White Eagles Over Serbia

Roman bridge near Janko Stone

 A few years ago, after a night camping in the North Cascades near Leavenworth, a friend and I found ourselves on an early morning hike up a long, open meadow.  A mist hung over the fairly steep meadow, and I was reminded of the moors of Scotland. 

I asked my friend to imagine ourselves struggling uphill with heavy packs on our backs, facing an emplacement of English troops above, firing down at us with rifles. 

My friend, familiar with my fantasies, rolled his eyes and shrugged.  And for me, as for him, the hike was all about the beauty of the area -- the emerald greenness of the grass, the dark, shadowy trees whose tops disappeared into the drifting mist, the silence broken only by the occasional calling of birds and my occasional tiresome babbling.  My thoughts of the violence of battle were merely an added fillip, a grace note, adding only slightly to the richness of the experience.

Lawrence Durrell has similar priorities in his novel of British espionage, White Eagles Over Serbia (1957). 

His hero, Methuen, is an old hand in the British "Special Operations Q Branch," (SOq), affectionately known as the "Awkward Shop."  He has just returned from four months in the jungles of Malaya -- yes, "Malaya," the story takes place in 1948 -- and is looking forward to possible retirement, or at least a long rest, when he is summoned by his superior.  Some odd things are going on in Tito's Yugoslavia, he learns.  They need someone with his background in the Balkans to ferret out what the deuce is happening, eh?  A recent agent, experienced, had been poking around in that area and turned up quite dead.  Awkward.

Methuen feels rebellious, but the Balkans have an irresistible appeal to him.  Especially in the mountains of Serbia near the Bosnian border, where they want to send him  The scenery is magnificent, and the fishing?  Incredible!  

The situation in Communist Yugoslavia is tricky -- Tito was on the verge of breaking up with Stalin -- and the British Ambassador is totally opposed to anyone from Britain snooping around in an area that is off-limits to foreigners.  Implacably opposed, and hostile to Methuen's arrival.  But he quickly softens when he and Methuen discover that they both -- like Methuen's superior back in Whitehall -- are avid fishermen.

Hey, they're British.  Izaak Walton, and all that.  

The British are permitted a weekly drive by their courier between the Belgrade embassy and a consulate in Skopje, Macedonia.  The area that has attracted the Awkward Shop's interest is in southwestern Serbia, near the courier's highway route.  Methuen is dumped off with a pistol, a few supplies -- and a fishing pole -- in an area where they are briefly out of sight of the Yugoslav tailing vehicle.  Luckily, as it turns out, Methuen not only speaks Serbian like a native peasant -- which he successfully passes himself off as -- but Bulgarian, as well.

From this point on, the novel is a magical travelogue of a primitive and mainly roadless area of Serbia, as it was in 1948.  Yes, there's a plot, involving an operation by Yugoslav royalist resistance forces -- the Chetniks.  An absorbing plot, but -- similar to my Highlands fantasy -- merely a device on which to hang some beautiful descriptive writings of the Serbian and neighboring Bosnian back country.

 The sun was sinking though its warmth still drugged the windless air and on this side of the mountains the flowers and foliage grew more and more luxurious, while the woods were full of tits and wrens and blackbirds.  The woods were carpeted with flowers, sweet-smelling salvia, cranesbill, and a variety of ferns.  Here and there, too, bright dots of scarlet showed him where wild strawberries grew, and in these verdant woods the pines and beeches increased in size until he calculated that he was walking among glades of trees nearly a hundred feet in height.

The novel shows Durrell's detailed knowledge of this country.  The plot involves a rendezvous at the Janko Stone.  Is there really a "Janko Stone," I wondered?  Yes, I find after a little research; it is the highest peak in Serbia (6,014 feet), and marks the boundary between Serbia and Bosnia. (A landmark now, unlike in 1948, reachable by road.)  I totally trust Durrell's descriptions of the country through which the rest of his hero's adventures occur. 

Lawrence Durrell is well known for his alluring and often impressionistic descriptions of Corfu, Rhodes, Cyprus, other Mediterranean islands, and -- less connected to reality -- Alexandria.  White Eagles was one of his earlier published writings, and showed the promise that was realized in his better known later works.

My knowledge of the former Yugoslavia is limited to cities.  The area has of course developed greatly since the 1950s.  But once travel is again possible, I would love to explore some of the mountains and forests of the area in which White Eagles takes place.

Even though I'm not a fisherman.

School in the time of Corona

Autumn quarter at the University of Washington begins on Monday.  I live a mile south of the campus.  Yesterday, I walked one of my frequent routes -- from my house to the university, and then looped my way around the campus.

The campus has been rather dead all summer, but was showing signs of returning to life.  But not vibrant life.  Ninety percent of the classes will be taught on-line.  Nevertheless, the dormitories are opening, for those who need them.  Because of decreased demand, many of the buildings will not re-open.  Students are being spaced in the dorms that do open so as to comply with distancing rules.  And the dining halls -- where so many interesting conversations took place in my own student years -- will be strictly a place to pick up meals to be eaten elsewhere. 

I was not aware of all these facts when I crossed the campus -- I was just out for a walk.  I'd even forgotten that the new academic year was about to begin.  But there were a number of students moving baggage  into some of the dormitories, which quickly reminded me of the time of year.  Many of the students seemed to be freshman -- they had that fresh, nervous, wide-eyed look -- and were being assisted by parents.

Everyone was wearing masks, which are mandatory on campus (or at least while inside campus buildings, and outside as well, where it's not possible to maintain six-foot distances).  A long line had formed outside my old dormitory -- McMahon Hall.  McMahon will not be opening fall quarter -- the line was for administering Covid-19 tests, which students have been requested to receive no later than 72 hours within arrival.

It occurred to me that the entire scene would have seemed surreal a year ago at this time.  Back when students were yelling and running around, crowding together and shoving each other.  (I don't mean they were acting like middle school kids -- just a bit exuberant.)  Everything was more restrained now -- masked, distant, and a bit tense.

But it still felt like beginning of term at an American university.  Since March, similar changes have been occurring throughout our entire society, of which the campus is a microcosm.  We are an adaptable species, psychologically as well as physically.  The surreal soon becomes the norm.  Students are still students -- even when masked and distanced.  Schools are still schools, even if the teaching is largely Zoomed, and even if the living quarters are more carefully regulated.

If I were 18 and beginning university studies this term, I might seriously have considered taking a year off and beginning a year later when college life -- one hopes -- would be back to "normal."  But maybe not.  I might have been so excited about going to college that the masks and the distancing and the Zooming would all have seemed just minor adjustments.  Certainly no greater adjustments than were leaving home, adapting to group living in a campus residence, or attending massive auditorium-sized lectures.

My best to all the new (and returning) students at the U-Dub. Have fun, and stay safe.

2020 unimagined

 

I imagine myself back in Miss Bell's Civics class, a required class in American government for high school seniors.  Or in my junior high school social studies class.  Most of the class staring off into space, bored out of their minds.  

"And so," Miss Bell intones, "the voters of each state select that state's electors, who then meet and elect the new president.  The new president is inaugurated on January 20."

And there I am, waving my arm in the air.

"What if the president was running for re-election and was afraid he was going to lose?  What if he said the other side was cheating, and the election results wouldn't count?"

Miss Bell rolls her eyes, as she so often has this year.  "Well, Don, what proof was there that the election was going to be fraudulent?"

"There wouldn't have to be!  The president could say that it was obvious that most of the country loved him, and the very fact that he lost the so-called election proved that there had been fraud?  The electors don't have to vote the way the way the voters vote, right?"

"Yes, Don, but the electors are devoted party members of the same party as the candidate who won their state's election."

"What if the state legislature decided instead to choose electors who would vote the other way?  Or what if the president just said that the whole election had been a fraud and a confusing mess, and he was staying in the White House and running the country until a new election could be held some day?"

Miss Bell looks at the clock.  "I think you're wasting our time again, Don.  Everyone in America, Democrat or Republican, believes in our form of government.  No one would allow the president to do what you're saying, and no president who would do such things would ever have been elected in the first place.  I think you should write science fiction novels, rather than study political science."

"But what if, some day, a president wants really bad to stay in his office, and no one in his party disagrees with him?  He's the president -- he controls the Army?  Who could stop him? 

The bell rings and the class comes to life.  "Well, we've wasted a lot of time today.  Please read chapter 34, "Separation of Powers," for tomorrow.  Don, please stay after class; I need to speak with you for a minute or so."

Prescience

 

On October 13, 2010, I posted a review of a book by Sigrid Nunez, entitled Salvation City.  My review began with the following words:

A new strain of flu, a world-wide pandemic, a death rate apparently exceeding that of 1918-19: No one should have been surprised, but no one was prepared. Moreover, this influenza virus frequently attacked the brain, leaving survivors with varying degrees of brain damage and memory loss.

Speaking of "brain damage and memory loss," I have no memory of ever writing this review.  I have no memory of ever reading the book.  Although I apparently reviewed the book, I do not own the book, nor is it loaded on my Kindle.  

I was so entranced by my own review, and by the foreknowledge that, ten years ago, it seemed to demonstrate of our present pandemic, that I did download the book on Kindle, and finished reading it today.  It's a nicely written YA novel about a 13-year-old boy named Cole who lost both parents during the pandemic, ended up with severe memory loss, and was put into foster care with a fundamentalist pastor and his wife in a small, Christian community in Indiana.  The story was interesting, but in today's Covid-19 world I was primarily interested in how the novel foresaw the details of our own pandemic.

The insights were stunning. While still living with his parents, as the disease first began to spread, Cole searched the internet trying to figure out what was happening.  He read headlines.

"W.H.O. Officials Call Pandemic "Inevitable.""

"Study Shows U.S. Ill-Equipped for Major Pandemic."

"Dysfunctional Health Care System Would Doom Millions, Doctors Say."

Afterward, living with the pastor, Cole looked back on what had happened.

When the second wave hit, everyone hoped it, too, would be mild.   A hope that died by the end of the first week.

Later, many people would say that if the schools had been closed right away, lives might have been saved.  But at the time, people argued that you couldn't just close the schools, because so many parents worked.  If they had to stay home to take care of their kids, a lot of them would lose income, maybe even their jobs.  

...

"How stupid can you get?"  a teacher who'd been fired for refusing to go to work told reporters.  "Anywhere people are crowded together is bad, but with school kids we're talking about a perfect storm of contagion."

...

In city after city, all over the world, the number of people appearing in surgical masks kept multiplying. ... But -- as happened almost everywhere -- there weren't enough masks to go around.  Some made do with scarves or other pieces of cloth, or they tried taping gauze or paper to their faces. 

...

When the first college students started getting sick, some health officials called for nationwide campus quarantines.  [T]he rate of infection among college students was turning out to be drastically high -- higher than any other group except prison inmates.

Toward the end of the novel, the boy's aunt, who lives in Berlin, comes to  Indiana to persuade the boy to come live with her in Germany.  She is appalled by the American response to the virus.

"But compared to Germany, the U.S. might as well be in the Third World, especially if we're talking about health care. Why did every other advanced country get through the pandemic better than the U.S.?

... 

"And it's so weird to see everyone still shaking hands," she said. "That is so primitive."  Cole figured this meant that everyone in Germany did the elbow thing, but it turned out they preferred the Hindu gesture of namaste.

There it is.  Ten years before the event, a novelist pretty well understood the effects a pandemic would have on America, and on Americans.  Government officials, especially in the Obama administration, also understood the potential danger, and drew up specific plans for handling such a crisis -- plans that I understand Trump ordered scrapped in 2019.  

As for myself, I have 140 book reviews on the Goodreads website, the vast majority of which have been copied over from this blog.  I remember something about each of those books, some more than others, of course.  And yet, I remembered nothing about Salvation City.  Reading it just now brought back no recollections.  Nor had I copied and pasted my review of Salvation City onto Goodreads.  

If I were superstitious, I'd doubt whether I actually wrote the review.  Some spiritual being prepared it, using my unique writing style, and inserted it into my blog for ... for what?  My edification?  As a message from Heaven to be passed on to you my readers?

Luckily, I'm a totally rational being.  I guess I just have a small lapse in my memory.  I hope that any memory loss doesn't mean that I've contracted Salvation City's virulent form of  "influenza."

AQI

Until a week ago, I had no idea what an "AQI" was.

Then we -- here in Seattle -- began feeling the effects of the great fires that were consuming California and Oregon.  A massive "pall of smoke," as journalists put it, had drifted out over the Pacific from those fires, and was now redirecting itself toward the northern Oregon and Washington coasts.

Suddenly, all we talked about was AQI.  When we weren't talking about Covid-19.

When I first saw the initials, I had to look up their meaning.  Our normally fresh Seattle air was suddenly thick with smoke, and the newspapers and on-line news and weather sources were full of current information on our AQI -- which I discovered meant "Air Quality Index."

Over the past weekend, Seattle's AQI swiftly rose to figures above 250 ("Very Unhealthy") and even above 300 ("Hazardous").  We were warned to stay indoors.  We were urged to construct indoor room purifiers out of various components that the articles seemed to assume we all had lying round the house.  (Like building an emergency vehicle out of your discarded carburetors and fuel pumps, plus any unused tires.)  I don't have asthma or chronic pulmonary problems, so I satisfied myself with staying indoors, hoping the lethal smoke wasn't slipping in through various cracks.

But I won't bore you with my subjective horror at confronting yet another existential crisis.  I'm simply interested in noting how quickly we all became conversant with AQIs, and the restrictions imposed on us by various levels of AQI.

My phone's weather app for Seattle gave both the current AQI, and the level of severity it represented. But I quickly discovered that no single reading of AQI fit the entire city.  The AQIs were more granular, differing greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood, and readings of some of these more specific AQIs could be found on-line.  Apparently, no sampling station exists in my Montlake neighborhood, but there was a station reporting from East Olive Street, a street that I pass on one of my daily walks.  I figured that was close enough, and set my phone to report the E. Olive numbers.

The "pall of smoke" hung over Seattle longer than originally forecast, meaning that I spent a week repeatedly checking my phone.  When the level first reached "Unhealthy," I cautiously stopped going for daily walks.  I sat in my dark house, watching as the level crept up to "Very Unhealthy," and even "Hazardous" at some nearby locations, although not (so far as I observed) at E. Olive.  You won't be surprised, knowing human nature, that when the level dropped down to merely "Unhealthy" again, I felt a great surge of gratitude.  I immediately went out for a fairly long walk.

The numbers kept dropping on Wednesday, and by Thursday had dropped into the category of "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups," (AQI between 101 and 150), which smelled like a happy day on a mountain top.  Yesterday, the first sprinkles began, and we dropped to "Moderate."  We had a good rainfall last night, and this morning, the AQI reading at E. Olive was an unbelievable 9 -- a rating of "Good," where "Good" means 0 to 50.  It has been "Good" all day today, and remains at 12 while I write this.  

I'm planning to forget as quickly as possible the AQI scale and its health implications.  I suspect, however, given the lack of interest of the government in combatting global warming, that it will be a critical set of numbers for us all in the future, and even more critical for the generations to come.

Decline of trust

David M. Kennedy is a Stanford professor emeritus of history, the author of well over fifteen books in his field (judging from my attempt to count the number on Goodreads) and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his study of the American people during the Great Depression and World War II. 

I discover that we were undergraduates in the same history department at the same time, he being a year younger than I was.  I feel that he has somehow out-excelled me!

I just finished watching his one-hour streamed lecture on "The History of the American Presidency."  It was a big subject for a short hour, but Kennedy is an excellent speaker and the lecture was well organized and well illustrated by photographs and copies of historical documents.  

I just apologized in my last post for publishing summaries of on-line lectures in my blog, and I don't want to try my readers' patience further.  I'll just say a few words about this interesting lecture.  

About half the lecture was devoted to the history of the office of the presidency, emphasizing how the power of the office has consistently increased.  The rise of mass media has permitted the president to appeal directly to the people, rather than to Congress.  And the rise of primary elections, beginning in 1910, and the resulting decline of political parties as the bodies which groom, vet, and select candidates has resulted -- and I would note, especially with Trump -- in the president's throwing off any ideological or philosophical shackles imposed by his membership in his political party, with his party's becoming merely one of his tools of governance.

His overall thesis was that "chronic frustration" is built into the American system of government.  The Constitution provides so many checks and balances that it is usually impossible for the winning party to get a program through Congress.  For this reason, and others, there has been a steady decline in confidence and trust in government.  But this is a decline that also applies to all institutions -- to the mainstream press and other media, and to experts of all kinds.  And a decline that applies most alarmingly to people's distrust of each other.  

This loss of trust exists at all levels of society, but is increasingly strong as we examine those less educated, those younger, and those with less financial stability.  It applies to distrust of the election process itself.  In a recent poll, 52 percent of voters believe that Trump will cheat in this year's election, and 39 percent believe that Biden will cheat.

Kennedy paraphrased a quotation from Alexis de Toqueville, in which that French student of American politics said that a despot doesn't mind if his subjects don't trust him; his concern is to prevent them from trusting each other.  (I note that Communist governments strongly discouraged development of any charitable or educational societies not directly controlled by the party.)  He noted that a recent survey of historians showed that, in their opinion, the worst president ever had been Nixon.  Not necessarily because of Nixon's policies, but because by his conduct he had weakened the structures of American government, and the people's trust in their government and the individuals holding political positions.  

Professor Kennedy offered no easy solution to America's decline in trust -- in their government, in their institutions, in each other.  He noted that a parliamentary system resulted in less of the "frustration" that has hurt American government, but neither urged nor foresaw any such revolutionary change in our own Constitution.

A New Birth of Freedom -- part 2

Note to Readers -- This is the seventh summary of a streamed lecture by Professor Domke that I have published this summer.  I am preparing these summaries primarily for my own benefit -- to organize in my own mind what Domke has said, and to have a record available for future reference.  I am providing little or none of my own thoughts or analysis; these summaries are just summaries.  As summaries, they may or may not be of interest to those of you who have generally been interested in my essays.

David Domke streamed his second lecture of this series -- "The Presidency and Leadership" -- from the interior of his rented RV, parked somewhere about twenty miles north of New York City.  He is working on behalf of his organization, "Common Power," visiting critical states where he meets with local Common Power staff people -- discussing tactics and firing up their enthusiasm.  He looked a bit tired, but full of enthusiasm himself.  He and co-workers had rented the RV in Seattle, and had already visited Montana, Minnesota, Chicago, Durham NC, Richmond VA, and New York.  They are bound for Boston and Maine.  He will still be on the road next Tuesday, when he delivers the third and last lecture of the series -- "The Senate for the Win." 

Trump is a demagogue; he is today's version of Joe McCarthy.  President Eisenhower helped end McCarthy's career, Domke feels.  But Trump is the president.  Demagogues rely on a certain narrative flow:
1.  Certain people endanger America.
2.  I can save us.
3.  I stand for "Real Americans."
4.  The show is always on.

Who have been Trump's "certain people"?  Immigrants, Hillary/Obama, the "Deep State," the "False News,"  bad allies (both foreign and domestic).  Since Covid-19, to these "certain people" have been added Democratic governors, street protesters, anarchists, and Joe Biden.

Until March, Trump would almost certainly have won, because of his claim that he had brought prosperity to America.  Since March, three major "explosions" have derailed Trump's route to victory.  These are his handling of Covid-19, his handling of the racial protests, and the nomination of Biden.

In a race for re-election, if the nation is on an even keel, not facing any acute crisis, the focus is on political and economic issues, not on the personality of the incumbent president.  But in times of crisis, the focus is on the president's history of leadership.  The voters judge leadership using three metrics -- competence, integrity, and empathy.  Such judgments of incumbents have been frequently made -- sometimes the incumbent was nonetheless re-elected, often he was not.  Examples:
--LBJ's handling of Vietnam -- judged incompetent and untrustworthy
--Carter's handling of the Iranian crisis -- judged incompetent.--
--Bush I's handling of the economy -- incompetent and lacking empathy (aloof)
--Bush II's handling of the Katrina disaster -- incompetent, aloof, untrustworthy (i.e., he lied)
--Obama's overseeing of Affordable Care Act -- incompetent handling of problems in execution.

Trump has been badly hurt by his handling of Covid-19.  The pandemic itself did not hurt -- he could have ridden it out by warning the public that we were in for a bad time and that the economy would be badly hurt, but that under his leadership we'd recover.  Instead, polls showed a huge drop in confidence in his leadership after the first couple of weeks of disastrous televised  press conferences.

Trump took a second major hit by his handling of the racial protests.  Instead of showing compassion and understanding of the feelings behind the protests, he came down hard on law and order.  The polls showed another drop, not quite as severe, in public confidence in his leadership.

Third, having Biden as his opponent has presented him with major problems.  Domke reminded us several times that this is not 2016.  Fairly or unfairly, Hillary Clinton had problems with voters that Biden does not.  Trump's campaign staff feel that attacking Biden is like attacking jello -- nothing they do makes any permanent dent in his popularity.

Biden has experience in handling pandemics.  With Obama, he helped defuse the Ebola threat.  They prepared a program of how to confront probable future pandemics.  Last October, Biden warned that we were not prepared for an epidemic.  Trump  had rolled back all the proposals contained in the Obama program.

Domke says that Biden has "hit the mark pretty well" handling the protests -- not perfect, but he's been far superior to Trump.  A large percentage of voters feel that Biden is better prepared to handle the protests.  He has an obvious history of empathy, and ability to bring people together.  He has a good relationship with Blacks.

Trump wins only if the economy makes a miraculous recovery in the next seven weeks.  Or if the pandemic should suddenly end.  Biden's advantages are these:
1.  He's ahead in the vital states.
2.  Biden's advantages in personality and history, indicated above, are valuable.
3.  The debates will be crucial.

Biden is an able debater.  If he wins the debates, he will win the election comfortably.  If Trump were able to improve his apparent personality, he could get back into the race.  But he probably is unable to do that.  Not in seven weeks. 

Pre-election approval of a vaccine is not going to win for Trump.

Biden can't be complacent.  Nationally, 96 to 97 percent of probable voters know already for whom they will vote.  But in the battleground states, it takes only a few votes one way or the other, to change the result.  That's why Domke and Common Power are working so hard in those states -- not just on persuading uncertain voters, but on encouraging turn-out and opposing voter suppression..

In answer to a question at the end, Domke said that yes, he is concerned about post-election violence in the nation, regardless of who wins.  "There is no easy path forward for America.  I'm sobered by that."

It's all metaphor

And I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God upon the earth." 

--Revelation 16:1

And what were those seven bowls of wrath?  I'm so glad you asked:

1.  Loathsome sores.
2.  Sea turns to blood.
3.  Rivers and springs turn to blood.
4.  Heat wave scorches the earth with fire.
5.  Darkness covers the land.
6.  The River Euphrates dries up, and demon frogs issue from the mouths of the dragon, of the beast, and of the false prophet, gathering the leaders of the world for battle.
7.  Global earthquake.

You see where I'm going, right?  I'm not sure about the loathsome sores, or the water turning to blood.  All I can say is that I've been suffering from flea bites, and we all know about toxic "red tides."

But let's jump down to Bowl Four -- heat wave and fire.  Global warming, right?  It's been a hot, dry summer here in the Northwest Corner.  A real "scorcher," as we say, usually humorously.  But now we pay the price.  The entire West Coast is "scorched with fire," just a small warning of what lies ahead for the rest of you climate change deniers.  As James Baldwin reminded us back in 1963

God gave Noah the rainbow sign
No more water, the fire next time.

Bowl Five -- I look out my window each day, the past few days.  A pall of smoke covers Seattle.  The sun is hidden.  The sky is a foreboding orange color.  The birds aren't singing.  The darkness may not be total blackness, but it is dark.  And the darkness covers the land.

I have no idea what the River Euphrates has done in the past few days.  But human intervention has had an adverse effect on the river over the long term:

Apart from the changes in the discharge regime of the river, the numerous dams and irrigation projects have also had other effects on the environment. The creation of reservoirs with large surfaces in countries with high average temperatures has led to increased evaporation; thereby reducing the total amount of water that is available for human use.
--Wikipedia

"Increased evaporation" -- get it?   It's drying up.  And we all know who the "false prophet" is.  The self-appointed "Chosen One," sitting in his Oval Office surrounded by his dragons and his beasts, with demon frogs pouring forth from their mouths, grotesque demons in the form of lies and vituperation, revenge and incompetence, bullying and insecurity -- loathsome twitters and and furious tweets.  Draw your own conclusions of whom I speak.

And the seventh bowl?  The great earthquake?  We haven't had that yet.  We haven't had the Big One.  But we're due.  Oh, we are so due!  Any day now.  An event to help us forget every one of the six earlier bowls.

But ignore the warnings, folks.  I'm probably wrong.  Tomorrow will be sunny, the skies will be blue again, the birds will be chirping, and angels will sing us to restful sleep.

Turn on the TV, have a glass of wine.  Ignore the beggars, the homeless, the starving refugees,  outside your window.  It's been a harsh six months, hasn't it? We all deserve a little relaxation.

Everything Sad is Untrue

Most of us remember the One Thousand and One Nights from our childhood (we probably called it the Arabian Nights).  And we may remember some of the stories that were contained in that book -- for example, "Sinbad the Sailor" and "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp."  (Although both of those stories were later additions, not found in the original versions.) 

We also probably remember the framing story -- how the evil king Shahryar, angry with an unfaithful wife and thence with the entire female gender, begins marrying one woman after another.  Each is married for one night, and then executed.  This goes on for some time until he marries Scheherazade.

Scheherazade entertains her new husband by telling him a story.  Just as it gets to the exciting part, the sun rises, and she quits.  Anxious to know how the story turns out, the king lets her live another day.  The next night, she finishes the story, but then starts another.  This goes on for, well, 1,001 nights.

David Nayeri, a 36-year-old immigrant from Iran, uses the Arabian Nights frame for a story of his own -- Everything Sad is Untrue.   For a Scheherazade figure, he uses his memories of his own 12-year-old self, recently arrived with his mother and sister in Edmond, Oklahoma, as an immigrant-refugee from Iran.  The young David ("Daniel" in the book) speaks to us, the readers of the book, as he also speaks to his seventh grade class in junior high school.

In Iran, Daniel and his mom had been Sayyeds -- direct descendants of the Prophet, and revered for that reason.  His father was a dentist, and his mother was a doctor, with both a Ph.D. and an M.D. to her credit.  They lived in Isfahan, probably the most beautiful city in Iran, "the city of covered bridges.  The city that smells of jasmine."  Their home was beautiful --  he recalled most strongly the smell of jasmine, and the glass-enclosed room within the house, with live trees and birds.  Kids in Oklahoma knew nothing of his past, and saw him differently.

I am ugly and I speak funny.  I am poor.  My clothes are used and my food smells bad.  I pick my nose.  I don't know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games.  I don't know what anybody wants from me.

But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what he saw.

Like you, I want a friend.

He describes himself as a "mazloom" -- "a puppy.  But not a happy puppy, a kicked puppy.  ...  A victim."  He is laughed at.  He is bullied.  He is "different," and Oklahoma apparently isn't a place in which to be different.   But he is strong in ways that his classmates don't understand.  He has experienced a lot, and he has made himself strong to survive his experiences.  He's a survivor.

His teacher asks him to tell the class something about himself.  She gets more than she bargained for.  He stands before the class, and speaks on and on and on.  He tells his own 1,001 tales.

He begins with the origin stories of his family, arising out of myth and legend, stories that are strange and wondrous -- but that leave us the readers, as well as his classmates, confused as to where he is going.  He reminds us that he is speaking only from memory, his patchwork memory of events and his memories of what others have told him.  Bits of memories of myths and legends.  "A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee."  But he also tells us that legends "are more detailed than myths, but not always more accurate." 

He approaches the present, telling stories of his grandparents and great-grandparents.  Finally, we learn of his mother's conversion to Christianity, a conversion she embraced with zeal, with no interest in acting "prudently."  Conversion by a Muslim to Christianity is a capital offense under the laws of the Islamic Republic.  She is arrested, perhaps tortured.  She manages to escape through a series of coincidences that she understandably considers miraculous, and takes her children aboard a flight to Dubai, leaving her husband behind. 

After years of detention in refugee camps in Dubai and then Italy -- times often harrowing -- always afraid that the Iranian secret police would find them and kill them, the family finally receives permission to immigrate to the United States, and to live initially with a sponsoring family in Oklahoma.  Daniel is a lonely boy, a homesick boy, a boy who misses his relatives back in Iran, who misses the smells of jasmine, the familiar food of home.  Who misses his abandoned stuffed animal, Mr. Sheep-Sheep.  A boy who lives a life of poverty, suffering the disdain of his fellow students in Oklahoma.

And then he begins telling his stories, often to the ridiculing remarks and sneers from his listeners -- remember seventh grade? -- but with remarkable empathy and forbearance from his teacher.  Caught up in the stories he tells us, the stories of strange ancestors or of his own life experiences, it is only toward the end of the book that we seriously recall the framing story.

His father receives  permission to visit America for a couple of weeks.  Daniel's classmates are interested to meet this father they've heard so much about, to find out to what extent Daniel has been telling tall tales.  The father arrives, not at all impressive in appearance, knowing little English, but gregarious, totally self-confident in his own importance, and displaying an unfeigned interest in each person he meets.  He answers questions, with Daniel translating, and then -- in a brilliant move -- brings out baklava for everyone in the class, and wins their hearts. 

"Your dad's awesome," said Daniel W."

Daniel's chief tormentor approaches him a bit later.  Daniel cringes, awaiting pain.  "Yeah, man," the boy says.  "How's the summer going?" 

Daniel is a thoughtful boy, and he remembers all his teacher has done for him -- "she had always known which to be -- a teacher who speaks or a teacher who listens" -- and he walks up to her and says "Thank you, Mrs. Miller."

She was the best teacher I ever had, and she was crying a little, so I walked off before she could hug me or anything.

I don't think Daniel becomes suddenly popular.  But he is accepted.  His classmates had listened to him.  His father was not only a cool guy, but spoke the same thoughts as had his son.  The class came to know Daniel, just as the king came to know Scheherazade.

The point of the Nights is that if you spend time with each other -- if we really listen in the parlor of our minds and look at each other as we were meant to be seen -- then we would fall in love.  We would marvel at how beautifully we were made.  We would never think to be villain kings, and we would never kill each other.  Just the opposite.  The stories aren't the thing.  The thing is the story of the story.  The spending of the time.  The falling in love.

All the good stuff is in between and around the things that happen.  It's what you imagine I might be like when I'm not telling you a story, but we're sitting together in silence.  Would my hands be fumbling with themselves in my lap? Would I be nervous? Would I love it if you asked about Final Fantasy? And would I say yes if you invited me to your house?

Daniel is still a sad boy.  He misses his grandfather, who he will never see again before he dies.  He misses life in Iran.  But he sees a path forward in America. 

We are proud of him, and  confident of his future.

A New Birth of Freedom -- part 1

David Domke

Professor David Domke delivered a streamed lecture tonight entitled "American Democracy in Crisis," the first in a three part series entitled "A New Birth of Freedom."  Professor Domke is the past chairman of the School of Communications at the University of Washington, and has delivered a number of prior lectures, some of which have been noted in this blog.

As the titles of the series and of the lecture indicate, Dr. Domke is gravely concerned about the state of American democracy.  He listed what he described as three existential challenges facing our Nation:

• Racism -- a threat in various forms from the time of the first European settlements.


• Covid-19 -- a threat since February of this year.


• Decay of democracy -- a threat since, in Domke's opinion, 1994, when Newt Gingrich became House Speaker, and the Republicans took a majority in both houses of Congress. 

The decay in democracy takes many forms, but he considers the most pressing to be:

• Gerrymandering, which has resulted in only about 30 of the 435 Congressional districts being swing districts.


• Undemocratic effects of the electoral college system, which have resulted in over-representation of white voters and of small states.


• Voter suppression, which he discussed in detail in an earlier series.

The electoral college system has resulted in five elections where the candidate receiving a minority of the votes won the presidency.  The candidates so elected were John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.  Biden will almost certainly win the majority vote this year, and the Republicans will then have won a majority of the popular vote in only one of the past eight elections -- the second term election of George W. Bush.

Nevertheless, Trump may well win a second term.

Domke supports, ultimately, enactment of the Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a compact that will come into effect when adopted by states representing at least half of the electoral votes, pledging that the signatory states will bind their electors to vote for the candidate who receives a majority of the nation's voters -- a compact that would reduce the electoral college to a formality with no functional importance.

Otherwise, at some point, if our system allows a minority party to retain power, election after election, a majority of Americans will give up on the concept and workability of our democracy,.

With respect to voter suppression, Domke notes that the Democrats have reacted to changes in the electorate by expanding the diversity of its membership and have come to support policies benefiting those members.  The Republicans have reacted by creating an election system that makes it more difficult for the poor and the non-white to vote, by appointing opponents of voting rights legislation  (most notably Chief Justice John Roberts) to the Supreme Court, and by following a Senate majority leader who has absolutely "no interest in democracy."

Domke's interest is in expanding American democracy by extending the franchise to all citizens, insofar as possible.  He disclaims partisan concerns, except insofar as in recent years the Republican party has fought against every attempt to make voting easier and more democratic.  He reminds us that in 1964, Congress nearly passed a bill to liberalize voting requirements, with more support among Republicans than Democrats.

He concluded with a two-minute excerpt from Representative John Lewis's 2019 speech before the House of Representatives, supporting election reform   It was a powerful conclusion to the lecture.

From Isfahan with sorrow

 

  Imagine you're evil.

  Not misunderstood.

  Not sad.

  But evil.

  Imagine you've got a heart that spends all day wanting more.

  Imagine your mind is a selfish room full of pride or pity.

  Imagine you're like Brandon Goff and you find poor kids in the halls and make fun of their clothes, and you flick their ears until they scream in pain and swing their arms, and so you pin them down and break their fingers.

  Or you spit in his food in the cafeteria.

  Or you just call him things like cockroach and sand monkey.

  Imagine you're evil and you don't do any of those things, but you're like Julie Jenkins and you laugh and you laugh at everything Brandon does, and you even help when a teacher comes and asks what's going on and you say nothing's going on, and he believes you because you get A-pluses in English.

  Or imagine you just watch all of this.  And you act like you're disgusted, because you don't like meanness.  But you don't do anything or tell anyone.

  Imagine how much you've got compared to all the kids in the world getting blown up or starved, and the good you could do if you spent half a second thinking about it.

  Suddenly evil isn't punching people or even hating them.

  Suddenly it's all the stuff you've left undone.

  All the kindness you could have given.

  All the excuses you gave instead.

  Imagine that for a minute.

  Imagine what it means.
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I'm reading Everything Sad is Untrue, by David Nayeri.  A fictionalized memoir by the author, written as though he were still a 12-year-old immigrant from Isfahan, Iran, attending junior high school in Edmond, Oklahoma.

I'm only about one-fifth of the way through.  The story is narrated as the boy's presentation to his class, telling them of his memories of his homeland, but presenting it -- as he clearly states -- sometimes as literal truth, sometimes as myth, and sometimes as historical legend.  He tells it in segments, as Scheherazade told the One Thousand and One Nights, ending each segment with a "cliffhanger."  He is a boy who speaks of the great Persian poets, a boy who begins the book with an epigraph from The Brothers Karamazov.

You might be thinking.  "What kind of twelve-year-old talks like that?"
And I would say, "The kind of twelve-year-old that speaks three languages."

He speaks Farsi, Italian, and English.  Plus a private language he made up when he was younger.

I'll review this book when I finish it.  It's a story of myth, history, geography, and private fantasy -- all used as means to tell a greater truth -- and a memory of how it felt being a sensitive and highly imaginative Iranian child plunked down in the aggressively unimaginative world of an Oklahoma junior high.

Regardless of how the story ends, I know my review will be favorable.

Need to travel

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” 
– John A. Shedd

Eleven days ago, I drove about 120 miles north to the tiny town of Newhalem, where I took custody of my new kittens.  That's the only time I've been outside the city limits of Seattle since mid-March.  The only time I've been really beyond walking distance of my house, for that matter -- luckily, walking distance for me is a fair distance.

As I've noted before, I confess that I'm lucky.  I don't live in a small flat in Queens, with total congestion outside my apartment building.  I can venture out for a walk without much fear of contagion.  I hate to complain.  I urge others to be patient.  I keep so urging myself.

But today, one of my relatives-by-marriage, a resident of San Diego, posted photos of her husband, her dog, and herself on the ferry to Block Island, where her dad has a vacation home, back East in Rhode Island.  I was too flabbergasted to ask for further details, but I assume they flew.  They all looked happy.  

I seethe with jealousy. 

I'm jealous not out of any particular interest in visiting Block Island, but because she's traveling.  Not just 120 miles, but across the country.  

Some people need to socialize.  Some need to play sports.  Some need to make origami animals.  I need to travel.  It's in my history.  Since childhood.  It's in my blood.  I canceled three planned trips out of the country this year, because of Mr. Covid-19, and my heart is broken.

Oh, did I tell you?  I also like to whine.

I still have precarious plans to travel to Levanto, Italy, in May.  A one-year postponement of a birthday party I had planned for May 2020.  Only one couple who had been signed up for this year has indicated that they can't do it next year.  And we have two new couples who want to join us next year.  The deposit for the rentals last year has been retained, holding our rentals for 2021.

But my willingness to go through with it, and the willingness of most of the others to join me, depends on the availability of a vaccine that we believe to be both safe and efficacious.  The rumors about the date such a vaccine will be available vary wildly from day to day.  Will it be ready by November?  The end of the year?  Sometime in the spring?  Not until mid-2021?  In two years?

We hear all of these predictions.  I discount the November date completely.  I'm not interested in being injected with an "election special" vaccine that hasn't been proved both safe and effective -- i.e., that hasn't completed its Phase 3 testing.  But America's hero, Dr. Tony Fauci, says that at least one of the vaccines under development may be available to priority recipients by January.

I'm (cough cough) old enough to be a priority recipient.  So are many of the others in the group, and those who aren't may not be as concerned about the risks of travel.  (Exhibit A being those irritating relatives now lounging about on Block Island.)  If I could be assured of being vaccinated by April, the trip would be on.

There would still be issues to be resolved, such as how long the vaccination is effective, and whether Italy will drop its bar against American tourists by May.

I'm trying to be very rational in balancing my desire to travel against the risks involved.  But I begin to see why college kids throw caution to the winds, especially after a drink or two, and go dancing on crowded dance floors with their masks flung aside.

I really need to travel.  I need to hear spoken Italian, to walk Italian trails, to drink Italian Campari and Chianti, and to indulge in all the Italian varieties of pasta.  As done by Italian chefs.  I also need to talk to relatives.  Face to face.  One on one, and in groups.  Zoom is great, but it's not the same.

Well, we all have our little Covid-19 problems, and mine at least aren't medical.  I hope my readers are all doing well, physically and psychologically.  I find that keeping a sense of humor about my frustrations and irritations does help.

As does having a blog in which to vent. 

 "Stay healthy, y'all," as the saying goes!  

Leaving home

"Empty Rooms" ¹ is one of André Aciman's most accessible essays.  In it, Aciman is just a father, musing about the trauma of his sons' departure as they head off for college, leaving their childhood home on the Upper West Side of New York.

The essay contains a few of Aciman's favorite Proustian tropes -- for example, recounting how each night for years he deliberately imagined his future separation from his kids as he waited to pick them up from their school bus stop.  Why?  In order to dull the pain when the time arrived for the boys' actually departure.  But, more than with many of his essays, "Empty Rooms" is a musing over an experience that most parents confront, sooner or later, and a catalog of reactions that those parents share.   

His description of his relationship with his school age sons was so vivid that the last time I was in New York, staying in a hotel on the Upper West Side, I actually made a point of visiting the intersection of Broadway and W. 110th Street, the magical corner where Aciman waited each night to greet his sons.  My experience with that street corner was underwhelming.  But Aciman would not be surprised.  He has often described his belief that the romance or magic of a place depends less on its physical appearance than on the feelings and past experiences that the viewer brings to it -- an emotional "film" that covers the physical bones of the place, "a scrim, a spectral film that is none other than our craving for romance -- romance with life, with masonry, with memory, sometimes romance with nothing at all." ²

I had brought no "film" of my own to Broadway at 110th -- just my reading of Aciman.

I don't mean to analyze Aciman's essay.  But when I read "Empty Rooms," I came across a casual remark that started me thinking about my actual subject in this posting.  Aciman mentions that separation from his boys didn't hurt as much as he had feared, because "e-mail and cell phones kept my eldest son, in college, present at all times." and "In the morning, on his way to class in Chicago, he always managed to call.  A new ritual had sprung."

Similarly, I've read mothers' descriptions of how their son or daughter always calls on the way to class, of how her daughter calls in the morning and wants advice on what she should wear to class that day.  It seems like the kids never, for better or worse, really left home.

My own memories of "leaving home" are vivid.  My dad took time off work, and drove me to the local railway station.  We stood there, a bit awkwardly but companionably, waiting for the southbound train that would take me to California.  We were a bit like that Norman Rockwell painting.  And then I was gone until Christmas.  Long distance calls were expensive.  I may have called once or twice during the quarter, to share some information or ask some advice -- but we always remembered that after the first three minutes, additional charges began adding up.

I was just seven hundred miles from home.  I felt like I was in Africa.  When I stepped off the train home that first Christmas, the Christmas of my freshman year, the town looked strange and dark, hemmed in by the hills surrounding it.  Very unlike the sun and palm trees I'd begun to take for granted.

My nephew Denny now lives and teaches in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  A few weeks ago, Denny called me by Messenger video chat.  I was sitting in Seattle, he was sitting in northern Thailand.  The call was free, and the quality was so good that he could have been calling from the next room.  If Aciman's sons were in college today, they'd be grinning at each other on video chat.

Again, I'm reminded of my six months in Florence, Italy, during my junior year.  I suppose that a long distance call home would have been theoretically possible, but no one I knew ever attempted it.  The price would have been out of sight, and the quality -- judging from other Italian services at the time -- would have been poor.  My only communication with home was by aerogram -- a handwritten letter on thin paper that folded over itself for mailing.  I don't recall the postage being surprisingly high, but it took at least a week for it to be delivered, and another week for a reply to arrive back.  The only other form of communication, so to speak, was my parents' wiring of money to a bank in Florence to keep me afloat financially for another month or so.

What a different experience it would have been, for both me and my parents, if I could have video chatted with them -- if I could have waved the iPhone around to give them a glimpse of the Colosseum or the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

It would have been fun.  And yet.  And yet.  I wonder if something wouldn't have been lost -- whether I was just 700 miles away in California, or a hemisphere away in Italy?  The feeling that I was off on my own, surviving without the support of my parents.  An illusory feeling in some ways, considering the number of checks and wired payments moving from my home town (from a family that was really just scraping by at the time) to wherever I happened to be.  But psychologically, subjectively -- yes; I felt independent,  a feeling that left me both proud and a bit scared.

I suspect that  more than the average college student, I began my freshman year still very attached to my family.  And, of course, I still am.  But not having cheap cell phone service, not having video chatting, forced me to undergo a loosening of those ties that was necessary eventually and best accomplished when it was.  Even as I remained financially dependent, to a large degree.

So, I envy Aciman and I envy his sons.  I envy my nephew who -- unable to travel or receive visitors because of Covid-19 -- can at least speak effortlessly and with visual accompaniment with family and friends back home.

But I'm also glad that I came of age when I did, with the limitations that were imposed on us.  And of course, because we couldn't imagine the marvels of the future, those limitations seemed just a necessary part of real life.
--------------------------------------

¹  André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere, "Empty Rooms" (2011)
² Ibid., "New York, Luminous"