts and Boalts Armen has been taking issue with Eugene Volokh taking issue with Slate taking issue with the inadvertantly comedic things Bush so often says. (Follow that?)

To be fair to Volokh, he might be right that sometimes people are too quick to find an excuse to make fun of Bush. Some of the things he says can be fairly understood to be innocuous unless you're really trying to find something to make fun of.

On the other hand, sometimes Bush makes it so easy. I remember hearing him on the radio giving a speech from O'Hare shortly after 9/11, when he was giving an update on the state of things. Including that "border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better." It was news to me that they were adjacent...

There was yet another letter to the editor of the New York Times today completely ignoring (and I suspect misconstruing) the Kosovar perspective regarding their still-withheld autonomy. It touted the same nonsense as advanced by the previous letter, that because the Kosovars reacted harshly against the Serb minority within its territory, it should be denied autonomy.

I tend to at least glance at the NY Times letters every day, and I don't think I ever saw a letter articulating the Kosovar point of view. Very likely because there's no one to do it. Serbia, as a sovereign nation, can represent itself on the world stage (and in the NY Times letters section), but without its autonomy Kosovo lacks the same ability.

What's really galling about the letters, however, is how they talk about withholding Kosovo's autonomy. Serbia has a legitimate concern about Kosovo becoming a separate nation in that it would involve officially splitting Kosovo off from Serbia, something that has not actually happened yet (at least not officially). But the Serb letter writers camoflauged that interest with patronizing language about how the Kosovars, being naughty little children, should be sent to bed without dessert and not get their autonomy until they learn to behave better. True, no Kosovar should be violent towards anyone. But as I've already pointed out, the violence has stemmed from a very real sense of frustration that has resulted from still not having their autonomy, even all these years after the war that nearly destroyed them.

It's further repugnant that anyone would claim the right to exercise such paternalism in deciding when a local population would "deserve" to get the right of self-determination. If democracy is a value the global community wants to foster around the world, presuming the authority to deprive a local population of it is a serious straying from that ideal.

Part I

It turns out it's Wesley Clark. See today's New York Times letters section.

Excerpt:

"You also reject independence for the province. Does this mean that the Kosovo Albanians would just live in the international limbo of United Nations administration indefinitely - with no access to foreign lending and investment, and thus very high unemployment?

The riots last year against Serbs and other minority groups were indefensible. But recognizing that social unrest has underlying causes and charting a path to a settlement to begin dealing with those causes does not "reward bad faith." Independence may well be the best way to get a functioning state that produces real benefits for people, including Kosovo's Serbs. When people have responsibility, they tend to behave more responsibly."

I was thinking about the new pope, noting in particular how notoriously conservative he's known to be. I worried consciously, in the following terms specifically, that perhaps he wasn't going to be able to "represent the interests" of many Catholics, liberal American ones and possibly ones from developing countries as well.

Then I caught myself, because I realized I was thinking about the pope in political terms. The pope isn't democratically elected, so having expectations of him as if he were might be inappropriate.*

But then I wondered again if that were really true. I'm not a Catholic, so in one sense the doctrinal dogma of the religion is none of my business. The problem is that I think it very much becomes my business as that dogma winds its way into my civic institutions. If dogmatic pressures are going to be placed on the laws and officials governing me then it is my business to care what they are.

This is not to say that because fellow citizens hold certain beliefs I should have the ability to scrutinize those beliefs and force them to conform to mine. Personal preference is personal preference, and individual political will should be freely expressable, regardless of the source from which it is drawn. What I am addressing is the much more vast political pressure placed upon my supposedly religion-neutral government by religious institutions as institutions to use its civic might to enforce the dogma of the church. When that happens it is my prerogative to make sure that dogma suits my interests.

There are two possible solutions which might ensure that my interests get served. One, to give non-Catholics like me voting rights in the Catholic Church to make sure that the dogma suits my will. Or, to ensure that no church, Catholic or otherwise, as an institution gets to set the policy of my government.

* There is another circumstance under which I think religious dogma is a legitimate concern of mine. I have had several good friends who are Catholic, for whom the tension between what they believe in their hearts to be right, and what they are required to believe is right, has been heart-breaking. They love their faith, they love their church. They see a beauty in their religion, in their faith, and in the general relationship Catholicism enables with God. But they can't just enjoy all those wonderful things without also abiding by the dogma, no matter how wrong, immoral, or contradictory they think it is. Instead they are forced to suffer in irreconcilable grief and guilt, whether they try to stick with the church or feel compelled to leave. So I do think it's my legitimate interest to care about the dogma because I care about my friends, and I don't want to see them keep getting hurt by the church they so love.

There was another excellent show on PBS this evening on Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who wrote visas for thousands of Jewish refugees during World War II. He suffered for his actions personally afterwards - his foreign career effectively destroyed as a punishment (a true shame, given his remarkable linguistic and cultural acclimation skills) - but today thousands and thousands of people and their descendants are alive because of his sacrifice, to risk sanction from his superiors and write all those visas.

The show was also interesting to me on another point: examining the relationship between the Jews and the Japanese. In particular it explained a comment I had heard in my family that previously had no explanation.

I've written before about my great-grandmother's brothers who had escaped Russia in the early 1900s by running east to China. There they settled in Harbin, a city full of expatriate Europeans, including many other Jews. They thrived there, even through World War II. And that was the comment - that the Japanese treated the Jews very well. Unfortunately during that period the Japanese army treated the Chinese people very poorly, which is why there was such confused marveling over why my relatives had no problems themselves.

There seems to be two explanations: one, that there were industrialists in Japan who actively wanted to settle Jews in China, to develop industry using their skills and education. In fact, at one point the Japanese, at the urging of these industrialists, offered to Jewish leaders that it would accept all the European Jewish refugees, with or without passports, so that they could settle in Japanese territory. This offer, however, was unfortunately declined by an American Jewish leader in the misplaced hope that if the European Jews had no viable options left, Roosevelt would step in and finally let them come to the United States and England would let them enter Palestine. Sadly neither of these things came to pass. Boatloads of refugees were turned back at Palestine, many to end up immediately shipped off to concentration camps upon return to Europe, and largely at the urging of anti-Semites in the State Department, America's borders stayed shut as well.

The other explanation stems from a conversation between Japanese officials, by then allied with the Germans, and a Jewish leader representing the large population of Lithuanian refugees who by now were temporarily settled in Tokyo. Their numbers and the irregularities surrounding their immigration were cause of some concern to the Japanese officials, and Germany was heavily lobbying for Japan to adopt its policies of Jewish extermination. So the Japanese officials asked the Jewish leaders why they should not abide by the Germans' wishes.

"Because we are all Asians," was the response. You from the eastern side in Japan, and we from the western in [Israel]. Besides, when the Germans talk about the population they aspire to have, it is all Aryan. It's all about blonde hair and blue eyes, which the Japanese don't have. Believe us, they said, when they're done with us they'll come for you next.

Whether this explanation was the reason or not, the Japanese chose to resist the Germans' urgings and let the refugees stay. And Mr. Sugihara was eventually vindicated by history, being honored by the survivors, the State of Israel, and also his native Japan. In Israel, like Schindler, he is known as a righteous person, and more people should know of his deeds.

I remember exactly where I was when I heard about 9/11: in bed, asleep, until the ringing phone woke me up. It was my dad. "Bad news, kid," he started. "Someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center."

At that point it was only a horrific accident. As I woke up it got much, much worse and people came to realize that it had been no accident.

But it was very surreal for me. It was another gorgeous day in California. New York was a world away. While my dad ended up spending the day trying to get out of Manhattan by bus and by foot, in California everything was exactly normal. Completely calm, sunny, perfect. And essentially untouched by the tragedy.

There were certain ways it was touched, of course. Some of the flights, for instance, were to the Bay Area. But in the days that followed the news almost seemed to try to manufacture connections, to manufacture injuries to the local community. Normally I would regard such efforts cynically, but here, in the face of a tragedy of such magnitude whose scope could only be imagined - and barely, at that - people needed to have their own injuries to salve in order to feel as connected to the event as they felt they really should.

There is something though about California - isolated, beautiful, unique, and in some ways completely naive and unspoiled - which makes being detatched from these tragedies even more disorienting than I think it would be anywhere else. I was in California when Spain was attacked and now I'm here with London. And it still feels like it all took place on another world.

Last year it was a mugging and attempted sexual assault.

This year it's a murder. Last night, three blocks away.

For various friends and relatives reading this, I'm totally fine and not in any danger. This seems to have been a targeted shooting, which, while no consolation for the victim or her family and friends, is a relief for the neighbors. It should also be pointed out that I lived in the same neighborhood for six years, completely unscathed.

In fact, had I not caught a mention on the evening news, I wouldn't have even known about it. I even drove past the scene this morning, completely oblivious to what had happened. I think I must have heard sirens last night, but since the fire station is three blocks in the other direction I often hear sirens during the night and so usually think nothing of them.

So rather than feeling nervous about the state of the neighborhood, I think my unease stems from the strange sense of isolation I can't help but feel. Something so serious happened so close, and yet I'm totally unaffected. That seems wrong somehow: one of my neighbors, however erstwhile, was just killed in our midst. We may not have known about it, or even known her, but we still should care. Right?

The problem is that it's hard to know what our feelings of concern are really connected to. Are they sincere concern for the victim, or are they born from our desire to overcome our anonymous urban estrangement and feel connected to horrible events? Of course, does it matter? Is feeling a manufactured an emotion somehow worse than not feeling any emotion at all? Somehow I get the feeling that the answer is yes.

One of my friends here is Turkish, and though she's familiar with the US (having done an exchange there in high school), she's not fluent in all of its nuances, political and cultural. She hadn't before heard, for example, the labels "red state" and "blue state," so I explained to her where the references came from (and how the electoral college worked) and the political cultures they are thought to represent.

She also, like I think many people here, did not grasp the enormity and scope of what has been happening in the Gulf Coast. Even I'm struggling with it, although my struggle is twinged with a shadow of guilt, from feeling like I've run away to this new, exciting place while my country I left behind is in trouble. It was barely a week ago when I spent the weekend in Atlantic City, where on Sunday as I popped in and out of the motel I saw all the news reports queuing up for the storm watch on Monday. On Monday, while it hit, I was driving back up north, packing, and then heading out to the airport. Sitting in the airport that evening, waiting to fly out, the news showed the first glimpses of the aftermath. But I don't think it was until the next day that everyone realized the full enormity of the consequences. And by then I was in Europe, and completely disconnected – geographically and technologically – from everything in the US.

But even without seeing any news, I knew it was going to be bad. I worried in particular about Bay St. Louis, the tiny town on the Gulf shores of Mississippi I'd visited on my trip two years ago. That was such a great trip, one of my Huey Lewis and the News-inspired adventures, rewarding to me in every way possible, not the least of which was the opportunity to meet one of my best friends. And on that trip I not only got to see New Orleans for the first time, but I also took a walk through this Mississippi town. They were having a big street festival that day, with tons of classic cars and hot rods sitting out on display on all the curbs, parades, and children selling lemonade on the sidewalks. I walked through this all, Americana everywhere, all the way to the shore, where I stood on the beach as the Gulf gently lapped at the shores.

But all of that now must surely be gone. And so the region, and the nation, reels. Evacuating New Orleans? An entire city? When I explain to people the enormity of what has happened, I try to make them realize what it means to have everybody leave a city. When they stop and think about it, they start to get it. But I think it's hard, because the scale is unprecedented. I think it's also hard because there's a lot of frustration at America. Our behavior in the world is so brash, perceived to be so arrogant, that I think there are people who are glad to finally see America's bravado tempered.

As a person from a blue state, sharing a blue state sensibility, I tend to agree with the criticisms others in the world lob at the US. I think they are often well-deserved. But I can't bring myself to allow the red and blue political dichotomy cloud my reaction to this disaster. Sure, it's red states that were affected. Red states that politically and culturally I have so little in common with. But they are in my country, and they are not strangers. At least not since 2003, when my plane landed in Gulfport, and these mysterious, strange places on the map turned into places that I knew.

Posted 9/4/05.

I wrote the preceding posts before reading any of the news today. The Katrina news is so awful, and then on top of it is the news about Rehnquist. I can hardly keep up, and it's so weird to be so far away from everything that's happening.

And if I felt a little guilty before, I feel very guilty now... Remember this post from 2003?

"Great. Just great. When I moved to France a few years ago they impeached the President. Then when I moved from California I was hardly gone more than 2 months when they recalled the governor (and installed Arnold Schwarzenegger?!?!? Oy gevalt...).

It just goes to show that if you turn your back on democracy, all hell breaks loose..."

I've been out of the country for less than a week. I really didn't think things would get this bad this soon!

But in all seriousness, I do care about what's going on and feel bad being so detatched. Now that I have more Internet connectivity and more routine I will read the news more regularly, and I'm sure I'll have more things to say about everything soon. But for now, I think I'll just join everyone else in general concern.

(Meanwhile, the big news in Germany is the upcoming election. Apparently tonight there's going to be a big debate with the leading candidates that many of my German friends will be off watching.)

My roommate and I were discussing traveling to Russia. She was interested in going but didn't know what was involved. I, however, have been there three times (mostly to St. Petersburg).

I told her that she'd need to get a visa, and she'd probably want to go with a tour because there wouldn't be a lot of English spoken there, etc.

She blurted out that she hadn't realized it was such a shlep to go to Russia.

To which I exclaimed, "You think going to Russia's a shlep??? At least it's POSSIBLE!"

And therein was the generation gap. She was born in 1980, and by the time she'd attained her global consciousness, maybe around age 9 or 10, Russia was already opening up. It was now a country under construction, an eager recipient of foreign aid. That it was still so difficult to travel there all these years later must have seemed to her somewhat inexcusable.

Whereas for me, at the same age, Russia (as the Soviet Union) was still an Avowed Enemy Ronald Reagan kept giving me nightmares about. Notorious for being closed off from outsiders, the idea that one could now go in and out even remotely freely strikes me, by contrast, to be an enormous achievement to celebrate.