Life after blog

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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.

Please tilt head or computer and read

Fortunate circumstance allows me to assemble these titles on my own bookshelf for this group picture to be presented during a wee presentation later today on engaged writers from the USA. Preparation of said presentation has robbed me of the time to post thoughts here on just how these (and many other titles) books occupy common ground.

I have called upon the reader to enlarge a photo and read on 1 previous occasion, in March 2009, with the embedded text Salt Lake City Again.

But where could you go?

I am already on the alert while approaching the multi-story building – in the absence of a sidewalk, I’m forced to walk either on the rim of the bicycle path or in the soggy grassland at its edge, where my foot is quickly engulfed by mud. The bicycles hurtling along the straight stretch of road before the curve around the building are being pedalled at significant speed, the cyclists absorbed in phone conversations, composing text messages or pressing ahead to meet deadlines – the options for the pedestrian aren’t good.

As I reach my destination, a broad sidewalk looms, but weaving around abutments near the front entrance reinforces the vigilant mode – one of the outdoor columns under the overhead protrusion of the first floor is built in at a sharp slant. The column's trajectory appears haphazard and does not enhance a sense of stability.


To my relief, the mood is altered inside, where a front desk belies activity: computer lights blink, rotating stools are askew, as if just vacated, and the digital sign board and clock are blinking. The message is that security measures are in force, but nobody is around to scrutinize my arrival.

In the utter silence I proceed to the upper stories: along a ramp, a staircase, a transitional passage which leads through a dining zone (closed today, the packaged ingredients safe behind a roller shutter) and past the elevator, which I board. The meeting room I must find has a number in the thousands, but one digit provides the clue to the actual floor, where I emerge and see another glimmering digital display, directed, it seems, at me, condemning me to this empty stretch with information indicating that I have arrived.

Along the open-plan dual-passage hallway, through the ceiling-high windows bordering office spaces equipped with high-tech gear, I see no one, I hear no one, and a dream-like mist descends as I inspect the lifeless corridor. I decide to walk back to double-check the location details and en route I encounter the evacuation chair, neatly fastened to a central wall. The white figures on the green plastic are my only company this day – my eyes dart from the word ‘escape’ back to the digital sign board on the opposite wall and then to the elevator door, where a menacing grind warns of its opening.

672 candidates

A new national government will be elected in the Netherlands on 9 June; election anxieties always mount for me when I receive my free copy of the candidates list (see above), which this year carries the names of 672 candidates.

I have addressed the subject in earlier posts: please see, for example "EU Election Anxieties" on 31 May 2009, when the 289 candidates put to the test my abilities to get informed and make a real choice.

We who will cast ballots are meant to vote for a party, not an individual, but we who will wield the red pencils in the voting booths can vote for any 1 of the 672 people running for parliament. A candidate lower down on the list can squeak past fellow party members higher up on the list if enough preferential votes come in. Ambitions to do just that take some candidate MP's out on the campaign trail, but the leaders of the respective parties have the highest profile, of course.

As in other European countries, the right-wing in Holland is coming along very nicely, thank you. We the people who would prefer to see center-left at least one step ahead hope that the good weather continues so that enough of the electorate will find a visit to a polling station (all local sites printed on the back of the candidates lists produced and distributed for each individual voting district) a pleasant proposition.

Annual Report

Would the author of this communication please contact me asap?

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

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.

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.

It all comes together - even now

Interludes with friends aside, there were only two moments on that long day of travel and conversation in and around Havana when I felt that everything came together: during the regular broadcast of the nation’s favorite soap opera, and later on, at the police station. Apart from those two interludes, it was disjointed - in a normal way, like any series of encounters where people wonder if the other was really who he or she claimed to be, if the stated reason for being present was the guiding or subordinate thought and if the apparent pleasure in the other’s company was feigned or genuine. At the time, I was concerned that further disclosure of the police encounter could lead to problems for various parties. Enough time has passed, and now we could, in theory, all rub shoulders as we struggle to read a barely legible document.

The better part of the day had been devoted to a visit outside of the capital, where I saw medical facilities for foreigners and a small museum on the coast honoring local heroes. Conversations and background sound were recorded along the entire route. We made it back to the hotel in time for me to trot over to a street in the old part of the city where I was able to slowly walk along, microphone in hand, passing all of the windows open to private homes where, without exception, televisions were turned onto the favorite telenovela (soap opera) of the moment. Everyone had turned up the volume full blast and the dialogues resonated beautifully against the old walls. It was a very satisfying few minutes, and I now expect that this was the walk that triggered my interest in the acoustic properties of clay.

Later on that evening, I sat on the Malecon, the boulevard at the water’s rocky edge, talking with a friend, doing what everyone else was doing: enjoying conversation and a bit of a breeze after another day of intense heat. My bag with all notes and recording gear was at my side on the wall, and then suddenly it wasn’t, having been snatched by a large boy or small man who ran away and jumped onto the back of a waiting bicycle which wobbled off towards the old city center.

My friend ran after them in pursuit, but they were fast. They vanished into blocks of unlit streets, but not without dropping a shoe, and when the police arrived, the shoe was handed over to the sniffer dog unit. The healthiest-looking dog in Havana, a German Shepherd, picked up the scent and rushed to the entrance of one of the side streets. He then raised his head in confusion at the spot where the perp had lost contact with the ground by leaping onto the bicycle.

Several more attempts were made before the operation was called off. I was offered the opportunity of registering the event with the police. Down at the station at 2 a.m., we were received by a very tired policewoman who inserted paper into an ancient typewriter and began asking questions about the incident and pounding the keys. As the sheet of paper came to resemble an embossed monograph more than an official report, I understood why her efforts were so fierce: the typewriter ribbon was worn out and almost no ink was being hammered onto the paper by the keys. The veteran policewoman whipped the report out of the machine and laid it on the desk to acquire all needed signatures, telling me not to worry, that everything would be legible once a photocopy had been made of this original. This was the last passport theft I would report before becoming a dual national.

Tom Hanks and Charlie Sheen: True Crime Pt.2

Pt.1 - please see September 27, 2008.

No pen and paper was at hand, so the young man suggested that I use my cell phone to write down the information he was about to share. We met by chance, two customers in overcoats standing in the True Crime section of a bookstore in Glasgow. I scanned all the shelves; he noticed, smiled and asked if he could help. Typical, I thought to myself, of local people extending themselves in a friendly way. I explained that I was looking for two books related to the notorious Glasgow Ice Cream Wars in the 1980’s. The name covers turf-wars in rougher neighbourhoods over routes followed by ice cream trucks, whose owners stood to rake in attractive profits from the sale of stolen cigarettes, candies and according to some sources, drugs. Whatever the products, violence shaped the culture, and the Wars peaked with the deaths of six members of one family, including a baby, in a house fire. People were convicted and jailed, their sentencing and imprisonment later declared a miscarriage of justice. Two books have appeared on this saga, but the books are hard to find.

Still smiling, the source tilted his head and minced no words: You probably won’t find them in shops, they’re, uh, not usually available. Try the internet. He spelled out the full titles and authors’ names and watched me tap the data into my phone. I told him that I had looked in branch libraries, where a librarian had confided that True Crime titles tend to go missing in Glasgow. Protecting these books from theft has become a matter of library policy. My search of their catalogue reported the titles as On Loan or In Transit, catalogue code for Missing or Stolen, facts revealed when the librarian smirked as she scrutinized her more detailed in-house screen: The books have been missing from all of those libraries for several years. We used to fill the shelves with empty boxes bearing the cover, just like they do with DVD’s and videotapes. My interest was piqued, and she quickly shut down her search.

The entry on my phone was complete. Why are you so interested in finding these books, if I may ask? I paused in surprise, but my hesitation was misunderstood: Never mind, you don’t have to explain. I had been wondering why he knew so much about it, and I was happy to reply: I’ve been struck by Glasgow’s combination of such a forthcoming and humorous population with its legacy of hard crime. I had been reminded of Colombians, whose graciousness, hospitality and good manners are unsurpassed, in a country suffering from decades of violent civil conflict which, according to the UN, generated the largest humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere just a few years ago. I didn’t say all of that, of course, but paused again, hoping he would show his cards. My book friend just beamed as he backed away: You’re rrrright. Kind of a contradiction. Oh well, must go, catch ya later.

An internet search soon afterwards did turn up second-hand copies of both books. Before purchasing, I wanted to see these tomes, and made my way to the main library where they were both stocked in the reference section. Correction: held in compound. As in libraries everywhere, certain books are produced for viewing under supervision only, and so I was guided past a turnstile to the special area where another librarian produced the titles, after acknowledging, with a twinkle in her eye, that our readers do tend to love to hold onto their True Crime titles.

My reading experience in Glasgow coincided with and was enhanced by the Crime Thriller Awards Season on television, a full seven weeks devoted to the work of crime writers. The series has featured profiles of the nominees, one of whom explained that English crime writing tends to be lighter and less bloody, while Scottish crime and thriller stories are darker and grimmer. Scotland’s crime series par excellence is Taggart, a program which branded the pronunciation of the word murder. The series does well abroad, and in the French version, the lead Detective has been given a Marseille accent. No other regional sound would convey the toughness required by the job. My reading experience has also been deepened by the airing of a TV special celebrating 25 years of Taggart. Its enduring popularity, say the makers, is due to both its ingenious stories and gruesome deaths. Actors are admired, but the city of Glasgow itself is one of the main characters – not its contemporary cosmopolitan side, but the traditional grit and humor.

The Taggart special was Sponsored by the Barra’s – Scotland’s local market. When I visited this street market maze, I was told by a local woman that it was still nice five years ago, but that now drug-related crime was making her nervous. I rode a city bus far into Glasgow’s East End, where many of the most difficult neighborhoods lie. Massive urban regeneration efforts are underway across the zone in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2014, but there’s a lot of terrain to cover. When I reached the last area shown on the generous map in my hands, I got off at a local shopping center, a tiny, economically-challenged precursor to other giant malls closer to town. Community facilities are hard to find out here. When gang violence took over in the 1970’s, outsiders arrived to stage a production of Romeo and Juliet. Professionals filled the main roles, and kids brought in off the streets as extras understood the spirit of the play, with little explanation required.

An elderly woman was seated on a low brick wall outside the back entrance, with a view of the dingy apartment buildings dotting the hills beyond like forgotten bales of hay. Have a seat, Dearie, plenty of room here. She clutched shopping bags and smoked a cigarette, before I take a taxi back home, she volunteered. I live in a village nearby. This place is going to close down soon, there’s too many shops closing because of the recession. You having a nice visit here, are you? That’s lovely. Yes, Tom Hanks and Charlie Sheen like Glasgow, too – well, they didn’t come out here, they were in hotels in the center, but I heard they liked it.

I’m not sure what brought Tom Hanks to Glasgow, but about 10 years ago Charlie Sheen played an alcoholic detective from the USA chasing a serial murderer in Scotland. The good and the bad have broad appeal. Even Barack Obama pays homage, as we found out thanks to Katie Couric from CBS, who asked the presidential candidates to name their favourite movies.

Obama: My favorite has to be the opening scene of the first Godfather – where the caretaker comes in and Marlon Brando is sitting there and he is saying ‘you disrespected me, and now you want a favour’ …the combination of old world gentility and ritual with this savagery underneath it, and it’s all about families, it’s a great movie.

True Crime Pt.1

As a newcomer to the streets of Glasgow, I’ve been charmed by the one the friendliest urban populations I’ve encountered anywhere. If tribal registration standards were applied in Scotland, I would qualify in terms of bloodlines, reinforcing my perception that the willingness of Glaswegians to engage with a stranger is not a mere courtesy extended to an obvious foreigner. A quip on a street corner, chit-chat in shops or a wee bit of banter when caught in the rain – that’s all par for the course. If I do ask for help, the experience generally highlights endearing individuals, from the bus driver who bellowed out the name of my stop in beautifully baroque Glaswegian tones, prompting surrounding passengers to whisk me to the door with smiles, to the young lad who thanked me after he pointed the way to a destination I was seeking.

Another charming soul replied Yes, the handcuffs sell well. Children love them. She was proud, and rightly so, of working in the gift shop at the People’s Palace in Glasgow, a social history museum with powerful displays, ranging from reconstruction of the humblest of dwellings to a lady’s elegant shoes and gloves. Tobacco Lords fuelled Glasgow’s growth in the 1700’s; ship-building followed. Living conditions for working class people were never good, and industrial decline in the 20th-century led to unemployment, urban decay and organized crime. The People’s Palace is surrounded by gentle green slopes bordering the River Clyde, but the city’s most deprived neighbourhoods are not far away.

Glasgow is rich in cutting-edge culture and world-famous architecture. A smattering of reports, however, have cast a shadow: the most unhealthy people in the UK live here, where there’s little sun; life expectancy is the lowest in Western Europe; the majority of Scotland’s poorest areas, with their criminal gangs, are in this city; and the fires of sectarianism are fanned all too frequently at local sporting events. This reference to endemic problems is offensive to inhabitants who believe that local heritage deserves more attention. Regeneration efforts are everywhere, as in the tour organized by one local official who decided it was time to let people see the brighter side of life in the much maligned Easterhouse area: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7626004.stm

Preview: Pt.2 (October 4, 2008) takes me to the True Crime section of a large bookstore in the center of town, where I set about searching for two books on a case that first rocked Glasgow in the 1980’s. You might be surprised, as I was, to find out why it's hard to get copies of the books today.

‘Metadata…Wild Type and Poorly Transformable Strains…’

Name-tags, handsewn onto clothing and other household items, are not something I see every day. Here’s one I have read and reread. The excellent quality of both bed sheet and label, the color and strength of their material permit me now, presumably a good long while after manufacture, to speak of their endurance.

Recently an acquaintance of many years placed a suitcase (that briefly belonged to me and then went into storage in her whereabouts) out on the street – common practice in Amsterdam. The story of what happened next, as a result of the fact that she did not remove the name-tag with my name, address and phone number on it, is for another day, but the fortuitous development of that story after its reckless launch has prompted me to display the text found on this sheet. Which, by the way, I did not pick up off the street. But I do not know how it entered my home.

Mr/Mrs/Ms J. Kooistra: I have your sheet. I have no idea how it ended up in my linen closet, but I would be happy to return the white bed sheet with your name on it if you would tell me where to send it.

You might be the author of this thesis from 1974: Fate of donor deoxyribonucleic acid in wild type and poorly transformable strains of haemophilus influenzaeas well as subsequent related articles in medical journals. J. Kooistra is apparently still a Senior Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Utrecht University, and is the co-author of Metadata as a means for correspondence on digital media (…Metadata derive their action from their association to data and from the relationship they maintain with this data…)

Or are you an Attorney in Wyoming, Michigan? Perhaps Dr. Kooistra, a Pediatric Pulmonary Disease Specialist in Wisconsin in the USA, who also helps children with asthma at a summer camp?

J. Kooistra the poet writes in Frisian, the language of the northern Dutch province of Friesland (and an official EU minority language!): Ik ha dy nedich, dû bist myn lêste treen, ik bin as deze himpen, rûch en rimpen, mar dû bist sêft as simmerreen, simmerreen. J. Kooistra also co-authored A Shorter Introduction to English Literature, a reference work which went through 18 editions but which was originally published in 1937, so I don’t think this sheet belongs to him. (Another Frisian J. Kooistra is locally known as the ‘Frisian Wiesenthal’ for his work on thousands of World War II casualties related to the province) Evidently a good number of Kooistra’s are literary figures in Friesland. And they get around: several years ago, J. Kooistra taught a course in Creative Writing: PROSE FICTION at Nipissing University in North Bay, Canada, where in September 2008 they just held a one-day welcome back powwow – there are hundreds of First Nation, Inuit and Métis students studying at Nipissing!

J. Kooistra is at the same time a veteran fire-fighter in the city of Portland, Maine, in the USA, where he became involved in a defamation suit around a colleague known for looking at women with “elevator eyes” – the court case, I should report, involved more grievous claims. And J. Kooistra is at work as a carpenter in Leeuwarden in Friesland back in the Netherlands, where the surname has its origins. You might want to visit his website if you are fond of sound effects: http://www.timmerbedrijf-jkooistra.nl/index.htm

If you want your sheet back, send me your address.

Wallace is a Good Speaker - Pt. 1

My neighbour thinks that basically I’m a good person, easy to get along with, probably affectionate with friends. He has never said as much, and he wouldn’t; that would be ungentlemanly, and Wallace is very well-mannered. But I can see the expectation in his eyes. I know how to read drunks, and he knows that I know. So I'm safe: he'll keep trying to bamboozle me; I'll glide through like a fairy. He'll never know I'm real.

From the very first indication of physical violence between Wallace and his friend, or boyfriend, roommate or protégé, whoever he is (I’ve never seen him), our communications have resembled communications between trusted acquaintances - the constructive, hopeful words that fall between pitched battles, the words spoken by the strong, who, however stressed and strained, know about the promise of serenity, know that they should want it. He knows that I want peace and quiet, and somehow I think that part of him (the part that does understand conflict) wants that for me, too. I suppose he uses our brief conversations to regroup. I use them as a security measure, knowing that a well executed sentence can provide protection in more ways than one.

But we are not friends. We rarely speak, and when we do, we are in the hallway of the apartment building. I am on my way in or out and the noise of my keys has drawn him to his door. Wallace is always impeccably groomed. Elegant silk shirts fall gracefully on his slender frame and his shoes gleam. Even the smoke of his thin cigarettes has a certain dash to it as it spirals off towards the staircase. His appearances are almost always for the purpose of apologizing for the most recent eruption. There’s no rhythm to the schedule. I’m out a lot, and I’m sure I miss some of the sparring, but when at home I’m no longer surprised by the shouts and thuds, the crack of a body slamming against a wall. So yes, I would really like to see this come to an end. But another part of Wallace enjoys the spectacle, of course, not the actual fighting, not even witnessing my discomfort, but his role as the eloquent narrator, as though it’s the best tale he can tell, and it will go on and on. Part of the plot is that he is apparently trying to help this other person. This story line has emerged in the notes he has started slipping under my door.

Always great to be back in Catalunya

From: The Acoustic Properties of Clay (fins quan?)

El Masnou is a municipality rising to the west from the sea: a maze of alleys, staircases and undulating north-south roads has grafted the town onto the hilly terrain...the old steps are too wide to take one at a time, so you must hobble down. A gutter slashes a central drain for late-summer rains which flood the main road below, blocking traffic between Barcelona to the south and France to the north.
You reach that road: hectic and flat, parallel to the beach, but separated from this and the train station by the road. You walk on: one hour north along the boardwalk to a beach café, placed a few metres to the right of the boardwalk on the beach, next to a site of marina construction. A sand dike sustained by rocks is topped with an idle machine, whose cabin and shovel are rusty. The side panel bears graffiti: fins quan? When will it end? Inside the café, cyclists de-helmet and sip coffee, as do walkers who have just fed the wild cats living inside the rock piles. The men perched high on the jetties to catch fish for the cats tend to keep to themselves. (Sit on a bench to take a longer look. ) A frail but impeccably groomed elderly couple is out for a stroll. They cannot travel far and take in every detail on their abbreviated route. A hand-written notice (…when will it end?) has been fastened to the fence separating the boardwalk from road-works. They pause to read the sign, the woman’s hand gripping the man’s forearm...

...to re-enter town from the beach, you brave the tunnels linking the boardwalk and railway lines with the sidewalk. In your mind there are several, one opening to town and the beach and the northbound trains, another with an exit to the train heading south. Each line has its own ticket booth. If you need a ticket for the opposite direction, you must run back into the tunnel and rush (if you can, the tunnels are wide enough for only two people) to the other end, ascend to street level and find the entrance to the alternate tunnel which will take you back to the other platform. This tunnel could also take you back to the beach, so avoid missing the exit, because if you arrive at the beach and think that you were in the wrong tunnel and search for the entrance to the other tunnel and enter there, you will find an exit to the railway line along which you do not want to travel. [fins quan?]

New Words in Dutch used in English

A credit card company offered me thirty free minutes on (in?) a golf simulator (I looked it up: a golf simulator [the Dutch word is formed by joining the two English words, and the Dutch word was used in spite of the fact that the advertisement was distributed in English], not surprisingly, creates a sort of virtual golf), thus engaging my brain in one of a myriad of wasted moments of alarm and desolation triggered by marketing campaigns.

Even though I have acknowledged feelings of being harassed by golf and its marketing campaigns since the final decade of the 20th-century, the point at which I created computer and paper files to accommodate my habit of holding on to all golf-related information which came my way, and in spite of the fact that the feelings of harassment have been toned down by my having recently embarked on a quest to find peace with golf, the truth is that it’s one of the few sports that really bothers me. I have chosen not to speak up until now, largely because a good number of individuals I like and even love are or have been committed to golf to some extent. For the time being I find it unnecessary to embellish upon the specific issues which might bring sadness to others.

It may seem that I have done everything possible to avoid talking about golf with that vulnerable group of devotees, but this is not the case. I have in fact actively pursued the subject of golf, in a manner that would allow me to learn more about the science of the sport, and explanations of certain golf-specific subjects, such as the handicap system, have invariably been complex and truly interesting. I have even gone out to play on a real golf course, dressed in golf clothes. It rained that afternoon, so the game was cancelled.

Some of the subjects in my golf files (which exist under the general heading of ‘The Rise and Fall of the Global anti-Golf Movement’ ) include: golf simulators, golf and globalization, fair pay for caddies, regional land disputes, farmland sold to golf course developers, farmers forced off their land to make way for golf courses, farmers who take up golf in their spare time, burial grounds excavated to create golf courses, environmentally-friendly golf courses, climate change and the future of golf, golf colors/fashions and accessories, the golf course as sanctuary, my Father’s private golf course in our back yard, growth and loss sectors in the golf industry, the history of golf, golf in China, golf etiquette, gender and race on the golf course, etc. Contributions to the archive are always appreciated. Thank you in advance.

It Had to Happen Sometime Pt.1

Onward, Mississippi is not a rallying cry for this state in the southern USA, but rather the name of a location, a town at a crossroads. Not the crossroads of Robert Johnson and the Devil and the birth of the Blues fame, that's farther north in the Delta. Onward marks the spot where drivers of cars heading North anticipate entering the 'real' Delta, and where south-bound travellers leave the flat Delta fields behind. Either way, people stop for gas or food at the Onward market, becoming aware, if they didn't already know, of the site's true claim to fame: the mythology around the origin of the term 'Teddy Bear.'

At the heart of the legend is President Theodore Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a bear cub while on a hunting trip. A remarkable tale, as Teddy Roosevelt was so assertive at other moments: he championed the triumph over Natives in the American West as well as in other continents, where the ‘dominant races’ had pushed on bravely and avoided the shame of leaving these vast terrains as ‘nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages;’ he led key campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and he was the overseer of Panama’s ‘liberation’ from Colombia and the subsequent construction of the Panama Canal.

I remember staring in confusion (for quite a long time) at the signs in Onward. The only feeling I could identify was ambivalence: inspired by Teddy's legacy (other hunters have spared cubs, but few to none have been Presidents), the Delta's past and present and the unifying role of the sweet stuffed creature. At the time, nobody could have imagined that this, too, would change.

No Coincidence

Had I remembered to take the book I was reading when I left the house, none of this would have happened. Recalling the events of that ride is as hectic as the journey through the over-built landscape of the Netherlands at locomotive speed is peaceful, or so one might expect.

The train sped through fields lower than the barges on the parallel waterway with its perfect border of trees. I held my small digital camera by the window and switched from photos to video, to record the conversation in the seats behind me, but the microphone is evidently not as good as the lens. (You'll only hear a cough, not the early evening chatter about mathematical theories.) Many people in Holland are concerned about the intrusion of industry throughout the countryside, as illustrated by the buildings seen from the train, but the family behind me laughed with delight, and recited the countdown out loud in three languages.