Fake Grass, Real Stickers

The newspaper from Texas arrived in Amsterdam with a visitor, who, like others before her, had kindly contacted me before leaving her home to ask if there was anything I wanted from the USA.

“A local newspaper, please.”

I like reading the most local of stories, of knowing that I’m supporting a local economy somewhere by encouraging the purchase of what I consider to be an important presence in each community. For the traveller, newspapers are not expensive. They are readily available and pose no packing problems.

The Texan delivered.

As the headline above reveals, the story that caught my eye concerned a resident of Dallas caught up in a legal battle over his front yard. His home stands in an urban zone of historical importance, and inhabitants have obligations: buildings and property must be maintained. The photograph of the man published with the article is slightly blurred, taken from a position higher than the subject. Motion, height: I imagined the photographer cruising past the man in a tall pick-up truck, vibrating in suspension over monstrous tires, the engine toned down to a percolating rumble as the subject was approached.

The pick-up passengers might have spoken with the man, although the article quotes a daughter, not the man himself, to explain his point of view. His English, it seems, was not very fluent. The picture might have been taken by a photographer drifting past in a helicopter, zooming in as the chopper sought balance in mid-air. As portrayed, the man does not seem to object to being photographed, but he does look sad. He had gone to great lengths to provide his home with a decent yard, but now, if I remember correctly, Dallas officials had ruled that the fake grass (widely used in the region, easily available) had to be removed, because it didn’t match the house on the lot.

I was also struck by the free color insert in this edition of the newspaper: stickers for readers’ appointment books. ‘Swimming pool services’ and ‘hunting season’ had two stickers each, while ‘family reunion’ had only one.

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.

At Lurline's Behest

From the International Letters Home Archive emerges correspondence between Lurline Birchum and her mother. The fonts in this typeset version appear to have been selected with the aim of replicating the appearance of the original handwritten version. It is unclear whether the earlier handwritten version was notated by Lurline herself or put on paper by another literate townsperson at Lurline's behest. The glossary with pronounciation guide indicates that reception of the letter would have been dependent on accurate phonetic delivery of the contents. In all their brevity, the documents offer poignant insights into small-town life.

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.

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

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

Not so very long ago:

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

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

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

Time heals everything
Claim (cultuur = culture)

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

The May 2 post included:

splendid isolation

for Kids
Outlet
Copyright or wrong

In focus
Update
Never a dull moment
Next
Something rotten

Now back to my vacation.

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.

One Small Victory in the Bailout Era

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not your card. WE own it.

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

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

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

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

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

I don't think anyone mentioned retail.

Well, you mean it wasn't retail?

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

‘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.

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.

Rising sea levels in literature

Time to release my files, to offer transparency on documentation I’ve held onto, some of it for a very long time. First up: the “Roses are red…”quips written by a childhood friend on the back of a card which reads “Learn to complain without suffering.” This appealing take-off on the self-help industry was ahead of its time. As young girls we were amused by the messages on both sides of the cardboard. As an adult, I acknowledge that some cardboard should stay, but some should go.

Papers from my archive that can and should be recycled include blow by blow accounts of family feuds; detailed daily logs from offices, church organizations and sports clubs; Christmas newsletters containing hyperbolic reports of the achievements of one family; Certain love letters; Copies of third-time reminders of subscription cancellations; Photocopies of an article from a South Florida newspaper describing ´Floribbean´ cuisine from the ´mango gang.´ After all:
There are only four years to go before celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Julio Cortázar’s Cronopios and Famas (Historias de Cronopios y de Famas), a work addressing a number of socio-cultural concerns as relevant today as they were in 1962. Nonsense, you say, this literature of the absurd pokes fun at human foibles, but nothing is intended for serious reading. The author himself said he wrote the book for fun, but for many readers, this kind of fun can only be appreciated by those who have experienced not-fun or extreme discomfort. Cortazar’s commitment to the written word was experimental, intimate and irreverent. The texts in Cronopios and Famas are short, a length familiar to those who hoard undesignated jottings from train rides, notes from a seminar or thoughts that pile up during a telephone conversation and have nowhere else to go.

"As the scribes will persist, the few readers there are in the world are going to have to change their roles and become scribes themselves. More and more countries will be made up of scribes, and more and more factories will be necessary to manufacture paper and ink, the scribes by day and the machines by night to print the scribes’ work. First the libraries will overflow the houses, then the municipalities decide (now we´re really into it) to sacrifice their children´s playgrounds to enlarge the libraries. Then the theaters will go, then the maternity homes, slaughterhouses, bars, hospitals. The poor use the books like bricks, they stick them together with cement and build walls of books and live in cabins of books. Then it happens that the books clear the cities and invade the countryside, they go on flattening wheatfield and meadows of sunflowers, even though the Department of Highways manages to keep the roads cleared, even if only between two extremely high walls of books. At times a wall gives and there are terrifying automobile accidents. The scribes labor without let because humanity respects vocations, and the printed matter reaches the seashore. The President of the Republic gets on the telephone with the presidents of the republics, and intelligently proposes to cast the leftover books into the sea, which act is accomplished simultaneously on every coast in the world. Thus the Siberian scribes see their works cast into a sea of ice and the Indonesian scribes etc. This allows the scribes to step up their production as the earth again has space to store their books. It does not occur to them that the sea has a bottom and that at the bottom of the sea the printed matter is beginning to pile up, first in the form of a sticky pulp, then in the form of a solid pulp, and finally a tough though viscous flooring which rises several feet a day and will finally reach the surface. Then much of the water invades many of the lands and there is a new distribution of continents and oceans, and presidents of various republics are replaced by lakes and peninsulas, presidents of other republics see immense territories newly open to their ambitions, etc. Sea water, forced to expand with such unprecedented violence, evaporates faster than ever, or seeks rest. Blending itself with the printed matter to make that glutinous pulp, to the point that one day ships´ captains on the great trade routes report that their ships are advancing slowly, thirty knots drops to twenty, to fifteen, the engines sputter and pant and the propellers are wrenched and bent out of shape. Finally the ships stop wherever they are at different places in the sea, trapped by the pulp, and scribes all over the world write thousands of articles and books explaining the phenomenon and are filled with an enormous happiness. The presidents and the captains decide to convert the ships into islands and gambling casinos, the public arrives on foot upon the cardboard seas, and on these islands and casinos dance orchestras fill the night and sweeten the air-conditioned atmosphere and the dancing lasts until the early hours of the morning.. New printed material is piling up on the seashores, but it´s impossible to put it into the pulp, so that walls of printed matter are growing and mountains are being born on the shores of the old seas. The scribes realize that the ink and paper companies are going to go bankrupt, and their handwriting gets smaller and smaller and they use the most imperceptible corners of each sheet of paper. When the ink runs out they write in pencil, etc. When the paper goes, they write on slabs of wood or rock or on stone tiles, etc. The practice of intercalating one text into another begins to become popular, to take advantage of the space between the lines, or to scrape down the letters already printed with razor blades so as to use the paper again. The scribes are working slowly now, but their numbers are so immense that printed matter now separates the land completely from the bed of the ancient seas. On the earth the race of scribes lives precariously, doomed to extinction, and at sea there are the islands and casinos, or rather the ex-transatlantic liners, where the presidents of the republics have fled to refuge and where they hold enormous parties and exchange wireless messages from island to island, president to president, and captain to captain… (´End of the World of the End´, from Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar, 1962.)

Peace without Printed Matter Pt.1

Free local newspapers, advertising brochures with shopping coupons, neighborhood weeklies, take-out menu’s and single-sheet ads for everything from chimney-sweeping and fortune telling to computer courses are plunked down on adjoining treads of the stone staircase leading up from the sidewalk to the front doors of four apartments, of which one is mine. In this country we have the option of pasting “Yes” or “No” stickers on the outside of mail slots, indicating acceptance or refusal of unsolicited printed matter. Some people are happy to find all of the above-mentioned stock lying inside on their door mat. The refusals can mount up, visually represented by the piles of paper cluttering the steps. Strong winds carry the loose sheets up and down the street. Paper, plastic bags, candy wrappers, cigarette butts and fallen leaves are blown to shelter behind the wheels of bicycles chained to the stands allotted by city authorities. Counter-gusts send a similar trail into shrubs and sturdy stems in the narrowest of strip gardens, created by removing concrete sidewalk tiles from the ground where the pavement meets the apartment building walls.

When advertisements from nearby stores lie on the steps for days, I have been known to carry the damp, dirty bundle over to the shops in question to point out that their expensive printing project was not going according to plan, and to ask them if they might renegotiate distribution contracts to include instructions that printed matter not be left in the open air. So far almost no one in the stores - however stressed by the environmentally-unfriendly evidence - has felt able to identify the point of origin of delivery, much less exert any influence. I abandoned that effort.

One day, as I walked down the street, I saw a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with printed matter. She was a middle-aged Dutch woman, very engaged with her work and completely open to conversation about recycling and keeping the streets clean. Apparently she had been instructed to leave bundles of paperwork halfway up the steps from the street, thereby encouraging residents themselves to retrieve items of their interest as they walk up to the apartment entrances. Going all the way up the stairs to check for “Yes” and “No” stickers on the mail slots was too time-consuming. And finding lots of “No” stickers would mean that she - with back troubles - would be stuck with excess matter at the end of her route, and it would all be thrown out anyway, so why not leave it on the steps, allowing residents who didn’t want it there to cart it off to the nearby paper recycling bins? She understood my point of view, however, and promised, whenever possible, to not leave papers lying around. I see her from time to time, but I’ve also noticed that certain kinds of hand-outs are now delivered by persons of foreign origin, badly dressed, thin - possibly undocumented workers, earning a pittance by handing out flyers. Most recycled paper from the Netherlands is sold to China for the immensely profitable recycling industry there, which, I now understand, is enormously polluting. The family behind China’s recycling industry has accumulated great wealth. I still do recycle, although I'm not sure why.

Name as Gerund

http://www.boomerwolf.com/soundsmovies/single.au

The letter from Greece began with 'Deer Martha' and I imagined myself catapulted away from the computer, hooves clanging on bare floors as I struggled to stay in forward motion. I eventually found refuge behind trees and was thankful for the profound silence.

Martha Howley, Hooley, Ms. Horley - these arrived in the mail at later dates, with more boisterous connotations.

I completely understood the gender confusion and appeals to Mr. Hawley, Mr. Awley, Mr. Hawkey. Especially endearing was the message for Hans M. Hawley. My middle initial is actually "M," so it was impossible to know whether this was an encroachment upon my first or middle name. For a brief period I answered the telephone with "Hello, Hans speaking" to see how far this could go, but the Hans ID didn't really stick, and took up far too much time as I carefully screened callers, hoping to connect with the person who had called me Hans. I wanted to know why this had happened, but the story fizzled out in a series of exasperated explanations, and I let it slip away. There were other lines: Hauley, Hawkey, Hawky, Halwey, Hoawley, Fawley - it's astounding how many wrong names have reached me. I accept them all.

The freshest name has now come in clear black letters on a white surface. There was no address, and I missed the sound of the small package being thrust through the door. A beautiful new envelope arrived, bearing a gift and another new family sound, reminiscent of celebrities of our times. A gerund is a wonderful thing, releasing me from the still, dense forest.

Still, even or perhaps especially, under its own sounds: http://www.boomerwolf.com/soundsmovies/single.au

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!”

Typed Like He Talked

He was the most professional newsreader on the night shift at the radio. His colleagues preparing to read the news (to other listeners, in other languages) routinely entered the soundproof booth way in advance to shuffle papers, sift through the news items to locate pronunciation hurdles and to fumble with the soundboard knobs in the minutes leading up to a broadcast. Throats were cleared, tissues and water set near the mute button by the microphone, the double doors firmly secured to increase the intensity of the concentration. But he always strolled in at the very last minute, never late, slipped into the chair and found the bulletin on the table. A swift flip through the sheets of paper as if separating a deck of cards, and he read the stories on air, sight unseen, without hesitation.

A veteran sports announcer back at home in the Southern Cone, he survived for a time as a dissident and eventually fled to Europe where he was granted political asylum in Holland. Presiding over broadcasts to his continent of origin provided steady work, but it was too easy and what he really wanted to do was to return to live football commentary. When the opportunity to apply for this work arose in Spain, he was nervous for the first time in years. To prepare for the interview and announcing test, he sat in front of his TV during a live football game, turned off the sound, and recorded his own roared commentary on the players, their moves, the scores, prospects for the season and club histories, all of which he understood profoundly. There was no hesitation here either, and the only word which received extra time and, astoundingly, even more volume, was ‘GOOOOOOOOAL!’ The neighbors in his Dutch apartment building were concerned, and they called the police, who were relieved to discover that the man who had been shouting non-stop was unaccompanied. They silenced him that day, so there really was only one practice session, but he got the job in Spain, and sent a few letters, which rang true.

Thanks for Calling

Several years ago, I found part of Steve Walker’s boarding card in a hotel room.

I had been surprised to find the stub on the floor of the large closet when I pushed open the folding doors. The room appeared to be spotless, with only this fairly substantial paper scrap on the floor. It seemed to me - in this new era of heightened security - to be a significant discovery. Steve, the passenger, had evidently stayed in this same room a few days earlier, and the stub confirmed that he had flown into town. I say 'confirmed' because of the hand-written number covering the printed data, indicating the positioning of ground crew at a point where they observed progression of passengers into the actual body of the plane, as the only physical alternative to either remaining in the Gate area or vanishing back into the airport with a boarding pass, intact or otherwise. Passengers with hand-written numbers on their stubs were presumed to have boarded the flight and disembarked at the destination.
The most likely conclusion to be drawn after finding the stub on the closet floor was that he had stayed in this room. The chances of someone else having acquired his boarding stub were slim. Printed data included his name, date, origin and destination, so I found a telephone number for a person of his name in the location of 'origin' and I called him. I didn't call him to have him either confirm or deny having stayed in the hotel; I called him to ask whether he objected to me posting the image of a boarding stub with his name on it. He could have suspected a scam or a call center and slammed the phone down, or he might have wanted to keep me on the line long enough for a trace. I had no way of knowing.

Instead, he listened to my introduction and said yes, he had a moment for a conversation, and no, that wasn't him in the hotel room, and he had no objection to the transfer of printed data which didn't actually refer to him. Steve was relaxed, uninterested in internet activities. He laughed, and bid me farewell with the words ‘take care.’

He was very friendly, and I could imagine him using the stub as a bookmark, perhaps leaving the paperback on his seat by mistake, or giving it to the person seated next to him, who then checked into the hotel and left the stub behind in the closet.