Annual Report

Would the author of this communication please contact me asap?

It doesn't have to be this way but this is the way it is

Recently I was provided with the opportunity of revisiting the ways in which the written word can aggravate and highlight irreversible frictions. Content tends of course to antagonize in any number of ways, but I’m talking about something else. The mere involvement of the written word raises hackles in some quarters. If the written word is perceived as being light-years away from the spoken word, printed or even hand-written matter can become the focus of mistrust, even when offered in the spirit of clarity. Wherever the written word carries weight, the language will be seen to have much in common with local spoken language. “Where” in this case refers to individuals, not geographical locations, political entities or religious hierarchies.

Raised in a Christian setting of text memorization, with my duties clearly spelled out, I was trained to have a Protestant perception of music, but certainly not dance, as part of the worship ritual. I was therefore intrigued when introduced to the Bharata Natyam devotional dance tradition from southern India, where the core tales of Hindu faith are acted out by highly trained dancers and musicians. I took a class to learn something about their story-telling. I took notes. Nowadays, of course, the dance is no longer confined to the temple.

The recent opportunity referred to above came when I was learning new things from a person who does not choose to write things down, and this person expressed a derisive view when I began taking notes on the subject of our conversation.

You don’t need to write it down.
Ah, but I do. It just happens. And then I remember more easily.

This person was not alone. The prevailing culture in that setting was one of attaching little value to the quality of the written word, so that any effort to do otherwise was provocative. Since then, I have reverted to writing things down when people are not looking. This tactic, borne of the desire to avoid conflict which would interfere with my enjoyment of the experience in its written variant, fuels the writing with a secretive tone missing from the original reason for writing down the information. The secretive tone adds a sense of urgency to the note-taking process, and the sense of urgency leads me to write down more and more detail in ever-increasing quantity. I have developed new ways of expanding the file without attracting attention and arousing suspicion. I will remember. Everything.

RTS Can Mean Different Things

Censorship of books in the USA works in fascinating ways. It’s grassroots - no official 'Office of Censor' decree in use here. Citizens can approach libraries and schools and challenge specific titles. If the challenge is successful, the work in question could be either restricted or banned. "Banned Books Week" was recently celebrated throughout the land - in support of freedom of speech, not censorship. Events happened thanks to librarians, teachers, journalists, authors and book-sellers, who want pages to turn across the land, not disappear from shelves. The list of endangered books, with details on who challenges what and where, is a story in itself: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/index.cfm

While reading from my computer screen, I glanced over at the black seal of the Egyptian censor, in protective custody on my office shelves since 2001, when I produced a radio program on censorship in Egypt and subsequently sent CD copies to all of the speakers. One of them was the Director of a human rights organization in Cairo, another an outspoken government critic. Their copies never arrived. Instead the censor apprehended my envelope, opened it and read the personal thank-you notes. The censor then - with or without listening to the CD, I'll never know - put the CD back into the envelopes, secured the envelopes with the censor's wax seal, wrapped them together meticulously with white string, and marked them as 'RTS' - return to sender (me). Somewhere along the way the paper envelopes had become shredded and torn, and a transparent plastic bag had become the protective carrier for what remained of the contents.

The censored parcel arrived back on my desk in the period following 9/11 and the start of the War in Afghanistan. Although of course this was the most appropriate end to a discussion of censorship that I could imagine, I remember that my heart was pounding as I examined the evidence, linked to grim circumstances elsewhere. In Egypt itself, the government had been clamping down on the whole spectrum of opposition, from right to left, for some time. Progressive Islamic scholars had been forced into exile for their modern ideas; secular scholars were punished for critical thoughts and fundamentalists had been driven out of the country and into radical training camps in the mountains of Central Asia. On the streets of Cairo, once the publishing center of the Arab world, conservative students burned piles of 'anti-Islamic' books. At the same time, the Library of Alexandria, the largest in the ancient world, was under re-construction. This contradiction had drawn me to Egypt in the first place.

In those troubled times, I was not surprised to receive the package. Various explanations of its journey came to mind:

The careful return was an overt show of power, a manifestation of government skill in blocking communications between its critics and the outside world;

A lone renegade employee in the Censor's office had salvaged the CD's from stacks doomed to destruction and smuggled them back into the 'outgoing mail' pile so that we would know what was going on in his/her country;
My handwriting was illegible on the stained envelopes, and the careful return was an act of great courtesy by a postal services worker;
The title 'Censor' did not actually appear, in so many words, on the envelopes and seals. I had imagined this into being while listening to the interpretation offered by a trusted Arabic-speaker of my acquaintance, who unfortunately was no longer available for consultations when I turned my gaze to an 11th-century text of a Customs Official in Alexandria, part of the cover design on plastic bank statement files distributed for customer use. Now I remember: the Bank blocked my use of that image.

Please see the post from May 25, 2007:

http://lifebeforenews.blogspot.com/2007/05/not-allowed-to-show-you.html

Both intended recipients of the CD are overseas at the moment; perhaps I should resend.

Both Sides Now: Muoslak Muo?

Should this be your first encounter with the person of Oum Kalsoum (that's her at the mic in the above picture), you may want to look her up, and for that purpose you have numerous options, including : Umm Kulthum, Om Kalthoum, Oum Kalthum, Omm Kolsoum, Umm Kolthoum, Um Kalthoom) (Arabic: أم كلثوم ). Egypt’s most celebrated singer crossed the river in 1975 at the age of approximately seventy-five, give or take a few years, interrupting the workings of government in Cairo during three days of national mourning.

Certain elements are not what they first appear to be in the person of Oum Kalsoum. That’s how she got started: her father, an Imam at the mosque in their small village, dressed his pre-adolescent daughter as a boy so that she could mingle freely and practice with males instructed in religious song. Dad thought she was better than her brothers, and the deception paid off: she went on to become the greatest female vocalist of her time in the Arab World.

Amsterdam’s Royal Tropical Institute used to stage a monthly open-mic talent night. On one such evening, I watched a gifted Oum Kalsoum impersonator whip a crowd of men of Middle-Eastern origin into a clapping, cheering frenzy. The applause trickled off to a confused, out-of-sync splatter as the audience gradually realized that the impersonator was a man. After a few tense moments, the singer struck another great note, and the audience, either convinced by the talent or just determined to prolong this good night out, rose up to the occasion and began to sing along and sway in rhythm again.

With this idea in mind (the idea that initially comes to mind is ‘opposites which attract’ as a relative concept, subject to amendment as circumstances change), I was charmed by the image of Oum Kalsoum lyrics floating in two languages across a screen in illustration of her improvisational virtuosity and unparalleled ability to sustain notes. The original Arabic lyrics move from right to left, the English lyrics from left to right (okay, backwards, but the impressive timing is the same).

The screen occupied a small rectangle of space in an exhibition in a European capital devoted to Oum Kalsoum. As reflected above, the display/audiovisual array was complex: photographs, recordings, film and print documentation, clothing items, current fashion from the Middle East inspired by her look and, touchingly, even the vintage microphone and radios that carried her sound live to millions back in the day – it was all there. And all off-limits for photographers. Somehow this clandestine still from the video for musicologists reached my files. She was, by the way, born as Fatima Ibrahim al-Sayed al-Betagui. What happened after that is the stuff of musical magic, cultural cooperation and rivalry, intrigues, geopolitics and global wars, all on a large but also small, intimate scale.

A Dish Towel in the Sun

My parents were married on September 10, 1938, after a whirlwind courtship in and around Toronto, Canada (Mom) and New Haven, Connecticut, USA (Dad). Her mother was critical of daughter Mary swanning off with an uncivilized Yank; the family of Alfred was disdainful towards the import bride with no previous exposure to New England protocol.

But Mary was swept off her feet by the bold young lawyer and punster who appeared out of nowhere as the Best Man at a wedding where she was the Maid of Honor. Alfred fell for the sparkling Toronto lass, an avid reader and lover of jazz, eager to escape her mother’s sharp scrutiny with emigration to the south.

Family friends from the early years of their marriage would later recall how Mary was a gracious hostess who would rather curl up with a book than clean the house, while Alfred drew praise for his gardens and succulent meaty treats prepared on outdoor stone grills built with his bare hands.

Mary’s Scots-Canadian temperament did not always blend well with the formalities enjoyed by her in-laws. She missed her Uncle George, a shy Ontario farmer who still spoke with a brogue which she never tired of imitating. Her mother inadvertently encouraged her to hone her natural beauty by asserting that she had none; Uncle George offered her blissful hours rumbling along on the back of his horse-drawn wagon carrying fresh peas to market.

Alfred would also show off the odd pumpkin or tomato that appeared in the green zone, but his love lay with flowers. You’d think this might have given more pleasure to his father, a professor of Forestry and planner of urban woodlands. Bare-chested in the summer, protected by layers of flannel and wool in the winter, Al hacked his way through thicket and bush with an enormous machete.

The parents catch up with me from time to time: on a restaurant sign mimicking Dad’s handwriting; on a common dish towel with tips for Scots pronunciation. Their anniversary falls in late summer, on September 10, a fortuitous day in some ways for many of us.

1001 Nights: Sports in Afghanistan

(Vacation Spirit 3rd and Final; Please see previous two posts for Vacation spirit 1 & 2)

Biomechanical analysis provides a breakdown of the race among the fastest men on earth. Click on the top photo for a closer look at the details. All related media coverage and commentary combine to make this a very lucrative 9.58 seconds, the time required by Usain Bolt to cover 100 meters at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Berlin. Unfathomable grace and power are demonstrated by some runners. Bolt leads that particular pack at this time.

I should know. I watch as many qualifying heats as I can. Train-crouch-starter gun-speed, over and over again; useful for triggering and focussing my thoughts, especially while ironing clothes. Ironing is very satisfying as well, and I have a special bond with the activity, but that’s a different story.

The slowest men and women on earth are not competing in Berlin, but very slow racers do enter the heats. They hail from small places like Palau and Vanuatu, and from big places like Afghanistan. One male Afghan has competed at the Championships, and there is a young Afghan woman on the track. Her name is Robina Muqimyar.

Afghan women are on my mind. A few days ago, the Afghan government we (we know who we are) support voted in favour of a law which states that Shia women who refuse any sexual demands by their husbands can be deprived of food by their spouse. Fathers and grandfathers have exclusive guardianship of children, and a woman may not work outside of the home without her husband’s permission. A slightly different draft version of this law, basically approving rape within marriage, was taken back to the drawing boards under international pressure. Now, in the interests of stability (appeasing conservatives who are willing to participate in the political process), the new and improved version has been voted in. In areas of Afghanistan under Taliban control, girls’ schools have been shut down again and music stores bombed, but this new law promoting starvation applies to Shia women nationwide.

So when Robina appeared in the qualifying heats for the women’s 100m at the World Championships, I watched. She was off-screen for most of the 14+ seconds of her race, but I did catch a glimpse of her full-length pants and t-shirt with (short) sleeves. We know that she is 23 years old, an Afghan Olympian (already in 2004, but sort of by chance in 2008, when another runner sought political asylum in Norway weeks before the competition began). Run, Robina, run.

It’s true, look!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/14/afghanistan-womens-rights-rape

Is/was on a Roll: English as Accessory Pt. 2

The July 23 LifeBeforeNews post was offered in the spirit of vacation. Vacation is still the dominant mode in Amsterdam, but meanwhile entries are piling up fast for ‘English as Accessory Pt.2’ (Please see ‘English as Accessory’ May 2, 2009) as the holiday season wears on. Please bear with me: your vocabulary list of Dutch words may be longer than you think, because they're English. And consider this: it turns out that third person singular present and simple past forms for the verb ‘to be’ (is/was) are identical in Dutch and English. You could be onto something.

Not so very long ago:

I was rearranging suitcase contents around midnight. The late cancellation of my flight out of a small regional airport in the USA (We apologize for the inconvenience. Please see our ticket desk for overnight vouchers) had resulted in my transfer to this nearby hotel, built on an awkward rectangular plot of land surrounded by new highways and access roads to industrial zones. Early morning would see me transferred back to the airfield – no need to unpack. I had been happy with the vending machine delivery of root beer (No meals are prepared here. Please visit our Food Lounge next to the elevators on the third floor), my childhood soft drink of choice. Cool sips, TV news in the background, as I puttered.

A voice in the news report caught my attention. The woman was speaking English, easily and fluidly, with a Dutch accent. I didn’t believe much of what she was saying (defending her son, who was a suspect in connection with a young woman’s disappearance on a Caribbean island), but hearing her made me homesick for my hood in the Netherlands. I had been away for several months. Her tones in English were/are part of the daily setting in my second homeland. Not only when English is spoken, but also when English is inserted into Dutch. (as I mentioned, Please see LBN post of May 2, 2009: “English as Accessory”)

Please find below a list of words, compounds and phrases from the English language, shown in context in above images; all common usage (in certain circles) in spoken and written Dutch:

Time heals everything
Claim (cultuur = culture)

Thrill
T-shirt
Service
Privacy
Killer
keukenDesign (keuken = kitchen)
Finest hour
Diehard
Corporate

The May 2 post included:

splendid isolation

for Kids
Outlet
Copyright or wrong

In focus
Update
Never a dull moment
Next
Something rotten

Now back to my vacation.

Good Call

Unbeknownst to me, there was a place named Badcall in the area I was headed for in northwest Scotland. I hadn’t been able to resist the cheap flight between Amsterdam and Aberdeen, where I rented a car, knocking off the outer left mirror when passing through the first stone-walled village in my path. I spent a few nights in Kinlochbervie (see marker ‘A’) in a Bed & Breakfast by the sea; the door to my bedroom was too warped to close.

I walked to the end of the road at Balchrick, where a Post Office appeared as a faded wooden shack. Inside, the Post Mistress was waiting in the dark behind a barred window at the counter. She, the counter and the bars pretty much filled up the shack and quite possibly held it together. She called me ‘Dearie’ and casually sold me stamps for an envelope of photographs I was sending to Colombia. The envelope was still in my bag in Balchrick because officials at the airport Post Office in Holland had refused to send the chunky personal parcel ‘for security reasons.’

From a hilltop phone booth on this coastline I called my mother in North America. Near the empty white beach of Oldshoremore I met the fierce gaze of an elderly shepherd as he held open a gate for me when our paths crossed on high pastureland bordering the sea. He pointed across the valley, where sheep in motion traced tidal patterns on the slopes as they ran, leaping ahead of a swift, supple dog, whose name, as I deduced from the ferocious commentary emanating from a white-haired man swinging a crook in the direction of the canine, was Angus.

Down the Drain with Confucius

One of the great tenets of social cohesion is slated to adorn a drain pipe, or line gutter, near me. The Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was voted in by residents of a neighbourhood in the Dutch capital. Five proverbs attributed to the Chinese sage Confucius were in the running.

While many do credit Confucius, others say the author was Epictetus, the Greek philosopher who may have played a larger role in passing on the idea in Western culture. Whether he did or not, it makes a great story: Epictetus, born a slave in 55 A.D., self-taught, freed from slavery by Nero and later thrown out of Rome by Domitian. Lame, sickly, and he never actually wrote anything, but his teachings were written down by his students and eventually influenced Marcus Aurelius - the Roman emperor who noted his thoughts in Greek during the Golden Age of the Roman Empire.

Epictetus was one of the later Stoics, who advocated harmony with nature and kindness towards all children of Zeus. As a child, I was taught that Jesus came up with the Golden Rule, but it’s advice extended by most world religions and thought systems. One of the earliest versions indeed comes from Confucius, whose name was given to Amsterdam’s “Confucius Square” (Dutch: Confuciusplein) in the western reaches of the city. The Square is being revamped, and in honor of the Sage, a drain pipe or gutter to be fixed in the ground at the edge of the new terrain will be inscribed with the Dutch-language version of the proverb. The photo is already available, thanks to Grijsen Park & Straatdesign (see post from May 2, 2009 “English as Accessory”).

Award-winning Utopias: travelling to possible locations to write this

Please note: the above image is the start of a video clip; duration 00’27” (twenty-seven seconds).

A first choice would be a provincial cafe.
It could be so relaxing, so down.
So grand - a monumental
converted residence in a big country town.
The staff glides along behind a marble bar.
These North Country people are rich.
So why go here to write this?
There’s no tension-filled entrance,
when the author slips in,
looking past the regular clientele
for a place to stop,
the resident heads always tilt
in suspicion
at moments like this, and
here's where the author would get the jilt,
unaided by other-worldly messages, or intuition.
But the newcomer just eases through, surviving the swallow.
What a fantastic place for disorientation.
What can you do, when you reach
the back, which has been renovated
into a rounded wall. No corners to lean against, and
it takes up most of the hall.
No tables back here (please don’t leave the group).
There’s comfort in knowing that someone
has created this setting. It didn’t just grow here,
as just another accidental destination.
It’s merely the result of a few bad decisions.
This could have turned out differently.
You could have selected a location to write down something
you already knew,
but finding a location to write this means
you don’t sit down next to images that follow you,
the usual crowd.
Those you don’t yet know
slink in from the shadows.
They say “we’re joining you.”
There’s a formality, a propriety to it.
A little ritual all the way through it, that always
gets things going: Say hello. Say thank you. Grab a hand.
Grab something. They seduce you into staying.
You position yourself accordingly
at a reasonable distance from this place
where you have chosen to be.
You found a chair, enjoy the reprieve, but
How will you know when it’s time to leave?

EU Election Anxieties

When I sent off my absentee ballot to vote in the US elections last Fall, I devised and enclosed a self-addressed stamped postcard bearing the message that my ballot had been safely received by the Florida officials. They sent it back to me! Another feel-good moment in the November 2008 US elections!

This week, I’ve been reminded that election ballots can be fearful to behold: the Dutch version of the ballot for the EU parliamentary elections features 289 candidates representing 17 parties, as depicted on the sample ballot you see above. A resident of the Netherlands, I can vote if I want to: I’m a dual national. The non-Dutch side of my dualism tells me that before voting I should know something about all of the candidates, but of course I don't, so there's some tension in this pre-election phase.

(The European Parliament in Strasbourg unites over 600 elected officials from all member states. Most of the electorate has trouble measuring the impact of the huge EU bureaucracy on our lives. But urgent issues abound: asylum-seekers + anti-asylum-seekers, undocumented workers + people smugglers (for the sex industry or agricultural work – recently a Dutch asparagus farm was busted on charges of holding Roumanian workers as slaves), angry farmers + inhumane animal transporters, environmental sustainability, trade, defense, terrorism, etc.…)

There are a couple of parties I won’t vote for: not on the European level, not in the Netherlands. And now one of those groups has become an EU ‘list-partner’ for the party of my initial choice, which makes it no longer my choice. The party which is no longer my choice is led in the Dutch Parliament by a man who first drew my admiration when serving the Dutch government in The Hague as ‘Reform and Kingdom Relations Minister.’ (Kingdom Relations refers to the former colonies in the Caribbean) At the time he was labeled ‘disloyal’ on more than one occasion, including the Fall of 2005 when he accused the Dutch Prime Minister of scare-mongering with constant warnings about terrorism. Then he ran media gauntlets after describing the political climate in The Hague as ‘filthy and nasty.’ He was supposed to deal with reform, but no one expected him to start talking about that kind of reform.

If I eventually do understand why his party has teamed up with a group I cannot support, a feel-good (or not quite as bad) moment might be closer by. Explanations have been circulating for weeks, but I'm not buying them.

Your Daughter is with Us - Pt.5

When asked why I choose to live in Europe rather than in my native North America, I have on occasion been known to reply:

Things didn't work out that well over there. We're all coming back.

Just kidding! Some people laugh with me. Others are alarmed. Let's face it, this is basically an out-emigration continent, and it can take a while for both immigrants and natives to adjust.

An update from friends a few hours down the road in France: Hua was nine years old, an undocumented resident of Paris, when police picked her up in the metro and took her into custody a couple of years ago, triggering a recovery effort by French neighbors and social activists who succeeded in reuniting child with (undocumented) parents before the day was done.

Episodes 1-4 about Hua’s life in Paris are here:

Pt 1 - May 31, 2007
Pt 2 - June 25, 2007
Pt 3 - September 14, 2007
Pt.4 – July 21, 2008

Hua's release, on that first frightening night, became possible when the Chinese-made document declaring little Hua to be living in the company of her legal parents was declared acceptable by the French authorities responsible for minors. The 'document' was certainly as valid as the flimsy ‘lease’ provided by the French landlord. Nevertheless, when the landlord decided things were getting too hot under his feet, he forced Hua, a new baby brother and her parents out of the shack under the stairwell of the apartment complex.

It would have been hard to relocate to something worse. And indeed, they moved to a place with more light, and then moved again, to a place with two rooms, allowing the parents to rent out one of the rooms to a single Chinese man. Hua continues to attend school and her French has improved enough for her to describe her displeasure with the fact that she is now, at age 11, home alone in the afternoon and evenings (her mother works until late in the evening and the father has been hospitalized), taking care of her baby brother while in the company of this male lodger. She doesn’t like him very much. She didn’t say why.

Meanwhile, my friend, who still lives in the building where Hua and her parents lived until the baby was born, has befriended a pair of little Chinese boys who live upstairs in an apartment with windows opening to a view of my friend’s door below. The boys have discovered that they can come and chat with her if she is at her ground-floor window, but more importantly, that she will help if their drunken father begins to beat up their mother. My friend once called the police on him, and believes that her presence might not save the mother from beatings, but it might keep her alive. The boys no longer feel trapped and alone upstairs when violence breaks out – they can fling open their window and call down to their new French friend.

Immigration issues are sticky wickets all around Europe, and with elections for the European Parliament coming up soon, the anti-foreigner temperature is rising. On this blog, on March 3, 2008 (see: A Win-Win Situation), I stated that the right-wing Dutch PVV Freedom Party was losing some of its steam. I was dead wrong! A recent poll of political parties positioned the PVV as the FRONT-RUNNER, the largest party in the Netherlands. Polls can be off the mark, but few will dispute the staying power of this anti-immigration anti-Islam group. If the poll is accurate and if the PVV does expand to the point of qualification for inclusion in a government coalition - who knows what will happen? A number of (centrish and leftish) parties have vowed to never enter into a coalition with the PVV, the Dutch variant on anti-foreigner fevers registering throughout Europe.

If only there was more time. My native North America has its own new immigration problems to solve, but some of the old ones worked themselves out. If people just pile in decade after decade, stuff happens.

In New York’s East Village I lived on a Ukranian block where the women wore headscarves while scrubbing the front steps of our apartment buildings. Baseball games were organized during quiet hours on the street by the tiny Puerto Rican grocery store mid-block. We were all watched over by the self-appointed neighbourhood guards, the Jamaican Rasta’s, who scared off purse-snatchers and other ne’er-do-wells at all hours of the day and night.

These were old tenement buildings originally constructed without any sanitary facilities. Rodent control experts occasionally made the rounds. I was in a conundrum one day when I couldn’t get one such expert, a huge, friendly guy now living in a New York suburb, to leave, after he performed his anti-rodent duties. His reluctance to depart had nothing to do with me (or the mice) – he was overcome with nostalgia. The big man shed tears at my table as he described having grown up in a railroad apartment similar to mine, with the whole family jammed into two rooms. He came through the rough & tumble well and did what most do: he emigrated to a more spacious environment nearby, with an entire house for his own family, and a lawn to mow.

It's just not the same as being all close with your family and neighbors, all the time, and those stories of making do with less are not very interesting to my kids.

Maybe later on, when they’re bigger?

That, too, takes time.

English as Accessory

Learning Dutch involves making choices. Depending on where you live, you may or may not want to take on the local accent and vocabulary (regional dialects are another issue altogether). Differences in pronunciation can be significant – perhaps less for foreigners more accustomed to adjusting to new sounds than for, let’s say, Dutch TV-makers, who are prone to adding subtitles when non-mainstream native Dutch speakers are on screen.

Students of Dutch familiar with English, German, Swiss-German and Danish have a head-start in the language-learning process in the Netherlands, but newcomers who don’t speak English at all may be at a disadvantage. Knowing which English words or phrases to use, and when to do it, adds a certain je ne sais quoi to one’s Dutch.

Consider these few random examples encountered in recent weeks:

The nation’s leading evening newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, stays high-brow in an editorial on Holland’s faltering judicial system by referring to something rotten.

Their morning tabloid edition targets the mobile generation with the name NRC Next.

The need for speed also peppers the speech of a producer of a jittery prime time talk show, where, as the producer concedes, haste can unhinge a script, but it’s TV and there’s never a dull moment.

Streamlined modernity shapes the program title InFocus (an example of how English words are sometimes combined into one for the Dutch variant) and its Update from the Muslim Broadcasting Company (in a system with Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Humanist and other secular broadcasting organizations).

A music sector network opts for misguided word play (that’s when it gets irritating) in framing their discussion Copyright or wrong… on authors’ rights.

Clearly a wrong decision was made when a woman named ‘Lies’ (Dutch pronunciation = ‘Lease’) created a store name by combining her own name with an English-language description of the business, resulting in Lies. For Kids. Good luck there!

I am, however, grateful to the Dutch journalist and author John Jansen van Galen who offers splendid isolation as an option for this country’s noisy right-wing PVV Freedom Party.

It's still there, in case you were wondering

Torture and Tourism: a European Perspective

Once upon a time, a seasonal exhibition was launched in Amsterdam, an educational money-maker: Medieval Torture, the freak/horror show, no longer on the sidelines of a recreational circus. The public would pay to stream through: relieved when spewed out at the other end, steadied by the thought of having learned something. The public (natives and foreign visitors alike) so loved this exhibition that it earned the right to become a permanent fixture. Inside this recreational success, guaranteed to scare, visitors can read up on the past in Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

The organizers understand that it’s not only fear of pain and suffering that will attract crowds – it’s the option of stepping into the role of executioner, or inflicting pain, that animates others. During a football competition of importance a couple of years ago, a cardboard figure of a well-known German player from the relatively recent past was propped up by the street entrance and museum visitors invited to spit on him, mimicking the act of a revered Dutch player at a game. The Dutchman, a man of color, was said to have been responding to specific remarks made by the German player against a backdrop of racist chants coming from the crowd. Dutch nationalism, often struggling for definition, has gained a profile at times like this, when defense of the national good is intended to come at the expense of Germans, the occupiers during World War II. The conflict escalated, and the two players in question were suspended. The (by now apparently resolved) conflict happened nearly two decades ago, but the Torture Museum thought that tapping into residual feelings of hate or aggression would be lucrative PR. The good news is that the target figure was removed from their entryway – enough complaints rolled in to convince them that this could put a dent in ticket sales.

The Torture Museum in Amsterdam continues to do well, but this is not only a Continental success story. Across the Channel in the UK, the legacy of 'Tudor torture' adorns pencil sets, notebooks and badges sold in shops wherever recreational and cultural pursuits cross paths.

Those Persians

A professor of Iranian origin now working in the Netherlands introduced Persian culture as 'the place where Asia kissed the Middle East.' I'm sure he said 'kissed.' He may also have said 'embraced' in the next sentence or two. It's possible that he also referred to China kissing Turkey. What's absolutely certain is that he referred to a mutual acquaintance of South Asian origin with significant disdain, more or less attributing this person's abrasive - as he saw it - personality to ethnicity. It struck me at the time as ironic that while pressing the point of a multicultural or pluralist tradition in his homeland, where there had been a unique and extended period of ecstatic cultural exchange and expression, he also illustrated some of the residual irritations that can remain visible, like scar tissue, when personalities clash.

Kavir is (was?? has the global crisis closed it down??) a pluralist Persian culinary zone in Glasgow, offering Carrot & Persian Ice Cream Milkshakes, Persian herbal tea and all variety of smoothies. I found their sign rather alluring, and I hope they've not had to fold. My Persian connections are scattered, but detailed, and luckily for me, publicity around an exhibition at the British Museum on 17th-century Iran draws another epic description of Silk Route dramas in centuries past in the days of glory in Isfahan, where, as it happened, the going currency was a silver coin mined by slaves of Spanish conquistadores, but manufactured by the mercantile Dutch. Who's kissing who, I mean, really?

My first Iranian connection was probably during my grade school years in New Jersey, when I played with the daughter of a carpet importer. After that, on my first flight from West to East, the standard pre-landing announcement from the cockpit was slightly amended to Ladies and Gentlemen, we will land shortly at Teheran Airport, where the local time is 1500 years in the past.

In contrast: I received a congratulatory card on International Women's Day once and only once - from a forward-thinking Iranian exile in Holland. And in the new Millenium, I was witness to the bizarre application of a dynamic, modern survey of the pro-active and largely successful Iranian minority in the Netherlands. In academics and many other fields, (Dutch-) Iranians are forging ahead.

Nevertheless, it was a bit of surprise when a Canadian friend was drawn into this survey as being one of them. Amsterdam city records showed his mother's place of birth as being Teheran, where she indeed first appeared on this earth as the daughter of English oil company employees temporarily residing in Iran. He was thereby classified as an Iranian in Holland, and when the survey of his lifestyle and habits was done, there was no way to clarify his true background. I know, because I sat in as a witness.

It was quite a shock to see that the barrier to providing accurate information was built into the software on the laptop provided to the interviewer by the marketing company being paid by government and/or city funds (taxpayers) to generate useful data on Holland's new demographics. The Canadian interviewee repeatedly explained the circumstances of his mother's birth in Teheran, but there was no way of recording this history. Another strange question concerned the subject's social life: do you spend more time with your own group (Iranians) or with Dutch people?? He asked: what about everyone else? But there was no way to file accurate details.

Te gek voor woorden - too crazy for words - an expression which I now can hope to learn in Farsi, thanks (to end on a high note) to the recent publication of a Compilation of Idioms in Dutch & Persian. The book's author is a Teheran-born long-time resident of the Netherlands and a certified interpreter and translator. Farsi, as it happens, is Iran's official language - but there many dozens of others.

Salt Lake City Again

I made some notes while watching the unbelievably fast, balanced and cool-headed speed skaters from around the world who are competing in Salt Lake City, USA this weekend. Luckily for me, they're on TV in the Netherlands.

Please click to enlarge the photograph and read.

For previous reference to Salt Lake City, please see June 16, 2007.

The Secrets of Thialf

The Medicine Wheel is central to the culture of the Plains Indians in North America. It is a sacred symbol for all knowledge. The eye-shaped Medicine Wheel shown here was printed in the TIPI Newsletter.

The Thialf Hall in the Netherlands is a state-of-the-art skating rink where major international competitions are held.

[Please see also post March 3, 2008, 'A Win-Win Situation', where I hinted at the imminent demise of a certain right-wing politician in the Netherlands, only now, a year later, to be proven quite inaccurate in my forecast, as a new poll suggests that his right-wing party would WIN elections in the Kingdom of the Netherlands if they were held today; this same personality has just enjoyed publicity on right-wing talk shows and with conservative groups in the United States, after being refused entrance to the United Kingdom, where he had been invited to screen his anti-Islam movie in the House of Lords - so let's keep an eye, so to speak, on these new alliances!]

The Thialf covered oval arena was named after Thialfi, servant to the Nordic God Thor ("the chief defender of the gods and of humans against the evil forces of the giants and chaos" Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 5 p.215). Thor is more commonly known today as the God of Thunder. The climate control system applied in the Thialf Hall is depicted below.

The smaller photo showing the Medicine Wheel again also carries a computer view of one of my eyes (an image I recalled while studying the technical information about the ice-skating arena) the results of an examination carried out to assess the potential benefits of 'night lenses': contact lenses to be worn while sleeping. These relatively large inserts alter the surface of your eye during the night, allowing something close to normal vision during the day. I did try them for a spell, but abandoned the night lenses after I discovered that, after dark, the lights of oncoming cars were refracted into blinding displays, like lightning.

One Small Victory in the Bailout Era

I have two months to study this brochure and determine whether or not I qualify for the $35,000,000 (thirty-five million dollars) class action settlement from Bank of America. As it stands, I think I have to send them a letter either way: I can include myself or exclude myself. I think. 35-mln, peanuts these days, especially for what will in all likelihood turn out to be a pretty big class, but the tiny trickle of funds into my account has produced a balance modest enough to encourage an accommodating attitude towards any additions which may arrive, so I'll reread the brochure. It arrived unrequested in the mail. I didn't ask for it.

Having skimmed through once or twice, it doesn't look good, in fact, because I don't have a Bank of America debit card, but like I said, there's time to comb the fine print. I do have other credit cards occasionally in use, and recently I had an interesting experience related to personal finance and customer relations.

A letter from the credit card (CC) company arrived informing me that unfortunate transactions had occurred involving their lists of CC numbers and illegitimate participants in global markets, who might be planning to incur costs on others' accounts. Mine. For this reason, I would be receiving a new CC from them and could cut up the old one.

I called them to ask for more information. Specifically, I thought it opportune to inquire about the way in which my CC number might have been targetted. Where had this occurred?

That's confidential. We are not going to tell you that, as it could lead you to avoid doing business with the enterprise in question in the future. The fraud was no fault of their own, and these businesses are our clients. They must be able to rely on confidentiality at all times!

Oh, even as a small CC-holder, I'm a client, too. Aren't I? Don't I have a right to know what's happening with my miniscule account, especially if something goes wrong? It's my card, after all.

It's not your card. WE own it.

Actually, your company earns quite a reasonable rate of interest on anything that transpires involving the card which bears my name. If you wish to keep me as a client, you might want to respond to my request for transparency in a more civilized tone. But you sound quite angry and upset, so I think I'll just thank you so much for your time and get off the phone now and send a letter to your office.

You DO that. The letter will arrive on my desk and I'll answer you with the EXACT same information.

I sustained this tranquil mode while composing a short letter which now included both my original message and my disappointment at having heard that CC-holders were viewed as second-class clients. I never did receive an answer on paper, but the letter evidently landed on someone else’s desk, because within a few days, the phone rang, and a different voice from the CC-company greeted me in the most cordial of tones.

It is most regrettable that you were left with the impression that certain clients are more valuable than others. We are really in a bind here. I hope you can understand.

I do understand. If I were investigating this subject, I guess I would somehow gain access to the information about potential dangers to CC-accounts. Now of course I am not conducting an investigation - even though I am experienced in the field of journalism; I could forward you some of my work if you'd like - but I must stand by the principle of having a right to know what goes wrong when it goes wrong out in world of retail and apparently I’m involved.

I don't think anyone mentioned retail.

Well, you mean it wasn't retail?

And so forth. This quite pleasant conversation continued with the utmost respect from and towards both parties. At a certain point, disclosure of both the geographical and retail locations became inevitable, as we agreed that principled action and accurate exchange of knowledge was the most fulfilling premise for all business relations. I truly believe that this second young man from the CC-company had a new professional experience on the phone that day, disclosing the information which his company was not supposed to provide. In doing so, we sealed a deal based on trust. I vowed that I would never report having found out the name and location of the store where my CC-details were fed into a crime ring.

Name as Noun

I've been called many names in my time [Please see 'Name as Gerund, ' January 21, 2008] but this was a real surprise, breaking what had felt like a long, tedious stretch during which my name was spelled correctly on all envelopes arriving in the mail. And I've never been addressed as the familiar term for a handkerchief. That, of course, is actually written as 'hanky' or 'hankie.' Now I know: Hankey is also a surname.

Inside the envelope for Martha Hankey were promotion materials for Turkish cultural events. One of the cards, partially displayed above, bore a photograph of a Sufi whirling dervish, which, when laid on its side so that the dancer's garment flails nicely under 'Hankey,' allowed me to emphasize the aspects of textile shared by image and text. Neither the image nor the first line in the address on the envelope carrying the cards had been intended that way. In fact, the truth is that I have intentionally blocked out a significant part of the photograph, the part featuring a Flamenco dancer who stands observing the dervish, this representative of mystical Islam. They perform together; that's what this announcement is all about. If I wanted to I could be in the audience sometime this Spring.

I don’t think that would be a good idea, now that I have traded in the Flamenco dancer dimension for the concept of being an elegant fold of cloth; silk, if possible, beautifully folded, easily accessible. But that might be too passive for the dervish aims at stake - why not take the sophisticated softness along as an ally? Spraying the handkerchief with an elusive scent, or wrapping it around a potent substance before tucking it into my evening bag could be an option. Anything to enhance the audience experience.

The 'whirling dervishes' enhance their spiritual poise by whirling in devotion to God. Another order of dervishes worships in a mode which can cause alarm among onlookers: they used to link arms, then violently move head and torso back and forth, moaning and crying out, until they threw themselves forward onto snakes or swords. Nowadays, they might sit in the presence of a Master, stabbing or burning themselves, to prove their devotion. This was their ritual prayer; these people are called ‘howling dervishes’ [Please do now see 'Name as Gerund, ' January 21, 2008, if you haven’t already].

By the way, alarmed onlookers have been there in great numbers for centuries, as both the whirlers and the howlers have always ‘performed’ their ritual prayer in public.