Mistaken Identities - It had to happen sometime Pt.2

Prance – a frivolous mode not reflected in our times; Switzarland – a superior misnomer; Unite Kingdom of Britain – unlikely, at least not any time soon. What’s in a name? The country names pictured above appear on a globe of extraordinary origin, as explained in an earlier post: http://lifebeforenews.blogspot.com/2007/11/global-local-something-like-this-pt1.html

A recent dinner-party conversation peaked when two people seeing each other for the first time in years confessed to remembering neither the other’s name nor details of the previous occasion. The pair spontaneously began to consider the option of creating new identities at each social gathering, not out of devious motive, but for the purpose of generating conversational surprise and more profound enjoyment.

The idea was hatched out of necessity. They couldn’t think of anything else to talk about, and they subsequently discovered common ground in their shared view of weekend social gatherings as a frenzied plundering of thoughts from weeks past. After thanking each other for the empathy displayed in this brief exchange, they categorized the content as a potential new thread of friendship, and acted accordingly. They also shared the opinion that identity as a concept was all worn out and should be allowed to rest for a while.

The significance of names has been considered in previous posts, including It had to happen sometime Pt.1: http://lifebeforenews.blogspot.com/2007/12/it-had-to-happen-sometime-pt1.html, written at the time when a British school teacher in Khartoum (Sudan) had been jailed for soliciting and adhering to the advice of her six-year old students: the teacher had asked the students to come up with suggestions for the most beautiful name for the Teddy Bear she had brought into the classroom for teaching purposes. One happy little boy chimed in with his opinion that Muhammad was the best name ever for the toy/learning prop. Word got out. Some citizens of Khartoum were outraged and took to the streets in protest. The British woman was arrested. The case spawned a new name: the Teddybear Taliban.
A teacher can’t be too careful these days. Mobs appear in different forms. They can take to the digital street.

The origin of the name Teddy Bear (see reference above to It had to happen sometime Pt.1)

is all the more remarkable when considering Teddy Roosevelt’s M.O. at the time. Roosevelt’s profile rose in an age when ideas about masculinity were under undergoing radical rewording. The posture struck by a reasonable leader, a rational man of character, was no longer convincing enough – and not far enough away from girlish sentiment. The new male model was a competitive man of action.

The British school teacher was eventually released by Sudanese authorities and deported back to the UK. As much as her detention may have been more a matter of political expediency than judicial procedure, she was better off having a few walls and metal bars between her and dynamic local males.

Some good things about disasters

I saved the receipt from the Glasgow green-grocer to remind me of Marta’s accent. She was a new resident of Scotland from Poland, working for Asians, and I imagined hearing all of that when she spoke. Throughout that neighborhood, commerce was being livened up by more new Britons (see LBN post Those Persians 25 March 2009). Eastern Europe used to be far away, but EU-member Poland in particular has been exuding a country-next-door come-hither aura.

This is not unfamiliar to me: Polish surnames (some Jewish, some not) were common at my grade school near New York City. Later on, Joe, the handy-man at my college dormitory, was Polish, and

He took care of his girls.

Under the circumstances this was a near-heroic stance: some of the local farmers in the New York countryside blamed crop failure on the young female students (offered as a postscript to recent remarks by an Iranian cleric who blamed natural disasters on scantily-clad, promiscuous women, statements which conjured up the images of Joe and Marta), girls who wore strange clothes and often spoke in loud tones, emphasizing their urban origins and accompanying disregard for country life. Joe was a Catholic family man, the son of pre-WWII immigrants. He turned up regularly with kielbas, as he called it.

Only the real Polish sausage for my girls.

Another encounter dates from the more recent past: one day I called my bank in Amsterdam to ask them to verify whether or not their internet banking system was experiencing an interruption of normal services. The customer service representative was very friendly and sounded sincerely apologetic about the breakdown. She spoke Dutch with an East European accent, and, yes, she confirmed, she was working out of a call center in Poland, one of Western Europe’s destinations for near-shoring (out-sourcing and paying lower wages) operations. This woman was delightful, in possession of a sweet voice and a willingness to depart from the call center script. She had been drafted from the population of new Dutch residents of Polish origin (and that story is not all peachy: see LBN post I Promise You 31 December 2008) to go home and earn a living there speaking Dutch. I hope she didn’t lose her job as a result of our conversation.

Invigilation, Anarchy and Civilization

Laws and constitutions are subject to interpretation, that much we all understand by now. But when a Dutch lawyer confessed to me that nobody in Holland really knows exactly how many laws there are to begin with, because they’re all rumbling around in profusion on computer chips in The Hague, I wondered if this was an aspect which could at some point spawn unforeseen complications. Breaking the rules is a matter of pride in this country – so it would be nice to identify the limits - perhaps not nationwide, but certainly in Amsterdam, where violation of most recognized codes of behavior has become a code in its own right: hurtling along a crowded sidewalk on your bicycle, tossing a still-burning cigarette butt in the air. I’ve been confronted with challenges to the system, not only as a civilian on the street, but as the enforcer of exam roles, the protectress of the honest and the good. I have performed as the invigilator.

While presiding over distance-learners as their invigilator, I was often in one hall with dozens of individuals from various Dutch Provinces, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Thailand China, Pakistan, Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Most exam candidates were prompt, if not early, settled at their assigned desk in a state of concentration. Usually a small knot of desks in the middle would be empty until 5 minutes before the exam began. Suddenly the door would burst open and a noisy group of adult males – accountants doing the compulsory refresher course – would rush in to find their numbered seats, come to register at the front desk without the required papers, inquire whether it’s really necessary to sit at the numbered seats, smirk and roll their eyes at the reply, ask us to look up their seat numbers, slouch back to their seats, transfer plastic-sealed snacks and water bottles (allowed) from their bags (not allowed) to the desktop, etc. On one occasion, a young woman presented an expired (not allowed) passport as her photo ID, and returned triumphantly when the exam was over to show me the registration papers which stipulate that a photo ID is indeed required – but the word valid didn’t appear anywhere in the text.

Most of the candidates were impressive: young adults holding down full time jobs while they studied, preparing for promotions or for assignments overseas. The hours of quiet had great appeal, linked by a few sounds only: papers sliding on desks, the clicking of pens and soft tapping on calculators, the rare sniffle or sneeze.

Occasionally there was someone like the au-pair from New Zealand, sitting for ‘Chinese Literature and Society’. She finished early and as no other candidates were present that day, we talked. As a believer she had joined a Christian Church and had learned Dutch from reading the Bible. I told her about learning Dutch from reading newspapers when I first came to Amsterdam. When I started speaking the language, I sounded like a walking front-page article – full of a syntax which is effective in print, but less than convincing when applied in conversation. She told me yes, her Dutch did echo Scripture, but that she didn’t mind, and neither did most of her partners in conversation as they were members of the Congregation, too, where by the way she planned to linger for the foreseeable future. There was little to go back to, what with the Maori’s being coddled by the government and the foreigners getting all the breaks. I was sure she would fit in somewhere in NL, perhaps with the political party whose leader is now on trial for inciting hatred and discrimination. The nanny was uncertain about whether her visa would be extended and had decided to get a head-start on Chinese civilization in case she gets sent home – at least the Chinese are coming down and creating jobs, not just claiming them.

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.

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

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”).

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.

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.

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.

Banned Substances Pt.1

The car stopped just short of the main drag in the old Cuban district of Tampa, Florida. I wanted to visit and walk along in search of José Martí, the Cuban poet and revolutionary who lived in a number of foreign locations in the final years of Spanish colonial rule in his homeland in the late 19th-century. Tampa was one of the most fervently revolutionary sites on Martí’s itinerary, and it was here that he participated in organizing the Cuban Revolutionary Party. The movement was financed in Tampa by cigar revenues, and, however briefly, by proceeds from baseball game ticket sales in Cuba. Appropriately, when the decision was made in Florida in 1895 to launch the revolution, the orders were smuggled into Cuba inside a cigar.

The USA was backing these liberation efforts with significant enthusiasm, and the Cuban Liberation struggle evolved into the Spanish-American War. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders set sail from Tampa before thundering ashore in Cuba and helping to win the war against Spain, so a main street in this Tampa neighbourhood today bears their name.

My elderly Florida cousin was happier showing me the new Malls, and who could blame him in the heat. He stayed in the car while I strolled down this road of historic importance. I seemed to be the only person on foot. In fact there were hardly any other people at all, and many of the storefronts were boarded up. A Cuban sandwich shop attracted some business, and there was one other brightly lit up establishment: the Santería store.

Several wooden steps led up to the screen door entrance. I entered, all smiles, and asked the woman behind the counter if they sold any José Martí souvenirs. She found one article: a paper cocktail napkin. While I studied the merchandise, a car pulled up outside and jerked to a halt as the hand brake was applied. The driver was a young man who bounded up the stairs and then closed the door carefully and quietly as he came in, evidently completely familiar with local etiquette.

Greetings were exchanged, and he proceeded to ask the woman what he could buy to definitely score on his date that evening. The girl was really worth it, he explained, and he didn’t want her to get away. The shop-keeper listened and nodded, recommending various jars and containers which were in stock. He paid for one of the love potions, ran out to his throbbing car and laid some tracks as he drove off. When the sound of the music blasting out of his car faded entirely, there was not a sound in the Santería store.

Inspired by his absolute faith in the shop-keepers advice, I walked back and forth examining everything on the shelves, and finally came up with two items which were light, unbreakable and easy to pack: Get-Rich-Quick household cleaning solution, and Powerful-Indian-Household Blessing Domination Powder, with a bilingual label, good illustrations and a handy prayer for happiness and victory-over-enemies on the back.

Things being how they are between the United States and Cuba, I was not surprised to see that the powder was from Chicago, but still a tad disappointed. Tampa and Cuba share a great heritage when it comes to contraband. After liberation from Spain, Cuba became one of the main transit points for illegal immigrants from Europe and China. Business was controlled by figures referred to as “Kings.” Small craft delivered people and goods to many Florida inlets, but Tampa was at the hub. The smuggling of whisky and narcotics was a profitable activity in the 1920’s, and Spirits Submerged There is the stuff of newspaper stories about deliveries hidden temporarily in the waters between Cuba and the USA.

All Lands are Homelands: a Headscarf Debate

I once knew a woman who longed to return to her country of birth, Canada, even after receiving this scarf as a present. It was intended as a joke, but, overwhelmed as she was by sentiment; she found it whimsical, much to her family’s chagrin. A friend of a friend of a friend of hers had once retrieved it from musty heaps of second-hand items, and so began its long trajectory through the closets and drawers of acquaintances and strangers, until it eventually found its way into her most secluded stash of usable items which lay safe and untouched.

To my knowledge, she never did wear the scarf, being far too fashion-conscious to do so. I on the other hand was willing to tie it around my brow and neck, in pursuit of an elegant Moslem headscarf style avant la lettre, and pose as an eager listener while she recited the poem that had become her favorite rallying cry for return to one's homeland: this excerpt from Scotland’s Sir Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!

I had learned at an early age to try and make her laugh, but not even my absurd posturing in an irreverent headdress could mask the grim shift in tone of this recitation, challenging to any listener within the first sixteen lines:

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

I understood that profound ties were being put to the test with these words, uttered in the original version not by the last Mohican but by ‘the last Minstrel.’ Sure enough, a celebratory tone enters this early ode to patria:

Not scorn'd like me! to Branksome Hall
The Minstrels came at festive call;
Trooping they came, from near and far
The jovial priests of mirth and war;
Alike for feast and fight prepar'd,
Battle and banquet both they shar'd.
Of late, before each martial clan,
They blew their death-note in the van,
But now, for every merry mate,
Rose the portcullis' iron grate;
They sound the pipe, they strike the string,
They dance, they revel, and they sing,
Till the rude turrets shake and ring.

More colourful details are supplied on the intimate mingling of the revelers, and, while she would have read those in private and blushed in public, anyone fishing for the core idea of home could skip over the rest. She thought she longed for Canada, when in fact her poignancy led her back to the people who had raised her on the nectar of homesickness, the people who harked back to their own native land, Scotland.

The woman began reciting these verses like a sermon. On gentler days, the verses were chanted like a prayer. Everyone knew that she expected you to eventually agree with the idea. No one could foresee that she would pick up and go home, and, having arrived, perhaps more upset by the first verse than anyone ever knew, would take her own life. Everyone carried on; we all learned the poem and longed for the homelands of all mothers; we swapped stories about the woman's other peeves: bullying in politics and society; the drab and claustrophobic landscapes in local villages, all built with money by the new post-war bully who bothered her the most. This could explain why she was not amused by the scarf.

I don't anticipate being able to uncover details on the origins of the scarf – the tags with shredded corners lost almost all faded print long ago. If you take a closer look at the scarf, you will see (deliberate) Anglo-misspellings of the French word ‘oui,’ dating this probable souvenir item to a time in Canada’s history when the French language was still struggling for recognition.

Let me count the ways

When I first caught sight of it, the sign was tacked to a wall in a shady corridor of the Municipal Judicial Authorities building in Kandy, கண்டி, a Sri Lankan mountain town. The three alphabets were graceful together; the colors enhanced by age. The message seemed either absolutely effective (the setting couldn’t have been quieter) or perfectly located, like a stage direction conveying a desired atmosphere which had been attained long ago.

A third possibility was to read it as a confirmation or announcement: This is silence, or as close to it as you’ll get for the time being. We walked into the building before office hours began, just passing by the Judge’s office for reasons which had remained unexplained, slowing down after a pre-dawn rush to the Buddhist Temple in Kandy where the faithful protect a tooth relic from the Buddha himself.

The Judge, the kindest person you could ever hope to meet, had picked me up at the guesthouse and run alongside of me in his loose sandals to the temple. He did this as a favor to his sister, a close family friend of a friend of mine in Colombo, but still, I had anticipated an element of formality in the temple expedition: a dignified stroll at the end of the night, slipping into the temple by a narrow entryway where religious supervisors would screen visitors with practiced looks.

Instead, the Judge rushed up to the guesthouse and bumped into the edge of the wooden porch several times as he greeted me, his crisp, white shirt contrasting with dark curly hair which even careful grooming with coconut oil, evident in the gleaming parallel locks, could not prevent from tumbling onto his forehead and cheek. In the dim light he looked like a schoolboy, ready for anything.

We said Must run! simultaneously and bounded across the garden lawn, arriving nevertheless too late at the temple, where the staff presumably recognized the Judge and allowed us to rush along the corridor as quietly as possible, only to reach the inner chamber housing the tooth relic just as the golden casket was again being sealed, leaving us to share this moment of disappointment with the smiling priests still bent over the treasure.

Which brings me to the fourth possible interpretation of the sign – which I fell in love with at first sight – hanging on the wall when we entered the Municipal building. Option #4 was conveyed by the figure of the apologetic man, a respected figure in this town who probably seldom failed in the execution of his duties. He shrugged just once and showed me inside without saying a word, the look of boyish anticipation gone from his face. As early as it was, we were warm from our exertions, ready for the cool interior, but the fine air seemed to cover the scene with a tinge of sadness rather than relief. The Judge padded around his office, with less urgency now, opening and shutting drawers and cupboards. I understood that this was a time for no conversation. I didn’t know how his relationship with his sister, his stature as a Judge, his religious convictions and relationship with the caretakers of this most sacred of sites were intertwined and how they all weighed in the balance.

I busied myself with a long, close stare at the sign. (This must have been when without a sound he slipped a small object into his pocket, producing it much later in the morning when he finally smiled widely again and opened his hand and peeled back tissue paper, which no longer crackled in the considerable heat, to reveal a small carved elephant, the beast central to the magnificent annual Perahera procession which appears to go on in spite of all extenuating circumstances) The Judge emerged, closed his office door and noted my focus on the wall, whereupon he offered to give me the sign without the slightest hesitation. They wouldn’t miss it in this quiet place, he assured me.

Fortunately I usually carried then as I do now a protective folder for flat, loose sheets of paper or objects, and I was able to slip the flaky cardboard rectangle into a cool, dry case for transport in my cotton shoulder bag. This was not the first time that I was able to make off with a sign.

Not Barefoot in the Park / No Naked Flames on Pentecostal Weekend Ferry

Drought warnings are in effect in parts of the Dutch countryside. But in Amsterdam, a city of canals, the sunny weather has been highly appreciated over the past week, since before Liberation Day 2008 - that's May 5th. Liberation Day marks the release in 1945 from Nazi occupation during World War II. Things have gone pretty well in Holland since then. Holidays are considered a basic right for all inhabitants of the Netherlands, and more than 20% of the Dutch population has reportedly been on vacation in the first half of May. This is good. It helps relieve the congestion in Amsterdam. Most city parks, and some waterways (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OfMOHdlpP8), sponsor holiday activities, with vendor markets, games for children and live music.

In one park in eastern Amsterdam, the activities reflect the local population: the merchants selling clothing, music and handicrafts are Dutch, Indian, African, Surinamese, Antillean and so on. Potential buyers reflect the same lines of descent. Many take their small children to the park’s wading pool, a large, clean circle of water surrounded by grass. One of the signs around the area warns of broken glass and other dangerous objects on the ground. The visual warning hangs too high for children to notice. I was interested in the policy at the city office responsible for this park so I called and asked whether language (multiple, in this neighbourhood) considerations played a role in deciding to feature the pained foot above glass, with no verbal reinforcement, on the sign.

A receptionist thought that it was a message discouraging people from leaving glass in the area. The person in charge of all park signs was out of the office, possibly all week, on vacation, as I said, and perhaps into next week as well, as the third major holiday in May (the first was Remembrance Day, on May 4th, honouring all War Dead, including WWII and all other conflicts) is today, with Whit Sunday or Pentecost, a Christian holiday which is an official holiday for all inhabitants of the Netherlands. The event is recalled differently in separate churches, but it all ties in with the idea of the Holy Spirit returning to man – according to certain groups: as tongues of fire settling on top of the Apostles’ heads! Extraordinary! This allowed them to speak in tongues, to all who would listen. The subject remains highly controversial in our times. It's an issue with, for example, the “Glossolalia Movement.”

No Naked Flames suddenly appeared as an apt warning on the ferry which carried me over a river yesterday, at the start of this holiday weekend.

Security Measures in Spain

The Future: The bicycle path in Seville extended into a traffic circle. I was impressed by the exclamation mark serving, I assumed, as a warning to cyclists along this route which I walked several times a day. Another point which caught my attention was that, in fact, I never saw any cyclists. Several times a day for less than a week – that is not enough to argue that there were no cyclists, so I imagine that there were, or will be in the future. I asked locals who frequented the shops and cafés whether the punctuation was meant to assist a multi-ethnic and or illiterate population of cyclists, but I did not manage to find anyone who felt qualified to respond.

The Recent Past: seguretat in the sign is meant to reassure rabbits and inform hunters that they are not allowed to shoot anyone or -thing beyond this tree. I entered this ‘no hunting’ zone in Catalan country feeling only mildly reassured. The old hunting rifle as depicted on the sign is evidently still in use here and there. The sign itself has become redundant, however, left over from an era when hunters stealthily slipped past this tree on the edge of a small but famous settlement to track down animals in the fields beyond. The fields have since given way to a highway and railroad line, so that the tree is now wedged between a car park and the modern traffic circuit, uniting metropolitan Barcelona on the East with suburbia on the West. The sign has so far survived all transitions.

Timeless Legend, Present Practice: April 27th is the Feast Day of the Black Madonna of Monserrat, not far from Barcelona in Catalonia. While still said to work miracles, the Black Madonna has a disputed history. Described sometimes as a 12th-century sculpture and in other contexts as a work carved with Joseph’s very tools in Jerusalem two-thousand years ago, the statue was said to have been transferred across the Mediterranean to Monserrat by Saint Peter in 50 A.D., amazingly hidden away from the invading Saracens and miraculously found first by shepherds and later by monks, to be fully reinstated at the time of the reconquista, when power was recovered from the Muslims by the Catholic monarchy. Those who believe that the Madonna is a 12th-century sculpture suggest that its inertness led monks to build a sanctuary around it and eventually a church. The Black Madonna is of interest to others because she is black (African), while other sources claim that x-rays prove that her skin color was originally white, turning gradually darker because of lead in the paint. Clicking on the picture will enlarge text offering still another explanation. Whatever the origins, the Black Madonna and Baby Jesus attract Catholic Pilgrims from all over the world. They believe that it is beneficial to file past the Madonna and touch or kiss the glass separating her from the crowds. Distance is not a problem; she will heal and protect.

A Win-Win Situation

He is losing his edge, the articulate right-winger in The Hague who has provided one-liners and sound-bites for what seems like a very long time already. In one of his recent anti-Muslim rants, in this case connected with burkhas (or was it the burkhini?), he stood in front of camera’s - wearing a dark suit and light-colored shirt, as do most of his many dozens of male colleagues darting back and forth across the glimmering hallways of government buildings - and referred to women wearing burkha’s as ‘penguins.’

This Dutch parliamentarian with startling bleached blonde hair, from the PVV “Freedom Party” is (possibly) celebrating his breakthrough onto the international scene, as the person responsible for an anti-Islam anti-Koran film, not yet released, which has now triggered anti-Dutch demonstrations on the streets of northern Afghanistan. The Dutch government has officially distanced itself from the blonde’s inflammatory message, which could lead to loss of life; NATO officials have warned of further disturbances. For months the focus has been on the polarizing Parliamentarian and what to do about him. He doesn’t need official bodyguards - he has had them for years.

The film might just suddenly be there on the internet, but even if it never actually appears, the PVV-penguin will have enjoyed enormous attention because of his ability to aggravate and offend, one word at a time. I was recently reminded that it is quite easy to do this by drawing people’s attention to something that they don’t understand. That can be unpleasant. I wore a sign with core-Dutch content and non-Dutch form, so designed, I thought at the time, to draw attention to the message. This was not entirely the case.

The sign with white letters on an orange background reads in Dutch as ‘Hup Nederland!’ which translates as ‘Let’s go Netherlands!’ A more authentic rendition of the original cheer would have been spelled out as the alliterative ‘Hup Holland Hup!’ in Dutch as displayed in blue letters on the orange t-shirt manufactured for soccer/football fans from Holland.* This sign was designed by a Dutch citizen of partial Dutch descent, raised outside of the Netherlands, now a dual national here and in his country of origin, where his parents had settled as immigrants.

His choice of wording was, as far as I know, an unintentional step away from the norm. His choice of font, on the other hand, was deliberate, inspired mainly by the fact that said choice, once the exclusive province of typesetters, is now open to anyone at all. “Freedom of font,” you could say. The sign was assembled as a lark. He had not expected me to either print it or wear it, and his ambitions were totally divorced from social concerns. It became apparent while displaying the sign that this sign, which tricks the reader into thinking that the text is in Arabic, was unsettling to a small group of natives seated nearby.

On this occasion, an international skating championship in a Dutch (skating) town, the number of non-Dutch spectators would have been restricted to an infinitesimally small group, meaning that nearly all onlookers would focus warily on the sign because of its apparent foreignness. Initially skeptical of the non-Dutch English-speakers in their midst, those nearest by gradually became elbow-nudging allies, pleased that we were armed with lists of the draws for races and quick to comment on the athletes as they stepped up to face the start pistol. At this level, the Dutch skating fans cheer for everyone, and even losers are heartily applauded for achieving a personal best.

*The remarkable ambivalence of the Dutch national anthem, printed on the back of this t-shirt, will be focused on in future posts.

Ramadan Began with Angels

I wanted to stay close to the Bakery window, where otherworldly cascades, ornamental sugary creations seemed to grow towards the glass. The sweet twists were white, golden, copper and orange in color. For a moment it was like being inside the miniature magical world of a sugar eggs with peep holes, a present I had received on Easter Sundays as a small child. I felt so close to that inedible, sweet display. Through the window I could see that mountains more filled the glass case and topped the long, narrow counter, glittering from the street towards the back of the store.
The man behind the counter was curious about my interest, as was a lone male customer inside. I turned away from the window to avoid their gaze and saw their sidewalk advertisement: a sawhorse stand provided by a well-known multinational. The sponsor background featured a young white woman with clear skin and rippling hair, angel wings in view behind her naked shoulders, two pre-packaged ice cream cones held in white- and black-colored gloves crossed carefully in front of her chest. The cones had also been produced to contrast: the cone appearing to be vanilla-flavored bore a light-colored wrapper; dark paper surrounded the presumably chocolate version held, of course, by a darkened hand. One wing was white, the other covered by a sinister shadow, as was half of her enchantingly pretty face. Still visible behind a large yellow sheet inserted by the shop-owners - a question printed on the poster by the multinational: Angel or Devil?
A thick plastic covering on both sides of the stand allowed the retailers to add their own hand-written news, which, in this case, in red marker, informed me that the Bakery was actually a take-out restaurant: Special Menu for Ramadan. By now the shop employee was frowning through the window at me while I studied the heaven and hell cone-eater image. Everyone was rushing along this busy Parisian shopping street. Observant Muslims from all continents might be walking past the sign, I thought, but nobody actually needed to stop in order to read it. The man inside wanted to know why I had. I stepped up and in off the street. The shop employee and I had to peer around the sugary towers on the counter to see each other and converse, while a tall, skinny local boy listened intently. He looked like a hip-hopper, with his baggy pants and cap.
I told the man that the sign was interesting, and asked if I could take a picture of it. He was suspicious and twisted on the balls of his feet, as if he wanted to consult, but could find no consultants within range. The boy asked me where I was from. The mention of Amsterdam brought a contented (conspiratorial?) smile to his face and he called out to the troubled shop employee: “Laisse la faire!” “Let her do it!”