Strangers in Strange Lands

Gypsies. The word has a romantic ring to most of us. Wanderers. Folks traveling lightly, below the radar of whatever society surrounds them. Many an American RV and pleasure boat has the word "Gypsy" plastered on its side. Gypsy Biker. Sensual music and hot tempers: Think of the gypsy woman in Il Trovatore who throws a baby into a bonfire, and Carmen's passionate, dancing cigarette-girl.

Beyond these romantic images, we don't think much about gypsies in the U.S., although an estimated one million gypsies live in this country. But, as an article in this week's issue of The Economist discusses, gypsies are a serious problem in most of Europe, where similarities to our own racial discrimination against blacks are obvious.

Gypsies, or Roma, originated in Rajastan, in India, a thousand years ago. Their language (now broken into many dialects) is based on Sanskrit. (They were called "gypsies" in English, because of a mistaken belief that they came from Egypt.) They are concentrated most heavily in eastern Europe -- over ten percent of the populations of Romania and Macedonia are gypsy. They have been nomadic throughout history, although most now live in settled camps. Historically, they have had a reputation for theft and various scams on the non-gypsy population, but in today's world they often specialize as collectors, sorters, and sellers of scrap for recycling.

Gypsies today are survivors of Hitler's holocaust, which targeted gypsies along with Jews.

For the most part, gypsies are impoverished and very poorly educated, a permanent and self-perpetuating underclass. Because their racial characteristics usually aren't so distinct as to separate them from other European ethnic groups, those gypsies who do succeed in entering the middle class tend to stop identifying themselves as gypsies. They "pass as white," so to speak. While understandable, this abandonment of their origins obviously prevents these more ambitious -- or less clan-loyal -- gypsies from serving as role models for the ones left behind.

The writer in The Economist points out that gypsies are feared and shunned by middle class Europeans. (I once knew a boy whose family came from Hungary -- he would humorously shudder whenever the word "gypsy" was mentioned.) Europeans pull their kids out of schools where gypsies are admitted, an analogy to "white flight" in America. Gypsies are family and clan oriented, moreover, and have no aspiration, in general, to assimilate into the culture of their host countries.

The lack of education -- or, at least, of the kind of education that is required to flourish in modern Western society -- is a key to their poverty and to their segregation. The Economist suggests that some form of affirmative action, similar to that used by American schools -- until the recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting its use -- may be the best long-term solution to the gypsies' ills. Unfortunately for that approach, although most gypsies would love a higher standard of living, they are not willing to sacrifice their own separate culture to attain it.

The Economist article ended with little optimism that a solution to the "gypsy problem" would be found in the near future. Their plight is a plight shared by hundreds of other less well known ethnic minorities outside of Europe. Being "different" in even the most open societies, including those of modern Europe, is rarely easy.

Two wheels good, four wheels bad

"It's SUMMER! Can't we go outside?"

Don't you love lists? It seems to be an American obsession.

For example -- I read today that Seattle is the sixth most bike-friendly city in North America. Forbes Magazine says so. Good news, with gas costing $4.45 per gallon. Surrounded by six billion people, all trying to burn up oil as fast as possible, oil that took millions of years to accumulate.

And which city comes in first, according to Forbes? Our friendly rival down I-5, Portland, Oregon. (Sandwiched between the two of us are Boulder, CO; San Diego; Montréal; and Davis, CA.)

So, what's so great about Portland? Free bikes for hotel guests, for one, Forbes notes. Converting auto parking spaces into bike "corrals." The good fortune of having a dense, non-sprawling city that's easy to bike, and the good foresight to have created a system of bike trails.

The first American city to receive a Platinum Bike Rating from the League of American Bicyclists, this metropolis of 500,000 remains by consensus #1 among North America's bike friendly cities. Portland is not resting on its two-wheeled laurels however, having recently initiated a Pilot "Green Box" program that directs cars away from bikers at busy intersections. Visitors will find 164 miles of bike lanes, 66 miles of bike paths, 30 miles of bike boulevards and great access to mountain bike trails.

A Seattle bike shop owner claims that Portland is ten years ahead of the rest of the country in its encouragement of bicycling. But Seattle also has an excellent trail system of its own. The Burke-Gilman trail can be accessed just a few blocks from my house, and runs 18 miles out into the suburbs. Eventually, it will join other trails to form a 55-mile loop circling Lake Washington.

Biking is "green" transportation, but it's also recreation.

Jim B. (whom I introduced in my last post) has challenged me to ride in the "Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa" (RAGBRAI), perhaps next summer. Across Iowa?!! Four hundred seventy-one miles of corn stalks waving in the breeze for scenery? He's got to be kidding! At least it would be flat, I think to myself. Isn't Iowa flat? Uh oh! According to the sponsors, riders will ascend a total of 22,500 feet during the course of the race. That's like biking up Aconcagua in the Andes! Of course, that means coasting down 22,500 feet as well. And then there's the temperature. Iowa in July? Doesn't it tend to be a bit ... warm?

But the idea's tempting, in its madness. I'd have to train, of course. Ride my bike a lot. Where is my bike, by the way? You mean, like, right now? Um, it's sitting quietly in the basement, where it spent the winter. And why, you may ask? "It's too cold out," I whine. "It might rain. It's awfully breezy." What a revolting specimen of an outdoorsman I prove to be! It's humbling to read that the sturdy citizens of No. 9 Minneapolis routinely bike to work in the winter. The Minnesota winter!

Ok, I'll dust my little friend off this weekend, fill his tires up (I see they've gone flat) and oil his chain, haul him upstairs, and take him out for a spin. So what if it never warms up all summer? I don't need no stinking summer. I'm part Norwegian, right? I've got family roots in Minnesota. We Norsemen laugh at the weather. We bikers laugh at the fat scowling motorists.

Just me and my bike! The open trail!

"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ..."

"If only I could spend a year in Paris," you sometimes think. "I should have found a cheap apartment in Manhattan, right after college graduation," I've often told myself. Or, the ever popular: "A week at the beach just isn't enough!"

Sometimes, however, the most intense experiences are those compressed into an extremely short period of time. It's over before you know it, but you are left with memories that remain vivid for years to come.

Jim B., a good friend I hadn't seen for years who teaches at Purdue, is spending two weeks in Ashland, Oregon, studying how to fashion and weld titanium tubing into bicycle frames. Only an idiot would drive eight hours from Seattle to Ashland on a Friday, and drive eight hours back on Sunday, leaving only Saturday for a visit. So you might think. Idiocy is a vice, however, to which I cheerfully confess.

First of all, the drive itself, while long and tiring, was beautiful. I left behind Seattle's recent climate (see prior post). South of Portland, the weather changed to warm, sunny, delightful. The Willamette valley is green, agricultural, full of orchards. The last part of the drive climbed over a series of low mountain passes, craggy and forested. By the time I arrived in Ashland, Friday evening, I was tired but happy, and ready for a beer. And Ashland was ready for me. A string of cafés line tiny Ashland Creek, which runs through the middle of town, each equipped with outdoor tables, giving off southern European vibes of dolce vita. I downed a local ale from Oregon's own Deschutes Brewery

Ashland is known for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Several plays, not all Elizabethan, are showing at any given time in Ashland's Lithia Park. As a result, the town is packed with tourists of a literary bent, as well as with many young people, some attending the local college, and with members of what appears to be a final redoubt of the hippie culture. Everyone -- locals and visitors alike -- appears happy and laid back, in full enjoyment of a town that's blessedly far removed from foreign wars, terrorist threats, and the grosser forms of Washington political infighting. Everyone tactfully and tacitly assumes that you have the good taste to support Obama, unless you care to insist otherwise

We had tickets to A Midsummer's Night Dream, for Saturday night. We spent all day Saturday warming up for the experience by setting out on a nine-mile hike to and from Wagner's Butte, a high crag overlooking the Rogue River Valley and the towns of Medford and Ashland. The climb was exhilarating -- initially through thick fir and pine forests, and then breaking out into open gorse and wildflowers. From the butte, Ashland appears as one small outpost of civilization, nestled in a vast sea of mountains and forests.

The performance that night was entertaining -- true to Shakespeare's text, but, according to the program, set in the mid-1950's. The play, which Shakepeare had placed in ancient Greece, opened on a pimped-out set with Theseus and his lover Hippolyta, lounging on what appeared to be a pair of gigantic white leather thrones, and hectoring each other in urban street accents. Oberon, the king of the fairies, was attended at all times by his quartet of fairy attendants, young men clad in leather shorts who sang and danced their lines in the manner of disco entertainers in a rather louche gay bar. The audience frequently interrupted with laughter and applause, which is certainly more than the usual high school production can hope for.

Nevertheless, the humor of the settings and costumes and of the actors' accents were superficial pleasures. The story and the lines of Shakespeare's play were easily transplanted from ancient Athens to 1957 (or was it 1977?) Brooklyn without damage. Their appeal is universal, regardless of how they are packaged.

I was on my way home before I knew it, but I'd had a great hike, enjoyed a wonderful interpretation of Shakespeare, and had an opportunity to catch up with recent events in the life of a friend.

Also, I learned that Linn County, Oregon, is the "Grass Seed Capital of the World," and that, as we were informed by the teenager who pumped our gas (self-service gas pumps being illegal in Oregon), the Ashland area grows the best pears outside France. As they say, travel is broadening.

Even when it's over in a flash.

Bipolar disorder

Cold, cloudy, and wet! Cold, cloudy, and wet!

Faithful readers -- whose numbers I trust are legion -- will of course recall my mantra of lament back on April 6. "Silly old Rainier96," I heard you all laugh. "Of course it's cold, cloudy and wet. The doofus insists on living in Seattle!" I crawled back under my blanket of moss, with a damp scowl on my face.

Yeah, well. Two months later. Ten days shy of the summer solstice. It's still cold, cloudy and wet. And you know what, faithful readers? According to official statistics(!!!) -- official, ok? -- this June, to date, has been the coldest June in all of Seattle's recorded history. Recorded history, from a weatherman's perspective, being history that dates back to 1891, a sizable hunk of time ago.

Meanwhile -- and my mouth fills with bitter bile and gall -- Fairbanks (Fairbanks freaking Alaska, mind you!!) basked in the 70's for six of the first ten days of the month. While we Washingtonians, thousands of miles to the south, splashed around miserably, our hands and feet numb, from cold dripping day to cold dripping day.

So, what's going on, people? What would Al Gore come up with to explain this anomaly? Where is that much vaunted global warming of his, and why am I getting none of it? Why the *bleep* is my furnace still running, on June 11, almost half-way though June? Still burning oil, worth its weight in gold, while happy oblivious school kids have already finished their classes for the year, and are out dancing mindlessly in the puddles?

Move your chairs up closer, my friends. Here's my theory. While everyone's eyes were on the antics of Britney Spears, or on the Obama-Clinton duel, our planet did a little dance. Just a little jig, a quick little step. One of those dances it does every few eons.

There has been a polar shift. The so-called "North Pole," I conclude, based on careful study and observation, is no longer the north pole. The Space Needle is now the north pole. We here in Seattle are gently revolving around our very own local icon, while our temperatures drop, and our tempers and oil bills rise. It makes sense, yes? The new north pole (née Space Needle) is far more impressive, magnificent, nay, polar, than was the old barber pole that reputedly stuck out of the ice cap covering the Arctic Ocean.

So if the north pole is in Seattle, where does that put Fairbanks? In the tropics? Look at your maps, kiddies, and do some measuring. It is 1,518 miles from Seattle to Fairbanks. And now that Seattle owns the new north pole (whether it wants it or not), the direction from Seattle to Fairbanks -- hell, the direction from Seattle to anyplace -- is south. Every degree change in latitude represents 69.17 miles. Therefore, Fairbanks is 21.94° south of Seattle, which works out to 68.06° N. latitude, under Seattle's new polar sovereignty. Since before the polar shift, Fairbanks was located at about 65° N. latitude, it's actually been nudged about 200 miles farther north.

Which is an excellent place for it, as far as I'm concerned, but admittedly doesn't explain why it's been having 70° temperature.

But global warming does explain it. Excellent. Everything fits.

So what's going to happen to the old lopsided barber pole that artists always show jutting out of the ice to mark the former North Pole? We'll put it on the registry of historical landmarks. It's no longer the north pole, but we can call it the West Pole. Why not?

You remember how he [Pooh] discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of this that he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such as a Bear of Little Brain might discover. "There's a South Pole," said Christopher Robin, "and I expect there's an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them."

So, see? There you are. Someone else already thought of it. And now, if you'll excuse me, these scientific posts are quite tiring to write, and I think I'll go stretch out on the sofa for a few minutes.

Wrapped in a blanket, of course. A heavy wool blanket.

I'm a peaceful guy, you know?

George Bush has expressed regret that his rhetoric in the run-up to the war in Iraq may have created the impression that he was a warmonger.

"I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric," Bush told the Times as he flew across the Atlantic on Air Force One.

The phrases he used to win support for the war such as "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive" he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace."

--The [Manchester] Guardian (U.K.) (6-11-08)

No comment.

With her head held high

Hillary Rodham Clinton finally conceded today, graciously and warmly, throwing her full support to Barack Obama.

Now that the infighting between the two is over, a civil war within the Democratic family that certainly caught me up in it as much as it did anyone, it's time to stand back and view her candidacy more objectively. We who supported Obama have tended to view everything through a single prism -- how did each of Clinton's actions affect Obama's chances in November? We tended to disregard the historical significance of her campaign, the first serious -- and very nearly successful -- attempt by a woman to become President of the United States.

To her female supporters, and especially to those over the age of 45 or so, supporting Hillary meant more than choosing the strongest candidate to oppose McCain in November, although they certainly believed that's what she'd be. Her vigorous battle for the nomination was also a celebration of their successes in their own careers, and an emotional compensation for their failures and humiliations -- careers spent fighting against male bosses and fellow employees who would simply never take them seriously.

For these women, this was an emotional campaign, displaying rawer and less joyful emotions than those demonstrated by Obama's exuberant youngsters. And it wasn't just her supporters who had a psychological stake in her campaign. While Hillary had succeeded well in a man's world, she, too, was a female who had suffered her own set-backs and humiliations throughout life.

For me, it's easy to forget this aspect of her campaign. I live in a state where the governor is a woman, and where both U.S. Senators are women. Our last governor was a Chinese-American male, and my county's last chief executive was a black male. Over the decades, Washingtonians have become so used to diversity that we often forget -- we're the only state, so far as I'm aware, that has ever had women serving as governor and as both senators, all at the same time.

Diversity of this sort is not the rule in most of the nation.

Gail Collins has written a moving and intelligent column in today's New York Times, entitled "What Hillary Won." She concludes:

So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before. By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

And this was, in fact, a major victory. Regardless of Ms. Clinton's future success or lack of success electorally, it may well be the accomplishment for which history gives her the greatest credit. Viewed from this perspective, her achievement was worth forcing her campaign through every primary, all the way to June. She may have created some temporary problems for Obama's campaign, but she showed that a woman can fight for her political goals and for her ideals as fiercely and as forcefully as any man. She didn't surrender the castle. She fought until superior forces overcame it, and defeated her in battle.

At times, I may have questioned her judgment in fighting so long and so fiercely. I may have been irked by her personality. That's all right. There have been few male leaders in history whose judgment couldn't also be called into question. There have been few who did not have their obnoxious moments. Hillary Clinton didn't set out to prove that she was superior to every man alive. She sought to prove that she was their equal.

In my mind, at least, she succeeded. An historical campaign, one that will be long remembered. To be governed by strong women, as well as by strong men, will from now on seem as normal to most of the country as it does already to those of us living in Washington state.

Hillary's future path may still lead to the presidency. If not, the woman who first does become president will do so by standing on her shoulders, by harvesting the crop that Hillary has sowed. That in itself is a remarkable and respectable legacy for her to leave to the nation.

And now, on to November!

Got a chicken in your pot?

Dow Plunges As Crude Tops $139
Jobless Rate Leaps to 3 1/2 Year High in May
Job Losses Confirm Sense of an Economy in Trouble
Wall Street Tumbles After Jobs Data, Oil
Businesses Shed 49,000 Jobs in May, 324,000 So Far This Year

--Random headlines spotted on June 6, 2008

Hoover easily won the 1928 Republican nomination for President. His platform rejected farm subsidies, supported prohibition, pledged lower taxes, and promised more of the same prosperity Americans had enjoyed during the Coolidge years. Hoover’s opponent in the presidential race would be Democrat Al Smith of New York, a Catholic who railed against Prohibition. Smith was a distinct underdog, however. His religion and his anti-prohibition position alienated many southern Democrats, a key constituency in the party. Hoover, on the other hand, was an extremely attractive candidate, the man who would help Americans attain new levels of prosperity -- or, as a 1928 Republican slogan claimed, put “a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage.” On election day, Hoover won an overwhelming victory, claiming more than 58 percent of the vote.

--Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia

Prosperity is just around the corner.

--Herbert Hoover

"We're beginning to see signs that the stimulus may be working," Bush said at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

--MSNBC 6-6-08

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

--Karl Marx

Open conventions

So Obama finally made it. And almost three months before the two conventions, we already know who the Democratic and Republican nominees will be. So, what's the point now of viewing the conventions on television, except maybe to watch the candidates' acceptance speeches?

'Twas not always thus.

In 1952, the Democrats needed three ballots to nominate Adlai Stevenson. The first ballot ran as follows:

Adlai Stevenson (Illinois governor)	273
Estes Kefauver (Tennessee senator)	340
Richard B. Russell (Georgia senator)	268
W. Averell Harriman	123 1/2
Alben W. Barkley (Vice President)	48 1/2
Robert S. Kerr (Oklahoma senator)	65
Paul A. Dever (Massachusetts governor)	37 1/2
Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota senator)	26
J. William Fulbright (Arkansas senator)	22
Miscellaneous	26 1/2

Although Sen. Kefauver led at the end of the first ballot, and again at the end of the second ballot, Averell Harriman, diplomat and cabinet member under Truman, and future New York governor, then threw his support to Adlai Stevenson, who ended up finally winning a majority of the delegates on the third ballot, and becoming the Democratic nominee.

Now that was exciting!

This 1952 wheeling and dealing, the politics of the "smoke-filled room," was tame, however, compared with the Democratic convention of 1924. Under the two-thirds rule then in effect, the delegates required 103 ballots to nominate a non-entity, John W. Davis, who then went on to be defeated in November by the charismatic Calvin Coolidge.

That was old fashioned, back room politics, sweaty, brawling, sleep-deprived gatherings of the party faithful. Even in 1952, only a few states held presidential primary elections. The delegates from most states were picked by the party leaders within that state, similar to the superdelegates of this year's race. A state's governor often was nominated at the convention as a "favorite son," commanding the loyalty of his entire delegation, with the expectation that he would be able to win concessions, to the advantage of himself and/or his state, for delivering the votes of his delegation.

Governor Earl Warren, favorite son from California at the 1952 Republican convention, threw his state's votes to Eisenhower at the end of the first ballot, putting Ike over the top. After the election, strangely enough, Warren was nominated as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The party was still viewed, to a large extent, as a private club, a club that proposed a nominee to the nation's voters, and worked for his election. Today, the parties are viewed more as an official part of the election procedure, almost governmental bodies. Voters today demand the right to help choose the delegates, even if they otherwise have no interest in the party and its affairs, and may even end up supporting the opposing party in the general election.

This evolutionary change has both its good and its bad aspects. What is beyond question, however, is that nominating conventions today are far less exciting than they were a few decades ago.